Design Downtime

In this conversation, Anna E. Cook and I talk about what happens when the work that defines you stops being the work you're hired to do. Anna traces the systemic forces pushing accessibility specialists out of their roles, connecting it to broader DEI rollbacks, and reflects on the identity crisis that follows when your expertise becomes a liability. We also talk about burnout, and why "just work less" misses the point entirely. For Anna, recovery required detaching her identity from her job, accepting imperfection, and exploring hobbies with zero expectation of productivity. This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered whether caring too much about the right things might cost them, and decided to keep caring anyway.

Guest Bio
Anna E. Cook (she/they) is a designer working across design systems, platform infrastructure, and the code that connects them, with a specialty in accessibility. She is currently a Senior Designer at Microsoft and created the LinkedIn Learning course "Auditing Design Systems for Accessibility."

Links
Anna's website: https://annaecook.com/

Credits
Cover design by Kristine Planche (inspired by Raquel Rubio Breternitz).

It's the season 5 finale and we're going whimsical, when Natalya Shelburne joins us to talk about the psychology of creativity. She makes a case for why creativity is not a personality trait, but a muscle most of us were slowly trained out of, explains how creativity killers show up in workplaces and daily life, and why "I'm not creative" almost always traces back to a single formative moment of being shut down. Natalya also introduces whimsy as a practical gut-check for creative readiness, shares her own daily rituals, and argues that reclaiming your creative practice is ultimately about deciding your time is yours to assign value to.

Guest Bio
Natalya Shelburne (she/her) is a designer, developer, artist, author, educator, and doer of good deeds. She leads the designers working on the DRUIDS design system at Datadog. Previously, she worked at GitHub working on design infrastructure and leading the Primer design system team. Before that, the New York Times and teaching at Harvard Extension. She loves to write, publishing the Design Engineering Handbook and articles for various online publications. Natalya holds bachelor’s degrees in Studio Art and Psychology, and a master's in Creativity and Talent Development. Crossing disciplines and building bridges between design and engineering is at the foundation of much of her work, and building teams, growing community, and investing in human creativity at scale is the next big adventure.

Links
Natalya’s website: https://natalyashelburne.com
Natalya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalyashelburne/
Books by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/27446.Mih_ly_Cs_kszentmih_lyi

Credits
Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

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.

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.

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.