Debbie Levitt “The Mary Poppins of CX and UX"

Design expert Debbie Levitt shares her perspective on how UX and CX professionals are being systematically disempowered despite their critical role in creating successful products and services. She explores how the "fail fast" culture and AI hype are undermining accountability and quality in design.

• Debbie has 30 years of experience in CX, UX, product, and business strategy
• The return-to-office movement is harming remote workers and creating inefficient work environments
• AI development lacks proper governance and respect for intellectual property rights
• Companies claim to be customer-centric while rarely engaging with actual users
• The democratization of design has led to acceptance of mediocre work as the standard
• Organizations need to involve researchers and service designers from the beginning of projects
• The "fail fast, fail often" mentality has become an excuse for poor quality work
• Senior design voices are being ignored even as companies face increasingly complex challenges
• AI is unlikely to create a renaissance for UX unless organizations fundamentally change their approach to design
• Companies should establish clear quality standards and accountability measures

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out Debbie's books including "Customers Know You Suck" and "Life After Tech" – find them wherever books are sold.

DHABA

Brewed slowly. served warmly. crafted with care

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, hello.
I know we've known of oneanother for some time.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
And we spoke many years ago mostly about music.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Mostly good.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Excellent Thanks for wanting to do this.
So for those who aren'tfamiliar with the amazing Debbie
Leavitt, do you want to justgive a brief kind of?
This is who I am, this is whatI do, this is where I'm from.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Sure, sure.
Hi everybody.
I'm Debbie Levitt.
I am an American living inItaly.
For the last seven plus years,I've been working in CX and UX
and product and businessstrategy in one form or another
for officially now 30 years.
I just had my anniversary,didn't bother announcing it on
LinkedIn, but yeah, 30 years forthis stuff I'm 53 years old, so

(01:11):
you don't have to do the math.
I'm completely in love with andobsessed with anything that
falls into problem finding andproblem solving from all of the
early generative research andunderstanding people, context,
systems, tasks, ecosystems andthings like that, through
feeding that through problemstatements and insights and

(01:32):
actionable suggestions intolooking at different solutions
and possibilities, whether thoseare digital solutions or
non-digital service design,interaction, design.
So to me, I feel like my worldare all of these areas of
business, product serviceexperience strategy.
But that's kind of where I'vebeen living for a zillion years.

(01:55):
My company is called Delta CXand we do all of the above,
including coaching and trainingand consulting with companies to
try to fix their messes andimprove their customer
experiences so that they canaccomplish their business goals
better, faster, easier.
So I would say that's a mediumsized version of me.

(02:16):
Did I miss anything?
Books, books, right.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Books.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
So I've got four of them on my desk.
So yeah, so I've written somebooks.
We're currently working on myseventh, but I would probably
point people to some of my lastfew, which I'm still very proud
and excited about.
Customers Know you Suck, whichis about why businesses need to
be more customer-centric.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Go read it, borrow it , buy it preferably, but get
hold of it.
It is insanely good.
It's not as just a fantastictitle for a book.
It's got depth, it's gotarticulation, it's just
knowledge oozing out of everysingle paragraph.
So if you haven't, go and tryand do that.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Thank you.
After that, I ghost wrote LarryMarine's Disruptive Research
book, which is about taskanalysis, and my 2024 book,
which came out in September 2024, is called Life After Tech, and
, for anybody who is concernedabout the job market and tech
jobs in general or specifically,it's got frameworks and

(03:24):
exercises so you can figure outwhat your future might look like
, because I hope to work in techforever, and I'm sure you and a
lot of your listeners do aswell.
But I think there's apossibility that it won't carry
us to retirement, and so I'mtrying to come up with what else
I can do in case tech gives upon me or I give up on it.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Always be planning.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That's it.
Be ready for the what if youknow?
That's why we buy insurance.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Or create your own insurance, because the job
market right now sucks, yeah,big time.
It's horrible, but one of thethings that I was able to do at
the last place I was at wasactually curate a pipeline from
seats of learning so that thereis a a route to a job where you

(04:16):
can produce real work and getpaid for it and learn from
better people through experienceor expertise or whatever, not
just from your discipline, butfrom multiple disciplines, and
it was just one of the thingsthat I had be in my particular
bonnet about to get done.
What's your take on that?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, I do get asked this a lot.
A funny thing is that I findthat the average person wants to
learn from the very experiencedperson the average person
especially a lower level personor someone trying to career
transition and they recognizethe value of a you, me, bob,
larry, maureen, whoever it mightbe and say, oh wow, I really
wish I could learn from thesepeople who've seen it all, done

(04:57):
it, all you know, know how toapproach it from all different
angles and techniques, and thenwhen we apply for those jobs,
we're not considered and sothere's a disconnect there.
I think it's something like 90%95% of jobs that are out there
are hybrid or onsite or remote.
Only if you live up our ass inthis county you know like remote

(05:19):
, but we have to be able tosmell you from here.
So I think the return to officeis hurting me more, but that's
just a hypothesis and I can'tprove it.
But it's the return to officethat even stops me from applying
.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
I don't think organizations have got a grasp
on what an office experience is.
I think organizations are kindof yeah, we're paying you, we
need your asses in here.
Thank you very much.
I don't care how long it takesyou to get in here and genuinely
, as long as you are visible andyou're perfecting the art of
looking busy, then I'm happy,which is the most BS I can even

(05:58):
begin to think about in terms ofthe ability to make yourself
available to do good work.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
And then what I hear from people who are going into
offices is that they're mostlyon Zoom Teams, google Meet calls
with people in other places.
It might have been just beforethe pandemic, or it was
definitely a few years ago and Ihad applied to their job.
I was already living in Italy.
It was a job in America.

(06:24):
They had claimed they were opento remote people and I applied
and they said well, are yougoing to move to Portland or
Denver?
And I said neither, I'm goingto stay here.
And they said well, you've gotto be in Portland or Denver.
And I said once Portland andDenver have figured out how to
work with each other from afar,you can also work with me yeah,

(06:45):
well, 100%.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
There's a lot to be said, I think, for the culture
right and the physical beingsomewhere in the same space.
You know, having thatface-to-face interaction right,
particularly within design, Ithink that's incredibly
important.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
I don't miss it.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
I just like people, right, You've done so much
though.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Oh, thanks.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
I hope.
No, no, no, you have.
It was one of the things when Istarted considering okay, what
else do I want to do, you know,life after tech or design or
digital or something, and I'vealways been very people-focused.
I like humans as much as I lovetechnology.
I used to be an avionicsengineer for crying out loud, so
I have to love technology.

