October 18, 2024 • 57 mins
We dive into our titular question with Nate Grubbs, who, unlike us, is a professional designer with strong views borne of decades of experience across UX, visual & product design.
MEET NATE – 01:18
THE AGE OF AVERAGE – 04:19
Alex Murrell: The age of average
The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same
How Khruangbin’s Sound Became the New Mood Music (paywall)
SOUL, FLASH & OLD MAN VIBES – 06:36
A Farewell to Adobe Flash—and the Messy, Glorious Web
Donnie Darko website
Félix Lapointe: Remembering Kai Power Tools
Artist at Play: An e-mail exchange with Kai Krause
A PERVASIVE FEAR OF FAILURE – 17:49
Please, Please Don’t A/B Test That
Study finds 268% higher failure rates for Agile software projects
SIGNS OF HOPE & BREAKING THROUGH – 23:27
Massimo Giunco: Nike, An Epic Saga of Value Destruction
The Father of Grunge Typography Calls Out Lazy Design
Paula Scher: Great design is serious (not solemn)
Kintsugi
CONSTRAINTS AS A CATALYST – 34:08
Why Constraints Are Good for Innovation
Daft Social
Start-Ups Surge in the Great Reset
Gnuhr
Physical music sales on course for first increase in 20 years
RECOMMENDATIONS – 45:45
Nate: Yoto
Ernest: A Different Man; related: The rise and rise of A24, a champion of storytelling on screen (paywall)
Joachim: I Saw the TV Glow; What You Are Looking for is in the Library
CLOSING – 56:57
NateGrubbs.com
****
Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ernest (00:04):
Hello and welcome to learn, make, learn, where we
share qualitative andquantitative perspectives on
products to help you makebetter.
My name is Ernest Kim and I'mjoined by my friend and co host
Joachim Groeger.
Hey Joachim, how's going?
Joachim (00:22):
I've already had a cocktail, so full, full
disclosure, I forgot we weredoing this tonight.
And then I had a cocktail, I hada cocktail, I was kicking back.
And then as I was sipping it, Iwas like, you know, something's
happening at eight o'clocktonight.
I'm so sure something'shappening at eight o'clock.
Anyway, I'm so sorry.
Ernest (00:39):
Oh, no,
Joachim (00:40):
I'm totally fine.
But you know, I'm just.
In the interest of fulltransparency of this podcast,
Ernest (00:46):
It's going to be,
Joachim (00:46):
thought I should share that.
Ernest (00:47):
learn, make, learn after dark.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,well, this is episode 23 and
today we're going to discussdesign primarily interface
design with our guest, NateGrubbs.
Now we've touched on the topicof design many times over the
course of our past 22 episodes,but this will be our first
opportunity to dig into thetopic with an expert
(01:09):
practitioner.
So.
Let's dive right in.
And Joachim, given yourrelationship with Nate, I'll
hand it over to you to get theconversation started.
Joachim (01:18):
Sounds good.
Well, we have Nate Grubbs here.
We're very excited.
This is our second guest on thepodcast and we get to talk about
design and specificallyinteraction design.
so I think we should just startwith the basics.
Um, and also we should just bevery, very clear that, the views
expressed here are ours, oursalone, nothing to do with our
employers.
(01:39):
Uh, so Nate, you're here as a,as an individual, not as a
representative of anything, asis Ernest and as am I..
So like, what's your story?
How did you get into interactiondesign and, uh, Yeah, what's the
journey?
Nate (01:52):
Yeah, so my name is Nate Grubbs.
I am a, let's see, productdesigner, interactive designer,
UX designer.
There's so many terms thrownaround these days that it does
get a little confusing, but, um,yeah, my background, you know,
it was used to just be kind ofgraphic design, um, kind of.
Did a lot of that withadvertising agencies, uh, moved
(02:14):
over to Amsterdam, found myselfinto doing product design, even
some physical, digital, blendedexperiences, um, and now I'm
back in Seattle, uh, workingwith a place called Teague, uh,
which likes to say that they'rethe first design consultancy,
born in a hundred years ago.
I've lots of consultancy designconsultancies backgrounds, if I
(02:36):
were to simplify it to a lot ofpeople, people ask me what I do,
it's often, you know, digitaldesign.
Joachim (02:42):
I think we talked about interaction design being like
the starting point for that.
So is it, is it, is it fair tosay that it is mostly like, The
interfaces that we interact witha computer system, is it the
design of a, of a surface that,that is connected to a computer
or how should we be thinkingabout this?
Nate (03:01):
Yeah, and I think maybe I'm probably speaking to the
mood of the industry, whichfeels like it's they're in a bit
of an existential crisis of whoare we as designers, because
there are people who came infrom a strictly visual
background.
You know, I just want to makethings look pretty.
I make websites look pretty.
I don't care about how to makethem or how they operate.
(03:21):
I just want to make.
Nice pictures and text onscreen.
That can be sometimes one camp.
There's another camp of peoplethat just love, you know,
getting the problem of athousand pages on a website or a
software application that'sextremely complicated and they
just like working with engineersand trying to figure out how to
(03:42):
make this usable for people.
How do we make this softwareeasy to use?
How do we make it so that it canwork for a consumer or work for
a professional?
That's more in the interactiondesign is typically in that more
kind of technical minded things.
Um, I think.
And then UX design was probablytrying to blend a little bit of
(04:04):
both the highly technicalwiring, with that visual
thinking, Hey, these thingsstill should look pretty.
And I think user experience kindof was born out of that.
Let's make it look pretty andusable at the same time.
Joachim (04:20):
Lots of little threads that we can pull on here for the
conversation, but I want tostart with kind of the first
conversation that we had.
In a coffee shop here inSeattle.
And we were just whining to beblunt.
Basically an episode of thispodcast, you know, why is design
kind of thoughtless where, whereare the people that are trying
(04:41):
to be innovative yet still servea customer need.
And then you brought up thisblog post by Alex Morrell.
the age of average, and itseemed to encapsulate a lot of
themes that I feel like arebothering us all in this room,
but also things that you have tocontend with every single day.
And just briefly, Alex Morrell'spiece on the age of average is
basically everything kind oflooks beige.
(05:03):
Now it's all merging into this.
middle, inoffensive kind ofspace.
And you had a phrase tosummarize this as well, Nate,
that I appreciate, which is likefor the, for the coffee shop
vibe, it's a Scandinavian stylecoffee shop, a little minimal
playing Khruangbin on thesoundtrack.
(05:24):
it's not offensive.
It's not terrible.
It's just kind of there but howdo you take this idea that
everything has kind of mergedinto this common beige massive?
Mediocrity.
Let's be really inflammatoryabout it.
Like, what's your take on all ofthat?
Nate (05:41):
You know, you know, I can, this is just full of, uh, hot
takes tonight, right?
where's, where's my cocktailhere?
but like, you know, I don't mindScandinavian design and, you
know, Khruangbin, it's, yeah,they're, they've had that vibe
that we all just need sometimes.
Joachim (05:57):
Yeah,
Nate (05:58):
And I, but I think it's just, um, yeah, is there
anything underneath this?
I think that's maybe one of thequestions we want to ask about
it, but I think there'ssomething else going on there.
None of those things are wrong,but it just feels like it's been
taken too far.
There was this authenticity ororiginality to it, but then it
just gets Recycled and recycledand recycled and recycled
(06:21):
because hey, that's what goodthings look like.
I'm starting a coffee shop.
It should look like this.
And I think that's where itstarts to feeling, feeling like
a little bit too, too much oryeah.
Where is the soul in all ofthis?
Joachim (06:36):
yeah, where is the soul and all of this?
And I guess that then is, that'sthe question that's top of my
mind when I think about aninteraction with a digital
system or a computer, like, doyou get the soul across?
How do you avoid falling intothe average way of thinking and
trying to actually get that?
Nate (06:56):
Well, I think it is.
It is a wide open question.
Um, I think that is a little bitof the soul searching that's
happening, um, because, youknow, again, maybe I'll bring
out not only the hot takes, butthe old man vibes where, uh,
back in my day, uh, no, I think,cause when I started, it was,
you know, fresh out of school.
I was doing, you know, went toan advertising agency because
(07:18):
that's where all the cool designwas going to be.
And, you know, people thatvalued this and, you know, And
at the time, this was early2000s, to age myself here, um,
and it was a very experimentaltime, you know, uh, we were
making Flash websites, which,you know, right before that, it
was literally people were makingrows and tables for their
(07:40):
websites.
And so it really was a, a mindbend to think of a new ways.
And I think with advertisingback then it was, you're
creating an experience.
You want to create an experiencefor a brand.
What's the mood, what's thetheme, what's the concept of our
website that we're going tomake.
And that was, you know, we stillthought of the content, but that
was almost.
at the forefront was like, Hey,what do we want people to come?
(08:03):
What do we want them to leavewith when they visited this
thing?
And it seems like it's justwe've gone down this route where
everything is a website,everything is an app, everything
is, you know, there's so manymore digital experiences now
that I think it's, you know, wein time is limited.
And we're Go back to function.
(08:23):
And, you know, just let's justmake this happen.
Let's make this work.
Let's ship this as fast as wecan.
And I think a lot of that, youknow, there's a lot of that
actually, at first, that wasinteresting to me, um, that sort
of puzzling of, Oh, hey, this islike, you know, it's doing that
design, but now it's got thispuzzle of how do I make all of
(08:43):
these things work together?
How do I make this a seamlessexperience?
And I think that's what firstdrew me into the interaction
side of things was to, you know,it was a puzzle.
It was like playing one ofthose, uh, games where, you
know, you kind of, you're doingthe action, and then all of a
sudden you get to this puzzlethat you have to figure out.
And I'm like, oh, this is fun.
I like this.
Um, but I think it just got alittle, maybe out of hand, you
(09:05):
know, just this focusing so muchon function that we kind of,
because I think even interactiondesigners like, oh, visual
design, they're not as, They'renot doing anything real, we're
doing the real work, they'rejust making things look pretty.
And I think it got a little bitlost of the sort of polarity of
design where one thought theother was better.
(09:26):
And yeah, I think we kind ofhave lost a little bit of this
holistic thinking about productsand what people want to get out
of that experience.
Joachim (09:36):
It's interesting that you say something that I don't
think happens very often, or wedon't even think about because
we're so surrounded by thesedigital experiences.
You're talking about the flashsites and asking the question,
what is the feeling that we wantthe person to leave and remember
when they've closed the page?
(09:57):
Which is a very different thingand mode that we're in right
now, which is just keep themlocked in, you know, binge,
binge, binge.
And it, you know, you never endthat experience going like, wow,
that was.
Mind altering or something, youknow, but thinking back to the
Flash stuff, And I hadn't Ichecked this out after you'd
mentioned this to me, but DonnieDarko, You had mentioned that
(10:19):
this was like a good example offlash design that was
experiential as opposed tofunctional.
It still did something whichhelped advertise the movie.
Nate (10:29):
actually hard to use even, I would say.
Joachim (10:32):
yeah.
But, Like, for those Flashwebsites, they still kind of
haunt me for being so unusable,but in a good way.
Does, is this even part of theconversation anymore or is it
just get him to do the thing,transact and let's move on?
Nate (10:46):
The short answer is no, it's not part of the
conversation anymore.
Um, um, and yeah, one of thethings I was thinking about, you
know, going back to that flashthing, you know, when I said it
was hard to use.
And that was actually some ofthe point when they made some of
these things.
They wanted you to click around.
They wanted you to, to, youknow, it was, they wanted it to
(11:07):
be difficult to find out whatthe content was.
It just made it even moreintriguing.
Um, and I even remember therewas a website, you know, it,
well, I was gonna say this stufffelt like art back then.
And I think even for myself, Iremember there was a time Again,
that, you know, early in mycareer, you know, maybe I, I
think I broke up with a girl orsomething and I just felt, you
(11:30):
know, I need to do somethingdifferent.
And I was like, I know I'm goingto quit my job.
I'm going to make this bestportfolio website ever, you
know, making it in flash.
And I had this concept that I,I, I.
Even to this day, I still, Ilike the concept.
I, I wanted this, I wanted, um,there's kind of, you know,
there's like this wallpaper, andyou could sort of click on this
(11:50):
thing, there's like a littlecrack in the wallpaper, and you
could click on it, and it wouldjust open up a little bit more,
and then eventually you wouldactually break a hole in the
wall, and everything else wouldjust fall away, and it would
just be like, Just the end ofthe website, like it's just your
experience just stopped.
And I think that's what I wantedpeople to get there and just be
like, Hey, it's done leave.
Joachim (12:11):
Oh,
Nate (12:12):
I think that's, that's the thing that we don't, we don't
think about in terms of withexperiences anymore.
It's not, you know, we think ofthat as cinema.
We think of that as, you know,I'm going to go to the movies.
I'm going to do this experience.
And our typical interactiondesign is very much just
function.
And, you know, If we have timeand if we have resources, we'll
(12:33):
try to make it look pretty atthe end of, end of the phase or
something like that.
