June 5, 2018 • 61 mins
My guest for this month's episode is Anne Dougherty.
Anne is a writer and a UX and content architect who is passionate about making excellent user experiences, film, curling, and, by her own admission, the Oxford comma.
She has over 20 years of experience working in digital spaces, primarily in the progressive non- profit community.
And Anne believes, as I do, that regardless of what problem the user is trying to solve, they can’t do that without good, useful, relevant content.
Here’s where you can find and follow Anne:
Website: annedougherty.com
Twitter: @annedougherty
LinkedIn: annedougherty
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to making us work to give you
podcast.
I'm your host Gionta Toli.
And our focus here is on folkslike you doing a real often
glamorous UKCS work in the realworld.
You'll hear about theirstruggles their successes and
their journey to and through thetrenches of product design
development and of course userexperience.
(00:31):
My guest today is and Dohertywho among other things is a
writer and a US and contentarchitect and is quite
passionate about makingexcellent user experiences as
well as film curling and by herown definition.
The Oxford comma and has over 20years of experience working in
digital spaces primarily in theprogressive non-profit community
(00:53):
and she believes like I do thatregardless of what problem user
is trying to solve they can't dothat without good and useful
relevant content.
Here's my conversation with AnnDoherty on making us work.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So and how are you.
I am well this morning Joe howare you.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Very good.
It's Friday it's ended a weekthe most joyous day of the week.
Indeed indeed.
So you if I understand correctlyI mean your core area.
Not necessarily of expertise butwhat you spend a lot of time
doing seems to be more drivencontent strategy driven.
(01:36):
Is that correct.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
That is correct.
I mean the thumbnail sketch ofme I like to tell people when I
when I go to to meet ups and youknow design workshops and things
that they say well you know tellme a little bit about yourself
and I say well you know I'm acontent focused you as a
designer.
And it's taken me a while to getto to that explanation.
When I first made the pivot toofficially doing more USX work a
(02:02):
couple of years ago as opposedto the unofficial USX work I've
been doing for the bulk of mycareer.
When I first made that pivotinto into quote unquote real USX
work there was no emphasis inthe community that I'm in on
content at all.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
It was very visually design driven very UI driven
very oh what do you mean youdon't have a million fonts on
your ear pro and what was thatwhen when did I do that.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
You know I went with them in terms of years when was
this was actually about twoyears ago.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
And so it's gradually taken me a while to realize that
no content is an important partof the user experience and it's
a little bit like saying thatit's not as a little bit like
standing at the parade andwatching the Emperor go by
going.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Am I the only one who can see his joke.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
Yeah yeah yeah.
Oh I am.
I am.
That is a long way of saying Iam a content focused designer
basically.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Well I mean and that's as it should be isn't it.
I mean as far back as say youknow graphic design before
software you know was it was adesigners focus.
Content has always been in mymind the driving force behind
everything and it's the reasonyou bother to check anything
out.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
If you think about it or use anything Yeah it
absolutely is I mean you knowit's interesting.
I mean on the Facebook group youhave we have some interesting
conversations about well youknow what if what if design is
the point of the site or thepoint of the product.
And to me that's kind of it's alittle bit of a straw man
argument without contentregardless of what problem the
(03:49):
user is trying to solve withoutcontent.
They're not going to be able tosolve it no matter how pretty
your product is your app or yoursite or or whatever you know
your your internet enabledkiosk.
It doesn't matter if they can'tget the information that they
need.
They're not going to be able tosolve their problem and their
problem might be anything fromis complicated to you know I'm
(04:09):
trying to qualify for a mortgageto as simple as I just wasn't
pretty new wallpaper for mywalkdown Windows machine that my
company has given me and theonly thing I can do is change
the background on my desktop.
So you know it really doesn'tmatter.
I mean that photograph thatbecomes your desktop background
is content even though you'reconsuming it with your eyes it's
(04:31):
content.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
AMEN AMEN AMEN.
I mean I couldn't possibly agreemore.
I think the problem and you tellme OK.
I often wonder if the problem iswhen people hear the term
content they have a very narrowdefinition of what that means.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
I think that's part of the problem.
I think that you're absolutelyright.
I think for a lot of peopletheir beginning and end of the
definition of content is words.
And to a large extent content iswords but it's not the only
definition of content.
YouTube almost the entirety oftheir content offering is
(05:13):
consumed visually audible Dahabthe entirety of their content
offering is consumed with yourears.
So you know it's it's it's avery narrow definition.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I also think this is possibly my own personal bias
but that bias grows out of theexperiences that I've had
professionally.
I think that to a large extentpeople here are content and it
gets kind of disregarded becausethe bulk of the people working
(05:46):
in digital content at least inthe first wave of digital
content are women interest andwomen's work is often seen as
not important as a fascinatingviewpoint.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Tell me more.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Tell me more about this so one of one of the
challenges that I'm facing withmy current employer which is a
very very large multinationalconsulting firm is that we
struggle with the divisionbetween content and quote
unquote EU acts.
I personally hold a fairlyunpopular opinion that content
(06:22):
and acts are actually the samethat they shouldn't be in
different buckets.
That famous Maslow pyramid thateverybody's heard of where you
know Maslow had thepsychological needs and the base
and was you know safety andsecurity and then you go up and
up and up and some wag hasmodified that pyramid to add you
know Wi-Fi access and thensomebody else modified that to
(06:45):
put you know an even bigger basebelow Wi-Fi access since a
battery life if you do a similarpyramid for user experience or
for service design experience Iwould actually say that content
is at the base of that pyramidhas without content KHRAIS.
Speaker 6 (07:02):
You picked a nice font stack and you made a really
great color scheme and yourlayouts perfect.
But you're looking at warm upsome and nobody cares what's
art.
It's art it I suppose it's art.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
I mean we can have that conversation about you know
whether or not certain things inmodern art or art.
But I think that maybe on thescope of Pakistan.
But you know there but thecompany that I worked for there
is a very strict divisionbetween content and us and you
people never do content andcontent people don't feel like
they are empowered to talk aboutcontent related things that
(07:38):
affect the user experience.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
And when I look at the way those two groups are
stashed there are some womenworking in new X but almost the
entirety of the content staff isfemale.
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
I'm curious about the U.S.
side of the house.
How is it possible.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I'm really having trouble with this.
How is it how is it possiblethat the folks on the U.S.
side of the House don'tunderstand or see or value the
degree to which content is thebackbone of everything they're
putting across the people.
What is it that they think.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
I think that I think that it's it it comes from that
it comes from that root of usbeing associated with you being
associated with visual design.
Now we're getting somewhere.
Yeah.
And I think that's that's reallywhere that that bias comes from
is us and UI have or have gottenand are still for a lot of
(08:38):
people conflated when UI isreally no more the entirety of
us than content being theentirety of you x.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Took the words right out of my mouth because that's
where I was going this is one ofthose situations where you X and
you are interchangeable termsbut they're not.
No of course not.
Of course they're not.
But for a lot of organizationsyeah they very much are okay and
there's still a very widespreadmisunderstanding of us and of
(09:07):
design in general.
Okay I think anytime someonesays that word everybody thinks
visual unfortunately and thenthat's that's that's 2 percent
you know the entire picture.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Yeah it's it's not.
It's it's a very small part ofthe picture and and you know
don't please don't mistake whatI'm saying.
I mean the folks who are doing Xon the side of the House they
are very well aware of howimportant content is and they're
very well aware that theirstrengths may not lay in the
(09:40):
content domain.
So you know there is a lot ofinterpersonal professional
respect.
But I think on a systemic andsort of administrative level
there isn't really a grasping ofthe understanding that without
content your product doesn'twork regardless of what your
product is.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Okay so we're talking about higher level management
maybe we're talking aboutproject management.
So that's where is that the areaof the organization where the
disconnect occurs more so thanthan in the data.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Yeah it's higher it's higher up than people who are
doing the day to day work.
I mean it extends even into thissphere of how projects are
actually written up or howproposals are actually written
up because I think that one ofthe challenges that we also face
as consultants is that you knowin the sphere we're working in
(10:35):
which is the public sphere not alot of our clients understand
how important content is and howit affects the user experience.
And you know as the sort of thedomain experts as the people who
are supposed to be helping themdeliver better for the people
they're responsible to which isthey're their users their
external stakeholders.
(10:56):
It's up to us to write thoseproposals and craft those
projects right from thebeginning so that they actually
have something that is going tofulfill that promise to their to
their internal stakeholders totheir users.
And I think that because thereis that disconnect between the
people who are actually doingthe work and the people who are
very often writing the proposalswere going in and pitching to
(11:19):
the clients that sometimes whenthe folks who do the actual work
get on site they're walking intoan environment where they're
already having to fight evenmore to get good content or get
good content governance or getnot so much good data.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Because we're we've reached the point with the
ubiquity of Google thateverybody understands the
importance of search Mosen.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
But we're already having to fight to say well you
know you need to you need tohave a content strategy you need
to have an archiving plan youneed to understand how to write
for the web even or how to writefor an app even and and how to
reuse and recycle content and soyou know having to to not just
(12:07):
fight all those battles but thenalso fight the battle on the
administrative level where it'slike well you've got enough
content work here for a team ofeight and you've put one content
person on this project.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And again in my experience that's common.
I mean that's a you justdescribed a very common scenario
to me and what I wonder is oftenbecause I don't have the answer.
And again I'm interested in yourtake here is that a result of
traditional organizationalculture inside an organization
(12:41):
right.
Leftovers from what we're in thedigital age.
But companies of the company hasbeen around for a long time and
your chart is still the orchardis still the orchard even though
it's been manipulated a littlebit.
Is it that or is it that all ofthis in the digital realm of
products.
Are we still just in our infancyand we haven't quite grown to
(13:02):
the point where it's more thanlipservice now it's an
integrated part of whateverybody does.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
I think it's a combination of those things.
I think for many organizationsmost organizations even.
It's a combination of we'restill clinging to you know the
traditional inverted pyramidmodel of riding that we all
learn in school where you knowyou have your most important
concepts and then you broadenout all that stuff.
(13:29):
And we're also I think that someof it is that we just haven't
grown up yet and that the folkswho are still on the top of that
org chart are not necessarilyunwilling to learn but they just
don't.
They don't have like theexperience to understand that it
(13:51):
makes more sense to write apiece of content one time and
reuse it a bunch of differentplaces and how you would
actually go about doing that.
So.
So it's a function of needing togrow and a function of just
corporate and organizationalculture needing to embrace the
idea that you know content isnot something that you write
down wants and stick in a folderit's going to change it's going
(14:14):
to grow it's going to need toget updated.
When I was the bulk of I spent Iactually spent the bulk of my
career working in theprogressive non-profit sphere.
And so I've been doing this.
Been working in digital spacesover 20 years.
And I distinctly remember I wasworking at an agency and one of
(14:35):
the major challenges we face wasthat a lot of nonprofit
organizations are still run bymanagement structures or by
people who think that theirdonors actually want to read
press releases.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
If there's any in what I read press no reporters
don't even want to pressreleases.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
And so it was you know that was a big battle that
we were constantly refightingwith every new client where you
know they'd say Well there's nospace in the home page for our
for our latest press release andwe would have to pick one of the
very gentle responses out of thehat that basically amounted to
really no one cares about yourpress releases.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
No one cares.
Speaker 6 (15:22):
No.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
You know it's it's not that you know it's not that
public organizations governmentagencies whatever are unique and
not really understanding whattheir users care about.
It's it's endemic.