(07:31):
But people, man, people arejust epic.
It has to always be, always be.
People process technology, inthat order.
And with the whole AI gig,right, right, which is now so
embedded with zero governance,anyone can do anything and
everything.
If you have any kind of digitalcontent, it's fair game, I can

(07:54):
take that, I can.
It can get sucked up in somekind of you know neural network
model, whatever, and repurposed,reproduced, but nobody is
getting any kind of credit,right, it'll go I know source
information and all of the above, and everyone's like shitting
bricks right now, particularlynot just design, but anything in

(08:16):
tech.
Yeah, because they're doing thistechnology first.
No one's really thinking about,well, what's the impact of the
people?
Right, and that's no bigsurprise, because everyone's
done that.
They did it when I was atschool and with the advent of
8-bit computing, but even thenpeople were having conversations
around.
Jobs are going to be gone andthey were to a degree they, yeah

(08:39):
, they were.
But what happened to design?
I was doing weird shit inWindows on an RM Nimbus machine
in paint, I kid you not becauseI thought that was super cool,
but it was an introduction to anew paradigm and then I could
exploit that right.

(09:00):
And this, for me, is exactlythe same.
Yes, the velocity of change isincreasing and it has got a.
It's not just with onedirection, right, the velocity
is not just speed, it's likespeed in which direction is that
?
This has got multipledirections, and the lack of
oversight and governance isactually freaking me out.
I'm just very, veryuncomfortable, and I put this up

(09:24):
on LinkedIn the other day.
Why haven't the lawyers comeout of their little closet and
gone?
Litigation, litigation,litigation.
Because there's a pile of cashto be made just from copyright.
Forget about, you know, digitalintegrity and equity and all of
that kind of stuff, but noone's doing it, nobody.
It's the Wild West.

(09:46):
That's nuts.
It's exciting, but it's nuts.
What's your take on that?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
As for AI and copyrights, copyrights exist for
a very specific reason and tome, ai or obviously this isn't
AI this is the people behind AIthey want to selectively believe
in intellectual property.
I'm sure if they have a patentor they have a copyright,

(10:17):
they're going to want to seethat protected.
But as soon as they see the,it's like a cartoon character
sees shimmering gold off in thedistance and their eyes bug out
and dollar signs explode overtheir head, or pound signs and
then they go oh wow, we've gotto have that and it doesn't
matter how we're going to havethat.
And you know there's certainlyplenty of that through

(10:39):
technology, through history.
Somebody says I see what'sgoing to make me rich and I just
have to have it, whether it'sright or wrong, whether it's
legal or illegal, and it's justanother grab at the expense of
the people being grabbed.
And especially for meta to saywe should be able to have access
to every book because the booksreally don't have that much
value.

(10:59):
You know that's there's a lotof.
I always know that someone hasa weak argument when they have
to go to gaslightingmanipulation, you know, like
when you see people using theuglier techniques or the
malignant narcissist playbook,then I know they don't have a
very strong argument, because Igrew up in a family of lawyers.

(11:21):
You can tell when someone has astrong argument and when
they're basically trying to kickyou in the knees on the
schoolyard.
Like well, debbie, we shouldhave all of your books because
they're not very valuable now,are they Prove to us that they
are?
They're just a speck in thecosmos, and so once you have
those arguments, that should bea moment of self-reflection.

(11:42):
But it's not going to be formalignant narcissists and that's
really who we're dealing with.
And so that's where regulationis supposed to be involved.
That's where the law issupposed to protect people.
But I'm not sure we're going tosee that happen.
I don't think.
I think people are too excitedabout the technology to want to

(12:02):
see it restricted by properregulation and proper
interpretation of the law.
People are not ready for theend game, even though they've
been watching the end game inevery dystopian movie of the
last 40 years.
It's the same thing I say aboutageism the ageist.
People are not prepared for thefuture they're helping to
create by being ageist.
And so the people who are usingAI to take other people's works

(12:28):
and hide behind.
Well, it's a fair use, or well,it's a parody.
You wouldn't have to hidebehind something if you were
doing the right thing.
So I find that these are veryeasy arguments when you are not
a rights holder, but as someonewith many copyrighted things,
multiple trademarks and, as oflast month, a patent.
So as someone with intellectualproperty, I care about that,

(12:52):
and especially as someone withintellectual property but no job
and it might be possible that Icould stay alive and eat food
through licensing myintellectual property If that
gets taken away from me, I runthe risk that I cannot eat food
and I cannot stay alive.
So it's a very bizarreecosystem.

(13:15):
That, I think, is just,unfortunately, a negative and
depressing topic.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
What do you think we should be doing about it?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
That's hard because it's a much bigger question.
What do you do about a world ofmalignant narcissists who want
to be rich at the expense ofothers?
As has been for how long?

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Let's just try and UX this, break it into smaller
pieces.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Well, it's really easy.
If we broke it into smallpieces and I could have one
thing, then the value of mycopyright should stand, my
copyright should not bediminished or diluted, my
trademark should not beoverlooked, my patent should not
be circumvented or infringed.
I mean, the simple answer hereis don't break the law.

(13:59):
But I don't think we're goingto get that.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Maybe I mean when I look at it from a music
perspective, right.
So Bob James Jazz, fusion,1970s, 80s did the theme tune to
Taxi.
If nobody knows Bob James, lookhim up.
Brilliant, he's now living offof Rotties Because I saw a
documentary about it, like Xnumber of months ago and very,

(14:27):
very grateful, apparently, forthe software that can pick out
all of the hip hop, the new kindof whatever genre, that people
have sampled pieces of hisintellectual property, right,
and he is getting paid and he'svery, very happy about it, um,
and I'm sure it's the same forlots of other musicians.

