November 16, 2025 • 44 mins
What happens when the structures designed to support creativity start to suffocate it instead? Peter Swimm, project management consultant at Toilville, brings a refreshingly honest perspective to this tension that every designer faces.
Ready to rethink how structure and creativity can work together in your design practice? Listen now, and then share your thoughts on how you're balancing these forces in your own work.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Designing with
Love podcast.
I am your host, JackiePelegrin, where my goal oal is
to bring you information, tips,and tricks as an instructional
designer.
Hello instructional designersand educators! Welcome to
episode 64 of the Designing withLove podcast.
I'm thrilled to have Peter Swim, a project management
(00:22):
consultant at Toilville, with metoday.
Welcome, Peter.
Peter Swimm (00:25):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:27):
Great Thanks.
I'm so glad we got connected.
It's so nice to meet some newpeople that are in the industry
or even just being able to makethose positive changes, so it's
really great.
I love that.
Peter Swimm (00:39):
Yeah, for sure, wonderful.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:41):
So to start, can you tell us a little bit
about yourself and what inspiredyou to move from working inside
other people's structures tohelping teams create more open,
supportive spaces for design?
Peter Swimm (00:52):
So I've been in tech basically my entire adult
life but I never started outbeing a product person.
I started out just like in thetrenches doing stuff and doing
stuff like support and, you know, working in a network operation
center and just like doingstuff with computers.
And eventually I like stumbledinto a startup in 2008 and
(01:15):
startups go where startups doand you know my desk was next to
CEO's desk, which is next to myproduct person's desk.
So all of a sudden I absorbedall this ambient like product
life cycle knowledge and whenopportunities came I started
working on product work and Ithink that kind of like put me
in a different mindset thanother my product peers, because
(01:37):
I didn't come to it through thefilter of like.
I just knew what I liked.
You know, like I read books andlisten to music and I know what
a good put together thing lookslike and I know what a slapdash
thing looks like and I've had awriting background so I know
the structure of narratives andI just leaned on that like.
I've just kind of like thatsmell test of like, trying to
(01:57):
figure out things like bestpractices and design and stuff
and I kind of stumbled into thisniche that I feel like I'm have
fun at and that is aconversational design and like,
uh, conversational ux and youknow what you think of as like
chat bots and press one, presstwo, because, uh, we launched,
uh, I had a startup called botkit and we launched, uh with the
(02:21):
slack app store.
So the day Slack was able todevelop for it was basically IRC
there wasn't a design patternto speak of, so your design
pattern was human speech, and soyou had to do a lot of stage
writing.
You had to write like you wouldwrite for a call center or
(02:41):
write for a nove know a novellaor a play, and I found, like
that was like, hey, this is likecorporate work, but I like this
, I like helping people and Ilike talking to people and
figuring out like succinct waysto communicate stuff that can't
be misinterpreted.
And as that modality grew withthis, technology got better.
You get buttons and stuff.
Then like, oh yeah, I knowwebsites and buttons and, and so
(03:05):
I felt like it was very, uh,easily approachable for me to
understand, even though therewasn't like best practice yet
for this stuff.
And um, so the years went byand I worked for bigger and
bigger companies I worked for,like the walmarts and the live
persons of the world and I Iworked at microsoft as um.
I was a principal productmanager in the chat bot
(03:28):
framework called the Microsoftbot framework, and we got
subsumed into a product thatbecame Microsoft's co-pilot
studio and, oh wow.
So like we were using, we weremessing with open AI like this,
like weeks before GPT-3 came outand, like you know, we had the
technology so we saw it evolveand it solved a lot of problems
(03:50):
right away, but then it createda whole new raft of design
questions and problems and so Iadapted.
You know, like I was able touse the things I did and a lot
of people were thrown into it.
You know, like people who havebeen working on database
applications and other computersciencey things now had to work
(04:12):
with something that is like ohyeah, we have to accept all
input, you know and that's athat is like a huge like shift
away from, like, working onexcel or working on products
that are like okay, you canenter one of three things in
this hole, versus, yeah, you canstream a movie into this hole
or you can, you know, have acamera looking on a field.
(04:32):
I think that is kind of likewas my competitive advantage
because I wasn't a computerscientist.
I can't program without accessto you know, stack Overflow and
Googling and all that stuff.
But I can, like imagine abetter world for me and my
friends without access to stackoverflow and Googling and all
that stuff.
But I can imagine a betterworld for me and my friends and
I can talk to people and heartheir problems and stuff.
(04:53):
And I think that mindset reallyhelps me talk to customers and
clients.
I've talked to people out ofusing ChatGPT almost as much as
I've talked them into usingthings like or bot framework,
because like it just doesn't fitwhat they're trying to do and
it's like a shotgun when apistol will do and whatever
metaphor you want to use, and Ithink like we've kind of lost
(05:16):
sight of this industry andpeople are like man, I wish I
can find someone like you orhire someone like you know, it's
like, well, you can't afford me, but also I'm someone, I'm
someone like me, I'm someonelike me and like I should just
go out there and help people dothis instead of, like you know,
kind of like walking them aroundthe scenarios and stuff like
that and, you know, trying toshow them, like through evidence
(05:39):
of best practice and commonsense, to do the right thing.
I'm just like you know what,I'm just gonna it, and then I
won't have to fight with theboss because I'll be the boss.
Jackie Pelegrin (05:47):
There you go.
I love that.
I love that approach, and itseemed like a natural flow, a
natural fit for you.
So that's great Thanks forsharing, peter.
I think it's a great way tokick off our conversation.
So we know many companies focusheavily on building processes,
platforms or even AI systems,like we just talked about.
(06:07):
So, from your perspective, whendoes structure support
creativity and where do you seethat over-engineering starting
to get in the way of design flow?
Peter Swimm (06:13):
I think you could talk to maybe a million
designers and not find a singleone who's passionate about
working in Figma.
They're passionate aboutaspects of design and thinking
and system thinking and all that, and figma is across the bear,
you know.
Or this is where I have to work, because the engineers need an
artifact and it's easier for meto do this artifact because I
(06:36):
don't know how to structure jsonor css or any of that stuff
that they need.
But I can learn enough aboutfigma and figma, blah, blah,
blah and um, I think this reallyhurts the process.
Right because imagine, imagineevery project around invented a
new communication language andit was the absolute uh, mvp of
(07:00):
the overlap of your worlds andand I think that's kind of what
these design systems are.
Right because, like, as avisual designer you have you
know everything from cavepaintings up to now is like your
corpus of information, and evenprogrammers, everything from,
like you know, ada lovelace tonow is their corpus and you just
(07:21):
need to know enough to talk toeach other.
And so, because you're notdoing a one-to-one mapping of
the world in your communication,your tool is just like the
cheapest possible translationlayer it can be, and then you
lose a lot in that communication, right, you're like, oh, it's
too expensive for me to havebanded colors or to be
(07:42):
accessible or to be in more thanthese eight business languages,
and then you start every deathfrom a thousand cuts results in
a product that uh, loses onecustomer, right and right, and
say losing, I mean like theycan't use it, like it's just
right, they're not even at thetable.
Jackie Pelegrin (07:58):
So, um yeah, and so it becomes hard to yeah
to sell that or to sell thatproduct or service, right yeah.
Peter Swimm (08:06):
If you're losing people and also that's like how
you get things like like whenyou load up a product like
Microsoft Excel.
Can you name off from memorywhat five of the buttons on the
first page are and what they do?
Jackie Pelegrin (08:18):
No, because I don't use Excel every day.
Peter Swimm (08:21):
Yeah, but that's my point, right, because and
there's probably buttons you maynever have used in your life,
right, and you you know, and ifyou knew maybe you'd use them
like, but the UI doesn't likesuggest anything.
And and I think that's how weget products like, that is
because every time someoneimportant comes along that like,
it's like I really need thisbutton to fill my thing, and if
(08:42):
you don don't, I'm taking mybusiness elsewhere.
Microsoft, and that's fivemillion dollars.
It's like boom, they slap abutton in there and and sure you
can customize it, and who doesthat?
But you can customize it and dothings, but then you just have
kind of like post-it note of aui, you know, and you're you're
and I think the entire industryof software is set up that
(09:03):
either you're the bulletin boardor you're the post-it note.
And so people are like and Italked to a lot of clients who
are like, okay, I have a form onmy website and it emails me and
then I send them a link to bookmy Zoom.
And then the Zoom meeting comesand I talk to them and I write
down all my notes and I put mynotes into office and I type up
a thing.
I send an email to fivedifferent providers and I put my
(09:25):
notes into Office and I type upa thing and I send an email to
five different providers.
And that is what AI should beautomating, because that's just
like this huge game of mousetrapthe kid's board game and it's
just like it kind of works.
But you're being held togetherby very put-together smart,
clever people who thecompetitive advantage of a small
(09:45):
business is the fact that I canstay on the phone with you for
an hour and listen to all yourproblems and really listen, and
that's how I'm better than, like, the big guys, you know.
And so a lot of my clients arejust kind of like, okay, what
can we fire from your stacktoday to like give you like 20
more minutes to breathe so youcan think about what's really
(10:05):
important and whatnot, and youtake it from there because you
know, once you get in that kindof like Marie Kondo life cycle
of you know, what do we reallyneed?
Do I, do I really need to bepaying for slack for $40 a month
so we can all be on the samepage, or should I just, like you
know, buy people an extra luncha month and we use something
free or whatever you know.