Every organization has thisproblem it's just the thing that
they think is important shiftsdepending on what sphere they
(15:44):
operate in.
Sure.
And and I think that reallygrows out of not understanding
the audience and wallingyourself off to some degree
intentional or otherwise.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Yeah.
Well and it's it's really it's afear reaction.
I mean and in some ways it's notan unfounded fear reaction like
the thing that the thing thatgovernment agencies face is that
they're under so much scrutiny.
There's just so much publicscrutiny of everything a
government agency does.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
And so it creates this environment where there's a
fear to fail.
Nobody's really embracing thewhole you know lean mindset
where you fail early and youfail fast and you make
corrections because there is afeeling that there's no
tolerance for failure that ifyou put out a wrong piece of
information the next thing youknow your agency head is going
(16:36):
to be sitting on CNN gettinggrilled or getting hauled in
front of Congress and you knowwhatever it happens you know
whatever else happens.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
That's worse.
Now with the advent of theInternet that's I think that's
infinitely worse.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
Yeah it is infinitely infinitely worse.
And it's so it's not anunfounded fear.
And with nonprofits the wholefail early fail fast thing is
really about a function ofresources and a fear of being
accused of not being a goodsteward of your donors
resources.
You know it comes from sort ofthe subliminal attitude of Well
(17:16):
if somebody gives us fivehundred dollars they want us to
put that Tor program expensesand you know we need to make
sure that we're being verycareful with every penny.
And that's that's really a goodattitude to have.
I mean that's not an unfoundedfear either.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Well sure.
So you want to be responsible.
You want to be a responsiblesteward of what people invest in
you.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
Absolutely.
But you know in the in thenonprofit world it's sort of the
tension between you know peoplewant an organization to do the
work but they don't want to payfor the organization to pay for
people to actually do the workthey want it to happen by magic
Yeah because that's theinvisible part right.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
That's how the sausages made.
That's that's the part thatnobody sort of actually sees the
existence of because it'sglossed over for the most part.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Exactly exactly.
There's a really famous cartoonthat I think was originally
published in the New Yorker andit's these two you know kind of
older frumpy look.
Professor Auriol guys you knowwhat the ties in the jackets and
the you know Einstein look andhair and they're standing in
front of this big chalkboard andthey're all these really
complicated math calculations onthe chalkboard and down sort of
(18:31):
in the lower right hand cornerthere is a rectangle and inside
the rectangle it says and amiracle occurs here.
The caption on the cartoon isone guy's saying to the other
guy I think you need to be alittle more specific right
there.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
Yeah that's about right.
Speaker 6 (18:51):
And and for a lot of people that's that's how they
view you accidents like taxesand a miracle occurs here and
out the other end comes thisgreat user experience that's
going to increase our donationsby 500 percent or reduce the
number of calls we get into ourcall center.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Or you know make everybody subscribe to our
product whatever it is.
And so there's a lot of there'sa lot of mystery around what you
folks actually do now which isyou know I get it.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I mean I keep saying design has had the same problem
since its inception and youcertainly has the same problem.
Since its inception all theoffshoots of what we do have the
same issue.
And what you find is thatthere's just a struggle for
people and largely I think thisis older more established
(19:45):
national institutions butindividuals have a hard time
getting their head around thisstuff like for instance
listening to you speak made methink of of a consulting
situation I was in where I wassaying look we need to have a
meeting this afternoon with yourdatabase team.
We need to get these guys in theroom.
And when you talk about contentin general the stuff that we're
(20:08):
surfacing and three peoplelooked at me like I had three
heads and they said well whatdoes data have to do with
content.
And I had a pause for a minute.
I said well they're the samething.
This is what we're surfacing topeople and we're doing it in a
way where nobody understands itin the format in which it's
presented.
So we need to get somebackground on what this is how
(20:31):
it is this system has catalogedhow it's organized and how we
could potentially surface it ina different way.
And those guys have the answersto those questions and it took
another hour of discussing andworking through this and making
them understand that all thisstuff that people are paying you
to consume in your system.
(20:52):
It's all content.
And if we don't get this partright it doesn't matter how
exciting what people see on thescreen is.
Yeah.
Doesn't matter.
They're going to stop payingyou.
The reason your customers arecomplaining right now is because
the don't understand how to getat any of this is being
presented to them in a way thatthey don't understand that they
(21:13):
can't use to get to go back tothe beginning you had to get
beyond what it looks like.
It's what is it you know.
Yeah and that's content to me.
I mean it's all content.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
And that's absolutely that's absolutely.
You could not have.
Have said it better.
I mean and maybe that's thechallenge I think for content
folks to try and open up theconversation about content being
a part of you x is talking lessabout content as an abstract
contact concept and talking moreabout content as meaning.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yeah.
Yeah and maybe you have the sameproblem.
That's maybe contentprofessionals in particular.
OK.
These are very broadridiculously generic term that
had the same problem thatdesigners and developers and us
folks have which is we fall intothe trap of talking about things
in the ways that we understandthem as opposed to using the
(22:11):
terminology in the language andthe outcomes in particular are
the obstacles in a way that thepeople signing the checks
understand.
I mean maybe you just hitsomething there.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
Yeah that that is really interesting.
I'd like to I'd like to unpackthat a little bit more.
Go for it because I find that tobe a really interesting
perspective on the problem andmaybe it's that.
Do you think that we are as asyou as professionals.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
Again ridiculously broad you know 12 inch Braasch
you professionals contentprofessionals visual designers
you know design researchers allof us.
Do you think that we need toapproach our clients in the same
way that we are telling ourclients that they need to
(23:02):
approach their users.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I think so but in what way.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Well in the sense that just how you mentioned like
we talked to them about userexperience and about content
strategy in language that weunderstand because we feel like
they're the domain experts forwhatever field they work in.
Whether it's you knowenvironmental activism or
government policy or health careor financial industry whatever
(23:31):
their domain is.
And so we feel like they havethe domain knowledge and that
may be kind of gives them a legup in in experience and
sophistication that their usersmight not necessarily have.
Every audience is different butmight not necessarily have them.
(23:52):
And so we have to go in and kindof explain to them no you need
to not assume that your usersknow what you know and maybe
because kind of mentally we'reframing them in a way of okay
they have this domain knowledgethat gives them kind of a leg up
in sophistication maybe we needto make the assumption that they
(24:14):
don't know what we know.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
In that case yes absolutely positively.
Amen.
I will I will get up on themountain top and shout it's OK
for the next you know whateverremaining years of my life I
have left.
That's how firmly I believe inthis and lately I've been
feeling like I personally havenot been doing a good enough job
of explaining that particularpoint.
(24:37):
Because of something I believein strongly obviously clearly
era.
I think I would like to see usall do away with all the
terminology we use all of itevery word every phrase every
formal name that we have foreverything.
And I personally I think that'strue in any discipline.
(24:59):
OK.
But I increasingly.
All right.
On a daily basis I read you Xarticles right or things
tangentially related to you x orproduct design or developer or
whatever.
I cannot I swear to you it'svery rare that I ever read
something where I can get pastthe first paragraph.
And the reason for that isbecause we immediately venture
into the land of jargon andterminology and just bullshit
(25:25):
names for processes and all thishigh minded stuff that only gets
in the way of peopleunderstanding what the hell the
author is talking about.
And I think that that hasinfected all of us in terms of
our practice.
So I think you're absolutelyright.
I think a lot of times weautomatically assume that
(25:46):
everyone knows what it is thatwe're talking about and the fact
is they don't.
All they know is that somethingis not working.
They're feeling pain and theydon't know what to do about it.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
I definitely agree with you.
First of all I'm glad to hearyou say that you know in the
reading that you do it you findit difficult to get through
there because I do a lot ofreading myself and very often I
get into these articles and I'myou know halfway through a five
minute read.
And I I just I don't I'mcompletely lost.
(26:17):
It's just terms and it's veryconfusing when people are using
words that they don't know whatthey mean or they may not mean
the same thing that I think theymean because the context around
them kind of indicates to methat well wait you're using that
term in a different way than I'mused to using it.
And maybe it's that.
(26:37):
I mean I think part of theproblem with with us in general
is that we don't even have acommon language among ourselves.
Right.
And we've I know we've talked inthe Facebook group about this.
You know we've kind of reachedthe you know beat a dead horse
point over this but you know aclear example of this is how
(26:58):
people recruit for you x relatedjob.
You know I just you X developerneeds to not become a thing.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
It's just nuts to not become a thing because it just
it's just it's just throwingsand in the water and it's just
completely confusing and and Idon't know.
I mean do we create do we usethese confusing terms because
we're secretly afraid that if weactually expose what we do then
(27:28):
we won't be seen as havingfailed you.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Partly yeah I think it's also there's a catch 22
involved.
The minute you are asked to tellsomeone what you do or the
minute you say OK I'm trying toget a job in this field because
the commonly used nomenclatureis what it is right.
Companies are going to usecertain terms for certain things
(27:51):
or put out these ads and say wewant you X developer or we even
you X designer OK is a misnomer.
But that's the terminologythat's what's commonly
understood and accepted to somedegree so you put yourself out
there you say all right I haveto call myself something where
people going to recognize thatthat Yeah I'm that thing that
you want.
That's what I do.
And you don't want to because Ithink as you as you said you
(28:14):
feel like Hanawon.
I don't want to muddy the watersfurther right.
And it does it adds to theconfusion.
But at the same time I think youfeel I think a lot of people
feel caught.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
Yeah I mean you have to have a way to describe
yourself to other people.
I mean that's that's kind of theit's kind of the basis of a
common language.
But I kind of want to circleback for a second why I'm
curious about why you say youdesigner is is a misnomer.
Can you can you explain a littlebit about that for me more.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah I can because again it's this conflation of
two things when experiencedesign came about as a
discipline and I think it grewout of a bunch of things.
It grew out of interactiondesign for one thing right.
Alan Cooper's work and thenobviously you know done Norman
(29:08):
at Apple and some other folksstarted talking about the
experience.
Human beings have with a productand their whole point with that
was that everything that camebefore was sort of very narrowly
defined and they were saying nothis this business these things
that we do.
It's bigger than that.
It's a lot of specificactivities and specific areas
(29:29):
under a very large umbrella.
In other words it's not justvisual design.
It's not just content.
It's not just the mechanics ofproduction right.
It's it's all those things.
It's human cognitive behaviourit's human psychology it's it's
visual messaging it's perceptionof color and what happened.
(29:50):
I think so then it became userexperience you X which came out
of HCI human computerinteraction.
What happened shortly after thatand I believe this is how this
thing kind of goes and justabout any field people had a
hard time getting their headaround you act like well what is
a you X person.
Do people know what a designerdoes.
(30:11):
Right.
So the two things were sort ofsimilar.
They're living next to eachother in a neighborhood.
So somebody said it's design isdesign OK so I'm a designer now
and then light bulbs will offerpeople that OK I kind of get
what that is and that's whathappened something enters the
lexicon and it becomes thisthing that means something other
(30:33):
than what it really is.
So to me those are two differentthings of someone who does user
experience work is notnecessarily a designer.
But it became this blanket termfor everything and it also
invited the direct confusionbetween you X designer UI
designer yeah right visualdesigner designer of experiences
(30:55):
I believe and I've told thestory so many times I'm not
going to bore you with it theway I learned design in school
when I went to school was thatthe visual result of that work
was only one part of theequation.
Design is design is design isdesign whether it's mechanical
or industrial architecturalgraphic whatever the case may
be.
(31:16):
It's all the same thing.