(14:47):
So could it be, could it be,that this is just a maturity
play?
But, yes, the ai is here andit's doing this kind of stuff
right now.
But, but the lawyers will wakeup, they will see that there is
a, a monetization that can occur, and then these processes and
governance can be applied andthen, therefore, your copyrights

(15:10):
et cetera will be seeing somevalue from a commercial
perspective.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
This is something that I've been asking for for
years, because there are let'sjust say there's at least one
well-known person who has theword UX associated with them out
there who has stolen a lot fromme.
I've been dreaming for years ofa tool or system that's able to
go through all of this person'scontent articles, webinars,

(15:39):
conference talks, PowerPointdecks.
I dream of the tool that thatpulls all that out, because then
I just hand that to my lawyerand I say fix this, that's
something that benefits theartist and creator without
taking something away from me ifmeta is just going to suck up
all my books.
You've taken something away fromme without giving me something

(16:00):
without any acknowledgement.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
I think the key thing there or money.
I think that comes afterwards,but first of all you need to
have the acknowledgement right,right, yeah, so so something
like that, or you technicalboffins out there in the world,
go do that, because it's muchneeded.
There's also an aspect to thiswhere folks don't realize the
importance of curators oforiginal content yeah, and the

(16:26):
damage that it can do toprofessions Right, and
furthermore, the damage that itcan do potentially to people's
careers.
I mean, there was a very, verysenior presentation that was
going on.
Lots of nice people were therelistening to person X and,
thankfully, thankfully, part ofthe audience went.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
That's joel shit well , we've seen that one remix, 12
inch dance remix you know, and adub version and blah, blah,
blah, whatever, whatever,whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Right, sorry audience , you may be dumb in the 80s and
yeah the joy, but anyway, thatwas lucky, that was lucky.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
It was lucky that they recognized it and it was
lucky that they said something,because otherwise you run the
risk that you have a bunch ofcompliant people in the room who
say, well, we know that'ssomebody else's, but I shouldn't
say anything and I feel like wehave to say more things.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
That's where I'm going.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yes, thank you.
Sorry, I beat you there.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
No, well, again, I'm not proud.
It's fine, it's okay, because Iadore your work.
Thank you.
I adore what you stand for.
Thank you, I adore what youstand for.
Thank you, even though that'sbeen from afar, yeah, but now
I've got the opportunity toactually make it public, because
you are shit hot.

(17:55):
You don't need me to tell youthat, but you are shit hot.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Then where's my job?

Speaker 1 (18:00):
There's a group of us oldies folks and pretty much we
all know each other.
We don't send each other toquote or pal Christmas cards per
se, but we will read eachother's contributions.
We will then maybe message oneanother and all the rest of it,
and within this very, very smallcircle no one and nobody has

(18:23):
ever said anything derogatory,derisory about debbie.
Oh thank you no, gosh right uhsimple thank you for those who
like to steal content andplagiarize it.
Right, it's quite simple, yeahit yeah.
Credit where it is required?

(18:45):
Yes, and that's always.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
That's what I've said for many years now, especially
when I got wind that this personwas stealing from me.
And I think this person couldstill have their popularity,
still have their cult following,still sell their courses and
webinars and speak atconferences.
I think this person could stillhave everything they still have
.
I don't think they would havelost anything if they had said

(19:09):
you know, I agreed with DebbieLevitt when I heard her say this
.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
So we've kind of gone from the awesome stuff that is
representative of you.
Some bits of it, not all ofthat right, because you've done
so much and you've been doing itfor such a long time and it is
all meaningful.
Thank you, right.

(19:34):
How that's going to get numberone reaffirmed, because it needs
to be, I think voices likeyourselves need to have.
It's one of the reasons why Iwanted to do this whole kind of
podcast thing.
You know, I was sitting there Iwas thinking to myself do we
need another podcast?
And then I thought, well, whereare the senior folks in my

(19:57):
circle, at the very least thepeople whom I respect, the
people who I can have aconversation with and actually
not necessarily raise theirprofile?
That's not what it's about.
But these messages, theseinstructions, right.
This level of clarity, right.
What is the right thing to doat the right time and how those

(20:19):
behaviors can then manifestthemselves and get ingested,
relearned, and if transpositionis required, fair enough.
But things matter.
Good work matters,accomplishments, even if it's
like, recognition matters.
Ageism comes into it, sexismcomes into it.

(20:40):
Experienced voices haven't?
I don't see enough of us.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
I just don't see enough of us, I just don't right
, yeah, well, remember a lot, of, a lot of the people who got
the power.
You know, they say they, somepeople say they failed up.
I think that's being a littletoo harsh, but I think that the
people who played the gamebetter than I do are the people
who got promoted, because I'mthe person who's going to come
in and say okay, I've taken alook at what you're doing.

(21:08):
I think the strategy's off.
I think we've there's badwarning signs we're missing here
.
There's a bunch of stuff that'sgoing ignored.
There's no accountability.
Hey, why don't we try to makesome changes here?
And I find that the person whotends to get the job is often a
man, often a little bit youngerthan I am, usually ex-fangs

(21:32):
Facebook, apple, amazon, netflix, google, and so I find that a
lot of the people who got thepromotions and those jobs are
the people who were going to doa leader's bidding or say yes to
the product manager or theproduct VP.
I think that companies don'twant the change agents.

(21:53):
People say to me oh, isn't itageist that you're not finding a
job?
And I say honestly I think it'smore the return to office
because I live out in the middleof nowhere, and I think it's
more that I have a reputationfor making changes and making
improvements, and I think it'smore that I have a reputation
for making changes and makingimprovements and you've got to
really want that to call meOtherwise if you really want to
just keep playing the game andkeep following all the shitty

(22:16):
books out there that say justfail and fail, more and more
cycles of failure and fail againand have another guess and fail
some more, then you don't needme.
I'm the wrong person for yourcompany because I'm going to
point at that and go why are wefailing so much?
Wouldn't we like to succeedmore?
And someone's going to be upsetby that, and so it's kind of

