Episode 20 - Ingenuity Goes a Long Way

Today, we have our special guest Kathryn Patterson to unpack the topic of: How to Evolve in an AI World. Kathryn became a Senior UX designer and researcher after she went to grad school and took advanced coding and design classes. She switched careers from originally working in marketing as a writer in publishing to now working as a technical specialist in Design.She is now a Senior UX Product Designer in the Supply Chain Logistics industry who has experience working in the healthcare space, home improvement industry, merchandising, and the automotive world.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

Today, we have our special guest Monica Shin to unpack the topic of: Ingenuity goes a long way.Monica is currently as a freelance UX/Product Designer with experience in tax accounting, fitness franchising, learning management systems, and that we don't make mistakes in life, only happy trees, as Bob Ross would say. However, to add to Mr. Ross, we must take our mistakes as seeds and plant what we learn about ourselves to grow. Fan of the wise words of John Wooden and MacGyver, she tries to stay true to herself while pushing herself outside of her comfort zone because "everything you want is just outside of it".About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Ammara Khan. Ammara is a UX/UI Designer with over two years of experience designing user-centered experiences across healthcare, education, fitness, and AI-driven products. Passionate about solving complex problems through research and systems thinking, she's currently building her first startup while exploring the transition from designer to founder. Through her work, she advocates for continuous discovery, thoughtful product decisions, and building solutions that create meaningful impact.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Khushali Parekh:As a product designer, Khushali spent years designing digital products and SaaS platforms. Recently, Khushali started applying the same UX and product thinking principles to her family's car rental business in Dubai, and realised that design can improve far more than just interfaces. From redesigning customer journeys and WhatsApp communication to building internal systems and shaping marketing workflows, Khushali has been using design to simplify processes, reduce friction, and create better experiences for both customers and the team. Through this experience, Khushali has come to see that product thinking can be a powerful driver of business growth, even in industries that don't traditionally think of themselves as design-led.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Andrea Nguyen: Andrea went from full-time employee to founder of Koi Studios, with both a bold leap and a deliberate, risk-aware plan. In this podcast, she pulls back the curtain on the real story: what pushed her to leave, what she focused on in year one, and how the business has evolved since. Along the way, she maps the honest tradeoffs between freelancing, in-house, and agency life. She weighs whether 2026 is actually a good time to go independent, and closes with a concrete 30-day action plan for designers who are ready to make the jump but don't know where to start.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Sadhana Pakala: Sadhana is a New York-based designer and creative project manager passionate about visual storytelling and building brand experiences that feel intentional and human. Her work spans branding, visual identity, and systems that help ideas scale. Coming out of corporate, she's now deep in a career transition — taking the skills she honed in-house and applying it to the freelance world, where she gets to combine all of her passions into something sustainable.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Ariella St. Rose. Ariella St. Rose is a Senior Product Designer at TKO, leading design for all enterprise and internal products for the Milan 2026 and LA 2028 Olympic Games. She holds a degree in Communication Studies and Interactive Media from the University of Miami. Ariella has lived in Mexico, Korea, Spain, and Portugal, and loves learning languages, dancing, pilates, doing improv, and checking out new restaurants.Disclaimer: All thoughts and opinions are Ariella’s own and not reflective of TKO.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Parys Khazaie: Parys is a UX Designer and Researcher based in Los Angeles with a background in human rights and political science from NYU. They bring a systems-thinking approach to product design, focusing on how thoughtful design can reduce friction between people and the institutions they interact with. Currently, they're working on projects spanning civic tech, ed tech, and AI-powered tools.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Blake Lemons:Blake Lemons is a product designer with a unique background in animation direction. After 15+ years writing and directing cartoons for Netflix, DreamWorks, and Nickelodeon, he recognized that user-centered design was the core of everything he had done. Now he's in the vulnerable middle of a career transition, applying the skills he used to make people laugh to help them feel capable instead. He's honest about the messy parts: the identity shifts, the beginner moments, the grief of walking away from something you loved, because that's where the real growth happens.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Jong Lee:Jong is a freelance product designer and UX designer for the UXR Guild. With a background in journalism, sports radio, education, and management experience, Jong's journey into design has been a long and rewarding one. He considers himself a career nomad, cycling through different careers but one thing always remained the same; he has a love of helping people. Whether it was covering real issues as a journalist, expanding coverage as a sports radio producer, educating our next generation of youth, or mentoring young minds, he always has had a love for providing knowledge to people who want to learn. Jong's mentality is all about taking what you learn and applying it to your career destination. He lives by "No Regrets," both in his personal life and career.About the hosts:Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona State University, specializing in accessibility. With five years of experience crafting intuitive and exciting designs, Sara has experience scaling solutions from startups to service organizations and larger institutions. Sara co-hosts the Designed Minds Podcast and serves on the Out in Tech UIUX chapter leadership team. Sara also loves self-publishing zines and co-founded Bisbee Zine Fest!Moyai Fujimura is a product designer specializing in design systems. Coming from a non-traditional path into design, she values shared learning and vulnerability. As a co-host of the Designed Minds podcast and community organizer, she aims to create spaces where designers can share openly, connect authentically, and grow together.