And I think that's about theextent.
We don't, I don't think any ofus really think about our work
as art, uh, in terms of the waythat I feel like the design
industry maybe used to, to thinkabout, uh, their digital design.
Ernest (12:51):
I think too, that maybe part of it is, back in the early
days, it was so much more of a,an individual, a medium for
individual expression.
even if you're doing work for anagency, you often were working
in a pretty small team.
Maybe you were the onlydesigner, um, and you had a lot
of leeway, um, or if you'redoing your own personal site,
(13:13):
whereas today it's just becomesuch a.
commercialized medium.
Um, and so corporatized that nowif it's a site for any sort of a
brand, it's probably a ginormousteam of people working on it
across many different functionsthat didn't exist back in the
early days.
But something, um, I forget whosaid it, one of you mentioned,
(13:37):
uh, creativity, but going backeven further, this is like an
old fogey show, but, um, youknow, Pre webbed.
I don't know if either of yourecall this at all, but there
was this thing called Kai'sPower Tools.
Have you guys ever heard ofthis?
There were a set of plugins forPhotoshop and Corel Paint, I
(13:57):
think.
And they had just the craziestinterface.
It was like this super punk rocksort of It looks like, you know,
Swedish, uh, avant garde art,uh, that was created by this
German computer scientist namedKai.
Um, I forget his last name.
We'll, we'll share some infoabout this, but it was a really,
(14:19):
I remember this cause this iswhen I was coming up, just
starting out in design and I wasjust so blown away.
I thought it was terriblygarish, but it was so distinct,
had such a clear point of view.
And, um, it was introduced in1992.
Um, It no longer exists.
Uh, the company, um, got foldedinto Coral at some point, but,
(14:42):
um, I thought I'd share just acouple of quotes that kind of
spoke to why it was so specialfor people.
This first one comes from aperson who used it.
His name is Felix LaPointe.
This is from a blog post.
He said, what made Kai's powertools truly special was its
sense of innovation andexperimentation.
The plugins were not just tools.
They were a playground forcreative minds.
(15:03):
They encouraged you to try newthings, to break the rules, and
to explore the possibilities ofdigital art.
And I thought it was, I, it's agreat way to put it.
That's very much how I feltabout it too.
And then I'll just read youreally a quick quote from the
creator, Kai.
This is from an interview hedid, uh, with the Atlantic way
back in 1997.
And I, I think this is the partthat kind of, uh, Uh, something
(15:26):
one of you said kind of clickedwith this, but he said, um, uh,
the analogy I always use is thatof Sony's inventing the
camcorder.
All the movies of weddings andbabies are ludicrous if watched
under the guideline ofcinematography, but the
camcorder is not a shortcut toCitizen Kane.
In that sense, I do not like mytools to be approached as one
(15:47):
click art shortcuts to MonaLisa, but as beautiful aids for
playing with your own brain.
I just love that idea, and it'sjust the sort of thing that you
just don't see anymore, right?
I mean, like, this idea of, I'mjust going to put this tool out
here for you to play with.
Play with your own brain versusto get as many transactions as
possible.
Uh, you know, maximize my clickthrough rate or blah, blah,
(16:09):
blah.
And, you know, after I did sevenrounds of AB testing to, to get
to the right shade of blue.
Um, I mean, I guess this doessound a bit old fogey ish, but
it does feel like a lot of that,uh, more art driven approach to,
to this.
Space has been lost, but uh, I,I've not been a practitioner in
(16:30):
some time.
I'm just, it sounds like youhave experienced this as well,
though, Nate.
Nate (16:36):
Yeah.
And even when you were bringingup those plugins, I remember,
uh, early in, I was, I think Iwas still in school, but there
was something with illustrator,you know, illustrator is one of
these softwares that you candraw things in and there's some
glitch that if you inverted somepart of the thing, it would make
this crazy wild vector,geometric thing at the tails of
things.
And it was almost just.
(16:57):
I think they just messed up the,how it displayed, but people
started using this as sort ofthe style, and it was just these
really sharp triangles going allover the place, and it was
something I, you know, Ienjoyed, because it was the
trend that we were all doing.
And it was just a, it wassomeone screwing up, and I think
that's a little bit of the, the,things that we kind of miss
sometimes, is those happyaccidents, or those, those,
(17:19):
things that, uh, theimperfections that actually make
us who we are, and I think maybethat's even going back to that
original thought, it's like, Thecoffee shop.
It's like, it's too perfect.
And I think what's supposed tobe good is it's like, it's
supposed to be human.
It's supposed to be messed up.
It's supposed to be a little bitdirty.
It's supposed to be a little bitlike just not right or not, not
(17:43):
all put together.
And I think that's, that's maybespeaks to some of that, uh, idea
a little bit.
Joachim (17:49):
so interesting because it is, it's the exact opposite
of everywhere where we are.
No one's taking risks.
Maybe that's another way to putit.
Do you think everyone's justscared?
Nate, is everyone just scared offailing that this, this kind of,
especially in UX design, I findpeople are very, very careful.
And as Ernest was alluding tolike AB testing till you figure
(18:09):
out it's actually that blue thatwe want.
Uh, is it, is it that, that,that infiltration of the false.
precision that technology hasgiven, allowed us to lean on,
you know, we have these tools sowe can precisely identify it is,
but, but really we, we can't, ofcourse not.
It's a vibe that ultimately isthe thing that decides it.
(18:29):
So is it that the falseprecision or is it just general
conservatism?
Like we're too scared to trysomething.
The stakes are too high.
What, what is your sense ofthat?
Nate (18:41):
I do think that there is a lot of things to be afraid of.
I felt like maybe that's just anelement of our time and, uh,
Where we are in the history ofeverything, really, that fear is
a motivating factor for a lot ofpeople in lots of different
ways.
I think it also depends on whereyou work.
I mean, I think if you'reworking for big tech
(19:03):
corporations or even just bigorganizations in general versus
a small consultancy, you know,they're all going to think of
things differently.
It's also about your companyculture and trust.
Like do your bosses trust thatyou're going to get this work
done?
And I think that's.
Some things that is easy to getlost, um, that your project
managers don't trust that you'regoing to get this done.
(19:24):
Um, and, you know, because itis, it is something you have to
communicate really well withyour project managers.
I mean, even myself, I'm stilllearning how to tell my project
manager, Hey, I know this iswhat you want from me today, but
I am going to have that, but Ineed to explore this first.
It's going to take me this muchtime to do it.
And it gets into that, this isone of the thoughts I was
(19:46):
thinking about, like, we'vegotten so much into this.
I don't know if you guys knowthe agile or scrum mentalities
about how we work, you know,it's, you know, let's just break
everything down into tasks andassign those tasks to people.
And, we have these sprints thatwe have a two week sprint that
we're going to get everythingdone.
These amount of tasks done forthis sprint and this time.
(20:07):
but I think there is times whereyou really have to pause and
say, Hey, is this useful?
Um, where is this going?
I need to pause and think what'sthe bigger experience that I'm
making right now.
And I think a lot of people justdon't have that either time to
do that, or especially as adesigner, it's either, um, You
(20:29):
may not even have the agency.
you may be earlier in yourcareer and you don't want to
stop the stop the flow ofeverything happening to bring up
your concern about something.
There's just there's a lot ofthings to be worried about as a
designer.
Um, so I think there's thosethings.
And I think, um, you know,obviously companies is.
(20:49):
want product shipped quickly,clients want their work done in
an efficient manner and theydon't want to feel like they're
wasting their budgets on hiringanother consultancy to do that.
And so, yeah, so I think thereis a, this tendency to, if you
just put it simply just to playit safe and Hey, maybe I can't.
Do this cool thing this time,but next time, next time I'll
(21:13):
have that opportunity.
Um, and then you have that fearof, hey, what if there isn't the
next time, maybe my whole careeris just gonna be doing these
boring things.
And so, yeah, so I think, Imean, I think there is things to
be afraid of, but you know, Idon't think we need to let that
stop us as a designer.
(21:33):
Um, so.
You know, I was trying to thinkabout this as in terms of like,
well, what, what do I do as adesigner for this?
I mean, I think it's alwaysabout trying to collect as much
of your own inspiration fromoutside sources.
You know, it's always, Hey, whatdid I see someone else do?
Especially when it comes to likeinnovation, there's lots of talk
(21:54):
of this.
Um, uh, I forget the term forit, but I like kind of a lateral
market.
Like it's, it's kind of similarto our market, a near market,
maybe is the term.
So it's like, Oh, what are thesethings?
What are they doing?
And how can we apply that in adifferent way to our market,
which does bring about some newchange?
so I think there is things ofjust keeping your eyes open.
(22:15):
I think you also have to leaninto your own personal
interests.
what is it that you Love and howcan you bring that to the table
with what you do?
And I think if you work withtrusting managers or you have a
relationship with the peoplethat you work with They will
give you that space to do that.
i've been told by my bosses tosay hey Yeah, if you think
(22:35):
something can be donedifferently, yeah, spend half a
day thinking about that.
I mean, don't spend a whole weekon it, but, but do give yourself
some space to think about how wecan do this differently.
We want to do that.
We want to think about thisdifferently.
But I feel like I am at a placewhere I, I am given that sort of
that, uh, space One more thingon the, the, the perfection
(22:58):
element, I was thinking aboutthis in terms of like, denim,
you know, when you buy denim,it's, you know, it's stiff, it's
clean, it's like, everythingthat, you know, oh, just wear it
a while, and it's gonna getbetter, and you know, those best
jeans are the things that areworn, in the right places.
And I think we've got like thisreverse thing where it's like,
(23:19):
let's try to strip all of thatand try to get it as stiff as
possible because that's what itshould look like on the shelf
sort of thing.
Ernest (23:27):
You know, one of the things that's given me some hope
because I think there's a lot ofreason to be a little bit
depressed about the state ofdesign and digital design.
But one of the things that'sgiven me some hope is the
discourse around Nike.
And again, like Joachim said,all of this is, uh, our own
opinions doesn't reflect thoseof our employers.
It's also none of this is insideinformation, but, uh, just
(23:48):
referencing a lot of the writingaround Nike that's, uh, been
published in the past few monthsas Nike's been going through
some struggles.
One of the most biting.
Uh, pieces that has beenreferenced quite a bit was from
a former brand person at Nikeand I forget his name, but we'll
provide a link to this piece.
But one of the things hementioned was that Nike spent
(24:09):
too much time focusing on thethings they could measure and
instead of the things theyshould measure.
Um, and.
And I've been excited to see theextent to which even these, you
know, very conservativefinancial publications like the
Wall Street Journal andBloomberg have been focused on
the fact that Nike hasn't beenspending enough time on its
brand.
(24:29):
You know, they've been focusedtoo much on transactions.
So that was kind of exciting tosee that, Oh, actually there is
a recognition that there needsto be a balance that, um, you
can't just be too, you know,Just so singularly focused on
transactions and, um, and thenumbers, if you want to be a
(24:50):
brand like a Nike, um, that, youknow, has historically been
known for innovation.
So I guess that that's given mesome hope that even in the kind
of business space, people aretalking about things like that.
Joachim (25:02):
What you were saying on this has got me thinking as
well, because you mentioned thatthe idea that Nike got obsessed
with focusing on things that itcould measure as opposed to
things that it couldn't measure,uh, and whether, and, and
whether it's measuring the rightthings.
So how do you convince someoneto do something new when it's
not been measured and is nolonger measurable?
In a conservative environment, Ifind that that's essentially
(25:25):
impossible, right?
Nike has the benefit of havingbeen such a strong brand.
It had strong vibes, strongfeelings attached to it.
So it can always go back andreturn to that overarching.
feeling that it gave people,right?
Of possibility, potential,fulfilling that potential.
(25:46):
Um, but in the user interactiondomain, if you're doing it for a
new company or a new client, howdo you even capture that type of
magic?
Is that still, is that somethingthat can be done or is it just
Also, maybe this is something todo with the tooling that we, we
have now, like everyone uses thesame tools.
So every, if you go to athousand consultancies, they're
(26:08):
all gonna give you some figma ofworkflow, and then that's gonna
not be the mockup of the app andeveryone's using the same
typefaces.
And so you're picking betweenthat blue, that blue or that
blue with that button or thatbutton or that one, which is the
same button.
But um, so the question isreally, again, like this
inherent conservatism.
How do you find.
the little space that's therethat you can actually push the
(26:31):
boundaries or something.
Like, we can't do the stuff thatwe used to do.
What, what do you do in thisspace now?
Like, what can you do?
Nate?
Nate (26:42):
I think sometimes you do have to seek out as a designer,
you have to seek out the placesthat you want to be and what you
want to do.
And, you know, Take theopportunities that you have to
do something challenging.
Um, I know for myself, I'vealways tried to find, I mean,
I've had the luxury of beingable to, to, you know, laser
(27:04):
focus where I want to work, youknow, and just, if I don't get
in the first time, I try anothertime to get into a place and,
uh, being able to just talk topeople and talk about the things
that I like and, you know, Opendoors through just, having
similar interests to people and,and having that trust.