(22:36):
the apple cart thing, as theBritish would say.
And so I think that the mainreasons I'm not getting a job
ageism, I think, is in there,but not the main reason.
Sexism could be in there, butnot the main reason I think it's
that I'm not coming into youroffice and I'm probably going to
want to make improvements and Ithink people don't want that.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
So, broadly speaking, right, I'm trying to do some
kind of mental taxonomy in mybrain at the same time whilst
we're speaking.
So we've got recognition, whichis hugely important.
We've now, I think, envelopedthe whole in part integrity

(23:18):
accountability accountabilityand those things.
They are fundamentally missingin our world, and not just in
design perspective, justeverywhere.
Absolutely agree, big ask.
But you know, I mean when folkssay to me, what did you do, you

(23:39):
know?
And why the bejesus did youactually go to that great, big,
horrible energy company?
Because they're just interestedin killing the planet slowly,
right?
They're not even doing itquickly, right?
They're that comfortable withit.
They're just killing the planet.
And yeah, where does that comefrom?
I guess, with regards torecognition and then integrity,

(24:01):
and my perspective is you've gotto be in it.
You can throw stones atsomething from the outside, but
if you're actually inside of itand try to affect change from
within, I think that'sincredibly powerful.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
But they have to want to change.
But a lot of theseorganizations I have found don't
want to make that changebecause they've been so
successful and so profitable bydoing let's just say other
things.
And it goes right back to whatyou just said integrity and
accountability and I thinkcompanies are trying so hard to
stay away from those thatthey've invented these little

(24:38):
false candy lands of keepfailing.
More failure, high AB testfailure rates that's good.
That's good.
Product management, that's goodstrategy.
We're really learning from ourfailures.
We are wrapped in so muchcotton wool and we are not able
to look more honestly at what'sreally going on and what our

(25:01):
experience ecosystem isexperiencing.
And I think that the voices likeyours, mine, potentially, bob,
some of these other people wecould name they see us coming.
I'm making air quotes because weare strong people who are not
going to kiss the ass of themost toxic narcissist at the
company and we are going topoint out a thing and say why

(25:23):
has this been going on like thisand shouldn't we be trying
something fresh?
And I think a lot of companiesdon't want that right now.
They want the least expensiveyes, people they can find and
they want to gaslight them intooverworking, being hamsters on a
wheel and just working and say,well, you're not involved,

(25:45):
you're not strategic enough, butthen disempower them from being
strategic, ux, not strategic,not allowed to be in many places
.
Even product managers used tobe strategic, not allowed to be
in many places.
They take orders from peopleabove them.
And so I think we have tonotice that the job market shift
is not just ooh, there's fewerjobs, ooh, they pay less, ooh,

(26:06):
they let you go with the blinkof an eye.
It's also that there's a hugewave of disempowerment that I
think we're not saying out loudenough.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
That's a lot.
Yeah, that's a lot.
No, don don't.
It's all good shit.
I mean nothing that you haveliterally just put out there.
I can't think of anything tochallenge.
Thanks, right, uh, and I've beentrying to challenge during the
course, yeah rip it up, pleaseright, but I'm listening to that

(26:39):
and I'm thinking okay, Igenuinely feel sorry for CEOs,
genuinely Right, because I'veseen when CEOs get appointed and
how their demeanor is, whattheir physical appearance is
blah, blah, blah.
Physical appearances, blah,blah, blah.

(27:00):
Within months, these people arelosing weight, going gray,
getting stressed out to the max,yeah, and you always kind of
think, well, you're on the bigbucks, yes, and yes, you have,
and the buck's supposed to bestopping with you.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(27:24):
And you've got one job to do,but it is the most important job
, right?
You need to steer this greatbig monstrosity in whatever is
the right direction.
But who have you got toactually help you?
Instead of having you knowgenerals and lieutenants, you
have a bunch of cabin boys,right, or?

Speaker 2 (27:42):
toxic narcissists.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Exactly Folks who are more interested in their own
survival as opposed torespecting the chain of command
and actually doing the rightthings, and I'm seeing that too
often.
Now, if you put that into thecontext of design and everyone's

(28:03):
been yapping about this get aseat at a table, blah, blah,
blah, blah- blah oh boy and BobPowell, like very graciously,
said, well, joel.
He said screw that.
And he built his own damn table.
Yeah, it was further away fromthe big one, but at least we had
it.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
The kids' table.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, whatever right now.
Why isn't there more designfolk actually as chief design
officers, whatever nomenclatureyou want to give to it, and for
me, the opportunity,particularly with this new
paradigm of artificialintelligence yeah, it's so
stupidly uncomplicated, right?
You need someone like a Debbie,like a Thomas, maybe like a Bob

(28:47):
, to actually be that personwho's accountable for experience
plus the AI, because the AIit's an enabling thing, and it's
not enabling things foranything other than human beings
.
So if you're not combininghuman-centered design and
everyone's yapping and have beenyapping about for the last 15

(29:08):
years, at the very least, oh,we're customer-centric.
You don't even talk to users.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Right, and now you're trying to avoid them even more
by having robots pretend to bethem.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Exactly, exactly.
Think of your organizations asa product and who are the people
genuinely who are supposed tobe them?
Exactly exactly.
Think of your organizations asa product and who are the people
genuinely who are supposed tobe putting your products
together?
The successful ones, they'rethe ones that have strong design
leadership and that's going outof style, I think.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
I think people just don't want that.
They don't want to give up thatpower.
They don't want to give up thatcontrol.
Everybody wants to be the togive up that control.
Everybody wants to be theperson who had the cool idea,
and so you get all of theseproduct manager ego projects and
stakeholder ego projects, andit's a big problem that I've
been unraveling for many yearsacross my multiple books.

(29:57):
But we have a lot of problems inthis area where we've been
disempowered, and then wefurther disempower ourselves by
some of the things we do andsome of the things we say to
each other, and so we're now inan incredibly disempowered state
where I feel like peopleunderstand and value UX less

(30:18):
than they ever have before, ashypothetically evidenced by our
lowering salaries and fewer jobs, and the people who get the
jobs are told exactly what to doand how to do it, because
you're just production designersand so on.
And I think we have to take amoment to reconcile that against
so I'm interested in youropinion as well to reconcile

(30:40):
that against some of the thingswe're hearing and you and I are
recording this in April 2025 ofpeople saying, oh, ai is going
to mean a resurgence for UX.
Companies are going to wantUXers to be strategic about AI.
They're going to want UX todesign the AI.
Now I have very strong opinionsthat that is a false future and

(31:04):
setting people up for a bigdisappointment.
But before I say more or why,what is your opinion about?
Will AI cause a renaissance andresurgence for UX work and
roles?

