『Boagworld: UX, Design Leadership, Marketing & Conversion Optimization』のカバーアート

Boagworld: UX, Design Leadership, Marketing & Conversion Optimization

Boagworld: UX, Design Leadership, Marketing & Conversion Optimization

著者： Paul Boag Marcus Lillington
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概要

 Boagworld: The podcast where digital best practices meets a terrible sense of humor! Join us for a relaxed chat about all things digital design. We dish out practical advice and industry insights, all wrapped up in friendly conversation. Whether you're looking to improve your user experience, boost your conversion or be a better design lead, we've got something for you. With over 400 episodes, we're like the cool grandads of web design podcasts – experienced, slightly inappropriate, but always entertaining. So grab a drink, get comfy, and join us for an entertaining journey through the life of a digital professional.Boagworks Ltd 経済学
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  • From Agency Work to Product Success

    From Agency Work to Product Success
    2026/02/17
    This episode we're joined by Stu Green, a product designer, agency founder, and serial app builder who's sold not one but two successful SaaS products.We dig into the realities of building your own product versus running an agency, the role AI plays in modern product development, and whether the flood of AI-built apps is a threat or an opportunity for professionals.Plus, we check out Bleet, an app that turns your meeting transcripts into social media content, and Paul shares how AI-powered personas are changing the way he approaches user research.App of the Week: BleetYou know you should be posting on LinkedIn. You've told yourself that every week for the past 6 months. But then you sit down, stare at the blank post box, and realize you have absolutely no idea what to write about. So you close the tab and promise yourself you'll do it tomorrow. You won't.Bleet is an app built by Stu Green (and collaborator Nick) that solves this by mining the conversations you're already having. It takes your meeting recordings and transcripts, extracts the key topics using AI, and helps you turn them into social media posts. And the thing that sets it apart from just asking ChatGPT to write something for you is that it pulls your actual words and phrases from the conversation, piecing them together into posts that genuinely sound like you rather than generic AI slop.How It WorksYou connect your meeting recordings or transcripts (or even just speak a thought into the app), and Bleet will surface a list of topics you covered. From there, you pick the ones you want to post about and hit "create." You can dial in how much creative liberty the AI takes, from near-verbatim to lightly polished.So you sit down for 10 minutes once a week, pick a handful of topics, schedule them up, and you're done. A single meeting can generate enough content for almost a week of daily posts.What About Client Confidentiality?The number one concern people raise is about sharing sensitive client information. Bleet strips out client names, specific people, and identifiable details. It focuses on the general topic and the ideas discussed, not the specifics of who said what in which meeting. And of course, you review everything before it goes anywhere, so if something feels too close to the bone, you just skip it or edit it.Topic of the Week: Building Products vs. Running AgenciesStu Green has lived both lives. He's run agencies, built products from scratch, and sold 2 SaaS businesses. So what's the difference between building for clients and building for yourself? Quite a lot, as it turns out.Start by Solving Your Own ProblemBoth of Stu's successful apps, a project management tool and HourStack (a time management app), started the same way: he needed something that didn't exist. The project management tool grew out of running his own consultancy. HourStack came from juggling small children and fragmented work hours, and wanting a way to visualize and stack little blocks of productive time.If you're genuinely your own best customer, there's a good chance others like you exist. And if even 2 or 5 or 10 of them show up, you've got the start of something real.The Myth of "I One-Shotted This"AI has made it dramatically easier to build apps, but Stu is refreshingly honest about the gap between a demo and a product. Sure, he cloned entire apps in a single prompt and it looked great. But behind that impressive facade? Hours of iteration, hosting setup, video infrastructure, S3 servers, and a stack of decisions that require real product-building experience.The people posting "I built this in one shot" on X are technically telling the truth, but they're showing you the Hollywood set, not the house behind the door. Getting from prototype to something you can actually charge money for still takes professional knowledge. You need to know what questions to ask, which answers are good, and when you're being led down a rabbit hole.Two Tiers of AI ToolsPaul and Stu landed on a useful mental model: there are essentially 2 categories of AI building tools.Tools for everyone: Platforms like Lovable or Figma Make that let anyone create a basic app or prototype. Great for personal use, proof of concepts, and quick experiments.Tools for professionals: Things like Cursor and Claude Code that enhance a developer's ability to build production-quality software faster and better, but still require real expertise to use well.Think of it like desktop publishing in the '90s. When it arrived, everyone panicked that graphic designers were finished. Instead, regular people made terrible flyers with Comic Sans, and the professionals used the same tools to produce better work, faster. AI-built apps are following the same pattern.The 3-Stage Development ModelPaul offered a framework for thinking about where AI fits in the build process:Prototype and proof of concept: Anyone can do this with AI tools. Great for validating ideas quickly and cheaply.The production build: This still needs...
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    1 時間
  • The UX Reckoning: What 2026 Holds for Our Industry