Jackie Pelegrin (10:26):
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, you're able to reallytailor the services to what each
customer needs, right.
So it's not a one size fits allapproach, and that's true, and
I think in a lot of industriesin learning, instructional
design, what I do, that learningand development space it's so
important to have that approachthat's not one size fits all and
(10:48):
that just-in-time learning itsounds like you're utilizing
that too, because you're able totake what their needs are,
tailor it and then approach themin that way.
That helps to solve thatproblem, right.
So yeah.
I have a friend of mine her andI used to work together and when
you were talking about that itmade me think of when she said
what you want to try to do inany industry is.
(11:11):
She used this analogy and she'slike you're the, they have a,
you know, like a wound, andwe're the bandaid that solves
that, and we're going to put theput the bandaid on the wound
and treat it.
So, yeah, I like that it'sgoing to put the put the
band-aid on the wound and treatit.
Peter Swimm (11:25):
So like, yeah, I like that it's gonna be but like
the problem with that is like abunch of people who run fortune
500 companies now they thinkthey have a digital band-aid,
right, they, they could ship,and that that isn't important
and like, yeah, and because noone ever tracks the pain and
(11:46):
life and times of being aband-aid, that they don't know
what they got.
And I've had clients and nowex-clients who, oh yeah, we'll
fire our contact center andwe'll just make it all a buy.
Weeks later they have to hirethe contact center back because
(12:07):
the whole business is meltingdown, because they didn't know
that everyone hates their gutsand the contact center has been
keeping the wolves at bay foryears.
Jackie Pelegrin (12:14):
Right, exactly.
Peter Swimm (12:15):
They didn't measure it right.
And I think design is like thattoo right, because if you design
well, you're invisible, and ifyou design bad you generate a
lot of smoke, and so a lot ofpeople who are really good at
their jobs become invisible,because it, you know, squeaky
wheel gets the grease kind ofsyndrome Right and, and so
(12:36):
that's the number one thing Itell my clients is like, when
they say, like what is the ROIon going to AI, it's like, well,
what is the ROI on what you'redoing today?
You know, like when you you know, you know how much you pay
people and you know what workcomes, you know what generates
come out of the work and youknow what's the cost of human
effort to do that.
And they don't know, no oneknows.
(12:57):
And uh, and I think it's like,well, you can't really like make
personnel decisions unless youknow what your personnel are
doing, you know.
And and then we get into thisthing like, well, the easiest
way to make personnel decisionsis complete, total surveillance,
and so we have to find somesort of like new social contract
, I think, between labor andoutcomes and time and all that
(13:19):
stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (13:58):
Wow, yeah, that's true.
Ai is really helping to it'sreshaping right.
How we approach differentthings like that, like ROI and
performance right andperformance assessments, things
like that Wow, that's that'sreally interesting.
So, for smaller teamsespecially, what simple
strategies have you seen thatkeep just enough of that
(14:19):
structure in place while stillleaving room for creative flow?
That's needed.
Peter Swimm (14:23):
Yeah, well, one I try to get clients and people to
think about like, stop thinkingin terms of dollars per hour or
dollars for project even, andjust be like what would your
ideal day look like to work?
Right, and maybe that's afour-day work week, and maybe
it's a seven-day work week andanything in between.
But like, understand, like howyou want to work is sort of the
(14:46):
first thing, because then you,then you understand, like, okay,
I'm gonna, this guy wants me totake a cut in my hourly pay,
but I think I could do it inless hours than he thinks it'll
take, so I'll agree to do it.
You know, and that's whatthat's the kind of thinking ai
tools help you do where, um,like I don't talk to clients now
without running a simulation ofwhat I would have on hand or
(15:09):
what I would need to build to doit, if he said, yes, right and
so, and because all my tools arein, like super fast AI
databases that run only on mycomputer and I don't have to pay
for it's cheap and fast, like,and so I can write an email back
to a person in 20-30 minutesthat has a elevator pitch of the
(15:29):
thing, to see if they'reinterested and then we could
talk more and get betterdefinition.
But I think that's like thecompetitive advantage of being
small and plucky, if you canunderstand.
Like all right, um, this guywants to pay me 75 an hour and
he says it'll take 40 hours aweek, but I could do it in two
hours a day, so I'll take, I'lltake75 an hour and turn it to
(15:51):
$500 an hour, right, and takethree of these contracts at once
, and that's like how you think.
Like Microsoft is thinkingabout labor and stuff, but you
can take that money and thendecide to get a person that has
only been part-time for you ormake sure that your employees
have care, at-home care forchildren and whatever perks you
(16:12):
want to do.
And that is like a radicallyre-engineered way of thinking
things that I think a lot ofsmall, especially progressive B
Corp-type people are notthinking through.
Jackie Pelegrin (16:24):
Right, yeah, they're not thinking about how
they can take some of thosemonotonous type of tasks right
that don't require so much ofthat human touch.
You would still, I'm sure youstill, you know, have that human
loop and you look at things,but it gives you that ability to
be able to shave off so muchtime.
That used to take us a lot, alot of time.
(16:46):
And yeah, I mean even just anexample of this podcast I use, I
utilize AI in every part of theprocess, but it doesn't replace
some of the things that I do.
It just helps to reorganize somethings and it frees up more
time for other things.
So, yeah, it's really great, Ilove it.
(17:07):
Well, yeah.
Peter Swimm (17:08):
I refuse to use.
I call it commercial AI,because you don't know where the
models come from.
Right, the AI that I've builton my machine.
Everything's attributed.
So I know oh, I stole this ideafrom Mark Twain or my neighbor
Tom, you know, or whoever it is,and the people who work for me.
We have a system that, insteadof giving them stocks, we give
(17:32):
them something that looks like apension plus residuals, and
because of the contract theyhave with us, they can say
things like you must never usethis for military applications
or whatever.
And so we can just define acontract for every single person
, every single interaction,because AI is able to read it
(17:53):
and understand it and market.
And so if I have a contractwith you and you give me a bunch
of things we can't do and Ithink that's arbitration between
everyone.
That should happen all the time.
You should say I do not want touse AI on this product, it's no
problem, because all my toolingis AI last.
(18:14):
So I take the AI and it onlykicks in when things are not in
place as a process.
So in front of it is a is aprogram, and the program is just
a chat bot or something thatlives in my artifacts.
So, and because of this, I cando things like fire, figma.
Because I find out my designerloves working in affinity and
(18:35):
super fast in affinity, and Ifound out that I love looking in
notion.
So I'll type something innotion and the machine will turn
it into the affinity templatewith, like, the colors and the
palettes, and my artist willfill it in with their designs
and and then we'll bring it backand send it to the code and the
code will go to my developer inthe format that he needs to
(18:57):
start developing.
Wow, and like, so like so now wedon't have a have a third
product.
You know, we don't have to renta hotel at the Radisson to have
a meeting, over everything.
We can do it all on our ownlittle private Idaho's over
everything.
We can do it all on our ownlittle private idaho's and and
then and then you know, and thenwe come, and when we look at
(19:18):
the product, it's in situ, it'sin the application or the
website.
So like we don't have to lookat a wireframe, we just load up
the program, we load up thewebsite and we can see if it
works or not.
So it's not like abstraction ofabstraction of abstraction and
we don't have that generationloss of, you know, our design
ideas and stuff that go missingin the middle.
Jackie Pelegrin (19:37):
So right, so it doesn't feel like it's a
hodgepodge of different things.
Peter Swimm (19:42):
Everything works in tandem with each other right
yeah yeah, I love that, that'sgreat yeah, it's kind of like
more like it, and this willsound terrible to creative
people, but I feel like it'smore like an assembly line
village methodology, where it'sjust like, yeah, I work on the
steering wheel and that's fine,you know I do what I do and I
(20:05):
own my domain and whatever I do,and you know he works on the
seat and because we are so wellaligned, we just plug in and I
think there's room to becreative and expert.
And I think pay people enoughwhere, if they still want to, at
the end of the day, practicemusic or paint or whatever they
want to do with passion, theystill can do it.
(20:25):
So that's really what I try todo with my company first and
then help people.
Others do it.
Jackie Pelegrin (20:31):
I love that, yeah, and so to me it sounds
like there's that servantleadership approach that you
bring into everything you do,whether it's your business and
those that you're working with,and that's important because you
want to be able to give themthat whole approach right, and
not just the work they do, butthat the work they do has an
impact all across every facet ofwhat they do.
(20:54):
So that's important.
I love that.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, that's definitelyexcellent advice for that.
So let's kind of shift over tonew designers maybe, who are
just starting out, because it'stough to be in this and be doing
it new.
It's tough to to be in this andbe doing it new.
So for designers who are earlyin their careers, how can they
(21:15):
tell the difference betweenstructure that helps them grow
and the structure that starts tolimit their creativity?
Peter Swimm (21:19):
um, I think, um, structure is either part of the
solution set or part of theproblem set, right, and when
it's part of the solution set,structure can make things easier
and you just, you know, like APstyle guide, right, I think
it's a thing where structurehelps the writing process but
doesn't make you a writer.
(21:40):
But then also, like you know,the early reader books from Dr
Seuss can only use 30 words, sothat limits the process, you
know, and maybe it's a creativechallenge for you and you can
detect that I think really gooddesigners are people who listen
and understand the limitationsof the scope.
