Design Downtime

Design Downtime

di Guy Segal

Design Tempo libero

Stagione 5

Dave House Loves Old VWs

You're guaranteed to catch the Love Bug, when Dave House joins us to talk about his love of old Volkswagens. He shares how owning and restoring old air-cooled VWs filled a gap left when music stopped being his primary community, and describes the VW scene as a counter-culture rather than a car hobby, one that mirrors the openness and camaraderie of punk. Dave reflects on the deep satisfaction of learning to weld and restore vehicles by hand, the meditative focus required to drive a 50-year-old machine, and his love of tracing the human histories embedded in these cars. Guest Bio Dave House (he/him) is a Design Systems Specialist that has spent the last decade working on Design Systems for organisations like GOV.UK, BT, Lloyds Banking Group and most recently Dentally, a management system for Dental Practices. He lives in Egham, a small town just outside of London and has played in punk adjacent bands since the late 90s - releasing multiple records and travelling the affectionately named “toilet circuit”. Links Dave’s website: https://www.das.house Dave’s VW on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calliethevwcamper Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Araxie Miller Loves JRPGs

Get ready to be swept away to a world of magic and giant swords, when Araxie Miller joins us to talk about her love of Japanese role-playing games. She explains what sets them apart from Western RPGs: rather than asking who you want to be, they invite you into a world of existing characters, deep story arcs, and themes of friendship, sacrifice, and hope. From discovering Chrono Trigger in 1995 to playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with her husband, Araxie traces how JRPGs have been a constant companion - through childhood, career in game design, and now parenthood - with the music, art books, and stories still inspiring her creativity today. Guest Bio Araxie Miller (She/Her) has spent her whole career making complicated things feel human. She started out building video game worlds at Blizzard and Carbine. Back then, one small detail could change the day for millions of players. That stuck with her. She learned something early. The best work never comes from one person alone. It comes from a team that trusts each other. Today she's a designer at ServiceNow, working on AI. She's led big design teams. But she still loves cracking open the code and building something herself. She's the one who stays up too late with a prototype, just to get it right. Off the clock, she's in Boston. She's got a husband, a daughter, a dog, and a cat who run the house. And in her spare time? She forages for wild mushrooms. Then she cooks with whatever she finds. Links Araxie’s website: https://www.araxiemiller.com/ Araxie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/araxiemiller Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Stephanie Tuerk Loves Learning Languages

No need to break your Duolingo streak, when Stephanie Tuerk joins us to make a case for learning languages. She traces her journey from high school French to PhD-era German to humbling Russian, arguing that language learning is less about fluency and more about a gateway into culture, history, and a completely different relationship with your own mind. Stephanie also reflects on the rare pleasure of being a deliberate beginner, and why a language class might be one of the last great third spaces left. Guest Bio Stephanie Tuerk (she/her) is a designer-developer who currently works at a startup making verifiable AI for science. She previously did this work in quantitative policy research context, and loves serving as the translation layer between technical domain expertise and users. She entered the world of interface and product design through data visualization, and prior to that spent time in the fields of architectural design and architectural history. Links Stephanie’s website: https://stephanietuerk.net/ Stephanie on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/stephanietuerk.net Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Andy Bell Loves The Legend of Zelda

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this episode where Andy Bell joins us to talk about his lifelong obsession with the Legend of Zelda. He explores what makes the franchise compelling: its creativity, humour, weird NPCs, and remarkable ability to stay consistent in spirit while reinventing itself across 20 games spanning 40 years. Andy also shares his self-imposed challenge of playing the entire series in timeline order, and the magical experience of introducing his daughter to the franchise and watching her fall in love with the same games that shaped him. Guest Bio Andy Bell (he/him) is a designer, front-end developer, design agency founder, and the founder of Piccalilli, based in the UK. He has worked in the design and web industries for over 15 years with some of the largest organisations in the world like Google, The NHS, Harley-Davidson and Oracle. Over the years he has worked on both extremely large projects for huge organisations and tiny projects for small startups. Andy mostly specialises in CSS — whether that is consultancy, writing an expansive course, co-writing a course for Google, co-authoring a book on CSS layout, or creating a methodology to help people write better CSS. Links Andy’s website: https://bell.bz/ Andy’s agency: https://set.studio/ The blog post that explains what he’s doing: https://bell.bz/im-playing-the-zelda-games-in-timeline-order/ Zelda timeline tracker: https://tangled.org/bell.bz/zelda-in-timeline-order/blob/main/readme.md Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Lisa Carey Loves Brian Eno

In this episode, Lisa Carey joins us to share her decades-long appreciation for Brian Eno. She introduces us to Eno the musician, producer, visual artist, and one of the originators of systems thinking in creative work, and traces a through-line from Roxy Music to Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, and from Oblique Strategies to a generative documentary that shows differently every screening - all united by a philosophy of embracing randomness and the unexpected over rigid planning. Guest Bio Lisa Carey (she/her) is a Design System Lead and Product Designer with a unique, 30+ year creative career spanning film, marketing, television, and software design, and her own creative pursuits. Working in the financial sector since 2012, Lisa brings over 20 years of UX/UI experience to her work. Currently, she is focusing on systemic design, front-end development, and AI collaboration within modern design system frameworks. Previously, Lisa spent 15 years in film as a director including the film Rough Road and managing international distribution and licensing for Ken Burns and other filmmakers. Today, she brings that same passion for visual storytelling to digital product design. A practicing painter who also teaches community courses exploring music and art, Lisa anchors her multi-disciplinary work in her true passions: systemic design, creative strategy, and making unexpected connections. Links Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacareydesign/ Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Erin Casali Loves Illustrating