And I think what I'm trying tosay with that is building the
trust with these people that youmay work with and saying, Hey,
(27:25):
yeah, this is, this is the timeto do it.
And I think even there's, um,the place I'm at now and the
previous company is that, um,they would say, Hey, you know,
if you want, if this is theproject that you want to knock
out of the ballpark, then do it,go for it.
Like, cause I think we have.
Some agency, we have some, uh,the client trusts us to do this.
(27:48):
So if you want to do something,try it.
And when my last place, Iremember, uh, there was a
company.
I was like, yeah, this is theone I'm going to, it was like a
smart thermostat and I was like,I'm going to make this amazing.
And I think me and anotherdesigner just went.
all out with just these bizarreout of just crazy ideas, just
(28:08):
thinking, you know, something'sgoing to hit here.
And I think we did thispresentation and they're just
like, okay, cool.
Um, we were just looking forsome ideas for this thing they
were doing.
They were actually still doinggreat stuff, but it just, I
think, you know, we sometimes,yeah, you, you have to fail
sometimes you have to mess up.
You have to be willing to takethat risk a little bit.
(28:30):
Um, and I think there was,there's a great.
Quote, um, I don't know how muchyou know about, uh, old, uh,
graphic designers.
Again, bringing in the old man,people, old person vibes here.
These people are older than me,but, uh, uh, there's a couple of
designers, David Carson and, uh,Paula Scher, which are ones that
really influenced a lot of, uh,my thinking about this.
(28:54):
But I remember Paula Scher gavea talk a while ago that was
talking about like, um, How to,what you call it, serious play,
uh, how do, basically, like, howdo you be a novice at something
again?
How do I take everything I knowand throw it out the window and
just start over again?
And she talks about this timewhere she was given an
(29:14):
architecture project to dographics for it, and she just
said, You know, I don't know therules of architecture.
I'm just gonna do whatever Iwant to do.
I'm gonna put graphics on thefloor.
I'm gonna wrap them around thewall.
Just do whatever I want.
And it was, it was a huge momentfor her to sort of, uh, take
this risk, do something crazy.
and to learn from thatexperience.
(29:35):
And I think that was a lot ofwhat she, um, yeah, a lot of,
uh, yeah, the ways that shethought about these things.
I was actually trying to findthis quote, uh, from her.
It was, uh, this funny thinghappened.
I found I was no longer at play,but in the solemn landscape of
fulfilling an expectation, whichwas not where I started, that's
(29:56):
a terrifying factor because itmeans that all that's left for
you is to go back and find outwhat the next thing is.
is that you can push, that youcan invent, that you can be
ignorant about, that you canfail with, because in the end,
that's how you grow.
And that's how that's all thatmatters.
Um, there's just so many thingsabout it because she calls it a
(30:18):
serious play.
It's just, you know, you're justserious about going out there
trying something new.
And, uh, I mean, yeah, and shetalks about When we start
recycling the thing that worked,uh, that's when we get into this
path where we keep recycling init, and it just takes everything
out of what was playful in thefirst place.
(30:39):
And I think maybe that goes backto what we were talking about as
well, but maybe that's aroundabout question, answer to
your question there.
Joachim (30:45):
No, that, that's, that's, that's it.
That is really the the heart ofit, isn't it?
Is that the willingness to takea risk to, and then as you said,
the very scary thing is kind of.
To fail, which is very scarything to confront when you're
trying to push it.
That then that gets me thinkinglike, out there, Nate?
Who is pushing the boundariesor, put another way, if you had
(31:08):
carte blanche, what would itmean?
What would you be doing?
What were the directions youwould want to push into?
Nate (31:14):
I think there's something out there that's like, we're
trying to find something new.
We're trying to find, and it'snot just VR.
I think that's, I thinkeveryone's looking for this new
theater to play in.
So I think there is a lot of,Just existential sort of
thoughts about, you know, whatis it that I want to do cool
stuff, but what is, I want tobreak the mold, I want to do
(31:37):
something else, but where am Igoing?
And I think, I think there is,we're not really sure.
I don't think, I can't reallythink of, uh, that many
interactive, uh, Companies thatare like really, you know, on
the cutting edge or whatever youwant to call it of finding new
ways to interact with things.
Um, so yeah, I think it's, it'sgoing to take a little bit more
time.
I think, I think the AI thingprobably will be an interesting
(32:01):
way of playing around with crazyideas that you can get quickly.
I think maybe that's one of thebenefits of AI, uh, being able
to just toss in a prompt and seewhat it comes out and maybe be
surprised a little bit by that.
Um, some of that may help, butsome of it may just, you know,
produce, uh, UI just that lookslike everything else.
(32:22):
Uh, so I think there's, it cango a couple of different
directions.
Joachim (32:26):
I think, as you were saying, is just in terms of
tooling and inspiration, itseems like the AI would only be
useful for this effort.
When it goes wonky, right?
So instead of just pullingsomething, some representation
of something that is in itsmemory, it just mashes up
(32:46):
something completely wrong.
And then that becomes.
Nate (32:49):
AI hallucination.
Joachim (32:51):
So, back to the earlier idea that it's actually the
wonky brokenness of somethingthat can be the friction that
gets you the innovative spiritmoving forwards.
Nate (33:02):
There's a whole idea of like the, the Japanese, is, the
idea that these broken vesselsthat, you know, they mend it
with gold and it becomessomething completely new, and
the sort of brokenness of itwas, you know, not to get too
philosophical here, but that'swhat made it this unique thing.
Um, and yeah, it's somethingthey're willing to tap into, an
idea of that.
(33:22):
Yeah, and I think that you hadmentioned to me the idea of
Bauhaus, what, how that affecteddesign and what we think,
because I think to a certainextent, the modern way of
thinking about design in anyterms really had a fundamental
basis in Bauhaus and how theyapproached a lot of their
things, that sort of minimalismthing, which was a response to
(33:43):
the previous culture of the ArtNouveau work.
ornate everything.
And I think that they had thatidea of form follows function.
That was their sort of principlefor everything, that the form
follows what this is.
So it's a chair, and, but it's,the form follows that.
And I think we've kind offlipped that now, the function
follows the form is a little bitof how we're thinking about it
(34:05):
now in terms of, How we thinkabout websites,
Joachim (34:08):
I think early PC design highlights the highly
constrained nature of graphicsand how you, how can you create
a meaningful user interface withvery few pixels to represent
anything.
Um, so, you know, but that's onewhere the design had to match.
the function of this machine.
Nate (34:28):
there's another thing that you're bringing up with, uh, uh,
constraints.
And I think that's what a lot ofart is about, is what are the
constraints that I have withthis, and how do I, how do I go
up against those constraints?
I think with, again, the Flashthing, don't need to be that the
theme, but it was like, that wasa constraint at the time.
Websites look really terrible.
(34:48):
How can we make this, open thisup?
You know, we made Flash.
It sucked.
You know, it, it was amazingwith certain things, but it
sucked a lot of battery out ofthese things and we had to
reinvent something from it.
And I think it's, there was aquote, a friend of mine was
talking about like, he wastalking about artistry.
He was like, you know, and ofcourse he, he was talking about
football as in soccer, howeveryou want to say it.
(35:11):
But he was like, you know, It'sthe whole art of the game is the
constraints.
You have this perimeter that youhave to stay within, but
whatever happens within thatthing, you can do whatever you
want.
You can make whatever artistry,whatever creative things you
want to do, but you have to havethese constraints to you.
And I think that's where wenowadays, I think as interaction
(35:32):
designers, we get.
A little bit, uh, fearful ofthat stuff.
It's like, there isn't anyconstraints.
I can just do whatever I want.
And okay, I'll just use Googlematerial design for this,
because that's just the easiest,I don't have that much time, so
I'm just going to plop inmaterial design and use that for
all of my widgets on my, mything.
And I think that's, uh, thoseare, those are one type of
(35:55):
constraints, but it's just, youknow, it's, yeah.
I don't know.
Is it the right constraints thatwe need to have?
And people just getting tired ofsomething, you know, like the
the dating app Tinder, you know,it's like, Hey, I don't want to
have a selector box for all ofthese people.
I'm just gonna swipe like what'show do I do?
Like, maybe that's a better wayto do it.
Or, you know, tick tock.
It's like, Hey, I don't want tojust have this infinite scroll
(36:16):
of things, infinite scroll in adifferent way.
Yeah, there, there are thingsthat come up every now and then
that do sort of break break howwe do things a little bit.
Um, but I think it is probablypeople just getting tired of the
same old, same old.
And I think there is just adesigner there just said, Hey,
I, I want to do thingsdifferently.
Let's mix it up.
(36:37):
And everyone else is like, yeah,let's do it.
Joachim (36:40):
Related to this, like the interactions and flipping
things around.
I'm seeing a little bit more inthe ether of the internet, a
little bit more of this appealto focus.
And.
limitations.
And a website that comes to mindis daft social.
I can't remember if it'ssomething that we've talked
about here, but daft social is asocial network that is
(37:05):
antisocial.
Uh, and the only way you caninteract with it is via your
email.
So you, you, you sign up for anaccount, you get a URL, just
like any other place you canimagine with a user handle.
And then all you can do is sendan email to a unique email
(37:25):
address that's yours.
You have to keep that secret ifyou want to control your page.
But once you have that emailaddress, you just send an email,
which the content of the emailis irrelevant.
It has to all sit in the subjectheading.
So if you want to writesomething, you have to write it
in the subject.
If you want to post an image,you put the URL for the image in
(37:48):
the subject.
And then you send this email andthat's it.
You go to your page and it's allthere.
There's no likes, there's nodirect sharing, there's no
interactivity at all.
If you want to see someoneelse's daft social feed, you
have to know their username.
It's such a shocking experience,because we're used to having the
(38:12):
hamburger menu with the home,and the feed, and the settings,
and the profile, and the blurb,and you need to do this, and,
um, it's kind of incredible tobe confronted with something
that is so restricted.
Maybe do we want more of thatNate?
Do we want more stuff like that?
Is that the future or is it?
Is it something else?
Like, I don't know, you know,that that's kind of
Nate (38:34):
Yeah, I mean, I think again, the world has changed
quite a lot from, you know, whenwe had that experimental thing
where everything was cool oreverything was different and
wild, wild west of things.
And yeah, I mean, now it's justa different world.
And when was the last time anyof us downloaded an app or when
was the last time we visited awebsite that was something
different?
Ernest (38:55):
What what, history suggests is that, you know, as
challenging as this time isright now, like Nate, you spoke
about how there've been so manylayoffs.
There's a lot of people who are,you know, having a tough time
finding work as well.
Um, but I think history suggeststhat it's in these sorts of
moments that, you know, excitingchanges do happen.
(39:16):
But, um, I think that there isthis moment of great opportunity
now, where the, I don't thinkwe're alone in feeling so
dissatisfied with the state ofuser experience.
Um, and so I think there is thisgreat, uh, moment of, um, you
(39:37):
know, where I think we are goingto start to see some changes,
you know, maybe it hasn't quitehappened yet, but.
It does feel like that sort of amoment of sort of stasis where
now, then we're going to startto see changes.
Like, you know, back in the daywhen, uh, a young company called
Nike approached this no, no nameagency called Wyden and Kennedy,
you know, agencies were wellestablished.
(39:58):
It wasn't as though Wyden andKennedy was some new thing.
But they just brought a muchmore authentic approach to the
world of advertising that hadbecome really stayed, you know,
and these newer companies likeNike back then, um, that's
exactly what they were lookingfor.
So it feels like there's thatsort of an opportunity now in a
one, a one side I came acrossrecently that sort of sparked
(40:22):
that feeling for me in a way.
Was this, uh, it's actually aPortland based apparel, outdoor
apparel brand.
And I believe you pronounce itnewer.
But it's spelled, uh, G N U H R.
I will provide, you know, linksto all this in the show notes.
But it reminded me so much ofthese old school, kind of like,
um, I don't know if you ever hadever seen cheapcds.
(40:44):
com or, um, very text basedwebsites, but it just has such
an attitude.
You know, it says, We're this,and if you don't like it, then F
off, go away, you know.
This is how, how we're going tobe.
And if you like it, then you'regoing to love it, you know, and
we're here for you.
(41:06):
And I, I really hope we see moreof that.
Um, and I think there is ahunger for that.
obviously the big brands aren'tgoing to go there, at least not
for a long time.
But I do feel like there's a lotof these entrepreneurs now
starting up businesses who wantto be more than just clones of,
uh, the last generation ofdirect to consumer businesses.
(41:27):
So as challenging as it mightseem, I guess I'd say, I do feel
like we're on the cusp of some,some new things, bluffs
blossoming.
I mean, maybe I'm being toonaive,
Nate (41:38):
I, I actually, as whatever I said before, I agree because I
do feel like we are, our cultureis yearning for something else.
And I think those are themoments when something comes
out.