I still believe that.
But in the same way that peoplehad had trouble with that.
It's just there's this need toput things in boxes and I think
sometimes those boxes areinaccurate and doing so causes
more problems than it solves.
So hopefully answer yourquestion.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Yeah I know that that totally makes sense that it
aligns kind of with where Ithought you were going but I was
I was curious because you youwill very often have a more high
level perspective.
I have noticed and so Iappreciate you know your
thoughts and insights on that atthat higher level.
I just think.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
I think there's a need.
We have a need.
Like I said put things in neatlittle categories where
everything makes sense and Ithink that the world at large
that we all live in is a lotmore complex than that.
And I think that trying to do socauses more problems than it
solves and it's better to walkinto situations where is the
issue here and in our case youare having a conversation about
(32:15):
content.
Right.
All right.
So for time content where arethe content related issues and
maybe in going down that pathyou find out that there's also
an issue with the visualpresentation of that content or
as I alluded to there's an issuewith the way that content is
stored and categorized.
Point being it's never just thisone little thing.
(32:37):
Now I don't know about yourtravels but in mine there is
never one simple direct piece ofthe pie that you have to deal
with.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Now it's never just one thing it's always it's
always a set of nesting dolls.
You know you take this and youopen this one up and oh there's
one more inside and there's onemore inside and there's one more
inside.
There's one more inside untilyou're you know down to the
tiniest tiniest solid littledoll and you know sometimes that
(33:06):
tiny solid little doll is wellthe person at the top of the
organization is making all thedecisions and won't listen.
Or sometimes that solid solidtiny little doll as we'd really
love to do this but we justdon't have the Fonz or there's
no political will or you knowwhat for reasons because
reasons.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
So yeah it's never just one thing.
And it's you know I also have abit of a background as a front
end developer.
And so I kind of I keep comingback mentally to the metaphor of
you know for us and how USproblems are solved and reveal
to aligning it with howcascading style sheets work.
(33:52):
You know it's just it's not justdiscrete NCSA it's not just if
you're if you're stylesheet iscoded correctly it's not just a
set of discrete instructions forwhatever system you're working
with to say hey use this fontuse this color in this size with
this padding and this Marjon andthis float and this clearance
(34:16):
and you know every other thingyou can think of if it's coded
correctly those changes cascadeand you is exactly the same way
you can't solve a technicalproblem without affecting
content delivery withoutaffecting the UI without
affecting the total experience.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
So the U.S.
is basically the sum total ofall of those things cascading
into each other.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Right.
And you just described you knowmy my issue.
In a nutshell with the degree ofspecificity that everybody sort
of insists on it's it's false.
Yes I do believe I asindividuals.
Everybody's talents abilitiesskill sets certainly gravitate
towards very specific areas ofthis discipline and I think
(35:04):
that's important.
Yeah but I think thesedefinitions get in the way and I
wonder often if they're not whatcaused people that are removed
from what we do often ourclients are our bosses or
managers or are our productowners or whoever they are.
It's awful what sort of helpsgrow this idea that there's one
(35:26):
specific thing we need to lookat and that's it.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
I think you're absolutely right.
I mean it it's the world iscomplicated.
The rural requires a lot ofmental energy and human beings
have a tendency to useshorthand.
Speaker 6 (35:42):
Whether it's you know inaccurate job descriptions or
you know stereotypes they useshorthand to make it so.
Oh I know what this thing orthis person is it goes in this
box.
I can now turn off my brain andworry about other things because
(36:03):
I know how things that are inthat box.
Function.
And that's that's really what itis is that the world is
complicated and is hard it'sjust hard to be a person.
Speaker 7 (36:16):
And it just really is.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Amen.
And that's with everything.
Right.
It's that just one thing.
It's it's always a lot of thingsand nothing is ever as neat and
tidy as all this stuff makes itsound.
I mean you know my my big thingabout formal processes and
recipes for success and all thiskind of stuff.
It's just all too simple.
(36:42):
OK.
Try to try to employ some ofthat in the real world and
you'll find out in five minutesexactly what it's worth.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
Yeah it is interesting is it.
Is it OK for me to say sort ofwhere I'm physically located.
Of course.
So I'm I'm in the WashingtonD.C.
metro area.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
And I did a bunch of volunteering for D.C.
for the conference back in Aprilshout out for you.
D.C.
It's an awesome group if youEspersen in the D.C.
area and you're not a member.
Please please please join.
It's FREE.
And you meet a lot of reallygood folks and we do a lot of
really good stuff.
(37:22):
But I did some volunteer workfor the conference we had back
in April and one of the speakersthat we had come in was Dan
Brown from shapes and he hadjust put out his book practical
design discovery which I amgoing back and rereading now for
a variety of reasons.
And one of the things that hetalks about in that book is you
(37:43):
know he basically has this sortof four square model of
discovery activities and thatFoursquare is divided in half
with one half being convergentactivities and the other half
being Divergent activities.
And then it's divided in halfthe other way with some of them
are problem solving and some ofthem are problem definition and
(38:06):
some of them are solutionoriented.
And the thing that he says inthe book which I completely
agree with even in the secondpass is that you know there are
a bunch of activities andartifacts you can generate in
the discovery process but youdon't have to use them all.
Speaker 6 (38:24):
It's like I my spouse's is a cook.
My spouse is a fabulous cookwhich means I do a lot of dishes
right.
It.
Speaker 7 (38:34):
Makes sense because the way it works on her house is
she does all the cooking and Ido the dishes and I consider
that to be you know we bothconsider that to be a really
fair division.
Absolutely.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
But I'm a baker and she can't bake at all.
I mean she's just don't ask herto make chocolate chip cookies.
She might as well eat a hockeypuck.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
And the difference between it is is that cooking is
very you know the way a lot ofpeople cook cooking is very kind
of intuitive and very oh thisdoesn't smell right it needs a
little bit more spice or oh Ineed to stir that up because the
burners are a little hot orwhatever.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
Baking is chemistry yeah.
Absolutely.
So that's why I can't pick.
Yeah.
Baking is Wheatly chemistry soif you've got a recipe where
I've this Christmas cookierecipe that I've been messing
with for years and it's it's afabulous cookie it started out
as a cookie with butterscotchchips in it.
And then one year I went OK wellwhat if I use half butterscotch
(39:37):
chips and half dark chocolatechips.
Oh my.
And then I had egg experimentfor a couple of years because
the dark chocolate chips don'thave as much fat in them.
So the cookies were kind of dry.
And you know this and that theother thing and it's gotten to
the point where it's abutterscotch oatmeal dark
chocolate coconut cookie.
It's a saying yes.
(39:57):
But it's all about figuring outwhat the chemical balance is
right.
So if you take out you know thebutterscotch chips that have
more fat in them and you put indark chocolate chips that don't
have as much.
You got to add a little bit morebutter.
Discovery is like that.
OK you can't just go Well I'mgoing to use you know six user
interviews and five Web sitestatistics and three whatever
(40:22):
this is then and then we'll haveour problem definition.
You have to use the discoveryactivities that are right for
the situation you're in.
Yep.
You know so you may not haveaccess directly to your users
for whatever reason your clientsays no no we don't want you
talking directly to users.
But what you may have access tois a customer service staff that
(40:45):
talks to the users great standthem in for your users because
they know what the companies youknow they know what the
company's customer base theyknow what their pain points are
because they're the ones whopick up the irate phone calls at
3 o'clock in the morning go OKApple so why can't I get these
podcasts off my back.
Absolutely correct.
Followed redirection in yourknowledge base on these podcast
(41:08):
will knock him off my iPad.
What the what.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
And that's an untapped resource.
It shocks me that more placesdon't lean on those people the
way they should.
Speaker 6 (41:17):
No they really don't.
And but but the whole the wholething is is that you know there
are all these different thingsthat we do in us.
And I think that the business ofus drives oh we have to create
this artifact.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
We must make wire frames or we must make a persona
or we must do a user journey mapor whatever it is because we
need to show the people who arepaying our salaries value when
in reality you may walk into asituation where you know your
clients already hired aconsultant who's done the
research and done this and allof that and they've got you know
(41:51):
10 personas that they know areaccurate for their audience as
the third consultant to come in.
You don't need to make more newpersonas you need to synthesize
the information that's alreadybeen gathered.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Right.
Right.
And look at it and say OK doesthis make sense at all.
Is it accurate.
Are there holes or are therefalse assumptions here.
Yeah.
Leverage leverage what's beendone.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
Yeah absolutely.
And so that's the thing I thinkwe get so current caught up on
proving value because we haven'treally communicated to the
people who hire us what itactually is that we do.
We get so caught up on theseartifacts that quote unquote
prove our value that maybesometimes we get into situations
where we're not really doing theactivities that would help us
(42:37):
get to that tiny little solidnesting doll even faster.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
And I think that's important and it's a tough thing
to do particularly if you'retrying to land a gig with a
client or you're trying to get ajob because everybody wants
artifacts.
Right that's what they want tosee that we do the portfolio
course.
It's all about artifacts.
(43:03):
You know show me what you'vedone and I get that.
Because they do in their ownway.
Show your thinking and how youapproach the work and that's
valuable.
But it also leaves people withthe mistaken impression on both
sides of the coin that the pathto salvation lies in producing
all these artifacts.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
Yes.
Yeah I I actually I took your Itook one of the first couple of
iterations of your portfoliocourse and that was you know
that was one of the reasons thatI took it is because as somebody
who is focused on content itkind of puts me in the portfolio
the whole issue of the portfoliokind of puts me in in particular
between a rock and a hard placebecause nobody wants to read
(43:44):
when they look at a portfolioyet a lot of content artifacts
are worth based.
So it's like well I've done allof this great content inventory
and strategy work but you don'twant to see my migration
tracking sheet.
You want to see a pretty pictureof the final project product and
the UI designer actually gets toclaim that work because I didn't
(44:06):
pick the fonts and didn't pickcolors.
You know yeah I helped write thecontent and give them an idea of
what would be a good strategy toput on the home page or on a
landing page or whatever it is.
But when people look at ascreenshot of that they're not
going to see the contentstrategy they're going to see to
Fahnestock and the pretty colorsand the whitespace and all of
the other things that go intoyou design that I'm not an
(44:29):
expert at right.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
And it's it's it's a misinterpretation
misinterpretation isn't doinganybody any favors now least of
all me.
Yeah exactly.
And I want to tell you that Ilooked to your portfolio briefly
last night.
I didn't dig into it but I didwant to make it a point to say
to you that I think you've donean excellent excellent job with
it.
(44:50):
Thank you because your valuecomes to me just even in the
first screen.
Your value is coming throughloud and clear specifically that
everything you do you know workstowards results.
Right.
And it doesn't tie you down toany specific tactical hands on
role.
And just knowing you and being asocialist for a while I think
(45:11):
that's where you value is so Idid want to make a point to say
that I think you're doing a goodjob there.
Well thank you.
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I appreciate that.
I like I said I'm I took youryou know I took your portfolio
workshop and I took everythingyou said to heart.
I was I was one of the peopleactually volunteered to have you
live critique my portfolio.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
I do.
But you know I took everythingyou said to heart and you know
(45:37):
really it made me really stepback and look at OK it's not
just about the work that I'vedone it's not just about the
artifacts I produced.
It's about the work that I did.
How did that help.
Yes my clients achieve theirgoals.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Yes it can be a painful way forward.
In some ways because like I saideverybody expects the artifacts
because that's what everybodyelse is doing.
And I will tell you though thatthe path to doing the work that
you are a meant to do extremelygood at and see.
