Tentative

About the show

Tentative is a podcast about digital product design.
Hosted by thoughtbot's Chief Design Officer Kyle Fiedler & Boston Design Director Jaclyn Perrone.

Tentative on social media

Episodes

  • 47: Cubital Fossa

    February 16th, 2018  |  33 mins 32 secs

    We're a bit giddy this rare pre-coffee morning recording, before Segway-ing into naming conventions in CSS, as well as communicating about the design process and decisions.

  • 46: The Danger Zone

    February 2nd, 2018  |  36 mins 4 secs

    Jaclyn and Kyle ponder their past lives and spirit animals, and manage to squeeze in some design talk about condensed sprints, tips for managing remote user testing, reinforcing best-practices, and time management.

  • 45: Happy Mistakes

    January 19th, 2018  |  31 mins 33 secs

    Kyle & Jaclyn are back for 2018! This week they discuss Die Hard, designing on an iPad, the importance of community to creation, and embracing the flaws in your art.

  • 44: Helvetica Wasn’t Designed Yet

    December 15th, 2017  |  33 mins 39 secs

    Kyle & Jaclyn chat about Stranger Things, design approaches to personal sites, using improv to build better trust & communication on a team, & the importance of naming and language.

  • 43: I Don't Know What NeoPets are Either

    November 24th, 2017  |  48 mins 53 secs

    Brenda and Dawn talk about early experiences with tech, CSS DevConf, code review, performance considerations around the world, and refactoring legacy sketch files.

  • 42: Start Building, Start Meeting

    November 9th, 2017  |  31 mins 26 secs

    Jaclyn and Kyle talk about ways to start a design career, as well as what happens when you're deep in the trenches building products.

  • 41: Happy Birthday Kyle

    July 31st, 2017  |  36 mins 6 secs

    Reda & Kyle discuss color consistency across tools and devices, as well as the inefficiencies of design workflows.

  • 40: CoolGraphics.com

    June 30th, 2017  |  32 mins 53 secs

    Kyle & Reda discuss search engines, documentation searches, reminisce about Photoshop Slices in Dreamweaver, and question Reda's Google-Fu.

  • 39: Too Much Fiddling

    June 9th, 2017  |  28 mins 18 secs

    Kyle & Dawn discuss end-of-project planning / organization, jobs vs user stories, and the merits of Austin TX.

  • 38: Grid Locked

    May 26th, 2017  |  26 mins 55 secs

    Brenda joins Reda to discuss CSS Grid Layout, the reasons they don't use grid frameworks as much anymore, iPad design, and the pros/cons of client vs product work.

  • 37: That Sounds Very Obvious Coming Out of My Mouth

    April 28th, 2017  |  24 mins 24 secs

    Dawn and Kyle talk about Dawn’s recent experience running usability tests, and what learned from running them. Kyle discusses how he's using Jobs-to-be-done theory to build a marketing landing page. Finally, how they approach which resolution screen to design for first.

  • 36: Floating in Space

    April 7th, 2017  |  35 mins 18 secs

    Reda and Jack talk about design from the perspective of a developer, why CSS sucks for layout, retro game making, and App Store things.

  • 35: Design Debt

    March 24th, 2017  |  27 mins 56 secs

    We talk about the dichotomy of perfection in design, versus shipping something that is 'good enough'. Reda discusses how he is keeping track of the places in the app that he wants to improve while trying to hit deadlines. Also, recent experience jumping on print design and branding projects, and the different tools used when tackling them.

  • 34: Big Human Aspect

    March 10th, 2017  |  30 mins 29 secs

    We discuss whether it is better to have a bunch of work waiting for you or none when getting back from a vacation, what it’s like being the only designer on a project, documenting design, and trends / style specifically for iOS (and how it relates to the web).

  • 33: Design Speak

    February 24th, 2017  |  30 mins 45 secs

    Kyle is joined by Jaclyn Perrone to talk about designing with seed data, and how to make a new interface not look empty. They discuss using jobs-to-be-done to influence a product through interviews and job statements, as well as how they approach designing with users in mind, and the value of real users' reactions when testing interfaces.

  • 32: Sprinting Remotely

    February 10th, 2017  |  23 mins 48 secs

    Kyle is joined by Dawn Delatte to discuss the different tools and methodology employed in tackling a remote design sprint. They cover some of the success and failures of a recent sprint and how they split up work afterwards.

    Dawn talks about diving into JavaScript which leads to a discussion on how they learn new technology and design techniques. Kyle is back on a rails app and is enjoying planning out the product.