And I think as I've even justsome of those interfaces I
talked about, like tick tocktended, those companies were
very much rewarded with doingsomething innovative, changing
(42:00):
things up.
So I think companies do, theyare rewarded with trying these
risks.
And I think it's this idea thatwe need to keep as a designer,
we need to keep Not just doingthe first thing that comes up,
the first thing that works, butactually what we call the
explore the mild to wild.
And I think we're going to,people will see something wild
(42:20):
and they'll be like, Hey, thisis amazing.
Let's do it.
And I think that's, we need tojust keep telling ourselves
like, Hey, pause.
Take a break, go for a walk.
And, and that's, I think that'swhen you come up with just kind
of crazy, good ideas.
And I think that's where we dohave to jump out of those agile
modes of just checking the boxesof, okay, this is what this task
(42:44):
is done.
And just sort of pause and say,okay, what am I doing?
How can I make this work?
Great.
And I think we will get to that.
I think it's just that, thatdarkness just before the dawn,
maybe, that we're, we'rethinking in right now.
So, we have to believe in thepower of design to change the
world, is what we always aretold.
So, I think it will happen.
Joachim (43:06):
okay, now the counterpoint to the old man
talk.
I wonder if when we see this newthing, it will be not appealing
to us.
You know, it will be somethingthat will be off putting.
And I was thinking about this inthe context of just slang and
language that has evolvedseparately now from, from me.
(43:27):
I don't, I don't understand alot of things.
I just learned what Riz is.
So now I know that's charisma.
So that's something.
And then Skippity Toilet.
And it's horrifying.
It's such a horrif It's scary.
you know, maybe that is what thefuture of all of this stuff
looks like.
And that actually is the thingthat's gonna push us to the next
(43:49):
level.
There is this stuff that is justso fundamentally difficult for
us to wrap our head around, butfor the next generation of
people, they're saying, this isour vocabulary.
This is the set of tools thatwe're going to be using.
And this is how we're going tocommunicate pretty deep
thoughts, but in a way thatisn't immediately obvious to
you.
And so you just have to learnthe language.
And once you've learned thelanguage, you'll appreciate what
(44:09):
we're doing here.
You'll understand that there'ssomething of value.
So, I, I, I wonder if that's thecase.
Nate (44:15):
And maybe, maybe we're thinking about it too much in a
way, uh, because I do feel likethere is a, the youth are going
back to the different ways ofinteracting.
And I think that's like thephysical things, you know, LP
vinyl sales are skyrocketing nowbecause people want something
more tangible.
They want to put their hands onsomething.
And the same thing I think aboutthis all the time when I, you
(44:36):
know, I changed the volume on mySonos app or some, or my Sonos
system, which is a different UIBut it's, it's just really
annoying to bring out my phone,flip on which speaker do I want
to change the volume of andswipe on the app.
And it's just, it's frustrating.
And it was just like, I wouldmuch rather get up, walk over to
(44:57):
that speaker or wherever andturn up the volume.
And I think these are thingswe've just gotten out of control
with digital, everything.
Um, where I think physicalinterfaces are much better.
You're finding that with cars,too.
I think you guys have probablytalked about that before, that
physical interfaces with carsare much better than
touchscreens.
So I think there is going to besome balancing of all of this
(45:20):
nonsense, I think, uber digitalthings that is happening.
Um, but yeah, I think it takes alittle bit of, and the physical
aspect takes money.
So I think you do, it takesmoney to make dials.
It takes money to do thosethings.
And I think, but we will, Ithink we will come back to a
happy medium in the future.
And I think that will solve someof our, uh, terrible interaction
(45:43):
experiences that we're havingthese days.
Ernest (45:45):
actually, that, that, that might be a good segue to,
um, something we haven't beendoing recently, which is
recommendations.
I'm just curious if Nate,there's anything that, whether
it's a product or a digitalexperience, or work of art that
you've encountered that's reallyinspired you recently,
Nate (46:02):
Um, okay.
This shows my dad ness, um, andYoakim has probably heard me
talk about this before, but I'mvery much into my three year
old's Yoto.
Uh, Y O T O is the name.
Actually made by PentagramStudios, or at least a lot of
the design was done by them.
Um, but it is a fantasticphysical, device for playing
(46:27):
music and, uh, my kid, even whenshe was two, could grab a little
card and put it in there andjust, it plays whatever is on
that card and, uh, they did thelo fi thing where it has a
little screen but it's a, uh, 16by 16 pixel grid, uh, there's
nothing else, it's just a 16 by16 pixels for each track.
(46:49):
And so she can sort of scrollthrough each track by track with
just a little icon and get that,uh, that music playing.
And I think the best part is, isI can actually create my own
playlist of whatever I want herto listen to and make a track
and put a little icon in there.
And it's just, it's fun for herto sort of, uh, Yeah, have even
our own books that we read, uh,to her or whatever on there.
(47:12):
And it's, it's a, it's a reallygreat physical, digital blended
product that again, dad pointsfor this, right?
So,
Joachim (47:20):
Oh, I gave it such a bad, that was my anti
recommendation like a fewepisodes ago, but, and I, at the
time, I actually was convincedthat we were going to send it
back and we still have it.
Um, and I have to say, asidefrom the very, very annoying,
(47:40):
uh, Wi Fi setup and the ideathat I needed to have an
account.
Um, Because I've somewhatneglected the device and just
let my children interact withit, it's proven to be a very
useful thing.
And like you said, children havea really easy time with it.
And so we've not had any troublewith the cloud.
(48:02):
I have strong issues with all ofthat.
That's a separate thing.
Um, but You are right.
That, that, that it has theright amount of tactile
experience and knobs and, andthe knobs are really, they
click, they give a good click,they give a really good click.
So big, you know, fidgety kids'hands, they can feel that click
(48:26):
as they're cycling throughstuff.
It's, it has been, it's a, it isa well-designed device.
I still want it to beself-contained without all of
the wifi.
given that it's now at home andit's connected up.
Um, yeah, my children also doenjoy using it, but I was, yeah.
Nate (48:43):
I'm, I'm finding new, new ways to work with it myself.
Cause I think there's, as again,as a digital designer, I'm very
cognizant of the time thatpeople spend on screens.
And honestly, I would like topeople to spend less time on
screens, and I think that's thething where recently I've been
taking episodes of shows thatmaybe she's watched and I've
downloaded the audio and thenI'll put that on the card.
(49:07):
And it was quite amazing to seesomething that she had watched
and kind of became a zombie tothat.
Whenever I put that as an audiobook, she would actually get up
and start dancing to something.
And I thought, what is it aboutthe screen that makes it that
sucks us in as a creature?
content thing, but when you makeit an audio thing experience, it
becomes a little bit more, uh,you're engaged with the world
(49:29):
around you and it makes you dowant to get up and dance.
And I thought, hey, this was anice little twist that we've,
uh, but of course now she justwants to listen to episodes like
at the breakfast table oranything, which is, you know,
give and take a little bit here,so.
Joachim (49:44):
that's an interesting point.
You're right.
There's something about audiothat allows us to pro we're able
to process sound and do otherthings at the same time.
Visual things are just too much,too much processing power goes
into that.
So it is possible to multitaskwith audio.
Um, so is there something inthat?
Should we be thinking aboutaudio as a, as a more powerful
(50:07):
medium for interaction and, andcontrolling stuff?
I, I
Nate (50:12):
Well, you have, what's, what is it about staring off
into a blank, blankly staringoff into space that lets you
sort of, I mean, maybe it letsyour brain work in a different
way to just, uh, stare off, and
Joachim (50:25):
I guess your inner, your inner eye takes over,
right?
And then the imagination can,can run a little bit freer, but
even reading doesn't feel likesuch an absorbing experience.
It's something about screen withmovement and the world.
It's, Maybe it does tap intoyour brain thinking, no, you're,
you're out there in the worldstill.
Ernest (50:45):
Uh, Joachim, is there anything that you want to
recommend?
Joachim (50:48):
Wait, there was something.
Uh, did you have something,Ernest?
You, I bet you do.
Ernest (50:53):
Uh, yeah, I could, uh, give you a minute to think
Joachim (50:55):
You should go first, I need a second.
Yeah,
Ernest (50:58):
we just this weekend saw this film called A Different
Man.
I'm not sure if either of youhave heard of this.
It's a pretty small film, uh,being distributed by A24.
directed by a person named AaronSkimberg, who I hadn't heard of
before.
It was written and directed byAaron Skimberg.
Uh, I won't, it's almost toodifficult to explain, um,
(51:19):
anything about it, so I won'teven try.
But what I was really interestedin was the extent to which, kind
of like you, you were alludingto just a minute ago, Joachim,
that So much of my experience ofthe film was a function of my
reaction to it.
There was, obviously there's thetext of the film, the story,
(51:40):
but, um, it is so much aboutprovoking a response from the
viewer.
And I think your experience ofthe film will really depend on
your reactions and, you know,the different, um, ways that you
respond to those provocations.
My, my, I saw it with my wifeand she hated it and I
(52:00):
absolutely loved it.
And I can't stop thinking aboutit more than anything I've seen
in quite a while, because itjust, without being didactic, it
really forces you to questionyour own assumptions and values,
I guess, and presumptions and,um, in a way that is It's
(52:22):
sometimes really funny,sometimes really dark, but, um,
it's just so interesting andkind of, of a piece of this
whole conversation.
So not like the standardHollywood fair.
It's, you know, like if youcould find the exact opposite of
a Marvel film, this is probablyit.
Although funnily enough, it'sstar Sebastian Stan who plays
(52:42):
the, um, the winter soldier inthe, uh, several of the Marvel
films in a role like, you know,you've never seen him in before.
He's, and he's really good init.
So, um, yeah.
You might hate it, but I wouldreally recommend a different
man.
Nate (52:58):
And, and actually A24, it's like, I think they're using
a little bit of that model thatwe probably need, which is, hey,
some of these are, things aregoing to fail, but some of these
things are going to be amazing.
And I think they've reallysucceeded in the past few years
at throwing out these films thatjust really take
Ernest (53:15):
That's a great shout.
Yeah.
Joachim (53:17):
Yeah, that's actually true.
We actually, this is, well,maybe it's a recommendation, but
it is the movie, uh, I Saw theTV Glow, which is
Ernest (53:24):
Oh, yeah.
Joachim (53:25):
um, movie of a very strange, retro, creepy film that
is really about, uh, alienationand not, not fitting in and
feeling like you're not livingthe right life, but also
incredibly creepy.
I would say it's.
somewhat lynchian, like a DavidLynch vibe to it, um, but it's
(53:50):
a, it's a strange one, butagain, like it's A24.
So we're used to this idea ofthem being divisive or a little
bit controversial or hard towrap your head around.
Um, But actually, myrecommendation is something
pretty, it's pretty, it's notthat, I find, I think it has
such broad appeal without beingdumb but it's a book by Michiko
(54:13):
Aoyama, and the book's calledWhat You Are Looking for is in
the Library and And it's, themain idea behind it is about
people going to their locallibrary, encountering a
librarian who gives themrecommendations for specific
(54:35):
topics they're interested in.
And then she always sneaks in anextra book at the end of her
recommendations that she thinkswould somehow resonate with this
person.
And she also gives them a littlefelt like souvenir.
So someone will get a littleairplane that she's made by
felting or someone will get, uh,oh man, I forgot the other
(55:00):
items, but so she gives them alittle trinket.
and an extra book recommendationthat they don't ask for.
And then the person goes off andthey're obviously facing some
sort of challenge, um, and this,the recommendation is just
right.
But what's interesting about thebook is that it's, it's actually
(55:21):
also a defense of books and it'sa defense of, it's kind of
making the case that books arejust so necessary, like the art
of it is necessary and we needto just have this in the world.
And.
We need to expand our definitionof what is valuable.
We have to expand our definitionof.
what society is, and this bookbuilds a really sweet, very
(55:45):
straightforward picture, but itis also just very heartwarming.
So it's a book that I recommend.
And it's very, it's a vignettebased thing, but each vignette
is somehow building to a verysubtle Japanese crescendo.
So it's more like a whisper, butit's very, very, uh, it's very
compelling.
So I would, I would recommendthat book.
(56:06):
I picked that book up as a totalfluke.
I was just in the localbookstore.
There are various things on theshelves that look compelling and
this was right at the checkoutand My wife was saying, did you
want to buy a book?
I paNateed and I grabbed thatone because the cover looked
good and it was Japanese.
I'm like that, maybe this isgoing to be okay.
It was a good choice.
(56:26):
It worked out.
So I would recommend that bookas a, as a light read.
I read it in a couple of days.
It's one of those that's just soeasy to read, but still has
enough depth to it, where itlingers in your mind.
It's not just one of those,like, it's not just a page
turner or a Jack Reacher novel,which has its place in the
world.
And there is great art in that.
(56:47):
I will defend.
Jack Reacher books all the wayto the end of time.
But, um, yeah, that, that's onethat's been on my mind recently.
Ernest (56:55):
Oh, that's awesome.
That's a good one.