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Okay, concisely, yes, it will, but is that going to
be?

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Disagree no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Go ahead, hear me out .

Speaker 2 (31:30):
I am.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
It will, but that's not going to be in the short
game, as per usual.
It's going to be post somecatastrophic, traumatic series
of events disagree.
That's fine, perfectly coolwith that, because I used to be
quite a senior avionics testsystems engineer, so there's an

(31:53):
awful lot of left brain andright brain within me going on.
And if I'm looking at the data,if I'm looking at historical
statistical trends, we havethese paradigms of, yeah, some
new tech, some new gizmo, somenew, whatever it is, and then
everyone falls in love with that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, because the iphonewasn't the iphone, the iphone

(32:16):
wasn't the first device that wasreleased in telco, right, of
that nature.
It wasn't the first device thatwas looking at consolidating a
whole bunch of features andfunctions, right?
yeah, I had a palm i705 right,we all had whatever variant of
blah blah.
But then what happened?
Designers stepped in.

(32:37):
Okay, dita ram stepped in,influenced john Ives, thank you
very much.
The rest is history.
The iPhone was there.
It made things intuitive,usable, that's it.
And it buried some very, veryfamous people and also some very
, very famous companies.
All of a sudden, they had theirKodak moments or their

(32:58):
Blockbuster moments or whatever.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Blackberry.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right moments, or they blockbuster moments, or
whatever.
Is blackberry right?
So I'm I'm presently and I'mmore than happy to be, have you
know, influenced otherwise.
Right, because that's whypeople need to talk, which is
something else that I don'tthink there's enough of going on
in the world.
Your view is x presently.
In my view is y.
Maybe that's going to change.
For either one of us, it givesa shit.
The fact that it's importantthat we're talking and we're

(33:22):
being polite and respectful.
Thank you very much.
It's not hard people, right?

Speaker 2 (33:27):
so well, this is an easy topic.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
There are some topics where x and y really don't
overlap maybe that's anotherconversation, maybe for another
thing, but where I'm going withthis is so, yes, the new shiny
is on the horizon and it'salready screwing things up.
It's already shitting the bed.
Thank you very much.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But I'm looking at that journeyof evolution.

(33:54):
It needs to get fixed.
It'll get fixed.
And who are they going to call?

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Not us.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Tell me, tell me.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Sure, if we are hypothetically, if we are one of
the least understood roles andjobs, and if we are one of the
most disempowered, and if thereis very little integrity,
accountability or ethics, whywould anybody think of asking UX

(34:25):
to fix these things?
If a company truly understandsUX, hcd, service, design, then
hypothetically you would thinkthey already have them working
with AI and the AI is not havingsome of the typical problems
because we care about HCD andwe're not going to let our AI go

(34:49):
in these bad or evil directions.
We're seeing a lot ofexcitement for the technology
and they have no reason to callus.
They don't even understand whatwe do.
Human-centered design isabsolutely sure they can do our

(35:09):
research, content and designjobs as well as or better than
me or you or anybody else, sothey have no reason to call us.
They don't see us as strategic.
In fact, they've spent the lastthree years gaslighting us that
we're not strategic enough.
We're not strategic.
We don't show our value.
Why would you call the role whoyou see as non-strategic

(35:32):
tactical grunt workers who areeasily replaceable and
interchangeable especially ifyou listen to Safe, agile,
interchangeable?
Why would you ask them to comein and fix your problems?
I'm only asked to come in andfix problems, not because I have
a history of UX designer, uxresearch, but because I somehow
got into fixing problems.

(35:53):
And so the average UXer isunlikely.
It's unlikely that someone isgoing to turn to mid-level
product designer Sam and say,sammy, our AI is shit in the bed
.
Millions of dollars are goingstraight to hell.
Customers are angry.
Sam, you're a UXer, you fix it.

(36:16):
And so I think we're at thepoint where we're so
misunderstood that we're notgo-to people for anything.
And at some companies we are,but at very few in the scheme of
the world.
We are not the go-to people forproblem finding or problem
solving.
And we've had so many books andauthors and trainers and loud

(36:37):
people who have kept hittingnails into that coffin, from
lean startup to lean UX, tocontinuous discovery habits, to
anything that Marty Kagan saysto all of these things.
Keep teaching our teammates andcompanies Just go workshop it.
You don't really need thesepeople.

(36:58):
Figma, who we thought was for us?
Figma's last two conferenceswere completely for product
managers and were pejorativetowards UX, and designers made
fun of them, told them they'reperfectionists you hate working
with and you don't need anymoreand our AI is going to replace
them.
Think that we don't want toadmit that.

(37:21):
Some people are comfortabletalking about how disempowered
we are, but they'reuncomfortable building that
bridge too, and we're not goingto be the ones they call on when
the AI crashes the plane.
When the AI crashes the plane,someone will apologize for the
plane crash and promise the AIwill be better next week, and
they're not going to call up you, me or Bob.

(37:41):
They should, but they're notgoing to.
Why should they?
Because we also have all of theculture.
We have enough Lenny's podcastsand whatever telling us failure
is great, fail fast, fail often.
Fail a lot, fail publicly, failprivately.
Fail your AB tests, fail yourproduct launches, fail
everything everywhere.
90% failure, totally normal.

(38:04):
Just do what you're doing.
There's nothing in place thatspeaks to quality or
accountability anymore, andthat's why that's been the flag
I've been waving for the lastyear.
Is that that's the only flagI'm going to wave?
I'm going to stop complainingabout design thinking.
I'm going to stop complainingabout what are our titles.
I'm just going to talk aboutquality and accountability.
Who wants to talk about thatwith me?

(38:26):
So far, not many.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
You, we're doing it.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Sold.
Yes, but that's why I thinkwhen the AI goes to hell or
continues going to hell, theyshould go to Larry Marine.
And they're not going to go toLarry Marine.
I mean, that's the number oneperson they should go to.
The rest of us are a distantsecond.
They're not going to.
Why should they?