That is of most value to thepeople who are going to pay you
to do it has everything to dowith divorcing yourself from
(46:15):
some of that stuff.
OK I have not shown anybody apotential client.
Of course I haven't had apotential employer for a very
long time but I have not shown aportfolio quote unquote for at
least 15 years probably morethan that out and deciding to
stop doing that was a verypainful difficult decision but
(46:38):
it was something that wasgnawing at me in the back of my
mind.
And there were a couple ofpeople who I really respected
that told me that gave me thatadvice and said look if you keep
tying yourself to these thingsthat is people's perception of
who you are what you do andwhere you value is that is true.
And it's that's not the case.
So you got to stop singing thissong.
(47:00):
And finally I did and it washard at first but you know the
results hopefully speak forthemselves.
It's bigger than that.
Everything I do everything Itake on is bigger than that the
companies who trust me.
All right.
Because if they're going to payme I feel a great responsibility
of that.
OK there.
(47:21):
And trusting me with their hardearned cash.
And I don't wanna ever promisethat Oh well I know right now
it's this hurts this hurts thishurts this.
You know we've got to find out.
Capsule is like saying we can'tafford to solve the problem
here.
So it's tougher but it's a goodway forward.
Speaker 8 (47:39):
It is a very good way forward and it kind of takes me
back a little bit too tocollege.
I went to a Catholic university.
And we had a religionrequirement as undergraduates.
And I actually managed to getout of the Catholic University
of America without ever taking aclass in Catholicism.
(48:01):
OK.
I did.
Yeah I was excited.
I took an architecture classthat satisfied the religion
requirement.
I took the basic survey.
I took a philosophy class thatsatisfied the requirement but
the class the class that Ienjoyed the most was actually a
survey of Eastern religions sowe looked at different kinds of
(48:22):
Buddhism Dao is a little bit ofHindu and some other things that
are lost lost in the mists ofantiquity.
But one of the books that weread that I think is directly
relevant to being a practitionerwith something called Zen Mind
Beginner's Mind.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
And basically the whole concept of the book was
that in order to actually be apractitioner of Zen Buddhism you
had to let go of the idea thatyou were an expert.
You had to let go of the ideathat you do anything and you had
to approach each situation as ifyou were an abject beginner and
(49:04):
you knew nothing.
Speaker 5 (49:06):
And I think to a certain extent that's a really
good mindset for us people tohave because it will help us not
walk into a client's office witha preconceived notion of Oh
you're in the healthcare spherethese are the problems that
you're going to have or you'rein the public sector.
These are the problems thatyou're going to have or you're a
non-profit.
These are the problems thatyou're going to have.
(49:28):
Yes there is to a general extentcommonality within all of those
different domains of theproblems that an organization or
an agency or a company mighthave.
But if you walk in going OK Ineed to open my mind and listen
to what the people who arewriting my check are telling me
their challenges are that you'reultimately going to get a better
(49:51):
solution for them than if youcan't put your feet up on the
desk.
Yeah I know what's going onhere.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yeah and I can't believe you mentioned that book
The Suzuki Book because behindme and I don't know if it ever
shows up in any of myscreenshots I take from this
office.
When I bought that book it camewith a little print really and
the print is the sameillustration that's in the book.
I believe that's the whole dealwe're in the beginner's mind
(50:19):
there are many possibilities inthe experts mind there are few.
And that's why if stuck to thewall behind me because that is
sort of my guiding principle foreverything.
Don't ever assume that you knowit's a mistake and it prevents
real progress real meaningfulresults or outcomes of any kind.
(50:40):
I absolutely agree.
Sounds amazing that you broughtthat up.
Sidor I was literally I swear toyou I sort of had chills.
You know the herem are standingup.
When you were talking about it.
Well my work is done here thatreally blows my mind on Friday.
So we got a little bit of timeleft.
(51:02):
We do so I want to puts you onthe hot seat here.
And as you hang some hopefullyinteresting challenging
questions.
OK.
What test your patience.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
More than anything else in general or in the works
sphere either.
Oh in the work sphere what testsmy patience the most.
This is going to sound horrible.
Is developers who are morefocused on functionality than on
(51:33):
the people who are actuallygoing to use the product they're
building.
How do you deal with that.
Speaker 6 (51:42):
Take a lot of walks take a lot of walks around the
block and very gently remindthem that you know for example
you've built a stripper poleContent-Type and all of the
fields that are in thefunctional specifications are in
the content type but they're inan order that doesn't really
(52:03):
make any sense to the people whoare actually going to be working
with the system and maybe couldwe rearrange them like this and
just kind of remind them thatwhile they may be having fun
with code that ultimatelythey're writing something that
people who aren't assophisticated as them are going
to have to use what's ourcuriosity what's what's the
(52:26):
ratio of responses in terms ofpeople who sort of go oh yeah
you know I didn't really thinkabout that versus people who
are.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Well no this is my thing stop talking to me.
Speaker 6 (52:36):
I've never gotten 100 percent.
No this is the way it is andjust deal with a response.
That's good.
I've gotten everything from oh Ijust didn't think about it too
fine.
All right we'll put the fieldsof opportunity.
And you can't see me rolling myeyes but I am.
(52:57):
And I think what I do have tosay the good thing is that the
developers that I've workedwith.
It's been about I'd say 70 30 of70 30 on the side of I just
didn't really think about that.
And now I know better.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
And whether or not they carry that forward into
other projects that they'reworking on with other people I
don't know.
But that actually makes me feelpretty good that maybe I'm able
to kind of widen their viewpointa little so that they consider
not just whether or not the coatis beautiful and it works
efficiently but how the personthat they're ultimately going to
(53:37):
that they're building the thingfor is ultimately going to use
it.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
I think so and I think that's why you're there.
I think that's whymultidisciplinary teams are
essential yet quite frankly it'sit's hard for all of us to get
out of our own way.
And it's also why I'm not a fanof the all in one unicorn person
who does everything but we canwe could be on that all day.
But but that's that's veryheartening and I think that's
(54:02):
reality in most cases.
Speaker 6 (54:04):
Yeah I'd be happy to come back and talk with you
about that but that we're goingto have to schedule our chat
later in the day so I canjustify drinking that we do.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Fair enough.
You're actually fairly close tome so we could do that and in
person we could we could but Ireally I can't justify the 930
am it does understand I don'twant to foist that on you
either.
I know that your master's infilm and video production so you
(54:36):
had let's assume that you're ona desert island question right.
Let's assume you're on a desertisland with power and you can
watch movies one movie you getto be with you for the rest of
eternity.
What is it.
Speaker 9 (54:50):
Ah wow lol that's really hard.
Speaker 5 (54:58):
One movie that I get to be with me for the rest of
eternity.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
Right.
I get it's cruel isn't it.
Speaker 6 (55:04):
That is really cool.
That is that is incrediblydifficult.
One movie that I get to be withme for the rest of eternity.
It's Casablanca Yeah it'sCasablanca.
Why it's nearly perfect.
I would tend to agree with that.
Yeah.
There are some you know fromfrom a film nerd perspective
(55:28):
there is a lot to recommend thedirector's cut of Blade Runner.
There is also some things thatrecommend against it and they
really have to do with storycontinuity.
Otherwise you know if if if Icould if I could go back and
make strategic cuts I would Iwould possibly change my answer
(55:53):
to and cut of Blade Runner butnot being able to do that.
It's Casablanca.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Excellent they're both excellent choices but I
think you've been an excellentchoice.
Thank you.
One last one.
Sure.
What is the hardest or mostdifficult thing you have ever
done.
Speaker 6 (56:14):
Just a personal question or a professional issue
it can be either the mostdifficult thing I ever did was
leave my uncle in the hospitalwhile he was dying of a brain
tumor to get on a train to comehome to go back to work.
It's not a happy answer.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
No it's not but I've been in a similar similar
situation and I know exactlywhat you mean.
Speaker 8 (56:37):
Yeah it was.
It was the most difficult thingI've ever done.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
This is this is life right.
It's a series of difficultchoices some in greater
extremity than others.
Speaker 6 (56:48):
It it yeah it really is.
I mean like I said being humanbeings hard.
It certainly is.
It is very hard sometimessometimes harder than others.
Where do you think ourresiliency comes from.
I'm still looking for mine.
Sometimes I think I think ourresiliency is based in the idea
that space to do to key ideasthat will get another chance to
(57:14):
make better choices tomorrowlater whatever some point in the
near future and it's based on afaith in ourselves that will
make that we will make betterchoices.
So hope really does springeternal.
Well you know I don't I'm not abig fan of hope as a concept and
(57:35):
part of the reason I'm not a bigfan of hope as a concept is
because hope in that kind of youknow political slogan kind of
way or that you know Alaskagovernor kind of way kind of to
me removes the responsibilityfor making the choice from the
(57:55):
individual.
I mean if I make a choice I'mresponsible for the consequences
of that choice.
And there are yes there arefactors that are going to affect
me that are out of my controlbut the way hope is a concept is
sort of floated in our society.
It's kind of like well I'm justgoing to hope and you know
(58:15):
everything will turn out OK if Ijust have hope.
It's kind of like my mother saysyou know Jesus doesn't care if
you run out of gas.
They don't pray to Jesus thatyou're not going to run out of
gas.
Pullover and put gas in yourcar.
Speaker 3 (58:36):
I love that that more than you can possibly imagine.
Which makes sense right.
Hope is wonderful but withoutaction.
Speaker 5 (58:43):
Exactly.
I was reading I was reading anarticle I have a ridiculously
deep unread pocket list.
And I was reading an articlethis morning on medium and it
was called good habits versusbad habits and the way the
article author started it was hesaid you know there are all
these lists where it says youknow they they make these false
(59:07):
promises of you know if you eattwo eggs over easy with wheat
toast while doing push ups andyou know reciting your mantra
simultaneously you too can be amillionaire in five years.
Speaker 6 (59:21):
You know his whole thing was that you know if you
pick up the habits of otherpeople who are successful hoping
that you're going to have thesame success that they had.
You're not living your lifeyou're living their life.
And to me hope is a concept thathas that same thing.
It's like I don't want to live alife that somebody else dictates
(59:42):
for me.
I want to make my choices andlive with the consequences of
them whether they are good orbad weather or I make a choice
and outside forces push thatchoice in a different direction.
So I have to make anotherchoice.
I want to live the life that Iwant to live.
And if that means that I have toexercise five times a day you
know five times a week becauseif I don't I won't sleep then
(01:00:05):
that's the life I need to livewhereas somebody else can
function perfectly well on fourhours worth of sleep.
I know I can't do that.
So it's really all about makingmaking good choices.
Speaker 7 (01:00:16):
And I would call that a mike draw.
All right I guess we're donethat and it has absolutely been
a pleasure talking with you.
I could do this all day.
To be honest with you.
Well thank you Joe it was it wasa pleasure talking with you too.
And I'm glad we found a time.
Worked for both of us.
And yes absolutely we coulddefinitely do this all day.
All right let's do it againsometime.
(01:00:36):
Yes OK.
In the meantime I wish you allthe best in the world you most
certainly deserve.
Well thank you.
I appreciate that.
And Rebecca Achie sir.
All right take care.
You too.
Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Bye that wraps up this edition of making us work.
Thanks for listening and I hopehearing these stories provide
some useful perspective andencouragement.
Along with a reminder thatyou're not alone out there.
Before I go I want you to knowthat you can find shows and
links to the things mentionedduring our conversation by
visiting give good you X.comslash podcast.