All right.
Well, I think that does it forus.
Nate, thank you so much onceagain for joining us on Learn
Make Learn.
Where can listeners follow youor find more of your work?
Nate (57:07):
Oh, good question.
You can find me at nategrubbs.
com.
Ernest (57:11):
That's nice and
Joachim (57:12):
Nice.
Ernest (57:13):
And we'll, we'll provide a link as well, just in case,
uh, for, for spelling.
But, um, thank you again, Nate.
And to those listening, thankyou for joining us here at Learn
Make Learn.
As always, we want to hear fromyou.
So please send any questions orfeedback to learnmakelearn at
gmail.
com or shoot us a note onthreads at Learn Make Learn
(57:33):
show, all one word.
Thanks for listening.
And we hope you'll join us forthe next Learn Make Learn.
Hello and welcome to learn, make, learn, where we
share qualitative andquantitative perspectives on
products to help you makebetter.
My name is Ernest Kim and I'mjoined by my friend and co host
Joachim Groeger.
Hey Joachim, how's going?
Joachim (00:22):
I've already had a cocktail, so full, full
disclosure, I forgot we weredoing this tonight.
And then I had a cocktail, I hada cocktail, I was kicking back.
And then as I was sipping it, Iwas like, you know, something's
happening at eight o'clocktonight.
I'm so sure something'shappening at eight o'clock.
Anyway, I'm so sorry.
Ernest (00:39):
Oh, no,
Joachim (00:40):
I'm totally fine.
But you know, I'm just.
In the interest of fulltransparency of this podcast,
Ernest (00:46):
It's going to be,
Joachim (00:46):
thought I should share that.
Ernest (00:47):
learn, make, learn after dark.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,well, this is episode 23 and
today we're going to discussdesign primarily interface
design with our guest, NateGrubbs.
Now we've touched on the topicof design many times over the
course of our past 22 episodes,but this will be our first
opportunity to dig into thetopic with an expert
(01:09):
practitioner.
So.
Let's dive right in.
And Joachim, given yourrelationship with Nate, I'll
hand it over to you to get theconversation started.
Joachim (01:18):
Sounds good.
Well, we have Nate Grubbs here.
We're very excited.
This is our second guest on thepodcast and we get to talk about
design and specificallyinteraction design.
so I think we should just startwith the basics.
Um, and also we should just bevery, very clear that, the views
expressed here are ours, oursalone, nothing to do with our
employers.
(01:39):
Uh, so Nate, you're here as a,as an individual, not as a
representative of anything, asis Ernest and as am I..
So like, what's your story?
How did you get into interactiondesign and, uh, Yeah, what's the
journey?
Nate (01:52):
Yeah, so my name is Nate Grubbs.
I am a, let's see, productdesigner, interactive designer,
UX designer.
There's so many terms thrownaround these days that it does
get a little confusing, but, um,yeah, my background, you know,
it was used to just be kind ofgraphic design, um, kind of.
Did a lot of that withadvertising agencies, uh, moved
(02:14):
over to Amsterdam, found myselfinto doing product design, even
some physical, digital, blendedexperiences, um, and now I'm
back in Seattle, uh, workingwith a place called Teague, uh,
which likes to say that they'rethe first design consultancy,
born in a hundred years ago.
I've lots of consultancy designconsultancies backgrounds, if I
(02:36):
were to simplify it to a lot ofpeople, people ask me what I do,
it's often, you know, digitaldesign.
Joachim (02:42):
I think we talked about interaction design being like
the starting point for that.
So is it, is it, is it fair tosay that it is mostly like, The
interfaces that we interact witha computer system, is it the
design of a, of a surface that,that is connected to a computer
or how should we be thinkingabout this?
Nate (03:01):
Yeah, and I think maybe I'm probably speaking to the
mood of the industry, whichfeels like it's they're in a bit
of an existential crisis of whoare we as designers, because
there are people who came infrom a strictly visual
background.
You know, I just want to makethings look pretty.
I make websites look pretty.
I don't care about how to makethem or how they operate.
(03:21):
I just want to make.
Nice pictures and text onscreen.
That can be sometimes one camp.
There's another camp of peoplethat just love, you know,
getting the problem of athousand pages on a website or a
software application that'sextremely complicated and they
just like working with engineersand trying to figure out how to
(03:42):
make this usable for people.
How do we make this softwareeasy to use?
How do we make it so that it canwork for a consumer or work for
a professional?
That's more in the interactiondesign is typically in that more
kind of technical minded things.
Um, I think.
And then UX design was probablytrying to blend a little bit of
(04:04):
both the highly technicalwiring, with that visual
thinking, Hey, these thingsstill should look pretty.
And I think user experience kindof was born out of that.
Let's make it look pretty andusable at the same time.
Joachim (04:20):
Lots of little threads that we can pull on here for the
conversation, but I want tostart with kind of the first
conversation that we had.
In a coffee shop here inSeattle.
And we were just whining to beblunt.
Basically an episode of thispodcast, you know, why is design
kind of thoughtless where, whereare the people that are trying
(04:41):
to be innovative yet still servea customer need.
And then you brought up thisblog post by Alex Morrell.
the age of average, and itseemed to encapsulate a lot of
themes that I feel like arebothering us all in this room,
but also things that you have tocontend with every single day.
And just briefly, Alex Morrell'spiece on the age of average is
basically everything kind oflooks beige.
(05:03):
Now it's all merging into this.
middle, inoffensive kind ofspace.
And you had a phrase tosummarize this as well, Nate,
that I appreciate, which is likefor the, for the coffee shop
vibe, it's a Scandinavian stylecoffee shop, a little minimal
playing Khruangbin on thesoundtrack.
(05:24):
it's not offensive.
It's not terrible.
It's just kind of there but howdo you take this idea that
everything has kind of mergedinto this common beige massive?
Mediocrity.
Let's be really inflammatoryabout it.
Like, what's your take on all ofthat?
Nate (05:41):
You know, you know, I can, this is just full of, uh, hot
takes tonight, right?
where's, where's my cocktailhere?
but like, you know, I don't mindScandinavian design and, you
know, Khruangbin, it's, yeah,they're, they've had that vibe
that we all just need sometimes.
Joachim (05:57):
Yeah,
Nate (05:58):
And I, but I think it's just, um, yeah, is there
anything underneath this?
I think that's maybe one of thequestions we want to ask about
it, but I think there'ssomething else going on there.
None of those things are wrong,but it just feels like it's been
taken too far.
There was this authenticity ororiginality to it, but then it
just gets Recycled and recycledand recycled and recycled
(06:21):
because hey, that's what goodthings look like.
I'm starting a coffee shop.
It should look like this.
And I think that's where itstarts to feeling, feeling like
a little bit too, too much oryeah.
Where is the soul in all ofthis?
Joachim (06:36):
yeah, where is the soul and all of this?
And I guess that then is, that'sthe question that's top of my
mind when I think about aninteraction with a digital
system or a computer, like, doyou get the soul across?
How do you avoid falling intothe average way of thinking and
trying to actually get that?
Nate (06:56):
Well, I think it is.
It is a wide open question.
Um, I think that is a little bitof the soul searching that's
happening, um, because, youknow, again, maybe I'll bring
out not only the hot takes, butthe old man vibes where, uh,
back in my day, uh, no, I think,cause when I started, it was,
you know, fresh out of school.
I was doing, you know, went toan advertising agency because
(07:18):
that's where all the cool designwas going to be.
And, you know, people thatvalued this and, you know, And
at the time, this was early2000s, to age myself here, um,
and it was a very experimentaltime, you know, uh, we were
making Flash websites, which,you know, right before that, it
was literally people were makingrows and tables for their
(07:40):
websites.
And so it really was a, a mindbend to think of a new ways.
And I think with advertisingback then it was, you're
creating an experience.
You want to create an experiencefor a brand.
What's the mood, what's thetheme, what's the concept of our
website that we're going tomake.
And that was, you know, we stillthought of the content, but that
was almost.
at the forefront was like, Hey,what do we want people to come?
(08:03):
What do we want them to leavewith when they visited this
thing?
And it seems like it's justwe've gone down this route where
everything is a website,everything is an app, everything
is, you know, there's so manymore digital experiences now
that I think it's, you know, wein time is limited.
And we're Go back to function.
(08:23):
And, you know, just let's justmake this happen.
Let's make this work.
Let's ship this as fast as wecan.
And I think a lot of that, youknow, there's a lot of that
actually, at first, that wasinteresting to me, um, that sort
of puzzling of, Oh, hey, this islike, you know, it's doing that
design, but now it's got thispuzzle of how do I make all of
(08:43):
these things work together?
How do I make this a seamlessexperience?
And I think that's what firstdrew me into the interaction
side of things was to, you know,it was a puzzle.
It was like playing one ofthose, uh, games where, you
know, you kind of, you're doingthe action, and then all of a
sudden you get to this puzzlethat you have to figure out.
And I'm like, oh, this is fun.
I like this.
Um, but I think it just got alittle, maybe out of hand, you
(09:05):
know, just this focusing so muchon function that we kind of,
because I think even interactiondesigners like, oh, visual
design, they're not as, They'renot doing anything real, we're
doing the real work, they'rejust making things look pretty.
And I think it got a little bitlost of the sort of polarity of
design where one thought theother was better.
(09:26):
And yeah, I think we kind ofhave lost a little bit of this
holistic thinking about productsand what people want to get out
of that experience.
Joachim (09:36):
It's interesting that you say something that I don't
think happens very often, or wedon't even think about because
we're so surrounded by thesedigital experiences.
You're talking about the flashsites and asking the question,
what is the feeling that we wantthe person to leave and remember
when they've closed the page?
(09:57):
Which is a very different thingand mode that we're in right
now, which is just keep themlocked in, you know, binge,
binge, binge.
And it, you know, you never endthat experience going like, wow,
that was.
Mind altering or something, youknow, but thinking back to the
Flash stuff, And I hadn't Ichecked this out after you'd
mentioned this to me, but DonnieDarko, You had mentioned that
(10:19):
this was like a good example offlash design that was
experiential as opposed tofunctional.
It still did something whichhelped advertise the movie.
Nate (10:29):
actually hard to use even, I would say.
Joachim (10:32):
yeah.
But, Like, for those Flashwebsites, they still kind of
haunt me for being so unusable,but in a good way.
Does, is this even part of theconversation anymore or is it
just get him to do the thing,transact and let's move on?
Nate (10:46):
The short answer is no, it's not part of the
conversation anymore.
Um, um, and yeah, one of thethings I was thinking about, you
know, going back to that flashthing, you know, when I said it
was hard to use.
And that was actually some ofthe point when they made some of
these things.
They wanted you to click around.
They wanted you to, to, youknow, it was, they wanted it to
(11:07):
be difficult to find out whatthe content was.
It just made it even moreintriguing.
Um, and I even remember therewas a website, you know, it,
well, I was gonna say this stufffelt like art back then.
And I think even for myself, Iremember there was a time Again,
that, you know, early in mycareer, you know, maybe I, I
think I broke up with a girl orsomething and I just felt, you
(11:30):
know, I need to do somethingdifferent.
And I was like, I know I'm goingto quit my job.
I'm going to make this bestportfolio website ever, you
know, making it in flash.
And I had this concept that I,I, I.
Even to this day, I still, Ilike the concept.
I, I wanted this, I wanted, um,there's kind of, you know,
there's like this wallpaper, andyou could sort of click on this
(11:50):
thing, there's like a littlecrack in the wallpaper, and you
could click on it, and it wouldjust open up a little bit more,
and then eventually you wouldactually break a hole in the
wall, and everything else wouldjust fall away, and it would
just be like, Just the end ofthe website, like it's just your
experience just stopped.
And I think that's what I wantedpeople to get there and just be
like, Hey, it's done leave.
Joachim (12:11):
Oh,
Nate (12:12):
I think that's, that's the thing that we don't, we don't
think about in terms of withexperiences anymore.
It's not, you know, we think ofthat as cinema.
We think of that as, you know,I'm going to go to the movies.
I'm going to do this experience.
And our typical interactiondesign is very much just
function.
And, you know, If we have timeand if we have resources, we'll
(12:33):
try to make it look pretty atthe end of, end of the phase or
something like that.
And I think that's about theextent.
We don't, I don't think any ofus really think about our work
as art, uh, in terms of the waythat I feel like the design
industry maybe used to, to thinkabout, uh, their digital design.
Ernest (12:51):
I think too, that maybe part of it is, back in the early
days, it was so much more of a,an individual, a medium for
individual expression.
even if you're doing work for anagency, you often were working
in a pretty small team.
Maybe you were the onlydesigner, um, and you had a lot
of leeway, um, or if you'redoing your own personal site,
(13:13):
whereas today it's just becomesuch a.
commercialized medium.
Um, and so corporatized that nowif it's a site for any sort of a
brand, it's probably a ginormousteam of people working on it
across many different functionsthat didn't exist back in the
early days.
