Two design podcasts I find constantly informative are Design Matters, by Debbie Millman; and Icon-o-Cast, by Lunar Design. Both have more than a little to say about experience design, though their ambits are quite a bit broader.
The podcasts display distinctly different temperaments, probably geographic in origin: Millman's attitude is alternately reflective and in your face, as befits a New Yorker; the Lunar Design team is San Francisco Bay laidback, "Wazzup?" all the way.
Millman takes a critical approach to design: in a quiet place, she interviews designers, brand managers, etc., inquisitively. She also voices her own opinions. She's a writer/critic/design aficionado whose first-person style conforms easily to the podcast's conversational format. The Lunar approach is more sitting-around-the-bar style, or in the field. It's more often breathless, although the Lunar designer/reporters are not afraid to call it as they see it.
Lunar Design's John Downing, Dan Senatore, Max Yoshimoto and others are more technology/product oriented: they favor first-person reports from within Lunar and interviewing with other companies' representatives.
The knowing crone and the young hunters: the latter are hip to changes on the design landscape, the former divines deeper meanings. Try 'em both. Design Matters is available as a stream via Sterling Brands or you can do a search for it on Apple's iTunes. You can subscribe to Icon-o-Cast from the Icon-o-Cast Podcast website and also via iTunes. They're now among our links.
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