(22:01):
And the scope could be like youknow, uh, you know we have to do
a website, or we have to do amovie, or you know, or my boss
is mean and he refuses to haveanything that has, like you know
, quotes around air, quotesaround stuff, and these are all
like the what makes up, like howyour work is evaluated, and so
it's really hard for a junior, Ithink, especially to like have
(22:22):
the confidence engaged in thatsystem and not be changed by it.
So the challenge, I guess, islike find your people and like
find processes that work anddon't internalize things that
don't work and look at them aschallenges that you know you
have to do to ship it and alsoknow your limits of like how
much guff you'll take.
And then you, before you know,you'll be a senior.
(22:44):
Right, and I think that's thedifference between junior and
senior is one the executivefunction of figuring out how to
start and do stuff.
Because you've been, you knowit works.
But also, like the eye of adesigner, to know what you want
to do and also the patience ofsuffering fools and like
treating as a challenge versus ainsurmountable blocker and
(23:06):
knowing when to tell people totake a hike Right, exactly yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (23:11):
And not be scared to do that.
Yeah, that's so true.
Yeah, because and I'm sure thisis true in your, your company
too, where you have those, likeyou said, the experts you know
we call them subject matterexperts in in my field, and I'm
sure that's kind of how they aretoo you know where they, they
have a certain uh, they, theyhave that expertise, um, and I
(23:33):
always want to be a novice whenit comes to what they know,
because I don't want to, I don'twant to stop asking questions,
right?
I think it's important.
So do you find that with yourum, with your designers, that
you want them to, even if theyget to that point, like you said
, when they're a senior designer, you don't want them to stop
asking the right questions orthose deep questions, right?
You want them to still get thatinformation out of the client
(23:56):
and understand what it isthey're really looking for and
what they need?
Peter Swimm (24:00):
Yeah, like and I think that just comes from
experience is the line betweenbeing crisp and, you know, being
like very definitive about whatyou want and letting someone
cook.
You know, and it's just like,okay, this area, um, that we're
working on, there's things thathave to happen and they could be
(24:20):
defined by you know the law orour policies or any number of
reasons.
You know accessibility, andthen over here is the technical
things that block us, and thenin this little narrow area here,
you can decide if the bevelsare rounded or squared.
Jackie Pelegrin (24:38):
Oh, okay.
Peter Swimm (24:39):
Wow.
And so like either my spec isjust like all the way down like
pins and needles, and then if I,if I miss anything and I tell
them they can't cook and it'smissing, I can't yell at them.
Right, you know as a productlead.
But, like you know, if you'relike, hey, you forgot to mention
about the bevels, do you wantrounded or squared?
I appreciate that in my companyand you know we do it in situ
(25:03):
and we're able to do it flexiblyenough where it doesn't have to
have a meeting about it orwhatever.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:16):
And I think that's where things get really
bogged down is when you startspending more time with process
mapping and project planningthan you do in working.
Right, that's true.
Yeah, because then you can getbogged down by all these
different systems and processesinstead of really having that
human connection with the client.
Yeah, that's true, that canhappen really really fast, and
then, before you know it, you'relike oh, I'm not really getting
to the heart of what they need,what they want.
Peter Swimm (25:37):
Yeah, and I think a lot of times when people say,
oh, I have the client from helland you know they're constantly
flipping, I mean, I think it'sjust because I take it as like I
didn't do enough to be crisp,like I didn't, I didn't show him
that, like this choice willresult in the narrowing of the
options this way.
Right and because if they don'tknow that, because they took a
(25:58):
left turn six revisions ago now,it's impossible to even do the
thing they want to do now, right.
You have to unwind the wholesnake to go back there, and I
think that's just kind of likethat's another experience thing,
but also like you might justhave a bad client.
You know, maybe your clientdoesn't have that kind of like
(26:19):
intellectual capacity and youjust have to like make a very
strict process of change,revision, change, review, and
that's just more of a senioritything, right, or you just jump
however they tell you to jump.
When you do it, to jump, andhopefully they're paying you
enough for that stress, you know.
Jackie Pelegrin (26:34):
I hope so.
Yeah, and then that way youdon't have to, like you said, go
back and do all these revisionsand then scope creep right, it
starts to happen.
Yeah, that's true.
That reminds me of a situationthat I went through when I was
new and it was my firstinstructional design job and I
was working in a university andthen.
So I was working in employeetraining and development and
(26:56):
developing my first e-learningcourse and so and it had
software simulation in it.
So you probably rememberCaptivate, at the time that they
were switching over from 4 to 5.
So this was 2010.
So they had just rolled outCaptivate 5.
And it was such a hugedifference between 4 and 5.
But I remember I did thesoftware simulation and I
(27:18):
brought it to the SMEs before itwas fully developed in
Captivate and I said here's whatit looks like.
Can you please look over thecontent, make sure it works,
before I go and build thesoftware simulation aspect,
because, as you know, each clickis a slide and it was huge and
yeah, and so then I bring it tothem and I'm like, okay, great,
it's ready to go, I'm ready totest it out with learners, can
(27:40):
you take one last look at it?
And she's like, oh, this needsto change here and that needs to
change there.
And she started listing allthese things and I said, why
didn't you tell me thisbeforehand, because now I have
to go back and rerecord thesoftware simulation she goes oh,
I'm sorry, I didn't realizethat was the case.
I thought you could just switchout slides and I'm like I don't
remember her name, but I saidnot like PowerPoint, this is
(28:06):
different than PowerPoint.
Yeah, so that was my lessonslearned as a new designer.
I was like, oh, you know what Ineed to make sure I'm as clear
in my in what the requirementsare in my communication that if
you want changes, say it now,before before I go and do all
this work, and then I have to goin and go back and do three
days worth of work again.
So yeah, it was a good lessonfor me, and so I'm sure you have
(28:27):
junior designers that havefaced similar situations where
it's like, oh yeah, I guess Ididn't explain that enough.
Peter Swimm (28:34):
I probably should have yeah, done that Well, and
that's the kind of thing of likewhy is the only thing we have
in our world that can be workedon that way copy right, because
words are.
You can write in notepad, youcan write in Word, you can paint
it on a cave, but then once yougo into the artifact it becomes
(28:58):
suddenly immutable and youcan't change it.
And that's kind of like theworkaround that came up with my
designer, vifini, where it wasjust like, yeah, we should be
able to just change the slide,right.
Right, I was training someclients on using Copilot and
Copilot was just and I think itstill is as of this week just
(29:18):
really awful at making aPowerPoint deck.
Right, because you know itdoesn't know style and design
and all that thing you know.
And just when you watch anythingcreative made with AI, it's
horrible because everyone justprompts like make me Star Wars,
but with donkeys, you know, orwhatever you know, whatever wish
that they have.
(29:39):
And if you told ChatGPT to do mea script about donkeys in Star
Wars, it'd be a lot better thanthe video generation in the
movie, just because of computerand processing speed.
So the trick is you have it,write the overview and the
script and then you take thescript and you just load in a
PowerPoint template and so itjust throws the text in each
(30:02):
slide and then you take fiveminutes and you move the text
around to where it goes in theslide.
That, you know, is pretty.
So we still need designers, westill need creative people and
we still need someone to readthe text and write the text and
invent a whole series of moviesset in space over the course of
40 years to reference in.
But then it becomes like anapproachable problem that
(30:26):
doesn't set the earth on fire togenerate you know right and
like it doesn't even have to beAI.
You know we've been generatingdocument texts since the sixties
and you know my iPhone is morethan powerful enough to write a
book.
You know, with AI.
And and so maybe we don't haveto, like, send everything to an
(30:48):
api owned by microsoft or googleor whatever you know.
We could just run thingslocally and, uh, you know, have
a designer design it and put ittogether in a way that's so
modular that when a person says,oh, this needs to be this and
this and this, you can workthrough it in a meeting an hour
and click go and it goes.
And I think all theselimitations are caused by
(31:10):
artificial constraints on howhuman creativity works.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:13):
Right, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, I've even seen AIhallucinate and things like that
.
And, yeah, I definitely have todouble check anything I put in
there.
Because, yeah, that I'm like,oh, it got this mixed up.
And what it did one time, itwas the funniest thing it got
two different instructionaldesign models mixed up.
(31:34):
It got Merrill's firstprinciples of instructions and
Mayer's 12 principles.
So I'm like, okay, well, I cansee why I would kind of mix them
up, because they mayor,mayorals are, you know, kind of
similar and one is five and oneis 12.
So they both have numbers.
But yeah, it started mixing upthe two and it started taking
(31:54):
mayor's 12 principles andstarted interweaving them into
mayorals first principles.
And I'm like, oh well, andthat's why, yeah, that human eye
is so important, because if Ihadn't seen that, and then I
would have presented that to mystudents.
They would have been like doyou know what you're doing?
You used AI, didn't you?
Peter Swimm (32:11):
Yeah, I mean, and everyone talks about like what
are the tells of AI?
And there are, you know, emdashes and all that stuff, and
it's just like not checking yourwork is the tell of AI?
You know, like you pay some kidto do your homework, kind of
like handed in and kind of thing, and like there's probably a
lot you know.
You've been using AI for 15years.
(32:32):
It's called spell check, youknow, or, and there's all kinds
of things that you do to checkyour work and you print it and
and you know, I think, like um,using things as shortcuts, um to
avoid uh thinking is bad, butusing things as shortcuts to
(32:53):
avoid uh toil is is good.
Right, like we, we want to worksmarter, not harder, right as
as a species, and reward thatkind of like ingenuity.
