In this highly anticipated return of the Discussing Stupid podcast, host Virgil Carroll welcomes new co-host Cole Schlotthauer to kick off Season 2. After a five-year hiatus, they're back with a fresh approach, focusing on shorter, more targeted episodes that delve into specific UX and digital practices.

Virgil and Cole discuss the shift from long-form interviews to concise, 10-15 minute episodes designed to provide actionable insights. This season will cover a range of topics, from alt text best practices to the pitfalls of relying too heavily on AI for accessibility. The goal is to offer practical advice that listeners can immediately apply in their own work.

In addition to audio, the podcast will now include video episodes, allowing for more dynamic content and visual examples. For those who prefer audio-only, detailed show notes will ensure no one misses out on the valuable information shared.

Don't miss out on the latest updates and exclusive content—subscribe to Discussing Stupid on their website, and follow them on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud. Get ready for a season packed with insightful discussions on UX and digital best practices!

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In this episode of the Discussing Stupid podcast your host Virgil Carroll has a conversation with Brett Matson, the Managing Director of Funnelback Search Technology, about search, semantic search, knowledge graphs, artificial intelligence in search, and the related leverages and pitfalls.

Brett shares that there are several big things coming in the area of search, after reaching a plateau and stagnation for a few years. Some of these are paradigmatic (understanding the search has multiple purposes, not just page rankings,) and some include changing the approach (i.e. modifying queries,) changing presentation of results (modules,) knowledge graphs, semantic search (detecting the intent of the query,) and many more.

Brett explores how some of these new technologies are intrinsically more attractive to people. For example, knowledge graphs are (or can be) visual and show relations between entities in them. Thus, they are much more intuitive in contrast to being faced with a wall of data to choose from. The point is, of course, making content a lot more intelligent and hence more useful, by treating it as a product and perfecting its delivery.

In Brett’s opinion, during the next decade we will see a real proliferation of smart tools that will help users and companies perform a significantly better search. Virgil and Brett also discuss how it is very important to avoid making too many connections when using a new, powerful technology that can do that. This can bog down the whole organization, its data servers, employees, and finally, users.

Virgil’s conversation with Brett is very rich and diverse, so make sure to listen to the whole episode and pay close attention to what he had to share.

Links:

Episode mentioned:
Future-proofing your experience delivery strategy with Intelligent Content by Kate Skinner.

Siraj Raval's YouTube channel is full of short, fun videos that teach all different aspects of machine learning and AI.

Coursera's Machine Learning course, one of the original online machine learning courses, delivered by leading AI researcher Andrew Ng.

A great article by Sebastien Dery discussing the challenges of knowledge graphs.

Connect with Funnelback:
https://www.funnelback.com/

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In this episode of the Discussing Stupid podcast, your host Virgil Carroll has a conversation with Kanwal Khipple about successful and consistent user experience (UX) across multiple channels. The question is how to design consistent user experience for people across different interfaces developed by different companies to provide different experiences. Kanwal is the CEO at 2toLEAD, and great UX innovation is his passion. Virgil and Kanwal dive deep into the past and recent trends of tools, the challenges that user experience design faces across tools, and offer advice on the best approaches to cultivate successful cross-app user experience.

One of the major challenges of UX is adopting a tool (or tools) that can sometimes be too complex and can feel burdensome. For UX design to be successful, it is important to understand the users themselves and how they utilize your services or business’s tools. For that reason, it’s important to note and map how consumers find your tools and how they use the tools. Another important aspect of UX design is to not overwhelm users. For example, one common error is overloading them with notifications that they cannot manage or turn off. Building a road map where the whole process will help the users and the company as well.

There are 3 facets of UX – navigation, search, and the actual content. The best approach is to focus on one of these, excel at it, gather feedback, and continuously improve.

Buzzword for this episode: seamlessness

Links:

Connect with Kanwal on LinkedIn

Follow Kanwal on Twitter (@kkhipple)

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