(01:01:08):
You'll also find links to moreEurex resources on the web and
social media along with ways tocontact me if you're interested
in sharing your own story here.
Speaker 10 (01:01:16):
Until next time this is Jonah Natoli reminding you
that it's people like you whomake us work.
Hello and welcome to making us work to give you
podcast.
I'm your host Gionta Toli.
And our focus here is on folkslike you doing a real often
glamorous UKCS work in the realworld.
You'll hear about theirstruggles their successes and
their journey to and through thetrenches of product design
development and of course userexperience.
(00:31):
My guest today is and Dohertywho among other things is a
writer and a US and contentarchitect and is quite
passionate about makingexcellent user experiences as
well as film curling and by herown definition.
The Oxford comma and has over 20years of experience working in
digital spaces primarily in theprogressive non-profit community
(00:53):
and she believes like I do thatregardless of what problem user
is trying to solve they can't dothat without good and useful
relevant content.
Here's my conversation with AnnDoherty on making us work.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So and how are you.
I am well this morning Joe howare you.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Very good.
It's Friday it's ended a weekthe most joyous day of the week.
Indeed indeed.
So you if I understand correctlyI mean your core area.
Not necessarily of expertise butwhat you spend a lot of time
doing seems to be more drivencontent strategy driven.
(01:36):
Is that correct.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
That is correct.
I mean the thumbnail sketch ofme I like to tell people when I
when I go to to meet ups and youknow design workshops and things
that they say well you know tellme a little bit about yourself
and I say well you know I'm acontent focused you as a
designer.
And it's taken me a while to getto to that explanation.
When I first made the pivot toofficially doing more USX work a
(02:02):
couple of years ago as opposedto the unofficial USX work I've
been doing for the bulk of mycareer.
When I first made that pivotinto into quote unquote real USX
work there was no emphasis inthe community that I'm in on
content at all.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
It was very visually design driven very UI driven
very oh what do you mean youdon't have a million fonts on
your ear pro and what was thatwhen when did I do that.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
You know I went with them in terms of years when was
this was actually about twoyears ago.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
And so it's gradually taken me a while to realize that
no content is an important partof the user experience and it's
a little bit like saying thatit's not as a little bit like
standing at the parade andwatching the Emperor go by
going.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Am I the only one who can see his joke.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
Yeah yeah yeah.
Oh I am.
I am.
That is a long way of saying Iam a content focused designer
basically.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Well I mean and that's as it should be isn't it.
I mean as far back as say youknow graphic design before
software you know was it was adesigners focus.
Content has always been in mymind the driving force behind
everything and it's the reasonyou bother to check anything
out.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
If you think about it or use anything Yeah it
absolutely is I mean you knowit's interesting.
I mean on the Facebook group youhave we have some interesting
conversations about well youknow what if what if design is
the point of the site or thepoint of the product.
And to me that's kind of it's alittle bit of a straw man
argument without contentregardless of what problem the
(03:49):
user is trying to solve withoutcontent.
They're not going to be able tosolve it no matter how pretty
your product is your app or yoursite or or whatever you know
your your internet enabledkiosk.
It doesn't matter if they can'tget the information that they
need.
They're not going to be able tosolve their problem and their
problem might be anything fromis complicated to you know I'm
(04:09):
trying to qualify for a mortgageto as simple as I just wasn't
pretty new wallpaper for mywalkdown Windows machine that my
company has given me and theonly thing I can do is change
the background on my desktop.
So you know it really doesn'tmatter.
I mean that photograph thatbecomes your desktop background
is content even though you'reconsuming it with your eyes it's
(04:31):
content.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
AMEN AMEN AMEN.
I mean I couldn't possibly agreemore.
I think the problem and you tellme OK.
I often wonder if the problem iswhen people hear the term
content they have a very narrowdefinition of what that means.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
I think that's part of the problem.
I think that you're absolutelyright.
I think for a lot of peopletheir beginning and end of the
definition of content is words.
And to a large extent content iswords but it's not the only
definition of content.
YouTube almost the entirety oftheir content offering is
(05:13):
consumed visually audible Dahabthe entirety of their content
offering is consumed with yourears.
So you know it's it's it's avery narrow definition.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I also think this is possibly my own personal bias
but that bias grows out of theexperiences that I've had
professionally.
I think that to a large extentpeople here are content and it
gets kind of disregarded becausethe bulk of the people working
(05:46):
in digital content at least inthe first wave of digital
content are women interest andwomen's work is often seen as
not important as a fascinatingviewpoint.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Tell me more.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Tell me more about this so one of one of the
challenges that I'm facing withmy current employer which is a
very very large multinationalconsulting firm is that we
struggle with the divisionbetween content and quote
unquote EU acts.
I personally hold a fairlyunpopular opinion that content
(06:22):
and acts are actually the samethat they shouldn't be in
different buckets.
That famous Maslow pyramid thateverybody's heard of where you
know Maslow had thepsychological needs and the base
and was you know safety andsecurity and then you go up and
up and up and some wag hasmodified that pyramid to add you
know Wi-Fi access and thensomebody else modified that to
(06:45):
put you know an even bigger basebelow Wi-Fi access since a
battery life if you do a similarpyramid for user experience or
for service design experience Iwould actually say that content
is at the base of that pyramidhas without content KHRAIS.
Speaker 6 (07:02):
You picked a nice font stack and you made a really
great color scheme and yourlayouts perfect.
But you're looking at warm upsome and nobody cares what's
art.
It's art it I suppose it's art.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
I mean we can have that conversation about you know
whether or not certain things inmodern art or art.
But I think that maybe on thescope of Pakistan.
But you know there but thecompany that I worked for there
is a very strict divisionbetween content and us and you
people never do content andcontent people don't feel like
they are empowered to talk aboutcontent related things that
(07:38):
affect the user experience.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
And when I look at the way those two groups are
stashed there are some womenworking in new X but almost the
entirety of the content staff isfemale.
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
I'm curious about the U.S.
side of the house.
How is it possible.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I'm really having trouble with this.
How is it how is it possiblethat the folks on the U.S.
side of the House don'tunderstand or see or value the
degree to which content is thebackbone of everything they're
putting across the people.
What is it that they think.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
I think that I think that it's it it comes from that
it comes from that root of usbeing associated with you being
associated with visual design.
Now we're getting somewhere.
Yeah.
And I think that's that's reallywhere that that bias comes from
is us and UI have or have gottenand are still for a lot of
(08:38):
people conflated when UI isreally no more the entirety of
us than content being theentirety of you x.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Took the words right out of my mouth because that's
where I was going this is one ofthose situations where you X and
you are interchangeable termsbut they're not.
No of course not.
Of course they're not.
But for a lot of organizationsyeah they very much are okay and
there's still a very widespreadmisunderstanding of us and of
(09:07):
design in general.
Okay I think anytime someonesays that word everybody thinks
visual unfortunately and thenthat's that's that's 2 percent
you know the entire picture.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Yeah it's it's not.
It's it's a very small part ofthe picture and and you know
don't please don't mistake whatI'm saying.
I mean the folks who are doing Xon the side of the House they
are very well aware of howimportant content is and they're
very well aware that theirstrengths may not lay in the
(09:40):
content domain.
So you know there is a lot ofinterpersonal professional
respect.
But I think on a systemic andsort of administrative level
there isn't really a grasping ofthe understanding that without
content your product doesn'twork regardless of what your
product is.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Okay so we're talking about higher level management
maybe we're talking aboutproject management.
So that's where is that the areaof the organization where the
disconnect occurs more so thanthan in the data.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Yeah it's higher it's higher up than people who are
doing the day to day work.
I mean it extends even into thissphere of how projects are
actually written up or howproposals are actually written
up because I think that one ofthe challenges that we also face
as consultants is that you knowin the sphere we're working in
(10:35):
which is the public sphere not alot of our clients understand
how important content is and howit affects the user experience.
And you know as the sort of thedomain experts as the people who
are supposed to be helping themdeliver better for the people
they're responsible to which isthey're their users their
external stakeholders.
(10:56):
It's up to us to write thoseproposals and craft those
projects right from thebeginning so that they actually
have something that is going tofulfill that promise to their to
their internal stakeholders totheir users.
And I think that because thereis that disconnect between the
people who are actually doingthe work and the people who are
very often writing the proposalswere going in and pitching to
(11:19):
the clients that sometimes whenthe folks who do the actual work
get on site they're walking intoan environment where they're
already having to fight evenmore to get good content or get
good content governance or getnot so much good data.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Because we're we've reached the point with the
ubiquity of Google thateverybody understands the
importance of search Mosen.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
But we're already having to fight to say well you
know you need to you need tohave a content strategy you need
to have an archiving plan youneed to understand how to write
for the web even or how to writefor an app even and and how to
reuse and recycle content and soyou know having to to not just
(12:07):
fight all those battles but thenalso fight the battle on the
administrative level where it'slike well you've got enough
content work here for a team ofeight and you've put one content
person on this project.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And again in my experience that's common.
I mean that's a you justdescribed a very common scenario
to me and what I wonder is oftenbecause I don't have the answer.
And again I'm interested in yourtake here is that a result of
traditional organizationalculture inside an organization
(12:41):
right.
Leftovers from what we're in thedigital age.
But companies of the company hasbeen around for a long time and
your chart is still the orchardis still the orchard even though
it's been manipulated a littlebit.
Is it that or is it that all ofthis in the digital realm of
products.
Are we still just in our infancyand we haven't quite grown to
(13:02):
the point where it's more thanlipservice now it's an
integrated part of whateverybody does.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
I think it's a combination of those things.
I think for many organizationsmost organizations even.
It's a combination of we'restill clinging to you know the
traditional inverted pyramidmodel of riding that we all
learn in school where you knowyou have your most important
concepts and then you broadenout all that stuff.
(13:29):
And we're also I think that someof it is that we just haven't
grown up yet and that the folkswho are still on the top of that
org chart are not necessarilyunwilling to learn but they just
don't.
They don't have like theexperience to understand that it
(13:51):
makes more sense to write apiece of content one time and
reuse it a bunch of differentplaces and how you would
actually go about doing that.
So.
So it's a function of needing togrow and a function of just
corporate and organizationalculture needing to embrace the
idea that you know content isnot something that you write
down wants and stick in a folderit's going to change it's going
(14:14):
to grow it's going to need toget updated.
When I was the bulk of I spent Iactually spent the bulk of my
career working in theprogressive non-profit sphere.
And so I've been doing this.
Been working in digital spacesover 20 years.
And I distinctly remember I wasworking at an agency and one of
(14:35):
the major challenges we face wasthat a lot of nonprofit
organizations are still run bymanagement structures or by
people who think that theirdonors actually want to read
press releases.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
If there's any in what I read press no reporters
don't even want to pressreleases.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
And so it was you know that was a big battle that
we were constantly refightingwith every new client where you
know they'd say Well there's nospace in the home page for our
for our latest press release andwe would have to pick one of the
very gentle responses out of thehat that basically amounted to
really no one cares about yourpress releases.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
No one cares.
Speaker 6 (15:22):
No.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
You know it's it's not that you know it's not that
public organizations governmentagencies whatever are unique and
not really understanding whattheir users care about.
It's it's endemic.
Every organization has thisproblem it's just the thing that
they think is important shiftsdepending on what sphere they
(15:44):
operate in.
Sure.
And and I think that reallygrows out of not understanding
the audience and wallingyourself off to some degree
intentional or otherwise.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Yeah.
Well and it's it's really it's afear reaction.
