Episode #12: You know all about food substitutions, but what about food upgrades, the little things worth spending a couple extra bucks on. Neven insists no one ever went broke buying olive oil, we try to inspire an anarchist nut butter movement, Jim unloads on “pizza dabbers”, and Neven has more food puns.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to saltandfat@muleradio.net.

Episode #17: The return of Gabe’s bloody nipples! Not really, but there is talk of chafing and tender tendons. Also, when everyone on the internet is always sort of working, how do you track overtime and why should you care? Document or suffer the consequences!

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to rftl@muleradio.net.

Episode #49: Mike and Katie broke out their best clothes and the swear jar to record Let’s Make Mistakes in front of a live studio audience in San Francisco. They discuss how to do your best design work regardless of what type of design work you do and when you happen to realize what the best solution is. And they start a discussion about the issue of brogramming in the tech industry and being responsible for your work. There is an awful lot of talk about breast feeding and a few special guests.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to makemistakes@muledesign.com.

Episode #48: Mike Monteiro and Katie Gillum present their shortest Let’s Make Mistakes ever. They talk about Moneyball, Jonah Hill’s diet, and doing things alone like going to a movie and/or designing things. They have very strong feelings about the new Brooklyn Nets design and the public reception of the direction. The show itself is so short in part because they are saving some of the super cool stuff they recorded for an even more amazing show in a few weeks and, in other part, in anticipation of their impending recording in front of a LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE. One of them is scared and the other is so psyched. You can hear it in their voices.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to makemistakes@muledesign.com.

Episode #11: Neven and Jim bemoan the fact that they haven’t been in the kitchen much lately and explore whether it’s possible to actually cook more by cooking less. Plus, microwave snobbery and crab legs on the bus.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to saltandfat@muleradio.net.

Episode #16: Gabe laments his mile-18 tummy trouble during the otherwise terrific Oakland Marathon. Erika and Gabe talk about best practices for employee reviews and dealing with people who aren’t working out. As always, clear expectations and clear communication save a lot of trouble in the long run. And keep eating those orange slices!

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to rftl@muleradio.net.

I know. Didn’t we go through this lesson already? Well, kind of. The first web boom showed publishers that there was money to be made on the web, so they started tentatively trying it, and some figured it out. Most just ended up trying to cram as many ad units as they could onto web pages (most of our pagination technology comes from trying to drive up pageviews).

When the iPad came out, there was a flurry and rush to create apps that would give the publishers the same level of control as print. Ad revenues would be saved! The web would remain a marginal income stream! Hooray!

Or not. As Pontin points out, the economies of publishing apps never really made sense. In addition to Apple’s demand of 30% of sales through apps, there was the technological hurdle.

Absurdly, many publishers ended up producing six different versions of their editorial product: a print publication, a conventional digital replica for Web browsers and proprietary software, a digital replica for landscape viewing on tablets, something that was not quite a digital replica for portrait viewing on tablets, a kind of hack for smart phones, and ordinary HTML pages for their websites.

And then, there was the real problem.

But the real problem with apps was more profound. When people read news and features on electronic media, they expect stories to possess the linky-ness of the Web, but stories in apps didn’t really link. The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, “walled gardens,” and although sometimes beautiful, they were small, stifling gardens. For readers, none of that beauty overcame the weirdness and frustration of reading digital media closed off from other digital media.

That paragraph speaks volumes about the hard, hard lesson that many publishers have been avoiding for the last decade. It’s a generalization, yes, but there was the distinct feeling that publishers were just holding their breath, waiting for the technology breakthrough that would return to them their beloved chokehold on both content and advertising.

And now here we are back at the web. The unpredictable nature of the browsing device requires the thoughtful and intelligent use of the most flexible coding environment available. Just as in 1999, that is HTML, not compiled code. Welcome back!

Episode #15: After a quick survey of the Bay Area fitness scene, Gabe rhapsodizes about Outlook and his genetic lawyering heritage. Erika attempts to describe the interplay between startup and design culture.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to rftl@muleradio.net.

Dangerously, we sometimes forget that helping [clients] through that process is an integral part of our job. We complain that they’re giving us stupid feedback, they’re evaluating the work wrong, that they’re breaking our process. We get irritated that they just don’t get it. As an industry, we’ve come a long way in embracing empathy for the users of our products, but we’ve a long way to go in developing that same empathy towards our clients. The very people who hire us, who trust us with our budgets, their futures, and whose success is ultimately intertwined with our own are often treated as an irritation.

Mike takes us through possible designer-client pitfalls and what you, as designers, can and must do to prevent them. It’s your job. Watch the video here.

Episode #47: Mike Monteiro and Katie Gillum do battle against passive-aggressive behavior in client services. Mike gets super mad, and Katie looks forward to wading through the hate mail. They also discuss the varied glories of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and “how much is too much” of your personality online. Mike’s NPR voice is back too. Enjoy.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to makemistakes@muledesign.com.

Our clients are working with us as people, not us as an organisation comprising interchangeable resources. We can identify and solve problems quickly and directly. Each individual can have a huge impact on how we function as a company. —Erika Hall

Get your issue here or at your local newsstand/Newsstand. Thanks to Tom May and the .net team for the splendid interview!

Episode #10: Our final episode from the Mule Radio archives, all the way back from January. We start the new year off right. We’ll tackle cooking with our mothers-in-law, cleaning out your pantry and freezer, cooking without shopping, rancid oils, and throwing down over blue vs. white masking tape. Neven gets philosophical and wonders if our kitchens are aspirational graveyards.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to saltandfat@muleradio.net.

Episode #46: Katie tries to get straight to the design part of the show, and Mike waxes poetic about the most popular boys’ names in the UK. They discuss the delicate balance of research and relationship management you need to use when deciding to work with clients and deciding when you need to not work with them anymore. They also talk about their graduate school experiences and their application to their current jobs.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to makemistakes@muledesign.com.

Episode #14: What is illegal to ask during a job interview? And what do employers really want to find out? Gabe discusses good interviewing practices and Erika shares a bit about the Mule approach. A discussion of personal informatics follows and Gabe divulges the metric that makes him feel most competitive.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to rftl@muleradio.net.

Episode #45: In this episode of Let’s Make Mistakes, Mike asks Katie the eternal question, “Have you ever seen a dog doing a cat?” While somehow being more interested in pet reproductive behaviors than ever and creating the concept of “Paula Deen Brain”, they delve into the problems of thinking you can “teach” your clients and messed up attitudes toward research.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to makemistakes@muledesign.com.