Career growth for UX people, one layer at a time.
UX Cake is a one-on-one conversation show in which Leigh Allen-Arredondo, a UX leader and leadership coach, talks with strategists, coaches and design leaders about doing UX work well and building a career through it. Guests include Sheryl Cababa, Tim Yeo and John Maeda, and the subjects run from systems thinking and quiet leadership to career reinvention.
PRESS PLAY
UX Cake leans on a baking conceit. A career in user experience is treated as a stack of layers, each episode is framed as a slice, and the sign-off asks people to share that slice with a friend. Behind the metaphor is a simple format: host Leigh Allen-Arredondo, who introduces herself as a UX leader and leadership coach, in conversation with one guest. Coaching runs through the conversations. The Jason Mesut episode, with a design strategist and coach the host calls a friend and colleague, is about shaping careers and teams more holistically, and about working out where to grow, what kind of company and colleagues to look for, and what change to make. The episode with Sheryl Cababa, chief strategy officer at Substantial and author of Closing the Loop, sets systems thinking beside design thinking. It credits design thinking with keeping users at the centre and making iteration routine, recalls the baffling VCR remotes of an era when products were built for functionality with little thought for ease of use, and then turns to where the process leaves gaps. It is not Cababa's first time on the show. Tim Yeo, founder of Quiet Achiever, brings a conversation about leading authentically without the loudest voice in the room. It pushes back on the lingering picture of a leader as an extrovert and describes a talk called 'Design Leadership for Introverts' that left some audience members feeling seen. Laura Barboza's episode is about building strategic objectives into tactical research and design work. One idea is simple and useful: an individual contributor can pause and ask the strategic questions even without the authority to set strategy. Career change gets direct attention too. The host brings back a '(Best of)' conversation with John Maeda for a period of layoffs and org changes. In it, Maeda explains a move into a computational design and inclusion role as a deliberate choice, prompted by a criticism he decided was fair. Another episode, 'Uplevel Your Career With UX Strategy', separates UX strategy as a process from UX strategy as a role and treats digital transformation as a further step. There the host sets out a working definition from the guest's book: the intersection of business strategy and UX design, with early and continuous validation of the value proposition with customers. The register is warm and conversational, and the host often greets listeners as friends. The language is mostly clean, with the odd mild slip. A listener gets a run of conversations about growing inside UX work rather than a manual, several of them with people who coach others through exactly that.
Made for: Suits a listener who works in UX research or design and wants practical help growing a career, especially one weighing a move toward strategy or leadership or facing a career change.
What sets it apart: Its host is a leadership coach as well as a UX leader, so the conversations treat career growth, leadership style and personal agency as part of the craft, and some guests are coaches themselves.
UX Cake is helping you become more effective in your UX work and career. Join host Leigh Allen-Arredondo as she speaks with leaders in the field from around the globe, bringing you practical advice to get the best outcomes for your work, your users, and your career in UX. Our guests include well-known leaders like Don Norman and Indi Young, as well as many less globally-known voices with fantastic insights to share, like disability designer & activist Liz Jackson, agile coach & UX champion Shayna Atkins, and UX team experts Mary & David Sherwin. The podcast launched in February 2018 quickly grew an audience of U
The usability test is already booked; Leigh Allen-Arredondo wants to know what strategic question you're asking.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded career conversation about growth, work conditions, and finding the shape of change that fits.
UX Cake looks at career growth as a matter of fit, direction, and the conditions around the work. The conversation stays close to the questions people often bring into coaching: where to grow next, what to learn, whether to leave a role, what kind of leader to become, and which…
A clear case for widening responsibility in design decisions.
Systems thinking is framed as a useful pressure on familiar design-thinking habits. User-centered, iterative work can still draw the boundary too tightly, treating the product user and the paying organization as the only parties that matter.
A practical, quietly persuasive case for leading authentically without performing extroversion.
Quiet leadership gets a grounded hearing on UX Cake, as host Leigh Allen Arradondo frames a conversation about authentic leadership that does not depend on being the loudest person in the room.
A grounded UX conversation about finding strategic influence within tactical work.
UX Cake begins season four with a practical question for UX practitioners: how can tactical work create space for strategic influence? Leigh Allen Arradondo and Laura Barboza keep the conversation rooted in research and design, focusing on how individual contributors can pause,…
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
["A client email at a conference pushed Jason Massoud into a breakdown, ended a contract, and led him into coaching.", "On UX Cake, Leigh Allen Arradano and Jason Massoud use that story to talk through Shaping Design, career timelines, and the wheel of life.", "Jason argues that design careers cannot be reduced to junior, senior, or principal ladders when people are trying to align work with values and whole-life priorities.", "The strongest practical point is his leadership-functions wheel, which compares time spent, enjoyment, and confidence across vision, team support, operations, and advocacy."]
Leigh Allen Arradondo uses UX Cake to press Cheryl Cababa on systems thinking for designers.
["Tim Yeo tells Leigh Allen Arradondo on UX Cake that introverts can have impact \"without pretending to be extroverts,\" and he grounds that claim in 18 years of design work and nine years in consulting.", "He describes sweaty palms before presentations, copying Steve Jobs at first, and then realizing the imitation felt like acting.", "The episode contrasts Singapore's norm of speaking only when a point is \"true and correct\" with Australia's meeting culture, where participation itself signals engagement.", "Yeo gives practical tactics for UX teams: take notes, ask questions, use one-on-ones, record short videos, and separate critique of the work from critique of the person."]
["Leigh Allen Arradondo and Laura Barboza spend this UX Cake season-four episode on one problem: how tactical UX research and design work can still push strategic objectives.", "Laura Barboza defines strategic work as foundational, generative research and contrasts it with tactical work where direction is already decided and the team is shipping the thing.", "The conversation turns practical with examples from usability testing, including five-minute pre-session questions about barriers and motivations, plus follow-up insights about gift cards and prototype A versus prototype B.", "Leigh closes with design tenets, storyboards, mini wire flows, and stakeholder alignment examples from REI and Nordstrom."]
Leigh Allen Arradano replays a 2019 UX Cake conversation with John Maeda about 'recover fast,' career change, and reinvention during layoffs and org changes.
UX Cake host Lee Alan Arodando and design leader Billy Mandel connect productive conflict with stronger creative work.
On UX Cake, host Lee Alan Arodando asks design leader Tutti Taygerly how “making space” can support meaningful, sustainable work.
Ryan Rumsey traces his outsider feelings from childhood into design work, including a secretive Apple role that limited his industry participation.
Host Leigh Allen-Arredondo interviews UX pioneer Jamie Levy about moving beyond design roles into UX strategy and digital transformation.
Host Leigh Allen-Arredondo interviews John Maida about reinvention, inclusive design, and using OnPondMan to train AI platforms.
Host Leigh Allen-Arredondo interviews Dr.
Host Leigh Allen-Arredondo interviews UX leaders like Don Norman to provide practical advice for improving work and career in user experience design.