But something, um, I forget whosaid it, one of you mentioned,
(13:37):
uh, creativity, but going backeven further, this is like an
old fogey show, but, um, youknow, Pre webbed.
I don't know if either of yourecall this at all, but there
was this thing called Kai'sPower Tools.
Have you guys ever heard ofthis?
There were a set of plugins forPhotoshop and Corel Paint, I
(13:57):
think.
And they had just the craziestinterface.
It was like this super punk rocksort of It looks like, you know,
Swedish, uh, avant garde art,uh, that was created by this
German computer scientist namedKai.
Um, I forget his last name.
We'll, we'll share some infoabout this, but it was a really,
(14:19):
I remember this cause this iswhen I was coming up, just
starting out in design and I wasjust so blown away.
I thought it was terriblygarish, but it was so distinct,
had such a clear point of view.
And, um, it was introduced in1992.
Um, It no longer exists.
Uh, the company, um, got foldedinto Coral at some point, but,
(14:42):
um, I thought I'd share just acouple of quotes that kind of
spoke to why it was so specialfor people.
This first one comes from aperson who used it.
His name is Felix LaPointe.
This is from a blog post.
He said, what made Kai's powertools truly special was its
sense of innovation andexperimentation.
The plugins were not just tools.
They were a playground forcreative minds.
(15:03):
They encouraged you to try newthings, to break the rules, and
to explore the possibilities ofdigital art.
And I thought it was, I, it's agreat way to put it.
That's very much how I feltabout it too.
And then I'll just read youreally a quick quote from the
creator, Kai.
This is from an interview hedid, uh, with the Atlantic way
back in 1997.
And I, I think this is the partthat kind of, uh, Uh, something
(15:26):
one of you said kind of clickedwith this, but he said, um, uh,
the analogy I always use is thatof Sony's inventing the
camcorder.
All the movies of weddings andbabies are ludicrous if watched
under the guideline ofcinematography, but the
camcorder is not a shortcut toCitizen Kane.
In that sense, I do not like mytools to be approached as one
(15:47):
click art shortcuts to MonaLisa, but as beautiful aids for
playing with your own brain.
I just love that idea, and it'sjust the sort of thing that you
just don't see anymore, right?
I mean, like, this idea of, I'mjust going to put this tool out
here for you to play with.
Play with your own brain versusto get as many transactions as
possible.
Uh, you know, maximize my clickthrough rate or blah, blah,
(16:09):
blah.
And, you know, after I did sevenrounds of AB testing to, to get
to the right shade of blue.
Um, I mean, I guess this doessound a bit old fogey ish, but
it does feel like a lot of that,uh, more art driven approach to,
to this.
Space has been lost, but uh, I,I've not been a practitioner in
(16:30):
some time.
I'm just, it sounds like youhave experienced this as well,
though, Nate.
Nate (16:36):
Yeah.
And even when you were bringingup those plugins, I remember,
uh, early in, I was, I think Iwas still in school, but there
was something with illustrator,you know, illustrator is one of
these softwares that you candraw things in and there's some
glitch that if you inverted somepart of the thing, it would make
this crazy wild vector,geometric thing at the tails of
things.
And it was almost just.
(16:57):
I think they just messed up the,how it displayed, but people
started using this as sort ofthe style, and it was just these
really sharp triangles going allover the place, and it was
something I, you know, Ienjoyed, because it was the
trend that we were all doing.
And it was just a, it wassomeone screwing up, and I think
that's a little bit of the, the,things that we kind of miss
sometimes, is those happyaccidents, or those, those,
(17:19):
things that, uh, theimperfections that actually make
us who we are, and I think maybethat's even going back to that
original thought, it's like, Thecoffee shop.
It's like, it's too perfect.
And I think what's supposed tobe good is it's like, it's
supposed to be human.
It's supposed to be messed up.
It's supposed to be a little bitdirty.
It's supposed to be a little bitlike just not right or not, not
(17:43):
all put together.
And I think that's, that's maybespeaks to some of that, uh, idea
a little bit.
Joachim (17:49):
so interesting because it is, it's the exact opposite
of everywhere where we are.
No one's taking risks.
Maybe that's another way to putit.
Do you think everyone's justscared?
Nate, is everyone just scared offailing that this, this kind of,
especially in UX design, I findpeople are very, very careful.
And as Ernest was alluding tolike AB testing till you figure
(18:09):
out it's actually that blue thatwe want.
Uh, is it, is it that, that,that infiltration of the false.
precision that technology hasgiven, allowed us to lean on,
you know, we have these tools sowe can precisely identify it is,
but, but really we, we can't, ofcourse not.
It's a vibe that ultimately isthe thing that decides it.
(18:29):
So is it that the falseprecision or is it just general
conservatism?
Like we're too scared to trysomething.
The stakes are too high.
What, what is your sense ofthat?
Nate (18:41):
I do think that there is a lot of things to be afraid of.
I felt like maybe that's just anelement of our time and, uh,
Where we are in the history ofeverything, really, that fear is
a motivating factor for a lot ofpeople in lots of different
ways.
I think it also depends on whereyou work.
I mean, I think if you'reworking for big tech
(19:03):
corporations or even just bigorganizations in general versus
a small consultancy, you know,they're all going to think of
things differently.
It's also about your companyculture and trust.
Like do your bosses trust thatyou're going to get this work
done?
And I think that's.
Some things that is easy to getlost, um, that your project
managers don't trust that you'regoing to get this done.
(19:24):
Um, and, you know, because itis, it is something you have to
communicate really well withyour project managers.
I mean, even myself, I'm stilllearning how to tell my project
manager, Hey, I know this iswhat you want from me today, but
I am going to have that, but Ineed to explore this first.
It's going to take me this muchtime to do it.
And it gets into that, this isone of the thoughts I was
(19:46):
thinking about, like, we'vegotten so much into this.
I don't know if you guys knowthe agile or scrum mentalities
about how we work, you know,it's, you know, let's just break
everything down into tasks andassign those tasks to people.
And, we have these sprints thatwe have a two week sprint that
we're going to get everythingdone.
These amount of tasks done forthis sprint and this time.
(20:07):
but I think there is times whereyou really have to pause and
say, Hey, is this useful?
Um, where is this going?
I need to pause and think what'sthe bigger experience that I'm
making right now.
And I think a lot of people justdon't have that either time to
do that, or especially as adesigner, it's either, um, You
(20:29):
may not even have the agency.
you may be earlier in yourcareer and you don't want to
stop the stop the flow ofeverything happening to bring up
your concern about something.
There's just there's a lot ofthings to be worried about as a
designer.
Um, so I think there's thosethings.
And I think, um, you know,obviously companies is.
(20:49):
want product shipped quickly,clients want their work done in
an efficient manner and theydon't want to feel like they're
wasting their budgets on hiringanother consultancy to do that.
And so, yeah, so I think thereis a, this tendency to, if you
just put it simply just to playit safe and Hey, maybe I can't.
Do this cool thing this time,but next time, next time I'll
(21:13):
have that opportunity.
Um, and then you have that fearof, hey, what if there isn't the
next time, maybe my whole careeris just gonna be doing these
boring things.
And so, yeah, so I think, Imean, I think there is things to
be afraid of, but you know, Idon't think we need to let that
stop us as a designer.
(21:33):
Um, so.
You know, I was trying to thinkabout this as in terms of like,
well, what, what do I do as adesigner for this?
I mean, I think it's alwaysabout trying to collect as much
of your own inspiration fromoutside sources.
You know, it's always, Hey, whatdid I see someone else do?
Especially when it comes to likeinnovation, there's lots of talk
(21:54):
of this.
Um, uh, I forget the term forit, but I like kind of a lateral
market.
Like it's, it's kind of similarto our market, a near market,
maybe is the term.
So it's like, Oh, what are thesethings?
What are they doing?
And how can we apply that in adifferent way to our market,
which does bring about some newchange?
so I think there is things ofjust keeping your eyes open.
(22:15):
I think you also have to leaninto your own personal
interests.
what is it that you Love and howcan you bring that to the table
with what you do?
And I think if you work withtrusting managers or you have a
relationship with the peoplethat you work with They will
give you that space to do that.
i've been told by my bosses tosay hey Yeah, if you think
(22:35):
something can be donedifferently, yeah, spend half a
day thinking about that.
I mean, don't spend a whole weekon it, but, but do give yourself
some space to think about how wecan do this differently.
We want to do that.
We want to think about thisdifferently.
But I feel like I am at a placewhere I, I am given that sort of
that, uh, space One more thingon the, the, the perfection
(22:58):
element, I was thinking aboutthis in terms of like, denim,
you know, when you buy denim,it's, you know, it's stiff, it's
clean, it's like, everythingthat, you know, oh, just wear it
a while, and it's gonna getbetter, and you know, those best
jeans are the things that areworn, in the right places.
And I think we've got like thisreverse thing where it's like,
(23:19):
let's try to strip all of thatand try to get it as stiff as
possible because that's what itshould look like on the shelf
sort of thing.
Ernest (23:27):
You know, one of the things that's given me some hope
because I think there's a lot ofreason to be a little bit
depressed about the state ofdesign and digital design.
But one of the things that'sgiven me some hope is the
discourse around Nike.
And again, like Joachim said,all of this is, uh, our own
opinions doesn't reflect thoseof our employers.
It's also none of this is insideinformation, but, uh, just
(23:48):
referencing a lot of the writingaround Nike that's, uh, been
published in the past few monthsas Nike's been going through
some struggles.
One of the most biting.
Uh, pieces that has beenreferenced quite a bit was from
a former brand person at Nikeand I forget his name, but we'll
provide a link to this piece.
But one of the things hementioned was that Nike spent
(24:09):
too much time focusing on thethings they could measure and
instead of the things theyshould measure.
Um, and.
And I've been excited to see theextent to which even these, you
know, very conservativefinancial publications like the
Wall Street Journal andBloomberg have been focused on
the fact that Nike hasn't beenspending enough time on its
brand.
(24:29):
You know, they've been focusedtoo much on transactions.
So that was kind of exciting tosee that, Oh, actually there is
a recognition that there needsto be a balance that, um, you
can't just be too, you know,Just so singularly focused on
transactions and, um, and thenumbers, if you want to be a
(24:50):
brand like a Nike, um, that, youknow, has historically been
known for innovation.
So I guess that that's given mesome hope that even in the kind
of business space, people aretalking about things like that.
Joachim (25:02):
What you were saying on this has got me thinking as
well, because you mentioned thatthe idea that Nike got obsessed
with focusing on things that itcould measure as opposed to
things that it couldn't measure,uh, and whether, and, and
whether it's measuring the rightthings.
So how do you convince someoneto do something new when it's
not been measured and is nolonger measurable?
In a conservative environment, Ifind that that's essentially
(25:25):
impossible, right?
Nike has the benefit of havingbeen such a strong brand.
It had strong vibes, strongfeelings attached to it.
So it can always go back andreturn to that overarching.
feeling that it gave people,right?
Of possibility, potential,fulfilling that potential.
(25:46):
Um, but in the user interactiondomain, if you're doing it for a
new company or a new client, howdo you even capture that type of
magic?
Is that still, is that somethingthat can be done or is it just
Also, maybe this is something todo with the tooling that we, we
have now, like everyone uses thesame tools.
So every, if you go to athousand consultancies, they're
(26:08):
all gonna give you some figma ofworkflow, and then that's gonna
not be the mockup of the app andeveryone's using the same
typefaces.
And so you're picking betweenthat blue, that blue or that
blue with that button or thatbutton or that one, which is the
same button.
But um, so the question isreally, again, like this
inherent conservatism.
How do you find.
the little space that's therethat you can actually push the
(26:31):
boundaries or something.
Like, we can't do the stuff thatwe used to do.
What, what do you do in thisspace now?
Like, what can you do?
Nate?
Nate (26:42):
I think sometimes you do have to seek out as a designer,
you have to seek out the placesthat you want to be and what you
want to do.
And, you know, Take theopportunities that you have to
do something challenging.
Um, I know for myself, I'vealways tried to find, I mean,
I've had the luxury of beingable to, to, you know, laser
(27:04):
focus where I want to work, youknow, and just, if I don't get
in the first time, I try anothertime to get into a place and,
uh, being able to just talk topeople and talk about the things
that I like and, you know, Opendoors through just, having
similar interests to people and,and having that trust.
And I think what I'm trying tosay with that is building the
trust with these people that youmay work with and saying, Hey,
(27:25):
yeah, this is, this is the timeto do it.
And I think even there's, um,the place I'm at now and the
previous company is that, um,they would say, Hey, you know,
if you want, if this is theproject that you want to knock
out of the ballpark, then do it,go for it.
Like, cause I think we have.
Some agency, we have some, uh,the client trusts us to do this.
(27:48):
So if you want to do something,try it.
And when my last place, Iremember, uh, there was a
company.
I was like, yeah, this is theone I'm going to, it was like a
smart thermostat and I was like,I'm going to make this amazing.