I mean and in some ways it's notan unfounded fear reaction like
the thing that the thing thatgovernment agencies face is that
they're under so much scrutiny.
There's just so much publicscrutiny of everything a
government agency does.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
And so it creates this environment where there's a
fear to fail.
Nobody's really embracing thewhole you know lean mindset
where you fail early and youfail fast and you make
corrections because there is afeeling that there's no
tolerance for failure that ifyou put out a wrong piece of
information the next thing youknow your agency head is going
(16:36):
to be sitting on CNN gettinggrilled or getting hauled in
front of Congress and you knowwhatever it happens you know
whatever else happens.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
That's worse.
Now with the advent of theInternet that's I think that's
infinitely worse.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
Yeah it is infinitely infinitely worse.
And it's so it's not anunfounded fear.
And with nonprofits the wholefail early fail fast thing is
really about a function ofresources and a fear of being
accused of not being a goodsteward of your donors
resources.
You know it comes from sort ofthe subliminal attitude of Well
(17:16):
if somebody gives us fivehundred dollars they want us to
put that Tor program expensesand you know we need to make
sure that we're being verycareful with every penny.
And that's that's really a goodattitude to have.
I mean that's not an unfoundedfear either.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Well sure.
So you want to be responsible.
You want to be a responsiblesteward of what people invest in
you.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
Absolutely.
But you know in the in thenonprofit world it's sort of the
tension between you know peoplewant an organization to do the
work but they don't want to payfor the organization to pay for
people to actually do the workthey want it to happen by magic
Yeah because that's theinvisible part right.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
That's how the sausages made.
That's that's the part thatnobody sort of actually sees the
existence of because it'sglossed over for the most part.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Exactly exactly.
There's a really famous cartoonthat I think was originally
published in the New Yorker andit's these two you know kind of
older frumpy look.
Professor Auriol guys you knowwhat the ties in the jackets and
the you know Einstein look andhair and they're standing in
front of this big chalkboard andthey're all these really
complicated math calculations onthe chalkboard and down sort of
(18:31):
in the lower right hand cornerthere is a rectangle and inside
the rectangle it says and amiracle occurs here.
The caption on the cartoon isone guy's saying to the other
guy I think you need to be alittle more specific right
there.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
Yeah that's about right.
Speaker 6 (18:51):
And and for a lot of people that's that's how they
view you accidents like taxesand a miracle occurs here and
out the other end comes thisgreat user experience that's
going to increase our donationsby 500 percent or reduce the
number of calls we get into ourcall center.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Or you know make everybody subscribe to our
product whatever it is.
And so there's a lot of there'sa lot of mystery around what you
folks actually do now which isyou know I get it.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I mean I keep saying design has had the same problem
since its inception and youcertainly has the same problem.
Since its inception all theoffshoots of what we do have the
same issue.
And what you find is thatthere's just a struggle for
people and largely I think thisis older more established
(19:45):
national institutions butindividuals have a hard time
getting their head around thisstuff like for instance
listening to you speak made methink of of a consulting
situation I was in where I wassaying look we need to have a
meeting this afternoon with yourdatabase team.
We need to get these guys in theroom.
And when you talk about contentin general the stuff that we're
(20:08):
surfacing and three peoplelooked at me like I had three
heads and they said well whatdoes data have to do with
content.
And I had a pause for a minute.
I said well they're the samething.
This is what we're surfacing topeople and we're doing it in a
way where nobody understands itin the format in which it's
presented.
So we need to get somebackground on what this is how
(20:31):
it is this system has catalogedhow it's organized and how we
could potentially surface it ina different way.
And those guys have the answersto those questions and it took
another hour of discussing andworking through this and making
them understand that all thisstuff that people are paying you
to consume in your system.
(20:52):
It's all content.
And if we don't get this partright it doesn't matter how
exciting what people see on thescreen is.
Yeah.
Doesn't matter.
They're going to stop payingyou.
The reason your customers arecomplaining right now is because
the don't understand how to getat any of this is being
presented to them in a way thatthey don't understand that they
(21:13):
can't use to get to go back tothe beginning you had to get
beyond what it looks like.
It's what is it you know.
Yeah and that's content to me.
I mean it's all content.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
And that's absolutely that's absolutely.
You could not have.
Have said it better.
I mean and maybe that's thechallenge I think for content
folks to try and open up theconversation about content being
a part of you x is talking lessabout content as an abstract
contact concept and talking moreabout content as meaning.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yeah.
Yeah and maybe you have the sameproblem.
That's maybe contentprofessionals in particular.
OK.
These are very broadridiculously generic term that
had the same problem thatdesigners and developers and us
folks have which is we fall intothe trap of talking about things
in the ways that we understandthem as opposed to using the
(22:11):
terminology in the language andthe outcomes in particular are
the obstacles in a way that thepeople signing the checks
understand.
I mean maybe you just hitsomething there.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
Yeah that that is really interesting.
I'd like to I'd like to unpackthat a little bit more.
Go for it because I find that tobe a really interesting
perspective on the problem andmaybe it's that.
Do you think that we are as asyou as professionals.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
Again ridiculously broad you know 12 inch Braasch
you professionals contentprofessionals visual designers
you know design researchers allof us.
Do you think that we need toapproach our clients in the same
way that we are telling ourclients that they need to
(23:02):
approach their users.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I think so but in what way.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Well in the sense that just how you mentioned like
we talked to them about userexperience and about content
strategy in language that weunderstand because we feel like
they're the domain experts forwhatever field they work in.
Whether it's you knowenvironmental activism or
government policy or health careor financial industry whatever
(23:31):
their domain is.
And so we feel like they havethe domain knowledge and that
may be kind of gives them a legup in in experience and
sophistication that their usersmight not necessarily have.
Every audience is different butmight not necessarily have them.
(23:52):
And so we have to go in and kindof explain to them no you need
to not assume that your usersknow what you know and maybe
because kind of mentally we'reframing them in a way of okay
they have this domain knowledgethat gives them kind of a leg up
in sophistication maybe we needto make the assumption that they
(24:14):
don't know what we know.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
In that case yes absolutely positively.
Amen.
I will I will get up on themountain top and shout it's OK
for the next you know whateverremaining years of my life I
have left.
That's how firmly I believe inthis and lately I've been
feeling like I personally havenot been doing a good enough job
of explaining that particularpoint.
(24:37):
Because of something I believein strongly obviously clearly
era.
I think I would like to see usall do away with all the
terminology we use all of itevery word every phrase every
formal name that we have foreverything.
And I personally I think that'strue in any discipline.
(24:59):
OK.
But I increasingly.
All right.
On a daily basis I read you Xarticles right or things
tangentially related to you x orproduct design or developer or
whatever.
I cannot I swear to you it'svery rare that I ever read
something where I can get pastthe first paragraph.
And the reason for that isbecause we immediately venture
into the land of jargon andterminology and just bullshit
(25:25):
names for processes and all thishigh minded stuff that only gets
in the way of peopleunderstanding what the hell the
author is talking about.
And I think that that hasinfected all of us in terms of
our practice.
So I think you're absolutelyright.
I think a lot of times weautomatically assume that
(25:46):
everyone knows what it is thatwe're talking about and the fact
is they don't.
All they know is that somethingis not working.
They're feeling pain and theydon't know what to do about it.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
I definitely agree with you.
First of all I'm glad to hearyou say that you know in the
reading that you do it you findit difficult to get through
there because I do a lot ofreading myself and very often I
get into these articles and I'myou know halfway through a five
minute read.
And I I just I don't I'mcompletely lost.
(26:17):
It's just terms and it's veryconfusing when people are using
words that they don't know whatthey mean or they may not mean
the same thing that I think theymean because the context around
them kind of indicates to methat well wait you're using that
term in a different way than I'mused to using it.
And maybe it's that.
(26:37):
I mean I think part of theproblem with with us in general
is that we don't even have acommon language among ourselves.
Right.
And we've I know we've talked inthe Facebook group about this.
You know we've kind of reachedthe you know beat a dead horse
point over this but you know aclear example of this is how
(26:58):
people recruit for you x relatedjob.
You know I just you X developerneeds to not become a thing.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
It's just nuts to not become a thing because it just
it's just it's just throwingsand in the water and it's just
completely confusing and and Idon't know.
I mean do we create do we usethese confusing terms because
we're secretly afraid that if weactually expose what we do then
(27:28):
we won't be seen as havingfailed you.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Partly yeah I think it's also there's a catch 22
involved.
The minute you are asked to tellsomeone what you do or the
minute you say OK I'm trying toget a job in this field because
the commonly used nomenclatureis what it is right.
Companies are going to usecertain terms for certain things
(27:51):
or put out these ads and say wewant you X developer or we even
you X designer OK is a misnomer.
But that's the terminologythat's what's commonly
understood and accepted to somedegree so you put yourself out
there you say all right I haveto call myself something where
people going to recognize thatthat Yeah I'm that thing that
you want.
That's what I do.
And you don't want to because Ithink as you as you said you
(28:14):
feel like Hanawon.
I don't want to muddy the watersfurther right.
And it does it adds to theconfusion.
But at the same time I think youfeel I think a lot of people
feel caught.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
Yeah I mean you have to have a way to describe
yourself to other people.
I mean that's that's kind of theit's kind of the basis of a
common language.
But I kind of want to circleback for a second why I'm
curious about why you say youdesigner is is a misnomer.
Can you can you explain a littlebit about that for me more.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah I can because again it's this conflation of
two things when experiencedesign came about as a
discipline and I think it grewout of a bunch of things.
It grew out of interactiondesign for one thing right.
Alan Cooper's work and thenobviously you know done Norman
(29:08):
at Apple and some other folksstarted talking about the
experience.
Human beings have with a productand their whole point with that
was that everything that camebefore was sort of very narrowly
defined and they were saying nothis this business these things
that we do.
It's bigger than that.
It's a lot of specificactivities and specific areas
(29:29):
under a very large umbrella.
In other words it's not justvisual design.
It's not just content.
It's not just the mechanics ofproduction right.
It's it's all those things.
It's human cognitive behaviourit's human psychology it's it's
visual messaging it's perceptionof color and what happened.
(29:50):
I think so then it became userexperience you X which came out
of HCI human computerinteraction.
What happened shortly after thatand I believe this is how this
thing kind of goes and justabout any field people had a
hard time getting their headaround you act like well what is
a you X person.
Do people know what a designerdoes.
(30:11):
Right.
So the two things were sort ofsimilar.
They're living next to eachother in a neighborhood.
So somebody said it's design isdesign OK so I'm a designer now
and then light bulbs will offerpeople that OK I kind of get
what that is and that's whathappened something enters the
lexicon and it becomes thisthing that means something other
(30:33):
than what it really is.
So to me those are two differentthings of someone who does user
experience work is notnecessarily a designer.
But it became this blanket termfor everything and it also
invited the direct confusionbetween you X designer UI
designer yeah right visualdesigner designer of experiences
(30:55):
I believe and I've told thestory so many times I'm not
going to bore you with it theway I learned design in school
when I went to school was thatthe visual result of that work
was only one part of theequation.
Design is design is design isdesign whether it's mechanical
or industrial architecturalgraphic whatever the case may
be.
(31:16):
It's all the same thing.
I still believe that.
But in the same way that peoplehad had trouble with that.
It's just there's this need toput things in boxes and I think
sometimes those boxes areinaccurate and doing so causes
more problems than it solves.