(38:53):
They would only go to him ifthey actually wanted something
diagnosed and fixed.
We're pretending that companieswant to be better than they
want to be.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Okay, I get it Now.
Do you think that yourobservations are based upon a
hierarchy of a design, ecosystemand network, or is it across
the board?
Because is it?

Speaker 2 (39:18):
just, I don't understand the question.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Is it just bog standard practitioners who
aren't going to get asked, or isit bog standard practitioners
but also the senior folks likeyou and me and whoever else that
are not going to get asked?

Speaker 2 (39:29):
We're not going to get asked.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Across the board.
So it's not to get asked Acrossthe board, so it's not a
hierarchy thing.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, yeah, I don't think it's a hierarchy thing.
I get private messages onLinkedIn, debbie.
Why are you out of work, debbie?
Why can't you find a job?
I look up to you so much,debbie.
I've learned everything fromyou.
Why don't you have a job,debbie?
You would help my company somuch.

(39:54):
I live in a surreal universe inwhich there are a squillion
companies I could be helpingwith a squillion small and large
things and I can't get aninterview.
And this is the surrealuniverse that I'm in, because
your phone should be ringing offthe hook, senor Joel.
Larry Marine's email should beringing off the hook.
My email should be blowing up.

(40:15):
My calendar should be full ofpotential client calls from
people who want my help withsomething.
I got a bunch of those a yearor so ago from famous companies
I shouldn't name who said weloved your customers know you
suck book and we want you tocome talk to our leadership
Fortune 100 companies.
And I said great, what's yourbudget for that?

(40:36):
Oh, we don't have any budget.
We just thought you'd come talkabout your book.
You're a Fortune 100 companyand you have zero dollars for me
to try to help you fix all ofyour problems.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
So that boils into the whole integrity thing, right
?
Would they have done that witha different discipline?

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Or would they have done it with an old fat bald man
?
Would they do it with old fatbald white guy?

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Whatever demograph you want to go for, right, I
don't think that we, as seniorpractitioners, have done
anywhere close to what we neededto do and should be doing to
actually protect what it is thatwe do on a day to day basis,

(41:22):
without even freaking, thinkingabout it.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, that's what my 2019 book was about.
But the horses are out of thebarn.
They're stampeding the sheep.
The sheep are dying.
I mean like we're so many stepspast that.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Do we give up then?

Speaker 2 (41:40):
In some ways, yes, and so basically, I'm at the
point where I'm telling peoplelike, if you want to give up, I
understand you and I support you.
We've spent a lot of yearsfighting and we've gotten very
old very fast and for somepeople it's affected mental
health and for some people it'saffected physical health.
And I say, if you want to shiftthat passion into something

(42:02):
that's going to be morerewarding and healthy for you, I
support you.
I don't have a lot of thethings that most people struggle
with, so I've got extraheadspace.
But to anybody who feels likethey're done fighting, that
they're burnt out, they'redepressed, they're wondering
what tomorrow looks like, thebank account is draining, the
jobs are unrewarding, I say it'sokay.

(42:26):
It's okay to move to somethingelse.
There are other things we coulddo and that's what Life After
Tech is about.
But I want people to feel likeI don't want them to feel
bullied to stay in UX or gaslitto stay in UX, or why aren't you
fighting more?
If anyone feels done or likethey need to ramp it down, I

(42:47):
support you.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Cool message.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
How can I tell someone something else?
Everyone has to find their ownpath and the best thing I can do
is raise you up and push yourboat out and not gaslight you or
bully you or say oh well,you're not a true Scotsman if or
you're.
That doesn't make sense anymore.
We've done that to each otherand it made things worse because

(43:14):
we bullied each other intousing design, thinking and
democratizing and andworkshopping everything and
telling everybody, everybodycould do ux just don't even get
me started on democratizing yeah, I just did a youtube show
about it, episode 264 I think itwas.
But if someone wants give up,and if you have to give up on UX

(43:36):
, on tech, on leadership, onwhatever it is, I want to
support you.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Cool, cool, cool cool .
We are in a crazy, crazy, crazyecosystem right now, um, and
not just from a designperspective, so she normally put
like, whatever, whatever badyou want to put on it is.
It's going through some majorupheavals, right.

(44:05):
Um, I still think that design'sgot a massive role to play and
the whole empathy which you'vespoken about so eloquently is
yeah, we need to bring that tothe fore for everything.
We need to listen more, we needto have more conversations.

(44:27):
I mean, you and I, I wouldnwouldn't say disagree, but
you've got a differentperspective on certain things.
To me, it's like fucking, whatright I'm not poking your eyes
out and vice versa.
Thanks, we're having a prettyyou can't reach me.
Well, you know I have my ways,but you know, yeah it's.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Come on over, write it off as a business trip yeah,
that ain't happening anytime but?
but I'm gonna disagree with youthere too, because we've done.
We've done too much listening.
We've done too much listeningand too much yesing, and too
much.
What do you need from me?
And too much.
Oh, you want to do my job?
Sure, Give it a try.
And too much, oh, you want thatto be a workshop?
Sure, I'll stop doing my work.

(45:04):
I live in this weird worldwhere a lot of people who ask me
for help and coaching on thetactical work have only ever
heard of design thinking.
And when I ask them why'd youworkshop that?
They're like what are youtalking about?
That's what we do.
And when I say why'd you makethis empathy map or why'd you go
into a solution workshopwithout understanding the

(45:25):
problem, and they go what areyou talking about?

