Design Meets Business: Recent Episodes
Christian Vasile
Design Meets Business is a podcast that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. On this show you'll hear design leaders from all over the world talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use Design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Jamie shares with us his thoughts on the evolution of the design role, the need to be a good storyteller, and about staying an individual contributor vs. moving into management.
Connect with Jamie
LinkedIn, ADPlist
Get your notebooks out for this conversation, because Alex is sharing all about his experience leading design organisations, and about his management style, and about how to frame design at the C-level.
Connect with Alex
LinkedIn, Website, Medium
Selected links from the episode
The value of design at the C-level
Dean shares with us his thoughts on how you can put your best foot forward during your job search and how you can make design more transparent through relationship building and collaboration.
Connect with Dean
LinkedIn, Instagram
On this episode I talk to Ioana about the importance of speaking your stakeholders' language, how you can learn from her career trajectory, and about design education.
Connect with Ioana
LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Mento Design Academy, Honest UX Talks Podcast, TikTok
Selected links from the episode
UX Rescue
Democracy Lab
Roger shares with us the value framework his team uses to quantify design and talks about the 'invisible' work of a design leader.
Connect with Roger
Selected links from the episode
Brian Pagan
This is an insights-packed conversation around how to build better relationships at work, how to use data to your advantage, and about design ethics.
Connect with Leonardo
LinkedIn, Instagram, Website, ADPlist
Selected links from the episode
99% Invisible Podcast
Megan shared how the entire 99designs team is involved in research, the challenges of designing for a global audience, and parallels between sports and work.
Connect with Megan
LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, ADPlist
Selected links from the episode
Dovetail
Ed talks about the behind-the-scenes work of a design leader, ways of building relationships, and his thoughts on design education.
Connect with Ed
LinkedIn, Website, Medium, ADPlist
Selected links from the episode
Undercover User Experience Design
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Daring Greatly
The Coaching Habit
The Heart Tree Start framework
The People Paradox: Human Nature's Impact on Digital Transformation
Shape Up by Basecamp
Google's HEART framework
UXClub.com
Spotify's Failed #SquadGoals
Our conversation was centered around linking Design with the wider business efforts and round hiring – how to stand out, how to create a better portfolio, and what to ask in interviews.
Connect with Nati
LinkedIn, Website, Medium
Selected links from the episode
Things I wish UX candidates would ask me during interviews
Knowing the business: A must skill for young designers
David shares with us his framework for experimentation and how to build trust with your product team. We also talk about the crossover of skills between entrepreneurs and designers.
Connect with David
LinkedIn, Website
Selected links from the episode
Article on experiment maps
Conor and I talk about how designers can prove their value in larger companies, why working in silos is a thing of the past, and how to transition from a design leader to a business leader.
Connect with Conor
LinkedIn, Twitter
Selected links from the episode
BT's Medium Design blog
Shook's model
Marty Cagan, Inspired
Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden, Sense and Respond
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organization.
On the last episode of season one, we're talking to Conor Ward, Director of Design at BT Consumer. We talk about how designers can prove their value in larger companies, why working in silos is a thing of the past, and how to transition from a design leader to a business leader.
Conor, thank you so much for joining Design Meets Business. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. You are one of the design leaders that I was lucky enough to work with, and I'm really looking forward to bring some of your knowledge to the masses if you will. So you used to be the Global Digital Experience Director at Centrica, and for the people who don't know what that is, it's the owner of British Gas. And as I said, I used to be part of your team. And I remember we have chats about “playing the game,” which basically is the whole idea of designers understanding how to manage their stakeholders in larger organisations.
So, before we go into all that, if you’d just like to dive a bit deeper into who you are, so people know who's talking to them. You grew up in Northern Ireland, if I'm not mistaken, how you came up to London, and maybe a couple of words about the saxiest man alive. That's a story that I love.
Conor: Okay, how do I do it in about four seconds so that I don't bore anybody. It's great to chat. It's been a while. It's good to catch up. So I guess my career has been in three really quick phases.
So first phase was music, and I did a lot of improvisational music as a kind of a career for a while, a step away from design for a while. And that basically taught me how to get good at generating ideas and then throwing them away. So, the old kind of diverge-converg model got fully ingrained in my brain being an improvisational musician. So it was great.
Second part of my career was getting back into design again after university and did a lot of agency work. So did huge amounts of kind of different brands and enjoying the breadth of different types of skillsets. I had to figure out what does design mean and all the different areas, which was great to kind of broadened my thinking about what I think design is as a role.
And then the third part of my career is enterprise size things. So that's where I moved into kind of heavy design leadership and learned a lot about that since then, and some in some very large companies, British gas and now I’m the Director of Design at BT.
Christian: Fantastic. Looking over your profile and doing a bit of research before this, I've noticed a lot of things that I didn't know about you. So first, I didn't know you had a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. You've been a software tester for a while. You're a certified scrum master. How have these aided you in your career as a designer or as -- and then later on, of course, as a design leader, but take it a step by step.
Conor: Yes, and certified product owner, a number of other things. I think it's trying to figure out what other feathers can I add to my bow? I think for me, the most interesting part of this digital industry is to try and broaden beyond a particular silo that you might be put in. So if you're a UX designer, how do you broaden yourself to consider all the other different disciplines. If you're a broadly skilled designer or a design leader, how do you broaden your knowledge, skills, influence, and expertise around lots of other different areas? How do you understand technology and your technology colleagues better? How do you understand product and that kind of product management approach, and how does product ownership work? What does the business need, etc? I just kind of value that enough. I think that knowledge helps you become a better designer.
Christian: Let's keep talking about that. Why does that, all that knowledge and understanding what everyone around you works on, and all the disciplines you're kind of cross collaborating with, why is that important to designers?
Conor: Well, I think it's the old Venn diagram, isn’t it? We talk about that quite a lot here at BT with me and my other director colleagues. There's hundreds of different, funny Venn diagrams of what design is, what a product is, etc etc. But the one I think that works for me in my head most days, the three circles or the three-legged stool, where one of the circles is the user, one of the circles is the technology that you have to work with, and one of the circles in the business and the reason why anybody is getting paid to work on this in the first place. And I think the centre of that, sometimes I think people get confused that the centre of that is a discipline like design, or the centre of that is UX.
For me, the renter of that is the product. It's the thing that you're creating; it's the experience. And the more that you can broaden your knowledge across those three different areas, the more you can contribute to the -- you can empathise with your colleagues. You can contribute your thoughts and be part of the overall holistic process of creating a great product.s you do that, the more you're just going to, I guess, get in people's way and annoy them a little bit and try and be a bit of a purist where you're fighting for your own discipline, you know?
Christian: Yes. And I guess a lot of designers struggle with that in larger enterprises, especially where design maybe is not that valued as in a small startup is actually is fighting a lot against people who, at the end of the day, have the same goals as them. Which the goal is, “Let's create a great product,” but they go by achieving these goals in a different way.
So let's segue a bit into talking about design in larger enterprises, where you have most of your recent experience of about the last four or five, six years. In your experience, what have you seen as patterns of what design as a practice struggled within some of these bigger companies?
Conor: Yes, so our design team at BT is 190 designers at the moment. It's very large, and that's because our definition of design is very broad and wide-ranging. So our definition of design that we created when I joined the team – I created with the rest of the team two years ago was human insight-based creativity. So that covers kind of four areas of our team that we set up at the time.
So, first area is product design, and that we have kind of 80 or so product designers. And that's a mix of people that have typically they would be called UX designers or UI designers, etc. And we have a single role that’s called a product designer that looks after how does a user interact with our products. The secondary of our team is content design. That looks after all of the creation of the content, the reason why it exists in the first place, all of the kinds of content editing, updating, producing it, and all of the SEO and how it’s found in the first place.
And the third design team is called inclusive design, and that covers our user research team that covers our service design team, and it also covers our accessibility specialist roles. So just looking at how do we make sure that we're being as user-entered as possible? On the fourth role is a DesignOps team. So that covers the design systems squad. We have DesignOps roles. We have ContentOps role. We have a ResearchOps role. And for me, this is the engine room of our design team because they're trying to essentially make designing easier for the rest of the design team.
So that’s kind of a really nice summary for me of what the design team is, but the really interesting thing about the way we're set up at BT is the rest of the organization. So, for example, I'm the first design director at BT, which is a really exciting role for me to take on, but my peers are product directors, engineering director, kit building planning director, etc. So it’s kind of like, instead of those being perhaps in other organisations pulled into, engineering would report into IT, product would report into the business, etc. It's kind of more like we're all the business, and we're all trying to do something together. We all report into the MD of Digital, and he reports into the CEO.
So you start getting these things that are promised in Silicon Valley companies where design is one step away from the CEO. It's being represented on the intent is that it's an important thing, and that's why it has a representation at director level. And so we do things like,” Well, we need to have a design strategy.” That was another place is that wasn't necessarily accepted because we have to just be part of another strategy. So it's kind of, “What’s our design strategy, and then how does that contribute to the overall product strategy? So, I think that that set up is really working for us.
Christian: So that set up is really working for you because design is seen as a very important part of the whole organization. Therefore, you have a role basically as close to the top as possible, and then it just triggers down the trust and the belief that design matters that triggers down to the rest of the team. But unfortunately, not all enterprises work like that. Unfortunately, as you said, design sometimes -- sometimes design reports into engineering, sometimes reports into product, sometimes not even one of these. Let's talk a bit about that. When that happens, how do you then make design important enough? Or how do you talk about design so people around realise that, actually for us to be the most effective, we would need to sit at a higher level?
Conor: Yes, it's an interesting question because it starts to get into what is design versus designers. And for me, design doesn't exclusively happen from designers or by designers. Designers, in my view, they're there to help all of the other roles become as user-entered as possible in their activities.
So, that becomes a really interesting shift on things because -- and you could play with this notion and use the Twitter phrase, not everybody's a designer. I don’t know if you want to play that game or not. I'm more interested in the fact that everybody contributes to the experience. So, for example, when we started our team, the new version of our team at BT a couple of years ago when I joined, we created a set of experience principles, not design principles. Because we wanted everybody to say, “Well, the experience that we create should meet these five experience principles, and everybody's responsible for that.”
So I think things like that help to get the buy-in from people that it's not these clever designers with their clever hats that can go and do some clever things and they have all the right answers. Designers don't know what to create, but they have a certain set of methods that they would go through on. Here's how we find out what to create and certainly engineering have their own version of that, product, their own version of that, and how we bring that all together.
Christian: So staying on this topic, we were talking on some of the previous episodes about how one of the largest or one of the biggest problems designers have is showing the impact of their work. And I guess that's mostly the top -- that's the topic of the podcast; design is business — Design Meets Business.
So, let's talk a bit about that because design historically has been known as art. Art doesn't solve problems; art just exists. In the past 15, 20 years, we’ve moved more and more away from that and towards maybe more like product design, and we're working on closer with engineering and with the business now. But I think one of the problems we still have is that we're not really very good at measuring our work. So how can we start doing that? And how can we talk about our work in organization so people understand what value we can add?
Conor: It's such a good question. It's one many of McKinsey study has been created to try and quantify, “Hey, every dollar you spend in design, you get $10 back.” And I think it's very hard to extract just the value of design all by itself. I think we've had a look at some case studies over the last year to see what progress we're making, and we have -- the highest ever NPS that BT has ever had. We had that as in the last kind of year, which is amazing. We have kind of 14% increase in our conversion funnels for our sales journeys, etc. We raised a million pounds for the NHS. We've done some great things that you could attribute if you wanted to, in part, to design, but you wouldn't say it was just design. I mean the experience was improved, but everybody contributed to the experience being improved.
So I'm kind of more interested in how does design help everybody succeed and the overall business value being achieved. And this brings us back to the kind of three circles idea is, are we trying to become more user-entered as a company, with the ambition of trying to achieve and provide more value. And value can mean two things. It can mean value for the customer, and it can entirely mean value for the business. And as long as those two happen in tandem, it's the right answer.
I think it brings us back to our experience principle, one that we have at BT, which is -- and we kind of stated in the principle text that says, “The best way to achieve business value is by providing customer value.” And I think if that kind of thing actually becomes a behaviour shift and a mindset shift, and that's the kind of value that you're able to start to attribute to a more user-centred organization rather than a design-led organization.
I think if you read any article out there that’s worth its salt, that talks about the value of design, it doesn't talk about becoming a design-led company. It talks about becoming a more user-centred company. And I think that helps with the politics of trying to push that through. You're not trying to say “Design is the right answer, designers are the best.” You're trying to say, “Hey, let's become more user-entered.” Design might have some ways to try and do that, but everybody else might have some ways too. How do we work together on that?
Christian: Yes, totally. And I think a lot of the aspects you're talking about are very much at a high level. These discussions happening at a leadership level, at a director level. When we're trying to bring it down to earth and the day to day over designer, how can people down on the ground who are working in the trenches, if you will help someone at the top to push that, let's call it an agenda for lack of a better word?
Conor: So I think it comes down to behaviours. So there's a lot of efforts. I see a lot of designers putting in effort trying to evangelise. They're really kind of almost tiring themselves out sometimes during the day, trying to get people to believe what they believe. And it's a hard job to do that.
I don't know if you're familiar with -- there's a model that Barley O’Riley shared in a conference one time called Shook’s model. And it's all stuck with me because Shook’s model was -- it's this kind of part of it -- It's hard to describe that diagram, but I'll try my best, but it's a kind of a three-layered permit. On the bottom, it says culture, and in the middle it says values, and on the top, it says what we do. And the old way of trying to change, what we do is by starting at the bottom and say, “We're going to change our culture.” And then if we change our culture, our values will change. And then that will change how we all operate. And we'll all do this great user-centred thing. We'll all be all these activities. Everything we do will be all user-centred.
Now that's too hard. It's just too hard. And there's a couple of really good examples I guess I've gotten in my last couple of roles where you just start at the top. You change the behaviours of a particular group of people. So if you and your squad, you say, “Hey, there's this new tool we're going to use. There's this thing we're going to do. We're going to -- We're going to pop into the lab once a week, once a month, whatever.” And we agree with that behaviour. All of a sudden, people go, “Oh, this was really good. Our product is succeeding. Now, this was much easier. We understand a lot of the things better now, etc, etc. Why did we do that again?” And we say, “Yes, this is part of user-centred design. I can tell you more about it if you understand. There's lots more things we want to instil into the way we work.” And all of a sudden, the values change, culture changes, we're all user-centred. So, it's that kind of changed behaviours to change mindsets. Don't try and change mindsets first. It's too hard.
Christian: It sounds to me like one of the keys to that is a bit more transparency around the work we do, because in order to be able to show what we're doing, you need to be more transparent. And as designers, we oftentimes work in silos. We don't really talk about our process and then two weeks later is the grand reveal of what we've worked on. So we -- in some organisations, that's how it works. And I guess what you're talking about is changing that and collaborating more with people around and being more transparent about the work we do. And then through that, over a long period of time, things might potentially change. Did that -- did I read that correctly or?
Conor: 100%. And that's one of the things that, for example, DesignOps has given us, and that fits with the model of change behaviours first around the change mindsets. So we changed our tooling set first. So we stopped using Photoshop and all of that. We stopped using Sketch and all that. We said, “We're all in Figma now. We're all in Figma for our design, and we're all in kind of Miro/Mural for our collaboration activities. And this was perfect timing, pre-kind of lock down. Everybody took it to jump into these digital tools.
And the key behind that was, first of all, product designers and content designers now work in the same file. So there's no point at which there's a handover within Design. Previously, there was kind of wireframes, got sent to somebody else, somebody else made some beautiful kind of visuals, somebody somewhere else was a copywriter writing in Word these things somehow, I got them together. Then I had to go in front of stakeholders, etc etc. And then at some point to engineers.
Tools like Figma again, becomes a behaviour change where you say, “You guys are all in the same document, same time, create stuff all at the same time, have no handover process.” And that’s because, like, “Oh, okay, we're trying this out now, and so we shifted to those tools because collaboration is constant and visibility and transparency is constant. And you say to anybody; you go along to your marketing stakeholders or your kind of directors, etc. You just go, “Hey, here's our file. Pop in.” We'll pop it in Slack. It’s only updated, but just click on the link, come and have a look. We're not going to create presentations for you. We'll welcome you into our space, which is our file. And we'll show you constantly where we are, what we're trying to do together. So again, that's another behaviour change that results in intense, constant collaboration, not just within design, but with the rest of the squad and across the business.
Christian: So did you find that when you shifted those processes, and you've, for example, said to your wider team, “Here's the Figma file. Here's where we do our work. We invite you in.” Have you discovered that people are actually interested and that it improved collaboration?
Conor: 100%. The difference is fantastic. People in these files together, and what you get then is anybody is able to go to any point in the file. When you're getting presentations, people are kind of like just walking through it. Doesn't have to be anybody, in particular, presenting anything. It can be -- could be product owner, it could be an engineer, can be a designer. Just like walking through, “Here's what we're trying to achieve together.” And the same for the kind of interactive whiteboard to those like Miro and Mural and that, it’s the same.
People are actually together planning things rather than going off in a silo, making a slide deck or something. It's like, “Well, we've decided this, and we haven't told you. So I think it seems like a small thing to focus on. Like what's the right tooling set, but if you have a DesignOps team, that's the kind of thing it can unlock for you is -- actually it's not unlocking the right toolset, it's unlocking collaboration and transparency.
Christian: Another example, I think maybe you could talk a bit about that is -- another example of how you show the way if you will, and then in overtime, people will understand the value of it, and we'll follow it. I think I remember the story of how the in-house lab at British Gas came about which very few companies of that size, where design is not part of the company -- part of the core of the company have a lab. It was crazy when I was talking to people and telling them they couldn't believe. So you were a big part of making that happen. So talk a bit about the process of pushing for a lab and how that came about.
Conor: Yes, it's quite funny. I think when we talk about this, it's -- we had like 23 versions of the lab or something. It's just like iterations and taking our own iterative methodology to build in a lab. So, I mean, that's what I joined the team I realised that the team used to kind of go in and pay a lot of money to do some external testing a handful of times a year, and so it didn't happen very often. Big huge reports that weren't really used at the end of it, because it was like in a stage before it went live. So it was like too late to change anything. That old story.
So what we did was we said, “Well, what's the version one of a lab because we haven't got any money? There's no justification for this.” So version one was we kind of -- one person with a couple of users go and find a meeting room and just say, “Hey, we'll bring somebody and will sit down in front of our laptop, and that's it.” And they would sit there on their own, and then they come out, and they say, “Okay. We've done that for a few days. Here's all the things that were wrong with that.” It’s hard to find people, no money to pay them. Nobody's understanding the results. The person's too busy moderating to capture, etc, etc. Like, as you would expect.
So then you go to the next one, which is like, “We'll do a Skype screen-share with like two o ther people from the squad and another like meeting room.” So you book two meeting rooms, and then that's it. And now you've got like a moderator room, and an observation room and then people go, “Oh God, this is great.” I get to see what users did. How do I get more of this?
And so it just kind of developed where we stuck it like a sign, and one of the doors said, “Hey, this is the lab.” And I started going around and tell everybody, “We've got like a lab now, and we made like little funny logos, science icons, and whatnot. We got this like lab, and we do science things in here. It's behavioural science will tell you what that is when you're interested, etc. People go, “Oh, right. I didn't know you guys had a lab, like what happens in the lab?” And all of a sudden, we kind of started buying more things, little signs that say, “There's testing going on here. Don't come in, then people go “Hang on a minute, there's a sign saying, I can't come in because there's like customers in the building Is a customer in the building? I’m kind of excited about that. I don't know how I like -- I thought only people in the call centre or the stores get to see customers. We get to see customers too?”
And it's just --, and it goes off, and at this point, we still spent like no money. And somebody's like, “No one's noticed that we've stolen a room and one of the meeting rooms.” And then the next thing, we went down to a charity shop and spent like 25 quid on bits and bobs to try and pretend that it was a living room. Like all these little wooden ducks and like books and stuff or whatever. And then to try and say like, “Hey, come into our lab. It's like a customer's home, etc."
So, it was really fun, and all of a sudden, we got like the value of this. And everyone gets this right. We expect all of our squads to be in the lab once a month because this is how you get user-centred. Others are like, “Okay, great.” Because that's what we were already doing. And we had to say, “And by the way, we need a whole bunch of money.” For like to do out the lab properly and to get proper technology. So we don't have to Skype each other and put wires to the roof or whatever. And by the way, moved to pay these users some money to participate,” etc.
So you just kind of, you can't say no at those points, because it's proven its value and it's becoming kind of sold in. So again, it's a behaviour change where people see the value of something. It's the show, don't tell. I've kind of; we're doing this. That's great. And then you say, “Hey, let me tell you why it's great. And let me tell you the thinking behind this, let me tell you how -- what are the other things we want to bring to our culture to make it more user-centred as well.” Fun times
Christian: That's fun times. The reason I wanted to tell that story is because I think it's a great example of how you eat your own dog food, is that expression. So you don't only design in a specific way when you create products, but you can also design the way you work. And every other problem you can have, you can use design thinking, and an iterative process, if you will, to try to solve that.
And I think you just said something a few seconds ago, proving a value over time show don't tell. And I think sometimes as designers, we expect to come into organisations and everything to be there for us so we can do the best work, but actually, most of the time, that doesn't happen. And I think the key to this is exactly proving the value over time and showing and not telling. So other than this example of the lab, what else could designers on the ground, in the trenches, do on a daily basis to show the value of what they're doing over time?
Conor: Yes, well, I mean, another example that we've tried recently about six months ago, that's really showing some promises, is we created this thing called a build measure learn canvas. And it was another kind of behavioural change, cultural change type tool. I think we'll have a blog post about it in our BT Design Medium blog if you want to go have a look. But essentially, we made the -- just like we decided not to have design principles, but instead experience principles, we decided to not have a design process, but instead a product process; a product squad process where everybody could feel a part of it and contribute to it. And so we kind of put lots of loads of red X's around all the things we could have chosen – we could have done there kind of to the left to right double diamond thing. We could have done that design thinking stages etc etc.
But the problem we're trying to solve at the moment is that there's lots of waterfall areas of an organization that are used to going left to right and having a finished point, a project mentality, whereas we're trying to bring a product mentality to it where you constantly iterate, and you're constantly increment.
So we thought, well, we have to have that type of a model. And also it can’t be for designers. It has for everybody. So we went with this kind of build measure learn model, and it has these kind of four questions. Two are about the business; two are about the customer. So the first to buy the business says, “Should we do this?” So the four questions are, should we, how might we? And then the other two questions are, can they, and will they?
So, should we even do this? What problem are we trying to solve? What's the business goals. What's the primary business goal? What's the user needs. What's the primary user need? So perfectly already everybody's aligned on the same problem, and fantastically there’s a user need in there, right side by side with the business goal. So again, that's changed things because now we start off with alignment and agreement on a business goal on a user need that we're trying to meet. Fantastic. Change things overnight.
So even if you just did that alone as a team, as a squad, you'll see the difference overnight. The other bits were fantastic, and you can read about them in our blog, but it talks about -- the highlight is like, what are all our experiments? What are all our hypothesis? What are our kind of current limitations? What are we going to try next? And then all of a sudden, they're not. Turns the product backlog from a set of deliverables into a set of experiments. Excel things we're trying to learn because any MVP you create should be about learning something, not delivering something.
So then the second two questions. Make sure we're focusing back on the customer again. So I'm trying to understand what's the leanest way of creating something to find out something. So, for example, the “Can they” is can users use this? Can they understand it? Can they find right, etc? You don't necessarily need to go live for that. You want to go into a lab for that. You want to create a super-thin, super lean prototype, put it in front of users, find out all those “Can they” questions. Can they get this kind of understand it kind of find it, etc? But if you’re trying to find out a, will they question; will they use this? Will they actually stop calling us? Will they buy more of this? Will they sign up to this product, whatever, then make sure you jump straight into that area and create a super lean MVP and live code. And you can't find those questions in a lab. So don't get to your types of research mixed up. Put it live, find out will users actually utilise this product?
And so that clarity of our process means everybody's involved in it. That means the prioritisation is right, it means it's user-centred, and it's not some sort of design process for designers that they go and stick your headphones on and do something in a corner and try and look clever.
Christian: Makes sense. Makes sense. And I've seen it firsthand working in your teams, how that -- how we've tried to make that happen. So yes, there's this discussion that design or designers, but mostly design leaders, the ones who are more towards the top, need to become business leaders or are business leaders because, without the business, there's no design. Design has no purpose unless it's to help the business grow or whatever the business goals are. But that transition can’t happen from one day to another. If you have a background in design, you understand design; you can't the day after just be a business leader. So how can someone who's trying to make that transition ease off on that or make it any easier -- make that transition in an easier way?
Conor: Probably two things come to mind for that question. So the first one is understanding value. So, what value are you contributing to the organization, and how do you work that out? How does it show up? And if the details have been able to kind of speak that language, to understand what all the words mean, all of the kind of terms, etc. And I still can't do that. I'm working hard on it, but there's still plenty of terms I'm not exactly sure how they're calculated our numbers. I mean, I have to ask for clarification on graphs way too often in sessions or on Slack behind the scenes. “I don't understand what this graph is telling me.” But that's part of growing into that area.
It's back to the three circles about how much about the business, and the value to the business do you understand? Looking at the money that you're spending, the cost that you've taken out of the business to pay for these teams and the return on investment, by again. So it absolutely has to be part of the process that has to be part of your thinking.
And I think the other thing -- the second thing would for me would be, it's hard for maybe some designers, certainly myself to get out of the utopia mindset because that's kind of what we're paid for. We’re expected to kind of think of the perfect future. Wouldn't it be great if…? And purveyors of the impossible. So it's kind of like, “Well, that's great, but we're kind of in reality right now. So how about dial back your utopia back to what's the next step towards it.” And I constantly make that mistake, ask any of my peers. They're always giving me that feedback of saying, “It's great Conor that you want to take us to 10 years down the line, you're getting confused to thinking that's tomorrow. That’s 10 years away. So, I love that you're giving it a challenge; maybe you could find out a way to get it five years away. But this confuses between today and tomorrow. So, how about you come back in the room?” I was like, “Okay. All right. Fine. Fine.” So I think it's that. It's trying to find out, how do you still provide that value, that it's kind of limitless thinking, but in a way that's useful to current realities and current business challenges?
Christian: One of the favourite subjects that I like to talk about is design education, whether that is school or whether that is self-education. I call both design education. So starting in your career, do you have any opinions on that, which one is better, or maybe any opinions on design education as it is today?
Conor: No, I guess my only opinion is one of my kind of core beliefs or core values in my life, even just beyond design, is just continuous improvement, continuous learning, continuous education, self-improvement. I think whatever way works for you to do that, go for that. I mean, I spend way too much time on Twitter. My whole Twitter is just design Twitter, which sometimes is fun, but a lot of the time is educational. Not always, but a lot of the time.
And reading those books, trying to like read the books that are on the edge of your knowledge when it comes to, are you reading business books? Are you reading -- have you read Inspired by Marty Cagan? Are you trying to figure out what does a product manager do? Like, have you read Sense and Respond? Have you read The Lean Startup Way? Like, have you considered what it's like to be an entrepreneur and then bring that back to being entrepreneurial business? What are all the things that you can keep doing to expand your knowledge, your expertise in areas that you might not necessarily use immediately, but you almost certainly will in the long term?
Christian: Keeping a bit on that topic and mostly around people starting their careers, you've had conversations with junior designers for ever. You've hired them. You've said no to them after interviews, etc. So what do you think are some of the blind spots that designers early in their careers have versus someone who's more experienced?
Conor: I think that the normal blind spot is always focusing on output rather than outcomes, isn't it. So it's the old Jeff Gothelf video of Output, Outcomes, and Impact and trying to kind of understand that, how can you create the least amount of output for the most amount of outcomes and the biggest impact and not just focusing on what the output is, what it looks like. I still see to this day, people that have an approach to, for example, presenting their designs where they show the output. It's a bit of a shame because that's not really what the focus should be on. And that kind of thing actually encourages behaviours that we wouldn't necessarily enjoy across the company where people then respond subjectively to the output.
So you say, “Show us the output?” People will tell you whether they like it or not. And that's what's going to happen. Of course, it is where if you show an experiment-based learning-focused process, “And by the way, here's the most recent assumption in an output format of how I were going to learn what the next thing is.” I will tell you when we get in that evidence anybody will go, “Brilliant. When you got, I can’t wait to find out what you learn next.” The only challenge you'll get at that point is, are you being bold enough? Which is great. That all of a sudden, that changes it. So, I'd kind of -- anybody is kind of junior design, I'd say, make sure that design means user-centred design for a start and then if it does mean user-centred design, focus on outcomes, not output.
Christian: Right. Conor. I wish we would have hours to talk about design because there's plenty I know you've got in store for us. So maybe on a next season or next season again, but I ask everyone towards the end these couple of questions, so you don't get to escape either. So the first one is, what's one thing you wish more designers would know?
Conor: Yes, I was just, I get stuck on having more chats about design. I think at some point in the future, whoever knows when I'm looking at a couple of times and continue the conversation as we have done in the past.
Okay. Let me get back to the question. What's the one thing more designers should know? Gosh, that's sounds like I have some particular wisdom to impart, which I probably don't.
Christian: I don't know about that.
Conor: I guess it was probably back to my previous point. Designers should know that design is about users, and if you're not fully involved in analysing, viewing, observing, and being obsessed with the customer's use of your product, then I guess it's a different type of design. I mean, maybe it's art right at that point.
Christian: Yes. And we all know art and design are very much, not the same thing.
Last one, Conor, how do you reckon the future of design as an industry looks like?
Conor: Oh gosh, more wisdom. Who knows? I think more and more, I'm kind of really seeing what we're enjoying at the moment is the coming together of these different roles. So design and gets closer to product, engineering gets closer to design. Removing kind of -- removing barriers, certainly removing handovers, or even the thought of a handover. And I mean, with the old phrase about design, having a seat at the table, except that's kind of that's happened a long time ago.
And so now it's about what happens when you're trying to make a company more user-centred? And I think that's the future already. You see companies now more and more becoming more digital, and as a result of becoming more digital, they become more user-centred, they have the ability to put things in front of the customers faster, which means they can learn faster, which means they can respond faster, which means they're more customer-centric than more user-centric. So I think the future of design is more collaborative, and it's more user-centred.
Christian: So off the back of that, do you think that one of the skills that defines and will define good designers in the future is being able to tear down the silos we've been into for a very long time?
Conor: Yes, 100%. Silos across design, silos across digital, silos across the business. Absolutely.
Christian: Right. Conor, where can people find out more about you, read the stuff you write, or anything else you want to plug? It's now, now's the time.
Conor: Okay, cool. Have a little Google for our BT Design Medium blog, where we try and post a few things on how we're doing, what we're up to. We'd love to hear anybody’s thoughts if the reading our articles. I'm on Twitter as @UXMuch and which I got a long time ago as a little tag, and I'm quite happy with it. But yes, just follow me on there, have a look at our blog. Let us know what you think and give us any of your thoughts on anything we're trying is working for you or different angles we should be considering.
Christian: Cool as always, all of these will be in the show notes so people can easily find you. Conor, you have no idea how grateful I am for you being on the podcast. So again, really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time, and hopefully, as you said earlier, we'll get to be face to face soon again and talk design over a pint. So I really appreciate you taking the time.
Conor: One of these days then.
Christian: Enjoy the rest of your day. Yes. Well, hopefully, sooner rather than later. Yes.
Conor: Who knows? Thanks very much, man. It was a pleasure.
Christian: Thanks, Conor. As always. Cheers, man.
Conor: Cheers. Bye.
Christian: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Jane and I talk about her opinions of what's the most crucial aspect of being a design leader, quantifying the value of our design work, and what we can do to support designers who are just starting out.
Connect with Jane
Selected links from the episode
Jane's Medium articles
The Intrapreneurs Club
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host, Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organization.
Today, we're talking to Jane Austin, Director of Design at Babylon Health. Jane shares with us her opinions of what's the most crucial aspect of being a design leader, quantifying the value of our design work, and what we can do to support designers who are just starting out.
Jane, I really appreciate you being in the podcast. Thank you so much for joining. You've been with Babylon Health for a couple of years now, and I'm sure you've got a lot to share about building teams and design leadership and all that. So we are going to be talking about all those cool topics today, but first, why don't you give us a quick background of yourself and how you ended up being in the role you are today?
Jane: I'm not quite sure how far you want me to go back. I'll try and I'll go back quite far because it's interesting. And I'll try and counter along quickly to get to the present day. I've got a degree, a master's degree actually, in philosophy, which meant I was completely unemployable. And I went traveling via around Easter Europe and Portugal, Europe, various other places, teaching English as a foreign language. So all these poor people they're actually learning Scottish, not learning English. And then I came back to London and I got a job teaching refugees English. And this shows how long ago it was. It was for a government college and they invested all this money in an ICT suite for the poor refugees to learn English. But these CD ROMs were so badly designed and everybody was getting really frustrating and upset. I got onto a free course to program director at the college. We did the CD ROMs and discovered that actually there was a thing called usability and that this was a huge problem.
I had no idea that this was even a thing and that we used the CD ROMs as a – like a portfolio to go onto a second master's which was called Hypermedia. I really am showing my age. And then from there, I got a job now and a really nice studio to be creative agency in Shoreditch, which went spectacularly bankrupt.
Set up my own agency. I phoned their clients and asked them if they had anybody looking after them. So it was like D&AD and Channel Four and the Design museum, so some amazing clients. And we didn't make a penny. Not a penny. We just like -- I was too embarrassed to ask for money. I didn't understand how business worked. It was an absolute disaster.
So from there I got a job in another agency and then I went and played safe. Because that's when I discovered actually what product design was, it was owning the product and iterating on it. It wasn't just kind of doing usability at the end of the process. So starting with product people from the beginning to craft something that people actually wanted. So that was at a trading company, online trading platform, which was insanely complex. I left there because I was second guessing myself. It was actually more like gambling than trading.
And went to the Government Digital Service, which was just amazing. I learned so much in GDS. I worked with some of the best people in the world. Then went to the Telegraph. We rebuilt everything at the Telegraph, and then they decided that we had built all the things, so they didn't need a product team. They just needed to market the things. So we all got made redundant and then I went to MOO, wonderful company making business cards.
And then I followed my boss Chad and moved to Babylon Health where I am now. We’re an AI-powered healthcare, not really a startup anymore, it’s a scale-up, and their mission is to provide affordable and accessible healthcare to the world.
Christian: Yes. Thanks. Thanks for that, Jane really quick, really, to the point. I love that. You said one thing that was really interesting, which is you've learned a lot at GDS. And a lot of the designers that I've spoken to around London and who have worked for the Government keep mentioning the same thing. Like, “Oh, I've learned so much working for the Government.” Which is probably another thing you would say in a lot of, let's say, more forward-thinking industries. So what were some of the things that you've learned at GDS?
Jane: At GDS I learned the power about having a mission and having these really clear sighted people at the top of driving that mission. I learned the power of doing research early and often. Research was a tool for everybody to understand the customer. So they had mandated contact hours. Everybody had to see the people using their product. They supported people, so people outside of GDS, to come along on the journey. We're having an incredible impact on people's lives.
So the people who redesigned the new passport service, it’s amazing. I actually saw them starting work on that -- starting work with really understanding people's needs and why they had to do this online service. And then building out from needs and making sure everything was clear and simple… doing the hard work to make it simple. They had values that were up everywhere. So you can't – you’re able to make really clear decisions.
And then the way they did agile, it wasn't just like… what’s it called, fragile, or like waterfall with some standups. It was proper agile where people were collaborating really well. The teams were really well structured. We had lots of retros and the people themselves. So I worked with Lisa who's amazing. And just, they had the space as well to really do considered very good work. I think the problem being in a startup or somewhere commercial, often, everything is an MVP, and that's really frustrating. But at GDS, they finished what we started and they released products which were a complete step change, most substitute of the products, but absolute complete step change in what had been done before, and setting standards that the rest of Government followed. It was just a joy to work there.
Christian: Was there any difference, or now looking back, you've worked for the Government, you've worked for a lot of private companies, any difference in working or in how design is being applied at the Government versus how it is applied in private companies?
Jane: It's an interesting question. I think at the Government, really, a lot of the battle had been already won. I can’t remember the lady's name from last minute… Oh gosh, that's terrible, I'll come back to that. She'd written a report into why Government had to be more digital. So the battle of this had already been won.
And then secondly, they said the people who set up GDS had a system and a process, and that battle had already been won. And they understood the importance of research and design. But very often in private organisations, they don't understand Design. They think Design makes things look pretty. I remember once getting interviewed for a job and the product manager said to me, “Oh, yes. I love design. It's where the magic happens.” And I felt, wow, this is a place I don't want to work. He thinks Design is like a creative genius in a cupboard doing magic, when actually it's a rigorous process.
So I think that what I learned at GDS, Design is a rigorous process that you follow that's based on customer needs, and it results in something really good rather than you're turning out and colouring in some stakeholders’ ideas, which is often what happens in the private sector. So for design to work well, you need stakeholders to understand the impact and you need to be able to do regular research and to iterate. And rather than HIPPOS, highest paid person in the organisation coming in dictating what you should do, at GDS it was the opposite. You started with customers or citizens and worked up from there.
So I think the differences where the power is, and what battles had already been won, and having the space for design to actually prove itself, rather than just coming at the end and colouring in. That's not everywhere, but a lot of companies are still like that remarkably.
Christian: So you said one thing that I'd like to unpack a little bit, which was one of the things that's required is for stakeholders to understand the impact. And I'm sometimes wondering whether that's something that we, as designers on the ground can do more towards. So to me, it always comes back to transparency.
It's sometimes very difficult for stakeholders in the business to understand what you're doing when you're working in silos or you go away and you work and then a month later you come back for a grand reveal or something like that. So do you think being more transparent at work would help more stakeholders understand what it is we're doing?
Jane: Absolutely. There's so much you can do to work with stakeholders. From the start, actually turning your UX and your design processes on the stakeholders. So not just having empathy for your end users, but having empathy for your stakeholders, or just doing -- interviewing them, doing empathy maps, trying to understand what they're thinking and feeling, and be able to channel or create your messages in a way that resonates with them and solves the problems that they're having that reassures them.
To speak in the language of business is really, really important. I've just finished… we get paid money to do training at Babylon. And I decided this year, I wasn't wanting to do any additional training in design. I did a course in how to be a non-executive director, which was a five-day course. It was almost like a mini MBA. And it helped me understand strategy, the pressures that businesses are under, the way the finances are operating. And that was really, really helpful, because it means that I can now coach what I'm doing in the language of the stakeholders.
And then you design with the stakeholders. You maybe have some quick wins to build credibility or you have a project that you make sure that they are -- you bring them along on the journey with you, so they understand what you're doing. And that's where product is phenomenal at. You should be working really closely with product and tech all the way through the process. And product people are very good at translating design into the business. You have to make sure that you don't sort of hide behind the product person and let them do all the talking for you. You have to go out there and try and build that relationship with the stakeholders and be able for them to understand the impact that you're having.
Christian: So you said earlier that you've started this agency and then you didn't make a penny off of it, because you didn't necessarily understand the business side of it. So how has, I don't want to call it failure, but how has that period of not being able to make that agency work helped you later on during your career? Has that taught you something specific that you've used later on?
Jane: Quite a few things. One of the first things was I felt like weirdly guilty about asking for money for my work. But clients would come and they would make us do all of these changes. And then I would think, “Well, I didn't get it right first time so I shouldn't ask them for any money.“ Which was just crazy. And I felt so weirdly guilty that I wasn't actually working, that I was somehow just enjoying myself so much that I shouldn't be asking for money for what I was doing, that I was enjoying so much. So this weird guilt and strange feelings about money that helped me reflect on that and say, “Why should I? Why did I feel so guilty and weird about asking for money for my work?" That's really helped.
The other thing is having much more structure in projects. So really understanding what you have to do, really pinning it down and really being very clear about the processes and what you got to do, why are you going to do it, rather than sort of like being buffeted by stakeholders. Being able to be much more structured about your interactions, to almost protect yourself. That really helped.
And I think, just understanding the importance of business, it's difficult to make money. And that gives me a lot of empathy for going to work in these other different companies and trying to understand how do they make money? What can I do that impacts their business?
So this helps when I was at MOO, which was an e-commerce business, trying to understand which products had the best margin, which one would be best for us to try and encourage the customer to buy. And then doing design switch, trying to -- well, not like dark patterns, but try to showcase products which have the better margins, which were good to impact the business. So taking that knowledge of the business and applying it to design is definitely something that I took from that.
Christian: I think, you've said something that will help us segue a bit into a topic that I want to discuss. You said you felt guilty for charging for design. And I think I can relate to that. And I've talked to a lot of people who do the same. And you see a lot of people, especially freelancers, who are struggling to charge proper money for their work.
And I think a lot of times this goes back to not necessarily understanding the value of what you can offer. Because if you talk to an architect, a lawyer, an electrician, a house builder, they don't feel guilty for charging you money because they understand the value they can provide. And they also understand, “I provide you some value, you need to pay for it.” But I think with design coming from an art background where you don't really solve a problem, you don't really bring any value per se, any tangible value, I think we still oftentimes think of our work as not necessarily valuable. And I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about how can we quantify what it is we're doing or can we quantify what it is we're doing?
Jane: I think that's a fantastic question. Maybe there's two parts to that. The first one I think is just because we're coming often from an arts background, as you said, business or commerce seems quite alien and we're not taught about it.
And particularly I come from a working-class family where we didn't really like have that sort of entrepreneurial backgrounds or understand about charging, about things. It was completely alien to me. And I think perhaps if you come from a professional family, where your parents work for a large company rather than being self-employed, it may be an alien to you.
It's not something that you were taught at school. You're not taught it as part of your degree course. It's just very uncomfortable. And as British people, we’re uncomfortable about money altogether. So I've actually had been taught by an American friend of mine about how to be much more confident and articulate about money. And I think that's maybe something all of us should do, go and find a really assertive American friend to teach you to ask for money, because it's painful until you do it a few times.