A picture is worth a thousand words when Erin Casali joins us to share about her illustration practice. She reflects on not being able to visualize images in her mind, which makes her process generative and exploratory; drawing to discover, not to transcribe. Erin describes switching from pencil to ink as a forcing function to break perfectionist habits and train herself to think in whole compositions rather than obsessing over details. Finally, she explores the blurry line between design and art, where what makes something art is the human soul projected into it. Guest Bio Erin Casali (she/her) is a VP/Director of both product and design, with over 10 years of experience in each. She has a hybrid approach with design, product, and engineering in her background. Her rare blend of skills, including psychology and change management, enables her to foster collaboration and break down silos. Driven by a passion for improving lives through her work, she empowers teams to reach their full potential. She advocates for purpose, transparency, and diversity, fostering a culture of trust and agency. Her diverse experiences across startups, large corporations, advisory, and board roles have equipped her with a versatile toolkit to adapt to various organizational contexts and drive meaningful change. Links Erin’s website: https://intenseminimalism.com/ Inklings of Late on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inklings.of.late/ Inklings of Late on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/inklingoflate.bsky.social Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Jenny Dee Brecheisen Loves Barrel Racing

Saddle up and start your stopwatch, when Jenny Dee Brecheisen joins us to talk about her passion for barrel racing. She shares how it completely transformed her life, from city dweller to 10-acre landowner with four horses. Jenny explores the deep bonds formed with her horses through daily care and patience, the 14-17 seconds of pure adrenaline that make all the preparation worthwhile, and the steep learning curve and real physical dangers that come with the sport. Guest Bio Jenny Dee Brecheisen (she/her) is a UI Engineer on Cloudflare’s UI Platform team, where she works across frontend UI, systems, and engineering infrastructure. Beginning with a degree in graphic design and early work in print and marketing, she later moved into product design and design systems before transitioning into engineering, bringing a cross-disciplinary perspective to building products in the age of AI. Her work today spans everything from frontend development and accessibility to migrations, debugging, and improving how software gets built and maintained at scale. When she’s not working, she spends her time barrel racing and investing in futurity horse prospects. Links Jenny’s website: tinycrowbar.com Jenny’s race-tracking app: highloper.com Jenny on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yennie/ Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Luke Murphy Loves Being in a Band

It's not all mosh pits and crowdsurfing when Luke Murphy joins us to talk about nearly 20 years of band life. They talk about the sharp contrast between recording an album and the rush of performing it, and how the Brutalligators' chemistry works through defined roles, mutual respect, and just enough creative tension to push each other forward. Luke also punctures the myth of touring glamour, but explains that the friendships, the crowd energy, and the moment a new song lands on stage make it entirely worth it. Guest Bio Luke Murphy (they/them) is a Principal Design Advocate at zeroheight. Before zeroheight, Luke has worked as an IC and leader in product design and advocacy teams at Memrise, Mr & Mrs Smith and Microsoft. They host the Design Systems WTF podcast, and co-organize the WDC and Converge conferences. When they’re not nerding out about design systems and DesignOps, they are busy raising their 13-year-old son, shouting in a queer punk band, or running a DIY vinyl subscription company. They also don’t sleep. Links Luke’s Website: www.lurkmoophy.com Brutalligators on bandcamp: brutalligators.bandcamp.com Brutalligators on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6PQwcg9SjBaPxGhqWeSIs5?si=w0sEdUZiTI27Yfr1stBZyA Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Odette Jansen Loves City-Building Games

We built this city, or rather Odette Jansen did, as she joins us to explore her deep love of city-building games. She talks about being drawn to games with genuine depth and resource management challenges, and a blank canvas that gives her full control without consequences. Games like Cities Skylines or Planet Zoo, where she's logged over 400 hours recreating Disneyland leaf by leaf. Odette also reflects honestly on how being late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD shapes her play style. From the hyperfocus and Excel sheets tracking city resources, to the pure joy of knowing random animal facts at the zoo. Guest Bio Odette Jansen (she/her) has spent 15 years in UX. She leads research and content at ING, and she also runs UXR Study (uxrstudy.com) - a training platform for UX researchers, used by over 80,000 professionals worldwide, with courses, templates, and support on everything from research to UX leadership. She's got a BSc in UX and an MEd in talent development and diversity. She's late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD, and that shapes a lot of her work - she's spent a long time looking at how organizations overlook neurodivergent people, and how to build places and leaders that don't. Links Odette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/odett/ UXR Study: https://uxrstudy.com/ Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Jarvis Moore Loves Sneakers

It's time to lace up when Jarvis Moore joins us to talk about his love for collecting sneakers. He shares how it grew from a childhood longing into a curated collection that serves as his primary form of personal expression, the systematic approach behind his collecting, and how he navigates the hype-driven world of limited collaborations and grail sneakers. Beyond the collecting itself, he reflects on how sneakers function as cultural shorthand, community building, and self-expression, including the Jordans he wore on his wedding day. Guest Bio Jarvis Moore (he/him) is a Senior Design Lead for Design Systems at Realtor.com, where his job is to build the infrastructure that makes great design possible at scale. In addition to maintaining and architecting systems, he’s spent his career teaching teams how to think in systems before they ever touch a component. His work spans enterprise design systems, AI tooling, and the harder question most orgs avoid “how do you actually build design culture, not just document it?” He speaks and teaches on all of it, because he’s lived it. He’ll tell you the hardest part of design systems was never the components. It’s the people. It’s always been the people. Links Jarvis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarvismoore1016/ Jarvis on Twitter/X: https://x.com/jmodesigns10 Credits Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

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