And I think that's anotherreason why creatives hate ai so
much is because they arecompletely denigrating that
whole.
Like 500 000 years of humancreativity versus, you know, 136
(33:18):
years of capital and industry.
You know it's just like get outof here.
You know everything that'shappened since the 1900s is like
the only thing that's good islike you know, people live
longer and like can grow toadulthood and all those things,
and and not that they don't likehave to like paint the picture
or make a movie on their ownanymore.
You know, like right, those arethe things that make getting
(33:41):
out of bed worth living, and youwant to take that from me and
you want to make it so.
I work 10 hours a day.
You know, get out of here, youknow.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:47):
Right, exactly, yeah, so they see it as a it's
hard to, and you know, as humanbeings, change is hard for us.
So, yeah, I see that you knowquite a bit in the work I do.
You know, whenever there's anew system or there's a new
software, it's just one of thosethings where people resist, and
there's people in my department.
(34:07):
We're supposed to use thiscurrent it's.
You've probably heard of XRM,which is a Microsoft system, so
it's supposed to be for anything, right, but it's not the
easiest system for us to use atall, and so we have the current
one that we're supposed to use.
But there's people still in mydepartment that are utilizing
the previous one because theydon't want to move over to the
(34:29):
Connectors and Connectors isjust a fancy way of saying APIs.
Peter Swimm (34:48):
And so APIs have a schema and it's very well
defined, and even within thatdefinition, there's a wide
variety of choice that could bebad or broken, and so to build a
universal system that workswith AI is very difficult, right
?
Because you basically have to,and the way things work.
You basically have to make aversion of that API for AI is
very difficult, right, becauseyou basically have to, and the
(35:10):
way things work.
You basically have to make aversion of that API for AI for
everything, until people agreewith your world of what that
needs, to be right?
Jackie Pelegrin (35:15):
So it's just like your problem.
Peter Swimm (35:17):
So if you're on version two and I'm on version
three, we need to do versionthree, because version two
doesn't have any of the stuffthat helps make AI easy and
until then I have to build abunch of things that causes
hallucinations until thathappens.
So how do you get people toupgrade One?
You try to do it automatically,right?
So like, yeah, you keep workingin your V2 as long as you can
(35:40):
until it becomes, like you know,impossible to like translate in
the fly or whatever, like youknow, and you're missing out on
all these cool features.
You really should upgrade.
That's the way you upgradepeople, right?
Because it's like give me areason to upgrade, you know, and
maybe that reason to upgrade isthe exact same UI as version
two, but now you have a buttonfor the new thing you know.
Jackie Pelegrin (36:02):
Right, exactly.
Peter Swimm (36:09):
And then eventually , while they're not looking, you
change out the code basebecause they are not holding you
back, because they love thecode.
They are holding you backbecause of the way they work.
Jackie Pelegrin (36:16):
Oh, that's true .
Wow, you know, and it's funnybecause we recently did some
things with our XRM systembecause we use it for
programming course developmentat the university.
So we recently reorganized thetabs within those areas to make
it work better for us, make itmore efficient.
So I'm glad we can customize itbecause I, if we didn't have
(36:37):
that opportunity to customize, Idon't know what we would do.
Our work would be so muchharder.
Peter Swimm (36:42):
So it's amazing.
Yeah, like I, I, I think that'sthat's the coolest thing I
think about the whole like moveto web apps.
Like, like 98 of your stuff inyour desktop that you install is
actually a website, because youcan just it's.
There's a layer, uh, apresentation layer, and there's
like a skeleton layer and theskeleton can be anything in the
(37:03):
whole world and the presentationlayer can react to the times
and the needs of the people useit, and so that's great.
It's great when design candrive the experience in a way
that technology can just likenot put any limits on and right.
And if you're ever a designer, Ialways tried to like be in
organizations where, like theengineers never forced to hold
(37:26):
his nose to do something and thedesigners never forced to hold
their nose to do something.
And I'm not just like they'reso afraid to challenge me that
if I have a dumb idea, they'relike they don't gently suggest
or push back or whatever ourrelationship is on the way
forward, like because I don'twant to like paint myself in a
corner just because I don't knowI didn't catch the the
(37:48):
accidental run war reference Imade, or you know, like I'm
reinventing something that Iunconsciously saw in another
product.
Uh, I think that's how badthings ship.
Right is because people aretrying to like make someone
happy who's mad.
I had a manager once who waslike, don't come up to me with
(38:15):
any problems unless you alsocome up to me with a solution.
And I was just like that's nothow the history of society has
ever worked.
You can't just say like, well,no one has a cure for cancer, so
don't talk to me about peoplewho have cancer.
You know it's just like.
But that flies in companies andpeople can say things like we
(38:37):
have a no jerks policy, likewhat's a?
And apparently being a jerk islike forming a union.
You know like it's like.
And apparently being a jerk islike forming a union.
You know like it's like.
You know like there's all kindsof crazy stuff in there and
it's just like you know.
And I think people like and I'mreally like hopeful for, like
the tiktok generation andzoomers and stuff, because they
seem like very um, built in fromthe get-go with that kind of
(38:59):
self-care and you knowarbitration and the contract
thing as a baseline and so as,as they go and design it, they
keep, like you know, I liketrigger warnings and I, like you
, know all those social contractthings and pronouns, because it
shows that a person isself-advocating, and people who
self-advocate tend to be verygood designers, because they are
(39:20):
also very empathetic toproblems and stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (39:23):
Yeah, it's good to have that empathetic lens,
absolutely, yeah, I love that.
And the self-care is soimportant because in the
technology sector and design,it's so easy to get burned out
and feel like you're beingoverworked.
Yeah, that's easy to have thathappen, yeah, yeah, those are
great insights, peter, I lovethat.
Peter Swimm (39:51):
So before we wrap up, I would love to leave
listeners with one final thought.
So if you could share one keytakeaway about balancing, there
is nothing that design has neverlike stopped a disaster from
happening.
A design has never, never once,caused you know, something that
(40:12):
was gonna bad, that's gonnahappen tomorrow, to happen.
And you know, if company isgoing to lay off 20% of their
people, there's no amount ofwork you can do to just be
arbitrarily cut off.
So stick to your guns and, youknow, push back a little bit and
, you know, be in situationswhere you feel valued and also
challenged.
And that's one thing I wouldtell people, especially juniors
(40:33):
of.
Like you know, your job on thisplanet is to like make it
better every day that you leavethe house, and if you're not in
a situation where you feel youcould do that you, you know you
should look around and youshould be promiscuous.
There's, you know I.
You know I talked to people.
I worked with people andcompanies and they it was their
(40:53):
first job out of college andthey're in their 50s and they're
getting laid off.
So now they have to go lookingfor their second job now and
it's like you know I had a, twoor three jobs a year through my
twenties.
You know like I know a badsituation and I stick around
less longer than probably Iwould have on my second job, and
so those are the kinds ofopportunities I think people
(41:14):
should do while they're youngand cheap is like you can.
You can work for all kinds ofdifferent things because they're
going to hire you becauseyou're cheap, cause when you're
expensive then it takes sixweeks to hire you.
Jackie Pelegrin (41:25):
Right.
Peter Swimm (41:27):
So try as many different things and you may
stumble into some niche thingthat you become the best person
in the world at.
And so that's the number onething I would tell to juniors is
just be promiscuous and explorethings and take risks and stuff
before you have something theycan hold over your head.
And then you're doing like man,I got a mortgage and you know I
(41:49):
got a kid's knee braces andcolleges around the corner.
You know, like you know, useyour freedom.
You know to be exploring whoyou are and be better designers
and and represent your field andwork with cool people.
I love that.
Jackie Pelegrin (42:04):
Yeah, that's great.
And even, you know, maybe eventake advantage of those
opportunities that come alongfor speaking engagements, like
conferences and even if it'sjust attending the conference
and networking, right, that'simportant too.
Yeah, yeah.
Peter Swimm (42:18):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
I mean it's just like there'sso many cool.
Yeah, you can volunteer at theconference to get in for free,
and so you don't have to pay thethree grand to go to the
conference, because you hand outbadges for the first six hours
and then you're there you know,do things like that because
you're not also like doingemails and stuff, and you know I
would.
(42:39):
You know, I would love to havesomeone that told me, like when
I was 22,.
It was like, don't take thatinternship.
I would love to have someonethat told me, like when I was 22
, it's like, don't take thatinternship, you know, just get a
job to pay your rent and workpart time and just mess around
with things.
You know, do you design for,like, you know, a political
candidate you'd like, or like anenvironmental cause you're into
and all that.
(42:59):
You don't have to learn fromthe thing that keeps you fed,
you know.
You don't have to learn fromthe thing that keeps you fed.
You know, but, unless you gethooked into the machine of, like
I got to travel twice a yearand I, you know I got to save up
for a house and all that stuff,you know right.
You know, use your flexibilitywisely while you're still
flexible.
Jackie Pelegrin (43:18):
So that's a good idea, absolutely.
I love that, so thank you somuch, peter, for sharing your
insights today.
I know your experiences, tipsand expertise are sure to
inspire my listeners, so Iappreciate that and I look
forward to having you back.
Peter Swimm (43:30):
Thanks for having me Talk to you soon.
Jackie Pelegrin (43:34):
Thank you, peter, appreciate it.
Thank you for taking some timeto listen to this podcast
episode today.
Your support means the world tome.
If you'd like to help keep thepodcast going, you can share it
with a friend or colleague,leave a heartfelt review or
offer a monetary contribution.