The second question was about how can you prove your value. I think that's another fantastic point. You should be starting a project, particularly now that we're working in collaborative cross functional teams, particularly if you're working in a product organization, you should be starting your project with the ideas of what the success metrics should be from the start. So is it that you want more adoption, more people using the feature or is it to be able to sell more rather than just randomly designing something, you should be part of that conversation from the beginning to understand why the company is investing its time in this team to build something. And designers should not see themselves as that sort of thing, separate from that, but as part of the cross functional team that has been able to justify its existence. Because you don't often hear engineers debating of like, “What's my value?” So actually being -- aligning yourself with engineers and product people as a group, understanding what your success metrics are as a cross functional team, and then proving that you've been able to deliver them.
That's a really good way to go about it rather than sort of extracting design from the whole thing and saying, “Yes, look at our ROI.” You're not -- you as a designer and a product organization, you're part of a group of people responsible for a feature or for a set of customers or something. And so you should understand why you're building this from the start.
Christian: So off the back of that, how do you empower your teams to do that? Because it's one thing to have it at a conversation level and say, “I think we should do that,” and it's a whole other thing to implement the whole mindset in the minds of a team of however, 10, 15, 20 designers, I don't even know. But how do you empower your team on a daily basis to do exactly that?
Jane: If you look at the rule of a manager or a leader in a product organisation is quite different to how it's gone before. In the past, you might have a manager responsible for a group of people and telling them what to do and directing their work.
It doesn't work like that anymore. In a cross functional agile product like companies, the role of a manager is more like a servant leader, that you're there to promote people and to empower them and to make sure that they have the tools to do their job. That you're able to perhaps give them the coaching, help them understand what we've got to do, but you don't tell them what to do.
Their responsibility is to work with product and tech and to understand what their roadmap is, to use research, to understand what you need to build, to use research to see if they've validated what they've built, and to collaborate really well with products and technology. So the way that design works now, I think is to be a partner and to be -- there should be like a really healthy tension between product tech and design.
So design should be focusing on the customer with a problem to solve, tech should be focusing on feasibility, and product should be thinking about the business requirements. And between the three groups of people, that tension results in some really good decisions. And that's what you should be trying to support as a leader or manager in a product organisation. How to give your team confidence to make these decisions, confidence to be assertive and have really good discussions with product people, to make sure that are there's enough designers to be able to have these conversations.
And that's where things get difficult, is when you're in an organization and there's nothing you can do about it, but there's not enough designers. So they end up not being able to look forward enough to be able to do discovery. So then they get it handed to them and then they have to just execute rather than really thinking about it. That's the place, perhaps, you can push back as a leader, but not always because that's where organisations become very difficult to work for where decisions are sort of handed down from the top.
And that might segue to another question that I know we were discussing prior to starting this podcast, which is like what is the good and the bad organization to work for? So good organisation is one where the teams are empowered to make their decisions. There's a good structure. People know what outcomes they have to build. There's consistency. So there's kind of guardrails around consistency, like the design system and processes. But the teams are within this structure, they’re told what outcomes they need to achieve, and they can decide how to do it.
And that kind of bottom up, but very supportive structure. You get really great results. Where designers become really fed up and disempowered and burnt out is where some dict-outs are handed down from the top. You've just got to build a feature. They don't quite know why they've got to build a feature. They don't get to do discovery and they become feature factories. That's a bad organization and a place where it’s really difficult to do good design.
Christian: So let's stay on that topic, I think, And let's talk hiring a little bit, but let's talk hiring from the perspective of a designer. So when you go to an interview, obviously you need to do well enough to prove to the people you're sitting in front of that you have what it takes to work there. But there's also the other side of the story, which is that organization also needs to “prove to you” that they are right for you. Sometimes it's really, really difficult when you just have brief interactions with people in a company you're interviewing for to know whether that company is fit for you or not, whether you would actually enjoy working there or not. So how do you go about doing that?
Jane: From the perspective of a designer, one of the things you should look at is Glassdoor. Glassdoor is going to give you a glimpse. Oh, there's a terrible expression an old boss of mine used to see is "opening the kimono”. It's terrible, terrible expression, but I suppose that's what Glassdoor does. It helps see the insight, the truth of the organization. And it's an amazing tool. Definitely one to be used.
Also maybe see the kind of people that are working there. Do they talk, or do they blog, and are there people that are respected? Then actually in the interview I think, -- Oh, sorry and when you're looking at people that work there, maybe you know somebody, or you can have a chat to them, just give a little bit of a detective and do some digging. And then in the interview, a lot of people don't realise it's a two-way street. You're not there just to prove you can do the job, it's also to make sure that that job is right for you.
So there's lots of questions you can ask. Like, “Why is the role open?” “How do you decide what to build” is a really fantastic question, because that's when you know if it's going to be a feature factory or people are a bit more empowered? Ask about how the teams are set up, so that you want to make sure that you're in cross functional squads, ask about how much research is done. So do people just build stuff or is it actually based on needs and do they the validate it? Where does power lie? Sometimes you've got organisations you’ve got very senior engineering people dictating things. Those that might be hard one to answer people hadn't really thought about it.
And also, “How do you iterate?” If it's a place where you’re in a permanent MVP, That’s a dreadful place to be a designer. Again, people get burned out, so just asking people how your products evolve, what basis you're evolving from? And then maybe ask if you ideally meet some other people in the team. Ask if you can go for coffee with them. If you get through to that point, definitely, you need to validate that this is a place you're going to be spending at least the next two years of your life, probably more time than you will be spending with your family. So it's really important to make sure that's the right fit. And that's another thing being assertive about, making sure that you value your time as well as asking for money. And that is this place the right organisations for me to give the gift of my time to.
Christian: Cool. So we've got it from the perspective of a designer. Let’s just twist it and talk from the perspective of a company, because you've probably interviewed hundreds of designers by this point, you’ve said yes or no to hundreds. So let's try to extract some patterns of what people do really well at interviews that impresses you. And then what people always kind of seem to be stumbling upon as negative step when they are in front of you.
Jane: What I look for in an interview is -- so I don't give tasks. I think tasks are really, really unfair way to assess people. For a start, it can often relate people who have family commitments or who have chronic illnesses who might not have the energy to do this. And you’re weeding out some potentially fantastic candidates. So I think it's a daft thing to do. Although if you want to keep doing it means my candidate pool’s bigger.
So what I do instead is try and look for signals to see how something works and what it would be like as a colleague. And so for that, we ask people who interview with us to talk through two or three previous projects. So first we give them a brief. We explain the problems that we have and structure that we have in our company, what kind of thing you might be working on, who they might be working with, challenges they might have, and ask them to go and think about a couple of projects that they're really proud of the top to the kinds of roles that they will be doing.
Then they come in and present to a panel. And there, we like to see a story. We like to see that people followed a good process. Maybe they got something wrong and they learn from it, that something surprised them, that they think about things deeply, that they collaborated well. So we have sort of set of questions that we use to see if someone's going to be a teammate, because modern product design is so much about collaboration and about good decision making. So we look for those signals.
And then we just we -- we call it a culture fit. I like to think about it as a culture art. What makes that person who they are and what strengths do they have that they can bring to the team. And it’s really good to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses. So what is sports value art? What’s the cultural art is that person bringing to the team?
So the mistakes I've seen is where people… actually, will tell you the one of the worst mistakes I've seen was somebody actually presented a bit of work back to me in the portfolio that they hadn't done that I had. I know, can you believe it? That was years and years ago, though. But I’ve heard stories of some of the things happening the other times. I think perhaps the worst things people can do is just present work where they've not really… they haven't really looked at customer needs. They’ve not really thought about what they're designing. They focus too much on shiny, shiny, beautiful stuff, rather than actually thinking about creating a product. Where people perhaps haven't learned anything.
So you ask people to reflect back on the project and say, what would you do differently? And we would always do something differently. Some people would say nothing, you think, well, that person perhaps hasn't got the growth mindset that you need to succeed. So it's those kinds of subtleties that we look for because we’ve got so many fantastic designers that apply to us. So there's subtleties about what people's aptitude and potential. It's important to hire for potential rather than reality.
Christian: So I know that you wrote a couple of years ago an article on Medium, where you explicitly stated that you think that your main job as a design leader is hiring. That is your number one job. So, first, why? And second, how do you bring good designers in front of you? Because putting a job ad on the website is not enough anymore. So you must be doing some things to be able to bring that talent in front of you, that you can then interview. So why is it important? And then how are you doing it?
Jane: It's -- there's a lot of things you need to do as a design leader. And I think the hiring is probably first among equals. It's not the only thing that's important, but if you get your team composition and structure wrong, things aren’t going to go well. And when I say hiring, I don’t just simply mean interviewing people. I mean, thinking really carefully about the components or the structure of the organization that you want to have.
So you have people in squads, but will you have a research director? What level should that person be? Do you have a design system? How would you build this? Do you have service designers? If so, by what parts of the product they look up? So often I go in, I think the last three or four jobs I’ve gone in and built a team. So this is -- I'm talking to more people working perhaps at startups and scale ups like I've done.
So first you have to understand the rules you're hiring for. And then you need to go out and get people excited about coming to work with you. So that's quite hard work. You'd also do mentoring. I'm continually mentoring to try and think about the next generation of designers, doing podcasts like this one, or talking. I’m member of Slack groups where I support other designers, I do portfolio reviews. So continually just trying to nurture a talent pipeline, that doesn't sound too cheesy.
And then making sure that you have another subset of values that is right for the team. That perhaps your first few hires you might look at the values of the organisation, but then you want to think about the values of your team. What you stand for, what kind of personality do you want to have? Where do you see potential, what do you mean by potential? And work with your team do you define this, and then when we hire people, as I said, there's a cultural art.
So that hiring is -- actually, there's a multitude of things that underpin hiring, that make you sure that your team is running really well, really well structured. And your job is to sort of like, make sure people get the right people come into that team in the right place and that they're onboarded and they're supported very well, set up for success.
Christian: You talked a couple of times about nurturing talent and people coming in. And I think one of the things that's very obvious to me is that we, as an industry, we're not really doing enough for the people coming in. There's barely any support. There's barely -- I know there are articles and YouTube videos and all that, but as in peer to peer support, there’s not a lot of that. So if you -- I assume a lot of senior people, senior designers, maybe design leaders are listening to this. What could they do to give back to the community and to help these people just coming in get to the point they are at?
Jane: There's a few structured things out there. There's the thing called the intrapreneurs club, run by Michael Giles, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, I've not been able to be as involved in that as I really wanted to be. But that's something you could perhaps reach out to them and see if they need support. They’re trying to bring around people who are underrepresented in the industry to find them jobs and get them supported.
I do some volunteer teaching. I support some like entrepreneurs clubs to try and help them understand the role of design of the kind of people that they should be hiring. I do some volunteer mentoring. Some universities have reached out to me to do things like portfolio reviews, which I do. So there's a bit of volunteer work that I do. And there's so many people looking for it.
So I think maybe even just putting up, deciding the kind of sector or group of people that you'd like to help would you could tweak, that's one way to look at it. Although that might distill like real life people who really need the help. So there's perhaps other organisations and different places you can go and try and find people. There's quite a few sorts of like local youth groups or some charities that are trying to get underrepresented people into creative industries. So do a bit of research and you could find these organisations and just volunteer.
Christian: Yes. I think another example that's been on the podcast is just being able to offer portfolio reviews. Just the other day, I had someone write to me on LinkedIn after I think I gave her portfolio review a couple of times back in April or something. I don't even remember. And she wrote to me to say, I just got a job. And she was just so thankful. And stuff like that makes you want to do more of that.
So I think there are small steps and I think if you just want to help, you can just put a message on LinkedIn and people would love to have your half an hour or whatever. So I think it's stuff like that that we need to do more of as people who've been in the industry for a while. What are some of the things that you've seen junior designers just coming into the industry struggle with versus what are the things that you've seen more senior designers, generally, struggle with?
Jane: Tricky question. Perhaphs junior designers, they haven't got a story to tell. So it's really hard to get that first job, because as I've described, there are a lot of these signals that I'm looking for, are for people who've already had a job and they're able to talk about how they’ve collaborated to how they’re able to share what they’ve learned from a project.
Junior designers, often we wouldn't have that. So try the -- you could do some volunteering or tell the story about your degree show or whatever course you on. You should have done a project, so you’ll be able to tell a story about that and what you've learned. So I think that's just like getting over the first hurdle is being able to give people the signals and the information or enough information for them to make a decision to hire you.
And also like, how do you demonstrate potential? So what could you do? That's another thing that the junior designers struggle with, and then I think junior designers actually on the job, there's all this stuff around being a designer. So like, understanding the complexity of shipping staff, understanding how to influence, how to tell the story of your design, how to present it, how to measure it. So there's the hard design skills, but all the soft skills around it are things that you probably learn just through years of work.
Senior designers, it's more to do with, again, I think the soft skills about thinking about how you might understand different things that are going on in the organisation and connect them. How to look up and out from your work. How to manage upwards. How to understand stakeholders. How to be assertive and push back. How to really unpack what you're designing, so rather than thinking about beautiful execution, maybe being targeted that you shouldn't be doing something at all. Being able to do much more, in depth research or think about sort of longitudinal research or to think about much more difficult problems.
So a junior designer might work on like a button or a small aspect of the site. Senior designer might work across an entire feature. And then more senior people would be thinking about the holistic for the entire product. How do you make that consistent? Or they might be thinking about something six months in the future and how you might support -- future of the product might be. So the difference often is the same skills. It's the scale or the range of impact that you have between junior to senior is what the difference is.
Christian: This might be a tricky one to answer, but you've mentioned potential a couple of times. And I'm wondering, how do you read potential? Sometimes even people themselves don't know they have the potential, because how would you? It's in the future. So when you have someone in front of you, what makes you think, “Oh, this person will become someone in this field.” Is it more of a gut feeling or are there specific things you're looking for?
Jane: I think there's a bit of a gut feeling. Everyone has a gut feeling, but I try to ignore that because that could often be your biases. I try to be aware of it and try to ignore the gut feeling. I think things that give it – talk to me about potential are people who really love the job, they find it really interesting, who have opinions about different apps and why they like them, who maybe worked really hard to get where they are, maybe did a career change or somewhere that they've done this sort of extra work to show that they really, really care.
And I mentioned earlier that people doing extra work is -- you could end up limiting your group of people that you're hiring from because people have chronic illnesses, people are parents are caring for supports. They may not have the time to do this. So the kind of thing I'm talking about is maybe that they've been reading books or reading not just design books, but books about the industry or books about how to work with product people. That they're thinking around the problem. That they're thinking deeply. That they're trying to unpack why we work how we work. They’re just looking more deeply rather than just thinking about a pretty interface. For me, that talks about potential.
Christian: What's your take on generally design education versus being self-taught or just taking an apprenticeship or whatever. What's your thought on starting out?
Jane: Gosh, I don't know. I think if you can and you haven't got enough money or time to go to university, then there's a lot of apprenticeships and there's a lot of sort of short-term courses, which seem to -- people I've seen do very well off the back of them. Some of them are perhaps a bit more of a factory, and perhaps people they're churning out a lot with designers there's not jobs for. I'm not so sure. Design education, I think from – I’ve been doing some volunteer teaching in universities, and often it's very difficult for people who are teaching the courses in universities to keep up with sort of modern product design techniques, because there's so much that goes on outside of just actually creating an interface.
And people are being taught how to create an interface, when actually you should be thinking about how to do effort versus value mapping with your product and tech person because that's the design activity. The looking at roadmap is a design activity, thinking about what KPI you should measure is a design activity, because all of this impacts your design. So I think this traditional design education is quite focused on the craft rather than all of the things that you need to do in order to produce a fantastic product design.
Christian: I think this focus on craft, it's naturally what's going to happen in the beginning of your career. At some point in time, ideally, this transition should happen where instead of focusing on the craft and the tools, you just start thinking about the 10,000-foot view or the future, the strategy, the KPIs, all the things that you've just mentioned. How does that transition happen? Is it just something that you just have to wait for it to happen over time or are there shortcuts you can take to get there?
Jane: That's a great question. I don't know, actually, I've kind of something I've seen just people have over time as they get more experienced. I think it just takes time. Some people, it might take less time than others, which is why often you see in job ads when people mentioned that years of experience required. I don't think that's strictly fair. But it's things that deepen your practice to understand how things work in the real world. It's not something you can just know overnight.
Think it has to be quite a bit of enough experience. And also to give you that innate confidence to be able to stand your ground, to be able to argue to sort of say, “Oh, I've seen it before.” I mean that's actually a really good way to describe what needs to happen, being able to say, “We have seen it before and it played out like this. So I think maybe we should try this, or I've seen this before and this bad thing happens, so we should avoid it and try this different thing.” That experience is always part of your craft. It does take time to just know how things work, how situations play out, how you should tackle a particular situation. That takes time and I think that's okay. It's okay.
Christian: Yes. So it's patience and then just keep working, I guess. We're nearing the end. A couple of more questions for you. You wrote another article than the one I was referring to earlier where you -- I'm going to just quote because I think it says a lot about your idea of what a designer should be.
So it goes like this, “I believe that to ship great products you need to move from a genius designer, working alone to save the world, then to the lone designer in the crew feeding this great development beast doing continuous delivery, to someone who facilitates the team to make great decisions to support design. In other words, you need a designer as a facilitator and I don't mean facilitating workshops for clients.” Let's unpack this.
Jane: I think what you said there, pretty much sums up everything I’ve been saying in this interview. That being a designer is more than creating beautiful Figma files. It's getting them built. It's working with people to build them. It's understanding what you need to build. It's understanding the business. It's compromising, working with products and tech to say maybe something can't be built, what would be a simpler version? If you have a big vision, how to turn this into like small incremental changes in order to get there. How do you know that you're on the right course?
So design is about the relationship and conversations and context and being able to navigate this in order to get something absolutely fantastic in people's hands. And it might not be the first thing to start to thinking about, but there's no way that you're going to get something great in someone's hands if you lock yourself in a room and come out with a beautiful, beautiful Figma file, which you might not be able to build it. It might not be what somebody wants. It might not be able to get it on the roadmap. It might be actually the wrong solution, it might be massively over complex, there's so many different things you have to consider before something actually gets built.
So your job is to navigate all of this, to make sure that you're putting the right efforts versus value versus business versus customer needs. All of this kind of stew of information that you have to navigate your way through and still have your vision and create what you want to and make sure it's as good as possible, but not too good. Because obviously you need to be commercial as well. So you don't want to over engineer a solution. So all of this takes a lot of navigating, a lot of facilitating, a lot of conversations and lots of compromise and commitment and assertiveness in order to make your vision a reality. And a Figma file isn't really a product design. It's just the first step.
Christian: I love that. That's a great answer. That should be a quote. Maybe you've already answered this, but maybe you have something else as well. We're moving into the last two questions at the end that I ask everyone. So what's one thing you wish more designers would know?
Jane: So one thing I wish more designers -- well, actually several things I wish more designers would know. There’s this whole debate, should designers code? Probably not, but they should know how things get built so we can understand that is the thing we're designing actually buildable?
Another thing they should know is how strategy works, how to balance what it is that they’re doing and why they're doing it. And then how to have the confidence to be able to understand the rest of the business. You have to talk to the rest of the business and make sure that the design has the credibility and the impact that it deserves.
Often designers don't like to get involved in business or they let product do the talking for them. I think design has tried to be part of that conversation and trying to be as commercial and user-centred. That's the balance. So there’s loads of things that I wish they would know.
Christian: And how do you recon the future of design as an industry looks like?
Jane: Well, there's been a few new AI tools come out that are sort of automatically building interfaces. So that's interesting. I was thinking, what impact will that actually have? Possibly not that much because for real product design, you really need to understand the problem you're solving, what the proposition is, the value proposition. What's going to make your design stands out? And that's not something that can be like cut and pasted with artificial intelligence.
So perhaps design would be moving away from just focusing on the interface to thinking a lot more about what problems are you solving, what’s the wider context of the design needs to be, and how to remake something that solves the need that people might not know if it’s solved or to solve a need better than anyone else has. That's how innovation happens.
So I think the future of designers to think less about the interface and more about the whole problem, the whole product, the whole surface, the whole person who's going to be ended up using it.
Christian: Great. Jane, this has been a pleasure. Where can people read more about you, find out what you're writing, all that good stuff.
Jane: I really need to have a website. I don’t and it’s terrible. I actually bought a really cool URL and I've done nothing with it. I'm ashamed. So yeah, probably just -- there's two stories in Medium from about four years ago and there you are. Sorry, I need to do something. That's my new year's resolution.
Christian: Right. We'll just put your LinkedIn in the show notes so people can find you that way, if they want to. Once again, Jane, it's been a delight to have you here. Thanks a lot for taking the time and I'm sure we'll get to catch up soon again.
Jane: Thank you for having me Christian. They were brilliant questions. I really enjoyed that. Thanks.
Christian: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Rochelle and I talk about why being a designer is a huge responsibility, why it's important to understand what matters to people outside of the design team, and how to be more transparent about our work.
Connect with Rochelle
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Full transcipt
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Today I'm talking to Rochelle Dancel, an experienced designer, producer, and creative director, currently working for global design studio, Idean. Rochelle and I talk about the responsibility of being a designer, why it's important to understand what matters to people outside of the design team, and how to be more transparent about our work.
Rochelle, thanks a lot for joining the podcast. It's really a pleasure to have you here. I'm looking forward to talk about design and design leadership with you today. I believe you're the right person to talk about these things with not only from the perspective of the agency world, but also from the perspective of larger organisations, since you've got a wealth of experience in both. But first, let's talk a bit about how much of a fascinating person I think you are outside of design. So tell us a bit about your background, how you got to work with so many incredible brands over the past 15 years, and about your other career as a producer in the film industry?
Rochelle: Yes, so I think – wow, intro. I think I would probably describe my career as a series of very, very happy accidents. So I started at university in events. I worked for ticketing company, and then when I left, I had my own company off the back of that. So actually I -- on a podcast about design and business, I think a lot of us have sort of naturally built in business backgrounds when you look at things retrospectively, because we've had other lives. And I think that has definitely sort of fed up and into the things that we've ended up did up doing subsequently.
But yes, I mean I started in events and met a lot of film people. I have a background in theatre, which is what I went to university for. And so my career in production, I guess the things I do on the side, all of the films and whatnot and then the web series that I've made subsequently or I've become known for. Those were sort of passions that I followed that we thought, “Okay, we just need to take those sort of to the next level.”
And then off the back of that, I've had a kind of massive learning curve having to learn how to make my own websites for the shows that I've been making. Because at the time, we didn't know anyone that was a developer and we didn't -- it wasn't a skill set, and so we had to do things like YouTube - How to make a website, and YouTube all those sorts of things, and so, software was not what it is now. We didn't have availability of free kind of software or freemium versions of things that we could try. So a lot of it was kind of putting -- I mean, it literally was bootstrapping in many cases.
And then off the back of that, the kind of like main, I'd say kind of turning point, was when I made a website for one of my shows, my very first show which is ended up getting picked up by MTV. So there was all of a sudden, quite a lot of traffic to the site. It became a bit of a showpiece and a talking point. I mean, it was terrible website. It was built in tables, and I had to learn how to do a dropdown menu in Flash.
Off the back of that, I could say that I could code. And when I was then applying for other jobs, I ended up at the mayor's office in a charity that was looking after the London domestic violence strategy at the time. And I came on, and I think it was like an administrator or something like that, because I could do things like code newsletters and all of that kind of thing. Then you become the person who's good with computers, and you become the person that's good with websites.
And then off the back of that, I got to work on some really cool projects that probably someone at my level would not have done just because it was perceived, I had this particular skillset. And then that blossomed into a really cool online project which was around supporting domestic violence workers who work with children. And it was the very first online space. And so that sort of as a project around sort of designing the pathways into that, around how security protocols work with that. Like all of those sorts of things, I'm sort of suddenly having to think about. So, that was -- Yes, so, I mean, that was -- Again, I call it a happy accident.
Off the back of that, learn lots sort of nonprofit meet-ups or meets-ups with other charities. Was talking to them about capacity building and then ended up in an agency that worked exclusively with nonprofit organisations, charities things, like that.
So, yes. I call all of these sorts of things, a happy accident. I ended up at PayPoint in the sort of e-commerce part of the business. Again, because I was just like, “Oh, I need like a temp job to fill up some time. “I can code. They were like, “Well, we need someone to do sort of like newsletters, and we got some microsites, we've got some things like that.” So then, you know, I’m suddenly kind of accidentally in this environment and then meeting their head of product and meeting developers and then getting a much bigger insight into workflow and how the little bit of what I'm doing fits in with a much, much bigger organisation. And then the other way around having to explain how my little piece of the puzzle fits into the much wider view of the organisation.
So I don't think I've ever done anything deliberately. I don't think I've ever gone. I want to -- if you'd have said to me then, I want to be a service designer, even though that's exactly what I was doing, I don't think that I would have had that sort of like cognisance or even known how to foresee how to build a career path into the awesome things I'm doing now. I've been very, very lucky and incredibly grateful to work on all of the things I've managed to work on. And as much as possible, I mean, my big ethos in life is that I follow people. I don't really follow brands and products and things like that.
I think after I got past the first year of -- because agency world is very small. And agency world it is incredibly nepotistic still. Nepotism is still a massive thing. It is all about the network, and I was very lucky in that I met a great recruiter who we clicked right away, got on with really well. And when I was thinking, “You know what? Let's go freelance.” So let's basically just see whether or not this is something that I want to do.
The very first agency I got to work with was Sapient. And in London, if you work for Sapient, everyone knows who they are. I mean, everyone's got their own opinion about every agency, organisation, you name it. But the minute that was on my CV, it was a massive kind of door opener. Once I had that first project, is a name that a lot of people in the industry recognised, obviously. It was just a lot easier to get recommendations or to have people immediately go, “Okay, she's worked there. Fine. They've had her, she didn't blow anything up, we can have her on our project.” And I've met lots and lots of people. I've been very grateful and very lucky that they've recommended me to other people and so on and so forth.
So I tend to follow people rather than the brands now. A lot of times, recruiters that don't know me will come to me and say, “We've got this brand. It is going to look amazing. It's a great project. You go to travel to this place.” And I'm like, “Yes, no, it’s fine”. But recruiters that I work with, they know who I want to work with, or what type of person they want to work with, or what kind of organisation I want to work with. And so they're very much, “You should join this project because I think you and this person would really get along.” And I take recommendations from people that I know about people that they know very, very like to heart, especially if they're people that know me.
And I just think that -- especially if you're on a project for -- maybe be six weeks, 12 weeks, whatever, six months down the line it's that sort of classic airport test, in that, you have to be with people that you wouldn't mind spending 12 hours on an overlay unexpectedly with. Yes, it's – again I've been very fortunate and very lucky, and I'm really hoping that this kind of just continues for the rest of my career.
Christian: Yes. There's a similar story I keep hearing from everyone who's on the show. There are small particulars that are different, but the pattern is the same. Most people I've spoken to until now started out by doing something totally different than design. Maybe they started coding. Maybe they started with a totally different career, and they ended up in design by chance.
But another thing that I'm noticing is how most of these people have started design by already having a lot of skills that help them in their design career. So as you said, if you've worked in other areas of the business before and you become a designer, then you're going to have those skills to aid you as a designer. And I'm wondering, it sounds like it's such a high barrier of starting in design today. There's so much required of you even when you're just a junior because there are all these prodigies coming in knowing how to do everything. So how do you start considering the barrier is so high?
Rochelle: I think it's to not perceive the barrier as being high. I think -- like you have to like -- I've been designing in various guises for the last sort of 15 plus years. And the world of design, I believe now is completely different to what it was back in the day. If you think about -- I would perceive the barrier to entry 15 years ago was a lot higher or a lot more difficult than it is today. So I find that kind of perspective very, very interesting. And I say this because 15 years ago, we didn't have things like social media like there's an entire ecosystem that goes around being a designer. So there's meeting people, there's talking to people about your work, there's being able to have those conversations publicly and openly about issues and concepts that are important to you.
I didn't go to a design school. I didn't even go to school for design, and I grew up at a time when design was so conflated with art that if you were terrible at art at school, the idea of a design career, like in my head, was completely “No”. And now I work with people who are designers, who, for example, I've maybe only been experienced in design is for the last sort of two or three years, but had massive careers previously as business analysts or as marketing managers or as something else in another field, and I think are better designers for it.
My kind of superpower or when people always ask, “What is your kind of like key skill or whatever as a designer, or what should I cultivate about myself in order to be successful?” And I'm like, “I'm super curious about people, endlessly curious about people and how they live. Like different cultures, different subcultures which makes me then much better about going or poking about when I'm trying to figure out what they might need to help them live better or to help them deliver faster or more efficient.” I'm also really good at telling a story about why something should matter to someone. Once you really get to know people, you get to know what is important them, and then you can tailor your story to them accordingly. It's almost like a pitch sort of situation in business.
I think back then there were only sort of very rigid, very formal ways into being a designer. You had to probably have gone to specific schools. You had to have been on certain tracks into, for example, the bigger agencies and ironically agencies only started talking to me when absolutely no sort of formal design portfolio that they knew of because I have the show that I made with a friend that was -- and then YouTube was suddenly going to be this thing and so what was online video?
So, yes, I think now, because there's so many tools out there to newer designers, or there's so many tools out there to people who want to start. There are so many tutorials out there that are telling you how to do things around any subject that you would want to know about. There's much more of an impetus, or there are many more resources if you want to self-start, which I think is a quality that you honestly have to have if this is a world that you want to get into. But then on the flip side of it, because there are so many things, so many resources available, anyone can, in theory, do it. So you have the flip side of it, which is then the pressure to be able to stand out amongst everyone that is doing all of these things.
So I think we’re at a kind of a really exciting time now. I think it's as much about how you get someone's attention as much as what it is that you do from a portfolio or talent standard in order to get someone's attention to start a career in design. I’m kind of -- I'm continuously excited and continuously surprised whenever I meet new designers, and by new, I don't just mean young. I mean designers who are just kind of fresh into the industry, the game, whatever you want to call it.
Christian: So because there are so many paths into design, so many different ways you can enter your career, hiring must be a bit harder, because then you're not looking for specific patterns, I guess. When you're trying to hire a lawyer, there are two, three things. You're looking for very specific things, because they kind of all have the same background with law school etc etc. With design, with there being so many paths you can enter the career through, how does that affect hiring, and what makes a candidate stand out when you look at a portfolio, for example?
Rochelle: So I can obviously only speak to my experience on this, in terms of what I look for or how I look for things when I look to have someone new join my team. So the portfolio is the portfolio. I think, how -- what good portfolios should look like? I think those sorts of things are very well documented elsewhere. Depending on what kind of skillset or where I think a person's going to sit within my team, I'll obviously just look to see there'll be sort of evidence of the work.
The same things I look for in the portfolio, what I look for in the person when I come to meet them, whether that's like online or whether or not that's in a face to face interview, I guess, pre-COVID. And that is -- it's an ability to tell a story about something, why you did something and why it mattered. Whether or not that's in person or whether that's in the portfolio, those sorts of things really kind of need to come out.
And then depending on the sort of level of seniority. I guess when you're -- when I'm looking at someone who has already kind of quite sort of set in terms of their career, two, three, four years down the line. Basically, they're not just sort of fresh in. I look at the work, and I'm like, “I know that you can do the job.” Because the actual skills, if I'm hiring for a UX designer for example, the actual skills of it should be already demonstrated in the work that they've already done.
So what I'm looking to have a conversation with you about is, do our ethics and ethos align around certain subjects? What do you like to speak to as a person? What else are you bringing to my team beyond the things that were in a job description or in a brief or something like that?
So I tend to have very kind of natural conversations with people about what they're interested in. If it's kind of around design, I'm interested to see what else they're doing within the community. What other areas affect them? Are there any issues that they kind of like feel strongly or sort of passionately about it? It’s all those sorts of things I'm kind of looking for over and above a portfolio or a CV or anything like that.
Christian: How have you seen the role as a designer change throughout your career? Now, obviously, you have gained more seniority over time, that brings different responsibilities to your role, but the role as a designer in general, have you seen that change over the past years you've been a designer?
Rochelle: So I'd say maybe three to five years ago, you -- well, I was an experienced designer and the conversations we were having were around UX versus UI. So it was like UX versus UI, to what extent do UI designers have to do UX? To what extent a UI designer is just basically putting a skin over what UX is doing? To what extent does UX have to be cognisant of like the visual designers? There was that kind of like back and forth. How do we split that out? And now, at least in the direction that my career is moving, there's a lot more around like product design versus service design. Is experienced design physical -- Like is experience design only on screen? And then what is the physical design -- to what extent do they bleed together?
And so those conversations now I look at them, and I'm like, they don't interest me at all anymore. I'm like designers, designers, design. Honestly, these labels -- the context of these labels are just to do with where you work or in recruitment area you're pitching, it's like the -- how people can label you, how they can pick out keywords on your CV and things like that. Which is why I'm as likely to have products and service designers and experience designers come in to see me all for the same role, because it's only when you talk to people about what they actually did or what they actually do that you're like, “Okay, your CV tells me this, but actually I can hear that or I can take from what you're saying that these are the skills that you have. And this is actually what you're interested in. So yes, come in and be a UX researcher.” It's that kind of back and forth around what labels should be, what people's job title should be, what people's job descriptions should be.
I think with seniority comes an expectation that you will be more involved with a project at a level of strategically where this is set in the business. And this is regardless of your discipline. So it's like strategically, where does this sit within the business? Who are you fighting with or who are you competing with for budget, things like that. Who is the sponsor or the stakeholder within a particular business for your project? And so on a very personal level you have just to kind of make the decision as to whether or not you want to be more involved in that, or if you want to stay in the trenches with the wireframing, with the prototyping doing the kind of -- the practical and all the practice parts of design which is why now I just tend to be drawn to projects where I still have seniority. I'm still involved in those conversations, but there is still a level of being able to kind of do the practical practice part of it. And I get super frustrated when I can’t do that.
So yes, I don’t know. From my own perspective and from my own journey, becoming more cognisant of conversations around funding the work and commissioning the work and prioritising the work. Those sorts of conversations, I'm much more aware of and have definitely had experience of having an increasingly seeing more and more designers in the room when people have been hammering those sorts of things out. I think it is still a massive frustration point. And this is just anecdotally -- I'll say anecdotally universally, that designers are often brought in when briefs or solutions or basically a way to solve a problem has already been agreed and or sold. And then we were just brought in to kind of execute how that's going to be happened. And we're like, “Well, you sold a car. So I'm going to -- I have to give you a car, even though the best way from A to B might be a catapult, something like that” do you know what I mean?
Yes. I think that those sorts of conversations in a much more kind of like rounded room, not just all business people, not just all finance people, not just all tech people, for example. I'm seeing much more sort of come together to make those sorts of decisions.
Christian: So how do designers get there? In the industry, we talk a lot about getting that seat at the table. I guess that's what you were referring to as well. So how do we, as an industry, get seen, or what do we need to do as an industry to be seen as someone who needs to be brought in early at that strategic decision-making time in the process versus coming in just to execute? What is it we need to do to get there?
Rochelle: I think it's always going to be a challenge. And I think if you're in a new organisation, you don't know anyone within the organisation, I think is even harder. Ultimately this goes back to my previous point about being curious about people and what is important to them.
I like to make myself known or at least. By myself known, at least I mean going introduce myself and say hi to people so that they know who I am. I remember being in this one company and no one ever got to speak to the CEO, and they were the person who were -- there was so many sorts of gatekeepers between that person and everyone else within the organisation. But they wrote an article, and it was on LinkedIn, and I made some comments on that and then started a conversation about that. I found them on Twitter and started tweeting them stuff that they were interested in until one day they were just like, “Look, you should come in and talk to me about this.”
And so we had those conversations, and this was in a very large sort of corporate organisation where the C suite sat in an entirely different floor to everyone else sort of surrounded by assistant and all of that kind of thing. But people are people, and people have interests. People are interested in other people who might be able to add value to their interests, very naturally.
On a practical kind of like day to day level, I love working with like developers. And so whenever I have a question about something I'm working on in flight, I can kind of go to them. And because of it, I've completely exposed the process to them. I think every organisational person within an organisation, if they're not used to working with designers they will have their own idea of what designers do and don't do.
And the second part I think is the more dangerous part. So actually, kind of adding value to what they might be working on or adding value within the process or actually saying, “Look, I can help you with this, or this is something that we already do.” They might -- I don't think people willingly shot designers out. I just don't think that they know what designers can do within the context of their own organisation. And so it is almost kind of incumbent on the designer to figure that out and basically then go, “Okay, who can I speak to? How can I make those connections? And then who do I need to get in front of to demonstrate the value that our practice or our team can have on a particular project or in this particular organisation?”
Christian: I think design is challenging in different ways, in different types of organisations. So in a smaller, more nimble startup, you would expect the lines of communications to be much shorter. You can get to speak to anyone you want to within minutes if you want to. Everyone is in the same office and all that. It's very different in a large organisation, especially in an organisation that has different offices. So what are some of these challenges that you've experienced in your career that design has in bigger companies?
Rochelle: So I think one of the challenges we have and -- definitely, it's the big one that sort of affects the work from a downstream perspective, is not being able to get into identify or to see, or to refine a problem at the beginning. And of course, that problem or how it's defined leads to someone else coming up with a proposed solution, which then leads to a sort of brief of sorts being written up and then just kind of chucked over the fence to designers who are then going to execute, I guess. So then Figure out how to do this.
Let me caveat, though, by saying that designers are not the only ones who can define problems. There are lots and lots of other disciplines. There are BAs and all kinds of other sort of strategic people who are really great at doing these things. So I'm not knocking these other practices. As a designer, of course, though, I have a bias towards my own. And so on my wish list, I'm just -- I often find myself several weeks down the line going, “Well, if we had been involved in looking at this, then this might not have happened.”
So ironically, one of the skills that we've had to get better at is actually pushing back and actually kind of mitigating a lot of things. So, it's being able to say, “We can deliver an MVP that is this way, which is somewhere close to what you thought it was going to be.” It’s to take your view of a problem as a hypothesis and actually go, “Right. We will deploy the MVP of this so that it's cost-efficient, time-efficient, etc. And then we will test it. And then actually, this is the iteration path if it's a product or a service.
I think within a large organisation, like knowing all of the different pieces that going to deciding not only whether or not your project is going to be sort of green-lit but also who's paying for it. Who has a stake in it, all of those sorts of things? Like often, you'll find departments and teams that you've never heard of before suddenly show up to your kickoff session. And you're like, “Who are you? They're like, “Yes, we’re this team that is based in this part of the business.” And there'll be something that you've never heard of before, regulatory or something like that. But because they hadn't on the spend in their budget, they're the main stakeholder in your project, all of a sudden.
So I think having -- being able to have a context of the landscape in which your project is going to sit, whether that's from a customer perspective or whether it's from a business perspective, it has always been a challenge. Especially when people think you only need to set or see this little part of a pilot that you're working on. And where that happens, you end up from a customer perspective, with a very fragmented experience of an organisation. You only need to the look on the home page of -- if you try and log onto the homepage of a website on your mobile and you see like all -- like a bajillion popups, or it's just like cookies and then the newsletter and then referral links. And then you're like, “Okay, this is what happens.” It's like, I always say that the politics of an organisation make themselves visible on a mobile screen experience. And you're like, it's everyone just fighting, and no one has oversight. And that's basically what happens.
Christian: I see the role of a designer as being a connector between all these parts of the business and being able to alleviate some of these pain points that you just mentioned. To give you an example, I don't know if this has happened to you. I was working for a company where we did some usability testing, and it became very clear that the choice of design that we've made was validated very quickly by the people we were testing with. They really loved it. Obviously, you take that as a green light to implement it. And then we showed it to basically our stakeholders, people who are paying for it, and they were totally against it.
So you, as a designer then, you're sitting in the middle between the people who are going to use the product who are telling you “This is good, let's make this happen”, and the people who are paying for the product who have a lot of other interests who are telling you, “Nah, we're not going to do this.” And I think that's where -- that's what separates a good designer from a great designer is that you need to understand why are they saying no to you? What are the reasons behind their ‘no,’ that you can play on to overturn their decision if you will. Have you ever experienced that?
Rochelle: Well, here's the thing. I think in that scenario, what I would do is I would explain all of the good stuff that came out of user testing. I'd make the business case for -- if we went down this road, this is the key indicator that says we will be successful. Now, if the business has decided, “We're going to do something else.” And you don't know why, at some point, I don't think it behooves you to try and shift the needle on it.
I mean, it might sound kind of controversial, but like at the end of the day I'm not your parent. I'm not going to tell you or force you that you should do something. I'm like, what I can do is present why I think that this particular direction is the right one based on data and testing. And if you decide that you're going to go down another road, well, then that's your issue.
There is a level of responsibility from all disciplines and all people in an organisation as to how something moves and grows and develops. And I think, yes, if you can find out and/or if you know why the businesses may be decided that they're going to chase another priority or move another direction from the one that you clearly demonstrated would be successful, then you need to understand that. Once you've understood that, and you've been decided what you're going to do about that, whether it's to have a conversation with them or see whether or not there's something from the direction they’re chasing that could actually align with what it is that you're doing. And then is there another route that you can test to prove that?
Once you've done all of those things, if they still decide that they don't want to move into the direction that you're pitching for, then that is completely up to them. It's not your business; it's their business. It's their product. It’s their design. You've done your job. I think so long as you've done your job as a designer the best way that you know how to, you've presented the options very clearly to them, you've defended a direction that you think will be successful, it is completely up to them what they decide and how they decide that they want to move forward.
I used to get really in knots about this. And I guess because I started from a much more kind of like creative and into -- In industry, I think like once you're first new, you get really attached to the things that you design that you're really attached to because they're like your babies. And so there's like kind of like cliche, you need to learn how to kill your darlings. And that's the thing.
Everything I do, yes, I can love it or not, but that tends to be secondary to how disposable it is. Like, it's an idea, and it's a concept. I'm doing this to solve a problem somewhere, if someone decides that they don't like it, or someone doesn't want it, or for whatever reason, things that are beyond my knowledge, that's not up to me. I'm just like -- I've got to like, get rid of it, move on to whatever's next or iterate it with someone else's feedback and figure out how that's going to work out afterward.
But yes, I think you really need to learn how to quickly move on from something if you can see that it's a dead-end, because it does not behoove you to stay in that dead-end, but you need to keep the momentum going.