So hopefully answer yourquestion.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Yeah I know that that totally makes sense that it
aligns kind of with where Ithought you were going but I was
I was curious because you youwill very often have a more high
level perspective.
I have noticed and so Iappreciate you know your
thoughts and insights on that atthat higher level.
I just think.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
I think there's a need.
We have a need.
Like I said put things in neatlittle categories where
everything makes sense and Ithink that the world at large
that we all live in is a lotmore complex than that.
And I think that trying to do socauses more problems than it
solves and it's better to walkinto situations where is the
issue here and in our case youare having a conversation about
(32:15):
content.
Right.
All right.
So for time content where arethe content related issues and
maybe in going down that pathyou find out that there's also
an issue with the visualpresentation of that content or
as I alluded to there's an issuewith the way that content is
stored and categorized.
Point being it's never just thisone little thing.
(32:37):
Now I don't know about yourtravels but in mine there is
never one simple direct piece ofthe pie that you have to deal
with.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Now it's never just one thing it's always it's
always a set of nesting dolls.
You know you take this and youopen this one up and oh there's
one more inside and there's onemore inside and there's one more
inside.
There's one more inside untilyou're you know down to the
tiniest tiniest solid littledoll and you know sometimes that
(33:06):
tiny solid little doll is wellthe person at the top of the
organization is making all thedecisions and won't listen.
Or sometimes that solid solidtiny little doll as we'd really
love to do this but we justdon't have the Fonz or there's
no political will or you knowwhat for reasons because
reasons.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
So yeah it's never just one thing.
And it's you know I also have abit of a background as a front
end developer.
And so I kind of I keep comingback mentally to the metaphor of
you know for us and how USproblems are solved and reveal
to aligning it with howcascading style sheets work.
(33:52):
You know it's just it's not justdiscrete NCSA it's not just if
you're if you're stylesheet iscoded correctly it's not just a
set of discrete instructions forwhatever system you're working
with to say hey use this fontuse this color in this size with
this padding and this Marjon andthis float and this clearance
(34:16):
and you know every other thingyou can think of if it's coded
correctly those changes cascadeand you is exactly the same way
you can't solve a technicalproblem without affecting
content delivery withoutaffecting the UI without
affecting the total experience.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
So the U.S.
is basically the sum total ofall of those things cascading
into each other.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Right.
And you just described you knowmy my issue.
In a nutshell with the degree ofspecificity that everybody sort
of insists on it's it's false.
Yes I do believe I asindividuals.
Everybody's talents abilitiesskill sets certainly gravitate
towards very specific areas ofthis discipline and I think
(35:04):
that's important.
Yeah but I think thesedefinitions get in the way and I
wonder often if they're not whatcaused people that are removed
from what we do often ourclients are our bosses or
managers or are our productowners or whoever they are.
It's awful what sort of helpsgrow this idea that there's one
(35:26):
specific thing we need to lookat and that's it.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
I think you're absolutely right.
I mean it it's the world iscomplicated.
The rural requires a lot ofmental energy and human beings
have a tendency to useshorthand.
Speaker 6 (35:42):
Whether it's you know inaccurate job descriptions or
you know stereotypes they useshorthand to make it so.
Oh I know what this thing orthis person is it goes in this
box.
I can now turn off my brain andworry about other things because
(36:03):
I know how things that are inthat box.
Function.
And that's that's really what itis is that the world is
complicated and is hard it'sjust hard to be a person.
Speaker 7 (36:16):
And it just really is.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Amen.
And that's with everything.
Right.
It's that just one thing.
It's it's always a lot of thingsand nothing is ever as neat and
tidy as all this stuff makes itsound.
I mean you know my my big thingabout formal processes and
recipes for success and all thiskind of stuff.
It's just all too simple.
(36:42):
OK.
Try to try to employ some ofthat in the real world and
you'll find out in five minutesexactly what it's worth.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
Yeah it is interesting is it.
Is it OK for me to say sort ofwhere I'm physically located.
Of course.
So I'm I'm in the WashingtonD.C.
metro area.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
And I did a bunch of volunteering for D.C.
for the conference back in Aprilshout out for you.
D.C.
It's an awesome group if youEspersen in the D.C.
area and you're not a member.
Please please please join.
It's FREE.
And you meet a lot of reallygood folks and we do a lot of
really good stuff.
(37:22):
But I did some volunteer workfor the conference we had back
in April and one of the speakersthat we had come in was Dan
Brown from shapes and he hadjust put out his book practical
design discovery which I amgoing back and rereading now for
a variety of reasons.
And one of the things that hetalks about in that book is you
(37:43):
know he basically has this sortof four square model of
discovery activities and thatFoursquare is divided in half
with one half being convergentactivities and the other half
being Divergent activities.
And then it's divided in halfthe other way with some of them
are problem solving and some ofthem are problem definition and
(38:06):
some of them are solutionoriented.
And the thing that he says inthe book which I completely
agree with even in the secondpass is that you know there are
a bunch of activities andartifacts you can generate in
the discovery process but youdon't have to use them all.
Speaker 6 (38:24):
It's like I my spouse's is a cook.
My spouse is a fabulous cookwhich means I do a lot of dishes
right.
It.
Speaker 7 (38:34):
Makes sense because the way it works on her house is
she does all the cooking and Ido the dishes and I consider
that to be you know we bothconsider that to be a really
fair division.
Absolutely.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
But I'm a baker and she can't bake at all.
I mean she's just don't ask herto make chocolate chip cookies.
She might as well eat a hockeypuck.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
And the difference between it is is that cooking is
very you know the way a lot ofpeople cook cooking is very kind
of intuitive and very oh thisdoesn't smell right it needs a
little bit more spice or oh Ineed to stir that up because the
burners are a little hot orwhatever.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
Baking is chemistry yeah.
Absolutely.
So that's why I can't pick.
Yeah.
Baking is Wheatly chemistry soif you've got a recipe where
I've this Christmas cookierecipe that I've been messing
with for years and it's it's afabulous cookie it started out
as a cookie with butterscotchchips in it.
And then one year I went OK wellwhat if I use half butterscotch
(39:37):
chips and half dark chocolatechips.
Oh my.
And then I had egg experimentfor a couple of years because
the dark chocolate chips don'thave as much fat in them.
So the cookies were kind of dry.
And you know this and that theother thing and it's gotten to
the point where it's abutterscotch oatmeal dark
chocolate coconut cookie.
It's a saying yes.
(39:57):
But it's all about figuring outwhat the chemical balance is
right.
So if you take out you know thebutterscotch chips that have
more fat in them and you put indark chocolate chips that don't
have as much.
You got to add a little bit morebutter.
Discovery is like that.
OK you can't just go Well I'mgoing to use you know six user
interviews and five Web sitestatistics and three whatever
(40:22):
this is then and then we'll haveour problem definition.
You have to use the discoveryactivities that are right for
the situation you're in.
Yep.
You know so you may not haveaccess directly to your users
for whatever reason your clientsays no no we don't want you
talking directly to users.
But what you may have access tois a customer service staff that
(40:45):
talks to the users great standthem in for your users because
they know what the companies youknow they know what the
company's customer base theyknow what their pain points are
because they're the ones whopick up the irate phone calls at
3 o'clock in the morning go OKApple so why can't I get these
podcasts off my back.
Absolutely correct.
Followed redirection in yourknowledge base on these podcast
(41:08):
will knock him off my iPad.
What the what.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
And that's an untapped resource.
It shocks me that more placesdon't lean on those people the
way they should.
Speaker 6 (41:17):
No they really don't.
And but but the whole the wholething is is that you know there
are all these different thingsthat we do in us.
And I think that the business ofus drives oh we have to create
this artifact.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
We must make wire frames or we must make a persona
or we must do a user journey mapor whatever it is because we
need to show the people who arepaying our salaries value when
in reality you may walk into asituation where you know your
clients already hired aconsultant who's done the
research and done this and allof that and they've got you know
(41:51):
10 personas that they know areaccurate for their audience as
the third consultant to come in.
You don't need to make more newpersonas you need to synthesize
the information that's alreadybeen gathered.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Right.
Right.
And look at it and say OK doesthis make sense at all.
Is it accurate.
Are there holes or are therefalse assumptions here.
Yeah.
Leverage leverage what's beendone.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
Yeah absolutely.
And so that's the thing I thinkwe get so current caught up on
proving value because we haven'treally communicated to the
people who hire us what itactually is that we do.
We get so caught up on theseartifacts that quote unquote
prove our value that maybesometimes we get into situations
where we're not really doing theactivities that would help us
(42:37):
get to that tiny little solidnesting doll even faster.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
And I think that's important and it's a tough thing
to do particularly if you'retrying to land a gig with a
client or you're trying to get ajob because everybody wants
artifacts.
Right that's what they want tosee that we do the portfolio
course.
It's all about artifacts.
(43:03):
You know show me what you'vedone and I get that.
Because they do in their ownway.
Show your thinking and how youapproach the work and that's
valuable.
But it also leaves people withthe mistaken impression on both
sides of the coin that the pathto salvation lies in producing
all these artifacts.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
Yes.
Yeah I I actually I took your Itook one of the first couple of
iterations of your portfoliocourse and that was you know
that was one of the reasons thatI took it is because as somebody
who is focused on content itkind of puts me in the portfolio
the whole issue of the portfoliokind of puts me in in particular
between a rock and a hard placebecause nobody wants to read
(43:44):
when they look at a portfolioyet a lot of content artifacts
are worth based.
So it's like well I've done allof this great content inventory
and strategy work but you don'twant to see my migration
tracking sheet.
You want to see a pretty pictureof the final project product and
the UI designer actually gets toclaim that work because I didn't
(44:06):
pick the fonts and didn't pickcolors.
You know yeah I helped write thecontent and give them an idea of
what would be a good strategy toput on the home page or on a
landing page or whatever it is.
But when people look at ascreenshot of that they're not
going to see the contentstrategy they're going to see to
Fahnestock and the pretty colorsand the whitespace and all of
the other things that go intoyou design that I'm not an
(44:29):
expert at right.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
And it's it's it's a misinterpretation
misinterpretation isn't doinganybody any favors now least of
all me.
Yeah exactly.
And I want to tell you that Ilooked to your portfolio briefly
last night.
I didn't dig into it but I didwant to make it a point to say
to you that I think you've donean excellent excellent job with
it.
(44:50):
Thank you because your valuecomes to me just even in the
first screen.
Your value is coming throughloud and clear specifically that
everything you do you know workstowards results.
Right.
And it doesn't tie you down toany specific tactical hands on
role.
And just knowing you and being asocialist for a while I think
(45:11):
that's where you value is so Idid want to make a point to say
that I think you're doing a goodjob there.
Well thank you.
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I appreciate that.
I like I said I'm I took youryou know I took your portfolio
workshop and I took everythingyou said to heart.
I was I was one of the peopleactually volunteered to have you
live critique my portfolio.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
I do.
But you know I took everythingyou said to heart and you know
(45:37):
really it made me really stepback and look at OK it's not
just about the work that I'vedone it's not just about the
artifacts I produced.
It's about the work that I did.
How did that help.
Yes my clients achieve theirgoals.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Yes it can be a painful way forward.
In some ways because like I saideverybody expects the artifacts
because that's what everybodyelse is doing.
And I will tell you though thatthe path to doing the work that
you are a meant to do extremelygood at and see.
That is of most value to thepeople who are going to pay you
to do it has everything to dowith divorcing yourself from
(46:15):
some of that stuff.
OK I have not shown anybody apotential client.