Every act of support, big orsmall, makes a difference and
I'm truly thankful for you.
Hello and welcome to the Designing with
Love podcast.
I am your host, JackiePelegrin, where my goal oal is
to bring you information, tips,and tricks as an instructional
designer.
Hello instructional designersand educators! Welcome to
episode 64 of the Designing withLove podcast.
I'm thrilled to have Peter Swim, a project management
(00:22):
consultant at Toilville, with metoday.
Welcome, Peter.
Peter Swimm (00:25):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:27):
Great Thanks.
I'm so glad we got connected.
It's so nice to meet some newpeople that are in the industry
or even just being able to makethose positive changes, so it's
really great.
I love that.
Peter Swimm (00:39):
Yeah, for sure, wonderful.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:41):
So to start, can you tell us a little bit
about yourself and what inspiredyou to move from working inside
other people's structures tohelping teams create more open,
supportive spaces for design?
Peter Swimm (00:52):
So I've been in tech basically my entire adult
life but I never started outbeing a product person.
I started out just like in thetrenches doing stuff and doing
stuff like support and, you know, working in a network operation
center and just like doingstuff with computers.
And eventually I like stumbledinto a startup in 2008 and
(01:15):
startups go where startups doand you know my desk was next to
CEO's desk, which is next to myproduct person's desk.
So all of a sudden I absorbedall this ambient like product
life cycle knowledge and whenopportunities came I started
working on product work and Ithink that kind of like put me
in a different mindset thanother my product peers, because
(01:37):
I didn't come to it through thefilter of like.
I just knew what I liked.
You know, like I read books andlisten to music and I know what
a good put together thing lookslike and I know what a slapdash
thing looks like and I've had awriting background so I know
the structure of narratives andI just leaned on that like.
I've just kind of like thatsmell test of like, trying to
(01:57):
figure out things like bestpractices and design and stuff
and I kind of stumbled into thisniche that I feel like I'm have
fun at and that is aconversational design and like,
uh, conversational ux and youknow what you think of as like
chat bots and press one, presstwo, because, uh, we launched,
uh, I had a startup called botkit and we launched, uh with the
(02:21):
slack app store.
So the day Slack was able todevelop for it was basically IRC
there wasn't a design patternto speak of, so your design
pattern was human speech, and soyou had to do a lot of stage
writing.
You had to write like you wouldwrite for a call center or
(02:41):
write for a nove know a novellaor a play, and I found, like
that was like, hey, this is likecorporate work, but I like this
, I like helping people and Ilike talking to people and
figuring out like succinct waysto communicate stuff that can't
be misinterpreted.
And as that modality grew withthis, technology got better.
You get buttons and stuff.
Then like, oh yeah, I knowwebsites and buttons and, and so
(03:05):
I felt like it was very, uh,easily approachable for me to
understand, even though therewasn't like best practice yet
for this stuff.
And um, so the years went byand I worked for bigger and
bigger companies I worked for,like the walmarts and the live
persons of the world and I Iworked at microsoft as um.
I was a principal productmanager in the chat bot
(03:28):
framework called the Microsoftbot framework, and we got
subsumed into a product thatbecame Microsoft's co-pilot
studio and, oh wow.
So like we were using, we weremessing with open AI like this,
like weeks before GPT-3 came outand, like you know, we had the
technology so we saw it evolveand it solved a lot of problems
(03:50):
right away, but then it createda whole new raft of design
questions and problems and so Iadapted.
You know, like I was able touse the things I did and a lot
of people were thrown into it.
You know, like people who havebeen working on database
applications and other computersciencey things now had to work
(04:12):
with something that is like ohyeah, we have to accept all
input, you know and that's athat is like a huge like shift
away from, like, working onexcel or working on products
that are like okay, you canenter one of three things in
this hole, versus, yeah, you canstream a movie into this hole
or you can, you know, have acamera looking on a field.
(04:32):
I think that is kind of likewas my competitive advantage
because I wasn't a computerscientist.
I can't program without accessto you know, stack Overflow and
Googling and all that stuff.
But I can, like imagine abetter world for me and my
friends without access to stackoverflow and Googling and all
that stuff.
But I can imagine a betterworld for me and my friends and
I can talk to people and heartheir problems and stuff.
(04:53):
And I think that mindset reallyhelps me talk to customers and
clients.
I've talked to people out ofusing ChatGPT almost as much as
I've talked them into usingthings like or bot framework,
because like it just doesn't fitwhat they're trying to do and
it's like a shotgun when apistol will do and whatever
metaphor you want to use, and Ithink like we've kind of lost
(05:16):
sight of this industry andpeople are like man, I wish I
can find someone like you orhire someone like you know, it's
like, well, you can't afford me, but also I'm someone, I'm
someone like me, I'm someonelike me and like I should just
go out there and help people dothis instead of, like you know,
kind of like walking them aroundthe scenarios and stuff like
that and, you know, trying toshow them, like through evidence
(05:39):
of best practice and commonsense, to do the right thing.
I'm just like you know what,I'm just gonna it, and then I
won't have to fight with theboss because I'll be the boss.
Jackie Pelegrin (05:47):
There you go.
I love that.
I love that approach, and itseemed like a natural flow, a
natural fit for you.
So that's great Thanks forsharing, peter.
I think it's a great way tokick off our conversation.
So we know many companies focusheavily on building processes,
platforms or even AI systems,like we just talked about.
(06:07):
So, from your perspective, whendoes structure support
creativity and where do you seethat over-engineering starting
to get in the way of design flow?
Peter Swimm (06:13):
I think you could talk to maybe a million
designers and not find a singleone who's passionate about
working in Figma.
They're passionate aboutaspects of design and thinking
and system thinking and all that, and figma is across the bear,
you know.
Or this is where I have to work, because the engineers need an
artifact and it's easier for meto do this artifact because I
(06:36):
don't know how to structure jsonor css or any of that stuff
that they need.
But I can learn enough aboutfigma and figma, blah, blah,
blah and um, I think this reallyhurts the process.
Right because imagine, imagineevery project around invented a
new communication language andit was the absolute uh, mvp of
(07:00):
the overlap of your worlds andand I think that's kind of what
these design systems are.
Right because, like, as avisual designer you have you
know everything from cavepaintings up to now is like your
corpus of information, and evenprogrammers, everything from,
like you know, ada lovelace tonow is their corpus and you just
(07:21):
need to know enough to talk toeach other.
And so, because you're notdoing a one-to-one mapping of
the world in your communication,your tool is just like the
cheapest possible translationlayer it can be, and then you
lose a lot in that communication, right, you're like, oh, it's
too expensive for me to havebanded colors or to be
(07:42):
accessible or to be in more thanthese eight business languages,
and then you start every deathfrom a thousand cuts results in
a product that uh, loses onecustomer, right and right, and
say losing, I mean like theycan't use it, like it's just
right, they're not even at thetable.
Jackie Pelegrin (07:58):
So, um yeah, and so it becomes hard to yeah
to sell that or to sell thatproduct or service, right yeah.
Peter Swimm (08:06):
If you're losing people and also that's like how
you get things like like whenyou load up a product like
Microsoft Excel.
Can you name off from memorywhat five of the buttons on the
first page are and what they do?
Jackie Pelegrin (08:18):
No, because I don't use Excel every day.
Peter Swimm (08:21):
Yeah, but that's my point, right, because and
there's probably buttons you maynever have used in your life,
right, and you you know, and ifyou knew maybe you'd use them
like, but the UI doesn't likesuggest anything.
And and I think that's how weget products like, that is
because every time someoneimportant comes along that like,
it's like I really need thisbutton to fill my thing, and if
(08:42):
you don don't, I'm taking mybusiness elsewhere.
Microsoft, and that's fivemillion dollars.
It's like boom, they slap abutton in there and and sure you
can customize it, and who doesthat?
But you can customize it and dothings, but then you just have
kind of like post-it note of aui, you know, and you're you're
and I think the entire industryof software is set up that
(09:03):
either you're the bulletin boardor you're the post-it note.
And so people are like and Italked to a lot of clients who
are like, okay, I have a form onmy website and it emails me and
then I send them a link to bookmy Zoom.
And then the Zoom meeting comesand I talk to them and I write
down all my notes and I put mynotes into office and I type up
a thing.
I send an email to fivedifferent providers and I put my
(09:25):
notes into Office and I type upa thing and I send an email to
five different providers.
And that is what AI should beautomating, because that's just
like this huge game of mousetrapthe kid's board game and it's
just like it kind of works.
But you're being held togetherby very put-together smart,
clever people who thecompetitive advantage of a small
(09:45):
business is the fact that I canstay on the phone with you for
an hour and listen to all yourproblems and really listen, and
that's how I'm better than, like, the big guys, you know.
And so a lot of my clients arejust kind of like, okay, what
can we fire from your stacktoday to like give you like 20
more minutes to breathe so youcan think about what's really
(10:05):
important and whatnot, and youtake it from there because you
know, once you get in that kindof like Marie Kondo life cycle
of you know, what do we reallyneed?
Do I, do I really need to bepaying for slack for $40 a month
so we can all be on the samepage, or should I just, like you
know, buy people an extra luncha month and we use something
free or whatever you know.
Jackie Pelegrin (10:26):
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, you're able to reallytailor the services to what each
customer needs, right.