Christian: I think this also comes down to putting your ego to the side because you, as a designer, you're just serving just like any other employee of the organisation, you’re serving your organisation. As you said, it's not your business; it's a business you work for. Unless it is your business, in which case, that's a whole different discussion. But putting your ego to the side and saying, “I've done my best. I've tried. I've made the facts clear. And at the end of the day, whichever decision they go with, I'll just have to accept that.” Instead of -- because otherwise, it comes from an egotistical place, “I said, we should do this. Why are we not doing it?” And keeping pushing for that, even when it's obviously a dead end. I think that comes from an ego perspective.
You've said earlier that you go into organisations, and sometimes people don't know what you're doing or what you're doing or what you're not doing. And I think that comes oftentimes down to making design more transparent in organisations. So how do we become better at talking about the work we do?
Rochelle: I think we just need to show it off. A lot of people who -- especially if your role does not necessarily involve design and by involve design involve designers. You won't necessarily know what a designer comes in to do, and much less what an experienced designer versus a product designer versus a service designer versus a solutions architect. You're not going to know each of those people does and the same way that we wouldn't know what various kinds of business people -- transformation lead, analytical, they're all of these job titles. I don't know -- I'm just like, “But what do you actually do? What do you do successfully, quickly?”
So we've been really successful in larger organisations, in fact, in any organisations is when you've gone, “Okay, we've done this, I'm inviting everyone to come and see a presentation of this work, and then we'll talk -- and in that presentation, we'll talk you through what the problem was, how we've gone about solving things. What we think the impact of this is going to be if it's a project that's in-flight and why it should matter to you.”
So you kind of go through those things, and you're suddenly then inviting people into your world. You're exposing a lot of your methods, and you’re making it very easy for them to then get in touch with you and have a conversation with you about whatever it is that you're working on and actually how you want to add value. And when people get -- when people receive an invitation -- people can get excited about how it might start to connect with a problem that they're also having. They suddenly want to work with you. They suddenly want to have those conversations with you. And then the kind of you end up with something that is greater than the sum of its parts, and I always find that sort of super, super exciting.
But I think so much -- even if it's a project that is only like four weeks or six weeks, you're going to be in an organisation. Like the thing that I think you should do before you kind of arrive like a charging bull is to really just listen and get the lay of the land and be humble about how design is sat within this organisation, about any qualms people might have about design and designers kind of coming in, bearing in mind that you're completely external to their culture and their organisation. And then just really listening before you then start going, “Hi, this is me, and this is what I'm working on, and this is what I'd like to accomplish and actually thank you all for your input, feedback, etc.”
I think when designers go into organisations with what I call ‘the God complex,’ “I'm going to come in and save everything. I'm going to come in and save you from yourselves." I'm like, “That's so arrogant. It is so very, very, very arrogant, and you are not going to be successful.” I'm like -- I think it's a good thing to have a very strong point of view. It's a very good thing to have even an idea of what needs to happen in order to make an organisation successful around a particular problem, the one that you've come in to solve, but I think you need to be very, very open to have your misconceptions be misconceptions and be knocked down on the first day. And to be open to another way of looking at an organisation and their problem and actually going.
What I thought from the outside, this one is going to be -- is actually something very, very different. Or the idea I had about this team being the problem, actually, they're not a problem at all. They've got some really great ideas that they've never been able to do execute because they're overlooked. Because they’re part of a particular journey. Is not as traffic. There's this other Product teams, for example, and therefore they're never going to be able to reach the heights of success because they have no resource.
Those sorts of nuances, you can only see by going into an organisation and talking to people and really listening to kind of what their issues are and also what the successes are and what their hopes are. Because as a designer coming into an organisation, often, you're the person who gets the microphone. Like you're the person who gets to amplify all of these things. And people will listen to you because they're paying you serious amounts of money compared to everyone else, to come in and sort of “be the e
So actually, the more that you can highlight these challenges, often from people that may have been screaming them for the longest time, but no one's listening to them because it might be political. Because they're not too senior or because they're not at the right level because they never get invited to the right forums or meetings. That's almost your responsibility as well as a designer to come in and be able to kind of reflect that back to an organisation.
Christian: You've talked a lot about this from the perspective of coming into an organisation as an external party, whether that's an agency or a contractor, and doing all these things. Do you think there's a difference between that and actually just working full time for an organisation?
Rochelle: Well, in my experience, both having worked client-side and agency side, I find that organisations will bring a third party in to complete a piece of work, and for whatever reason, because they're paying for it, whatever, they perceive this third party who comes in to be more knowledgeable or more experienced or whatever than their own people. And I always find that kind of quite tragic. And I always tend to say that -- I'm like, “You've got this person, or you have these teams who’ve been here for a really long time. They know the organisation. They know your customers. They know the industry. They know context. They're very deeply passionate about what it is that they're doing.”
And that's the thing; I'm just like if you're butting heads with someone is because that person is very passionate about what it is that they're doing and rightly so. If I meet someone who's apathetic, I'm just like, “You've checked out. You're here for the pay check and the benefits, that’s it.”
Christian: Yes
Rochelle: I always find it a massive waste and really kind of disappointing when you have an organisation that brings someone in, whether that's like one person or a design partner, whatever. They bring those people in, in order to do a job that they have people in-house whose job is to do anyway if that makes sense.
Christian: Yes.
Rochelle: And I'm like, “You should trust your people. You should trust your people.” I'm like, “If you're bringing someone in, it should be because they have a skillset or an experience or something that you clearly don't have. And everyone is on the same page about the fact that you don't have that is the thing. When I've worked a client-side, when I've been in an organisation, design still has the same challenges.
Design definitely still sort of has the same roles; I think. And the advantage of it is that you don't just work on a finite piece of work. You can actually see how it's going to fit more effectively, and you're there for the sort of the actual execution of it and the aftermath of whatever the execution is of -- whatever it is that you're doing.
I think I certainly, and this might just have been because I wasn't particular junior at the time, I probably took fewer risks when I was within an organisation when I was permanent and worked for them full time, etc because of potential ramifications. And I did not have that -- I was certainly not in an environment where it was okay to be seen to fail if that makes sense. And also where the framing of “failing” was not a failure that you could learn from. Now we call it hypothesis testing. You'd never go, “Okay, this is the solution, and then we're done.” You would say, “This is a hypothesis that we're testing, and then we can get it…” And then there's an A or B that comes out of it.
So I think that from a kind of cultural perspective is very, very important. And so I have wondered. I'm like if you're in an environment where it's okay to make mistakes, but you were very transparent about your process, would organisations trust their teams more and actually invest the money that they would be spending on a third party more into that team to be better, to be bolder, to kind of take more risks if that team was supported in failing and learning from that. I guess those are my musings on it.
Christian: Cool. We are nearing the end. I always ask at the end, a couple of questions. Everyone gets asked the same thing. The first one is, what is one thing you wish more designers would know?
Rochelle: I think the one thing that I wish more designers would realise is that it is a massive privilege and a responsibility to be a designer. As a designer, whether you're an experienced designer, product designer, service designer, whatever kind of designer, I'm like, “You are designing people's lives.” Like you are designing how they interact with the world, which includes excluding them as well by design, whether or not that's intentional or not.
And so I think it's a point that I always try to land when I'm talking to young and new designers kind of coming into the market. It's not just about making things that are pretty; it's not just about making things that are going to wow people. Like it's as important, in fact, even more, important to make sure that someone who's trying to access universal credit or unemployment benefits can complete a form properly in a language they can understand, on a device that is not as souped-up as the one that you might have in your studio. That is so super important.
It's important that people can navigate cities and access transport and access support. Those sorts of things are super, super important. So it is indeed a huge privilege and responsibility to be able to design the world in that way, for better or for worse.
Christian: Yes, that's a great answer. I love that one. The second rapid-fire question and the last one is how do you reckon the future of design as an industry looks like?
Rochelle: I think in the future, in fact, you can see this now. I think that more and more people who don't necessarily carry the job title of designers will be utilising what has classically been known as design methods. I wouldn't say design methodology, because that's quite a loaded term, but methods or processes that we use as designers now I think those sorts of things, those sorts of frameworks, again, it'd be used more and more by people who don't have design as their job titles.
I think from a designer's perspective, and again, you can see this now, the most successful designers or design partners, just if I'm looking at it from an agency perspective, are the ones who are also going to be doing a lot more of the doing part of it. I think the days of a designer or anyone from a senior level coming in and telling you how you should design a service and then leaving a project are done.
I think where we have been successful, not only at Idean, but in the most sort of successful sort of design consultancies at the moment, are the ones with people that go in and literally roll their sleeves up and go, “Okay, this is a hypothesis we have and, actually, we've built your prototype, or we know how we can test the service offering or whatever. And going, “Okay, this is how we're going to get maximum value from the money that you've given us. Oh, and by the way, he's the execution as well. We're not just going to tell you what to do and then leave. We're actually going to do it as well.”
I think the skillset of a designer I'd say, honestly, like out of the box is, going to be higher than it has ever been because of the expectation of what designers should be able to do and how they should be able to do it. So 10 years ago, we didn't necessarily have UXers who can code and now we've got fully code functioning prototypes, for example. Whether or not that designer knows how to code or whether or not that designer knows how to pull in different technologies, like the various non-code platforms to kind of build the things that sort of seem to work.
So I think those are the changes. They're happening at the moment, and they're incremental, but I think between now and five -- 10 years’ time, those are the sort of working methods, working styles, the way we work – I think we're going to see that more and more.
Christian: Cool. Rochelle, where can people find more about you, read the stuff you write, get in touch with you?
Rochelle: All that stuff is either on my LinkedIn or my website, that’s rochelledancel.com. And yes, find me on Twitter, connect, let's have some conversations.
Christian: Cool. And as always, we're going to put all of that in the show notes so people can easily find you. Rochelle, this has been really awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show. We've learned a lot, me as well as hopefully everyone else listening to this. So I really, really appreciate you taking the time. I hope that we'll catch up soon again.
Rochelle: Oh, no. Thanks for having me.
Christian: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Olivier and I talk about the difference between designing consumer products vs. enterprise software, and how advocating for Design in organisations is supposed to be a long game.
Connect with Olivier
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organization.
Today, we're talking to Olivier Cottin. Olivier's a former agency owner and designer with a wealth of experience and together we tackle topics such as designing in B2B versus designing in B2C, and how advocating for designing in organisations is supposed to be a long game.
Olivier, thanks a lot for joining Design Meets Business. Really a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I can't wait to talk about a lot of interesting design topics today. Just to give everyone a background. You and I, we used to work together at British Gas. And although we were in different product teams, we did have a lot of interesting chats over lunch about how and why design struggles to thrive in larger organisations.
So today, we'll focus a lot on that, but let's begin by giving everyone a bit about your background. What's your story? What brought you where you are today?
Olivier: Sure. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you, Christian, to have me in your podcast. I’ve been listening to the first episodes, and I really liked the direction it's going. I think it's a very interesting thing you're trying to do, creating a safe space for designers to talk about these questions. So thank you for that. A bit on my background. So, my background is noisy.
Christian: Okay. Very noisy… noisy is good.
Olivier: It’s noisy. I wasn't really planning to be a designer. It has been an accident. So what I mean is that this is -- when I went to uni, I was studying accounting. So very different from design, because I always wanted to run my own company. That was the main thing I had in mind. And I felt that if I knew how to manage the books, that will help me to get there. But I got bored. it's too linear, it’s one way of thinking, and not really who I am.
So By the age of 18, I discovered the Photoshop by accident. I started to play around with, and then I found that it was actually a job. So then I decided to go back to uni, and I studied was is called Media and Communication. So very early days of this. It was back in France, and at the time it was doing a part time education.
So I was working in music, and interesting thing of this was back in 2007. It was when the music industry was in the biggest crisis they ever had because digital just had started, with the illegal downloading and piracy. I worked for a company called Because Music. I was working with the creative director of this record label. And I’d seen how the digital has really impacted and all business model.
So it was an interesting thing for me, and I think this is why it kind of shaped my career. I've always been in companies that always trying to find their fit, trying to change business model or adapting, all that kind of stuff.
So after my degree, I started to run my own business. I was 21. I created like a small agency, but it wasn't a small agency for small companies, but with the knowledge of big companies. So the idea was all the expensive knowledge you can get from WPP, I wanted to bring this into small businesses because I realised a lot of them had potential but didn't have access to the knowledge and the people.
So that’s what I started to do. I mainly shift to B2B and then B2C. It went really well that we grow the business all the way to maybe -- I think it was £1 million revenues, in a couple of years, but the downside of it is I was very inexperienced, and I made a lot of mistakes, and the cashflow just didn't follow.
So company collapsed. I run this business with my best friend at the time. I want to think that I've learned is business and friendship is not meant to be mixed. Because unfortunately, our friendship has fallen out. So that's the biggest lesson I've learned is do not do any business with family and friends.
And then that led me to go to London. I'm half French, half Mauritian. So I always been a close contact with the UK because my family -- of course, my family is in the UK and I spoke English very early days. So I always wanted to go to London. I didn't know how and when. The Olympics started in 2012. I came for one weekend and never went back.
That's my story. I didn't know anyone in the UX industry. So I applied for, I think, a hundred jobs. I had a lot of rejection and then the first company that risked to hire me because, at the time, my English wasn't so good. I could do the job, but I wasn't really fluent. And I realised that UX is all about communication. So I started to work for the House of Fraser.
Christian: Pretty big brand to take a chance on you, not just the company in a corner of Colchester.
Olivier: Very big, very big, established. But the interesting thing is my boss was willing to take a risk because he really liked my approach of how I see UX -- and he said to me that's – you know that they give you like a design task. And he say to me, “That's the best staff I've seen. So I had to hire my team.”
So that's what I studied, but I want to come back to how I get to working in the UK. So when I moved to the UK, I haven't had a job. I just called a couple of savings, and my family said, “You need to find a job.” Not because I had to work, but they wanted me to get used to the British system and how things work.
So for me, having such experience was very difficult to go back to a very low paid job, but I did it. So I worked for Cineworld. I did that for about nine months, and it has helped me to understand pure user experience and service, because this company is really around customer service. So I did many small jobs. So I was a cashier. I was also the cleaning team, also helped the supervisors with cashing and I things.
So I've learned quite a lot, but the main thing is I've learned about how customer experience impact the staff. So what I mean that this is the way round. So we care about the customer experience that's feasible, but we don't see how the employee experiences has real impact on customer experience. That is an interesting thing for me. I've realised that I was also part of the problem because not being well paid, long hours, you get tired of hearing the same thing and same thing, so you start to become a bit like a machine. And that's why I think I've started to develop this sense of empathy because, at the time, people were paid 15, 20 pounds for a seat. And I was thinking, it's a lot of money to go to cinema, and you don't deserve to have such a bad experience because I'm not in good mood or I'm tired.
Christian: This reminds me of when I was younger, I used to work in the service industry as a bartender. You learn so much about a service-driven business when you work behind a bar or at a cashier or at Cineworld, as you said. It really gives you a lot for later on.
Olivier: I think you learn a lot when you work in entertainment and leisure industry, because when people are coming to relax, some people have to work, and it's a very different dynamic. If people want to understand where I came from, I'm earning in one day what I used to earn in one month. It's a big difference, and to me, it's just -- when people say, “Things are difficult.” Yes, they are, but there's a way -- always a way. And I think I want to tell to people, if they have a dream or they want to chase something, they have to try. You can't live in regrets. And I think for me, the best thing I have done is trying.
Christian: So how did you get from Cineworld to starting your own VC fund? Let's talk about that because it sounds like such a big difference.
Olivier: Sounds like a crazy project. So through my career I started with House of Fraser, then I went to work with Selfridges, and then I did a couple of consulting. Then I worked and joined a company called POQ. So it was a – it’s still running by the way. It's very successful, but they have the biggest retailers in the UK on their platform. So it's a native retail platform where retailers can launch within three months. What I've learned about startup is at this company, because they were in a process of raising the second and third round. And when I joined, it was slightly before series A.
So I've seen the change where they had the first injection of cash, and they're trying to raise -- get more customers and improve the product. But once series A has kicked in, dynamic has really changed. The company, in terms of size, has grown massively. It was a very engineering-led company. So quite a challenging for me because they brought me in to bring design, but I was the only one designer. And that was a very, very, very special experience.
What was very interesting is, they knew user experience has value, but how do you make it work in a very engineer-led company in terms of culture and how they think? I think that's one of the greatest challenges that I had in my career.
Christian: So how did that work? Is that something you helped with, or did they bring someone external to help or…?
Olivier: No. So, I started. What I realise it's getting closer to the engineer's team. So we just started very small. So things I explained to them that user experience start with look and feel; if something is good, you can trust it. So we had some couple of issues and when it comes to implementation, not because they were lazy or they couldn't do it. Because the tool they were working with had a lot of implementation restrictions.
So we try to work around it. So we found very simple process. Do you remember Zeplin at the time when they created the first tool where you could compare your iOS simulator versus your design?
Christian: Yes
Olivier: That's where we started to work. So that's how we fixed it. But the interesting thing is the guys at the company started to like working in this way, and they’ve also seen the impact on the user experience and also the reviews we had. So it was just the beginning.
And then I did a bit more further education when it comes to user experience. I explained to them that it's not just the app itself, but it's understanding the whole customer journey from end to end. And I was trying to explain to them that when people use the app, it's just one touch point in their journey. Because we used to have a lot of good reviews and bad reviews. And most of the bad reviews were about the delivery service, long lead times or expensive, they really cost. And it didn't understand why people were complaining, and it was impacting the app ratings.
So I explained to them that for them, when the deal -- when they use the app with X brands, they don't know behind its POQ. So they complained because, for them, it feels like the interacting the brand. So that was a very interesting thing to try to get them to understand.
The very, very, very big change I had to face was I knew the management believed in UX, but they went not really focused on bringing more resources, because it wasn't part of the business model. So for me, it was a very hard and harsh experience because I knew what I could bring, but it's only a couple of years later, stepping back, that I realised is not really their competitive advantage. Because their competitive advantage was to be able to launch a product in six months or three to six months and start generating that revenue through a digital channel.
So it took me a lot of maturity and reflection to think of it. But at the time, it was really difficult because I wanted to create my team or just -- I wanted to have like a much bigger say in the business or at least have some influence. Didn’t happen, but they let me to create like a small team. I had two designers working for me. And then what we realised is all of a sudden that what we really needed to do was to help closing business. So when they had prospects to talk to, that's where design came very handy.
So we used to do some previews of the app. So we found a way in early stage, early days of Sketch to streamline everything with components. So we could create like an app preview within two hours, sending across to clients so they can have like a preview of what they buy.
Christian: Right. That's so interesting. I've never heard about this, but it just goes to show that design in organisations can take different forms. You mentioned at the beginning, and I really liked what you said in this process of trying to educate everyone, you started very small. You started just with the look and feel, and then you said, well, actually, this is more of a service design. There are more touchpoints.
So I always like to say that, about life in general, that it's a marathon, not a sprint. And it's exactly the approach you've had, which is, “I'm going in. I'm going to be there for a long time, or at least that's the plan. And I can take my time to do this right.” Because I feel that oftentimes we go into companies and we care. We're passionate about what we do, but the downside of that is that we want to do everything yesterday, if possible. And in bigger organisations, that's just not -- that's just not possible all the time. So how have you, throughout the roles you've had in the past, managed to steer the ship over time, and now I'm referring mostly to your day to day tasks?
Olivier: So I think one thing I realise is if I look at myself back in the days as a designer, I think there was an anxiety inside of me. I needed you to produce things that impact and scale, so then I could become much more comfortable with the things I do. And what I'm trying to explain is I used to judge myself and look at things for what I can produce, if that makes sense. So if I couldn’t produce, I couldn’t roll out big projects or big features, then I wasn't feeling confident. And I thought if I cannot do this, then other company wouldn't hire me. And then I wouldn't be able to climb up the ladder going from senior design to lead to UX manager.
So that was my biggest, biggest, biggest fear, and anxiety. But what has helped me to realise why I was wrong; it was looking at other companies and talking to other people. And what I realised is when you’re part of the company, whether it's big or small, you have a role to play. And unfortunately, this role would have a cap.
So what I've learned is try to control what you have control over. And the things you cannot control, try to influence it, but do not have expectations to change it because you're not responsible for it. And that's what I'm the biggest principle when I look at user experience. When I design solutions, is what do I control? What can I not control?
The shift has happened when I've realized that I need to understand how design is enabled in every company I'm going to work for. When I worked in retail, I knew design was to generate sales and increase conversion. It's very easy to quantify.
When I worked in B2B SaaS, for example, because it was retail, the metrics were simple, but the execution was very difficult. Because when you don't work for the end-user, you work for -- the client has brought your solution, and it's very different. So what I was thinking, we can have the best user experience for consumers, but the reality is, how can you do everything to make more money, increase the downloads? So it's a very different design. And this is what I also realised is designing for B2B and designing for B2C are two different things, very different. And I do -- and I've realised myself, working with other designers and hiring other designers, not a lot of them have this exposure to B2B and B2C.
A lot of designers think of things from a B2C point of view because they want to simplify things and make things look good and pretty. But when you work B2B, for example, it's an environment where people are used to frictions because business process and operation are all made a friction to reduce the risk.
It's a very different way of designing. In B2B, design will be enabled to either increased sales, increase customers base, or reducing the costs to produce, for example. Rather than B2C, you know it’s to increase conversion, is increasing the people going through the door, and it's to reach as many as possible, but you don't really think maybe of reducing the cost. So those are very different dynamics.
Christian: So would you say that there are different skills required for designers to be good at B2B versus B2C? Would you say there are different skills required, or it's the same skills, it’s just the implementation or the thinking around them?
Olivier: I think there's different designers within design. Not everybody is going to be a unicorn. It's not possible. You can strive to be, but you're not going to be, because you can become a thousand times better at what you're good at rather than trying to be good at something you're mediocre at. So it's knowing your strength and your weaknesses. But the reason why I'm saying there are different designers within design is because design is a very complex field and is touching everything from the surface all the way to the deepest level. I believe in design you have people that are really good at designing things and making visually pretty aesthetics so you can engage and connect with people. I think that's one set of skills.
The second thing is you have people that are much more focused on how'd you make things much more streamlined and easy to use. For me, that's more product design / user experience, but I think there's a bigger picture, which is how design is mapping out to the business model and the company strategy. What I mean by this is, if you understand, for example, what are the strategy the company has to go through in order to hit certain milestones, if design is aligned, then it can help with it.
If a company is going through a period of growth, you need to have an easier to experience that allows growth, but you're not -- And what I realised is depending on the stage the company is at, your user experience is going to be very different. When you're going to design for early adopters, things are going to be very much simplified, easier, no friction whatsoever, because you want them to use.
But think about right now, if you want to design something for Uber, it's going to be very complex. You got to think about systems. You've got to think about regulation. You got to think about legal sort of consultancy. So it's going to become very much more complicated. And I think there's different designers for different stages.
That's why I believe in, and that's what I've seen so far. In my experience, I know that I'm much more comfortable and better at taking things off the ground rather than taking things and helping them to improve and -- what is it called? The incremental
Christian: Iterations over time.
Olivier: Iterations — it’s not something that I'm good at, because I really love going to somewhere where it’s kind of blind and you know there's a need, but you're not really sure. That's what I love. I love to take something from zero, take it off the ground and changing perspective and perception, or have something that can be seen and working.
Christian: This is similar to that anecdote of a CEO that starts a company and brings it to, I don't know, $10 million in revenue, whatever, and then steps aside for someone to take over that company and bring it to $100 million. Very different skills are required to start a company and bring it to $1, versus $10, versus $100 million revenue.
Olivier: Absolutely. Like scaling is very different from starting.
Christian: So what -- how do you know what you're good at? How can a designer reflect over what they're good at? Is it just what they enjoy doing? Is it trying to work in different types of companies and seeing where they fit best? How do you think someone figures out which ones of these types of designers one is?
Olivier: I think it’s a tough one, especially as you start. I do think, as individuals, there are things we tend to love more than others. So some people like, for example, to ask questions and getting to the bottom of things. So you're probably more likely to like running research.
Some people like to visualise ideas and coming up with concepts. They might be a better at product design or even visual design. Some people like to think. They actually think of the bigger picture. They like to think about the single details of how an interaction is going to work or how the business is going to work with design.
So I think at the beginning, it's very hard. But this is why I think we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to design education. And that's one topic you like to talk about it, right?
Christian: Yes. Yes, totally. Let's do it. Let's do it. What's your take on it?
Olivier: I think it's a tough one because I do realise something. There is this, I don't know if it's a bias, but because it's a creative industry, or it started as a the creative industry. There's always this thing of you have to go through the small steps in order to get to the biggest steps because you have the creative leadership. So then you can inspire people.
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. But let's say, for example, if we had some sort of program that helps you to understand what you're good at, then maybe as you come out straight from school, you could be diving straight into strategy rather than going to the usual junior UX designer doing a bit of research, touching about UI and that kind of stuff. Because I think it's good to have an understanding of how things all work together, but why would you have to… not waste, but why would you have to wait a few years in order to make a decision on where you want to go, if that make sense?
Christian: So, I partially agree. And let me give you my view on that. I think the way -- just to answer my own question earlier, my own take on it, the way you find out what you're good at is by trying a lot of things.
So I believe that when you're early in your career, you need to go and work for someone in-house, go and work for an agency, go and work for an NGO if you want. You don't learn to play basketball by reading a book you need to play. I think that's super important. And the reason I also think it's important to do everything is because unless you do everything, you can never really put your hand on your heart and say, “This is what I truly like the most.”
And I think it's also super necessary because as designers, we need to collaborate with each other, we need to collaborate cross-departments, whether that's developers, product managers, whoever. And I think you need to have an overall understanding of design and every step of the design process in order to be able to confidently collaborate with other people.
However, because now I'm going to contract myself. What I like about what you said is how cool would it be that school would actually help you find out what you're good at? That's great, because then you need to know, “Oh, I want to end up being a design strategist.” But still, how do you get there? And helping you get there, taking you through all these steps that I, again, believe, I believe you need to be a pixel pusher for a bit in order to understand what design strategy is.
So I think that'd be awesome if design education, if there would be a program that could do that. Unfortunately, it's not. Would you -- talking about design education, would you say that's the best way to start now if you want to become a designer, or are you more on the other bandwagon of self-learner?
Olivier: I don’t know. I don't think I can answer this question because I'm self-taught. I didn't go to school to learn. I've done many courses and stuff, but it's not having a proper degree or education. But I also think that not being from a design school, for example, has given me a different way of thinking. But it's bit of a complex one to answer, because like I said, you need to do a bit of everything to understand what is design as a field, and then you can specialise.
Christian: Let's talk a bit about one of the common experiences we have, which is digital transformation programs. I mean, we've both been in those types of programs. Let's tackle the elephant in the room. I was thinking the other day, do you think it's possible to go into a company that doesn't have ‘digital’ in its DNA and actually successfully perform a digital transformation program?
Olivier: Not an easy one…
Christian: No, I know. That's why I'm asking you because I don't have an answer.
Olivier: I think I'm going to be controversial here. I don't believe in digital transformations, because you don't just change a channel. You change a business. So we'll call it business transformation first. Playing with the words, but words important, and they mean things.
I think the hardest question to answer is, what's the reason why they need to transform, first of all? Do we need to transform because they are losing customers, and there's an urgency to get more sales, or do we need to transform because the long-term strategy of your company has changed, and they need to take baby steps to get there?
Those are two different things. And I think business transformation starts at a much higher level. It starts at a shareholders level, which is not something as designers -- if you work in a company, you don't even necessarily have the chance to be part of these conversations, but that's where things are really happening.
So it's really understanding what is the aim or objective of this transformation, because if it's just, for example, modernising, so playing catch up, having a much more like easy way to interact online with like some sort of transaction and portal, whatsoever, it's one thing. But if it's like changing your business model completely, it's not going to be an easy journey, because when you have a balance sheet, you have obligations or you can’t really take risks, if that makes sense.
So when you have, for example, a massive employee to pay you, can't just say, “Look, we're going to change the business model. And even if we not breaking even, we're going to try it.” It's very different. And plus, I think the hardest thing is, because you have shareholders, they took the risk 7-10 years ago. Now they are reaping the rewards. They're not necessarily ready to take the risk and wait another seven years to get returns. And I think that's probably the biggest journey you've got going to have in a digital business transformation is, how do you convince the shareholders to wait? We'll make more investment in way to get more returns. That's the biggest, biggest challenge, I think.
Christian: Okay. So let's say there's -- I see two different paths here for someone interested in working in one of those organisations. So one is the one you're saying is, look, as a designer, you're going to come into one of these companies that wants to do a digital transformation, and you might not necessarily have a lot of impact because the decision starts at the top. So you will -- more or less, you'll be part of the team that executes the change. You won't necessarily be the brains behind it. So that's one.
There's the other one, which is if I, as a designer, want to have impact in an organization, I need to make sure that the organization I work for is fit for my ambitions. And that's where I think we could talk a bit about doing your due diligence as a designer before saying yes to offer from a specific company or no. How do you do that? What is -- what are some key important aspects that someone listening to this could learn? Maybe they have -- they're sitting on two offers, and they're not sure whichever one to choose. How do you do your due diligence?
Olivier: It's not an easy one, this one…
Christian: This is the podcast with all the hard questions.
Olivier: Yes, that's a very hard one. I think the main thing is, does this company align with your personal values? So the whole company business, does it fit with one of your values as an individual? I think that’s the first one. Are you behind the mission of business, because you think that something is aligned with who you are as a person?
I think the second thing is due diligence: you can look at the external perception of company. So you look at, for example, how customers think of it. So any articles, PRs, whatsoever. Reviews are a good way to look at this. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, you can see how people are internally treated, and you know how the senior management is looking after people. But I've been in this industry for like 13, 14 years now.
I've been through many interviews. It's very difficult to find out, because people want to show the best when doing interviews. It’s only when you going to work with them, you're going to see who they really are; you’re going to find out about their character flows and qualities and weaknesses and stuff. So, I think the hard one, but if should have the chance to find people who are working in a company, for example, that could give you an indication of this. If you go to meet-ups, you might be able to meet people. So I think there's a way, but a there's always a risk.
Christian: There's always a risk. I think there are ways of trying to minimise the risk, but the risk will always be there. I agree with you. I think one of the things that I've always tried to do is to ask specific questions during the interview process. You can ask some questions that people have rehearsed for, and you can ask some questions that people cannot rehearse for because you're taking them by surprise.
So, for example, an interesting one to answer is why this role exists. A lot of people don't necessarily -- have necessarily thought of that. So what -- why is this role a thing now? It's either because someone got fired, in which case you want to find out what happened there, as much as you can find out. Maybe it's a new role because they have a digital transformation project or whatever it is, or expanding, yeah.
Yes. So there are a few questions you can ask to try to figure out if you would be a good fit in your company, but I'd like to say that I think these questions are not standard for all of us. I think everyone needs to look into the mirror and decide what's really important and then ask questions based off of that.
So I wouldn't want to put a standard set of questions there, but always figure out what is important to you. And then ask questions to try to understand whether that company aligns with your values, as you said in the beginning. I think that's super important.
Okay. So, in the past, you just said 13, 14 years, I can imagine you've seen the design industry change quite a lot. And I'm thinking, especially from the perspective of your own role. So what a designer was asked to do 15 years ago is very different than what a designer is being asked to do today. How have you seen that shift happen over the last 15 years?
Olivier: It's been quite progressive. So just give you an idea: when I left France in 2012, there was 50 - 100 people doing UX.
Christian: 15 or 50?
Olivier: 50 – 100
Christian: 50 – 100. Wow. That's it?
Olivier: Very small, very small. And it wasn't called user experience. It was called strategic planning and for me to get a job was very difficult. The way it has evolved, I think it's big companies such as Facebook, Amazon, have shown how user experience has a big impact on companies. And how much impact design can make. So I'm not talking about as an individual; I'm talking about as a group.
So I think it went from very aesthetic driven first, so pixel-pushing and UI and style guide and all that kind of thing, to a much more like solving problems approach kind of thing. So I'm not saying problem-solving, but more solving problems, as in we think there's a problem there and that's how we should solve it. And as how, as they want designers to come in and have few to explore solutions. So much more, I would say like I'm a bridge between the classic UX/UI. I think that's where we are right now.
I still think there's still some challenges to sell the whole user-centred design approach or even say human-centred approach. With research, it's always seen as it's going to slow down things, we're not going to go to market faster or, there's people skeptical about the sample, they say five years is not enough, they’re not representative of the market. So there's all those things, but I do think that now the more and more I speak to different companies and founders and CEOs, they know design has a huge impact, but how to enable it? I think this is where the big question is right now.
Yes, I think it's progressing, definitely progressing. There's much more of us on the market than before, but you still have companies with terrible user experience. So there's an awareness we need designers, but maybe the next step is how do we enable them to deliver value for business?
Christian: So I think that a lot of this transition that you're talking about, that you've seen over the past many years happened because at a wider scale, as you said earlier, companies like Facebook and Amazon and all that have shown how design, again, as a wider concept can impact the organization. And I think there's a precursor to that, and that is designers on the ground, the ones that are doing the work, every single day, as much as possible, showing the impact of their work to the organization.
You briefly touched upon it earlier, in retail and eCommerce, you have a very specific, a very well-defined metric we're going for, and that is the conversion rate, or how much are we selling versus how much effort we're putting into this. But if you look at any other industry, as designers we don't really have a way of showing the impact of our work. It's very blurry. So how do we do that?
Olivier: It's difficult because what we're doing is very abstract. It's not something you can touch. You can touch an app and interact with, but you can't really touch something, like when you produce like an industrial product, for example, you can touch it. You have a feel. I think it's difficult because design on his own cannot operate. Design on its own cannot run the company. I still think a lot of people have misconceptions and misunderstandings of what design is.
So me and you, we know that most of the people understanding from a UI level, branding, style guide, and how things look and feel, but it's missing the element of design is business. And I think that's probably the biggest thing we have to work on. Is yes, design is core business, and want to say this is, I've seen him myself. If you have the right business model, you can design the right business. Or, if you have identified the right customer needs, then you will find a business model at some point. But if something is flawed, so whether the need you're solving is not big enough, or it's not viable, or nobody's interested in that, then you can do whatever you want. People don't want it; they don't want it.
Christian: I think there are ways of doing that, but they are not very well defined, and they are different from industry to industry, so just like eCommerce has that conversion rate. You were talking earlier about B2B SaaS companies. One of the interesting parts of our working B2B, where I have most of my experience actually, is that the end-user is not the one that's in charge of procurement, like in B2C. There's an operation manager or whatever, buying a piece of software, and then everyone else in the company has to use it, whether it's good or bad.
But one thing that I've learned is that you can actually dig deeper into what some of these people are using the products for, how much time and effort it takes them to do that now, and then see, “Well, with this new product that we have, it takes them half of the time.” And now suddenly, someone in some sort of a spreadsheet can actually put a number to what's the value of that product. So there are ways, but I think what we're struggling with as an industry is finding one way that works across every industry. I don't think we'll ever find it. And I think that's a good thing.
Olivier: I don't think. Well, I think it's a good thing. Yes. For me, when I work with companies and my clients, I define B2B and B2C very differently. So B2C, for me, the way I define it is, it's a way to digitalise your business. So you're basically breaking it down every single step or your business process for someone to buy.
So it's simplifying the experience from outside. So remove the frictions, you offer, for example, the best payment method they are used to. You make it very easy to find a product they want. The experience is very simple, so you don't have to think too much about where to find things whatsoever.
So this is what I have seen. B2C it's a -- from an outside perspective, how do I make things so much easier that I can get sales. When it comes to B2B, it's very different, especially if it's like an employee software, because you also think a lot of things due to the nature of the work, which is collaboration most of the time. I need an information from someone. If I don't have it, I can’t carry on, or I need to solve this task, but there's many steps in a business process because we need to manage risk.
And so what I realised with B2B or what B2B/ employee experience is all about how'd you cut down the time for people to do their job the fastest as possible. And it's a very interesting, sort of interesting thing when it comes to design. So I currently work for a maritime shipping company, so very, very traditional business, and it’s using quite a lot of time to jump on a digital transformation bandwagon, but it's happening.
And one of the things, for example, for me, which was very kind of difficult to understand at the beginning was, when we design interfaces, we like to simplify things with like the main CTA so people can focus on this. While I realise in B2B, it's not that. It's all about how can you show me as many controls as possible, so I don't have to think about. And it's a very different design. And again, the way you measure it and quantify is very different. Like for me, my company, what we sold to other companies, is the fact that we are centralising all operations into one platform. And everyone's got access to everything. So it's like, this whole thing about single source of truth, communication and internal operations, all in one place, but it’s also cutting down the time, removing the friction with the current software they have.
So it's a very different thing. And for me, I really enjoy it because it's actually a much more problem solving/human-centred rather than commercially driven if that makes sense. Like for us, we don't make money by selling stuff, we make money because we solve problem on daily basis. And that's the value we create. That's what we can sell to other companies rather than, like a consumer goods company, I need to sell stuff as many I can sell. That's how the company becomes valuable.
Christian: Yes, totally. It comes down to the business goals because design needs to be linked to the business goals. In B2C, if the goal is to sell a product or a service, the metrics are going to be different than in B2B where the value you're adding is maybe improving efficiency in a company or cutting down the time it takes an employee to perform a task five times a week.
So design needs to be linked to that business goal. And when we track design, obviously, it needs to be tracked based on those business goals. It requires a bit of a different way of thinking when you design in B2C versus B2B. So staying on the topic of thinking differently, you're about to go on an adventure and start your own VC fund that does things a bit differently. So tell us a bit about that and tell us why?
Olivier: Something that was thought, I've worked in many companies, diversity wasn't there at all. I've worked in company that I was the only like diverse person in the room. That's the main reason why I want to go on that journey and create this, the venture capital that we mentioned. I've realised diversity will only change or start to change if more of us take the risk to give back.
What I also realised is, all those problems we have, they would only change if wealth is created on those -- in those communities. Because when you have wealth, you have access to network, you have access to influence; you have access to some people that can change and balance the world. And that's what I want to try to -- not to achieve, but that's why I want to try to do.
So the venture capital I'm going to create is going to be targeted, not necessarily at just underrepresented founders, but it’s more people coming from poor backgrounds, but a lot of people have a lot of ideas. But they don't evolve within those, the same crowd as me and you. They don't know people that are paid for designing products. They don't know all of this.
So what I want to bring, I want to make it more accessible. The knowledge that's already existing there, so when it comes to design, business, finances and all of that, because I believe a lot of them have ideas and they don't even try because they're afraid to fail because being the background -- Sorry, being the ethnic background they are, it's going to be even much harder. Because we know if, for example, if you’re not Caucasian, it's going to be two times harder. Let's be real.
So I want to create a shift, which is doable because I've seen someone looking like me trying to do it. If we allow people to fail, we're going to learn more about things we actually don't necessarily understand or even heard of. So for me, the one thing I think of is all these underrepresented communities. There's a lot of data we don't have on them. We don't know how they consume. We don't know how much they spend. We don't know why and how. And I think there's a lot of opportunities there for investors. Those, that kind of want to invest in things, are different, and I want to create this room for everyone.
Also, one thing I realised myself working with many startups is there's nothing more dangerous than giving money to someone as a first-time founder. What I mean by this is you can give only to someone, but if they don't have the experience, the knowledge, the people, they're going to burn through your cash. Simple, because they don't know. And what I want to bring is I want to bring on this more hands-on approach. So you dedicate a team that's helping those founders to get to a milestone turnover.
The reason why I'm saying this is much more important is because I would say 90 or 80% of the time, every startup or first-time founders always make the same mistakes. And then if you think as an investor, it's very risky. But imagine now you can have a team behind; I'm not saying we’re securing your money, but we're taking more steps to reduce the risk. I think that can create a very different dynamic.
Christian: Olivier, a couple more questions for the end. Everyone gets asked this. So you, you don't get to run away before it. First one is how do you recon the future of design looks like?
Olivier: I think we're living in them more and more in a complex world. Everything is intertwined. I think it's all going to be about mapping ecosystems together. That's what I believe. And I think we're going to move toward things that are a bit more -- Well, definitely more personalised, first of all, automated, even proactive, AI machine learning.
So learning from people and even how to identify the next patterns of behaviours, I think. But I've seen something very interesting, and I think we are going back to -- it's a cycle, and I think people are needing much more attention. What I mean by this is I think we okay to interact with machines, but I think we crave for human interaction. Digital can help, but we still need people involved in the process if that make sense.
I can't really predict, but I do believe we're going to see, I think an interesting decade, I think, especially in a pandemic. There’s much more industries that have not been disrupted are going to be disrupted, for example, healthcare, lots of disruption in healthcare, logistics has been heavily disrupted, shipping as well. So the oil industry has been disrupted too. So there's -- I think there's a lot of things are going to. Aviation is another one. I think it’s a very interesting one.
It's interesting. I think I believe in much more ethical companies. What I mean by this is we've all seen the big companies, multi-billion companies being wealthy, but down on the human side of things. So I think it's bringing more ethics back into business and then money is one driver, but it's not the only driver, I think. That's what I can think of.
Christian: Do you think design has a place in all of these because these are a lot around business. But do you think design is going to be the driver?
Olivier: Yes, that'd be tough because, as designers, we have this ability to design a better world. We can design a better world. So if you see something is broken, we can try to find some pieces of answers to try to fix it.
Christian: All right. Last one, what's one thing you wish more designers would know?
Olivier: About business, much more.
Christian: Oh, business.
Olivier: Yes. The simple one.
Christian: That’s what the podcast is about, isn’t it?
Olivier: Yes, one of this one-on-one is sales versus losses, so P&L. I think is much more around how business really works. So what's the triggers that bring customers? All the things around customer acquisition, lead generation, onboarding, how you convert them and boarding then the whole post-purchase experience, upgrading, upsetting. All of this, I think, should be taught from the very beginning and then helping them to map out how design can actually help. So if you know you need to increase your conversion rates, then you also need to spend more money in customer acquisition. Or, maybe there's a way to decrease it and get more customers. So that's how I see.
I think it's those basic one on one. So Jared Spool is someone that I learned a lot from. And one thing he said is when you speak to an exec, they care about five things. How much money they will make? How much can we save? How many more customers can we get? Can we diversify? And the fifth one is, can you diversify? So can you upsell? Sorry. So how much more can you make for each customer? So, and I think this is the five thing that every designer should be taught of. So then, they will understand that you can still be creative, but you need to be able to create this bridge between the business or management.
Christian: Awesome. Olivier, where can people find you, read about you, connect with you, keep an eye on when that fund is coming out, etc?
