Lynne Polischuik & Justin Davis - Navigating the Evolution of UX Consulting: Adapting to Industry Shifts - The UX Consultants Lounge

Episode Transcript
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Kyle Soucy (00:15):
Welcome to the UX consultants lounge.
I'm Kyle Soucy, founder ofusable interface an independent
UX research consultancy.
You can find out more about mywork and the services I offer at
my website, usable interface.
com.
I'll be your host here at thelounge where I'll be providing a

(00:35):
place for UX consultants togather, share stories, and learn
more from one another.
I hope everyone in the UXconsulting land is doing well.
I recently had a bit of turmoilwith work, but it had a good
outcome, and I wanted to sharethat with all of you.
So last week I was on a researchproject and it was unexpectedly

(01:00):
cancelled.
The client just decided to pullthe plug due to shifting
priorities and budgets and Andthis was a big project.
It was supposed to keep me busyfor the entirety of Q4 and into
the start of Q1.
So I was completely bummed, tosay the least.

(01:23):
And if I'm being honest, a bitpanicked.
It's hard to pick up work in Q4,especially the kind of UX work
that I do, which is qualitativeresearch.
The holidays make schedulingresearch sessions an even bigger
logistical nightmare.
So it would be most likelyimpossible to just pick up a gig

(01:46):
to fill this time.
I vented a bit to my network inprivate slack groups, and then I
just decided that I should justput it out there publicly that
I'm available.
I've seen a lot of otherconsultants do this in the past,
but I've always been afraid to.
I guess I worried that it wouldappear desperate.

(02:08):
You know, sometimes as aconsultant, it can feel like a
sin to be without client work.
There are these toxic thoughtsthat creep in that people will
assume I'm not good if I'm notbusy.
So, for the first time ever, Idecided to post a Hail Mary on
LinkedIn, announcing what hadhappened and that I have

(02:32):
immediate availability.
After typing it out, I closed myeyes and clicked post and held
my breath.
A funny thing happened.
I received amazing support fromall different people in my
network.
23 people reposted it, whichblows my mind.

(02:54):
And most of them added thekindest notes and testimonials
about my work.
It was like getting a warm hugfrom my colleagues, and it just
made my day.
If you're listening to this andyou were one of those people
that reacted to my post, I wantto say thank you sincerely.

(03:14):
I really needed that.
You know, it doesn't matterwhether or not I get work from
posting this Hail Mary onLinkedIn.
It was just so helpful for me toget such a confidence boost from
my network and to trust themenough.
To let them know that I hadimmediate availability and that
they wouldn't think less of mebecause of it.

(03:36):
So the lesson I want to impartin sharing this story is to just
trust your network and to keepthem informed on what's going on
with your business and that it'sokay to ask for help when it's
needed.
Now, I wouldn't necessarilysuggest doing this every
quarter, but I don't think ithurts when you're in a rare

(03:57):
bind.
I have had a few conversationsthat have come from posting this
on LinkedIn.
So who knows?
Um, maybe it will help me findwork for this quarter, but if it
doesn't, that's okay.
It's okay because I'm reassuredthat this does not reflect on my
abilities or value that I offer.

(04:17):
This is just a shitty time, andwe'll all get through it.
I'm a big believer thateverything happens for a reason.
So it's going to be okay.
All right.
That was my little update sincewe were last together in the
lounge.
Let's get to introducing myguests Today.
I have Lynne Polischuik andJustin Davis in the lounge.

(04:40):
Lynne and Justin have a wealthof UX consulting experience
running their own separateconsultancies, and they've also
partnered together for a shorttime, which we'll talk about in
the beginning of the interview.
I've also had the pleasure ofworking with the both of them on
a UX research project for one ofLynne's clients, which was so

(05:00):
much fun.
I'm going to have Lynne andJustin introduce themselves, but
let me just share some of thetopics we covered in this
interview.
Both Lynne and Justin have takenbreaks from consulting from time
to time, so we talked a bitabout that.
We discussed the state of UXconsulting today, and how it
will change in the future, whereUX consultants can provide the

(05:24):
most value going forward, andhow AI will change UX
consulting.
These are meaty topics, which iswhy the episode is so long.
But, I want to remind all youlisteners that if you only have
a short period to listen, I'veadded chapters for all the
different discussions so you canjump around to your heart's

(05:45):
content instead of listening tothe full episode from start to
finish.
There's no other two people Iwould rather talk to about these
topics than Justin and Lynnebecause they're so passionate
and have so much energy.
I just always feel super pumpedafter getting an opportunity to
chat with them.
So let's get to the interview.

