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Accessibility is not a final checklist. It is a shared responsibility that should shape a product from the beginning.

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with David Sloan, Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi and co-author of What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility.

David explains how designers can look beyond visual considerations like color contrast and account for the different ways people perceive, navigate, and operate technology. They discuss assistive technology, screen readers, semantic HTML, linearization, disability language, and the difference between accessibility needs and medical diagnoses.

The conversation also explores why accessibility works best as a team effort. Designers, developers, product managers, writers, and testers all make decisions that can either create or remove barriers.

If you want to build more inclusive products—and make accessibility part of your everyday workflow—this conversation offers a practical place to begin.

If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!

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What makes a product feel not just usable, but desirable?

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Marty Gage, co-author of User Experience Research: Discover What Customers Really Want, about how teams can move beyond guessing and uncover the experiences people actually desire.

Marty shares a practical framework for connecting emotional needs to product strategy: desired emotional states, benefits, features, and sensory cues. They discuss why great design is not just about making something easy to use, but about understanding how people want to feel, what value they want from an experience, and what details communicate that value.

The conversation explores useful, usable, and desirable design, the meaning behind cues like simplicity, familiarity, organization, and accessibility, and how methods like collaging and contextual inquiry can help teams translate customer insight into actionable design direction.

If you want to build products and services that connect with people, align teams, and reduce the risk of guessing wrong, this episode offers a clear way to think about user experience research as the foundation for better innovation.

If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!

If this show has been useful or thought-provoking for you, please do us a favor and help other people discover the show by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast player.

To leave a review on Apple Podcasts: search for The Design Psychologist, tap the show, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and hit “Write a Review.”

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How many users do you actually need for a usability study?

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Laura Faulkner about one of the most repeated ideas in UX research: that five users are enough. Laura explains why that rule of thumb can be useful in some situations, but dangerous when teams treat it like a law.

They discuss sample size, research risk, stakeholder alignment, and why the real question is not “How many users?” but “What decision are we trying to support, and what happens if we miss something important?”

Laura also shares practical advice on making research more influential inside organizations: sharing early and often, treating research as community property, helping stakeholders take ownership of findings, and building a point of view from human data rather than personal opinion.

The conversation also explores synthetic users and AI, including where AI can help researchers think through test plans and where teams still need fresh data from real people.

If you want to design better studies, communicate findings with more impact, and help research actually change product decisions, this episode gives you a grounded, human-centered way to think about evidence, risk, and influence.

If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!

If this show has been useful or thought-provoking for you, please do us a favor and help other people discover the show by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast player.

To leave a review on Apple Podcasts: search for The Design Psychologist, tap the show, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and hit “Write a Review.”