    The UX Reckoning: What 2026 Holds for Our Industry
    2026/01/13
    In this episode, we kick off 2026 with a candid look at where the UX industry stands and where it's heading. We dig into a thought-provoking article from Nielsen Norman Group, share our hopes (and fears) for the year ahead, and explore a fantastic design pattern catalog focused on building user trust. Plus, we discuss why generalists might just be the unicorns the industry needs right now.Topic of the Week: Preparing for 2026 and the UX ReckoningWe spent a good chunk of this episode discussing an article from the Nielsen Norman Group that, while technically published in early 2025, remains just as relevant today. Written by Kate Morin, Sarah Gibbons, and others at NNGroup, it tackles the challenges facing our industry head-on.UX Is Back on the Chopping BlockLet's not sugarcoat it. It's been a tough time for UX professionals. Layoffs have hit hard, particularly in the US, and there's a palpable sense of doom and gloom floating around LinkedIn and other professional spaces. We've seen this before, though. We set up Headscape right in the middle of the dot-com bust, after being laid off ourselves. It wasn't fun, but times like these have a way of separating the wheat from the chaff.Economic downturns tend to clear out people who jumped into UX because they saw easy opportunities, leaving behind those with genuine understanding and passion for the work. And despite all the negativity online, the World Economic Forum actually ranked UX design as one of the 8th fastest-growing industries. So the discipline itself isn't dying. There's just been a mismatch between the number of people entering the field and the reality of what the market can absorb.The Rebranding Debate Is a Red HerringSome people are suggesting we rebrand UX to "product design" or "experience design" to solve our problems. We don't think that's the answer. The word "design" does carry some baggage. In many business minds, it's seen as a luxury rather than a business-critical function. So when budgets get tight, "design" gets cut while "conversion optimization" and "customer retention" survive. That's a perception problem, not a naming problem.The real issue is that there are too many low-quality UX practitioners who've been churned out through bootcamps. They've been taught a process to follow, and they follow it come what may. That's not their fault; they were taught that way. But six months of bootcamp doesn't prepare you for the messy, contextual reality of actual UX work.The AI ReckoningThe negativity around AI on LinkedIn has been phenomenal lately. There's anger about "AI slop" and a general feeling that it's no good for anything. Paul posted about using AI to help create personas and do online research, and got absolutely slated for it.AI is just a tool. Like any tool, if you use it badly, you get bad results. If you use it well, it can be genuinely helpful. The good news is that we're finally moving past the "AI for AI's sake" phase. We're starting to see thoughtful integration of AI into products and services, AI that actually solves real user needs.Every technology goes through the same cycle. Remember video recorders? First, we were just amazed the technology worked at all. Big analog buttons, you started recording and stopped recording, and that was it. Then manufacturers added more and more features until the things became unusable with their tiny buttons and complicated preset systems. Then someone invented a code you could enter from the Radio Times to set recording times automatically. And finally, Sky came along with "press a button and it records." AI is going through that exact same evolution right now.Shallow UX Is Suffering (and That's Okay)Templates, processes, production-line UX: that stuff is really struggling, and it will continue to struggle. AI can do that now. You're not going to make money or build a career by blindly following the double diamond and churning out deliverables.What you need going forward are distinctly human skills: critical thinking, taste, knowing whether something is heading in the right direction, and navigating messy organizational dynamics. Those are the skills that matter. Soft skills like relationship building, facilitation, and empathy are going to be far more valuable than whether you can use Figma.Stop Worshipping Templates and ProcessesUX is messy. You can't box it up the same way on every project. Templates and checklists are great starting points, but they're not a substitute for thinking. Context is everything.There's no such thing as best practice. When someone from Google or Facebook says you need a 6-week discovery phase with facilitated usability testing of at least 6 people, and sure, that probably worked great for their situation, with their team, their product, and their stakeholders. But it doesn't mean it's right for your startup or your client with a third of the budget and massive internal politics.If you've been taught a linear process, shift your mindset. Don't have a ...
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    52 分
  • Surviving Crisis: Lessons from Higher Ed's Financial Storm