Speaker 1 (45:27):
This is this is how we do it Right, knowledge is
very dangerous and that's whyconversations like this, for me,
are incredibly important,because I get to speak with
stupidly intelligent, stupidlyexperienced individuals.
You want to share anything fromyour perspective because, yes,

(45:50):
I'm here to kind of corral andcoax and cajole and cover a
whole bunch of different topics,hopefully in some kind of
remnants of a process.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
But you know, the floor is yours, yeah.
I want to tell you a story abouta conference I spoke at a few
months ago.
The closing speaker was from anAI company, so not a UX guy,
and that's fine UX conference.
A few hundred people there,researchers and designers, and
this was an AI guy and he cameout with a.
His talk was something about UXintersection with AI and it was
basically.
It was going to be theresurgence of UX because there's

(46:29):
going to be so much work inbuilding AI tools and that UX is
going to be the resurgence ofUX because there's going to be
so much work in building AItools and that UX is going to be
needed to go there.
This guy had an obvious pre-madedeck that almost seemed to be
his company's pitch deck.
Whenever he talked about UX, hecalled it UI, UX, and he looked
down at his notes and he readword for word.
Now I'm an observationalresearcher and so I'm watching

(46:52):
this guy and I'm thinking, okay,this was definitely plugged in
after the fact.
Ux was just kind of glued on tothis PowerPoint, because he
would say these things that werealmost like someone reading a
cue card, like and UI UX will bevery important for the design
of ai agents in the future, andthen you'd go go back to telling

(47:16):
us about all the ai agents thiscompany's been making.
Well, I'm exploding inside.
Finally, the he was finishedand they're.
They're passing the microphonearound to the audience for
questions and the first questionwas like but is AI safe?
And I'm like fuck, here we go.
And then the second questionwas what about old people and AI

(47:37):
tools?
And I said, holy shit, I'mgoing to be the only person who
says this out loud.
It's going to have to fuckingbe me, I'm going to have to be
the person that everybody thinksI am, and I'm going to do this,
and my heart was pounding and.
I got the microphone and I and Idid what I do best, which is I

(47:59):
brought out the worst side ofmyself, which is the
manipulative New Yorker, and Iset this guy up for a big fall
and I said I said thank you somuch for sharing.
This is recorded somewhere, butI haven't seen it.
I said thank you so much forsharing all of the very
interesting information aboutyour company.
You're doing so many veryinteresting AI projects,
especially for municipalities.
You're here at a UX conferencespeaking to hundreds of people

(48:22):
who are UX researchers and UXdesigners, and you're carrying a
message that UX is going to beso important when it comes to
building AI agents, like theones you've been working on.
Thinking about any of theprojects that you've been
working on the past few years,how many UX researchers or
designers have you worked with?
And before I could finish mysentence, he said zero.

(48:45):
We're a tech company.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Now, at that point I blacked out and I have no memory
of what happened next.
I don't remember what this mansaid.
It was just like those TV showswhere just like silence kind of
closes in on me and I'm justlooking around the room because
I'm at the back of the room andI'm looking around the room and
people are looking at me andmouthing holy shit.

(49:10):
And they're mouthing thank youfor asking that.
And they're mouthing.
I was wondering that and Idon't remember anything.
That guy said after none, we'rea tech company.
But when he stopped talking, Ipicked up my backpack and walked
out and to me, we're getting alot of lip service around.

(49:30):
Oh, ai agents.
Ai agents have to be designedand built and we're really going
to need UX people to make allthese AI agents, or we're really
going to need all these UXpeople to fix the broken AI
things?
I haven't.
I'm finding that to just be nottrue.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
How.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
I'm not seeing UX involved.
I'm not saying there's zero ofit or it's not happening or
it'll never happen.
I'm saying I'm not seeingenough of it for me to think
that this is a trend we're allgoing to ride and we're all
going to keep our jobs, orthey're going to newly
appreciate and understand us andwe have greater job stability.
I think our jobs are still veryin trouble and I think a lot of

(50:17):
people believe AI agents canabsolutely be built, deployed
and iterated upon without UXprofessionals.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
So everything pretty much stays the same.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
No, I think it gets worse Because, hypothetically,
if they start building AI agentsthat do UX work, the Trojan
horse is we've built you this tomake your work faster.
It's usually faster.
It's usually not better or moreaccurate, because sometimes
it's not better or more accurate, it's usually we built you this

(50:54):
to make your work faster.
You adopt it.
That shit's probably trainingon you and how you use it and
what you do with it, and sothere is a potential slippery
slope there that if the AI agentbecomes good enough at certain
tasks, it can hypotheticallyreplace us.
I went through this a year agoin an article that I published,

(51:16):
saying that once you have fakedemocratization, once you have,
anybody can do UX work.
Everybody's a designer, leteverybody do interviews.
Once you have some sort of fakedemocratization or some sort of
, anybody can do UX work.
And people are doing UX workand it's mediocre or poor.

(51:37):
Then what's the problem with AIdoing our work, mediocre or
poor?
Which comes back to the qualityquestion we covered earlier.
If we don't have strongstandards for the quality and
outcomes of UX work, then aproduct manager doing it badly
is okay, and AI doing itmediocrely or badly is okay, and

(52:00):
nobody seems to care.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
No, no, no, no, what I was saying like.
So nothing changes, right?
Just to go back on that bit, Iagree with you, right, by the
way.
Thanks, it's the same.
Yeah, we're accumulatingtechnical debt.
We might get someone to fix itwhenever we realize that, yeah,
it needs fixing, but the rightpeople are not being brought in
at the right time.
Design is not something thatyou bolt on at the end.

(52:24):
If you are thinking aboutenhancing an existing product or
service, you need researchers,you need service designers,
because they're the right peoplewho are going to do your
heuristic evaluation.
Yeah, and we have frameworksand standards for those.
If you're thinking of somethingbrand new, something greenfield
, you are still going to needresearchers and service

(52:47):
designers.
They should always, always, beyour first point of call.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Now they are and you have to empower them and let
them do their thing how theyneed to do it I'm gonna tell
them to just run a survey I'mgetting.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Oh god, running a survey is like somebody stopping
you in the street right on asunday morning.
Maybe you've been to yourreligious thing of choice, maybe
you've just been out for astroll and you've got that
college kid, or whoever it is,with a clipboard.
I'm terribly sorry.
Can I stop you?
Can I get you a beer?

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Are you happy with your washing?

Speaker 1 (53:22):
I'm going to give them a little bullshit and just
get rid of them damn quick.
You need your researchers andyou need your service designers.
Now, if you're thinking, oh,I'm just going to get a UX
person, a UX person is not goingto be as detailed or as
experienced as those twodisciplines, because they are
specialisms.
All they're probably going tobe at a mid-level, otherwise

(53:53):
they're not doing ux.
Then they're either old-schoolgraphic designers or visual
designers yeah, but they haven'thad the experience enough to
actually develop these otherdisciplines that I'm referring
to.
Okay, so researchers superimportant service designers,
absolutely critical to yourecosystems, particularly now
where you have this wonderfulthing called the AI.