(06:06):
Please enjoy Lynne Polischuikand Justin Davis.
All right.
Hello, Lynne.
Hello, Justin.
Welcome to the lounge.

Lynne Polischuik (06:14):
Hello.

Justin Davis (06:15):
Hey, hey, it's great to be here.

Kyle Soucy (06:18):
Yeah.
It's awesome to have the threeof us together again, the band
back together.
Yeah, we have to fill thelisteners in on how we all know
each other.
But before we do that, I'd likefor you both just to introduce
yourselves and just tell us abit about your consulting
experience Justin, and why don'tyou start us off?

Sure, absolutely.
So I'm Justin Davis.
I live in Tampa, Florida, usedto live in Nashville, where I
got started in UX andconsulting.
I've been a developer since thelate nineties, built a lot of
stuff on the web, launched a lotof products and startups and
things like that have beenpretty active in that world and
started consulting in UX.
I had my first job at a collegeI had, I was working actually

(07:01):
for the United Methodist Churchin Nashville for a few years,
um, doing a lot of just generalweb work kind of stuff for them.
And I left there to start myconsultancy because at the time
in 2006, Seven ish, um, nine,maybe.
There wasn't a lot of UX inNashville.
There weren't a lot of peopledoing consulting.
And so, I saw an opportunity todo that.

(07:22):
I kind of wanted to work formyself and so started Madera
Labs, in like 2009, 2010 ish,started consulting then, and
then did it really almostexclusively that, uh, through my
move to Tampa and up untilreally about a year or so ago,
and now I've, I've kind ofchanged.
I'm in house and, also had astint at a startup before this.

(07:43):
And most of my consulting's beenaround design, product strategy,
user research, information,architecture, that kind of
thing.
So that's kind of my story whereI, came from and how we got to
today.

Kyle Soucy (07:52):
Awesome.
And Lynne, how about you?

Similarly, kind of circuitous route.
I've actually been anindependent, freelancer and then
consultant since 2008.
I came to this space from likereally weird place.
I wanted to work in museums and,um, I had come to Vancouver to
do museum studies at theUniversity of British Colombia I
had moved to Vancouver, a friendcalled and said, what are you

(08:16):
doing?
I said, reading at Starbucks andhe said, okay, well, come help
me with my startup.
So I kind of just jumped in and,did a few online jobs, ended up
going back to work.
To museums for a year, I workedat the Vancouver Museum for a
year was bored out of my tree.
So I came back to this in 2005,work for a cool company called

(08:41):
CityMax was actually ended upbought by Google Pages.
And then I went indie in 2008.
I basically outgrew that roleand wanted to do.
More and my CEO, my boss at thetime kind of just pushed me out
of the nest, which I'm evergrateful for.
I've been working the past fewyears as a consultant.
I've done a couple of years inhouse, here and there, which

(09:04):
ended up being more kind of likelong term contracts and, yeah,
currently I am back toconsulting after a bit of a
sabbatical.
So that is me.

Kyle Soucy (09:14):
You both have.
Almost 15 years experienceconsulting, which is amazing.
And having worked with you both,I, I know how brilliant you both
are.
And let's talk a little bitabout how we all know each
other.
We worked together on what Iwould have to say.
Was the most interesting and funresearch project I've ever had.

No doubt.

Kyle Soucy (09:37):
It was, back in spring of 2019 for Youtube TV
And Lynne, since this was yourclient, why don't you go ahead
and explain the project?

So, I had a contact that I'd work with for
quite some time.
She actually ended up going andworking at YouTube.
Her name is Allison Meier.
She.
And I had worked on a fewdifferent projects for another
agency and then when she went inhouse at YouTube, she kind of
conceived the research projectthat we ended up doing, and I

(10:08):
think just because we knew eachother so well and she knew the
caliber of research andresearchers I could bring to the
project, she reached out to meabout the co watching, project
for YouTube TV and it wasfascinating it was honestly one
of the most interestingprojects.
I agree, Kyle.