So it's not a one size fits allapproach, and that's true, and
I think in a lot of industriesin learning, instructional
design, what I do, that learningand development space it's so
important to have that approachthat's not one size fits all and
(10:48):
that just-in-time learning itsounds like you're utilizing
that too, because you're able totake what their needs are,
tailor it and then approach themin that way.
That helps to solve thatproblem, right.
So yeah.
I have a friend of mine her andI used to work together and when
you were talking about that itmade me think of when she said
what you want to try to do inany industry is.
(11:11):
She used this analogy and she'slike you're the, they have a,
you know, like a wound, andwe're the bandaid that solves
that, and we're going to put theput the bandaid on the wound
and treat it.
So, yeah, I like that it'sgoing to put the put the
band-aid on the wound and treatit.
Peter Swimm (11:25):
So like, yeah, I like that it's gonna be but like
the problem with that is like abunch of people who run fortune
500 companies now they thinkthey have a digital band-aid,
right, they, they could ship,and that that isn't important
and like, yeah, and because noone ever tracks the pain and
(11:46):
life and times of being aband-aid, that they don't know
what they got.
And I've had clients and nowex-clients who, oh yeah, we'll
fire our contact center andwe'll just make it all a buy.
Weeks later they have to hirethe contact center back because
(12:07):
the whole business is meltingdown, because they didn't know
that everyone hates their gutsand the contact center has been
keeping the wolves at bay foryears.
Jackie Pelegrin (12:14):
Right, exactly.
Peter Swimm (12:15):
They didn't measure it right.
And I think design is like thattoo right, because if you design
well, you're invisible, and ifyou design bad you generate a
lot of smoke, and so a lot ofpeople who are really good at
their jobs become invisible,because it, you know, squeaky
wheel gets the grease kind ofsyndrome Right and, and so
(12:36):
that's the number one thing Itell my clients is like, when
they say, like what is the ROIon going to AI, it's like, well,
what is the ROI on what you'redoing today?
You know, like when you you know, you know how much you pay
people and you know what workcomes, you know what generates
come out of the work and youknow what's the cost of human
effort to do that.
And they don't know, no oneknows.
(12:57):
And uh, and I think it's like,well, you can't really like make
personnel decisions unless youknow what your personnel are
doing, you know.
And and then we get into thisthing like, well, the easiest
way to make personnel decisionsis complete, total surveillance,
and so we have to find somesort of like new social contract
, I think, between labor andoutcomes and time and all that
(13:19):
stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (13:58):
Wow, yeah, that's true.
Ai is really helping to it'sreshaping right.
How we approach differentthings like that, like ROI and
performance right andperformance assessments, things
like that Wow, that's that'sreally interesting.
So, for smaller teamsespecially, what simple
strategies have you seen thatkeep just enough of that
(14:19):
structure in place while stillleaving room for creative flow?
That's needed.
Peter Swimm (14:23):
Yeah, well, one I try to get clients and people to
think about like, stop thinkingin terms of dollars per hour or
dollars for project even, andjust be like what would your
ideal day look like to work?
Right, and maybe that's afour-day work week, and maybe
it's a seven-day work week andanything in between.
But like, understand, like howyou want to work is sort of the
(14:46):
first thing, because then you,then you understand, like, okay,
I'm gonna, this guy wants me totake a cut in my hourly pay,
but I think I could do it inless hours than he thinks it'll
take, so I'll agree to do it.
You know, and that's whatthat's the kind of thinking ai
tools help you do where, um,like I don't talk to clients now
without running a simulation ofwhat I would have on hand or
(15:09):
what I would need to build to doit, if he said, yes, right and
so, and because all my tools arein, like super fast AI
databases that run only on mycomputer and I don't have to pay
for it's cheap and fast, like,and so I can write an email back
to a person in 20-30 minutesthat has a elevator pitch of the
(15:29):
thing, to see if they'reinterested and then we could
talk more and get betterdefinition.
But I think that's like thecompetitive advantage of being
small and plucky, if you canunderstand.
Like all right, um, this guywants to pay me 75 an hour and
he says it'll take 40 hours aweek, but I could do it in two
hours a day, so I'll take, I'lltake75 an hour and turn it to
(15:51):
$500 an hour, right, and takethree of these contracts at once
, and that's like how you think.
Like Microsoft is thinkingabout labor and stuff, but you
can take that money and thendecide to get a person that has
only been part-time for you ormake sure that your employees
have care, at-home care forchildren and whatever perks you
(16:12):
want to do.
And that is like a radicallyre-engineered way of thinking
things that I think a lot ofsmall, especially progressive B
Corp-type people are notthinking through.
Jackie Pelegrin (16:24):
Right, yeah, they're not thinking about how
they can take some of thosemonotonous type of tasks right
that don't require so much ofthat human touch.
You would still, I'm sure youstill, you know, have that human
loop and you look at things,but it gives you that ability to
be able to shave off so muchtime.
That used to take us a lot, alot of time.
(16:46):
And yeah, I mean even just anexample of this podcast I use, I
utilize AI in every part of theprocess, but it doesn't replace
some of the things that I do.
It just helps to reorganize somethings and it frees up more
time for other things.
So, yeah, it's really great, Ilove it.
(17:07):
Well, yeah.
Peter Swimm (17:08):
I refuse to use.
I call it commercial AI,because you don't know where the
models come from.
Right, the AI that I've builton my machine.
Everything's attributed.
So I know oh, I stole this ideafrom Mark Twain or my neighbor
Tom, you know, or whoever it is,and the people who work for me.
We have a system that, insteadof giving them stocks, we give
(17:32):
them something that looks like apension plus residuals, and
because of the contract theyhave with us, they can say
things like you must never usethis for military applications
or whatever.
And so we can just define acontract for every single person
, every single interaction,because AI is able to read it
(17:53):
and understand it and market.
And so if I have a contractwith you and you give me a bunch
of things we can't do and Ithink that's arbitration between
everyone.
That should happen all the time.
You should say I do not want touse AI on this product, it's no
problem, because all my toolingis AI last.
(18:14):
So I take the AI and it onlykicks in when things are not in
place as a process.
So in front of it is a is aprogram, and the program is just
a chat bot or something thatlives in my artifacts.
So, and because of this, I cando things like fire, figma.
Because I find out my designerloves working in affinity and
(18:35):
super fast in affinity, and Ifound out that I love looking in
notion.
So I'll type something innotion and the machine will turn
it into the affinity templatewith, like, the colors and the
palettes, and my artist willfill it in with their designs
and and then we'll bring it backand send it to the code and the
code will go to my developer inthe format that he needs to
(18:57):
start developing.
Wow, and like, so like so now wedon't have a have a third
product.
You know, we don't have to renta hotel at the Radisson to have
a meeting, over everything.
We can do it all on our ownlittle private Idaho's over
everything.
We can do it all on our ownlittle private idaho's and and
then and then you know, and thenwe come, and when we look at
(19:18):
the product, it's in situ, it'sin the application or the
website.
So like we don't have to lookat a wireframe, we just load up
the program, we load up thewebsite and we can see if it
works or not.
So it's not like abstraction ofabstraction of abstraction and
we don't have that generationloss of, you know, our design
ideas and stuff that go missingin the middle.
Jackie Pelegrin (19:37):
So right, so it doesn't feel like it's a
hodgepodge of different things.
Peter Swimm (19:42):
Everything works in tandem with each other right
yeah yeah, I love that, that'sgreat yeah, it's kind of like
more like it, and this willsound terrible to creative
people, but I feel like it'smore like an assembly line
village methodology, where it'sjust like, yeah, I work on the
steering wheel and that's fine,you know I do what I do and I
(20:05):
own my domain and whatever I do,and you know he works on the
seat and because we are so wellaligned, we just plug in and I
think there's room to becreative and expert.
And I think pay people enoughwhere, if they still want to, at
the end of the day, practicemusic or paint or whatever they
want to do with passion, theystill can do it.
(20:25):
So that's really what I try todo with my company first and
then help people.
Others do it.
Jackie Pelegrin (20:31):
I love that, yeah, and so to me it sounds
like there's that servantleadership approach that you
bring into everything you do,whether it's your business and
those that you're working with,and that's important because you
want to be able to give themthat whole approach right, and
not just the work they do, butthat the work they do has an
impact all across every facet ofwhat they do.
(20:54):
So that's important.
I love that.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, that's definitelyexcellent advice for that.
So let's kind of shift over tonew designers maybe, who are
just starting out, because it'stough to be in this and be doing
it new.
It's tough to to be in this andbe doing it new.
So for designers who are earlyin their careers, how can they
(21:15):
tell the difference betweenstructure that helps them grow
and the structure that starts tolimit their creativity?
Peter Swimm (21:19):
um, I think, um, structure is either part of the
solution set or part of theproblem set, right, and when
it's part of the solution set,structure can make things easier
and you just, you know, like APstyle guide, right, I think
it's a thing where structurehelps the writing process but
doesn't make you a writer.
(21:40):
But then also, like you know,the early reader books from Dr
Seuss can only use 30 words, sothat limits the process, you
know, and maybe it's a creativechallenge for you and you can
detect that I think really gooddesigners are people who listen
and understand the limitationsof the scope.
(22:01):
And the scope could be like youknow, uh, you know we have to do
a website, or we have to do amovie, or you know, or my boss
is mean and he refuses to haveanything that has, like you know
, quotes around air, quotesaround stuff, and these are all
like the what makes up, like howyour work is evaluated, and so
it's really hard for a junior, Ithink, especially to like have
(22:22):
the confidence engaged in thatsystem and not be changed by it.