(54:16):
Because service designers aregoing to not just look at your
happy past and your negativepast.
They're going to look at yourback office, they're looking at
your front of house, they'regoing to be developing your
service blueprints blueprints,If you have products who are
turning around and saying I'mmaking a design decision because
I'm the product owner.
You are going to do one thing,and one thing only, and that is

(54:38):
contribute to the landmass soonto be the landfill of technical
debt.
And good luck spending the nexttwo to five years digging up
that mess in order to fix yourproduct proposition.
Next two to five years diggingup that mess in order to fix
your product proposition am Iclear, sorry.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
No, you said good luck spending the next two to
five years and I said if youstill work there, exactly, or
even if that organization exists.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
so standard stuff.
We don't get involved soonenough.
And I'm calling out thesedisciplines to all of your
non-design folk who don't knowthis Researchers, service
designers, absolute, withoutquestion.
You need them and they're notgoing to eat up all of your
budget because if you listen toDr Nick Fine, he's got a million

(55:27):
and one ways to actuallyexpedite, accelerate and deliver
value propositions from aresearch quality and
quantitative perspective in notime at all, and they will do
that collaboratively, okay.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, we did a project a few years ago for a
startup that couldn't findproduct market fit and couldn't
figure out what to do.
We met 35 people fit andcouldn't figure out what to do.
We met 35 people.
We did the entire project, fromfirst meeting to last meeting,
where we had given them a valueproposition, their entire
business model, their entireecosystem map, a high-level

(56:05):
product roadmap.
We had basically invented whattheir startup would do.
So, from the first meeting toall of the research, to all of
the reporting and synthesis, totelling this startup what we
thought was the right path forthem was six weeks and people
who think that research has totake months or quarters it
doesn't have to.
It's not going to take days.

(56:26):
If you want qual research doneright, it's not a day's thing
and, depending upon how manypeople you're meeting, it might
not be a week's thing, but italso depends on how many people
you throw at it.
When I do these projects, Iwork with at least one other
person and we share theseresponsibilities and it's not a.
Debbie team of one.
Imagine that.
Remember when we had teams ofpeople doing things.

(56:47):
You know we have six to 12engineers working on something,
so you can make something gofaster by throwing more
qualified humans at it.
My work doesn't go faster whenyou give me a product manager
who likes the idea of research.
My work goes faster when yougive me a qualified researcher
to partner with.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Yeah, and that has to be coordinated by the likes of
Debbie, by the likes of RobertPowell, by the likes of maybe me
, even right and a whole bunchof other people we ain't got
time to name drop.
All of them 're going to startthinking about what you do since

(57:31):
time began create andaccumulate this technical debt,
wait until something tocompletely screw up, and there
will be multiple screw ups.
And that's on you, because youhave not benefited from the
luxury of people who know howthis shit works, of people who
know how this shit works, anddoes that meet your quality

(57:52):
standards?

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Do all of those screw-ups meet your quality
standards?
They shouldn't.
You can't change without change, and if you have the same
people, then expect the samethings.
So I'm saying startstrategically with cool AI
exists.
What are the good, helpful,high-value, ethical things we

(58:15):
can do with it?
What makes sense to do with itinternally?
What makes sense to do with itexternally for our product,
services, experience, ecosystem?
Then from there, of course, youneed your researchers and your
service designers.
And I would also say reverse theorder of what I just said.
Maybe you just say we have AI,we don't know where the hell to

(58:38):
put it.
You know what you figure it out.
Hey researchers, hey servicedesigners, is doing or should be
doing that you believe would beimproved by AI tools or
automations or whatever it mightbe.
You don't have to have the.
I don't want you to have thesolution first.

(58:59):
I would rather you just go tothe researchers and say find
problems that need to be solved,and maybe they're solved by AI,
but maybe they're not.
And we just have to rememberthat, like chatbots, we
shouldn't be shoehorning it intoeverything because it's a shiny
object.
I still, I know we're sayingsome similar things and the way

(59:19):
that I try to put it is look, Ithink ultimately, companies win
more through customer centricity.
You can try to avoid customercentricity.
You can try to say it's notimportant.
We can live without it.
You can live without it.
You can win more throughcustomer centricity, by
understanding people and theirneeds, tasks, behaviors, etc.

(59:42):
To me, the companies will dobetter when they are solving
real problems.
Well, it sounds so simple.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
And organizations out there.
Who's orchestrating these tasks?
Because you all claim to becustomer-centric.
You all claim to be user-first.
90% of you, in my humbleexperience, don't even talk to
users, and the other bunch justguess.
Yeah, it's mostly guessing.
You need to experience.
The framework and for me itstarts at the top is flawed.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Yes, but I'm doing a catch flies with honey version
because I could take a scorchedearth version.
I don't disagree with you.
I would say, blow it all up andstart with a chief experience
officer and then figure out whoelse you need.
But because what isn't anexperience?
But I think that I'm lesslikely to see that happen when I

(01:00:41):
act like 92 billion people haveto lose their jobs so that we
can put in a CXO.
So my thought is at leastfreaking install the CXO and an
experience large experiencedepartment under that empowered,
funded experienced departmentunder that empowered funded.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
If you haven't got the right people by
qualification and or experienceat a senior level, you're
leaving millions of dollars onthe table.
That is what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
I'm going to take you in a totally different
direction, just so we have a funway to wrap up.
This is Roy, and Roy should beat my house in about a half hour
.
We can't, we can't keep him.
We're going to foster him untilhe can find a home.
We already have five dogs.
We are dog family, so we lovedogs.

(01:01:23):
But a cousin found roy in theroad and brought him home and,
um, we are, we'll give himwhatever stick and ball that he
likes, but hopefully we can findhim a home and uh, where he
will be loved and appreciatedand understood and hashtag

(01:01:45):
empathy and cared for.
And what I want for roy is whatI want for every tech worker
what a good boy to have thissession, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Promise to be in touch more often.
I hope so.