Kyle Soucy (10:27):
And for those that don't know, co watching is a
term that we were using forpeople who come together
virtually to watch a show, uh,but they're watching it, on
their own devices and kind oftrying to figure out like, okay,
how do we sync the play?
Like one, two, three, play.
And, it was so fun.
We were watching people watch,game of thrones.

(10:48):
Um, uh, what were some of theshows there were?
So many, Um, I'm

Game of Thrones.
I know there was some reality.
The Bachelor, I think.

was like billions, I think might've been one of
them, uh, yeah, the bachelor, hehad, it was a bunch of, it's a
bunch of random housewives.

yeah, yeah,

Kyle Soucy (11:07):
It was great.
I've never been on a projectwhere you're watching people
watch TV, but it wasfascinating.
That was a good time.
But I think Lynne, how you'reexplaining your connection to
that, it just goes to show howimportant, networking is and
just, it's all who, you know,and to land a project and a
client as big as YouTube TV.
I mean, that's huge.

Yeah, it was an interesting process.
I think, it definitely wasn't aproject I could have taken on,
even two or three years prior.
I think one thing that is bothscary and great about working
with large size clients, likeGoogle alphabet Facebook is, you
do need to have a little bit ofinfrastructure to take on a

(11:48):
project that big.
So, that required, insurance ofa certain amount and, it just
wasn't a project.
I could have done myself.
So.
I wouldn't have gotten theproject without my network.
I also couldn't have done theproject without you folks.
Like, there would have been noway.
So it just was a kind of perfectstorm confluence of of good

(12:09):
timing.
But that worked out

I think one of the things that you were saying,
Kyle, and I think it's soimportant because that was such
a big project.
It's a crazy project.
And I honestly, it's one of theprojects I love telling people
about.
Like, yeah, they, they paid usto fly around and watch people
watch TV.
Uh, it's crazy, right?
People like, wait, what do youdo for your job?
But I think the one thing, Kyle,that you just mentioned that is

(12:32):
so important as a consultant is,just that, that was a project
that Lynne landed and thankfullybrought us into and she got that
project because of who sheknows, right?
And because of her network.
And I think that this issomething that is, that is You
know, we talked about it a lotin consulting, but I don't think
you can say it enough, which isthat kind of the net worth is
the network, you know, or thenetwork is the net worth,

(12:53):
whatever saying is.
And I think as a consultant,especially a solo consultant,
but to some degree at any levelin the service business, staying
top of mind, staying visible andhaving a lot of people know you
is the way you get work and theway you get job opportunities.

yeah, and it's interesting to like, I think
we're in a different time now.
I think we were very lucky thatwe kind of came up during the
golden age of Twitter and thegolden age of this, this being a
small community.
Industry wise, we were veryfortunate that, the pool was a
lot smaller then I think we allknew each other at one point in

(13:29):
terms of like, UX, you did UX.
we probably had met at aconference at one point and I
think, that was that in the pasthas had been great for us.
I think it was, my dad orsomeone in my family was like,
how can you be a web consultant?
And you don't even have awebsite.
And I was just like, well, Ihave been too busy doing the

(13:51):
work.
It was a total cobbler shoessituation, but the reason that
was possible was because of mynetwork, you know, it was.
And, and this is so importantfor, consultants.
You do a good project, you havea good vibe with a client.
They end up changing jobs andgoing somewhere else, you know,

(14:11):
like Alison did with me and, andbrought me along.
And that, that snowball, of goodwork, kind of begetting good
work, that was the core of mybusiness, for over 10 years.
And.
I know that it's a differentworld now.
So it's interesting.
I think we have a first moveradvantage that newer consultants

(14:32):
today probably don't have thesame access to.

Kyle Soucy (14:35):
A hundred percent.
And I want to talk more aboutthat, just the state of
consulting today and what it'sgoing to look like in the future
with the both of you.
Before I do that, I wanted to,also ask the both of you, I know
you mentioned prior to YouTubeTV to work together, and I know
that you even created anotherconsulting practice together for
about two years called firstchair partners.