Olivier: Yes. So just LinkedIn for now.
Christian: Your LinkedIn for now?
Olivier: Yes, but I will. I will update you when it's happening.
Christian: Cool. We'll put that in the show notes so everyone can find you with one click.
Olivier: Yes. If anyone is interested to join, please feel free. Not everybody has to bring money, but I need skills. I need people with different background stuff. And yes, let's make it happen. It's not just money.
Christian: Fantastic. Olivier, thanks so much, once again, for being part of Design Meets Business. I really, really appreciate you taking the time, and hopefully, we'll catch up soon again.
Olivier: Thanks for having me, Christian
Christian: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
On today's show Tommy and I discuss what separates successful designers from the less successful ones, the two viable career choices for creatives, and what he's looking for in a portfolio when he's hiring.
Connect with Tommy
Website, LinkedIn, Medium, Cuckoo
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use Design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Today we're talking to Tommy Toner, former Design Director at Nissan, and currently co-founder of UK’s emerging broadband startup Cuckoo. We're talking about what separates successful designers from the less successful ones, the two viable career choices for creatives, and what he's looking for in a portfolio when he's hiring.
Tommy, thank you so much for joining Design Meets Business. Really, really a pleasure to have you here. I've been looking forward to having a chat with you for a while, so it's awesome to finally have you here. Just to give everyone else a background, everyone else who hasn't heard about you yet. Can’t be too many of them, but there might be a few.
So you've got a very diverse background spanning a lot of freelance roles and the now Head of UX and Brand at an upcoming player on the broadband market. We're going to talk a bit about that. So we’re going to talk about all your career and maybe your time at Nissan and leading design there, and what you've learned from that.
But before we go into all that good stuff, let's start talking a bit about your background, how you started out as a front-end developer actually, and what made you drop that for a career in Design?
Tommy: Hi, Christian. Firstly, thank you so much for having me on board. I've been -- it's been exciting to join you for this chat today under super relevant topics. Hopefully, we'll have a good chat today. Yes. So before I go into sort of my more recent professional history, I thought it'd be interesting to mention how it all began. So this is actually a secret that I've not told many people that you might find interesting.
So I don't know if you're familiar, but there used to be a game called Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, which was a PC game. So I'm not a gamer by any means. However, this one game captured my imagination. And I was very involved in the community with a clan and sort of play playing online with friends of age about 14 at this period.
So I got into chatting on the forum, of which I was then inspired to start creating some visual assets for my team or my clans, kind of signatures on the forum. And that was actually how I first learned and taught myself Photoshop -- Adobe Photoshop properly CS1 or whatever it was back then. So from then, that was kind of sparked my sort of love of design. I wasn't actually an art student at the period, so it was all quite new to me, sort of in those early days of sort of the interactive web. It was an exciting time and is where visual design first started playing sort of a big role.
So, yes. Then I went on to study at the University of Leeds; a degree called New Media. Now, the reason why I wanted to bring that up is because I think people might find it interesting. It was before really user experience was an established academic course, which is much more common now. You can study human-centered design much in a variety of universities across the world, and it's a much more kind of, I guess, more established and respected profession now.
But when I was doing it, this course was called New Media, which my parents, I think, had – weren’t too keen on and found quite amusing. My dad actually, I think, called it a Mickey Mouse subject, which was basically, it was a hybrid of design meets kind of communication. That was kind of where I learned my trade, and that was a bit of code flown in, and it was actually called F usion, which unfortunately is no use whatsoever anymore.
So that was kind of where I then, as you say, my first role outside of university was a front-end developer, an agency which I loved. I mean, I found it incredibly frustrating at times because it wasn't really -- I didn't study Computer Science. I wasn't necessarily a coder by trade, but I kind of threw myself into it, and in the end, it paid dividends later on. Like, even to this day, when I'm creating user interfaces, that first role as a front-end developer was super important.
After that front-end developer role, I was looking to -- I wanted to go back to my sort of creative roots. It was what I've really enjoyed, but I didn't really know where to start or where to look. I popped up a portfolio, and then I ended up getting a role at Sky, BSkyB, which in the UK is a huge corporation, but they have a number of different sub-brands from broadband to sports and television etc.
I started as an acquisition designer, so designing ad banners. I don't know if you're familiar with ActionScript 3. And then, after that, I kind of moved into a more product design role, which was my first exposure to user experience and user interface design as a sort of trade. It was something I was fascinated in because I was able to maintain being a creative visual designer, but I was able to fix and solve complex problems which is what I think we hopefully will talk -- is kind of where I get a lot of my inspiration from. I enjoy problem-solving. And I think that's where design is super valuable for business. It's ultimately fixing complex problems through design.
After Sky, which was up in Leeds in Northern England, I kind of made my move to the big city of London. Very naive, not knowing I made the move to go -- decision to go freelance. And I'd never done that before, like in a professional capacity. Obviously, I'd helped out friends and family businesses and sort of smaller companies. So I spent about six years in the London design and advertising agency space, where I was lucky enough to work on some awesome international brands from websites to apps to sort of mixed reality experiences.
And then, more recently, I joined Nissan, the automotive brand where I started off as a designer. And I was sort of the second UX designer actually in the global sort of experience team as it were. There wasn't really an established user experience practice in Nissan at a global level at that stage. So it was kind of up to us to kind of define what are the processes, how can we add value to the customer experience across all of these different journeys at Nissan. And then, as time went on, we grew the team quite rapidly, and our influence across Nissan in terms of what value we could add was growing.M y role got elevated to Design Director, where I was also the User Experience Manager, managing a team of UX designers, UI designers.
And then that kind of brings me up to current day, which is my briefs -- my most recent venture that I want to talk about today is Cuckoo. And for those that don't know Cuckoo Broadband, it's a UK-based Internet service provider. And we've just launched a couple of months ago. The broadband industry in the UK is somewhat broken in the sense that you look at things like Trustpilot or NPS scores in the UK broadband companies, and they're outrageously low. It's quite shocking, actually.
So, in the same way, Monzo and Revolut came in and disrupted the finance sector or Bulb Energy or Octopus, if you're based in the UK, came and disrupted the energy sector, the idea of Cuckoo Broadband came about that we could apply these similar principles — customer first sort of approach to a design-led approach to our product — and there was scope to disrupt this market.
Christian: All right. Thanks. That's a very comprehensive background about yourself. That's all good, no more questions for there. One thing that I've noticed is that you've worked across different types of companies in different types of sectors and at different types of levels. So I'm wondering, in your experience, how is design treated and approached and applied in agencies versus how is it applied and approached when you're in-house?
Tommy: Yes. Great question. I'll start with the agency world. And again, this is going to depend on whether you're hired as a freelancer or whether you're hired as a permanent member of an agency team.
When you're a freelancer, you're more of a hired gun, and you might not be exposed to the sort of more strategic side of a project, whereas when you’re in-house in an agency, you're going to be very much part of the team trying to solve and meet a client's needs. So how it would typically work is, a client or brands would come with a problem that they can't solve in-house. And that might be because they don't have the in-house expertise, like to give you an example, it might be that a lot of in-house brands might not have a motion designer, a motion department. So in order to -- if they're putting off, maybe it's a campaign for growth, or it might be some kind of interactive experience that they want to launch on their site, that typically might not be something an in-house team could pull off. So that's where the specialism comes in.
So what you'll find with the sort of agency world is you have some incredibly talented people all brought together to solve one problem or a series of problems. And the differences, I think, with in-house, is the ability to not just have your eye on the project at hand, but also to have that eye on the longer-term roadmap. So to be a lot more strategic. You're not just worried about the campaign that the agency is currently working on, but you're also looking six months ahead, 12 months ahead. The difference with in-house is that you're going to be much more business-driven because it's ultimately on -- it falls on you to develop or push this product or brand forward.
So I always try and say “Never design blind.” And what I mean by that is everything can be measured. And obviously, this depends on what you do, whether you're an illustrator or a user experience designer. But you should always try and start with a project of how you're going to measure the value rather than trying to retrofit it. So setting up a project with goals in mind and knowing how to measure them, whether that's brand perception, customer satisfaction, reduce in cost proposition, or just improving engagement. These are the kinds of things that, as an in-house team, you define yourself, and I think that's a big difference between the agency world.
Christian: So I love what you just said about being much more business-driven when you're in-house versus in the agency world. I'd like to stay on that topic for a bit and talk about measuring, because design inherently or historically is something that couldn't be measured, because we've often likened this too much to art. Art doesn't solve a problem. Art just exists.
Design is moving more and more towards that area of business where it has to be measured, but as designers, we're struggling a lot with measuring. We don't really have a way of measuring design. We don't have a way of measuring the experience. I know we have the NPS, debatable how valuable it is. I know we have the SUS or SUS or whatever it's called. Again, that's something created in the '80s. I'm not sure that's up to standards anymore. In your experience, how do you measure design the best way possible in, what, 2020?
Tommy: Yes. It's a really great question. And you find yourself quite often asking yourself that question. How do you measure value or the impact of your work in an organisation? I think first and foremost; it depends what you're doing. And that sounds obvious, but going back to my point I've just made earlier, is there’s a time when sometimes when I was sort of more junior working in-house, that I would almost ask -- wouldn't ask questions. So I would -- you'd be given a brief, maybe it's to redesign a homepage. Now I would ask questions — what, why? Be curious as to like, why am I being asked of this task? And as you say, there are many formal metrics, whether that's NPS. For anyone that's not aware, that's just Net Promoter Score, which is the simple question, “Would you recommend brand X to a friend or family on a scale?”
And yes, it depends on what you're doing, and I think it, for example, Cuckoo, we use for brand perception we do use NPS, and we use it at different moments in the different journeys, so we can measure the NPS of those different journeys, and then we bring them together. There's a view of it.
One thing that we've seen a transition towards is being reactionary to success or measuring the success of a project; is equally as important to us as the customer. Before, we'd use different metrics, whether it was KPIs, whether it -- are people generating leads? Are people dropping off into the funnel? What is our cost per acquisition? Those sort of literal KPIs and metrics. However, what we tried to do at Cuckoo is – yes, we obviously measure our success with those, but we've also been looking at sort of a big emphasis on customer research. Yeah. The research. So just as simple as Trustpilot is a huge one for us. And if we release a new product feature, and then we start getting positive or negative responses based on that change, that to me is a measure of how well or something is or isn't doing. And it's something that we can be very reactionary to.
I always remember the famous story of the BBC. BBC did a redesign of the BBC Sport, and the second it went live, it got barrage of negative comments, rightly or wrongly. I think I remember at the time I thought it was great. And they obviously then reacted to it and brought back in the features that people wanted. And I think that's just a shift that we're going to see.
In terms of measuring UX, I've always been in after is user testing and getting everything in front of the user as much as possible. And I know it's not always possible, particularly if you're an independent designer, or maybe you work in a small studio where the budget's just not there. There are easy ways you can get around it. You can still do the testing, that's friends and family. There’s always someone you can ask your opinions off, who might be less subjective than your own opinion. There's a million ways to skin the cat as well.
Christian: Yes. I think it also depends a lot on what type of company it is and what type of work you're doing, because I remember when we used to work for -- when I used to work for British Gas, we actually did use the NPS score, but we didn't use the score itself. What we did use was the raw data, so the raw comments of the customers.
So we took a sample, we categorised all the raw comments, and then a year and a half later, after we launched our project, the new, improved part of the website, we took a sample of the NPS score again or not the score, but the data behind it, and we tracked whether the comments that we wanted to get rid of have disappeared or not. That was a very easy way for us to track whether we've actually solved the problem we set out to solve.
So I think there are ways of figuring out the value of design, but I think, unlike in many other industries, it requires us to think what those metrics are. While in other industries, if you have sales, there's how much you sell. If you have, I don't know, marketing it's, “Well, what's your conversion rate?” or whatever marketing people use. But in design, it just feels like as an industry, we don't have a metric that we need to figure that on our own, which is not necessarily a problem, but when you're a bit more junior at the beginning of your career, I think that's a bit more difficult to. Because you don't have the experience to know, “Well, how do I track this?” And I guess that's the next question. When you are a bit towards the beginning of your career, how do you tackle measuring design, if you will, without having the experience of having done it 10, 15, 20 times before?
Tommy: Yes, it's an interesting one. I think it's one that all designers for — when you’re first starting out, it's really hard to not be emotionally attached to the work you do. And it doesn't matter whether that's an illustration or even if it's UX design, or designing a new component or a product or a feature or something. You've put your love and your energy and your time into creating something. And obviously you -- most people will be proud of that thing that you've done. And when you necessarily get feedback, it can be disheartening, and it's -- and I think the most important thing when you're potentially getting feedback early on is to not be emotionally attached to the work you're doing.
It was interesting what you just said that I think it's funny that in terms of design in other industries. Design is subjective, yes, but it's also a science. And I think I do believe that there's elements of design which are a science and you can -- and it is measurable.
And I think when you're starting out, I think the biggest thing you can do is ask for help, expose yourself. Don't be afraid to put yourself on the line and expose yourself to your sort of your lead designers, your senior designer. And if you're working for yourself, if you're maybe be an independent designer, and you don't have that network, there is tools out there. There's things like the obvious ones like Dribbble and Behance, where you can maybe validate some of your designs. Yes, it might be -- It's probably more aimed at sort of visual designers, but even UX and UI designers, I think there's different platforms out there, which you can look to to seek feedback.
And again, just coming back to my earlier point around sort of setting design sort of KPIs, I think whenever you set out on a new project no matter whether you're a junior or whether you're a director, it doesn't matter, you've got to understand, ”Why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve? What is the purpose, or what am I trying to solve?” And I think if you truly understand that before you set up, then it's much easier to look back and measure and go, “Hey, I did a good job here.”
Christian: I think this is key to something else as well. Let's segway a bit into hiring and portfolios, and you've hired teams in your career. And the reason I want to talk about this now is because you just said something that is key to what I believe should be part of a portfolio design, and that is why you're doing what you're doing.
And I'm not talking about why are you a designer, but why have you made the decisions you've made in this project? Why have you started this project? What was the point of it? Because nobody wakes up in the morning saying, “I want a new website.” There's a problem that someone wants to be solved and they think that the website can solve it. So when we're talking portfolios and how designers can talk about their work, I believe is super important to keep reiterating why they're doing stuff, because that shows whoever's looking at that portfolio that there's a reason behind everything. So other than that, you've probably looked at many portfolios in your career. What other things are important to you when you're trying to hire someone?
Tommy: Yes. Hiring is really interesting. It doesn't matter what stage in your career you are, but when you're applying for a role, I think there's a few things that I personally look for. One is passion, and that goes without saying, sometimes can't tell that from a portfolio or a CV, but if you can get across that your passion or your genuine, sincere kind of interest in the industry, then it does go a really long way.
One thing that I've -- this is quite funny. I mean, I remember I was working with an agency. I was hiring, looking for a role when I was at Nissan, and we were looking for what I would call it a hybrid. So for example, we were looking for someone who is a user experience designer, but that was super passionate about UI design and because of the nature of the kind of role that was the two sorts of two skills that we were looking for. So we went to the agency, “This is the kind of designer working for.” And they came back and told me, “That person doesn't exist.” They said that that's a unicorn.
So one thing I've always tried to tell people as well, “Just be more unicorn.” I think it's super important. Particularly in the last few years, design and particularly in digital design, has -- it's split into these quite siloed factions. You have a user interface designer, then you have a user experience designer, then you have a UX researcher, etc. And before you know it, you've got a team of five specialisms within one team, which I think makes sense to some extent. However, I think it's important to not silo yourself just in that role and explicitly say, “Do you know what? I don't touch anything else.” One of the best UI designers I've ever worked with was also one of the world's leading authors on kirigami, the Japanese -- which is the Japanese art form of folding paper, and then when you open it, it creates 3D objects.
I think it's having this breadth of skills or at least an interest in other skills that is what we look for. And just to give another example, I think when, when we're creating digital products, whether that's an app or a website and we're joining a product team, one thing I think that's quite undervalued quite often is the development side or the awareness of how things work.
Now, I'm not -- I've never expected a UI designer to also be fluent in JavaScript and Sass and everything. But I think it's having a genuine curiosity into how things work. What are the limitations of the React UI framework, or what are the capabilities of webGL? Because if you don't know what you don’t know, but at the same time, I think it can really add value to a team when you've got a cross-pollinated team. So you might have a developer who actually came from a creative background, or you might have a designer who on the side, likes dabbling with equations or whatever. And it creates a really rich team, and that's something that we look for when we're hiring.
Christian: I think the last point is really, really important. I've worked in product teams before with what they're called UI engineers. So there's this hybrid between someone who's a front-end developer, but also has an interest in general -- just the basics of intuitiveness and user-friendliness, generally usability principles.
And I could tell you how many times or I actually can't tell because there's been so many times when I've been out-designed by an engineer. Because when they kind of overlap a bit with yours and I have some background in coding, so I will never tell them how to code, but by understanding the limitations, as you said, I can design something that they won't spend five weeks developing. It'll only take them three.
But also the other way around when developers understand design, it just creates this highly productive team. There's this myth that developers don't really care about the users, they just care about the technology, and that couldn't be further away from the truth.
Most developers I've ever worked with actually truly care, and some of them can bring some brilliant ideas as well. So I think I only said design as a team sport and being able to understand the other side of the story — development — is just as valuable as developers being able to understand design and working together much closer. So I really love that you've mentioned, and I guess your background in coding helps a little bit with doing that right now?
Tommy: Yes. Slightly, slightly biased.
Christian: Slightly biased?
Tommy: It's certainly, yes.
Christian: I don't think people should code, honestly. I've I wrote articles about this. I talk about this. I think design is a full-time job, and designers should design. But I also do believe that designers should understand the limitations of the technology their productive team is working in, so they can become better designers. Just like designers also need to understand research and all that other stuff that's part of their job. Just like designers need to understand the business and how they're getting paid at the end of the month.
For example, to understand the churn and why the churn is important to the business and try to figure out how they can do anything about the churn in a SaaS company, etc etc. I think that as designers, we need evolve more towards a general, a wider audience standing of the business than just pushing pixels.
To move on to next question. You are -- you said earlier, actually didn't know this, that you were the second UX designer at Nissan globally. I can just imagine how many challenges that came up with; just having to set up all those processes, having to just create a team, again, at a global scale. Talk a bit about those couple of years you spent there.
Tommy: Yes, sure. I was actually reluctant when I was approached about the role. I was a little bit reluctant mainly because I'd never worked -- I hadn't worked in a really corporate environment in quite a long time, and I was very much used to the creative agency world, which has a different -- very much a different vibe. And I didn't know -- I didn't really understand what I would be able to achieve versus what I wouldn't and how creative it would be. So I ended up taking the role, and it's such a fascinating place. And I look back with a lot of fondness.
So Nissan is actually one of AEM's biggest clients in the sense that they have -- sorry, Adobe's biggest clients for their AEM product, because there's about 200 market websites across the world, across three different brands: Nissan, Datsun, and Infinity. It was a super exciting place to work in the sense that any changes or sort of design strategy that we would apply would then be rolled out across four or five continents in 200 markets, which is super exciting. And that's just on the responsive website.
And then on the sort of product sort of native app side, there was-- I think at the time there was up to about 50 apps worldwide, all of varying degrees of ‘good’, which all needed sort of governance to be put in place and a sort of a unified design strategy.
So one of the most interesting things I think that I -- I got out of it, I was working in a diverse team across different time zones and cultures. I'd have -- we'd have early morning calls with Japan, and we'd have afternoon calls with the United States and India.
And we’re trying -- our team ultimately became responsible for setting the experience strategy across all of the customers' journeys. So, and by customer journey in automotive, you're looking at kind of that presale is when you're discovering what car you might want and if that car brand is right for you through like money your driving experience, something goes wrong and you need to service. And then it's like kind of after-sales, so buying accessories and other things.
So it's a really challenging sector in itself. There's a really clear complex set of user journeys, and what we would do is we introduced this concept of journey teams. Now, previously, we were like one team was looking at all the customer journeys at one time, and it became a -- it was a challenge because they almost needed full-time attention and almost people to become SMEs, like subject matter experts in very specific things. It was a big task for someone as a UX designer to be knowledgeable in the whole spectrum of things because it's impossible.
So we introduced these journey teams, and it worked really well. So you'd have -- one person would be an expert in just test drives, and then you'd have one person who would be an expert in just matching, finding the right car for you. And it was -- and it worked really well. Those teams would have SMEs from the product team, from the data analytics team from technology. so it was almost like a representative from each function working as one, and it worked really well.
Christian: What were some of the challenges of doing that because you said already -- you said a lot of entities, like 200 websites, 50 apps at different levels. That's probably one, the scale of it. Time zone, working with people remotely, probably another one. Anything else worth mentioning there that was really challenging for you?
Tommy: Yes. So the big anyone will sympathise to me if they've worked in big corporations, and I'm sure you can sympathise with this as well. But the stakeholder management was a big chunk of sort of our role. And this was the first time I actually experienced designers being involved in stakeholder management in this kind of capacity. Normally, even thinking about the time at Sky, you'd have product teams would almost be a little bit separate to the business. But because of the way that we were set up at Nissan, we were responsible for selling in our vision or selling our proposals to quite a high level to sort of the Exec level.
And that comes with its own challenges because you've got, like you say, it's not just all those complexities of time zones or different cultures. It's also then you've got an extremely complex stakeholder map, which you've got to navigate. And for a designer, that's not always -- we don't often have experience in that. And in terms of like, working through that, I think we came up with different processes, which we realised worked for us.
So just to give an example that maybe some other people can resonate with — we introduced very early, like the idea of basically bringing stakeholders on from a very early phase, whether that's doing things like the Google crazy eights process or these very, kind of, to a corporate environment, quite abstract concepts of flashing out what the design requirements are, what the user needs are. Moving away from a very kind of, I don't want to say archaic, but kind of very old school corporate way of thinking to kind of much more new sort of product and technology-driven way of thinking.
Christian: Would you say that being able to do stakeholder management is one of the most important skills for a designer? At least as they climb the career ladder, it becomes more and more important. Would you agree with that?
Tommy: 100% Absolutely. And you know, the more senior you get, there’ll come a point in people's careers as a designer when maybe you get to sort of a senior designer level, and you have to ask yourself, “Do I want to stay doing the craft and be involved in the granular execution of a design?” Because some of the best user interface designers I know have no interest in managing people or being involved in the sort of product roadmaps. They'd rather just be given a brief or a complex challenge and solving that challenge through design, but they don't want to be involved any wider than that. Which I totally respect, and that's their choice.
But then you might get another person who might get to the phase where they are actually -- I want some move away from spending hours a day in Sketch or Adobe or whatever it is. And actually, I'd like to maybe get into more on the people's side, whether that's the operational or delivery side of things. And what we're seeing is a shift, I think, that designers won't necessarily always be designers. I think the way that the industry is moving, you need -- you're going to have people that need to manage these big in-house design teams, but they can't just be a manager. To be a good design manager, I believe you need to have come from a design background, just in the way that if you were going to be a head of technology, some way you'd need that technological background.
Christian: Yes, good. Then we agree on that. It's super important -- it's fascinating to learn to do that because I haven't done stakeholder management at a very high level until I worked for British Gas. And then I was -- then I felt like I got thrown into a pool with very deep water, because as a designer, you never have to do stuff like that, and suddenly you have to know how to swim.
Tommy: And some people hate it, you know?
Christian: They do.
Tommy: Some people just not for them.
Christian: And you know what? That's also fair. That's why there are different paths for different designers, as you just said. You can just stay and do the creative part, or you can actually go the other direction.
And so it's interesting that you had the same -- you've learned that after you ended up in a corporation. So you've managed a lot of designers in your career, and I'm wondering, have you noticed any pattern? Have you seen – what’s something that successful designers do all the time versus designers who are maybe less successful?
Tommy: Yes, I believe there is. There is trends you can see. And I think this comes back to a point we were chatting about earlier in our conversation that curiosity is, I think, is a word that I probably overuse, but it's about being curious. Some of the most successful designers or the best designers I've ever worked with kind of -- they're curious.
Your design career is not a sprint, it's a marathon. We're in an industry that there is no finish line, and because of that, we're constantly evolving, constantly growing. I think it's a blessing and a curse sometimes as a designer; you can never rest on your laurels. You can never kind of chill out, because there's always a new technology or a new trend or experience that comes up. But I think that's equally what makes it such an exciting place to work in. It's never a dull day as a designer.
And I think in order to be curious, you've got to be passionate. It's not one of those industries where you can't just turn up. I think it's certainly not that. I think if you're truly passionate and you really do care about the products you're working on or the brands that you're helping grow, then they tend to be more successful. And the more exposure you can give yourself in a variety of different spheres or sectors within your company, then the better.
So just to give an example, designers tends to stay in their lanes or their silos, but there's no reason why that should be. Like if there's no reason why you couldn't reach out to your operations team and understands how they work or go for a coffee or a pint with the data analytics guys. And I think it's all about breaking down those silos and designers that expose themselves and put themselves out there tend to be the ones that I think the most successful.
Christian: Great. I think that actually answers a question that I just wanted to ask, but let me ask you anyway. Maybe you have a different answer to it. So there's this understanding right now that design leaders and designers, in general, should strive to become more like business leaders or more like business people, but that transition can’t happen from one day to another. There have to be some steps in between starting your career to getting to that point where you understand what the business is all about, where you understand how design can help the business, where you understand all these things that are required of you to be able to be a business person. So if you would start again in your career today, how would you get from that point of knowing nothing to becoming a business person?
Tommy: Yes, it's an interesting one. And like we said, some people simply wants to be a designer, but then there will be others that -- I don't think you can… design and business are part of the same thing. You should always care about business. If you don't understand the business, then you can't design anymore. There's always going to be a goal to the business or an aim that’s business-led, even if they say it's customer-led. So I think I would -- if I was going to go back, I'd expose myself to more strategic and operational sides of the business much earlier on.
So I decided to be a freelancer for six years. And so you do limit yourself a little bit to expose yourself to those areas of the business, if you're in freelance, but there are ways you can do it. I mean, may I suggest dating someone who works in the business side, which is actually how I met my -- that's how I met my girlfriend, but that's a story for another day.
I learned a lot from sort of friends who were either business analysts or product owners. And I was, again, come to curiosity, understanding how say procurement works or resourcing. And yes, you're not by default going to get exposure to that kind of thing, but it's up to you to put yourself forward. Maybe it's a case of grabbing 30 minutes with X, Y, and Z team. Make sure you’re in luck, as it were.
Christian: So it's about seeking help from others and not expecting it to come to you?
Tommy: Yes, yes. 100% And I think if you're in a position where you're not in a big corporate environment or maybe you're just working in a -- if you say you're an independent designer and you're worried that you're not going to get this business experience, one thing I would potentially recommend would be to reach out to some smaller agencies, maybe some independent studios. They might not get you involved in things like finances, but what they could get you on is areas outside of your comfort zone, outside of design. I think, how I would see it, smaller agencies and teams tend to get their designers involved in a lot more than some of the larger ones.
Christian: Awesome. Tommy, we're nearing the end. I have a couple more questions. I ask everyone on the show these, so the first one is, what's one thing you wish more designers would know?
Tommy: I think it's important that designers understand that you do have the ability to diversify and cross-pollinate your skills. If you've left school and you're a graphic designer, for example, there's no reason why you can't grow into being a user experience designer or a UX researcher, or whatever that might be. I think people sometimes feel like they've been siloed or that they've been put down a path that they're not comfortable with or that they maybe have, not regrets, but there may be more to move out of.
And I think it's just super important to know that nothing is forever, think things evolve and change as does the industry. And there's always room to grow and shape your own career into something that's right for you. As I've explained, I came -- I started off as a front-end developer into a creative designer, visual designer, then into product design and then sort of manager. So there's nothing further is my takeaway on that.
And I think you become a more rounded a designer by having more strings to your bow. Designers are fixers and essentially creative problem solvers. You can solve more problems if you understand the wider variety of concepts, and teams recognise that. So coming back to my original point, I think it's be more unicorn.
Christian: Be more unicorn.
Tommy: Yes.
Christian: You should put that on your Twitter bio or in the LinkedIn header. Tommy, last one: how do you reckon the future of designers and industry looks like?
Tommy: Oh, good question. So for me, I think what I'm anticipating is that designers -- design will be seated at the top level of business in a way that it kind of hasn't before. At the moment, design can still feel like a grassroots movement, where we have to sometimes fight for our pitch or place at the table. But I think those days of being sort of second-class citizens are over. You only have to look at some of the big tech companies. Two of the obvious examples, Apple and Google, where you've got roles such as chief design officers, chief experience officers, which were roles that didn't really exist a number of years ago.
And I think that's going to be a trend that we see more and more, where CEOs, investors, sort of boards are going to -- are now realising the importance of brand and user experience, product design. Brand and UX are the two sides of the same and coin. And I think people are seeing that in terms of business and meeting business needs, these roles are just absolutely paramount just in the same way that an operations person or an operations department, as well as the finance team.
So I think what we're seeing as well, over the last sort of five years, is a shift to these companies building in-house teams, for example, with Cuckoo, we’ve rather than outsource everything, we're looking to build an in-house team and grow that team which you can. So we're going to see all kinds of new types of strategic leadership, of how those in-house teams are run. And I think it comes down to if companies don't prioritise design and elevate it to the same prominence as things like operations, product, they just simply won't succeed.
And then lastly, I think the secondly, I think we’re essentially shifted to something more dynamic in the future. So there's these buzz words such as customer experience transformation, and digital transformation that you see everywhere. I think companies that aren't able to react quickly to changing customer needs will fall behind. So I think we'll see a shift to brands listening to customers in new ways.
So just to use as an example, we've grown a community forum at Cuckoo, and any feedback customers have or ideas customers have, we then inform almost all product roadmap which is a kind of people who have been doing it, but it seems to becoming more popular where direct feedback from customers is then instantly almost impacting the roadmap.
Christian: Tommy, this has been an hour that went past really fast. Last thing I want to ask you is, where can people find you? Where can they get in touch with you? And also, feel free to add Cuckoo's website and everything else in here as well.
Tommy: Sure. Yes, it has flown by; it's been a fast hour. So as I've sort of alluded to, my latest venture is Cuckoo, which you can reach cookoo.co. So, yes, if you're in the UK and you need broadband, you should check us out. And yes, you can reach me at tommytoner.com if anyone would like to reach out and contact me.
Christian: Awesome. We'll add all of these in the show notes as always, so people can easily find you. Tommy, it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time, and we’ll catch up soon.
Tommy: Thanks very much, Christian.
Christian: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Cassius and I talk about why it's important to learn how to learn, the challenges of moving into leadership, and why asking questions is key to solving problems.
Connect with Cassius
Website, LinkedIn
Selected links from the episode
Mark Channon - The Memory Workbook
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Today we're talking to Cassius Kiani, a fascinating product designer, entrepreneur, and former lecturer at the Imperial College of London and MIT. In the next hour you'll hear us talk about why it's important to learn how to learn, the challenges of moving into leadership, and why asking questions is key to solving problems.
Cassius, thanks a lot for joining Design Meets Business. Your background in design is very diverse. You've got to work with a wealth of companies that everyone has heard about, whether that's Bumble or GoDaddy, or Facebook, and you also got to lead products in the fields that are a bit more ambiguous, let's say, like blockchain and emerging technologies. So we'll talk about what all of those different experiences taught you as a designer. But before that, let's go a bit into your background and how you started out in Design, and if you remember, what's the moment that made you want to become a designer?
Cassius: Yes, so that's a rather interesting question. So I've always been interested in technology in general. And I spent a great deal of my time as a teenager and young adult exploring, experimenting with social media. And that could be things such as just creating MySpace themes and hacking around the bits and pieces.
And I wouldn't necessarily call that design, but it was at say my first soiree into using design tools. And then, from there, I suppose my path is unconventional because I didn't realise that there was product functions within businesses until I ended up working in a start-up. And I originally worked at a start-up within marketing specifically.
And from there, I then saw different aspects of the product function and realised that some of these skills that I'd spent my time learning as a teenager and hacking around with were actually useful. And from there, I started to essentially do the same thing that I think a lot of people do when they realise that something is interesting, and they start to talk to more people about it, learn more, find out more about it.
Then I met some very talented individuals who, let's say, acted as my mentors. And then from there managed to scale that into a profession and through the consistent practice of doing good work, managed to, let’s say, move forward from there. So it's not a very romantic story as much as it's quite a pragmatic, practical one.
Christian: So, what were some of these skills that you’re mentioning? Because I can relate a bit to that. I started by coding for fun when I was very young, and then suddenly that turned into design. So was coding one of them, or what were some of these other skills?
Cassius: Yes, so I definitely think that programming is something you have exposure to at a younger age than you would, say, design, simply because the idea of making websites and apps comes up a lot. People don't tend to understand that the difference between design and development is the same as architecture and construction. There's a fine line. And so I explored programming; I did a lot with WordPress and hacking around with bits and pieces.
However, I definitely would have considered myself much more of -- I think they call them growth hackers in the space; someone who could take different aspects of marketing and a couple that with development. Now, I wouldn't necessarily say my development skills were rather strong, but they were good enough.
So I suppose that the skills I realised I could apply into design were things such as critical thinking and what people obviously define now as user experience — the idea of how can you help people accomplish their goals or solve their problems through a product specifically. Because you realise quite quickly that -- at least I realised that those two things are separate in terms of what people think about as development in a standard sense. So I realised that actually, I enjoyed that side of things much more. And then I've managed to find labels from that.
I mean, when I first started doing this, this would have been around 10 years ago. So the industry itself was, especially if you're a young person you grew up in the UK, was something which was a little bit more mysterious. User experience existed. Yes, UI/UX was talked about, so was product. However, it was by no means an absolute standard function within businesses, unless you were venture-backed or you're a booming internet business at the time.
Christian: You're right. I remember 10 years ago; it was not even product designer. You are a web designer, right? The industry is evolving just as a role if you want, is evolving. Again, with the industry evolving, I guess we as designers need to evolve as well. So throughout your last 10 years, let's use that as an example, what were some of the things where you can look back and say, “That's what's allowed me to get to the point where right now I can build teams, and I worked at all these successful companies?” What's the thing that made you successful in your career that you've managed to develop throughout time?
Cassius: Absolutely. So this is right. This is a rather interesting topic for me, because I have quite a strong opinion on this. So I believe that the majority of leaders in the world are great synthesisers, which means they're able to find threads between people, business, and technology, and they're able to pull on them. And typically, to do that, you have to be what some people would call a polymath.
So you have to be someone who is capable of learning, and exploring a number of different areas and understanding how those areas start to fit together and from there, be able to synthesise thoughts based on what you've learned. And so for me, I'd say that my unfair advantages is I spent a great deal of time learning how to learn. I surrounded myself with experts within the field. And from there at the same, what I did a lot of was attempt to find my own thoughts and opinions on things, because it's rather easy to read a textbook. It's rather easy to listen to what someone says and to say, “Okay, that makes sense.”
However, that isn't necessarily synthesis. I wanted to understand a little bit more about perhaps why things were the way they are and how I could then apply that into, like I said, these three different fields of people, business, and technology. And so synthesis, I'd say, has been the thing that has been my unfair advantage. And I'd say that any leader in the field or any leader within almost any company is rather good at synthesis.
Christian: I love this topic of learning how to learn because I think there’s, especially in education today, there's an emphasis on learning. Here's the curriculum. Here are the things you need to learn, and by the end of school, you need to pass a test to show that you've learned those things, but we're not really talking in education, whether that's design education or any other type of education, we’re not really talking about what you mentioned earlier, which is learning how to learn.
Did that come natural to you, or have you picked it up from somewhere? How did you find this concept, or how did you start thinking even about learning how to learn?
Cassius: For me, what happened was I stumbled across an interesting set of people known as mnemonists — so people who could memorise obscenely long pieces of information. So let's say 150 words in five minutes or a thousand digits in a short space of time.
And for me, I found that quite fascinating, because I wouldn't necessarily say I have a good memory by any stretch. And so I was curious to learn more about what these people could do and how they learned to put together these structures in their minds, which allowed them to then absorb copious amounts of information and to do something with them.
And so I actually spent a great deal of time being taught by a previous Grandmaster of memory, who I sought out and asked for some support. And he showed me all of the techniques, tricks, and tips. And from there, I started to ask myself questions around what makes these things work? Why do they work? How does the mind work in relation to these techniques? Why are they so effective and so sticky?
And you quickly realise that actually, this whole process of learning consists of three big blocks, where you have encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. And the memory side of things is the retrieval side, and encoding and consolidation is stuff that we interact with a lot on a daily basis through education and everything else.
The only downside is that most of that is heavily focused on rote learning and the idea of being able to absorb facts by simply repeating them and expressing them over and over again, rather than understanding them. And from there, I started to dive into the topic and learn more about what is mastery and reading a lot of the literature around that, and at the same time, attempting to apply that as much as possible to some of the things that I've learned.
So I’d say that -- Oh, how did I learn how to learn? Well, ultimately, I became curious to know how some people can accomplish so much with that time, and why I was accomplishing so little comparatively. And from there, I think I was like everyone else. I was looking for a magic pill, and then what I realised there was there wasn't one. The closest thing I could find was, let's say, the equivalent of a protein shake for the mind.
Christian: Right. So let's stay on the topic of education and learning. You are self-taught, right? You haven't gone to design school. If you would have to start all over again today, would you go the same route again, or would you actually try to get get some education? What's your opinion on that?
Cassius: So I’d say that design education is fundamentally broken. And I'd say it's fundamentally broken because it still relies on a huge amount of tacit knowledge in order to get things across. So when I say tacit knowledge, what we can view is we can view -- if we view an iceberg, explicit knowledge is the tip of the iceberg, and what sits above the surface of the water and tacit knowledge is everything which sits below the surface.
So that's the stuff that we learned from doing, which is rather hard to explain and rather difficult to bring to the surface. Now it's difficult; it's not impossible. When we look at fields such as Law, Medicine, or other scientific fields what people have done really well is they found a way to take all of this tacit knowledge and to bring it to the surface and make it explicit, which means we can have a conversation about it and it makes sense.
If we look at Neuroscience, for example, we no longer need to talk in high level of abstraction around what neurones do and how they interact with each other in terms of, let's say, neuronal circuits in the mind. We can now have conversations around them and start to understand things. We haven't done that yet with Design.
Design education is fundamentally, still an incredibly tacit process, which means that you have to have experience. You have to be out into the real world, and you have to interact with these things to get to understand a little bit more about, again, the people, business, and technology of things, and to make it work.
Now, I don't necessarily believe that that's how it has to be forever. However, no one has really spent the time to bring all of these tacit and pieces or these tacit subject matters to the surface. They're not explicit yet. And so if I was to go back in time, I would 100% continue on the path that I continued now, simply because I've met and interacted with people who have had a, let’s say, from design education and unfortunately, the curriculum or the system simply hasn't found a way to take all of that tacit knowledge that you learn and bring it to the surface, not even in a way, which I believe is useful from a fundamental starting point.
Christian: I can relate to that. Just to segway a bit into a story. I do actually have a design education, but as I mentioned in one of the previous podcasts, I haven't really used it for anything because it was so slow in teaching you what it had to teach you that you could learn it outside of school and get a client or potential client where you could apply that knowledge. So actually, I was always a bit ahead of the school curriculum, if you want. So for me, it was more of a checkbox exercise if you want.
So because I can relate to that, I fully agree with you that probably because education -- design education is broken today, it might not make sense to follow it. But I'm wondering, are there any cases in which actually it would be beneficial to you as someone starting out to go to school to get that knowledge that you're talking about, even if the system is broken?
Cassius: So my perception here is that when people look at design, they tend to mix design too closely with art. And ultimately, they also seem to mix design very closely with execution. Now, design is ultimately a number of things. It's a process, which means it can be used for strategy or execution. It does not have to be simply a production skillset.
Now, when we talk about design education, unless you're looking at schools which have identified these problems for a long period of time and have done their best to overcome these things, so you have schools such as perhaps Parsons or perhaps Glasgow School of Art, where they have very specific courses where they've identified that actually design is a little bit more than simply -- I mean, a lot more than simply the case of learning, how to use tools and being a, let's say, a pixel pusher or production monkey.
So when it comes to design, I find that it depends on your goals, because there definitely are schools which will teach you to produce well. Now in my opinion, production is not a long-term skill. And it's not a long-term skill which has any longevity, simply for the fact that we have to be quite honest and quite frank here, and the majority of us are going to get old. We're going to have families, and we're going to -- at the end of the day, end up in a situation where keeping up with the Joneses is far too complex. I realised that at a very young age, when I was messing around with PHP and Java and Javascript, and then all of these new frameworks coming out, and I have friends who are incredibly deep in development who also suffered from the same, let's say, learning fatigue of having to keep up with all of the modern trends.
Now, you can add huge amounts of value by being someone who can steer the ship rather than the person that builds the ship. And I feel that for a lot of people, if you wanted to just -- if you want to do something, which is heavily production-based when you're younger, by all means, go for it. And I think you put -- you rather enjoy it. However, I do feel there comes a time where the majority of designers should consider how much time they want to spend, let's say, as someone who does pure production versus moving into someone who could move into leadership and management. And I think that that's a natural transition for a lot of people.
There are some absolute superstars who can, let's say, go against the grain and be incredible with production late into their 50, 60, 70s, and that's fine. However, that's by no means the majority. It's the minority. It's the top 1% of producers in the world, let's say.
Christian: So moving into leadership and steering the ship as you've called it also comes with some other challenges that producing the work long-term doesn't necessarily have -- you have to suddenly deal with people. You have to manage people down. You have to manage people up. And every single time you have to deal with people because we are so complex, there are a lot of challenges there. So what are some of these challenges of moving into leadership that you have experienced throughout climbing the career ladder?
Cassius: Absolutely, the two biggest challenges I think most people would face and the ones I certainly faced were the illusion of transparency, which is believing that what you say is what people hear. And that's an incredibly hard thing to learn and to understand. Because you may have a crystallised idea in your head and an image, your job is to attempt to implant that into someone else's, and that is — to understand how to do that is it's an art as well as a science. And it takes a long time and to learn how to use words to -- first of all, take what's inside your head and allow someone else to see and understand that. And then, at the same time, to clarify whether everyone is aligned and on the same page.