So the challenge, I guess, islike find your people and like
find processes that work anddon't internalize things that
don't work and look at them aschallenges that you know you
have to do to ship it and alsoknow your limits of like how
much guff you'll take.
And then you, before you know,you'll be a senior.
(22:44):
Right, and I think that's thedifference between junior and
senior is one the executivefunction of figuring out how to
start and do stuff.
Because you've been, you knowit works.
But also, like the eye of adesigner, to know what you want
to do and also the patience ofsuffering fools and like
treating as a challenge versus ainsurmountable blocker and
(23:06):
knowing when to tell people totake a hike Right, exactly yeah.
Jackie Pelegrin (23:11):
And not be scared to do that.
Yeah, that's so true.
Yeah, because and I'm sure thisis true in your, your company
too, where you have those, likeyou said, the experts you know
we call them subject matterexperts in in my field, and I'm
sure that's kind of how they aretoo you know where they, they
have a certain uh, they, theyhave that expertise, um, and I
(23:33):
always want to be a novice whenit comes to what they know,
because I don't want to, I don'twant to stop asking questions,
right?
I think it's important.
So do you find that with yourum, with your designers, that
you want them to, even if theyget to that point, like you said
, when they're a senior designer, you don't want them to stop
asking the right questions orthose deep questions, right?
You want them to still get thatinformation out of the client
(23:56):
and understand what it isthey're really looking for and
what they need?
Peter Swimm (24:00):
Yeah, like and I think that just comes from
experience is the line betweenbeing crisp and, you know, being
like very definitive about whatyou want and letting someone
cook.
You know, and it's just like,okay, this area, um, that we're
working on, there's things thathave to happen and they could be
(24:20):
defined by you know the law orour policies or any number of
reasons.
You know accessibility, andthen over here is the technical
things that block us, and thenin this little narrow area here,
you can decide if the bevelsare rounded or squared.
Jackie Pelegrin (24:38):
Oh, okay.
Peter Swimm (24:39):
Wow.
And so like either my spec isjust like all the way down like
pins and needles, and then if I,if I miss anything and I tell
them they can't cook and it'smissing, I can't yell at them.
Right, you know as a productlead.
But, like you know, if you'relike, hey, you forgot to mention
about the bevels, do you wantrounded or squared?
I appreciate that in my companyand you know we do it in situ
(25:03):
and we're able to do it flexiblyenough where it doesn't have to
have a meeting about it orwhatever.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:16):
And I think that's where things get really
bogged down is when you startspending more time with process
mapping and project planningthan you do in working.
Right, that's true.
Yeah, because then you can getbogged down by all these
different systems and processesinstead of really having that
human connection with the client.
Yeah, that's true, that canhappen really really fast, and
then, before you know it, you'relike oh, I'm not really getting
to the heart of what they need,what they want.
Peter Swimm (25:37):
Yeah, and I think a lot of times when people say,
oh, I have the client from helland you know they're constantly
flipping, I mean, I think it'sjust because I take it as like I
didn't do enough to be crisp,like I didn't, I didn't show him
that, like this choice willresult in the narrowing of the
options this way.
Right and because if they don'tknow that, because they took a
(25:58):
left turn six revisions ago now,it's impossible to even do the
thing they want to do now, right.
You have to unwind the wholesnake to go back there, and I
think that's just kind of likethat's another experience thing,
but also like you might justhave a bad client.
You know, maybe your clientdoesn't have that kind of like
(26:19):
intellectual capacity and youjust have to like make a very
strict process of change,revision, change, review, and
that's just more of a senioritything, right, or you just jump
however they tell you to jump.
When you do it, to jump, andhopefully they're paying you
enough for that stress, you know.
Jackie Pelegrin (26:34):
I hope so.
Yeah, and then that way youdon't have to, like you said, go
back and do all these revisionsand then scope creep right, it
starts to happen.
Yeah, that's true.
That reminds me of a situationthat I went through when I was
new and it was my firstinstructional design job and I
was working in a university andthen.
So I was working in employeetraining and development and
(26:56):
developing my first e-learningcourse and so and it had
software simulation in it.
So you probably rememberCaptivate, at the time that they
were switching over from 4 to 5.
So this was 2010.
So they had just rolled outCaptivate 5.
And it was such a hugedifference between 4 and 5.
But I remember I did thesoftware simulation and I
(27:18):
brought it to the SMEs before itwas fully developed in
Captivate and I said here's whatit looks like.
Can you please look over thecontent, make sure it works,
before I go and build thesoftware simulation aspect,
because, as you know, each clickis a slide and it was huge and
yeah, and so then I bring it tothem and I'm like, okay, great,
it's ready to go, I'm ready totest it out with learners, can
(27:40):
you take one last look at it?
And she's like, oh, this needsto change here and that needs to
change there.
And she started listing allthese things and I said, why
didn't you tell me thisbeforehand, because now I have
to go back and rerecord thesoftware simulation she goes oh,
I'm sorry, I didn't realizethat was the case.
I thought you could just switchout slides and I'm like I don't
remember her name, but I saidnot like PowerPoint, this is
(28:06):
different than PowerPoint.
Yeah, so that was my lessonslearned as a new designer.
I was like, oh, you know what Ineed to make sure I'm as clear
in my in what the requirementsare in my communication that if
you want changes, say it now,before before I go and do all
this work, and then I have to goin and go back and do three
days worth of work again.
So yeah, it was a good lessonfor me, and so I'm sure you have
(28:27):
junior designers that havefaced similar situations where
it's like, oh yeah, I guess Ididn't explain that enough.
Peter Swimm (28:34):
I probably should have yeah, done that Well, and
that's the kind of thing of likewhy is the only thing we have
in our world that can be workedon that way copy right, because
words are.
You can write in notepad, youcan write in Word, you can paint
it on a cave, but then once yougo into the artifact it becomes
(28:58):
suddenly immutable and youcan't change it.
And that's kind of like theworkaround that came up with my
designer, vifini, where it wasjust like, yeah, we should be
able to just change the slide,right.
Right, I was training someclients on using Copilot and
Copilot was just and I think itstill is as of this week just
(29:18):
really awful at making aPowerPoint deck.
Right, because you know itdoesn't know style and design
and all that thing you know.
And just when you watch anythingcreative made with AI, it's
horrible because everyone justprompts like make me Star Wars,
but with donkeys, you know, orwhatever you know, whatever wish
that they have.
(29:39):
And if you told ChatGPT to do mea script about donkeys in Star
Wars, it'd be a lot better thanthe video generation in the
movie, just because of computerand processing speed.
So the trick is you have it,write the overview and the
script and then you take thescript and you just load in a
PowerPoint template and so itjust throws the text in each
(30:02):
slide and then you take fiveminutes and you move the text
around to where it goes in theslide.
That, you know, is pretty.
So we still need designers, westill need creative people and
we still need someone to readthe text and write the text and
invent a whole series of moviesset in space over the course of
40 years to reference in.
But then it becomes like anapproachable problem that
(30:26):
doesn't set the earth on fire togenerate you know right and
like it doesn't even have to beAI.
You know we've been generatingdocument texts since the sixties
and you know my iPhone is morethan powerful enough to write a
book.
You know, with AI.
And and so maybe we don't haveto, like, send everything to an
(30:48):
api owned by microsoft or googleor whatever you know.
We could just run thingslocally and, uh, you know, have
a designer design it and put ittogether in a way that's so
modular that when a person says,oh, this needs to be this and
this and this, you can workthrough it in a meeting an hour
and click go and it goes.
And I think all theselimitations are caused by
(31:10):
artificial constraints on howhuman creativity works.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:13):
Right, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, I've even seen AIhallucinate and things like that
.
And, yeah, I definitely have todouble check anything I put in
there.
Because, yeah, that I'm like,oh, it got this mixed up.
And what it did one time, itwas the funniest thing it got
two different instructionaldesign models mixed up.
(31:34):
It got Merrill's firstprinciples of instructions and
Mayer's 12 principles.
So I'm like, okay, well, I cansee why I would kind of mix them
up, because they mayor,mayorals are, you know, kind of
similar and one is five and oneis 12.
So they both have numbers.
But yeah, it started mixing upthe two and it started taking
(31:54):
mayor's 12 principles andstarted interweaving them into
mayorals first principles.
And I'm like, oh well, andthat's why, yeah, that human eye
is so important, because if Ihadn't seen that, and then I
would have presented that to mystudents.
They would have been like doyou know what you're doing?
You used AI, didn't you?
Peter Swimm (32:11):
Yeah, I mean, and everyone talks about like what
are the tells of AI?
And there are, you know, emdashes and all that stuff, and
it's just like not checking yourwork is the tell of AI?
You know, like you pay some kidto do your homework, kind of
like handed in and kind of thing, and like there's probably a
lot you know.
You've been using AI for 15years.
(32:32):
It's called spell check, youknow, or, and there's all kinds
of things that you do to checkyour work and you print it and
and you know, I think, like um,using things as shortcuts, um to
avoid uh thinking is bad, butusing things as shortcuts to
(32:53):
avoid uh toil is is good.
Right, like we, we want to worksmarter, not harder, right as
as a species, and reward thatkind of like ingenuity.
And I think that's anotherreason why creatives hate ai so
much is because they arecompletely denigrating that
whole.
Like 500 000 years of humancreativity versus, you know, 136
(33:18):
years of capital and industry.