And I think me and anotherdesigner just went.
all out with just these bizarreout of just crazy ideas, just
(28:08):
thinking, you know, something'sgoing to hit here.
And I think we did thispresentation and they're just
like, okay, cool.
Um, we were just looking forsome ideas for this thing they
were doing.
They were actually still doinggreat stuff, but it just, I
think, you know, we sometimes,yeah, you, you have to fail
sometimes you have to mess up.
You have to be willing to takethat risk a little bit.
(28:30):
Um, and I think there was,there's a great.
Quote, um, I don't know how muchyou know about, uh, old, uh,
graphic designers.
Again, bringing in the old man,people, old person vibes here.
These people are older than me,but, uh, uh, there's a couple of
designers, David Carson and, uh,Paula Scher, which are ones that
really influenced a lot of, uh,my thinking about this.
(28:54):
But I remember Paula Scher gavea talk a while ago that was
talking about like, um, How to,what you call it, serious play,
uh, how do, basically, like, howdo you be a novice at something
again?
How do I take everything I knowand throw it out the window and
just start over again?
And she talks about this timewhere she was given an
(29:14):
architecture project to dographics for it, and she just
said, You know, I don't know therules of architecture.
I'm just gonna do whatever Iwant to do.
I'm gonna put graphics on thefloor.
I'm gonna wrap them around thewall.
Just do whatever I want.
And it was, it was a huge momentfor her to sort of, uh, take
this risk, do something crazy.
and to learn from thatexperience.
(29:35):
And I think that was a lot ofwhat she, um, yeah, a lot of,
uh, yeah, the ways that shethought about these things.
I was actually trying to findthis quote, uh, from her.
It was, uh, this funny thinghappened.
I found I was no longer at play,but in the solemn landscape of
fulfilling an expectation, whichwas not where I started, that's
(29:56):
a terrifying factor because itmeans that all that's left for
you is to go back and find outwhat the next thing is.
is that you can push, that youcan invent, that you can be
ignorant about, that you canfail with, because in the end,
that's how you grow.
And that's how that's all thatmatters.
Um, there's just so many thingsabout it because she calls it a
(30:18):
serious play.
It's just, you know, you're justserious about going out there
trying something new.
And, uh, I mean, yeah, and shetalks about When we start
recycling the thing that worked,uh, that's when we get into this
path where we keep recycling init, and it just takes everything
out of what was playful in thefirst place.
(30:39):
And I think maybe that goes backto what we were talking about as
well, but maybe that's aroundabout question, answer to
your question there.
Joachim (30:45):
No, that, that's, that's, that's it.
That is really the the heart ofit, isn't it?
Is that the willingness to takea risk to, and then as you said,
the very scary thing is kind of.
To fail, which is very scarything to confront when you're
trying to push it.
That then that gets me thinkinglike, out there, Nate?
Who is pushing the boundariesor, put another way, if you had
(31:08):
carte blanche, what would itmean?
What would you be doing?
What were the directions youwould want to push into?
Nate (31:14):
I think there's something out there that's like, we're
trying to find something new.
We're trying to find, and it'snot just VR.
I think that's, I thinkeveryone's looking for this new
theater to play in.
So I think there is a lot of,Just existential sort of
thoughts about, you know, whatis it that I want to do cool
stuff, but what is, I want tobreak the mold, I want to do
(31:37):
something else, but where am Igoing?
And I think, I think there is,we're not really sure.
I don't think, I can't reallythink of, uh, that many
interactive, uh, Companies thatare like really, you know, on
the cutting edge or whatever youwant to call it of finding new
ways to interact with things.
Um, so yeah, I think it's, it'sgoing to take a little bit more
time.
I think, I think the AI thingprobably will be an interesting
(32:01):
way of playing around with crazyideas that you can get quickly.
I think maybe that's one of thebenefits of AI, uh, being able
to just toss in a prompt and seewhat it comes out and maybe be
surprised a little bit by that.
Um, some of that may help, butsome of it may just, you know,
produce, uh, UI just that lookslike everything else.
(32:22):
Uh, so I think there's, it cango a couple of different
directions.
Joachim (32:26):
I think, as you were saying, is just in terms of
tooling and inspiration, itseems like the AI would only be
useful for this effort.
When it goes wonky, right?
So instead of just pullingsomething, some representation
of something that is in itsmemory, it just mashes up
(32:46):
something completely wrong.
And then that becomes.
Nate (32:49):
AI hallucination.
Joachim (32:51):
So, back to the earlier idea that it's actually the
wonky brokenness of somethingthat can be the friction that
gets you the innovative spiritmoving forwards.
Nate (33:02):
There's a whole idea of like the, the Japanese, is, the
idea that these broken vesselsthat, you know, they mend it
with gold and it becomessomething completely new, and
the sort of brokenness of itwas, you know, not to get too
philosophical here, but that'swhat made it this unique thing.
Um, and yeah, it's somethingthey're willing to tap into, an
idea of that.
(33:22):
Yeah, and I think that you hadmentioned to me the idea of
Bauhaus, what, how that affecteddesign and what we think,
because I think to a certainextent, the modern way of
thinking about design in anyterms really had a fundamental
basis in Bauhaus and how theyapproached a lot of their
things, that sort of minimalismthing, which was a response to
(33:43):
the previous culture of the ArtNouveau work.
ornate everything.
And I think that they had thatidea of form follows function.
That was their sort of principlefor everything, that the form
follows what this is.
So it's a chair, and, but it's,the form follows that.
And I think we've kind offlipped that now, the function
follows the form is a little bitof how we're thinking about it
(34:05):
now in terms of, How we thinkabout websites,
Joachim (34:08):
I think early PC design highlights the highly
constrained nature of graphicsand how you, how can you create
a meaningful user interface withvery few pixels to represent
anything.
Um, so, you know, but that's onewhere the design had to match.
the function of this machine.
Nate (34:28):
there's another thing that you're bringing up with, uh, uh,
constraints.
And I think that's what a lot ofart is about, is what are the
constraints that I have withthis, and how do I, how do I go
up against those constraints?
I think with, again, the Flashthing, don't need to be that the
theme, but it was like, that wasa constraint at the time.
Websites look really terrible.
(34:48):
How can we make this, open thisup?
You know, we made Flash.
It sucked.
You know, it, it was amazingwith certain things, but it
sucked a lot of battery out ofthese things and we had to
reinvent something from it.
And I think it's, there was aquote, a friend of mine was
talking about like, he wastalking about artistry.
He was like, you know, and ofcourse he, he was talking about
football as in soccer, howeveryou want to say it.
(35:11):
But he was like, you know, It'sthe whole art of the game is the
constraints.
You have this perimeter that youhave to stay within, but
whatever happens within thatthing, you can do whatever you
want.
You can make whatever artistry,whatever creative things you
want to do, but you have to havethese constraints to you.
And I think that's where wenowadays, I think as interaction
(35:32):
designers, we get.
A little bit, uh, fearful ofthat stuff.
It's like, there isn't anyconstraints.
I can just do whatever I want.
And okay, I'll just use Googlematerial design for this,
because that's just the easiest,I don't have that much time, so
I'm just going to plop inmaterial design and use that for
all of my widgets on my, mything.
And I think that's, uh, thoseare, those are one type of
(35:55):
constraints, but it's just, youknow, it's, yeah.
I don't know.
Is it the right constraints thatwe need to have?
And people just getting tired ofsomething, you know, like the
the dating app Tinder, you know,it's like, Hey, I don't want to
have a selector box for all ofthese people.
I'm just gonna swipe like what'show do I do?
Like, maybe that's a better wayto do it.
Or, you know, tick tock.
It's like, Hey, I don't want tojust have this infinite scroll
(36:16):
of things, infinite scroll in adifferent way.
Yeah, there, there are thingsthat come up every now and then
that do sort of break break howwe do things a little bit.
Um, but I think it is probablypeople just getting tired of the
same old, same old.
And I think there is just adesigner there just said, Hey,
I, I want to do thingsdifferently.
Let's mix it up.
(36:37):
And everyone else is like, yeah,let's do it.
Joachim (36:40):
Related to this, like the interactions and flipping
things around.
I'm seeing a little bit more inthe ether of the internet, a
little bit more of this appealto focus.
And.
limitations.
And a website that comes to mindis daft social.
I can't remember if it'ssomething that we've talked
about here, but daft social is asocial network that is
(37:05):
antisocial.
Uh, and the only way you caninteract with it is via your
email.
So you, you, you sign up for anaccount, you get a URL, just
like any other place you canimagine with a user handle.
And then all you can do is sendan email to a unique email
(37:25):
address that's yours.
You have to keep that secret ifyou want to control your page.
But once you have that emailaddress, you just send an email,
which the content of the emailis irrelevant.
It has to all sit in the subjectheading.
So if you want to writesomething, you have to write it
in the subject.
If you want to post an image,you put the URL for the image in
(37:48):
the subject.
And then you send this email andthat's it.
You go to your page and it's allthere.
There's no likes, there's nodirect sharing, there's no
interactivity at all.
If you want to see someoneelse's daft social feed, you
have to know their username.
It's such a shocking experience,because we're used to having the
(38:12):
hamburger menu with the home,and the feed, and the settings,
and the profile, and the blurb,and you need to do this, and,
um, it's kind of incredible tobe confronted with something
that is so restricted.
Maybe do we want more of thatNate?
Do we want more stuff like that?
Is that the future or is it?
Is it something else?
Like, I don't know, you know,that that's kind of
Nate (38:34):
Yeah, I mean, I think again, the world has changed
quite a lot from, you know, whenwe had that experimental thing
where everything was cool oreverything was different and
wild, wild west of things.
And yeah, I mean, now it's justa different world.
And when was the last time anyof us downloaded an app or when
was the last time we visited awebsite that was something
different?
Ernest (38:55):
What what, history suggests is that, you know, as
challenging as this time isright now, like Nate, you spoke
about how there've been so manylayoffs.
There's a lot of people who are,you know, having a tough time
finding work as well.
Um, but I think history suggeststhat it's in these sorts of
moments that, you know, excitingchanges do happen.
(39:16):
But, um, I think that there isthis moment of great opportunity
now, where the, I don't thinkwe're alone in feeling so
dissatisfied with the state ofuser experience.
Um, and so I think there is thisgreat, uh, moment of, um, you
(39:37):
know, where I think we are goingto start to see some changes,
you know, maybe it hasn't quitehappened yet, but.
It does feel like that sort of amoment of sort of stasis where
now, then we're going to startto see changes.
Like, you know, back in the daywhen, uh, a young company called
Nike approached this no, no nameagency called Wyden and Kennedy,
you know, agencies were wellestablished.
(39:58):
It wasn't as though Wyden andKennedy was some new thing.
But they just brought a muchmore authentic approach to the
world of advertising that hadbecome really stayed, you know,
and these newer companies likeNike back then, um, that's
exactly what they were lookingfor.
So it feels like there's thatsort of an opportunity now in a
one, a one side I came acrossrecently that sort of sparked
(40:22):
that feeling for me in a way.
Was this, uh, it's actually aPortland based apparel, outdoor
apparel brand.
And I believe you pronounce itnewer.
But it's spelled, uh, G N U H R.
I will provide, you know, linksto all this in the show notes.
But it reminded me so much ofthese old school, kind of like,
um, I don't know if you ever hadever seen cheapcds.
(40:44):
com or, um, very text basedwebsites, but it just has such
an attitude.
You know, it says, We're this,and if you don't like it, then F
off, go away, you know.
This is how, how we're going tobe.
And if you like it, then you'regoing to love it, you know, and
we're here for you.
(41:06):
And I, I really hope we see moreof that.
Um, and I think there is ahunger for that.
obviously the big brands aren'tgoing to go there, at least not
for a long time.
But I do feel like there's a lotof these entrepreneurs now
starting up businesses who wantto be more than just clones of,
uh, the last generation ofdirect to consumer businesses.
(41:27):
So as challenging as it mightseem, I guess I'd say, I do feel
like we're on the cusp of some,some new things, bluffs
blossoming.
I mean, maybe I'm being toonaive,
Nate (41:38):
I, I actually, as whatever I said before, I agree because I
do feel like we are, our cultureis yearning for something else.
And I think those are themoments when something comes
out.
And I think as I've even justsome of those interfaces I
talked about, like tick tocktended, those companies were
very much rewarded with doingsomething innovative, changing
(42:00):
things up.
So I think companies do, theyare rewarded with trying these
risks.
And I think it's this idea thatwe need to keep as a designer,
we need to keep Not just doingthe first thing that comes up,
the first thing that works, butactually what we call the
explore the mild to wild.
And I think we're going to,people will see something wild
(42:20):
and they'll be like, Hey, thisis amazing.
Let's do it.
And I think that's, we need tojust keep telling ourselves
like, Hey, pause.
Take a break, go for a walk.
And, and that's, I think that'swhen you come up with just kind
of crazy, good ideas.
And I think that's where we dohave to jump out of those agile
modes of just checking the boxesof, okay, this is what this task
(42:44):
is done.