So some people call that communication, and I would agree. However, the problem with communication is that we then assume that everything we say is transparent; it's not. People have different experiences. They come from different backgrounds, and they are likely to interpret what you say differently to the way that you want it interpreted. So creating alignment through communication and, let's say, bypassing the illusion of transparency is one thing.
And then the other side of the things I say is listening. Leadership is not about telling people what to do by any stretch; it's about simply making good decisions. And making good decisions requires data and information. Now you may have lots of data and information, and you may already know what you want to do and what to say. However, if you are working with someone or you're leading someone or managing someone, the first thing that you should ask is what do they think should be done next. Because quite frankly, most of the time, if you ask someone, “Okay, so from here, what do you think we should do?”
Regardless of whether or not you know what to do, that person -- one is a useful learning curve for them to attempt to, let’s say, piece together parts of the puzzle, and to then understand where to move forward, which is a good way of creating another leader. I mean, that's one successful criteria of leadership, good leaders create other good leaders.
And then the second side of that is, can you then understand and -- either what you haven't seen or perhaps where you fall short, because more often than not, you'd be surprised when you say, “Well, actually I think we should go in this direction.” But you give someone else the platform to speak, and they'll say something, and you realise, “Wow, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that. So maybe we should do that.”
So I find that if I had to summarise those two things, move past the illusion of transparency. Understand that people are complicated and they do not always hear what you are saying as what you wanted to be interpreted as, and on the other side, spend more time listening and asking people what they think you should do and make a decision with that rather than simply being the person who dictates absolutely everything.
Christian: I think that relates really well to what I see the role of a designer and design leader be, which is more of a connector. In a business, you're the connector between maybe the engineering department and the people who are in sales and marketing and everyone else. But also from the business perspective, you're the connector between that business and its customers.
So I see communication as -- or being good at communication, listening obviously is part of that, as an absolutely fundamental part of being a good design leader. And I've heard this quote once, which I think goes like this, ‘Communication is not what you say. Communication is what people understand through the words you're saying,’ which is basically what you've said.
So when you keep this thing in mind, and when you go into a company where as a design leader you don't only need to manage down (your design team), but you need to do a lot of managing to the left and to the right and even up. Would those same skills apply, or there's something else you need here as well? Are there other challenges?
Cassius: Yes. I mean, there's lots of challenges. And so one of the things that people need to become accustomed to, and I feel that people have a lot of resistance to especially young designers and designers in general. So if we had to look at this from a perspective of personality psychology, we can say that most people who become designers would be rather high in trait openness, which means that we’re rather accepting of a lot of things, we’re open-minded, and we're interested in exploring things, which means we tend not to like boundaries or hierarchies.
Now the irony here is everything in the world, including your mind and nature is constructed in a hierarchy. And when you hear the word deep, deep is the millennial word for hierarchy. If we say deep learning, it just means hierarchical learning.
So what we have to begin to understand is that all self-organising systems eventually organise themselves in hierarchies, and they do that for a myriad of reasons. The reasons are usually the evil of the hierarchy. Competence is not a reason to be at all for a self-organising system. Competency is great because then people get good results. Now, if something self-organised is in a way where let's say it's negative hierarchy based on something arbitrary looks, there’s a problem, because that has no competence, no value. It's not useful for anyone.
So when we're looking at, let's say a company, and we're looking at maybe a start-up, or we're looking at a team that's growing from 10 to 100 people. You move from a very flat structure because that's fine. There's enough nodes in the system that say 10 people that you can share information in a very light, transparent way, and it's not overwhelming.
Now, if you're in the middle of that system, let's say, and it grows from 10 to 100, and now, you're responsible for the information that flows downwards as well as the information that flows upwards, well, now you become one of these nodes in the network that has to do some level of filtering.
So what you have to realise is that when things start to self-organise into hierarchies, the number one reason for that is to, let's say, constrain the flow of information. And constraining the flow of information is really important, because if you are overwhelmed by everything that's going on constantly, you can't get anything done. And a really simple example of this is to just simply look at the way the brain works. About 99% of our processing is unconscious, which means we don't really know it’s happening. Our conscious cognition is 1% of all of our total cognition. And that's simply because if we had to attempt to attend to everything that was going on at the same time, it would be absolutely bloody overwhelming, and it's the same with an organisation.
Which means if you're communicating up or down, what you really have to understand is what information has to go where and why. Now there are certain things that I'm completely, let's say, all for in terms of transparency. By all means, let's talk about salaries. Let's talk about what's going on. Let's talk about runway, everything else. No problem.
Now, is it important for, let's say, management to hear about all of the troubles that happened on the ground if these troubles on the ground are trivial and resolved? No. Is it important for them if these things look like they could bubble over, and let's say, damage the system in the long term? Yes. And equally, it works both ways. So when you're working with a company, you have to understand that ultimately, if you're a leader and there's someone above you, and there's someone below you, you have to manage that flow of information. And you simply need to understand what information is relevant, where, when and why, or how to take all of the information that you've seen and given and condense it in a way that is useful to that part of the system.
And that's quite tricky. And I feel that that's something that people who move into, let's say a leadership position and design tend to struggle with is the idea of one understanding that the systems form hierarchies for a reason. And two, to understand that actually, the hierarchy is simply to control the flow of information and to ultimately control competence.
Now, if you understand those two things, the world is a lot less mysterious and mystifying. If you become comfortable with that, then you can safely say, “Well, provided I become more competent and I understand how to transmit information in different directions, then I will probably get some social mobility and some upward mobility, that's fantastic.”
So I'd say that the biggest challenge for people moving into leadership is to attempt to understand how hierarchies work and, at the same time, to understand simply the flow of information. Information theory is really useful here. However, that's overkill. I mean, the simple answer is know what to say and when to say it.
Christian: And that I assume, or maybe this is the question, that comes with experience, or do you think that's something that someone can teach someone else?
Cassius: I think you can teach it. I would say that it may feel quite tacit to someone who's been in that position. And again, if you spend a great deal of time learning from experience and you're quite pragmatic, it can be quite difficult to pull some of these rules to the surface. However, there certainly are rules where you can say to people, if you do these things, then you're likely to be more successful, and you can make it rule-based.
What I would say that, here’s the chaotic modifier, if you will, is people are different. And so there are certain people who sit within different positions of these organisations that have different personality types, have different dispositions, and they may want different things from you. And learning to interact as a different node on the network is quite tricky.
So if you are someone who is relatively trusting and the person up top is, let's say, very skeptical, you have to learn what information they need to hear in order to allow you to move forward in the way that you want to move forward. Especially if, let’s say, you have enough indicators that the team that you're working with or leading is moving in the right direction. Someone who wants data is not going to be convinced by simply, “Okay, well, these anecdotes make everything okay.”
So to some extent, that's the modifier. I'd say that if I had to pull out two very -- two quick rules, which may be useful here, then I'd say understand who you're talking to and then understand what they need to hear. And if you can get a sense of that -- and that, unfortunately, takes a little bit of time, then usually you're in a good situation.
Christian: So it sounds like transitioning from being a designer on the ground, doing the hard work, to a design leader position, that's a bit of a different type of hard work, takes a lot of experience, a lot of skills, a lot of things that are built over time, but I'm wondering, you as a design leader have probably worked and helped other people become design leaders or at least get closer to it throughout your career. Are there any patterns there? Are there any traits that you know if a designer has this trait they're much more likely to become a good design leader, or is it down to training and experience?
Cassius: I don't think it's done at the training or experience. I think that there's a number of people who are incredible leaders at the age of 13 and 15, and they do not necessarily need to spend 10, 15 years climbing, say, a corporate hierarchy or even a design hierarchy to get there. I've met plenty of people who are serial founders and have exited three companies by the time they're 25, and they are incredible leaders.
And what I tend to find with these people is that the traits that they show which show that they're good leaders, is that they can, one listen and two, they can understand where information needs to be channeled more than anything else. Most good leaders are incredibly good at simply finding people to listen to and listening to them and from there, making decisions. It really isn’t a game of becoming better and better at making decisions and understanding when and where you have enough information to make a good judgment call on something.
Now, the more complicated the industry, the more complicated the subject, the harder it is to gain some of that knowledge. If you're in biotech, for example, there's a lot of rules and regulations that will dictate how quickly you can move, comparatively to if you're in a SaaS company and well, let’s say, what is a good and bad move? And even in SaaS, then you have things like FinTech, you have different types of legal tech as well. And they have different hurdles to comparative creating dev tools.
So I don't think that you need 10 to 15 years’ experience. And one of the things that I come across when I speak to a lot of young designers is they say, “I don't have enough experience here.” I think that's garbage. I feel that, quite frankly, if you wanted to become a design leader, you could do it in six to 12 months, provided you work on the soft skills required to position yourself in a way where one, you learn how to listen, two, you learn how to make good decisions more than anything else. And I think that everything else after that is perhaps superfluous.
Now maybe you could argue that actually to make good decisions, you need higher IQ, and if you have higher IQ, it becomes easier. However, there's plenty of people with high IQ that make bad decisions as well. So it's simply as a case of understanding the frame that you're working within and the dots that you can join within that frame and to say, “Okay, well, this is a good enough decision right now and here's how we'll measure success going forward.”
Christian: So wouldn't you say -- at least I would think, that in order to be able to make good decisions, you need to have a bit of experience in that frame that you're working in. So how could someone coming in, as you said, six to 12 months, even if that person at a people level is a great leader, how can that person make good decisions considering that person doesn't necessarily understand and all the complexities of that frame they're working in?
Cassius: You don't necessarily need to understand all of the complexities as much as you simply need to understand why? What you find quite quickly is that if you ask someone something and they give you an answer, and you say, “Okay, and why would that work? Or why is that the way it is?” And someone can't, let's say, move down one more level of the hierarchy, I mean, usually, the troubling thing that we have here is that if you ask some of the three whys, then they get stuck incredibly quickly.
Now there are certain professions where people do not get stuck at three whys: doctors, neuroscientists, psychologists. Eventually, things -- typically, if you ask why enough times, they can still give you a rough answer. What you tend to find is that if someone understands what they're talking about or the reason why something should be done, then as you question it and you attempt to pull the argument apart, it becomes incredibly difficult to do so.
And then you can start to weight, “Okay. Well, actually, if this person can give me a coherent explanation of this over and over again, and I then have the opinions of five people. And all of those explanations seem coherent, and they're all roughly in line, well, the question is, “Okay, now I'm going to ask everyone what would happen if we were wrong? What would we do if we’re wrong?” And typically, you then get some more interesting information.
I mean, ultimately to become a good leader, you simply need to -- I mean, you don't need to know everything about industry as much as you simply need to understand how to weight opinions and how to weight information in a way that allows you to say, “Okay, well actually I don't know anything about, let's say, human biology. However, you've all produced convincing arguments; we've now weighed all of that up. Some are false; some are against, some of these ideas have collided and clashed. We've now identified what the worst-case scenario is. We've identified what the best cases. I think we do this. Can we all agree and commit?” It's like, sometimes they’ll say, no, we can't all agree. It's that fine. Well, can we all disagree and commit? Yes, sure. Fine, but let's commit.
And it really is just a case of simply being able to pull out the right -- pull out information. Sometimes that's simply a game of asking the right questions. However, if you start with why, most of the time you'll be able to get past someone that say fake explanation, and a fake explanation is incredibly dangerous, because if someone gives you a fake explanation, well, suddenly you realise that there's a problem and this is a big thing of design. I mean, if I start to talk to -- if someone asks me a question around, let's say, “What size should fonts be in across, let's say, hero images?” It's like, “I don't know.”
So there is no right answer, really. It's like, you can't make good judgment calls on stuff like that.
I mean, eventually, you'll get to something which is useful. But as a leader, you don't necessarily need to know all of these things because they're superfluous. Most of the stuff that we feel as designers are useful for leaders or not. I mean, I don't care how big the font is on the homepage. I don't care what font you use. I equally don't care the colours or anything else. Provided it sells and provided what we're doing is putting something together that markets to our target audience. I don't care if it looks like Airbnb or LinkedIn; it really does not bother me anymore. It mattered a lot more to me when I was younger because that would essentially show how competent I was, how pretty I could make something, but in the future, that no longer matters.
So yes, I suppose if I was to summarise that rather large train of thought, it would simply be a case of, if you can weight decisions and you can ask why, and you can ask the right questions, then suddenly you realise you don't need to know much about anything. You simply need to be the person that can make the right calls.
Christian: I want to talk about that transition from a few years ago to today, but before that, you wrote an article which relates to what we just discussed called “Thinking Like an Experience Designer.” And in that article you talk about how thinking like a designer basically means asking questions. Can you talk a bit about that?
Cassius: Yes. So the fundamental difference between art and design is that design must solve a problem. Art does not need to solve a problem. Art can simply be visually pleasing and appealing. Now, how would you turn art into design? Well, let’s say you create art, which then helps people with depression or helps calm unruly animals. Well, suddenly that's a design problem, and suddenly, you've created a solution for something.
So when we're looking at what design is really, it's the case of solving problems. And really, to solve problems, you have to be able to understand what the problems are. It's really easy to take a top-down approach and to say I'm prescribing solutions to a market rather than understanding the problems. And I'm not necessarily saying that you should take a purely bottom-up approach either of saying, “Well, actually, all of the markets says it wants this. Let's give it to them.” Because quite frankly, people can't see what they can't see, and people don't know what they want until you show them to some extent, anyway.
So it's finding that balance between top-down opinions on things, and let's say, bottom-up support from the people who you want to serve, anyway. However, in order to do that, you have to ask questions. And so when I've worked with my own companies’ entrepreneurs that have a track record of success, what I tend to find is that when things go really well is if they have an idea, they first say, “Well, I wonder what problem this solves.”
And once they have that and then go and say, “Well, I wonder if people actually have this problem, people that aren't simply me.” When a lot of people say, “The reason my company has succeeded is because I built it for myself.” Well, in that case, perhaps after doing a little bit of research, you realise you’re not an anomaly anymore. You realise that the problem that you have everyone shares, and they face, and they experience as well.
And design really is that process of being able to understand what problems exist, why do they exist, and then to understand a little bit more about, will they exist in the future? E.g., if no one solves this, will there still be a problem tomorrow? And do I need to be build a tool to solve this? Or do I need to simply change the way that someone behaves and their habits, because those are two different things as well.
GitHub, for example, is much more of a behavioural change for people than is an actual useful tool in the sense of what it does. I mean, it does have a fantastic number of things, however, git on a fundamental level. Does all of those things. It simply doesn't allow people to interact with the system and change their behaviour. And you'd say something such as Asana or a Trello is a good example of this because quite frankly, anyone could pick up some post notes and stick them to a wall. However, that's not necessarily collaborative, and it doesn't change behaviour.
So there are some things which we can say will exist forever. I used to, when I was younger, think, well, I can't start businesses because all the good ideas are taken. Well, turns out that if you want to do something exciting, most of the time you can simply ask questions around the clothes people wear, the food people eat, how people get from A to B, how people collaborate. There's always a business idea somewhere as long as you can find the problems.
So I guess when I talk about design and being a designer, the idea of asking questions it really comes from taking a problem-solving approach to things and focusing much more on the problem than the solution. And again, we all get caught up, and this is much easier to think about solutions rather than problems and if you can strike that nice balance. This is why I don't like to label myself as a designer when everyone is really a designer. If you can ask the right questions, then technically you're using design as a process to solve something as a problem for real people. That's how I tend to look at these things.
Christian: If you'd start your career at that lower level, where usually you feel, and the role you take in companies is more of a pixel pusher. Then after a few years of having that experience and understanding what design is, you move a bit more into caring about the experience of the customers, and we call that user experience.
So then after a few more years, you move into the next level, which is, “Well, actually I need to care about the customers, but I also need to care about the business because, without a business there are no customers.” So I know that transition happens over time, but what can you, as a designer, just starting out do to speed up that transition?
Cassius: I mean, this is what's really interesting to me is that most of the beliefs that people have about what they can or cannot do are self-limiting, they don't exist. If your dream is to start a start-up, or you dream to be a lead designer or a design leader, then do it. There really is nothing stopping you. The only thing that you have to ask yourself is, let's say that you right now, you say, “I want to be a thought leader in design.” Okay. That's fine. What are you going to say or do to add value to the industry? And if you can figure that out, well then go and do it.
Now along the way you're going to learn, anyway. If you say, I want to be a leader in interaction design. Well, you're going to have to talk about and create things which are used by lots of people in that process. And simply by doing that, you're going to learn more. I mean, depending on how much time, energy, and effort you want to commit to this, you could in six months achieve what some people achieve in six years. And it really is that process of saying, “Look, if you want to fast track something, the honest answer is simply to go out there and do it.” If you want to be the founder of a start-up, the only thing that's holding you back is self-confidence, because quite frankly, if you want to raise money, then what you do is you put together an idea, and then you go and talk to some investors, and the investors will hate it.
And then you go and talk to the customers again. And the customer say, “I don't know why the hell you put this together. This idea is rubbish. These are my problems.” And then you say, “Okay.” And then you put together another idea, and you'd go back to the investors, and the investors will hate it. And you do that a few times, and suddenly you realise, “Oh, wow. Someone's willing to invest. Let's say a small seed into this, and I can get somewhere.” You simply have to be comfortable with failure because it's the only way to learn.
So my concern here is that most people take a really safe path into moving forward because they're worried about arbitrary limitations around failure or all of the things they need to learn. And nine out of 10 times, it comes back to this idea of information theory. Is you don't need to know that much; you simply need to know enough about the problems that you care about and the direction that you want to go in, and that's enough. And if you go out there and you flounder around and fail, that's absolutely fine because if you're able to listen to this, then you're in a privileged position in the world where failure is not going to be the be-all and end-all of your life right now. It's a very different position if you come from different backgrounds, but if you are part of the 10% of people in the world that can listen to this, it's like, “Well, count your lucky stars that you could go out and fail and there would be no problem here.”
And most of the time, if you want to keep your day job, which is still very safe and spend 6:00 PM to 12:00 PM every night, working on wherever you want your future to go where you can, and that will happen. So I find that it's so arbitrary when someone says, “What can I do to speed things up?” Is that do what you want to do or do the things that you feel are going to be useful for you. And ironically, provided it's overwhelming, and this is my only criteria: if you're moving in the right direction, it should feel overwhelming. Nothing that's easy or nothing that makes your heart sing is really ever, “Oh, this is easy,” etc.
I mean, there's a reason that people talk about creative distress and things like that. It's because when you're putting yourself on the line, it hurts, and so to some extent, if you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed with where your life is going, but then hopefully provided you’re taking action, which is moving you in the right direction. And you'll be able to tell by giving yourself some arbitrary markers, “I want to be a design leader in six months. What does that look like?” Pick any arbitrary measure. I don't care if it's followers on Instagram, Twitter, or anything else, just pick something and measure it.
Now, if you're measuring it and it's not going up, it's like, “Okay, well now you know what to change.” If there was no measurement, then that is a bit tricky because you don't know if you're just being unusually stupid or if you're actually moving in a positive direction. I suppose if I had to summarise this, it's the shortcut for anyone that wants to do anything is simply to go and do it.
And, quite frankly, I sat there idolising the idea of running my own start-up and raising money at a very young age. And I realised that actually, the difference between the person who raised money and run a start-up was, quite frankly, nothing other than I was willing to go and do it. The trending right now is the fact that the founder of Gymshark is a billionaire at 28. And what's the difference between me, you and him is simple: he started Gymshark. There really is no difference at the end of the day. I have two arms, two legs, and so does he.
Christian: Nice. So you told about just go there and do it. I liked that mantra. I think Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this a lot. He says, just start. That's his thing. When people come to him and ask, “How do I start a business? How do I do this?” He says, “Just start.” Just start and then you'll -- as you go on that road, you're going to see there's a way to the left, there's a way to the right and then that's kind of going to guide you, but if you don't start and you're stagnant, how are you going to go? Which direction to go into the next? So I love that.
I want to talk a bit about, you've built a few product teams in your career and the things that you're looking for when building teams, the things that you're looking for when you're interviewing designers, when you look at their portfolios when you try to build a high performing team, what are some of those?
Cassius: Most of it comes down to hard work and work ethic, and ultimately it comes down to someone's ability to realise that they can do more. I would say that I don't care necessarily too much for someone who has -- it depends. It depends on the project. So if I'm hiring freelancers, I need someone who can come in quickly and get things done. So in that case, I'll look at your portfolio and say, “Well, you have what I need right now. I don't need to nurture you, and equally, I don't see us as long-term investment. I need you to come in, do your work, and you want to leave anyway.” So that's a valuable exchange. We shake hands, and everyone wins, done.
And so if you're a freelance, you really should simply be able to show some level of competence to the person that you're pitching to around what you want to do. So if you're a web designer or you are a UI/UX designer, you’re product designer, a design strategist, anything to do with design regardless of where you are in the value chain. Provided you can show and convince someone else that you are capable of doing what you do and that you are able to deliver and other people can vouch for your delivery, and sometimes that's really as simple as putting some logos on a page. That's enough.
Now, if you're building a design team and you plan to scale something. Well, if you're hiring -- it depends how high you're hiring to some extent. Even then, if you're hiring for junior to mid-weight designers, 90% of the battle is their work ethic and how much they're willing to learn and improve and just take on feedback. Most of the time, if you have people that tick those boxes, then they're the right people. And I don't want to get into this weird, aggressive work culture where people suggest that you should work 20 hours a day.
However, if someone comes to me and they are slightly below what I believe they need to be, and they work 20 hours a day, I sure as hell would give up person priority over someone who won't. And the fact is that you can technically, to some extent, outwork the competition at that level. It becomes a bit trickier later on in life. I mean, quite frankly, I can't outwork Bill Gates, because Bill Gates is much more efficient than I am. He has a myriad of things and a cumulative advantage that I do not have. So I can work 24 hours a day and still lose. However, when you're starting out, that does work, and it does work relatively well to a point. So for junior and midway, work ethic is something that I would definitely hire for. And I think that 90% of design leaders will take work ethic and someone's ability to take on information and feedback on board as a positive indicator of joining a team.
Now, as you move up and you start to move away from production, what I really care about is, are you going to listen to other people? Are you able to communicate? And if you're able to communicate, are you then able to make good decisions based on the information that you receive? And are you able to put out fires before they start? And are you able to identify some markers of performance going forward that makes it easy for you to do your job and easy for me to do my job.
And if you can take all of those boxes, then as far as I'm concerned, you're a good designer. And I would certainly say that a portfolio is important if you're earlier on in your career than later, because as you move later on into your career, will people realise quite quickly that the way that you speak and the way you interact with the world is much more important. Whereas, if you're junior to mid-weight, you're going to have to prove to someone that you can -- you can create and commit.
And nine out of 10 times the portfolio is -- it's an arbitrary checkbox exercise. It's simply needs to show that you understand what design is and if you can do so in a way that says, you kind of understand the job you were applying for, because that's a problem in itself and you know how to solve that, then I'm fine with that. It doesn't need to be especially aesthetic. It doesn't need to be anything else. All of that can be tweaked and changed. Someone can say, “Reduce the padding on these buttons, space this out there, don't use these colours, don't do that.” It's arbitrary comparatively to someone who can work and learn in the process.
Christian: I've always looked at portfolios, especially for more junior people as -- or I've only said the portfolio is what actually has to get you through the door. It's the interview where you're actually making the impression, because you're talking about hard work, for example. Hard work is difficult to show in a portfolio. How do I show in a portfolio that I'm working hard? However, if I’m front of you at an interview, and we tackle that topic, then that's what I would bring that up. So with that in mind, how do you, how would you split the two -- if you would have to create a portfolio for a junior, what are the things you'd focus on, and then what are the things that you would focus on in the interview process?
Cassius: So for a portfolio for a junior, I’d simply talk to someone about why you did what you did. Okay, so you decided to do this. Why? Okay. For this reason. Okay. What made you think that was a good idea? These things. Okay. And what were the results of doing this? So if you're really junior, you may have only arbitrary projects for show, and that's fine. However, we live in a world where there's no code tools right now, and there's a few things that you could do.
And even honestly, if someone gave me a portfolio and they said, look, “I put together this distributor website, and I wanted to sell sponges, but I didn't really want to build it. So what I did is I went to a market, and I tried to sell sponges using this messaging and everything else. And say, “Okay, that's interesting. So you're testing an MVP. What happened? What did you learn? How would you move forward?” It's not clear-cut. It really is a case of, “Can you show that you understand the process and that you will do, let's say 1% more than another candidate would.” And that really is the seeding deal when you're hiring anyone. And then moving forward is, can you show that you are willing to do that little bit extra?
So in terms of portfolio, how you'd show hard work is, are you -- how different is your portfolio in terms of what have you done that I haven't seen before that shows hard work? What have you done that shows you know some semblance about the job or me? And I'm not -- I mean, this isn't too complicated. For example, you could scrape LinkedIn, you could use Zapier and Google slides to then take all of those tokens and create -- you can have one template presentation. You could use Zapier to then take information from a CSV and update all the name tokens within the presentation. You could send it to me, and it could simply say, “Hey, Cassius, I’m this designer applying for this position.”
And you could have already automated this whole goddamn process. I'll never know. However that's enough that most other candidates wouldn't have done that, and you have my attention. So I'm willing to have a conversation with you. Now in the conversation, what would you have to prove? Well, typically, the conversation is a gauge of how well does someone fit for a role based on their character? And it’s really unfair.
A conversation is a really unfair way to understand how well someone would do at a job because we're really biased. I mean, the human mind is subject to contamination from everything. And then when people say this stuff doesn't matter, it really does. The way someone looks, the way someone sounds, the way someone does XYZ, it all matters. It all makes a difference. And simply because you are not conscious that you’re making decisions based on these arbitrary factors. Well, you kind of are. So someone does have to go out of the way to attempt to be their best self in an interview. And if you feel that you're not getting -- and my honest answer here is if someone feels they're not getting an interview for a very specific reason, then that's probably true. And so you should ask yourself, how do I change this thing to stop it biasing someone else? Obviously, I don't want to get in to a PC argument about XYZ. Honestly, the problem here is that humans are really biased. They're subject to contamination.
Now in that interview, if you want to show someone that you're good at -- that you're willing to work hard and that there's a bar that you need to reach, well, you're going to have to tell me things that form an impression in my mind that you will do those things, or you have done those things, or there's some type of character reference that suggests you would.
Now you might say, I train as a martial artist, I do CrossFit, I spent the last six months learning how to use Framer. I did this; I did this; I did this. Oh, on the weekends I take care of my sick parents. I don't know, but there's something somewhere that has to suggest that actually you are not like everyone else, because you are willing to do these things, and that's interesting for me, and quite frankly, it depends. If you're a junior, I'll take a big risk, because one, you're probably not -- you're going to have to work hard. However, you're easily replaceable, and at the same time, to some extent, as a junior, my expectation of you is lower than probably what I expect you to do anyway. I'm going to want you to reach for the stars, but I'm going to underestimate you slightly, and your job really is to impress me.
Now, if you're mid-weight and the more senior you get, the more I overexpect you to deliver. And so in those situations, it's a completely different paradigm. Saying that I'm going to learn, etc, etc. That’s why being able to read a conversation and understand the flow of information is more important. So for junior and mid-weight, again, there’s probably -- there's a bit of advice I'd give specifically around the portfolio and the interview is show that you in a portfolio do 1% more than someone else would. And then, and as far as the interview goes, simply give me indicators or give someone else indicators that if there's a bar and you're going to reach here, and you're going to go beyond that.
Christian: The reason I love the answer around the portfolio is because you're -- it's a thesis that I really believe in, which is,you can --there are some things you cannot control, so don't worry about those. There are some things you can control, and that's what you want to focus your energy on. And what you're talking about is as a junior, I can't control how much — how many projects I get, or I can't control whether I'm self-taught or educated, but what I can control is the work I put in in creating that portfolio or anything around it.
So I really love that. And I think this is really useful and helpful advice for anyone who's sitting out there wondering, “How do I get myself out there? How do I make people see me?” And I think doing, as you said, 1% more than everyone else does is probably the best way of doing it. So I really love that.
We're running out of time. I just got a couple more questions. The questions that I ask everyone at the end of the show. First one is, what's the one thing you wish more designers would know?
Cassius: That's a good question. And if -- one thing is quite difficult because I'm going to paraphrase it as one thing I wish that designers would know and then one thing I think that the industry wishes that designers would know.
And so the first thing I think that the industry wishes that designers would know is that the way things look is arbitrary. I care about how much revenue you can generate for this project because revenue gives my company energy and that energy I can use to then do, let's say, more good in the world.
So provided that you believe you're working for a company that's generating wealth, which means that they're, let's say, taking money, using it as energy to create physical transformations in the world for the good, then that's fantastic, and that's what companies care about. How can you help me generate wealth?
Now, what I think -- or what I would really like more designers to know is how to learn. And I think that if people would simply understand the, let's say, process of encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and they could simply repeat those loops over and over again. They could do so efficiently. Well, suddenly, you realise the world is not such a scary place, and you realise that actually, if you're concerned about the threat of artificial intelligence or machine learning or anything else, well, design is fundamentally a process and a mindset.
And that can translate anyway if you decide that you want to move away from design and move into finance or anything else is like, those processes would still apply. They wouldn't disappear. There's a reason why most industries have product teams, and there's a reason why design thinking and design, let's say architecture and execution, are becoming much more of a talking point, especially design strategy actually, while I'm on the topic.
So if you know how to learn, well, suddenly you're very dangerous, because you don't necessarily have to fear change. And I feel that that's something that I wish most designers knew. Is that your job is as far as I'm concerned, you're in a privileged position because you can move and transform as you need to, provided you rely on the principles that you help other -- you use for other companies to help transform, if you will.
Christian: Are there any resources, while we're on this topic of helping, that can help people learn how to learn, any books, any podcasts, anything that you've discovered out there?
Cassius: So I was originally taught by Mark Shannon, who was a Grandmaster of memory. And he has a book which is -- I can't pull it out. I’ll link it to you so you can put it in the show notes, but it's incredibly simple. I think it's called The Memory Work Book or something.
And that comes with a series of really simple exercises where you can prime and gauge yourself and how to learn. And it's some of it's really, really trivial as much as learning the phonetic alphabet or learning what, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Sierra, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff. But it allows you to understand the process of that over and over again. And all you have to do is then transform that process into things you actually care about and things that you want to learn. It makes it a bit different. So that is a -- I think it's about $10 and that's a really bloody useful resource.
And I think that if someone started with that and they persevere because quite frankly, it's the new skill and the way that you've thought for the last 25 years or 30 years, it's going to be hard to overwrite and persevere with it, practice with it. There's a task in there a day. That's what originally helped me a lot to improve my skills exponentially, and then I just kept investing resources to improve from there. So that's a very nice starting point.
Christian: Okay. We'll put that in the show notes so everyone can find it. Cassius, last question for you. How do you reckon the future of design as an industry looks like?
Cassius: I feel that the future of designers and industry it's interesting because I don't know if design will be an industry anymore. Because one of the things that we have to bear in mind is that because design is a process and a mindset and a series of, let's say, a series of understanding how to solve problems, it’s a little like saying, “Well, it's critical thinking and industry.” No, it's a soft skill. It's everywhere. It's university applied. So product, I believe, will still exist. I think that one of the things we start to realise quite quickly is that design begin to, let’s say, transition away from simply being an industry, unless, of course, we're relating to design in the most literal kind of sense of graphic design and everything else. That's relatively timeless.
However, I feel that to look at something and say the design industry is – well, if we say design industry, we’re literally talking about producers. We're not talking about design thinkers; we're not talking about design strategists; we're talking about producers.
So I really do feel that if the design industry still exists in 20 years, it will exist in the same way that it exist in 20 years prior, where we're talking about producers. I think design thinking and design strategy and everything which surrounds that will be incredibly commonplace, because there's a really big movement in design education right now. And the ability to democratise design as a process, and companies are switching on to how useful that is, and at the same time, why they should use design as a strategy and as a long-term investment in terms of people people's mindset and performance, rather than simply an arbitrary production function.
Christian: Awesome. This was a learning experience, a learning show for me, and hopefully also for everyone listening. Where can people find out more about you? Where can they find you? Where can they get in touch with you?
Cassius: I mean, they can -- if you go to www.cassiuskiani.com, at some point that will link to more than my LinkedIn profile, go to a website or something else, because I have a few interesting projects in the work, specifically around learning that I'd like to share with people. I've just finished doing a set of them user interviews, and I'm running a short beta test in the next – in the coming weeks. So I'd suggest that anyone who wants to keep up with me, by all means, just go to www.cassiuskiani.com and if it's LinkedIn feel free to connect and if it's anything else, then let's see what the future holds.
Christian: Cool. We're going to put all of these in the show notes so people can easily find you.
Thank you so much for being part of Design Meets Business. Really appreciate you. This has been very inspirational for me and again, hopefully, for everyone else listening. Thank you so much one more time, and hopefully we’ll catch up soon.
Cassius: Privilege. Thank you very much.
Christian: That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
I talk to Rick about his hustle of becoming a designer, how to deal with tricky client situations, and what are the steps to becoming a successful freelancer.
Connect with Rick
Website, LinkedIn, Medium
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business – a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host, Christian Vasile, and on this podcast I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Today we're talking to Rick Veronese. Rick is an Italian designer based in the UK, from where he runs a small design shop focusing on FinTech and PropTech companies. In this episode he is sharing with us the hustle of becoming a designer, what's important when going freelancing, and how he deals with clients in difficult situations.
Rick, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. It's really a pleasure to have you here. You're working today as a freelancer, just like I am, and you're trying to nail down that FinTech niche. So we'll be talking about that a bit later because I think that's really interesting, but first, before we go into all that design talk, tell me a bit about yourself, how did you end up in the UK, right, because you're from Italy, and if you remember, I love asking this question, what's the moment that made you want to become a designer?
Rick: Right. Okay. So there's a bit to unpack, because obviously when you move countries, as you know, there's a lot of things that you need to learn. And the naive me about maybe six or seven years ago thought that starting a new career in design and moving to a new country at the same time would be a great idea; without knowing the language or anything, so I moved here in the UK. I'm in Bristol currently, from Italy, about six years ago. And I got into design by chance, to be honest with you. It's not a romantic story or anything. I started Googling jobs that I could do online. You know one of those top 10 lists blog posts.
Christian: Yes
Rick: Yes. That's exactly how it happened. And I thought -- well, I think I consider myself a creative person, so I'm going to give it a go, and that's it. That's how I fell in love with it, to be honest. I spent nights on trying to learn graphic design at the beginning and then web design and coding and things like that. And that's when I decided to get serious with it. But at the time I couldn't find a job in Italy. I wasn't trusting that I would find a job.
So I moved to the UK with my then-girlfriend and now wife. That's basically how I started my career – by making websites online, so just as a web designer, and after a couple of years I wasn't happy with that anymore. I decided to specialise and become a UX designer, because that was the boom like a few years ago. That’s when everyone was becoming a UX designer. People that have been -- that were doing it for years were like, “Oh, now you're waking up?”
Christian: Yes, welcome to the party.
Rick: Exactly, exactly. That's how I started, and I found a full-time job as a designer, which was quite a big step for me because having taught myself design from my bedroom back in Italy, going to work in a different country, in a language that wasn’t mine. So it wasn't that comfortable in expressing concepts and things like that. That was a big step.
So when that started, everything changed in terms of how my career evolved. The plan was always to get into the industry, if you will, work for companies for a few years, and then eventually set out on my own and just do my own thing. And that's pretty much what brings us here today.
I've been at it at full time for some time. I realised I wasn't really jiving with company politics and things like that. I decided to scale down in a way. I used to work for a big company in the UK. I decided to scale down and work for startups closely with the CEO and the CTO and the founding team. And from that, that was just what jump-started my freelance career a few months ago.
Christian: Nice. That's a a good, good background story. I love the fact that you just looked at the list and just picked one thing from the list and that’s how you started.
Rick: It's random, right?
Christian: So random, but I guess it turned out for the best, didn’t it? Let's stay on that topic a bit, because I wanted to talk to you about education – design education. Some people have a degree in Design, and they've used that as a catalyst for their careers.
Some other people have a degree in Design, and they haven't really used that at all; like me, for example. I used to do work before getting my degree. So the degree was more of a checklist exercise for me. And there are -- there's the third type of people like you, who don't have a degree, yet somehow are still successful in the industry.
So there must be a lot of steps in between deciding to become a designer and where you are today in terms of learning. So let's talk a bit about how you got here from a learning perspective. What -- where did you learn? Was it all online? Did you do any courses or anything; reading articles and Medium? Or how did you do this? How did you get here?
Rick: Yes, that's a great question. I think for you, for example, that you have a degree, the path is completely different in a way, because that's what you're studying and what you're going to do. And sometimes not even that, sometimes I reckon people finish Design school and decide that maybe it's not for them. They’re going to do it something different.
Christian: Totally. Yes.
Rick: But for me, yes, it was a lot what you said, to be honest. A lot of online courses. So I would work a few months to try to get a client and then whatever money I would get from that would use it to buy a new course, some books about design or anything that would interest me basically and I saw would upgrade me as a designer and as a professional in general, I would invest in. So I think that makes a difference. So it has to be self-initiated in a way. You need to be really aware that you need to work harder than maybe the people that had degrees. And you need to have that kind of discipline -- to just have work ethic to be able to bridge that gap.
Christian: Your story is all about hustling, I guess. And I love that, because a lot of people starting in Design don't necessarily, or didn't necessarily have to hustle the way you did. So I guess what's happening when you start the way you did is that you are so committed to it, because you need the next client to buy the next course, and then you buy the next course, and you upgrade your skills, and then you move on, you need the next client again. So it's a big commitment to say, “Well, I'm going to spend so much money on a course." That probably forces you to -- or motivates you to stick to that path. Right?
Rick: Exactly. And the way you said it is right, but I also think that you say you invest in a course. I actually see as an investment in myself. So it's a change of perspective. If I'm investing in myself, I'm going to spend whatever money. I don't care. If it results in me improved by whatever, it's going to be a good investment. It doesn't matter how much it is or how I'm going to get the money. I mean in legal ways, obviously.
Christian: Sure. Yes, but it's worth it. It's worth investing in yourself like that. I love it. The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I think Design is becoming more and more of a cool job to have.
So a lot of people grow up thinking they want to do something creative, but don't believe in the classical path of going to school. And then they have a lot of questions of how do I go from where I am right now become a designer that's worth hiring or to be able to provide some value to my clients.
Hopefully, your story will be a bit of an inspiration, because that is how you start. You do one course, you get better. You do another one, you get better. You maybe get a client where you get to apply some of this knowledge, you get better. At every single step, you get better. It's like karate kid polishing the windows, just doing the work.
Rick: That’s such a great example.
Christian: I love that. I love that. So you've been in-house for a little bit. You said earlier you got tired of it. And then you moved into freelancing. What made you go into freelancing other than the fact that maybe you were not really feeling it that much in-house?
Rick: That was always the plan. So the plan was to be a freelance web designer. I was liking the idea of being successful, but I wasn't at the time, I was just trying to make ends meet, and I was working in retail. So it's not like I went full-on with web design and was so talented that I would get clients every week.
So it was a bit -- it was a struggle, don't get me wrong. I think I needed to go through it to understand what I needed to do. So struggle is great, but I think that the way it happened is I worked full time, so I really like the vibe, the environment. Actually, I was working in a great company. I liked the people it was working with. I like the projects and things like that. Everything was new, and everything was exciting. Then eventually we got bought out, and I don't want to get too much into the details, but there's a shift in culture sometimes when companies get acquired and this new team has different ways of working and things like that.
And I experienced that, and I didn't like it, because everything before was just really great to be working with them. It was just a good team and then eventually it got into the politics and the way it ended, I didn’t really like that vibe. So I decided to transition eventually to a position that will be more of -- just like a connector, if you will, between the founding team in small startups. That's pretty much how it started.
Christian: Going freelance is a risk, isn't it? So not only that. Going freelance in itself is a risk, but isn't going even deeper down in a niche even more of a risk? Because that's what you've done, right? You've niched down on FinTech.
Rick: Yes, I did. Yes, it's a risk. It's a risk like -- what in life isn't a risk, to be honest with you. I’ve got that kind of mentality. So I'm pretty prone to risk, which I appreciate not everyone is, but at the same time -- so, going in phases, freelancing is a risk, yes, but over time, if you're smart with your money and don't spend everything on takeaways every day of the week, you can set aside some money… some emergency fund to kind of use for those days where you maybe decide to go independent and try something new.
And then yes, obviously niching down is a risk at face value, but I don't think it actually is. It's a way to -- it's like saying being a designer -- let's just put the same example, being a designer is a risk, but if you specialise in, say, user research, or if you're a great interaction designer, you're not going to be able to find as much work, but actually, people do appreciate expertise and knowledge and authority. So, yes, it's a risk, but it's really not. It's a way of focusing. Niching down is focusing on one thing and trying to be really good at it.
Christian: Yes, and I think a lot of clients actually appreciate that. I'm trying to think about myself sometimes when I need to hire some people to do a very specific work for me; what I'm actually looking for is someone who's done that work before. I am looking for someone who understands exactly what I need and someone who can prove to me and show to me that he or she has done that exact type of work before. So it's a bit similar, isn't it? That's what clients are looking for as well when they want to hire a designer.
Rick: Absolutely. And that's what I do as well, what you just said. If I need to subcontract some work or anything like that, I need to be really specific with my instructions, of course, but I'm looking for someone that really knows what I'm talking about. I’m looking for the person that asks the right questions. And I know that's the right person, because I've experienced it before.
Christian: Okay. You’ve gone down a niche. There are many niches to choose from… what attracted you to FinTech?
Rick: Well, first and foremost, I think the main thing about is for simplicity – the transition between working in financial services and PropTech made it simple for me to just kind of sit down and say, “Okay, well, what did I work on? What do I have knowledge of? What kind of industry do I know the most so far in my life?” And that was it. So that's quite clear cut decision, pretty simple.
On the other side of things, I like to think about “the why” of things, so why did I want to work in FinTech and on a more philosophical level? I like helping people. I liked the idea of improving people's lives through improving their finances, but I'm not a financial coach or anything like that, nor I'm close to being able to do something like that. But what's the best way to do that, because I've got really interested in finance and things like that on personal finance. So I decided to expand that to my work life as well, in a way. So on that level I would like to help people improve their education and financial literacy and things like that.
Christian: So it sounds like it was a bit of a natural choice for you with what you enjoy doing and what you're good at. Right?
