Marionettes, Metrics, and Medieval French Lit: A Conversation on UX and Life with Leah Reich

Jim and Leah dive headfirst into a whirlwind chat that covers everything from the fine distinctions between puppets and marionettes to the equally delicate art of building great user experiences. Leah shares her fascinating journey from a Medieval French literature course at Berkeley to leading UX research at companies like Slack, Spotify, Instagram, and Mozilla. Along the way, they tackle why users often don't honestly know what they want, how to avoid building a product no one asked for (looking at you, Juicero), and why good design begins with understanding both people and teams. It's a conversation about people problems disguised as tech problems—with a few detours into bad movie references, car oil changes, and the mythical Trojan horse. Grab your headphones, settle in, and prepare to laugh, learn, and maybe rethink what "user experience" really means.