    Surviving Crisis: Lessons from Higher Ed's Financial Storm
    2025/12/23
    In this episode, we welcome back Andrew Millar from the University of Dundee to discuss the current state of higher education, vibe coding platforms for non-developers, and the importance of community-driven conferences like Scottish Web Folk.App of the Week: Bolt.newThis week we're looking at Bolt.new, a vibe coding platform designed specifically for non-developers. Unlike tools like Cursor that are built for developers to pair program with AI, Bolt is aimed at people like marketers, designers, and small business owners who want to create functional applications without ever touching code.Paul has been using Bolt to build practical tools for his own business, including a custom top task analysis app, WordPress plugins, JavaScript extensions, and CSS animations. The platform handles everything from the database to publishing and hosting, making it genuinely accessible for non-technical users.However, we'd caution against treating these tools as production-ready for enterprise use. They're excellent for prototyping, internal tools, and small-scale applications, but they likely won't pass rigorous quality control in larger organizations. Think of them like desktop publishing was in the early days. They democratize creation but don't eliminate the need for professional expertise.For production-ready code, the real value comes when developers use AI pair programming tools where they can review, understand, and quality-check the output. The future likely involves professionals using these tools to increase productivity rather than replacing expertise entirely.Topic of the Week: The State of Higher Education and Digital TransformationAndrew Millar, who runs the digital team at Dundee University, joins us to paint an honest picture of the current higher education landscape. It's not pretty, but his candid insights offer valuable lessons for anyone navigating organizational crisis, whether in universities or elsewhere.The Perfect Storm Facing UniversitiesHigher education has always claimed poverty, but the structural problems have become impossible to ignore. Universities face two fundamental financial challenges: funding per student hasn't kept pace with inflation over the past decade, and research grants typically only cover around 80% of actual costs, leaving institutions to make up the difference.International students became the solution to plug this gap. They could be charged higher fees and effectively cross-subsidized teaching for domestic students and research activities. This worked until a perfect storm hit: COVID disruptions, international conflicts, hostile government rhetoric toward international students, and for Dundee specifically, the Nigerian economy's collapse, which dramatically reduced one of their key international markets.Dundee found themselves with a 30 million pound deficit. Within a year, the principal resigned, the entire executive changed, the Scottish government stepped in with emergency funding, and 500 staff members have left from a workforce of around 3,000.The Three Phases of Crisis ManagementAndrew outlined three distinct phases organizations go through during financial crisis, and his framework offers practical guidance for anyone facing similar situations.Phase 1: Cut, Cut, CutWhen crisis hits, budgets get slashed, often multiple times. Andrew recommends categorizing everything into three buckets: what's absolutely critical to keep the lights on, what will hurt but won't cause lasting harm, and what's easy to eliminate. This is actually an opportunity to clear out legacy systems and processes that nobody uses but somehow persist.The challenge is that during this phase, people aren't open to change or new ways of working. They just want to see the existing stuff cut. Don't waste energy trying to introduce innovations here. Focus on strategic pruning.Phase 2: The Great Spaghetti Flying ContestThis is where everyone becomes an expert on how to solve the crisis. Phrases like "we should at least try it" and "isn't it good to test ideas?" fly around constantly. The problem is that these are the exact phrases digital teams have been using for years to encourage experimentation, now thrown back at them by people with competing priorities.Governance structures become critical here. You can clarify requests (ensuring they're truly worth pursuing), compromise on scope, or clog them up in committees until priorities become clearer. When your escalation paths have collapsed, as they did at Dundee when leadership departed, you're left justifying decisions without backup.The key insight: never say "computer says no" via email. Have conversations. Explain your reasoning. When people understand the constraints, they typically accept them. Email refusals just get escalated to whoever shouts loudest.Phase 3: The Big SqueezeWith less money, fewer people, less institutional knowledge, and no clear strategy, this phase is when things get really difficult. But paradoxically, it's also when ...
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    1 時間 4 分
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