Rick: It made sense. Yes.
Christian: Yes. So for how long have you been trying to niche down FinTech right now?
Rick: Yes. So in the last -- let's say I went freelance in November last year. I started working in FinTech like I started -- I decided to work in FinTech maybe after three months or so.
Christian: So would you say that right now, you have a much better understanding of what your type of client is struggling with, or are you still learning?
Rick: Yes, both, to be honest. After a little bit of time I do understand the problems of potential clients, but there's so many different facets. There's so many ways you can go about it that I'm still trying to understand what they're looking for, what they struggle with.
Christian: Yes. Considering you've worked in-house and now you've had some experience as a designer on the freelance side, are there any differences in how designers in these two different situations tackle design or anything that you can highlight from your experience?
Rick: Yes, so I think -- So, obviously it's very different, but there are similarities in the way that – the way you need to organise your work, the way you need to think about different people in the company. A good designer, as I said earlier, I think it's a connector between the different parts of the business. I think that the void is similar is that you need to -- well, it's actually the same thing.
You need to deal with people, maybe at a different capacity when you're in a company. The way you need to know your audience is the same for when you're freelance or when you're in-house, because you need to know who you're speaking to and what they want from you. And you need to decipher that sometimes because people are not really that great at communicating in general. So you need to understand what they're trying to get from you, and you do that both with the client and with your stakeholder. You do that with your project manager, other designers in your team. Communication is a common theme.
Christian: So let's stay on that communication path, because this is something that to me became apparent when I went and started freelancing myself – that the type of communication you need to be good at when you work in-house is slightly different than the type of communication that you need to be good at when you go freelancing.
The reason I want to talk about this is because there's a tendency nowadays to think that if you're good at your craft, if you're a great designer, that's enough to become a freelancer or a business owner. Because as a freelancer, you're nothing else other than a business owner. So what is actually necessary for you to be able to become a successful freelancer?
Rick: Okay. That's a really good question. Personally, I think the way that someone can be a successful freelancer, to be honest, is a change, a shift in the mindset in the way that you really need to wear many different hats when you're a designer, especially if you're a product designer. And in the most modern concept of it, you need to do everything basically.
I think that what makes a difference is being an entrepreneur, instead of trying to be just a designer. You need to take care of the marketing. when you're freelancing, you need to take care of sales. There's many parts of it that they don't teach you in design school. Even if -- they think they're going to -- I didn't go to design school, don't get me wrong. But that's what I heard from most of the designers I spoke to that went to design school. And I don't know if you can relate to it, but basically what they do is they don't really teach you about real life. They teach you a set of skills, and then when you get out of it, you need to figure out how to be a person as well. So it's kind of tricky.
So I think in the same -- in a similar way, when you're a designer in-house, you’re kind of in a bubble -- in the bubble in that industry maybe, or that type of product you're working on. When you get out of it and start to work with different people from different backgrounds and having to do all of that workload to get clients and understand how to manage relationships and things like that. And that's the main thing about it, really, trying to learn more skills that are outside of Design. So you're not just a designer anymore, you're a business owner, you're an entrepreneur. So that's pretty important.
Christian: So you're great at design, but you said sales, you've said communication, probably accounting is another one. What I want to highlight is that going freelancing is not as easy as just saying, “I'm going to sign up to Upwork, or I'm going to get a few freelance gigs online.”
It's so much more complicated. And I want to talk a bit about what's required from you as a designer who, let's say, is already good at design and I want to go and become a freelancer today. I've quit my job. I have three weeks’ notice, and I want to go freelance afterwards. Considering there are so many hats you need to wear, where do you start from?
Rick: That's a great question. I think, obviously, the more generic trial and error. If I were to go back, for example, I would -- actually, what I did was I sat down and wrote down what I wanted to get out of my freelance career, if you will, but out of my life in general, and then I would try to fit things around it. So I want to become a business owner, but I'm a designer, so I'll go use my design skills to do that.
And so think about the transferable skills that you already have, which are plenty if you're a designer, and try to get some perspective on, “Okay, I know I maybe don't like sales as much, but I'm going to try. What can I learn, the minimum I can learn to be efficient at it? I don't like marketing, maybe, I don't like writing content. What's the bare minimum I can do? So start with small steps and then make a plan for it and try and ask someone that's more experienced than you. Once you have that, go and ask them, what do you think about this? Maybe be more specific than that. There's nothing worse than someone just asking you a really generic question “Ehm, I want to be really successful, how do I do it?”. Well, what do you want to do? What are you doing right now?
Try to ask for help, be open about your journey, and try to figure out from the get-go where you're trying to go. Then it's going to be valleys and peaks from there. It's always going to be a ride that you're going to find struggle, you’re going to find success, and it's all a balance at the end of the day.
Christian: Truer words have never been spoken. I think another thing that I would add as an answer to my other question is something that I recommend people to do is actually to have a runway. If you have a job in-house, put some money to the side before you become a freelancer, because when you don't have the pressure of having to think of where the next paycheck is going to come from, because you already have an amount of savings, you can actually take your time to build your business the right way. Because that's what it is. Being a freelancer is a business. You are building a business; a one-man business, but that’ss still a business.
So I always say, if you don't have six months to one year of runway in which you can potentially get no work at all and still survive, then I think it's not a good idea to become a freelancer, because there's going to be too much pressure for you. And when there's too much pressure you will make some mistakes that normally you wouldn't make if you wouldn't be under pressure, like for example, underpricing yourself or ignoring important aspects of running your business like sales and lead generation and all that, because you're spending all your time to try to find work.All these other aspects are important. And having a runway allows you to attack all of them in the right way, instead of being pressured all the time about where the next work is coming from. So that's -- on top of what you said, I think having a runway is also super important.
And another example that I have is a lot of people start their careers by being freelancers. That's how I started. And looking back… I haven't during those years learn as much as I would have if I worked together with other people. I just don't think it's a good idea to become a freelancer when you're in the beginning of your career, because you're going to learn the most when you're working around other people. And if you're starting by working on your own, how are you going to learn?
Rick: Yes, that's such a great example. I think because we share that path, starting off as a freelancer. Initially I was a web design freelancer. I think what made the most difference and really what kickstarted my career was to find a job, a full-time job, and work in a design team and exchange ideas and confront your style of working with other people and trying to adjust and adapt to other people's needs as well. Because you're doing it with clients, but when it's -- it feels like sometimes you're on a different team than your clients, but when you work in a company you're in the same team, and you're working towards a common goal.
And I think, yes, it's super important to have those people around. And to be honest with you just by seeing better designers, when I started working full time -- just by seeing how much better than me they were, it gave me a huge motivation to improve myself and get to their level. But not from an envy standpoint, more like inspirational standpoint, say “Okay, so that's what's possible, I'm going to try and do that and maybe get even better.”
Christian: Yes, and I think another reason you want to start like this is because by learning from other people and spending time around people who are better than you, you're actually becoming more confident in your craft as well. And I think that confidence is super important when you go and freelance and have to deal directly with the client.
So let's talk a bit about dealing with the client and situations that you and I and every other freelancer has had many times in their careers. So I have a couple of examples here. I just want to know how would you deal or how do you deal when this happens to you, because I'm sure it has and I'm sure it will continue to happen. So you might have a potential client coming to you and in a way trying to downplay a little bit the work he needs done by just saying, “Hey Rick, I have this project. I just need you to design 10 screens for me. That's all, just 10 screens. How much will it cost me?”
And I think behind that, if you've got experience, you know there's a lot going on. It's not just about the way they're asking you to design those 10 screens, but by saying -- by using the word screens, by downplaying the amount of work it goes behind, in a way they're subconsciously maybe saying that your work is actually not that hard. But we all know that design is much more than just what's on the surface. It's much more than just visual design. There's all that hard work behind.
So how do you take a client from saying that to you to actually educating them and explaining to them that those 10 screens are actually much more than just 10 screens?
Rick: Yes. Good one. That's a good one. I don't know if that happened to you actually recently, but it's something that still happens sometimes. The way I go about it is… it depends, there are many variables. Do I feel like I want to educate this client right now? Have they reached out to me just with that, opening with that, or they're trying to start some kind of conversation? So it depends. Do I have work at the time?
Usually I would say -- so if I'm busy, I would direct them to maybe someone else. If I'm not busy and I do feel like maybe it could be an interesting project, there’s potential there; I actually flip the question. Not even flip the question, because that's more of a command. I need this, tell me how much do you want to get it done or how long is it going to take? Which is, yes… don’t need to take that personal. It's just what they think Design is. So I flip the question and just as maybe how -- you need to be some -- some way do you need to be challenging, I think, with your clients.
So you need to challenge them. And if we get on a call, let's assume that I'm on a call with this person, I would just try to ask, “Why is it 20 screens? What are we talking about?” Trying to get a bit of context. I don't really jump to, “Okay, well, what do you need to get done?” and trying to get instructions from that. If you come to me you need to understand that I'm a professional, so I'm going to look at what you just told me in a different way than you are. I'm going to have --- I have to look at the details, the specifics, trying to understand the context a little bit more.
So I do this on the phone with a client potentially, and just ask them, I try to turn the conversation around and ask the questions myself, instead of being asked something. So I'm trying to understand the context a bit more and what they're trying to do, and if they have an actual problem I can help them solve. Because otherwise, they can go into -- I had someone going through a whole sales pitch the other day of their company with slides and everything. And it's not the same as starting a conversation around design… there needs to be context before you start a call.
So it's really important to qualify the client. Before they actually ask something like that, you just turn the conversation around and say, “Okay, let's jump on a call and do it that way.” That's quite the way I do it. If you want to do in writing, it's going to take a little longer, but try to understand what they need to get done from your perspective, instead of just taking that at face value.
Christian: Do you think this happens because there's a misconception of what a designer is and does?
Rick: Yes. And to be honest with you, it's both our fault, in a way, or the way the industry has evolved or not evolved, in many ways. And I think, it's also -- I think let’s start from that, to be honest, because if you’re really clear about what you do, what a designer is and what kind of designer you are -- because if you're fine with say, there's nothing wrong with being a logo designer on Fiverr; nothing wrong with that. But you decided to do that, so you know how it works. And you can also be really good at it at one point, but that's where the price starts to become more evident as it's going to be on the higher side and people are going to -- you only get people with that budget contacting you. You're not going to get the people that say… they really know how that works most times when they are willing to spend that much on logos or things like that.
Christian: Talking about budgets, one of the things that I've learned is that clients who are willing to pay more are actually the good ones. You would think that the clients who are willing to pay more would be more difficult to work with because they've paid more. But actually it's the other way around. It's the clients who only have £2,000 to spend that are really difficult to work with because one, maybe they don't necessarily value what you do, so they think that's all your work is worth.
Maybe the work is not that important to them, so they think, “Well, I'm willing to spend just that because I actually don't care about this.” But maybe it's also a matter of when you only have a little money to spend, you’re much more likely to want to be part of the process, just to make sure that whatever's happening there happens the way you imagined it to happen.
While sometimes, you get a client who's willing to pay much more money for the same type of project, and they don't bother you. And you don't hear from them unless you call them or you take initiative. And to me, that was a bit shocking because I always thought it would have been the other way around.
Rick: Yes, it's an interesting observation. I think that there's something about being on a budget that puts you in a scarcity mindset in a way. That's the little money you have left sometimes. People tend to get really close to it, attached to it, and they think that if they control what happens with you, I don't know, maybe they're going to get a better bang for their buck or whatever. But it's actually… when you let someone do their work without figuratively putting a gun to their head and keep pressing them with questions and trying to understand it, it's going to be a much better result.
The people that are willing to pay more are usually those that don't do that. They just say, “Do your thing.” When they say do your thing you need to ask questions. You can't just let someone say, “Do your thing," but they're usually more chilled.
Christian: Yes. And I guess they know that by paying so much, they're working with a professional. I think this happens subconsciously. If someone is charging you a lot of money, you're going to think, “ Oh, it must be someone who is good at their job”. I guess it's not very different than driving a Honda versus driving a Mercedes. The moment you pay for a Mercedes you know, and you have a higher expectation, that although it takes you from A to Z exactly the same, you have different expectation of it, because it was so much more expensive than the competitors. So maybe it's the same.
Rick: Yes, I think it's a good analogy.
Christian: How do you market yourself? You're a freelancer; nobody does marketing for you. You need to do the work, and you also need to find the work as a freelancer. That's yet another challenge of going on your own. So what do you do?
Rick: So, okay. It's different points, but to be honest with you, it's all around trying to keep things simple and connected in a way. And I'm going to explain your why. So I like writing, that's something I discovered a few years into my design career. I like writing as much as I like designing, to be honest. And what I know, what I understood about marketing is that if you put yourself out there in a way that you're comfortable with – so you have your voice, you have your way of doing things – your clients can see that you're really transparent, can see your personal brand. They can see how good you are at what you do because you put passion in it.
So the way I linked the things was “I like writing, so I'm going to write a few blog posts, put them out there.” They initially were for designers and for my own audience, because that felt comfortable. And then I decided to focus on LinkedIn. So the way I get clients at the moment is all through LinkedIn. And I write the daily posts on UX, and whatever comes to mind that’s relevant to my niche, and that's basically how I market myself. That's all I do.
Christian: Here's the thing about that. When you do what you do, and you do it well, and you do it over a specific period of time, what you're actually doing in front of your customers is that you're proving your expertise. So two years down the line, when Michael from X company realises he needs a designer, because he suddenly has a project, but he knows no designer at all, what he will remember is that this designer on LinkedIn once wrote a post that really landed with him. And he's going to get in touch. So that's inbound marketing. That's just creating content that is useful for your customers without necessarily expecting anything in return. And if you do that and if you do it well, it's going to pay off sooner or later.
Rick: Yes. That's exactly -- funny enough, I got a message this morning about a post I published three months ago, which is hard to find on LinkedIn; you need to scroll through someone’s feed for a while – and from the CEO of the company and mentioned in that post. So it's amazing, I think; after three months this person wants to talk to me, and that's how it works. On a longer-term I think it's the best way to go about it.
Christian: I think marketing has changed a lot. It's gone from that world where it was all about outbound and you putting your name out there and paying for ads and being on TV or the Superbowl ad or whatever it was depending on your size of company. And it's going from that to everyone in the world being bombarded with advertising. It's kind of like that banner blindness we have on the web, and nobody's paying attention to any ads anymore, but what people are paying attention to is individuals or businesses who are trying to help. And that's the new type of marketing.
So I think for anyone who wants to start in freelancing, that's a good avenue. And it doesn't have to be only articles. Look, I don't write as much. I actually do a lot of videos, because I'm comfortable on camera and I love it. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It doesn't have to be either one of them. It has to be whatever you're comfortable with. Some people are comfortable writing. Some are comfortable talking in a microphone, then you go podcasting. Some people are comfortable writing short content, then you go on Twitter or LinkedIn.
So it's all about figuring out what you're comfortable with and then helping your audience that way. And the way you help them is by understanding what their needs are. And this circles back to what we were discussing earlier about your niche. You niched down – what that is making you is an expert in understanding what FinTech customers are struggling with. So now you can create content to help them. So that's that circle of marketing for a freelancer.
Rick: You described it absolutely amazingly. So that's exactly what's happening there. And to what you said, you’re into video, you like video, as long as you share what you know, even if it's little, as long as you've shared that and make your own opinion about it, I think that's really the most simple level. That's what it is. Writing or doing videos is just sharing knowledge and your struggles as well. I think it's just sharing the journey and just being you, just putting you in that content. Whatever you're creating is going to make a difference for the people that read it, because they're going to relate to something. So if you're a person that swears a lot, don't hide it.
Christian: Gary Vaynerchuk, right?
Rick: That’s exactly what I was thinking.So just be you and be unapologetic about being you. Not everyone is going to be the right fit for you, and you're not going to be the right fit for everyone.
Christian: I love that. I think that is a point that we haven't covered yet. When you create all this content to help other people, 100% there will be people who either don't agree with you, don't like the way you said it, don't like what you said, and it's important to take that with a pinch of salt. So I love you brought that up. That's super important.
When you get a client on a call, a potential client on a call, howdo you qualify that person, and how do you -- are there any red flags that you know automatically, “Oh this is going to be a problematic client”?
Rick: Yes, like sometimes it's just a gut feeling. Let's be honest; you don't have to -- like I just said, you don't have to be liked by anyone, you don't have to like anyone. So sometimes it's just a matter of not getting the vibe from the call. I'm a quite open person, I like chatting a little bit, and some people are more like to the point, no jokes, that's what we need to talk about. So sometimes you're not going to jive with that. Sometimes you just realise it was just a clash of personality, maybe.
But in terms of qualifying, yes, I'm quite clear at this point of what problems I can solve with what I do. So I just try to understand if there is a problem that I can help with. And I try to do that quite quickly. And I like to get on calls, even if it's short ones, just to ask a few questions to see if there's a fit on that perspective. And sometimes, yes, I just ask a few questions. It's a very consultancy like approach, where you ask -- if you ask a consultant, they try to understand what the problem is, the current situation, the desired situation, and you're the person that bridges that gap. So those are usually structured in a way that will get me to understand if I can help, and if I do, then we can move into more interesting things to talk about.
Christian: Amazing. Rick, we're nearing the end. I have two more questions. Everyone who's on the show gets asked this. So the first one is what's one thing you wish more designers would know?
Rick: I wish more designers -- Well, I'll speak for myself. I wish I knew more about human sciences and psychology, and that's a topic that fascinates me a lot, and I wish more designers were interested in it, because I think there's a lot of potential in knowing more about that for our profession.
Christian: Awesome. And last one, how do you reckon the future of design looks like?
Rick: I think it's going to be like a sci-fi movie where designers collaborate with scientists to create the best interfaces for retina displays in a way that it's in your retina, it’s not on a device. Something like something that, it could get creepy quite quickly.
Christian: It's Black Mirror. It's very Black Mirror-like.
Rick: More positive. It's just like it's meant to be working with humans. I see what Elon Musk is doing, so.
Christian: Okay. Well, eventually, let's say -- let's see if that's within our lifetime. We'll see. Rick, thank you so much for being part of the show. Where can people find you, get in touch with you, read your stuff?
Rick: I haven't been active on Medium as of late, but I'm on Medium, and on LinkedIn, it's just Rick Veronese, and you can find me there and, just follow, connect. I'm happy to connect, and hopefully, I'm putting out out something useful for people.
Christian: We're going to put all of this in the show notes so people can easily find you. Rick, once again, thank you so much for being a part of the first season of Design Meets Business. It's been a pleasure to have you here, and hopefully we'll chat again soon.
Rick: Likewise, Christian, thank you so much for having me.
Christian: Cheers, buddy. Thank you.
All right, so that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful. And if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing.
And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Rafa and I talk about the blind spots of design education, what's the first thing he does when he takes on a new client, and how design is thought of in different organisations and sectors.
Connect with RafaLinkedIn,Website
Selected links from the episodeYour Digital Rights
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Today, we're talking to Rafa Prada, a London based product designer, and college lecturer. We're discussing the blind spots of design education, what's the first thing he does when he takes on a new client, and how design is thought of in different organisations and sectors.
Rafa, thank you so much for joining the Design Meets Business podcast. Just to let everyone know, you and I used to work together at British Gas more than a year ago, although we were in a different team. So while we didn't get to work with each other directly, the fact that you were one of the most talented people in there was never a secret. It was very much out there. So we'll get into what's your secret sauce today. And before that, like in any other episode, I want to give everyone an understanding of what's your story and where you're coming from, and what made would you want to become a designer? All that good stuff.
Rafa: Yes, absolutely. Thanks. Thanks, man. Thanks for inviting me here. It's been a pleasure. Well, and again, the thing you say, we have a really good team at British Gas, and I think that we can talk a lot about all the stuff that happens there, but the way to get to that point, I'm coming from a small city in Spain. A lot of people know about it. It's called Seville, Sevilla, and I studied fine arts, and that was kind of a way to get into proper stages of curiosity. I do believe that the same is all about being curious and try to understand well, and then try and bring a solution into the table very well.
So then naturally kind of very slowly, kind of moved towards the place that I am now. I run my own company, and I'm doing consultancy for big firms, but they try always to get into the more collaboratively spaces if that's the case. So I guess that talking about those collaborations and that collaborative space. It’s quite -- it's way a good thing to do in there.
Christian: So looking a bit over your background, you've said yourself, you have a background in arts, but someone told me you also have a background in coding and that is a very interesting combination. Usually, you're very creative, or you're very logical. You have a bit of both. Tell us a bit about that. How did you get into coding when your background was in arts?
Rafa: So, yes, that’s something that I question myself as well sometimes. Like is the something. I can think of the same way, like, “How does that even happen?” And the only kind of answer I could get to that is that basically when you’re an artist -- when you train as an artist, and you create things, you create objects, you have your paintings, you create drawings, you create sculptures, then you have this feeling of ending. You're going to have to complete something and then set it int he wild. Then when you started to do things more related to design, which are more -- I would say that when you're talking about design, it's like way more inclusive. When you're an artist, you produce something; you give it to someone that will buy it or not buy. When you do the same, you design for people or for businesses. So you design for a reason.
So it gets to a point where being a designer, we will always create bridges. So I will do design, but then maybe someone is going to print. I would do a design that someone is going to then make into a website. And that was a bit of a thing that I was missing. I need to understand how things are made in order to make them properly. And that's how I slowly kind of got into code and made sure I understand why -- and this is talking about -- we're talking like six or ten years ago. We were still having conversation about responsive design. “Oh my God, why is these things from 50 pixels to 1%? What is this?” Those are the kind of the learning points, I guess, that gets you into coding. And I've been kind of growing from that.
Christian: So where was the point where you said, “Okay, enough is enough. Now let's focus more on design and bridging that gap between businesses and customers and being that pivot point in the middle that acts to, I guess, please everyone's needs.
Rafa: Yes. So, I have a personal kind of opinion, that critical thinking is very important. And critical thinking is not really something that people get trained of or maybe kind of being taught in schools or any of that stuff. So there's something that's inside of you. You’re either a critical thinker, or you grow into critically look into those things. With this, I mean that at some point you work and you do design based on -- someone will tell you to do thing or a creative director will tell you what to do. You kind of -- you need more answers. You need to make sure in order to make something that is useful for the user, you need to understand what's happening. You need to understand what’s happening.
That's how you use kind of slowly say, “Look, listen, there is no way that a successful piece, it could be called a product., it could be called a service, there’s no way that this will be successful if someone gathers the information, passed it to someone, then that information goes to me, then on that information I make mock-up and pass it to the developer, and then we go on. That needs to be much more fluid. It needs to be much more connected because otherwise, there obviously the Chinese. How they call it in English? The Chinese phone?
Christian: The Chinese whispers.
Rafa: The Chinese whispers. And then you always lose information on the line, and people make decisions down the line, which might not be a decision based on what's the necessary thing for the end product basically.
Christian: So how do you bridge that gap? You join a company, and maybe they don't have these processes in place. Maybe they do a lot of Chinese whispers. Maybe you're the first designer. Where do you start from?
Rafa: It's interesting because I recently joined another company. Well, one of my clients, and there's pretty much that, what's happened. We’re talking about a situation where you get onboarded into a company in the middle of a pandemic. I know that you, Christian, you talk a lot about distributed teams and remote work, so it's very similar. It's just that now it feels more real for some people. For people feel like, “Oh, I cannot go to the office, so we need to introduce this person.”
So when I get to places like the one that you describe, I'll -- things that I do is just basically talk to everyone. I spend the first month just talking to everyone. Everyone needs to know there’s someone new here and make very clear that what I'm doing here is help everyone. That we’re in this together and try to bridge that somehow. You go, and then you say, “Well, I'm going to talk to my direct team.” But this team needs to talk to the stakeholders. And the stakeholders have their own teams, and the bubble kind of grows, grows, grows.
So you can spend basically the whole first month trying to make sure that people understand what you do. Why are you there? What is your purpose? What is your role? And then you understand theirs as well, because that’s very important. Sometimes you get to places where I want to do -- as a designer, I need to create this particular thing, which could be a piece of content, or it could be a particular feature. And I've got my specific needs, which is basically make sure that it's very user-focused, it’s very user-centric, or is kind of good for the business. It's important for the business. But then you talk to a project manager, and then you realise that maybe they have another set of needs.
They may have a bonus, and that bonus is based on a particular outcome. So how could we bridge this? This is important for that person. Like how can we make it that it’s good to work for everyone, really. And this, trying to kind of uncover all those needs, those kinds of unique needs. I feel that a lot of times it takes long. So it's normally not something that you could flip in a week or two, because you need to get trust. You need to gain trust with everyone, and that's really tough.
Christian: Building trust takes a lot of time; you're right. And it takes even more time when you're trying to build it as this outsider that comes into a company. Nobody knows you; nobody knows who you are, and you're trying to build trust. So what are some tips there? How do you approach those conversations? Whether it's a developer, whether it’s a project manager, whether it's someone that’s underneath or above you, how do you approach those conversations on your day four or day 21?
Rafa: I mean, if it was in a kind of a physical space, I just kind of go and talk to the people. I just don't -- I'm shameless on that end. So just go and talk to people really. But honestly, what I normally do is this being very humble. So it seems like I know nothing and I need to know about this company. And it happens to me, I do believe in people, and people are generally generous when they go to work, because they know that someone is new and they come in with a particular purpose. Normally, your line manager or someone that's above you, could be like I don’t know the VP or something, might do a little bit of an intro to the team, but those have of kind of generic interests.
What I normally do is send very polite emails saying, “Hey, I do this. I'm now new in the company. Now we're working in different things, but I really need to have your input and understand what is where you're working on.” Basically, just try to listen to what the people are working on. And that opens up this kind of very candid conversations where they tell you about stuff, what’s their priorities, or even if they don't send you the directly what's their priority, they will tell you -- the first thing that they tell you is normally what's most important for them. And so that's always going to be a good start.
Christian: So you've joined now a bigger company where it's maybe as a freelancer, as a vendor, they're not expecting you to deliver the first minute. They probably understand the fact that you need to take your time and do this the right way, but say you're joining a startup tomorrow, and you know very well in startups, people are running fast. Would you use the same approach in a startup to say, “Look, I know we're all running, but I need to take two weeks to talk to everyone, or would you try to balance the two together in a company where you're expected to deliver fast?”
Rafa: So, that's a very good question actually, because I did almost -- so just before this company, I was almost jumping into another startup, and that's something that I was thinking about. What would I do? The particular project that they had was a new product, a completely new product, but they have quite fragmented interfaces and quite fragmented pieces of work. And they -- I felt that they didn't know exactly what were the next steps for them.
So I guess that the point is when you join a startup, and they know that they needed specifically this, you need to deliver. You need to deliver quickly. I’ve every client what they want and what they need, and it makes sense, you need to deliver on that. Now there’s always some kind of a balance, because sometimes you need to push back and some areas where you say, “Look, guys, this is not adding value to anyone.” It will be case by case, really. But if that particular startup has done their homework and they've got those needs, cool. We just need to understand that one.
So it's a bit of a complicated question, because I also believe that short engagements are very tricky. Like short engagements are very, very tricky. They will be hired as -- almost like someone that will turn around something very quickly without context and again, that goes back to the beginning of the problem that they told you when there was -- when that kind of breakthrough, this way of working. I think it's really hard to turn up things very quickly. I don’t know… you have some experience doing bits like that. I don't know what do you think about it?
Christian: Yes, for me, it's a balance. So whenever you join a company for longer, I agree with you; you do need to spend the first week doing that, talking to everyone else, making your face visible, making everyone know your name, and also talking to them about what you do there and how you can help them.
Sometimes you're going into a six-week engagement where you need to design a whole new product in six weeks. That is, you're really up against it. So in that case, I think as a matter of how much of these discussions I can have with people without damaging the chances of me delivering on time. And it depends from project to project. I always say the more you're able to talk to people and understand their points of view, the better the work is going to be. And I try to bake that into engagements. I try to make it clear to my -- when I put timelines together for clients, I say, “Look, actually don't expect anything the first week or two, because here's what's going to happen in the first week or two. There won't be any deliverables.” And sometimes they really need you to deliver something very fast. And frankly, in that case, we might not be a good fit.
I do need to talk to everyone in the business. I need to do my due diligence, and the things that I know are right in order for my work to be good. So skipping that part is putting myself at risk and my work at risk. So sometimes I just say, “Look, if you don't have two weeks for me to do my due diligence or however long I need for that project, we might not be a good fit.” And then I send them to someone else.
Rafa: I think it's really important. It's maturity as well. That's maturity in the design that we do, because somebody said it's really interesting is this caring about the work that you're going to deliver. You understand that if you don't do this, you're not going to deliver a piece -- like a critical piece of work and it's not going to be a good work. And that's very important. And again, it depends on the company.
But one of my previous cases as well, I was brought as a product designer. You know the product designer is a bit of a catch-all these days. But hey, a lot of people think about product designers as purely interfaces. So I've been brought as that, and then very quickly, everything flipped because it was like, “Oh, the UI is not important anymore. Rafa, we need to do what you said, which is basically do the right thing first.” They didn't understand what was the right thing to do.
So it's like, “Well, I can give an interface, but I don't care if it's a table, if it's a button, I don't care about these things. What I do care is, are we doing this particular journey right for the users so then we can get value into the business? If we don't do that, why are we going to even do it? There’s no point to it.
Christian: I think it's great you mentioned this. If people have listened to the previous episodes, on episode one, Austin is talking about how this happens a bit because of ourselves as well. It's a bit our fault that we, as an industry, we haven't necessarily explained well enough what we do. And we've kind of left it. It's kind of like when you leave something at sea, it ends up on a shore somewhere else. Like it goes like the wind, and this is -- what you said right now is exactly what we should do as designers, which is speak up and explain what we do, not because we're these great unicorns, whatever you call them, but simply because that's the right thing to do so that we can help our clients and the companies we work for get better results through the powers we have as designers.
So sometimes it's -- you're right. It's about educating people. People just don't know, because all they've heard left and right is that design is only about the UI and creativity. So I totally agree with you. Sometimes it's just about saying, “Hey look, this is how – this is what I recommend you do. And what you do with that information is up to you.“
And I think this segways really well into what I want to talk next, which is transparency. Because when you join a company, what you said that you do, which is you go around and talk to people, that's transparency in a way. You're transparent regarding what your role is. And you're transparent regarding the fact that you're there to help everyone reach their goals if you can, and bridge that gap between customers and the business.
And then you've been with that company for three years and nobody has any clue of what you're doing. And I love talking to designers about how they talk about their work in their companies and about how they are more transparent with what happens. If you have a usability testing session, you want to be transparent with everyone in the company about what happened in that testing session. Not only use it to inform the next product decision. So throughout your career, how have you tried to make yourself and your work more transparent in your organisations?
Rafa: So this is great. I love what you're saying because it's true. There’s few things that happen on that journey that you just described. One of them is that sometimes we've got doubts. We question ourselves, and it’s like, “Oh Gosh, am I a designer now?” I'm doing stuff that is not what a designer does like by the book. But you are designer, and I've realised that what I do often actually is democratise these things.
So what I mean with democratising is that I stopped talking about design terms. I stopped talking about tech terms. I stopped taking about any of this stuff. I'm not going to talk -- I'm not going to talk to you about what is the -- how is the backlog built. I’m not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about what’s the problems that we try to solve? What's happening here? Why are we doing this?
And then try to remove these terminologies, always quite powerful. What takes you there is the transparency that you said. Everyone understands. If you tell them, “Look, what we've built in now, it's not allowing the users to download the form, because we don't have that.” So it's very clear. We’re not talking about KPIs; we’re not talking about features. We're talking about just pure needs.
So what I'll do is normally kind of blend myself, and I love what you said about the user testing. I believe that user testing adds so much value at so many levels. And when we talk about user testing, we generally talk about user research, like talking to users in a need-finding interview. It’s like, “I just need to know because I've been told that all of these things are problems for you. Can you tell me that? Are these really your problems?” And you have the conversation that you invite PMs, you invite developers, you invite everyone. And everyone is like, “Oh my God, what is this person saying?”
Well, is saying what everyone is saying, because they are the end-users, and it's what you have to understand. So that’s basically is a very long-winded answer, but when you talked about transparency, I see a lot of blending and a lot of demystifying who does what, and then just kind of go and do it. Just trying to make sure that we we've got our own remixes. So we have our own kind of things that we stand for.
So if I’m a designer, I'll make sure that I will stand for consistency and make sure that the user is being heard. And a tech developer or an engineer will stand for, “Well, I don't mind how we do this, but we do this in a very structure way to protect my schema.” Great, those are things that are important. “Do I understand what schema means?” No. But do I understand that this is really important for you? I do understand that. I now obviously understand what schema means, but you get my point -- I don't really -- same way I don't really care how my button looks. I do care, obviously, but it's an end product. It's the end of the journey.
Christian: There's this discussion, and I think what we've talked about until now, segways really well into this. There's this discussion that design people, mostly design leaders, but the more senior you are in design as well, the more you're transitioning towards or should be transitioning towards becoming a business person, because understanding business it's what's going to allow you as a designer to be effective. Because as designers, we tend to talk a lot about how we work for the customers and how we meet their needs with our designs and all that. But there's the other side as well. If we don't design for the business, the customers are not going to have a business in five years cause it's going to go down.
So we need to marry the needs of the customers with the needs of the business. And I believe that what's required for that to happen is for design people to understand how businesses work and to be more transparent about their work, which we've talked about. And I really like what you said earlier, which was, I don't talk about technical jargon and UX. I talk about things everyone can relate to. And I think that is a big key of transitioning from a design leader to a business leader. And it doesn't happen overnight. There's a lot of knowledge. There's a lot of experience you need for that, but it has to happen for you to become a good designer, a great designer. Design is moving from that creative industry more towards the business world, I think.
Rafa: Yes, I absolutely agree with that. And we can relate back to the very beginning of the conversation; I want to make the things that are real. I want to make them real. And in reality, customers are crucial because obviously, they are kind of why we do things. They are the kind of -- we do the things for them and then try to have a revenue and stuff. But if we don't understand what's happening in the business side of things, like why decisions are made in this particular way or why we cannot do XYZ now, but we will do that later.
They may have their arguments. They may have their kind of their particular needs. The business has needs as well, like how can we make sure that as designers, in order to create these things or support the creation of this thing, we understand all of those requirements. And sometimes we influence them. And this is where it becomes really important. Because at some point, you will be confronted with certain things. And because you have a really broad view of what's happening, you are -- you're a problem solver. You're not someone that makes XYZ. You're a problem solver.
So understanding that comes from business something that they always done in this way. Just to talk about clichés, talk about the Blockbuster one. When Blockbuster, they’re just gone because they couldn't put anything into streaming. And that was like a massive problem. Someone -- they should have listened to the designers more, probably and I say, “Hey guys, this was coming from -- this is what's happening in the ground. This is what's happening in the people in the streets. You need to be able to adjust to this change because this is really important.”
And again, coming from the designers and we know change is important. We live in change. We decided, today we're graphic designers, tomorrow we’re product designers, the day after tomorrow we’re producers. And you're like, “How does it even happen?” We have to acknowledge that and make sure -- I've always, I was talking to a friend yesterday actually when she basically point to a company that was really a young company. And she said, “Well, is this normal that they have issues because they're really young, and they don’t have the experience.” So I'm like, “Well, I understand what you're saying, but they, like young people and our generations, have a really big skill, which is the -- it's easy for them to change, to make sure to adapt.”
And that is something that I have to say business needs to keep up with. They need to make sure that they're more flexible, that they adapt to change, because what is true today, and we see them more often really with COVID than all the staff. What is true today, tomorrow is not true anymore. And so how your business can do this is the question that you'd need to always ask them all the time.
Christian: So transitioning -- Well, let’s take a step back. What business people really love doing is to talk numbers. That's what business people, that's what salespeople, that's what marketing people, that's what executives talk in. They talk in numbers. We, as designers, we have a gap there. We don't always measure our work. So what I want to talk about now is how have you, throughout your career, measured the impact of your work?
Rafa: So I do a little bit of measuring here and there, but to be honest, I try to make it real once, again, like I tried to explain very clear why I'm here and why I do the things I do. So I do a lot of collaboration, as you know. Like collaboration, as I have mentioned before, in terms of transparency. Collaboration is a practice. Is something that you need to foster. Is something that is a thing. Is not something that kind of comes out of the blue, "Oh, we're collaborating.” You need to actually massage that.
So collaboration is something that helps measuring very well. You can talk about the speed even if you want to, and you put it in a very business kind of a terminology to talk about speed. Well, why it's worth doing this three-hour workshop. Or why is it worth that you, a designer, sit next to a developer? And what I can tell you very easily, if a developer -- if I design something and then send it to the developer, there's a time gap happening there. The development we'll look into that. Will try to fix it, probably in the next sprint. And then, when they are in the next sprint, they will be back to us and say, “Hey, Rafa, this design doesn't work.”
So we're talking about a lifespan of three weeks already, and I would include this, and I will look into that and then make another change that maybe works, maybe doesn't work. And they will go, not in this sprint, in the next sprint again. So you very quickly quantify this. It’s like, “Look, we need to have a designer in each development team, because this decision making is something that designers have the background and has the knowledge to respond very quickly, but they need to be part of it.” If they're not part of it, you're losing three weeks, five weeks, six weeks, and then almost you're eating up all the time that you hired someone, and that translate into money directly?
Christian: Yes. And I think communicating that back to the business is important as well, because they might not be aware that what you just said costs money, or they might be aware, but they might not know it’s happening. I also think that something that we should be better at doing is actually measuring the value of, if you want, user experience if you want to call that. And I know it's hard, and I know we have some metrics that some design leaders like and some don't, but I like to avoid getting involved in the politics of that. And more objectively, try to see if a metric that we could use could be useful to measure design or not.
And I think that it's becoming more and more of a conversation of how can we measure design? And I think it's important to talk about this because the moment we can measure design, that's when we can actually bring something tangible to the business. That's when we can become those business leaders.
In e-commerce it’s easier because we have conversion rate. Everything is about the conversion rate, but what if it's not e-commerce? In everything else, we don't have a metric. And I think the moment we manage to find that metric, we can much easier advocate for doing the work we want to do, or we know it's best to do, because we can go to the business and say, “Look, give me two weeks, and I'll improve this number, and if I don't I'll know why I haven't because I've measured it. And then I can -- then the second time or third time around, I can do it.”
And then the business, on the other hand, can also come and say, “Look, we as a business, want to achieve X. Can you, or how can you, as a design team, help us do that?” But right now, it feels like we're in a place where we're not measuring our work; the business side doesn't know we can measure our work. So there's this limbo where people still think that design is about colours and all of that, and it bothers me all the time. But again, as I said earlier, it's down to us not doing a good job at talking about the value that we add, which is why, when you go into organisations like British Gas, we have that common experience.
What I really liked about it, you can't say British Gas is the most mature organisation in terms of design, but what they are doing right is the fact that every product team there has to test once a month or whatever the timing was. And then it has to give back the details and the information or the results of that research to the product team and to the wider business. So other designers in other teams can also learn from their learning.
So that is the first step towards trying to put numbers or at least specific different metrics on design. I really liked -- it's one of the – One of the things that I really enjoyed there is being able to do that. And I think a lot more companies could learn from it.
Rafa: Absolutely. Absolutely, totally getting that. And I think it's interesting because I keep bringing that example as well. Exactly in the same way that you put it. They're not the most mature one, and it's kind of complicated. They are mature, much more mature than other companies, really, but that's the fact of having like almost every day you could do testing is fascinating.
And they also, again, managed to create a bit of a conversation among the designers as well. So we will be facilitating user testing. Sometimes we will run them, sometimes someone else would run it, and they would feed back. It's interesting, because then you have a lot of designers that are at least in the loop of what's going on, and you can refer back to it. And the interesting thing is, once again, talking about change, is that you need to revisit those things again. What is valid today is not valid tomorrow. People keep thinking that we've tested this four years ago. Four years ago, man, a lot of things have changed since.
Christian: Yes
Rafa: So we need to go back to the lab. And also, something you mentioned is mega interesting. I definitely think that there is no standards for measuring just yet, and in a way, I don't think that standardising those measures is a good thing to have because they're very different. You mentioned now, one. You said about e-commerce is like the clicks or whatever. I haven't had a lot of experience with e-commerce, but that is a very clear, standardised way of measuring if your work is good or is not good.
Now we can talk a lot about Amazon. I’m not too sure if Amazon is a good product or not, but that's another thing. It's really good for business. It's absolutely really good for business, but because they've got a business -- that the business having at Amazon is very well designed, far more than the interface is. But then you've got all the type of companies where you might have an assignment for internal tools.
People don't really pay enough attention to intern on tools. That's what people in the back end or people in operation is doing. And I'm like, “Well, hold on a second. What if this job that you have an individual to do, they need to be doing that through the week several times. We make sure that they can do the job in one day, and they have four days to support all the areas of the other work.” Oh, wow. That's winning. That’s reach. It's like, how can we measure you, Operations, to perform on a particular task. What are the problems that you have through this?
Give me a task end to end. Don't tell me; I do this every day. No, no. Just tell me a task and to end and tell me how long it takes you. “Well, it will take me two, three, four, five minutes, 10 minutes.” And oh my God, how's it taking you 10 minutes to perform this simple task. We need to reduce this, and then you start to kind of highlight those measurements. And then you go back to the business, and you're like, “Well, we need to spend time in this because these people -- one thing is painful, the work they do is absolutely painful, and secondly, they're really talented people that could bring much more value to the business if we alleviate those four days.”
I don't normally talk about, which happens in many digital transformation programs where they basically when they get rid of the call centre, that's pretty much what everyone wants to do. Just get rid of the call centre. That's not the point. They’re trying to find a way where the call centre, with their knowledge, could support all the areas of the business better, because they would bring value. And they have knowledge that no one else has in the business. How can we recycle that knowledge? How can we make it shine again without being the call centre? And there's many ways of doing that.
Christian: I work a lot in enterprise software. And one thing that I've noticed throughout the years is that there is very little incentive or motivation to improve enterprise software. And that's because the procurement doesn't happen with the end-user. The procurement happens with someone in operations. They buy a piece of software, and then everyone in that company has to use that piece of software, whether it's good or not. So then there's no incentive to actually work on improving those.