Of course I haven't had apotential employer for a very
long time but I have not shown aportfolio quote unquote for at
least 15 years probably morethan that out and deciding to
stop doing that was a verypainful difficult decision but
(46:38):
it was something that wasgnawing at me in the back of my
mind.
And there were a couple ofpeople who I really respected
that told me that gave me thatadvice and said look if you keep
tying yourself to these thingsthat is people's perception of
who you are what you do andwhere you value is that is true.
And it's that's not the case.
So you got to stop singing thissong.
(47:00):
And finally I did and it washard at first but you know the
results hopefully speak forthemselves.
It's bigger than that.
Everything I do everything Itake on is bigger than that the
companies who trust me.
All right.
Because if they're going to payme I feel a great responsibility
of that.
OK there.
(47:21):
And trusting me with their hardearned cash.
And I don't wanna ever promisethat Oh well I know right now
it's this hurts this hurts thishurts this.
You know we've got to find out.
Capsule is like saying we can'tafford to solve the problem
here.
So it's tougher but it's a goodway forward.
Speaker 8 (47:39):
It is a very good way forward and it kind of takes me
back a little bit too tocollege.
I went to a Catholic university.
And we had a religionrequirement as undergraduates.
And I actually managed to getout of the Catholic University
of America without ever taking aclass in Catholicism.
(48:01):
OK.
I did.
Yeah I was excited.
I took an architecture classthat satisfied the religion
requirement.
I took the basic survey.
I took a philosophy class thatsatisfied the requirement but
the class the class that Ienjoyed the most was actually a
survey of Eastern religions sowe looked at different kinds of
(48:22):
Buddhism Dao is a little bit ofHindu and some other things that
are lost lost in the mists ofantiquity.
But one of the books that weread that I think is directly
relevant to being a practitionerwith something called Zen Mind
Beginner's Mind.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
And basically the whole concept of the book was
that in order to actually be apractitioner of Zen Buddhism you
had to let go of the idea thatyou were an expert.
You had to let go of the ideathat you do anything and you had
to approach each situation as ifyou were an abject beginner and
(49:04):
you knew nothing.
Speaker 5 (49:06):
And I think to a certain extent that's a really
good mindset for us people tohave because it will help us not
walk into a client's office witha preconceived notion of Oh
you're in the healthcare spherethese are the problems that
you're going to have or you'rein the public sector.
These are the problems thatyou're going to have or you're a
non-profit.
These are the problems thatyou're going to have.
(49:28):
Yes there is to a general extentcommonality within all of those
different domains of theproblems that an organization or
an agency or a company mighthave.
But if you walk in going OK Ineed to open my mind and listen
to what the people who arewriting my check are telling me
their challenges are that you'reultimately going to get a better
(49:51):
solution for them than if youcan't put your feet up on the
desk.
Yeah I know what's going onhere.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yeah and I can't believe you mentioned that book
The Suzuki Book because behindme and I don't know if it ever
shows up in any of myscreenshots I take from this
office.
When I bought that book it camewith a little print really and
the print is the sameillustration that's in the book.
I believe that's the whole dealwe're in the beginner's mind
(50:19):
there are many possibilities inthe experts mind there are few.
And that's why if stuck to thewall behind me because that is
sort of my guiding principle foreverything.
Don't ever assume that you knowit's a mistake and it prevents
real progress real meaningfulresults or outcomes of any kind.
(50:40):
I absolutely agree.
Sounds amazing that you broughtthat up.
Sidor I was literally I swear toyou I sort of had chills.
You know the herem are standingup.
When you were talking about it.
Well my work is done here thatreally blows my mind on Friday.
So we got a little bit of timeleft.
(51:02):
We do so I want to puts you onthe hot seat here.
And as you hang some hopefullyinteresting challenging
questions.
OK.
What test your patience.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
More than anything else in general or in the works
sphere either.
Oh in the work sphere what testsmy patience the most.
This is going to sound horrible.
Is developers who are morefocused on functionality than on
(51:33):
the people who are actuallygoing to use the product they're
building.
How do you deal with that.
Speaker 6 (51:42):
Take a lot of walks take a lot of walks around the
block and very gently remindthem that you know for example
you've built a stripper poleContent-Type and all of the
fields that are in thefunctional specifications are in
the content type but they're inan order that doesn't really
(52:03):
make any sense to the people whoare actually going to be working
with the system and maybe couldwe rearrange them like this and
just kind of remind them thatwhile they may be having fun
with code that ultimatelythey're writing something that
people who aren't assophisticated as them are going
to have to use what's ourcuriosity what's what's the
(52:26):
ratio of responses in terms ofpeople who sort of go oh yeah
you know I didn't really thinkabout that versus people who
are.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Well no this is my thing stop talking to me.
Speaker 6 (52:36):
I've never gotten 100 percent.
No this is the way it is andjust deal with a response.
That's good.
I've gotten everything from oh Ijust didn't think about it too
fine.
All right we'll put the fieldsof opportunity.
And you can't see me rolling myeyes but I am.
(52:57):
And I think what I do have tosay the good thing is that the
developers that I've workedwith.
It's been about I'd say 70 30 of70 30 on the side of I just
didn't really think about that.
And now I know better.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
And whether or not they carry that forward into
other projects that they'reworking on with other people I
don't know.
But that actually makes me feelpretty good that maybe I'm able
to kind of widen their viewpointa little so that they consider
not just whether or not the coatis beautiful and it works
efficiently but how the personthat they're ultimately going to
(53:37):
that they're building the thingfor is ultimately going to use
it.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
I think so and I think that's why you're there.
I think that's whymultidisciplinary teams are
essential yet quite frankly it'sit's hard for all of us to get
out of our own way.
And it's also why I'm not a fanof the all in one unicorn person
who does everything but we canwe could be on that all day.
But but that's that's veryheartening and I think that's
(54:02):
reality in most cases.
Speaker 6 (54:04):
Yeah I'd be happy to come back and talk with you
about that but that we're goingto have to schedule our chat
later in the day so I canjustify drinking that we do.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Fair enough.
You're actually fairly close tome so we could do that and in
person we could we could but Ireally I can't justify the 930
am it does understand I don'twant to foist that on you
either.
I know that your master's infilm and video production so you
(54:36):
had let's assume that you're ona desert island question right.
Let's assume you're on a desertisland with power and you can
watch movies one movie you getto be with you for the rest of
eternity.
What is it.
Speaker 9 (54:50):
Ah wow lol that's really hard.
Speaker 5 (54:58):
One movie that I get to be with me for the rest of
eternity.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
Right.
I get it's cruel isn't it.
Speaker 6 (55:04):
That is really cool.
That is that is incrediblydifficult.
One movie that I get to be withme for the rest of eternity.
It's Casablanca Yeah it'sCasablanca.
Why it's nearly perfect.
I would tend to agree with that.
Yeah.
There are some you know fromfrom a film nerd perspective
(55:28):
there is a lot to recommend thedirector's cut of Blade Runner.
There is also some things thatrecommend against it and they
really have to do with storycontinuity.
Otherwise you know if if if Icould if I could go back and
make strategic cuts I would Iwould possibly change my answer
(55:53):
to and cut of Blade Runner butnot being able to do that.
It's Casablanca.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Excellent they're both excellent choices but I
think you've been an excellentchoice.
Thank you.
One last one.
Sure.
What is the hardest or mostdifficult thing you have ever
done.
Speaker 6 (56:14):
Just a personal question or a professional issue
it can be either the mostdifficult thing I ever did was
leave my uncle in the hospitalwhile he was dying of a brain
tumor to get on a train to comehome to go back to work.
It's not a happy answer.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
No it's not but I've been in a similar similar
situation and I know exactlywhat you mean.
Speaker 8 (56:37):
Yeah it was.
It was the most difficult thingI've ever done.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
This is this is life right.
It's a series of difficultchoices some in greater
extremity than others.
Speaker 6 (56:48):
It it yeah it really is.
I mean like I said being humanbeings hard.
It certainly is.
It is very hard sometimessometimes harder than others.
Where do you think ourresiliency comes from.
I'm still looking for mine.
Sometimes I think I think ourresiliency is based in the idea
that space to do to key ideasthat will get another chance to
(57:14):
make better choices tomorrowlater whatever some point in the
near future and it's based on afaith in ourselves that will
make that we will make betterchoices.
So hope really does springeternal.
Well you know I don't I'm not abig fan of hope as a concept and
(57:35):
part of the reason I'm not a bigfan of hope as a concept is
because hope in that kind of youknow political slogan kind of
way or that you know Alaskagovernor kind of way kind of to
me removes the responsibilityfor making the choice from the
(57:55):
individual.
I mean if I make a choice I'mresponsible for the consequences
of that choice.
And there are yes there arefactors that are going to affect
me that are out of my controlbut the way hope is a concept is
sort of floated in our society.
It's kind of like well I'm justgoing to hope and you know
(58:15):
everything will turn out OK if Ijust have hope.
It's kind of like my mother saysyou know Jesus doesn't care if
you run out of gas.
They don't pray to Jesus thatyou're not going to run out of
gas.
Pullover and put gas in yourcar.
Speaker 3 (58:36):
I love that that more than you can possibly imagine.
Which makes sense right.
Hope is wonderful but withoutaction.
Speaker 5 (58:43):
Exactly.
I was reading I was reading anarticle I have a ridiculously
deep unread pocket list.
And I was reading an articlethis morning on medium and it
was called good habits versusbad habits and the way the
article author started it was hesaid you know there are all
these lists where it says youknow they they make these false
(59:07):
promises of you know if you eattwo eggs over easy with wheat
toast while doing push ups andyou know reciting your mantra
simultaneously you too can be amillionaire in five years.
Speaker 6 (59:21):
You know his whole thing was that you know if you
pick up the habits of otherpeople who are successful hoping
that you're going to have thesame success that they had.
You're not living your lifeyou're living their life.
And to me hope is a concept thathas that same thing.
It's like I don't want to live alife that somebody else dictates
(59:42):
for me.
I want to make my choices andlive with the consequences of
them whether they are good orbad weather or I make a choice
and outside forces push thatchoice in a different direction.
So I have to make anotherchoice.
I want to live the life that Iwant to live.
And if that means that I have toexercise five times a day you
know five times a week becauseif I don't I won't sleep then
(01:00:05):
that's the life I need to livewhereas somebody else can
function perfectly well on fourhours worth of sleep.
I know I can't do that.
So it's really all about makingmaking good choices.
Speaker 7 (01:00:16):
And I would call that a mike draw.
All right I guess we're donethat and it has absolutely been
a pleasure talking with you.
I could do this all day.
To be honest with you.
Well thank you Joe it was it wasa pleasure talking with you too.
And I'm glad we found a time.
Worked for both of us.
And yes absolutely we coulddefinitely do this all day.
All right let's do it againsometime.
(01:00:36):
Yes OK.
In the meantime I wish you allthe best in the world you most
certainly deserve.
Well thank you.
I appreciate that.
And Rebecca Achie sir.
All right take care.
You too.
Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Bye that wraps up this edition of making us work.
Thanks for listening and I hopehearing these stories provide
some useful perspective andencouragement.
Along with a reminder thatyou're not alone out there.
Before I go I want you to knowthat you can find shows and
links to the things mentionedduring our conversation by
visiting give good you X.comslash podcast.
(01:01:08):
You'll also find links to moreEurex resources on the web and
social media along with ways tocontact me if you're interested
in sharing your own story here.
Speaker 10 (01:01:16):
Until next time this is Jonah Natoli reminding you
that it's people like you whomake us work.
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