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It’s a special announcement from Now What? podcast. We’re nominated for a Webby Award! The Webbies celebrate the best of the internet and we’re so honored to be selected. We’re bringing you this special message to ask for your VOTE –– because you can help us win the People’s Voice Award. Go to http://wbby.co/pod-creativity to vote and share with friends and colleagues. Voting ends this Thursday, April 21, 2022. Thanks so much for listening and for your support. Oh, and there’s so much more to come… very soon.

After a year of unparalleled change in our society and the way we use technology, this first season of Now What? podcast had us speaking with leaders in design, development, eCommerce, and the agency world about how their teams and customers are reacting to this new operating system at work and in life. Guests from WarnerMedia, GitHub, The New York Times, Medium, Red Antler, and R/GA shared incredible insights and lessons about solving big problems, the entrepreneurial refresh, the future of online shopping, finding clarity to circumvent failure, designer / developer relationships, and what’s next in user experience design. Sit back, for highlights from Season 1 of Now What? podcast and stay tuned… There's so much more to come.

Developer, author, artist and educator Miriam Suzanne has spent her career designing the future of the internet. She builds websites, apps and is focused on expanding the boundaries of the technology that determines how we interact with the web. The co-founder of OddBird web agency and Invited Expert on the W3C CSS Working Group talks to Now What? about why the internet looks the way it does, why designers and developers need to move in lockstep and how the future of the web will be built around inclusivity and respect. 

Alexis Lloyd leads product design at the intersection of publishing and technology and she’s spent her career working on future-forward solutions for readers to discover the content they want. Alexis is the co-founder of Ethical Futures Lab, where she aims to positively influence the future of AI and technology platforms, and she’s worked as a creative technology leader at The New York Times focused on the future of news, before joining Axios and then Automattic to transform their design practices. As VP of product design at Medium, Alexis is dedicated to the role technology can play in evolving user-centered design when it comes to the written word, and how platforms like Medium can create experiences that support interdependent systems and society as a whole. We talk to Alexis about the power and peril of the creator economy, how Medium is building relationships between readers and writers and why artificial intelligence might just supercharge human creativity.

Paul Turzio is using data to upend the prevailing wisdom about how and why customers fall in love with their favorite brands. The SVP of Data & Marketing Sciences at R/GA recently led a global survey that asked 16,000 customers about their relationships with brands. The findings and subsequent report titled The Power of Brand Relationship Design have shifted the assumptions surrounding everything from marketing technology (MarTech) to the role of personalization in turning one-time customers into loyal fans. In this episode, we talk to Paul about conducting the right experiments with MarTech, the importance of post-purchase experiences and why brands need to keep their promises to customers.

Richard Jennings has seen the disruptive power of technology firsthand. The veteran design leader spent much of his career in the music and media industries, where he’s watched technology change the shape of business seemingly overnight. Witnessing all the ways people consume, discover and enjoy entertainment change so rapidly has had an indelible impression on Richard –– and it shaped his approach to leading design teams at HBO and WarnerMedia. In this episode, we talk to Richard about where he finds inspiration, his work in making the design industry more inclusive and what organizational evolution looks like during a global pandemic.

Designers who code are often described as unicorns. Mythical creatures, not of this world, capable of incredible feats. Natalya Shelburne is on a mission to change all of that. She says these so-called unicorns should be as commonplace as horses. Natalya knows a lot about sitting at the intersection of art and code, she’s the co-author of the Design Engineering Handbook, the senior manager of design infrastructure at GitHub and was previously senior software engineer at The New York Times. And in this episode, Natalya breaks down the misconceptions of the design engineer, gets to the root of making designer/developer collaboration work (hint: it’s about people), shares the value of design systems for better business outcomes and offers advice on carving out a career on the multidisciplinary path.

The pandemic was a time of peaks and troughs for Printful, the custom printing company Davis Siksnans helped launch in 2013. His organization experienced explosive growth in both revenue and headcount during the pandemic, expanding from 500 employees in 2019 to 1,600 in 2020. But he was also forced to reckon with how his global workforce and supply chain was impacted by COVID-19 and make adjustments to help the company navigate on the fly. In this episode, we talk to Davis about running an eCommerce business during a global crisis, how Printful is making eCommerce more sustainable and the most important leadership lessons he’s learned after nearly a decade in business. 

Trevor Hubbard has spent the last decade thinking about what leads to failure. His process around identifying weak points is core to his work at Butchershop, the agency he founded in 2009. In fact, during one retreat a couple years ago, Trevor and the executive team listed out potential conditions that could lead to Butchershop’s demise. Among them? A global disaster that prevents them from leaving San Francisco or going to the office. We talk to Trevor about how moving to a distributed workforce opened the door to new business perspectives for Butchershop, the non-profit his team launched seemingly overnight at the start of COVID-19, his system for minimizing meetings, and how his process has helped many massive companies swim, rather than sink.

For the last 15 years, Shanna Tellerman has been figuring out how virtual reality and 3D modeling can make our lives better. The founder of the interior design startup Modsy knew that both of these technologies had the potential to change how we interact with the world and buy products—but not in the way people might think. We talk to Shanna about her biggest revelation when it comes to VR, the importance of data and AI for attracting and retaining customers, and how Modsy has tapped into consumer desires and thrived during lockdown.

Like so many entrepreneurs, developer Ire Aderinokun started her business because she was frustrated with something—namely the Nigerian financial system. It was operating on technology and bureaucracy that seemed stuck in the past and unsuited for global consumers. Which is why Ire started Buycoins, a crypto trading platform for Africa allowing people to seamlessly buy and sell cryptocurrency. We talk to Ire about her background as a front-end web developer and user interface designer, her work advocating for women’s equality in Nigeria as a founding member of the Feminist Coalition, and how cryptocurrencies can shape our future for the better.

Joy Cho has gone from a freelance designer sharing her inspiration to building one of the most influential brands on the planet — and she has the 15 million Pinterest followers to prove it. The founder and creative director of the lifestyle brand Oh Joy! has partnered with everyone from Target to Microsoft to Keds to create products that reflect her singular aesthetic. But Oh Joy! is in a constant state of evolution, and Joy herself is always looking for new opportunities to create and collaborate. We talk to Joy about her strategies for developing a successful creative business, finding a social media platform that works for you, and knowing the right time to end a business venture and move onto something new. This is the third episode of Now What? A new podcast series from Wix, hosted by Rob Goodman, about how technology is changing… everything. Subscribe and follow the show for new episodes. Get show notes, subscribe to our newsletter, and learn more at www.wix.com/nowwhat.