But I think that right now, the differentiator or in the future very soon, the differentiator will be more and more -- the emphasis will be more and more on what you just said. It takes me 10 minutes to do this with one tool. It takes me two minutes with this other tool, and we do this task 50 times a week. So I want my employees to spend less time doing this and more time doing something else. And therefore, I think in enterprise software very soon, if it's not already happening, the experience of software becomes important, just like it's in consumer products.
And talking about enterprise and consumer, you have a lot of experience across a lot of different brands, across government work, across public companies. And I'm just curious how is design thought of and applied in these different types of companies?
Rafa: So there are very different ways. The first thing to mention on that end is that the definition of Design is very different. So like last year, I was working mainly with UK governments. And then we have this meeting where we were trying to — again, try to understand who was a designer there, like where’s the tribe. Where are the designers in this particular a department? And then we have a call, and then some people help us to make sure that everyone is in the table.
We got there, and then it's like about ten people. And everyone started to introduce themselves. So "Oh, I'm X, Y. I'm whoever from architecture. I'm whoever from process mapping. I'm whoever from whatever company.” And I’m like “No one here is a designer." Why, what, how had this happened that someone has said that you guys are designers, that you consider yourselves designers, which honestly I’ve got nothing against this, but your role is to maintain a tool. It's a process tool. It's not even -- you don't even kind of create an input into that one.
So, there is a bubble where the definition of design is really complicated to start with. And then there's the whole thing about roles and responsibilities. Some people might understand that what you do is one thing. For instance, what I mentioned before like they thought that would go and then do the interfaces. But then, to your point actually, being able to articulate what's happening, like where are you adding the value as a designer. It takes you to a point where “Maybe Rafa doesn't do interfaces only,” but far more than that, they understood that the interface that we might create is the end thing. Like there's a lot of work to do before that happens.
So different companies work in different ways. In public sector, a lot of times budget constraints, and we have to make sure that obviously, the money that is at hand is public money. So we’re taking about taxpayers. So it's really important that you measure against those things, actually talking about measuring again. You make sure that anything you do has a direct impact into the people that live in a particular country.
I have to vouch once again, everyone has done it many times. I have to vouch once again, the UK government have this, GDS, the Government Digital Service, I think, I believe, manual, where they talk about service design in a detail way. You can say -- a lot of people have said this boring design or this very constrained design. Hey, they go from A to B very well. They reduce costs really rapidly, and they make sure that they solve a problem from the people industries very quickly.
And so, you have to vouch them. You have to make sure that -- that's really important all the times. As you said, you would have talked about, I don’t know, investment firms, or we may have a particular idea of what investment firm do or doesn't do. So then the way you do design, it might be completely different. Like suddenly you're working – you’re working in the government, your end users are the most important thing when the money comes, you're working in investment firm, your customers are maybe someone that you need to take the money from.
Which is sad, but I'm not just talking about all the businesses, though, but it's like different focuses require different things. And I really like what you mentioned before about maybe it’s time to walk away; sometimes you need to make a decision. It's like, I don't want to design in this particular environment because I don't believe in what's happening and need to move away.
Christian: When you are interviewing for a company, what is a sign that that company is taking design seriously, and it's a place where you could really make an impact versus it being a place where you're just seen as a pixel pusher?
Rafa: Gosh, that is a good question. And I have a problem. Christian, I have a problem, which is that I get really excited very quickly. So I'm very quickly like, “Oh my God, this is going to be the best thing ever in the world.” So normally kind of I have to say that it’s hard to me to pick up that. To make sure that what's happening there may or might not have an impact.
What I would say that kind of my example of something is who are you talking when you’re interviewing. Are you talking to someone very low; low the chain or value that they might need just a pixel pusher to put into there, or you're talking with a program manager that understands that you need to -- it's about who you're talking to and the responsibilities of the people that you’re talking to, to make sure that it comes from a bit of a leadership kind of point of view that that is happening.
A lot of times, you might have conversations or interviews with people that might not be the leaders. At least in the first one, which is normally -- it's normally the case. The leaders might not be involved in first interviews, but it's important that you get to that point.
Christian: So let's change gears a little bit and talk about education. You're closely tied to the academic environment, because you're mentoring and you’re a guest lecturer at the London College of Communication. You studied design as well. What's your take on how designers should start their careers? Should it be self-taught, should it be through education?
Rafa: Oh, man. You’re touching a pain point there. I don't -- It's interesting. So I'm a lecturer, and I work in few universities. But put in completely blunt, I don't believe in education, in higher education as such. I think there's a lot of holes. There's a lot of stuff that needs to change. So the interesting point is that when I teach and when I'm lecturing in these universities, I don't really lecture to creatives. So I normally go and then talk about design and creativity mainly to photographers and architects and people that works in buildings like creating buildings and asset management.
And you talk about these things because you bring -- again, this collaboration initiatives that come really closely to empathy and to design itself. And that becomes really interesting when you start to open up their minds to make sure that when they’re learning, they learn the things that make sense to them and they don't just kind of get it into the box and then try to kind of learn anything they want.
I do talk to a few -- the few initiatives with the designers as well at the London College of Communication. And it's interesting because when I talk to designers, I would put the hat of developer on. So now, I'm just talking to you as a developer. I'm talking to you as someone that works with code and not as a creative. Because they are creative. They gain this information, but what really university need is having this broader spectrum and understanding how things are connected.
My biggest learnings have always been with developers Like I've learned collaboration with developers. And this is a funny statement because everyone thinks that engineers that in that room they don't talk to anyone. They talk to everyone.
Christian: Yes, yes
Rafa: They talk to everyone in the global scale. But they don't talk to the rest of the team. They're in GitHub, and they're in public forums where they converse about all of this stuff that's happening. They're massive collaborators. You need to acknowledge that, and I’ve learned a lot from them.
Christian: I think, just to talk a bit about that. The reason that developers get this bad rap of them being in a corner, not talking to everyone because that's how their brains work. They need uninterrupted hours of focus time to be able to produce work.
Rafa: Absolutely.
Christian: So then, of course, they're not talking to anyone because talking to everyone would mean they couldn't do their work at the highest quality, but actually if you go out after work with them, or if you catch them at lunch, sit them at the same table as they are, they are not these nerds in the corner that everyone thinks they are. They are actually great people and very social as well. Last question on education, what do you think is a blind spot that designers have when they get out of school?
Rafa: I would say collaboration, definitely collaboration. That's the blind spot that -- they don't understand that they're part of a chain. And this is really important.
Christian: But would you say that that's because you don't learn collaboration at school or it's because you learn a bit, but it's not enough, or you don't get to try it out?
Rafa: That's very interesting kind of think thing, because you’re right. They learn about collaboration among designers. But they don't talk about cross-collaboration, like how do you collaborate with old people? How do you understand that your designs -- once again, went back to the idea of the business, your design is a piece in the parcel. Well, maybe it's the code.
It's the code that makes the whole parcel beautiful. And that's absolutely great. You put it on top of the parcel, shiny and nice, but you need to understand that when you go out in the wild, you have a responsibility towards certain areas that you're good at. As a designer, you've been trained for this. You've been training a lot of stuff you have to put in practice in order to achieve a collective goal.
Christian: Right. So we're approaching the end. Just before we go into the standard end questions that I ask everyone, I just want to talk a little bit, or I want you to talk a little bit about your digital rights, because it's a subject that I'm deeply passionate about; privacy, online digital privacy. And tell us the story of how that started. Tell us the story of the UK Government's answer to you trying to incorporate that and tell us a bit what your digital rights is and why it's important.
Rafa: Sure. That's a great story. I always love it. And so we've launched Your Digital Rights two years ago, right after GDPR legislation was in place. We quickly understood the GDPR, to start with, it's really hard to even think about what does it mean? So what does it mean the GDPR? How do I get involved with any of this stuffs? Is really dark or really kind of obscure how an individual that you meet, anyone that have any connection with Europe, in this particular case, they could action those laws.
So we've understood very quickly that we need to give the power to the users or to the people. “Why is this important for me?” Because when GDPR came onboard, I don't know if you remember that, that we got absolutely bombarded with every company that we ever touched with. That was ridiculous. People didn't know what was going on. Like, “What is this? Why are you telling me this? Why are you asking me this?” They don't understand. They don't have a clear understanding of why is that happening, and how can they action these things?
You own your rights; you own your data and it’s yours. You need to remember that who you are and where you sit is really important. It could change the way a government kind of functions, and we've seen this before. We've seen it in different cases in the States, we've seen in the UK. Like having that data could change the course of history, it will change it.
So we need to make sure that we understand that we, as citizens, we could reclaim those rights. We can say, “Hey, these are my rights. I don't want to be part of anything that you're doing.” We’re talking about specific companies. So we talking about what they call data brokers, which is basically companies that deal with like big chunks of data, and they sell and buy this data.
So what we did with these digital rights is make a very simple application – very simple test where we give them the option – to users to find a company that they maybe been bothered with, or they don't want to be part of them anymore. And we provide them with the legal jargon and the legal kind of points for them to opt-out of the data in a safely manner and really easily.
But then we realised that obviously, we need to get -- and this is the story that you want to hear. So we realised that we need to go into the next level and trying to make this a bit more official.
So we thought that maybe having a charity would be the most interesting part of this. And then we applied for this charity body, and then we have this answer back saying, technically, that the right of privacy is not a right in the UK. So it's not a real right. It’s absolutely nuts.
Christian: Oh my God.
Rafa: It’s absolutely nuts, So we were like, “What did you mean? It's not a right as in our papers? So which means that if you’re doing something as a charity for rights of privacy, you are lobbying to have that right into the government. So we can’t give you a charity body because you're lobbying, you're making politics.” And I'm like, “What is this?” It's really crazy. So it was a bit of a mind-blowing situation, and we're just trying to deal with that. And actually, in fact, this is the first time I’ve talked about this publicly. So it's good to kind of start to put it out there. What can we do next?
Christian: Yes. Nice. And just to let everyone know this is all free. Anyone can use this for free. You're not charging anyone to opt-out from the different companies. You're just providing them with a template and an easy way to submit their data requests. And if I'm not mistaken, people can find this at yourdigitalrights.org. Right?
Rafa: Absolutely.
Christian: Great. Awesome. Let's ask you the last -- the two standard questions. So first one is, what is one thing you wish more designers would know?
Rafa: It might sound cliché, but yes knowing about business is really important. The understanding of the designs into broader picture, they need to know more about. This is something that they need to learn and I’m trying to learn more and more. And that's definitely the one thing that I will look for and like how anything that happens around me will impact my designs. So then you do designs better, basically.
Christian: Great. And how do you reckon the future of design looks like?
Rafa: I love this question. That's my favourite -- that's my favourite question ever. So I don't know how it will look, obviously, because maybe tomorrow something happen and it goes all over the place. But what I’d like it to be is, and this is a very specific kind of intake that I have for this, what I really want this to be is that we think about interfaces, not as a visual interface only. I know there's a bunch of initiatives. We know we've got Alexa, we've got phones, but they're quite evil, quite intrusive, sometimes even quite complicated to manage. But my take is that the future will be more like less visual. And we will live visual for all the things. I love enjoying visual.
I love to go into a website that is photography-led, and then I get lost in there, and I've got my own experience and love it. It's great. I've worked -- I do things for that as well, but if I want to -- going back to our BG background, if I want to know my next bill, Guys just, just tell me how much it is. I don't even care. It’s just; I want to say to Alexa, “Hey Alexa, how much is my next bill?” And that's it. They tell you, and that's gone.
And those are things and services and interfaces that needs to go. So hopefully, in the future, we will be in a place that no one collects our data from anywhere ideally. No one records everything from us, and try to predict us. But we also make it much easier to do the services, hopefully, by not using visuals.
Christian: The best interface is no interface. Isn't that what they say?
Rafa: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the one.
Christian: Rafa, where can people find you?
Rafa: The best place to find me is madeabroad.io. This is the company where I've got, or where I can produce my stuff. I do a lot of work as a consultant that you guys know, but I’ve also partnered with my wife, she’s an animator. And you can see all our work in there, madeabroad.io, as well as a few links from Instagram and LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I would say I was such a -- I don't want to LinkedIn in my life, but now I actually think that LinkedIn is the social media of the future. So yes, LinkedIn is definitely the place. If you want to reach me quickly, go to LinkedIn. I'll be there.
Christian: Right, we're going to put all the notes, all your links in the show notes of the episode, so everyone can easily find you. Rafa, this has been an hour that passed very, very fast. This has been a learning experience. Hopefully, everyone listening thinks the same. Really appreciate you being on Design Meets Business, and I hope we'll catch up soon.
Rafa: Yes. Thank you very much for having me. Nice to see you. Bye.
Christian: Cheers, man. You too.
That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful, and if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Jiri is a Design Manager at Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint.com. In today's episode he talks about doing research when there's not enough time, traps designers fall into when they test prototypes, and about the progression from coming out of school to becoming an entrepreneur-designer.
Connect with Jiri
LinkedIn, Twitter
Selected links from the episode
Eric Ries, The Lean Start-up
Art Lebedev AI-designer
Design at Intuit
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business – a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host, Christian Vasile, and on this podcast I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
Today I'm talking to Jiri Jerabek. Jiri is a Design Manager at Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint.com. And in today's episode he talks about doing research when there's not enough time, traps designers fall into when they test prototypes, and about the progression from coming out of school to becoming an entrepreneur-designer.
Jiri, thanks for joining the podcast, I really, really appreciate it. The first season of Design Meets Business is exciting to put together, and I'm glad you wanted to be part of it. So you are an all-around designer who started your career a bit similar to how I did, and that is by coding and playing with Flash and all that good stuff… all the good times.
And so before we go into what you do today, your thinking around design and all that, tell me a bit about your background, where you're coming from, and how did you decide to drop coding for a career in Design.
Jiri: Yeah. Oh, and you know what? I loved it so much. I thought with the late 90s and early noughties, what we witnessed was a democratisation of the Internet. We witnessed a time when getting online and coding was one of the easiest things someone in their late teens or early 20s could learn, just like that. There were so many of these resources popping up and I just loved it; this democratisation of something awesome like this. And yeah, so I went on, I did coding. I also did design. This job title almost disappeared these days. I was web designer. And you don't get too many web designers these days.
Christian: You don't hear about that anymore. Everyone is UX and Product...
Jiri: Exactly. I never managed to become a web master. I always wanted to be a web master. That sounds so cool. I never was a web master.
Christian: Well, I think your current job is cooler than being a web master. To each their own…
Jiri: Probably, yes, there you go. So as I evolved in working with clients, most of my early career was spent on the agency side. And I was working for some pretty awesome clients in some pretty awesome agencies, but what I started realising was a lot of the digital products or websites we produced at the time, they were based on what you would call requirements from the client. And ultimately, we were meant to serve an audience, a customer, but we were not really looking at what did the customer need or how to design the product in a way that really satisfies those needs of the customer.
And so I started learning about that. And I learned about UX. I learned about interaction design, and I fell in love, because I realised there's so much knowledge accumulated in that area that could help me with getting on with the job. And so this is when I started switching. I basically switched in my heart first, then my career switch followed a little bit later.
Christian: How did you find that transition from a job that is very logical – the one of coding and I remember Flash and all those good times – to something that at least when you started as a designer, wasn't as logical as your job is now? This was more about feelings and how things look and how they feel. It wasn't as much about business goals in the beginning. So how was that transition going from one role to the other one?
Jiri: I found it actually really easy, maybe I'm a little bit weird. I always found the interaction design and UX side to be fairly logical too – to understand what the customer wants to achieve, what is the goal, why they're coming to this place. How then apply well-documented patterns, validate usability, understand how the customer might be challenged in their path to put items in the shopping basket and check out. To me it made perfect sense. My brain didn't suffer as much.
And I also, at the time when I was still coding, that was the time of CSS hacks, mind you. It was a time when I was trying to get the code working and looking similarly in IE6 and Opera. And code was just like a little, little thing somewhere on the horizon, slowly appearing, I suppose. So it was quite messy at the time as well. I didn't see it as a huge massive change.
Christian: Yeah. Design is messy, isn't it? if the process is clean, then it's something wrong there. I mean, I guess the more complex the project is, the more messy you expect the process to be from taking a product from a concept to finals. And I guess that's one of the things that I'd like to move into talking about, because when you look from the outside, you see just what's above the iceberg. You see the visual design, you see the copy and you think that's what design is, but we both know that the hard work actually goes on behind.
You've worked a lot in agencies and I know that when you work in agencies, it's more often than not all about delivering fast so you can move on to the next client. How did you balance that need of taking your time to do things properly and working on that discovery and understanding customers with the need of the clients to get something delivered in a week or two or three? In the agency world you don't really have a lot of time.
Jiri: Yeah, I'll give you one example that is so funny. If I look back at it, it always makes me smile. So I was working for this agency that doesn't exist anymore. It was a fairly sizeable, London- based agency called Fortune Cookie. But we were serving some pretty awesome clients and the team was a dream team. I joined there as a junior UX designer. And I felt really privileged to be joining such a fantastic team, with such a fantastic boss at the time. I loved it.
And I was really looking up to all my Senior UX designer colleagues. And I was so hungry to learn from them. And one of the clients that we were designing for was National Rail Inquiries, which in the UK it is a system to gather your travel information from before Citymapper came and when Trainline was really crappy. You would always look to National Rail Inquiries, and a lot of people do still today. And so one of the products that we were working on was the mobile app.
When I joined the team working on the app, it was already released. The team was working on it for a while. I joined them later and I was tasked with designing alerts – what happens when something bad goes on the train line and there's a delay or there's a disruption, and how do we let the customer know. And I started designing that. And there was, as you say, there was very little time for some involvement of customers, as it typically is in the agency land or at least used to be at the time. And so I got really creative. I was taking a train every morning.
Christian: You did your own research… you researched yourself
Jiri: Yes, and you must know, and probably everyone who listens to his must know, that talking to someone on the public transport in the UK is a no-no. Even just looking at someone is a no-no. Even just looking at someone is a no-no.
Christian: Yeah.
Jiri: You're risking being killed.
Christian: Yes.
Jiri: But I was like "Hey stranger, I've got this prototype here. It is meant to make your journey to work easier." That was amazing, because once the people understood, “Hey, this will make my life easier”, they’d be like, “Okay, I'm going to give you some feedback”.
So I did this a couple of times and basically I bypassed the constraint of not having the time to do it during my normal working hours. And I suppose it's a little bit unfair to do that, but I was so hungry, I was so passionate about bringing that user-centric perspective into the project that I just did it anyway. I did it all on public transport. I'm cursed for life probably.
Christian: Well, it's a good curse, I think. What's happening when you bring all this research home, and then you've done maybe a diary study, maybe some eye tracking, maybe some guerrilla testing on the train in the morning. You've got all this research and then you need to create a product based off of that. How do you transition from having all this information to actually putting something on a piece of paper or in Photoshop back then, or Sketch, or whatever way you're doing it?
Jiri: There are many different ways a designer can go about doing that. I really fell in love with the way how this is done at Intuit right now. We distil a crystal-clear customer problem. Customer problem is your sort of a needle-sharp definition of what the customer wants to achieve, what is the behaviour they are doing instead, and what is the root cause of that problem and how it makes them feel? And it really needs to get to the bottom of the root cause. And if it does, then what we could do off the back of this customer problem definition is we can imagine what is the best possible solution? What is the best possible ideal experience, not a solution, I correct myself – experience. And we call it ideal state and we don't describe a solution in there, we describe the ideal experience.
So we say, in the perfect world the experience would look like this, and the actual change to the customer's life would be this, and it needs to be something that is measurable so we can quantify that later. And we also declare how this makes them feel. And so we have these two inputs on the back of that synthesis of these research insights. We have the custom problems, we have the ideal state, and of course we have the various behavioural insights synthesised, as you do, in the various decks and diagrams.
And so we take this and then we go through your standard double diamond – we diverge in ideation, we converge to get to some specific solutions, then we say, “Okay so given that we have these solutions, what are the biggest assumptions we are making that have to be true for this to work?” And then we just go about and we experiment in the most rapidest way, if that’s a word…
Christian: Yes, we get it. We get it.
Jiri: In the most fastest way possible we just experiment and then once we clear out all these unknowns, then we go about designing that thing and delivering it with our engineering partners.
Christian: So tell me about this fastest way of experimenting. How do you do that at Intuit? Because Intuit is quite a large company with, I would assume, a lot of resources. So you probably have a very different way of going by doing this than say a smaller company would. So what's your… how does your testing, let's say, look like?
Jiri: Actually, I don't think it is about the size that makes a difference. I think it's the culture. And the culture at Intuit is so customer-centric that the culture really determines how we do that. If you are familiar with, and I would suggest everyone to really get very familiar with The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries… we pretty much use it as a, well, not a Bible, but we get a lot of guidance from that. We run experiments to validate assumptions, not to validate designs at that stage, at that experimentation stage. So we would potentially run a fake door test on the website or on the product.
We would run really rapid experiments with just a couple of sketches on pen and paper, and we will be looking for strong, emotional reactions. We wouldn't be, of course at this stage, looking at usability or anything like that. We would be just really looking at concepts. Does this concept work? And of course, you get tests of various fidelity – you could have a diary study with a prototype. I did that in one of my previous jobs and we ran a test for four weeks in total. And then you have some really high-quality data about how people start using it. And if they actually keep using it after the initial spike of excitement fades off, or you can run some really rapid testing of some of the examples of gave.
Another really good example we are doing very often is concierge test. When you would have a system that's sort of looks like it's a fully-working system, it looks like an automated AI-powered miracle, but actually there are a couple of guys sitting behind the screens and connecting all the dots.
And so if you have a higher fidelity test, you need to invest more effort, but you have higher confidence of the back of your concept. If you start running with some pen and paper sketches, of course, you can do this really quickly, but you don't have so much confidence in the validation.
Christian: Now I'm really happy, I've asked this question. I didn't know where you were going to go with it, but it sounds to me that you're following Eric Ries’ book and that's it. It's not more complicated than that. It's following basic, simple ways of making sure that what your assumptions are or what your prototypes look like are validated. And the reason I'm saying this is… I often look at portfolios or talk to people about design and they do a lot of complex stuff. They use all these new frameworks appearing out of nowhere that I haven't heard about. And they try all these methodologies when actually it's not that complicated. It's the basic stuff.
And if a company like Intuit, that's really big and has a design culture at the core of it, simply just follows the basics, then probably that should be the advice for any company out there. Instead of trying to do too much, simply follow a very simple guide and try to make that part of your process. So I am really happy you mentioned Eric Ries’ book. It's great.
Jiri: It's fantastic. Of course, if you have a big bet and you are going to invest for next ten months on your product roadmap into something massive, you might want to get a bit more confident. You would run maybe a combination of three different experiments to validate your business assumptions. And after that validates, then you could start looking at your customer assumptions as well. That would be a specific specific solution.
There are two traps that designers typically fall into when they are running experiments. One is they mix up conceptual testing and usability testing. And of course, at the stage of testing concepts, there is no point of testing usability whatsoever. And there is… the second trap is designers try to test everything. Often, I see that. There’s no need to it.
Many of the assumptions that designers declare as assumptions are actually not assumptions. We can see these things working elsewhere in the industry. And if we see something similar working somewhere else, well, it's not a complete assumption that that thing is an assumption, when we can learn from elsewhere.
Christian: Let's talk a few minutes about these two traps because I think they are interesting. So especially the first one, let's dig a bit deeper into that.
Jiri: So when designers test concepts, basically they’re trying to validate whether the assumption that has to be true for a specific idea is correct or not. They are testing a big idea. They are not testing the interface. They shouldn't be testing whether the button is red or yellow on the right or the left, and what is the specific layout of the page, and if someone understands what this individual page says. They need to be testing whether a huge underlying question about whether this entire idea is viable, is true.
Christian: So that's where you would do some sort of, let's say, a fake door testing, right? Just to try to see if people would be interested in a new feature.
Jiri: For example. That’s one of the ways how to do that. And other way how to do that is potentially even like, if someone really wants to do something low fidelity, even just sketches on paper or some conceptual illustration of the concepts can be used, but you're not looking at the feedback on the subject granularity of the single button You're looking at, “Okay, I see massive value in this”. And you are looking for this positive reaction in the person as opposed to, “Oh, I'm confused by this text on this button here”.
I really like the sort of rapid fire tests with pen and paper. They don’t give too much confidence, but they give you a thumbs up / thumbs down, sort of, because if you don't feel… if you don't see an emotional reaction, then you are not striking the right chord at all. You need to see a reaction. If the reaction is amazingly positive, then probably you can persevere. If the reaction is extremely negative, then clearly you are onto something as well. And this is important for someone. You are just doing it wrongly and you have to persevere again and try to fix it in a better way. If you're actually like “Meh”, there's probably no point.
Christian: …and it's the end of the road for that idea. It's interesting, because in some of the companies I used to work in before there was a lot of focus on doing usability testing and I guess that's okay, all good and that, but if you can design a feature in the best way possible, but if nobody's interested in that feature, then you've wasted your time. So I guess before putting together all those prototypes and doing all this usability testing you want to do as you call it conceptual testing to first figure out if whatever it is you're building is actually interesting and useful for your customers.
And this takes me to the next point that I wanted to talk about. You have this idea or this concept about the three types of designers – that there are three types of designers in the world. And when we talked about this, I thought that was really interesting. So I want to talk a bit through that. And after you explain to us what the three designers are, talk a bit about how you get from one to the other.
Jiri: So this is something I observed over last 15 years in the industry is that the designers around the time when they are little more junior, they tend to really obsess about tools and visual style and about sort of these trends of what is cool at the time. So we got designers arguing about whether it's Sketch or Figma, whether it’s neumorphism or skeuomorphism or whatever. This is nothing new though. Like if you look at the history of Arts, Design, and Architecture, this is happening since literally ancient times. You can have a look at the Doric column in the ancient Greek and the Ionic column and the Corinthian column and you'll see, “Oh, these guys went from very stark, ornamental, aesthetics”. The same happens with, for example, Renaissance and Baroque, the same happens with art nouveau, and then the reaction to that is constructivism and modernism.
So we see these trends of like highly-ornamental style and also highly-ornamental style in the history. So it's nothing new. Designers just to get really passionate about that. And this is what I call artist-designer. They're really obsessed about the tools and they’re really obsessed about the style.
The second type of designer, I call designer-designer for the lack of better terminology. I don't know how to call it. Maybe I should call them experience-designers, because really they focus on the experience. They just fall in love with the concept of user experience and customer experience so much that this is all they want to do. They really obsess about delivering that amazing experience and they just can't get over it. It is the entire goal of what they want to do, and we can't really be angry with them for it. That's the beauty. That's what makes many of us motivated to design something great. This is why we exist in the world. So these other designer-designers, or the experience-designers, really obsess about that.
And then there's a third type. There’s actually a fourth type that I didn’t mention. There's a third type – and these are entrepreneur-designers. And these are the designers who start exhibiting the four mindsets or four behaviours.
The first of these behaviours is how they choose problems to work on. They choose problems based on what is the biggest unsolved customer problem. Ideally, this is something really painful for the customer. The second would be, is this something that is viable in the business? Is this something where there is big enough serviceable market that we can actually obtain? And this does sort of this realisation just doesn't happen at once. This is typically a spiral of testing and figuring out, “Oh, are we on top of this problem?” Yes. And can we deliver this program to this market? Yes. And actually, if we do the investment, does it provide a good enough return? What is our strategy there? Are we going for growth? So are we trying to grow our customer base at whatever cost or are we chasing revenue? In which case we are probably looking at customers to stay with us for longer to be paying customers for longer and provide them great experience. So these three things have to come together. So, this is the first behaviour, how they choose problems.
The second behaviour is giving up on perfectionism. So they're kind of like saying goodbye to those experience-designers who just try for the perfect experience ever, and instead of focusing on delivering this amazing experience that is perfect, focus on delivering value to the organisation and to the customers as frequently as they can. Suddenly it's not about the amazing architectural solution, but it's about where the value really is and how can I quickly deliver it, so we improve the life of our customer and we improve the success of the business.
The third one is applying their designs superpowers on other stuff than just design. Now designers have these amazing superpowers they obtain through their carrier. And these typically are things like I take stuff that is intangible and that is an idea, and that is in peoples’ heads, and I can turn it into something that others can literally see. So they can turn intangible into tangible. They can rapidly validate. So we talked about validation. We talked about rapid experimentation. So this is another superpower. They can take an unknown, use their superpower, and generate some data. This is another superpower, for example. So applying these superpowers not on design problems, but on any organisation problems, any business problems. This is the third attribute.
And the final one is focus on measurable difference to customers' lives. So in this one, the designer really starts taking care of the outcomes, not just outputs. The outputs are already amazing designs, right? This is that grand vision.
But now designer is really passionate about what is that measurable difference they’re making to the life of a customer and to the life of the business. What can be measured? How can I deliver that? What it distills to? And for that to be something that the designer can apply, they have to really understand the customer problem so they can define, “Okay, this is how we are going to resolve this problem”. And in the core of that solution, there's this customer benefit that we are going to deliver, and it has to be quantifiable. And that's the point when the designer can be like, “Yes, we can measure this. We can measure how much time we save to this customer”.
For example, over the course of last year, through various design activities and various product activities, my team was able to save over 260,000 hours to QuickBooks customers preparing their VAT. And we can quantify it like this – so much time saved, this is a huge customer benefit. And so these are the attributes: measurable difference, how they choose problems, ditching perfectionism, and using the superpower on other stuff than just designing.
Christian: So I guess ideally everyone would hope that they would become these entrepreneurial designer or entrepreneur-designer as you called it, but I think everyone knows that it's not as easy to go from the artist-designer to the experience-designer, to the entrepreneur-designer. There are some steps you need to take and getting out of school, for example, if you have a design education, is probably not enough to get you even to the experience-designer level. You're going to become an artist-designer for the first few years of your career, because that's the natural progression. So how do you go from the first one to the second one and then to the third type to become this person who truly understands the business and what the business is about and how they can use these superpowers that they gathered throughout their career to do some good in the world?
Jiri: Well, this is an answer that many won’t like, but I don't think there are any shortcuts. Actually, you mentioned design education and there are many voices that will say, “Hey, in design education, you don't get enough about the business, and it's just theory”. And I'm going to say something that could be quite radical and potentially many people will not like this. And I'm going to say, I think this is what the university needs to be. They need to teach the underlying theory that is detached from the practice, because then it is universally applicable. The industry changes in waves, every couple of years it’s just different, but if at university there are big underlying principles taught, then this is something that can equip designers for life. That aside, how do you go about progressing from the artist-designer to the entrepreneur-designer?
And by the way, the fourth stage that I mentioned is leader-designer. So how do you progress there? And they just have to understand these underlying concepts. They have to understand what is the big custom problem, how to define it, how to distil it, how to understand it.
Without that they would be just skipping ahead and it would be fake. So they have to -- they have to do it, karate kid style, polishing windows to learn the moves and the same goes for the design superpowers. Well, the designers will not be able to start applying design superpowers on the other problems than design problems unless they learn the superpowers in the first place.
So again, Luke Skywalker in the swamp type of work. I always wanted to be that Yoda that is being carried on the back of younger designers. I have this picture in my mind. The only one where I think we could be much better and we could go much faster is data. And I have seen many companies just not being very good with data.
There’s nothing like working with an awesome smart analyst on your team. I have an amazing analyst. He is worth his weight in gold. Hello, Brandon, I'm sending my regards this way! It's amazing, because then what you could do is get help of a partner like this, and you could start making connections between customer’s behaviour and data that you really need to see for determining whether you're getting business outcomes or not.
I give you a real specific example from our world. We established that customers that use QuickBooks who also connect their business bank accounts typically stick around for longer, because they are getting much more value from the product. What it means is that if they stick around for longer, basically this is a retention. Retention is very important, because it leads to higher average revenue for that customer. And that also means that we are improving our ratio of the cost of acquiring that customer and the lifetime value they provide. And these are some of the key business metrics that we will be looking at to determine whether we are doing well or not.
So having a good analyst can help us to really look for causations between behaviour and this business impact. Then what we could do as a team is to say, “Okay, so we are going to invest in improving this experience of connecting your bank, so we enable more people to connect their bank, so they get this amazing value, so they stick for longer and so we have a higher rate.“
Christian: So there's this circle of benefit, I guess, for the company and for the customers as well that your analysts have helped you discover, and then you as a design team or a product team just tries to bring it home.
Jiri: Yes. And so I realised that I didn't really answer your question about how a designer can do that, how they can sort of uplevel. They have to work with smart partners, they have to collaborate, and they have to understand the concept of causation between behaviour and business outcomes. But really design is about partnerships and collaborations. So if there's one takeaway maybe that’s it…
Christian: You've said something that I fully agree with. And sometimes I see designers starting in their careers and the first thing they do is they go and freelance. I've done that myself. And looking back, the times when I've learned the most, were the times when I worked in product teams.
So I always say to people at the beginning of their career, "Try to go and work in a company, in a product team, around people that you can learn from, collaborate with, because that's what's going to allow you to build those superpowers. And then five-ten years later, you can actually go and become a freelancer, because you've got that toolbox. But you've got to learn it from somewhere.”
So I think what you're saying is really accurate. You're learning a lot of these things by working in product teams and design is a team sport. Isn't that what they say? And I truly believe that and I wish sometimes we, as an industry, would do a bit more towards the people coming in as juniors, and we would give them a few more opportunities to just join our teams and learn.
Jiri: Yes. I don't think they are doing enough, because there's this picture that many designers have in mind – the designer demigods. They want to be the Dieter Rams, sitting on the golden throne of other disciplines. Or they picture Jonny Ive making like all these amazing decisions about design, or Norman Foster or like whoever is there, Mark Newson, whoever is their designer demigod.
But it’s not like that. It’s really a team sport, and I think we should admire the work of these great designers, but we shouldn't aim for being the lone wolves – designers who are masters of everything and tell everyone what to do. I don't think that’s… this is not how it should work.
Christian: I also think that you can look at these demigods as you've called them, and you know that, sure they brought their creativity, but they still work in teams.
Jiri: Absolutely
Christian: Jonny Ive didn't work in a cave
Jiri: That'd be something
Christian: Yes, I can imagine… probably a beautiful cave, but the point is they're still working in teams. Sure, they have some incredible creativity and what they bring to the table is fantastic, but they still work in teams. That's just such an important point.
Jiri: So you're absolutely right because yes, Jonny Ive is not in his like white cave… glossy white cave. No, he's not, actually. No, they are team players. They have teams, there are leaders, they are people. They are people managers as well. They have this. And ultimately, as someone scales to leadership, they ultimately, yes, they are zooming in on craft, yes, but their impact comes through scale and comes through teams and comes from nurturing other designers and helping other designers grow. This is how design leaders work. And so, I think if there’s a picture of design demigod, I think it's a fake picture.
Christian: I agree. So talking about leadership and leading designers, how do you on a daily basis help your team at Intuit move more towards those entrepreneur-designers, from wherever they are in their career?
Jiri: Yes, we do it as -- we work through this, we follow these four things that I outlined before. This is basically how we work. And if a junior designer joins the team, we ensure that we infuse them in this working. It doesn't happen as a big bang. They still have to learn. They still have to obtain these superpowers. They still have to understand. It's a path.
So they do a little bit of that karate kid polishing windows, as I said, but ultimately, there are the other designers who are already doing it, and everyone basically learns from everyone. And my role is to ensure that the individual designers get enough coaching, that they get enough reflection, that I give them feedback where appropriate, but also, I give them enough space to go and do their own thing and actually fail.
I suppose one role of a manager isn't to ensure that no one fails, my role is to ensure that everyone learns, and sometimes the best learning comes from failures. So I have to make these decisions between… do I let this person fail now and are they going to learn from it, or raise the safety net or you know how that works…
Christian: So you're saying it's about putting the right process, the right design framework in place. So whoever joins the company, they will all have to follow the same design process, I guess. And then that's what you mentioned earlier as polishing the windows or whatever the metaphor is. But as long as you put the right process in place then the people who join your team will sooner or later learn to move more towards that mindset of an entrepreneur-designer. Right?
Jiri: It's really a mindset rather than a process. Our process looks like a skeleton. We have very strong backbone that is really, really well defined. It defines the key parts of the process, the really impactful big chunks, but then the individual ribs and bones around.
Every senior designer, for example, can determine to themselves. They can basically take the toolbox and assemble their process appropriately to an appropriate project based on their own expertise. They can swap methods. They can swap tools for whatever they judge to be appropriate. And I trust them. To be honest, I’m so lucky that I work with such smart guys. I don't really need to intervene there so much. They are all very happy to like assemble their own, but we have this backbone, and this backbone is so awesome that we can really rely on it and the entire skeleton just hangs off the backbone.
Christian: And I guess by doing that, by not setting the clear path for everyone and letting them verge to the left and to the right, they also feel more ownership of the work. Because they're not order takers. They are working on the back of a very well-defined process, but they can go to left and to the right as they see fit and use their experiences. And I guess that's also where you're learning throughout your career; not when you're following orders. So that's great.
Right. We’re approaching the end. I have two more questions and I'm asking everyone on the show this. So the first one is what is one thing you wish more designers would know?
Jiri: Yeah, I wish more designers would be focused on…oh, there are two things. Is it cheating?
Christian: Cheating is allowed on this show. Cheating is allowed, go with two…
Jiri: So the first thing is I wish designers know more, how to be humble, how to keep listening, how to be open, and how to challenge everything they know at all times. My approach is strong opinions held lightly, and I wish more designers would be like that. And not just in their conversations with customers, but with their conversations with their partners, with their collaborators.
I believe that if someone is humble to acknowledge that they can be wrong almost at all times, then they are set up for success, because they will learn, they will scale, they will improve, they will grow, they'll become better. That's the first one.
The second one, my cheating here, is I wish more designers actually knew all that amazing underlying knowledge base that defines our industry. For example, speaking of interaction design, there's so much knowledge accumulated since the early years of interaction design, that basically originated from human factors about how to design a cockpit for planes. That's the… the cockpit is the grand dad of that. So if you have this knowledge, that really equips us so well.
Christian: Fantastic. Thank you. And then the last question is how do you reckon the future of design as an industry looks like?
Jiri: Yes. Okay. We are all going to get replaced by robots.
Christian: I'm not sure I buy that. I’m just not sure I buy that.
Jiri: I think we are, look, I have seen – was it this week or last week, there was this experiment done by the Art Lebedev Studio in Russia, and they created this artificial designer AI, and they let this non-person work on actual real client problems for a year and no one recognised it.
Christian: Wow
Jiri: This AI designer designed logos. You can't really talk about brand identities, because brand is so complex, but they designed -- this designer, yes, I called it a designer, designed logos. And you can check them on the Art Lebedev website website and it just looks -- it looks like a David Carson copycat. My boss looked at it earlier and was like, “Oh, this looks like David Carson”. So yes, basically Art Lebedev cloned David Carson. Yeah…
So seriously, what it's going to look like? It's going to look like exactly as the industry looked always. We are going to be understanding the needs of our customers. We are going to be understanding what are the needle-sharp pain in the eye of our customers, and we are going to be resolving this. And we are going to be applying design superpowers, not just on design problems, but on the organisational problems and on the business problems. And then that's how we become leaders.
Christian: Fantastic. Jiri, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining the show. And is there anything that you want to mention to everyone listening about where you're working or anything else you want to mention before we say goodbye?
Jiri: Yes, I'm going to mention two things. I work for Intuit. Intuit's probably the most customer-centric organisation on this planet and in the solar system, check it out. I mentioned the Eric Ries’ book. Read it carefully, guys. You will not believe how many times Intuit is mentioned there as a good example for how these things should be done.
Check out Intuit. We are constantly hiring designers, if not in the UK, then for sure in the U.S. and around the globe. And second, I’m not hiring right now, but I might be hiring later in this year. So if you are passionate about design, I really want to hear from you. Ping me on LinkedIn or on Twitter or anywhere. And I'm always so passionate about meeting great designers who have their own opinion and who are passionate about Design. So yes, ping me and I'll be very happy.
Christian: Fantastic. We're going to put all your links in the show notes so people can easily find you there. Jiri, again, thank you so much for joining the show and we'll catch up soon.
Jiri: Thanks Christian!
Christian: Thanks!
Jiri: Cheers!
Christian: All right, so that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful. And if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing.
And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.
Austin is a designer at Google and previously the first UX Designer at HubSpot. We talk about the importance of economics as a designer, why the change to distributed teams is inevitable, and why understanding the value systems of a company you're interviewing for is important before saying ‘yes’ to an offer.
Connect with Austin
Website, LinkedIn, Twitter
The UX & Growth Podcast
Austin's newsletter
Selected links from the episode
Austin's UX Design Process
Lean UX, by Jeff Gothelf
The podcast episode with Dan Patiñ0
Indonesia's top healthcare app
Full transcript
Christian: Welcome to Design Meets Business, a show that inspires designers to think beyond pixels. I'm your host Christian Vasile, and on this podcast, I sit down with creatives to talk about their stories, lessons they've learned during their careers, and how you can use design to make a bigger impact in your organisation.
On the first episode of the show, we're talking to Austin Knight. Austin is a designer at Google and previously the first UX Designer at HubSpot. We talk about the importance of economics as a designer, why the change to distributed teams is inevitable, and why understanding the value systems of a company you're interviewing for is important before saying ‘yes’ to an offer.
Austin, thank you so much for joining the Design Meets Business podcast. Really excited to talk to you today about some of the things you've been working on and maybe how the future is going to look like for our industry. Your team at Google is influencing the future of Chrome, which everyone knows is the most popular browser out there. And you're focusing on how to get to that next billion users in the emerging markets. So, I'd like to talk about how you manage such a mammoth of a task today, but also about your experience of HubSpot where I know you were one of the first UX Designers and how you helped the company grow so massively.
So before we go into that, it would be nice to start with a bit of a background so people get acquainted with you. What's your story? What led you to the path or on the path you are on today?
Austin: Yes. Excellent. So I'm really thrilled to be here, Christian. Thank you so much for having me on. It's fantastic to be talking to you about these topics that are actually really important to me at the intersection of design and business. But yes, just to give folks a quick background on myself, I am a Product Designer at Google based in the San Francisco Bay area.
Prior to that, I helped lead and established UX at HubSpot, and I actually worked remote for quite a sizeable chunk of that time. I was primarily based out of Rio de Janeiro, but then I was traveling around the world. I do some mentoring at Columbia and Stanford, advise start-ups at Sequoia Capital, do some speaking when we're not dealing with a global pandemic, co-host a podcast called the UX & Growth Podcast and then another one called the Decrypting Crypto Podcast. Both are kind of about design and tech and stuff like that. So really passionate about this space.