And just sort of pause and say,okay, what am I doing?
How can I make this work?
Great.
And I think we will get to that.
I think it's just that, thatdarkness just before the dawn,
maybe, that we're, we'rethinking in right now.
So, we have to believe in thepower of design to change the
world, is what we always aretold.
So, I think it will happen.
Joachim (43:06):
okay, now the counterpoint to the old man
talk.
I wonder if when we see this newthing, it will be not appealing
to us.
You know, it will be somethingthat will be off putting.
And I was thinking about this inthe context of just slang and
language that has evolvedseparately now from, from me.
(43:27):
I don't, I don't understand alot of things.
I just learned what Riz is.
So now I know that's charisma.
So that's something.
And then Skippity Toilet.
And it's horrifying.
It's such a horrif It's scary.
you know, maybe that is what thefuture of all of this stuff
looks like.
And that actually is the thingthat's gonna push us to the next
(43:49):
level.
There is this stuff that is justso fundamentally difficult for
us to wrap our head around, butfor the next generation of
people, they're saying, this isour vocabulary.
This is the set of tools thatwe're going to be using.
And this is how we're going tocommunicate pretty deep
thoughts, but in a way thatisn't immediately obvious to
you.
And so you just have to learnthe language.
And once you've learned thelanguage, you'll appreciate what
(44:09):
we're doing here.
You'll understand that there'ssomething of value.
So, I, I, I wonder if that's thecase.
Nate (44:15):
And maybe, maybe we're thinking about it too much in a
way, uh, because I do feel likethere is a, the youth are going
back to the different ways ofinteracting.
And I think that's like thephysical things, you know, LP
vinyl sales are skyrocketing nowbecause people want something
more tangible.
They want to put their hands onsomething.
And the same thing I think aboutthis all the time when I, you
(44:36):
know, I changed the volume on mySonos app or some, or my Sonos
system, which is a different UIBut it's, it's just really
annoying to bring out my phone,flip on which speaker do I want
to change the volume of andswipe on the app.
And it's just, it's frustrating.
And it was just like, I wouldmuch rather get up, walk over to
(44:57):
that speaker or wherever andturn up the volume.
And I think these are thingswe've just gotten out of control
with digital, everything.
Um, where I think physicalinterfaces are much better.
You're finding that with cars,too.
I think you guys have probablytalked about that before, that
physical interfaces with carsare much better than
touchscreens.
So I think there is going to besome balancing of all of this
(45:20):
nonsense, I think, uber digitalthings that is happening.
Um, but yeah, I think it takes alittle bit of, and the physical
aspect takes money.
So I think you do, it takesmoney to make dials.
It takes money to do thosethings.
And I think, but we will, Ithink we will come back to a
happy medium in the future.
And I think that will solve someof our, uh, terrible interaction
(45:43):
experiences that we're havingthese days.
Ernest (45:45):
actually, that, that, that might be a good segue to,
um, something we haven't beendoing recently, which is
recommendations.
I'm just curious if Nate,there's anything that, whether
it's a product or a digitalexperience, or work of art that
you've encountered that's reallyinspired you recently,
Nate (46:02):
Um, okay.
This shows my dad ness, um, andYoakim has probably heard me
talk about this before, but I'mvery much into my three year
old's Yoto.
Uh, Y O T O is the name.
Actually made by PentagramStudios, or at least a lot of
the design was done by them.
Um, but it is a fantasticphysical, device for playing
(46:27):
music and, uh, my kid, even whenshe was two, could grab a little
card and put it in there andjust, it plays whatever is on
that card and, uh, they did thelo fi thing where it has a
little screen but it's a, uh, 16by 16 pixel grid, uh, there's
nothing else, it's just a 16 by16 pixels for each track.
(46:49):
And so she can sort of scrollthrough each track by track with
just a little icon and get that,uh, that music playing.
And I think the best part is, isI can actually create my own
playlist of whatever I want herto listen to and make a track
and put a little icon in there.
And it's just, it's fun for herto sort of, uh, Yeah, have even
our own books that we read, uh,to her or whatever on there.
(47:12):
And it's, it's a, it's a reallygreat physical, digital blended
product that again, dad pointsfor this, right?
So,
Joachim (47:20):
Oh, I gave it such a bad, that was my anti
recommendation like a fewepisodes ago, but, and I, at the
time, I actually was convincedthat we were going to send it
back and we still have it.
Um, and I have to say, asidefrom the very, very annoying,
(47:40):
uh, Wi Fi setup and the ideathat I needed to have an
account.
Um, Because I've somewhatneglected the device and just
let my children interact withit, it's proven to be a very
useful thing.
And like you said, children havea really easy time with it.
And so we've not had any troublewith the cloud.
(48:02):
I have strong issues with all ofthat.
That's a separate thing.
Um, but You are right.
That, that, that it has theright amount of tactile
experience and knobs and, andthe knobs are really, they
click, they give a good click,they give a really good click.
So big, you know, fidgety kids'hands, they can feel that click
(48:26):
as they're cycling throughstuff.
It's, it has been, it's a, it isa well-designed device.
I still want it to beself-contained without all of
the wifi.
given that it's now at home andit's connected up.
Um, yeah, my children also doenjoy using it, but I was, yeah.
Nate (48:43):
I'm, I'm finding new, new ways to work with it myself.
Cause I think there's, as again,as a digital designer, I'm very
cognizant of the time thatpeople spend on screens.
And honestly, I would like topeople to spend less time on
screens, and I think that's thething where recently I've been
taking episodes of shows thatmaybe she's watched and I've
downloaded the audio and thenI'll put that on the card.
(49:07):
And it was quite amazing to seesomething that she had watched
and kind of became a zombie tothat.
Whenever I put that as an audiobook, she would actually get up
and start dancing to something.
And I thought, what is it aboutthe screen that makes it that
sucks us in as a creature?
content thing, but when you makeit an audio thing experience, it
becomes a little bit more, uh,you're engaged with the world
(49:29):
around you and it makes you dowant to get up and dance.
And I thought, hey, this was anice little twist that we've,
uh, but of course now she justwants to listen to episodes like
at the breakfast table oranything, which is, you know,
give and take a little bit here,so.
Joachim (49:44):
that's an interesting point.
You're right.
There's something about audiothat allows us to pro we're able
to process sound and do otherthings at the same time.
Visual things are just too much,too much processing power goes
into that.
So it is possible to multitaskwith audio.
Um, so is there something inthat?
Should we be thinking aboutaudio as a, as a more powerful
(50:07):
medium for interaction and, andcontrolling stuff?
I, I
Nate (50:12):
Well, you have, what's, what is it about staring off
into a blank, blankly staringoff into space that lets you
sort of, I mean, maybe it letsyour brain work in a different
way to just, uh, stare off, and
Joachim (50:25):
I guess your inner, your inner eye takes over,
right?
And then the imagination can,can run a little bit freer, but
even reading doesn't feel likesuch an absorbing experience.
It's something about screen withmovement and the world.
It's, Maybe it does tap intoyour brain thinking, no, you're,
you're out there in the worldstill.
Ernest (50:45):
Uh, Joachim, is there anything that you want to
recommend?
Joachim (50:48):
Wait, there was something.
Uh, did you have something,Ernest?
You, I bet you do.
Ernest (50:53):
Uh, yeah, I could, uh, give you a minute to think
Joachim (50:55):
You should go first, I need a second.
Yeah,
Ernest (50:58):
we just this weekend saw this film called A Different
Man.
I'm not sure if either of youhave heard of this.
It's a pretty small film, uh,being distributed by A24.
directed by a person named AaronSkimberg, who I hadn't heard of
before.
It was written and directed byAaron Skimberg.
Uh, I won't, it's almost toodifficult to explain, um,
(51:19):
anything about it, so I won'teven try.
But what I was really interestedin was the extent to which, kind
of like you, you were alludingto just a minute ago, Joachim,
that So much of my experience ofthe film was a function of my
reaction to it.
There was, obviously there's thetext of the film, the story,
(51:40):
but, um, it is so much aboutprovoking a response from the
viewer.
And I think your experience ofthe film will really depend on
your reactions and, you know,the different, um, ways that you
respond to those provocations.
My, my, I saw it with my wifeand she hated it and I
(52:00):
absolutely loved it.
And I can't stop thinking aboutit more than anything I've seen
in quite a while, because itjust, without being didactic, it
really forces you to questionyour own assumptions and values,
I guess, and presumptions and,um, in a way that is It's
(52:22):
sometimes really funny,sometimes really dark, but, um,
it's just so interesting andkind of, of a piece of this
whole conversation.
So not like the standardHollywood fair.
It's, you know, like if youcould find the exact opposite of
a Marvel film, this is probablyit.
Although funnily enough, it'sstar Sebastian Stan who plays
(52:42):
the, um, the winter soldier inthe, uh, several of the Marvel
films in a role like, you know,you've never seen him in before.
He's, and he's really good init.
So, um, yeah.
You might hate it, but I wouldreally recommend a different
man.
Nate (52:58):
And, and actually A24, it's like, I think they're using
a little bit of that model thatwe probably need, which is, hey,
some of these are, things aregoing to fail, but some of these
things are going to be amazing.
And I think they've reallysucceeded in the past few years
at throwing out these films thatjust really take
Ernest (53:15):
That's a great shout.
Yeah.
Joachim (53:17):
Yeah, that's actually true.
We actually, this is, well,maybe it's a recommendation, but
it is the movie, uh, I Saw theTV Glow, which is
Ernest (53:24):
Oh, yeah.
Joachim (53:25):
um, movie of a very strange, retro, creepy film that
is really about, uh, alienationand not, not fitting in and
feeling like you're not livingthe right life, but also
incredibly creepy.
I would say it's.
somewhat lynchian, like a DavidLynch vibe to it, um, but it's
(53:50):
a, it's a strange one, butagain, like it's A24.
So we're used to this idea ofthem being divisive or a little
bit controversial or hard towrap your head around.
Um, But actually, myrecommendation is something
pretty, it's pretty, it's notthat, I find, I think it has
such broad appeal without beingdumb but it's a book by Michiko
(54:13):
Aoyama, and the book's calledWhat You Are Looking for is in
the Library and And it's, themain idea behind it is about
people going to their locallibrary, encountering a
librarian who gives themrecommendations for specific
(54:35):
topics they're interested in.
And then she always sneaks in anextra book at the end of her
recommendations that she thinkswould somehow resonate with this
person.
And she also gives them a littlefelt like souvenir.
So someone will get a littleairplane that she's made by
felting or someone will get, uh,oh man, I forgot the other
(55:00):
items, but so she gives them alittle trinket.
and an extra book recommendationthat they don't ask for.
And then the person goes off andthey're obviously facing some
sort of challenge, um, and this,the recommendation is just
right.
But what's interesting about thebook is that it's, it's actually
(55:21):
also a defense of books and it'sa defense of, it's kind of
making the case that books arejust so necessary, like the art
of it is necessary and we needto just have this in the world.
And.
We need to expand our definitionof what is valuable.
We have to expand our definitionof.
what society is, and this bookbuilds a really sweet, very
(55:45):
straightforward picture, but itis also just very heartwarming.
So it's a book that I recommend.
And it's very, it's a vignettebased thing, but each vignette
is somehow building to a verysubtle Japanese crescendo.
So it's more like a whisper, butit's very, very, uh, it's very
compelling.
So I would, I would recommendthat book.
(56:06):
I picked that book up as a totalfluke.
I was just in the localbookstore.
There are various things on theshelves that look compelling and
this was right at the checkoutand My wife was saying, did you
want to buy a book?
I paNateed and I grabbed thatone because the cover looked
good and it was Japanese.
I'm like that, maybe this isgoing to be okay.
It was a good choice.
(56:26):
It worked out.
So I would recommend that bookas a, as a light read.
I read it in a couple of days.
It's one of those that's just soeasy to read, but still has
enough depth to it, where itlingers in your mind.
It's not just one of those,like, it's not just a page
turner or a Jack Reacher novel,which has its place in the
world.
And there is great art in that.
(56:47):
I will defend.
Jack Reacher books all the wayto the end of time.
But, um, yeah, that, that's onethat's been on my mind recently.
Ernest (56:55):
Oh, that's awesome.
That's a good one.
All right.
Well, I think that does it forus.
Nate, thank you so much onceagain for joining us on Learn
Make Learn.
Where can listeners follow youor find more of your work?
Nate (57:07):
Oh, good question.
You can find me at nategrubbs.
com.
Ernest (57:11):
That's nice and
Joachim (57:12):
Nice.
Ernest (57:13):
And we'll, we'll provide a link as well, just in case,
uh, for, for spelling.
But, um, thank you again, Nate.
And to those listening, thankyou for joining us here at Learn
Make Learn.
As always, we want to hear fromyou.
So please send any questions orfeedback to learnmakelearn at
gmail.
com or shoot us a note onthreads at Learn Make Learn
(57:33):
show, all one word.
Thanks for listening.
And we hope you'll join us forthe next Learn Make Learn.
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