You know it's just like get outof here.
You know everything that'shappened since the 1900s is like
the only thing that's good islike you know, people live
longer and like can grow toadulthood and all those things,
and and not that they don't likehave to like paint the picture
or make a movie on their ownanymore.
You know, like right, those arethe things that make getting
(33:41):
out of bed worth living, and youwant to take that from me and
you want to make it so.
I work 10 hours a day.
You know, get out of here, youknow.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:47):
Right, exactly, yeah, so they see it as a it's
hard to, and you know, as humanbeings, change is hard for us.
So, yeah, I see that you knowquite a bit in the work I do.
You know, whenever there's anew system or there's a new
software, it's just one of thosethings where people resist, and
there's people in my department.
(34:07):
We're supposed to use thiscurrent it's.
You've probably heard of XRM,which is a Microsoft system, so
it's supposed to be for anything, right, but it's not the
easiest system for us to use atall, and so we have the current
one that we're supposed to use.
But there's people still in mydepartment that are utilizing
the previous one because theydon't want to move over to the
(34:29):
Connectors and Connectors isjust a fancy way of saying APIs.
Peter Swimm (34:48):
And so APIs have a schema and it's very well
defined, and even within thatdefinition, there's a wide
variety of choice that could bebad or broken, and so to build a
universal system that workswith AI is very difficult, right
?
Because you basically have to,and the way things work.
You basically have to make aversion of that API for AI is
very difficult, right, becauseyou basically have to, and the
(35:10):
way things work.
You basically have to make aversion of that API for AI for
everything, until people agreewith your world of what that
needs, to be right?
Jackie Pelegrin (35:15):
So it's just like your problem.
Peter Swimm (35:17):
So if you're on version two and I'm on version
three, we need to do versionthree, because version two
doesn't have any of the stuffthat helps make AI easy and
until then I have to build abunch of things that causes
hallucinations until thathappens.
So how do you get people toupgrade One?
You try to do it automatically,right?
So like, yeah, you keep workingin your V2 as long as you can
(35:40):
until it becomes, like you know,impossible to like translate in
the fly or whatever, like youknow, and you're missing out on
all these cool features.
You really should upgrade.
That's the way you upgradepeople, right?
Because it's like give me areason to upgrade, you know, and
maybe that reason to upgrade isthe exact same UI as version
two, but now you have a buttonfor the new thing you know.
Jackie Pelegrin (36:02):
Right, exactly.
Peter Swimm (36:09):
And then eventually , while they're not looking, you
change out the code basebecause they are not holding you
back, because they love thecode.
They are holding you backbecause of the way they work.
Jackie Pelegrin (36:16):
Oh, that's true .
Wow, you know, and it's funnybecause we recently did some
things with our XRM systembecause we use it for
programming course developmentat the university.
So we recently reorganized thetabs within those areas to make
it work better for us, make itmore efficient.
So I'm glad we can customize itbecause I, if we didn't have
(36:37):
that opportunity to customize, Idon't know what we would do.
Our work would be so muchharder.
Peter Swimm (36:42):
So it's amazing.
Yeah, like I, I, I think that'sthat's the coolest thing I
think about the whole like moveto web apps.
Like, like 98 of your stuff inyour desktop that you install is
actually a website, because youcan just it's.
There's a layer, uh, apresentation layer, and there's
like a skeleton layer and theskeleton can be anything in the
(37:03):
whole world and the presentationlayer can react to the times
and the needs of the people useit, and so that's great.
It's great when design candrive the experience in a way
that technology can just likenot put any limits on and right.
And if you're ever a designer, Ialways tried to like be in
organizations where, like theengineers never forced to hold
(37:26):
his nose to do something and thedesigners never forced to hold
their nose to do something.
And I'm not just like they'reso afraid to challenge me that
if I have a dumb idea, they'relike they don't gently suggest
or push back or whatever ourrelationship is on the way
forward, like because I don'twant to like paint myself in a
corner just because I don't knowI didn't catch the the
(37:48):
accidental run war reference Imade, or you know, like I'm
reinventing something that Iunconsciously saw in another
product.
Uh, I think that's how badthings ship.
Right is because people aretrying to like make someone
happy who's mad.
I had a manager once who waslike, don't come up to me with
(38:15):
any problems unless you alsocome up to me with a solution.
And I was just like that's nothow the history of society has
ever worked.
You can't just say like, well,no one has a cure for cancer, so
don't talk to me about peoplewho have cancer.
You know it's just like.
But that flies in companies andpeople can say things like we
(38:37):
have a no jerks policy, likewhat's a?
And apparently being a jerk islike forming a union.
You know like it's like.
And apparently being a jerk islike forming a union.
You know like it's like.
You know like there's all kindsof crazy stuff in there and
it's just like you know.
And I think people like and I'mreally like hopeful for, like
the tiktok generation andzoomers and stuff, because they
seem like very um, built in fromthe get-go with that kind of
(38:59):
self-care and you knowarbitration and the contract
thing as a baseline and so as,as they go and design it, they
keep, like you know, I liketrigger warnings and I, like you
, know all those social contractthings and pronouns, because it
shows that a person isself-advocating, and people who
self-advocate tend to be verygood designers, because they are
(39:20):
also very empathetic toproblems and stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (39:23):
Yeah, it's good to have that empathetic lens,
absolutely, yeah, I love that.
And the self-care is soimportant because in the
technology sector and design,it's so easy to get burned out
and feel like you're beingoverworked.
Yeah, that's easy to have thathappen, yeah, yeah, those are
great insights, peter, I lovethat.
Peter Swimm (39:51):
So before we wrap up, I would love to leave
listeners with one final thought.
So if you could share one keytakeaway about balancing, there
is nothing that design has neverlike stopped a disaster from
happening.
A design has never, never once,caused you know, something that
(40:12):
was gonna bad, that's gonnahappen tomorrow, to happen.
And you know, if company isgoing to lay off 20% of their
people, there's no amount ofwork you can do to just be
arbitrarily cut off.
So stick to your guns and, youknow, push back a little bit and
, you know, be in situationswhere you feel valued and also
challenged.
And that's one thing I wouldtell people, especially juniors
(40:33):
of.
Like you know, your job on thisplanet is to like make it
better every day that you leavethe house, and if you're not in
a situation where you feel youcould do that you, you know you
should look around and youshould be promiscuous.
There's, you know I.
You know I talked to people.
I worked with people andcompanies and they it was their
(40:53):
first job out of college andthey're in their 50s and they're
getting laid off.
So now they have to go lookingfor their second job now and
it's like you know I had a, twoor three jobs a year through my
twenties.
You know like I know a badsituation and I stick around
less longer than probably Iwould have on my second job, and
so those are the kinds ofopportunities I think people
(41:14):
should do while they're youngand cheap is like you can.
You can work for all kinds ofdifferent things because they're
going to hire you becauseyou're cheap, cause when you're
expensive then it takes sixweeks to hire you.
Jackie Pelegrin (41:25):
Right.
Peter Swimm (41:27):
So try as many different things and you may
stumble into some niche thingthat you become the best person
in the world at.
And so that's the number onething I would tell to juniors is
just be promiscuous and explorethings and take risks and stuff
before you have something theycan hold over your head.
And then you're doing like man,I got a mortgage and you know I
(41:49):
got a kid's knee braces andcolleges around the corner.
You know, like you know, useyour freedom.
You know to be exploring whoyou are and be better designers
and and represent your field andwork with cool people.
I love that.
Jackie Pelegrin (42:04):
Yeah, that's great.
And even, you know, maybe eventake advantage of those
opportunities that come alongfor speaking engagements, like
conferences and even if it'sjust attending the conference
and networking, right, that'simportant too.
Yeah, yeah.
Peter Swimm (42:18):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
I mean it's just like there'sso many cool.
Yeah, you can volunteer at theconference to get in for free,
and so you don't have to pay thethree grand to go to the
conference, because you hand outbadges for the first six hours
and then you're there you know,do things like that because
you're not also like doingemails and stuff, and you know I
would.
(42:39):
You know, I would love to havesomeone that told me, like when
I was 22,.
It was like, don't take thatinternship.
I would love to have someonethat told me, like when I was 22
, it's like, don't take thatinternship, you know, just get a
job to pay your rent and workpart time and just mess around
with things.
You know, do you design for,like, you know, a political
candidate you'd like, or like anenvironmental cause you're into
and all that.
(42:59):
You don't have to learn fromthe thing that keeps you fed,
you know.
You don't have to learn fromthe thing that keeps you fed.
You know, but, unless you gethooked into the machine of, like
I got to travel twice a yearand I, you know I got to save up
for a house and all that stuff,you know right.
You know, use your flexibilitywisely while you're still
flexible.
Jackie Pelegrin (43:18):
So that's a good idea, absolutely.
I love that, so thank you somuch, peter, for sharing your
insights today.
I know your experiences, tipsand expertise are sure to
inspire my listeners, so Iappreciate that and I look
forward to having you back.
Peter Swimm (43:30):
Thanks for having me Talk to you soon.
Jackie Pelegrin (43:34):
Thank you, peter, appreciate it.
Thank you for taking some timeto listen to this podcast
episode today.
Your support means the world tome.
If you'd like to help keep thepodcast going, you can share it
with a friend or colleague,leave a heartfelt review or
offer a monetary contribution.
Every act of support, big orsmall, makes a difference and
I'm truly thankful for you.
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