I am fully self-taught, so I kind of came into this purely based out of that passion. I come from a place in the middle of the United States called Kentucky. It's not exactly the tech centre of our country, and Design wasn't really seen as a career. So it was more something that like failed artists did to pay the bills. So it was really cool over time for me, as I pursued this passion to realise that actually it was a career and it was something that real value could be derived from. So eventually, yes, made my way here to Google designing with immense responsibility for Chrome – over 3.5 billion users that we are serving now. It is incredible to operate at that scale.
And yes, as you mentioned, starting out at HubSpot as an early designer; learned a lot about what it means to establish a design practice and what was already a very, very well-functioning organisation actually, they really knew what they were doing, but getting design off the ground when the company was already several years into its incredible growth trajectory was quite an experience. So happy to talk about that too.
Christian: Awesome. Thank you for the background. I cannot even imagine how complicated it must be to have to design for billions of users, and that's billions with a B. There must be so much going on behind there. And we're going to talk about that in a second, but first I want to talk about something else that I've read about you; might be true, might not be true. If it's on the Internet, it's true. Isn't that what they say? Tell me about unsolicited redesigns and getting jobs out of that. Is there any truth to that?
Austin: Yes, there is some truth to this. So a big theme in my career is actually sort of self-initiative, which I think an unsolicited redesign is sort of one manifestation of that. I started my career really by launching a non-profit organisation, purely again as a passion project. It was fighting human trafficking. And did a fundraiser with a local business in Kentucky, and we raised way more money than we expected to. And as a way of thanking them, I wanted to kind of go through their digital presence, especially their website, to perform an audit and give that to them as an additional thing in return for the incredible work that they did for our fundraiser.
And then I presented this audit to them, and they basically said, “Look, this is awesome. We don't have the expertise in-house to do this. How much do we have to pay you to just do this for us?” So that ended up being basically my first job. And it was really just a fantastic opportunity to kind of explore all of the different areas of design that I felt I could be interested in and start to hone my craft and take things in the direction that I wanted to, because I have a lot of autonomy in that role.
And then that eventually led to -- this was around like 2013. There’s a huge allure, as there still is, to the idea of joining a start-up at the time. So there's a start-up out of Cincinnati, Ohio, that really caught my attention. I did an unsolicited redesign of the site, built a style guide, spoke to the CEO, and got a job because of that effectively.
And then interestingly, that also was a big theme in my going to HubSpot. I was on Reddit doing anonymous design feedback on like r/designcritique or something like that. And one person whose design I critiqued happened to be a fairly prominent engineer at HubSpot, and he knew that they were looking to establish their UX practice. And so this opened that conversation to complete strangers behind random usernames. Ultimately, we became very close co-workers, and we actually started the UX & Growth Podcast together. That's Matt Rowe – was the guy that did that with me, and he's still at HubSpot doing incredible things.
So it's really cool to see how when you have a passion, and you are pursuing it organically, it will lead to opportunities both intentionally, of course, and unintentionally as some of these were.
Christian: That's a great story. The reason I wanted to talk about it is because I see a lot of designers nowadays, especially towards the beginning of their careers, really struggling with getting work. And especially in this time when nobody's really hiring, or very few companies are, it must be even more difficult than usual. And this story reminds me of the fact that whichever situation you find yourself in, there is always a way around it. Not a lot of people do unsolicited redesigns, and I guess not a lot of people will continue just because of this podcast. But I just want to put the story out there because it's a bit inspiring of how you can start in a different way than most other people do.
So you’re self-taught. You didn't have a college degree or whatever, you didn't have that catalyst to start your career based off, but you found other ways of doing it. So I just want to raise that flag and say, there's always a way to get in front of companies, and there must be, not Google, not HubSpot, not Facebook, not Apple. Probably that doesn't work there, but if you are at the beginning of your career, I can imagine that starting in a smaller company, it's probably even better than starting in a large company that might be a bit overwhelming. And maybe a way of starting in a smaller company is doing some sort of an unsolicited redesign or trying to just provide any value maybe without expectation, and someone might say, “You know what? We actually need that.”
So that's why I wanted to talk about this. I love that story and the Reddit story of how you got into HubSpot; that's even better. So let's talk about HubSpot. You are the first UX Designer there working on the website, working on hubspot.com, and when was that? 2015 or when was that?
Austin: Yes, yes, right around there.
Christian: ‘15, right around there. So they were already growing massively, but with you being the first UX Designer, I can imagine that the role you came into was maybe a bit different than, or definitely a bit different than the role you are in today. You were maybe seen a bit differently. I don't want to say pixel pusher, but did the people at HubSpot really understand what you were brought in for, or did you have to do a lot of stakeholder management and a lot of transparency around the work, etc etc?
Austin: Yes, it's a great question. I think that my answer is going to be a bit atypical, actually, which is that HubSpot was effectively founded on user-centred design principles. If you research really, like one of HubSpot's greatest innovations is this concept of inbound marketing. And if you really sort of break down the fundamentals of it, it effectively is just human-centred marketing. It's a beautiful thing, and because of that, it was quite a natural transition for user experience and human-centred design to become an established practice at HubSpot.
And I was in a nice position where my role was actually advocated for by the very engineers that I would be working with. So that's not to say that I didn't have to overcome plenty of things along that road, but what I will say is that if the right values are in place within an organisation, it's much more straight forward to incorporate human-centred design within that organisation. And this is a big piece of advice that I give to designers that are looking to go into nascent roles and organisations is – what are the fundamentals, the values that the organisation holds elsewhere in its practice, and how well do those align with the values of human-centred design, but also with your values as an individual. That is going to impact your ability to be effective.
Now that's not to say that there isn't something really, really poetic about overcoming an extreme challenge against all odds. I think there's a lot to that, but I also think that a lot of the time, to your pixel pusher sort of fear of perception that many fear that designers have being perceived as that. I think a lot of the time we bring this upon ourselves, and because of that it is also our responsibility to squash that perception and to prove to our cross-functional peers that we are not deserving of that perception.
So yes, I think if you go into a company that totally doesn't get it, of course that is a challenge in and of itself that may have nothing to do with your quality or abilities as a designer. However, if you go into a relatively well-informed, forward-thinking, open-minded company that is focused principally on success and recognises that success for the company means success for its users and for its customers, then the only way you're going to get that perception, in my opinion, is if you do yourself and your peers the disservice of earning that perception.
So think about how do you work your way out of that in terms of using it as a design problem? Who are the people that you're working with? What do they care about? What language do they speak, and how do you sort of speak in those terms in that language? In the case of HubSpot, if I ever ran into that, it was usually that folks cared about certain very specific metrics. So like the search organisation really, really had strong SLAs that we needed to help them deliver. And so it was important for me to speak about the design in terms of those metrics that mattered to them the most, for example.
Christian: So that's applying the same principle you would apply to designing a product or a website to designing maybe let's say your role in your organisation; to figuring out who your stakeholders are, communicating to them the right way, and then applying whatever you need to apply to make sure that they start understanding that your success is their success as well, I guess.
Austin: Yes, absolutely. You can view a lot of things as a design problem, that's for sure.
Christian: Well, I guess that's maybe why a lot of designers have gone on to build really successful companies is because if you do have this mentality of trying to understand everyone around you and make sure that whatever you do fits their mental model of an organisation, or fits their needs, then you're much more likely to be successful. And we see this in the industry whether it's Airbnb that started by designers or whatever other organisation, it's kind of a pattern that keeps popping up.
So you go into HubSpot, it's already, as you said, a mature organisation. It's already an organisation that understands design. Just because they don't have a designer or a UX designer it doesn't mean they don't understand design. You come in; there must still be a lot of challenges to overcome. So what would you say were the biggest challenges to overcome when you started at HubSpot?
Austin: Yes. So there certainly were. One of the largest challenges that we faced is that there wasn't really any formalised UX practice or process. There were designers at HubSpot, they were principally visual and brand designers. And so we were looking to establish the UX practice, which was quite different to what was being done there. HubSpot was always, first and foremost, a marketing company. So it would make sense that they would have more marketing-oriented designers, but as the site started to grow and we started going from like 100,000 visitors a month to like 10 million, we really thought a lot about the role of the functionality of the site and the usability of the site and how that fed into the product and the sort of consistency of that experience across both of those touchpoints. From when you're initially landing on this site, HubSpot was bringing in a ton of traffic through organic search because it's just a content machine. That's effectively inbound marketing.
So what's that experience like a first engaging with the content versus engaging with purchasing the software versus getting into the software. Establishing the process was something that I knew from the very start needed to be done collaboratively. Of course, I had an idea, a conceptualisation for a process in my head, but I also knew that both from a design perspective, but also from a marketing and sales and engineering perspective, there were already systems in place at the company. And it would not be very productive for me to come in and immediately say, “Okay, here's what's being done wrong. This is what we need to change. I'm going to institute these things, etc etc etc.” That's a fairly egotistical way, I think, to approach design or to approach your role.
So I spent the first couple of weeks listening and observing, and I think that that can be an uncomfortable thing to do because you feel this pressure, especially in a high-growth tech company, which that's exactly what HubSpot was at the time; we called ourselves a scale-up. So call it like a start-up and then there's a scale up and then you've got a mature organisation or a corporation or whatever you want to call it. We were still scaling up, which means we had found the wave, but there was a lot more riding and a lot more building of that wave to do.
So I knew that within those sorts of systems that were in place, it was important for us to collaboratively develop that process. And that began with listening and with not really contributing very much for a couple of weeks despite the fact that in these start-up and scale-up environments, people are contributing at just extreme velocity. So while everybody else around me was just running at full speed, I had to kind of just sit down a watch them. And you stand out because of that, but what that empowered me to do was to take in a lot of data and also to form relationships that could then be used to institute our UX practice and our process.
Christian: You already touched upon something that I wanted to ask anyway, which is what is the first thing you should do when you join an organisation? What are you spending your first month on? And I guess it's what you just said. It's building relationships to people and seeing how the organisation how the organisation worked without you and trying to figure out how we do would work with you.
Austin: Yes, absolutely.
Christian: Were there any trade-offs you had to make in terms of establishing this design process? Because there are just -- it encompasses so many things. There's just so much as part of this design process. Were there any areas that you simply weren't able to implement because of many other reasons, or did you do it the way you actually hoped you were going to end up doing?
Austin: You'll never fully be able to do it 100% to plan. And I think it's important to reconcile with that as early in your career as possible, especially in this industry that has at least classically been so aesthetically oriented. We are prone to the pursuit of perfection, but I will say actually to HubSpot's credit more than to my own, we actually got pretty close to exactly what was we were shooting for, and I was really proud of that.
It was a really nice experience to be able to devise something entirely from scratch and within a fairly short amount of time see it mature to actually something greater than we had originally envisioned. This process I've open sourced on my website at austinknight.com. You can go, or you can go to uxdesignguide.com and click on the process tab; it's on there. I also have a case study on my site that sort of talks through how we put this into practice, but it's the exact process we implemented at HubSpot. And it's a derivation of Lean UX written by Jeff Gothelf and their crew.
And what I did learn through this process of creating a process is that these processes are intended purposefully to not be rigid. And that was something that we had to let go as we were developing this, is the tendency to want to create a rigid process that says “Every time this thing must be done in this way at this phase”, but Lean UX is ingenious in the respect that it is designed intentionally to be flexible and to be fluid and to be adaptive.
So I have a lot of people coming to me, and they'll like -- over the years, and they'll ask me, “How do I incorporate a good process into my organisation? Or how does the X, Y, and Z thing work with Lean UX?” And the beauty of it, but also perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of it, because it really just comes down to the answer is, you're going to have to do the work yourself, is that there is no definitive answer. Every process and implementation of the process is contextual, not just to the organisation, company, team, industry, but also to the project itself. So one of the things that we did really good was that we built this fluid process, and then we took it through several projects with the intent and purpose of iterating on the process thereafter. So we took an iterative approach to our iterative process.
Christian: Very inception, isn't it?
Austin: Yes, yes. But it actually worked really nicely because we learned the things that worked well within HubSpot, and that didn't work well, the things that were important to us and were not so important to us. And also, by nature of that, the things that we needed to change about our organisation to better adapt to the process that we had envisioned or the things that we needed to change about the process to better adapt to this beautiful organisation that had been around for years and it was already making all of this money and making so many people happy.
Christian: Yes, especially the shareholders.
Austin: Yes, that was one of the interesting things is that, like the company IPO’ed, when I got there. And so yes, we got to see this really awesome roller coaster ride of stock prices and emotions and everything like that. And a beautiful thing about HubSpot is that usually a lot of companies, when they IPO, the culture changes and the way things are done changes. Nothing changed. It was amazing. And that really -- I mean, I sound like I'm a walking advertisement for the company, but I practically am, and it's not intentional.
I think that the thing to take away for folks listening to this is that it is so important to scrutinise and to evaluate a company before you choose to invest your time, your most valuable asset, in that company. And that's really the way that you have to think about your job, is that you are making an investment in that company of your most valuable asset. So when you're interviewing, make sure you're not just being interviewed by the company, ensure that you are interviewing the company as well, and making sure that there's a mutual fit here.
Christian: So I guess that's a bit easier to do when you're more experienced, but how about being someone maybe first job, maybe maybe a second job, earlier on in their careers. What's an easy way for them to do this? To figure out if a company is a fit for them when they haven't really got that experience yet to know -- smell those red flags from a mile away or whatever the saying is. What do these people do, who just start in their careers?
Austin: Yes. So I think it's a matter of developing a strong value system as an individual and as a designer and knowing yourself and what you care about. And sure, that of course will be honed explicitly through experience, but it's something that I think is also somewhat intrinsic to the individual. And something that worked really well for me with HubSpot is that they were very forthcoming about their culture. If you just Google HubSpot culture code, you'll find a 100 plus slide deck that has been viewed over six million times. And it's basically HubSpot just laying out, “Hey, this is what we're all about.”
There were a few things that spoke to me. One of them being, we don't care where you work, when you work, what we care about is what you produce. So here they're talking about a results-only work environment. And as you sort of educate yourself on the company and its values, you can start to get a sense for how well you're aligned with that company. But I also think that you can fall into this sort of tough situation where not all companies are going to be quite as forthcoming as HubSpot. I think that younger companies… more forward-thinking and adaptable companies are doing that more and more often.
Google was perhaps famously one of the first companies to do things like this, to be so forthcoming about its slides and free food and stuff like that, but you may be like, “Okay, Austin, great thing about the culture code. But I'm looking at these very, very corporate, dry websites. What does that tell me about these companies?”
Go on Glassdoor and read about them. Go on LinkedIn and find people that are individual contributors, managers, whoever you think are going to be the best sources of information and reach out to them and say, “Hey, can I buy you a virtual beer? And we can just talk about what it's like to work at your company.”
The design industry prides itself on empathy and on openness. So take up the industry on that. Go to events hosted by the company. When you're in the interview process, again, make sure that you're interviewing the company. I think the best way to do that in terms of understanding their value system is to ask very, very specific questions. Because if you ask a general question, like, “What do you care about?” most likely the interviewer that you're working with is going -- or the recruiter, whoever is going to have a fairly well-rehearsed answer. So ask for specifics and examples that are difficult to rehearse or to fake, etc.
I think a fantastic one that we have at our disposal at this point in time is – especially a great question to ask to the individual is, “Hey, how did your company treat you during COVID-19? When did you start having shelter in place orders in your region, and when did your company send you home? When did they send you remote?” That timeframe can tell you a lot about the companies’ values and how it approaches work and what it thinks of its employees and on that sort of spectrum of resource to human being.
So yes, I think there's definitely going to first be an aspect of researching the company, and that's also going to aid you a lot in the interview process when you can demonstrate knowledge and expertise about the company. Because it shows that you're not blasting out applications to as many places as possible. You're actually excited and passionate about the opportunity, and you can fit in well with the area that they're working within. But also, when you're in the interview process, ensuring that you ask pointed and thoughtful questions to get a sense for where the company is at and what it's like to work there and how you can fit into that.
Christian: So off the back of that, you been with HubSpot for a bit of a time, and then you moved onto Google. So I'm wondering what was it? I guess when you've helped scale HubSpot in the way it has, you probably have your pick of choices of where you want to work. So what was it that attracted you to Google talking about values and how the company was? What was it that made you think, “Oh, I want to invest my time here as you very well put it earlier?”
Austin: This is going to sound maybe a little silly, but when I -- I'll never forget in 1997, the first time that I saw that search engine and then typed something into it and got a result and how much it just blew my mind. I love the branding. I love the simplicity of it, but I love the power of it. The power to deliver information, to organise information for at that time what may have been millions of people and today, of course, there's billions of people and I've seen this play out in my time at Google – the real-world impact that the company and its products have had. And I think that that is an immense opportunity, and of course, and this is the one that I tend to focus on more, an immense responsibility. But I grew up with Google from that moment on, and I honed my passion for design via the open web.
So view source on a website, deconstruct it, try to host something on my own, and pose like I'm some big design agency or something like that and see if I can get anybody to be interested in this stuff that's that I'm doing. I remember I think I was like 11 years old when I built my first website and, of course, that was in Firefox. Chrome didn't even exist at the time. And then Chrome -- a lot of people don't realise this, but Chrome was actually born out of Firefox.
So I remember when Chrome came around, and it was just such a robust leap forward. I recognised the importance of it, because it was this collaboration between a company with such incredible reach and such depth of information and the very window through which people would reach that depth of information, which of course, is the browser, and that is Chrome. And I think it's that journey for me of growing up on the open web – it's what has specifically led me to -- and very intentionally join Google and for that matter Chrome specifically.
Of course, I love many other Google products, but this is the product that I always intended to work on for years. And actually, when I -- very early, when I started my career and then especially when I was going to HubSpot, everything was intended to be a calculated move toward exactly this. So I have to say that when I actually made it the Google, I couldn't quite believe it. I couldn’t… especially how quickly I was able to do it.
Oh, that's not to say that I didn't fail on the way because I did fail a whole interview process, and I'd be happy to talk about that as well. There were failures along this whole path, but when I did finally do it, I had kind of like this moment for -- man, maybe like six months of just existential dread, where I was like, “Oh my God, what do I want to do next?” And I'm like, “Do I need to like go to MIT or something? Try to like -- maybe I should get an education. What's this next thing that I can do because I achieved my goal?”
So it's a beautiful thing when you achieve your goals, but there is also this other thing, especially if you're listening to this and you're in that process of achieving your goals. It's kind of better to be in the process than it is to be at the end of it, I have to say. And now, of course, a couple of years later, I've built up this whole new host of just lofty goals. Hopefully, some of which I'll never achieve so that I can always chase them and just land on something else that's interesting.
Christian: I've heard you on your own podcast, actually, talk about designing for the next billion users. Designing for people in Indonesia, Brazil, all these countries that are just coming on the web and how these people are actually so similar to how we are too, or maybe to how similar they are to people in Midwestern America or, people in maybe more rural areas of Europe or… so, talk a bit about designing for that emerging market, and how does that fit in with the -- let's say overarching goals of Google as a company?
Austin: Yes. So this is a huge area of passion for me as an individual, but of course, it's an area of passion for the company as a whole. There is enormous potential in markets like Brazil and Kenya, Nigeria, Indonesia, India, etc. And you're right. I've been talking about this well before I was at Google, I'll never forget on the UX & Growth Podcast.
I was living in Argentina for some time, and I met this incredible guy, Dan Patiño. And he came on the show with me, and we talked about emerging markets and the immense potential that is there. And that still remains very, very true today. Of course these markets shift, especially with political changes and things like that, but by and large, there is a lot of opportunity as we see millions of people coming online for the very first time every day.
And what we have to note is that these people, their interaction with, their experience with the web is very different from mine and yours. Of course there's maybe a couple decade or a decade and a half gap, but also most of the time they're having these first interactions via mobile devices that may be lower-end devices, feature phones, maybe they have spotty connections. And these devices are critical for their access to information, their livelihood, their wellbeing, their entertainment, their communication with their family, etc.
And so the way that we designed for them is in many ways, very different than how we design for somebody that is in San Francisco. But interestingly, yes, to your point, there are strong overlaps. For example, with folks that are coming online for the first time in emerging markets, as well as with folks, for example, that are coming online in Appalachia, a place very dear to my heart where a lot of people are dealing with living conditions that are… I think most people in the United States don't completely comprehend or understand. So yes, and then of course you've got like the in-between too. Not all of these situations are dire, which is that, like running research with people in Brazil, I saw a ton of overlap with their use cases in their needs with my dad's use cases and his needs are, or my mom's or whatever.
So yes, there's a lot right here in your backyard whether you're in rural Europe or in the United States that you can learn from, but then also, there is this beautiful thing where you -- when you start to design at this scale, and for billions of users and especially for billions of users that are coming online for the first time, you get an immense explosion of diversity at the same time. So some of the needs may -- there may be some strong overlap, but then the specifics and the execution can be fairly different. So yes, this is a really interesting time where we are seeing just explosions of connectivity in places like India and Nigeria, their entire infrastructure changing over the course of a year or two. And the impact that that has on these people's lives. You can especially see this in Southeast Asia as well.
Before the pandemic I was Singapore and Malaysia and travelled around and got to meet a bunch of local designers there working at companies like Grab and Gojek, etc. And within like -- we are used to as people in Europe and the United States, etc, we're used to pretty insane level of -- insane in a good way, level of stability. And the amount of change that we experienced over the course of one generation is like that amount of changes experienced maybe five or six times over the course of one generation in Southeast Asia right now. I mean, you're going from literally like living in a hut potentially to having a scooter, a motorised scooter, and having access to Internet and working as what they were literally refer to themselves as digital entrepreneurs, which is fantastic. So there is a lot of shift happening.
Christian: Yes, so I'm based in Bali right now. And Bali today is very different than Bali was ten and even five years ago. I was hearing stories and seeing photos, shocking photos from Bali five years ago. And it looks like it's a different world. So they -- and if you look at five -- at photos from five years ago in London, where I also used to live, there's no change. They're still the same shops. Everything's the same.
So you're right. It's really interesting. And that must come with a lot of challenges for people building products, I can imagine. Challenges that are wildly different than the challenges we deal with when we design for the, let’s say, Western world.
Austin: Yes. There's a lot of things that you take for granted as a designer, which are really related to infrastructure, to device, tech, and capabilities, to culture, language, perception, that you have to just completely throw out the window when you're designing for these population. And really the antidote to all of that is field research. User experience research is the most powerful thing that I think you can embark upon to empower yourself or your designers, your team of designers, to create for such an incredibly diverse population. So that's something that I feel very fortunate to take part in at Google, again, outside of pandemic times – going into people's homes and observing them as they interact with our devices and with our products and talking to them about that and learning from them.
Christian: A few years ago, I designed an app. I had no clue what it was going to turn into. This was towards the beginning of my career. I designed an app for -- a healthcare app for Indonesians. Back then, I had no clue that years later I would end up living here. And the app, looking back at it, even compared to like -- obviously there were different trends back then, but even compared to the counterpart apps in the Western world was so rudimentary, so basic. There was nothing exciting about it.
Three months ago, I get in touch totally randomly with the guy who hired me back then on LinkedIn. And he tells me this was -- I think this is six years ago. And he tells me that they've had that version of the app until last summer, so that's for six years, simply because it was so rudimentary that -- and that's what they needed. And finally, after six years, there was a need to kind of prop that up a little bit. It's unheard of for a popular -- and this is the leading app in Indonesia right now. Again, who knew what they were going to turn into. But it's unheard of in the Western world for an app to not be redesigned for six years, top app, right? While here, it's totally normal.
So I want to segway a bit into -- what you've talked about now, it's a lot of designing for users. There's also the other side of the story that you're passionate about, which is designing for the business if you will, or to meet the business goal. So when you work, whether it’s a smaller or larger organisation like Google, how do you manage to marry up the needs to design for people like you and me, with the needs of a large faceless entity or a corporation or a start-up, whatever it is, to be successful?
Austin: Yes. So I do think that this is perhaps one of the most critical, yet overlooked aspects of design. And that's why I'm so grateful that you are running this podcast and that you are starting these conversations, because they're just not happening.
To be blunt, a lot of designers are just completely and utterly, economically illiterate. They don't understand how a business is run. They don't understand what makes a product commercially successful, and they don't understand how that pay check shows up in their bank account every month. And I think that that is a huge disservice to our profession, to our users, and perhaps principally to ourselves and the organisations that we work for and care about so much, at least, I hope.
So to me design and business are inextricably tied. And I think -- going into the design profession, going into design school, however, you find yourself entering into this field, it’s smart to approach it from as entrepreneurial of a perspective as possible. And to say, “I'm not just here to design something that looks really good, or is really usable, or makes users really happy, but I'm also here to design something that is going to be objectively successful. And if you think about it, that is sort of maybe one of the highest forms of design, because if you design something that is really nice and it looks really good and it's really usable and makes all your users happy, but can't sustain itself, then ultimately your users are going to lose that product at some point. It’s not going to be able to pay for itself if it's not commercially viable. Or even if at some point it is commercially viable, and then you erode that over time through what could seem as like, well-intentioned designed decisions that ultimately hurts the economics of the product, then you're going to get this sort of classic situation where it's like, we built something that people loved, but we didn't do it thoughtfully enough to make sure that they could continue loving it after the money ran out; after the venture capital infusion went away.
And I think that a lot of that responsibility actually falls on the designer. And we think, “Oh, that's the suits’ job. Like that's what the CEO does or the CFO or that's what the marketing and sales people do. Their job is to bring the cash into the funnel. And it's my job to create the product that people love.” But when you make design decisions, you make decisions on behalf of the entire business and your entire user group.
So this is no longer about you. As soon as you step into the role as a designer, you must remove your own, self-driven desires and motives from that equation and think about, “Okay, I have been given this responsibility. So how am I going to properly solve for both the users, which we love to talk about, and I don't think we have any problem advocating for users in design at this point, but also how am I going to solve for the business and recognise that these are both very, very important stakeholders?"
Christian: So you've asked the question. I'll let you answer it too. How do you do that? Because it doesn't sound like it's -- it sounds like there's a gap in knowledge there, you said economics. If a designer becomes a designer through school, or even self-taught like you are, where are you getting that economics, as you called it, knowledge from? Is it by working in companies? Is it by studying on your own because you know it's important, just as important as visual design is or whatever other component of design… how do you get that knowledge?
Austin: I think the first step is intellectual curiosity. And that's really what I'm campaigning for here. I think that the problem, the root of this problem that we're dealing with, and the first step that we can take is actually very basic, which is to not shut the information out, to not dismiss the information. So to not say, “Oh, it's not my job to take care of the business. It's my job to take care of the user.” To recognise that actually the information about the business is very important. So when you're talking to sales people about their pipeline, or when you're talking to marketing people about how they are going to market and sell the product that you are designing, or you're talking to your data analyst about how your revenue is being impacted by a product. And they may be telling you something that you don't want to hear. Like, “Look, this feature that you designed is very nice, but it's going to cost us $5,000 a month or something like that in lost revenue potential to launch this feature.”
I've been in that exact situation many times, and I have made the decision to not launch the feature in favour of the economics –– the economic impact that it would have on the product. And the beautiful thing about that is that constraints are the mother of innovation. So almost inevitably, with every one of those cases, it just took a little bit more time and tweaking and thought to be put into it, to find a solution that either kept those metrics at neutral or positive, instead of putting them into a negative space.
Now with that said, of course, sometimes you're going to get backed into a corner where you have conflicting goals, where the business may have a set of goals that are not directly aligned with design or not directly aligned with the user. And this is partially a big part of the value that designers bring to the table is this conflict resolution and helping to align your cross-functional team on shared mutually beneficial goals. I think that that really comes into play as you're moving into leadership. So maybe not as much for somebody like a junior designer, but certainly something to be thinking about early in your career.
When you have those conflicting goals, sometimes you may be able to justify actually taking a hit in one direction or the other, if you can't find a compromise or you can't reconcile them. So for example I've also launched feature that cost quite a bit of money, but before we even designed the thing, we knew, we did our due diligence to understand and recognise that it was probably going to be costly, because we had conflicting goals, and we went into the project under that agreement and assumption. And then when we noticed and inevitably saw that the revenue metrics or whatever metric it is that you want to pick, a business metric, health metric, etc, was being hurt by the feature, we knew that that was actually somewhat intentional, because we had prioritised intentionally this other aspect of the design over that.
So for example, you may be able to pick out a shitty piece of UI or a dark pattern in your product or like a modal that is like doing a really good job at getting you $5,000 extra revenue per month. But you notice that that is coming at the expense of NPS or user customer satisfaction or retention. And so you make the explicit decision to tank that metric, that little revenue metric, in favour of the other metric, which in the case of NPS or whatever would be a quantitative metrics. So, it's very easy to see that comparison.
It gets more sort of difficult when you're dealing with a qualitative metric, which is something like, look, this is about product excellence. This is about the fit and finish of the design. It's a lot harder to argue that. And I would say that the way that you're going to do that is by building rapport within your organisation, as a designer that approaches every design problem from a standpoint of humility and not from ego; not saying, “Look, design is like this thing that needs to be put on a pedestal, and designers are like better than you all. You all don't have taste.” I've worked with people like that, and they're very unpleasant, and they really -- again, going back to the perception of design, they do the most work out of anything to ruin design's perception cross-functionally.
So first, make sure that you build up the rapport and the respect with your cross-functional peers to show, “Look, these designers, they really do care about the business and the users on a well-balanced basis”. I can go back on a track record -- on this person's track record and see that they have made decisions that may go against like the aspects of design or whatever these aesthetics or whatever these things that we hold to be so dear in favour of the thing that maybe wasn't beautiful but was right or what was better.
And then when you do take a stand, and you plant your flag, and you say, “This time, we are going to do the design-driven thing, even if it is in the face of our metrics.” You have this rapport and this respect to fall back on or to serve as your backdrop. This is built principally through an understanding and a mutual respect for your cross-functional peers’ roles, goals, and responsibilities. So understanding what an engineer does, what's important to them, and expressing your desire to help them and to achieve those goals via the design.
Christian: I used to work with someone who -- he used to say to the business, very bluntly, “I don't work for you. I work for your users or for your customers.” And I thought, “Oh, okay. I see what you're doing. I see what you're trying to do there, but if there is no business, there's no customers either.”
So I see design or designers as a connector in between the users, which of course, everyone knows as you said earlier, everyone knows we design for users. There's no – like who else would we design for? So the connector between that and designing for the needs of the business, because by designing with the business in mind, you're actually having the best interest of your users or customers in mind at the same time.
Austin: In the ideal scenario.
Christian: Yes
Austin: I do want to say that person that you're working with, especially if they're an old school designer. I try to have a lot of patience with them. I think an inherent ego and a designer, “Oh, I'm the creative director and what I say goes” this like hierarchal bullshit and everything. I'm pretty allergic to that, and I'm quick to call that out and to defect against that. Like when people play hierarchal or experience games like “I have all these awards, or I was at this agency, or I have this education”. That’s all bullshit.
But I also think that in the spirit of empathy, especially designers that have been around for quite some time, they did come up in an environment where nobody gave a crap about the user. And so they're sort of like battle-hardened, and they're like, “Look, I've dealt with too many of you people saying that, like, we can't do the right thing for the user.” And so, I understand where they're coming from, and I think this goes back to the thing where it's like, “Hey, it's contextual.” You know what I mean?
Right now, I'm working in a company that really priorities this and values this. So I can -- we have like everybody -- we've got rules of play. So you have to have this mutual respect in order to develop a product at the companies that I work at. And as soon as somebody drops that mutual respect and kind of the whole system comes falling when one function puts their priorities above another's, and they stop taking into account the legitimate needs and goals of the other functions, which is what I think a lot of designers especially of the past are used to, but certainly those organisations still exist.
So if your organisation doesn't understand or respect design, obviously you're going to be in a different situation than that. And you can't give as many concessions as you -- you can't be as kind as you may be able to be in a more well-designed scenario.
Alright. We are running out of time. I have two more questions. I ask everyone on the show these. So first one is what is one thing that you wish more designers would know?
Austin: Yes, this is an interesting one. So I think that there's a few things that I would -- pieces of advice that I would like to give to somebody who is interested in design, who is wanting to get into design. And a lot of them sort of follow this very similar theme, which is that we all face imposter syndrome. And I've especially noticed that this is a common phenomenon as I've been working with junior designers, career transitioners, people laid off by COVID-19.
I did mention this at the beginning, but a few months back I made a post on LinkedIn after seeing that so many people were being impacted by COVID-19, offering to do free mentoring sessions, 30 minutes a piece, one-on-one, as many as people need for portfolio reviews, interview prep, coaching, or just being somebody for them to vent to.
And this caught on. It became a huge movement within the design community. We got over 30 people from companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, etc, that became mentors. It spawned off into this thing that Felix Lee and James Baduor created called the Adplist. Companies like PayPal and Zendesk ended up creating their own versions of this and systematised it. And we ended up conducting over 500 one-on-one reviews, like 30-minute portfolio reviews.
Over 85 jobs have been land ed already by individuals that have taken part in that. And I've sensed a lot of patterns in the people that I've talked to and the people that have gotten jobs and what advice worked and what didn't. And one of them is sort of just this bringing down the expectation and the anxiety around what it means to be a well-contributing designer. And I think that what we all experience to a degree is a form of imposter syndrome, especially as we seek this pursuit of perfection within our work.
We did a really interesting study at HubSpot on imposter syndrome, and we found that the people that tend to experience imposter syndrome the most, it's sort of on this interesting curve where the most junior folks experience it at like say, on a scale of one to 10, they’ll experience it on average at like a three or a four. And then mid-level folks will experience it on maybe like a one or a two, and then senior-level people, principal level of people, people that are very experienced will feel that at like a six, seven and, eight.
They actually experience the most heightened forms of imposter syndrome. And there's a bunch of things -- psychological science that goes into this. But basically, the principle is -- I think that if you want to Google something around this, I believe it's called the Dunning Kruger effect, which is that the more that you know about something, the more self-aware you are and the more you realise you don't know. And the less you know, the more you actually -- you don't realise how much you don't know.
There's a famous philosopher quote about this, probably that's like, “The more you know, the more you realise you don't know,” basically. And that's what people are experiencing with imposter syndrome. And when you get to a well-experienced position in your career, you really have to confront this, and it becomes a part of your daily life. And what you learn from it is that nobody really knows definitively what they're doing.
Ultimately, there are no true experts, especially in a field like design. This is a very open and creative field. And I think that everything that I've said in this podcast is totally open to debate and disagreement and being debunked. I recognise that really what ultimately makes the person right, is that they are just less full of shit than the last person. And that's really what you're striving to be – recognising that at the end of the day, to some degree, there's still so much to learn, and you're always going to be full of shit to some degree regardless of whether you're a student or a seasoned professional.
So what this means is actually something really beautiful that really, when you're early in your career, you actually have a lot to contribute already. I did a segment of cloudflare.tv today where we talked about this stuff as we've been mentoring people. That these students that -- a lot of the students that I was mentoring, they're saying, “Hey, thank you so much for doing this mentoring or whatever.” And I would tell them my one condition is that you, as soon as you are in the position to mentor other people, do the same thing because we need more of this stuff. And obviously, I am like these other amazing people that volunteered to do it, can’t take on 100% of it. So the more people we have doing it, the better.
And then usually the reaction is like, “Oh my God, it's going to take me so long to get to that point.” But what they don't realise is, they just graduated from college. There's total -- totally new people, freshmen coming into design at their universities, that they have a lot of perspective and insight that they could share with them.
And then beyond that, coming into design with a totally fresh perspective and set of eyes is extremely valuable. I remember when I joined Google, we were like -- on my first day, we were in a design review, and I said, “Hey, I can't believe this, but I actually have like a piece of feedback that I want to give.” And I'll never forget, Alex Ainslie, my director of design going, “Please, please do that. It’s exactly what you are here for right now. We need your fresh perspective and your external influence at this point.” Because I was still effectively operating from a sort of uninformed point of view.
So you always, always have something to contribute to design, to the design community, and you should never feel like you need to get to a certain level or position or amount of years of experience or accomplishments or whatever before you can consider yourself to be a strong contributor or a good designer, somebody that can do well at your role and somebody that can give back.
Christian: I love that. That sparks a lot of thoughts into my head as well, because I can relate to a lot of the things you're saying around imposter syndrome and all that, and thinking that you don't necessarily have a lot to offer when in fact you're right, everyone has something to offer. So that's really interesting. I hope a lot of people listening to this also got to this point where it makes them reconsider how much they want to help or how they can help others coming in. I always said that I think, as an industry, we need to do more for the people coming in. We're not doing enough.
Austin: Yes. I agree
Christian: And since the world is becoming more and more dependent on technology, therefore there’s going to be more and more of a need for people like us, that we, as an industry, need to do a bit more towards this cohort of people that's coming in every year or every, every day.
Right! Last question. How do you reckon the future of design looks like?
Austin: My answer to that is distributed and diverse. Something that I didn't mention here is that I'm extremely passionate about remote work, but I'm even more passionate about flexible work arrangements, so being able to go into the office if you want to, being able to work from Bali if you want to.
And Christian, I'm sure that you can speak to the incredible opportunities and challenges and inspiration that comes from doing something like that. But I think that the future of design is very distributed and it is diverse in perhaps an even broader sense of the term than is typically discussed today, which is to say like diverse in terms of -- very diverse in terms of geography, in terms of background, in terms of perspective. We are seeing more and more people from different, interesting, bizarre backgrounds coming into design and making such an impact, and I love that. I love people coming into design from non-traditional backgrounds. I love people designing for the community that they live in. Maybe they didn't grow up in it, but maybe they did grow up in it. But I love the idea of saying, “Hey, I'm going to take on this.”
We've had several people do this at Google recently, which is so cool. “I'm going to take on this product that is going to principally be a next billion users’ product.”, say, “And we're going to be focusing on Indonesia first. And because of that, I am moving to Indonesia, and I am going to work from Indonesia, and I'm going to hire designers in Indonesia that grew up in Indonesia. And this creates this like beautiful fusion where you've got somebody that's like coming from the U.S. that can bring this sort of American perspective if you will and then these people that can bring this Indonesian or a Southeast Asian perspective to the table. And it creates really, really interesting forward-thinking products.
So diverse in every sense of the word, I think, is really where this industry is going. And the distributed aspect is precisely what's going to empower that to occur. In fact, I think it is absolutely essential. I don't think that we will ever, really truly reach any form of meaningful diversity, as long as we are saying, “Hey, we love diversity, but you need to move to this country and away from your family and your culture and live in this city, which is inevitably expensive. And you need to drive two hours a day to come to this office to sit at this desk. We're all going to be in the same environment. And this is going to all – minimum subconsciously influence our thoughts in the same direction, because we're in this very sort of homogenous place.
I think that by breaking through that outdated formality, we are going to have the opportunity to create a serious explosion of diversity in design, and I'm so excited about that.
Christian: And I think COVID-19 has accelerated that trend and talking about, we were talking earlier about great power and great responsibility. I don't know if I can necessarily say it's their responsibility, but whenever I look around and I see these big companies over the past couple of months that have announced -- Atlassian, one of them, Facebook until June, whatever. I think Google until -- Shopify, all these big companies that everyone as an industry looks towards. When everyone sees that these big companies are moving towards that distributed way of working and diverse way of working, they're going to be more incentivised to do so themselves because otherwise they're going to lose talent to these big companies.
So I don't want to say it's the responsibility of big companies, but I think when big companies do it, it helps the whole industry move into that direction. And that's really, really awesome.
Austin: Yes. I agree in my thought on that, especially to anybody from the big company that's listening to this, is don't worry, it's not your responsibility. It's an inevitability. It's not something that you actually have a choice in. It's happening. And the question is, are you going to use this as a differentiator, as an accelerator, as a way to reinvent and innovate on your organisation, or is it going to become a threat?
Christian: Yes. Awesome, Austin. I know that there are a couple of things you want to talk about. I want to plug your podcast in here, your email list. So let's take a couple of minutes to talk about those things that are important to you as well.
Austin: Oh, yes. Well, so yes. I've got this email list where I sort of once a month, one email a month, share out everything that I'm working on. So a broad range of things ranging from mentoring slots that I share out with folks, so a host of mentoring slots every month where you can get one on one time with me to talk about anything from your career to portfolios to design problems that you're having at your work.
I share out essays. I share out resources, tools, processes, everything. Plus, every now and then, I have an interview on the podcast with a great designer entrepreneur from around the world and share when new opportunities are coming up, whether that be my team hiring or other great companies that I respect. So that's sort of like this hub that people can go to at austinknight.com/updates. If you want to sign up for that, completely free. Just my personal email list, no spam, no B.S. Just one email a month with some good stuff to read and to interact with.
And then, yes, you mentioned the podcast. So I've been doing this for about five years. It's called the UX & Growth Podcast. Actually, it has a lot of overlap with what you're doing here in terms of -- I think if you’re -- if folks are interested in UX & Growth Podcast, they’re going to be interested in this. And if they're interested in this, they're probably going to interest UX & Growth Podcast, which is sort of this merging of design with business, design with entrepreneurship, design with growth and marketing and stuff like that.
So, yes, we've had some really cool people on there from the household names that you would think of all the way to folks that are people that you've literally never heard of that are doing very, very interesting things in remote corners of the world and have great perspectives to share. So if you want to check that out, you can just search for UX & Growth Podcast or go to austinknight.com, and it'll be on there. It's on all of the major podcasting platforms.
Christian: Great. Yes, we're going to put all of those links in the show notes so people can find them very easily. Austin, really, really grateful for you being on the podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time. I hope this will be, or I know it will be inspirational for a lot of people. And I just wanted to reiterate that there’s more content like this on your podcast. So hopefully people will go and check that out as well. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much for being on Design Meets Business, and I hope we'll catch up soon again.
Austin: Yes. Thank you, Christian. This has been fantastic.
Christian: Thanks, Austin.
That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Since you've made it this far, I hope you found this useful. And if you did, you should know there's much more content just like this on the way. So if you want to learn more about how designers can impact businesses, please consider subscribing, and maybe sharing the episode with others. And before I say goodbye, remember that you can find show notes and links for this episode and others on our website, designmeetsbusiness.co. Catch you in the next one.