(14:58):
And I was wondering if you couldjust tell me a little bit about.
You know why you created thisother entity in the past and
what the experience was like forthe both of you

I can jump in there.
I think that we create a firstyear because back in that era
back in the 2018, 17, 18, 19, 20era.
We were doing more and more worktogether that would just happen
to find a lot of projects thatkind of fit our combination of
skill sets, as well as, uh,another person, Matt Grocki, who
was also involved with that aswell.
And the three of us foundourselves kind of working

(15:27):
together a lot.
And we thought, you know, man.
We don't really want all theoverhead unless they're starting
a big thing.
But it's quite frankly, it justgets complicated.
Cause it's like, well, who arethey writing the checks to?
Like, how do you bill it?
How do you invoice it?
What, what name is on things,right?
How do you create like apresence that feels credible?
Um, uh, with a team of just afew people.

(15:48):
And so, we decided to createfirst chairs kind of.
Essentially a brand that wecould do business under together
as kind of this loosecollective, basically,

Initially, we had started partnering up and I
think the first few projects wewere just writing through my.
Mm hmm.
Business, um, and I would liketo pass through, I'd get a
check, I'd split it up 3 ways,I'd wire off the money to Justin
and Matt, and away we go.
Um, then my accountant was like,um, no.
And, oh, Josh.

(16:21):
Um, so he, yeah, so, so itbecame a factor of like, okay,
um, we do, as Justin said, we doneed an entity that.
Is a separate thing from each ofus it essentially was business
infrastructure.
It really helped us and we weredoing projects of a size that it
had big tax implications for any1 of us to kind of deal with

(16:44):
that.
So, it really was just as Justinsaid a way for us to work
together.
The benefit of it was, you know,we, we did some great work with,
um, Elise Weeks, up in, Elise asin New Hampshire.

Kyle Soucy (16:57):
I think Maine.

Maine.
That's right.
Her company, her team is justfantastic.
She did some amazing brandingfor us.
And we did just kind of puttogether a loose collective.
But it ended up being great.
It just was really nice to havea banner we could fly under.

Kyle Soucy (17:16):
And it sounds like possibly it was easier to do
that rather than, Is set upsubcontractors under your
company.
Is that right?
Lynne?

Yeah.
And I'm trying to remember, Ithink also for like insurance
purposes, um, there were a fewfactors that kind of came into
play and setting it up that way.
It made the most sense for us atthe time.

Kyle Soucy (17:38):
And you know, the, both of you have mentioned that
you've taken breaks fromconsulting at times to work
internally.
And I wanted to hear more aboutwhat that has been like.
Lynne, why don't you start?

Yeah.
So, in end of 2017, um, I had anopportunity to go and work at
Automatic WordPress.
And be actually one of their 1stdedicated researchers in the
history of the company.
John Maeda was leading design atthat point.
It was an exciting offer.
I don't think.

(18:12):
I would have made that move hadthat offer not come along, but
it was just, too good to passup.
So one year contract there.
And working in house, and it wasinteresting.
I think the thing that it reallymade me cognizant of is that,
when you're doing shorter termcontracts, smaller contracts

(18:34):
with a company, you're exposedto some degree to their culture
and, their foibles and all thepolitics.
And it just, it made me realize,it is difficult to be a full
time in house person because youcan't escape.
Um, you are there and you aredealing with, you know, the
culture of a company and andalso just the corporate

(18:57):
structure, which, I don't knowfor me, you know, being
independent, calling the shots,um, has just, don't think I ever
realized how important that wasto me and how much I enjoyed
that until I was in house.
And so, yes, so I did the yearand it was great.
I got to work with so manypeople that I am still close

(19:19):
friends with to this day.
I don't know how much of thatwas trauma bonding but um, But
but.

Kyle Soucy (19:27):
the best way to bond.

Yeah, right.
But it was an experience.
I'm glad that I had.
And like I said, it's, sointeresting to see the other
side of things, right?
It gives you so much perspectiveto go in house and to just see
how that feels.
I think it was just good timingand it was an experience I
needed at that point.
And yeah, I learned a lot bothabout myself and about how

(19:52):
companies work.

Kyle Soucy (19:54):
Awesome.
And Justin, how about you?

Yeah.
I've been running Madera, for,sometime I'd like, golly, I
mean, over a decade, I guess,and then my journey in house, in
house really started, about ayear ago, at Sourcetoad.
Before this, I was CEO, for alittle while, uh, Chief Product
Officer and then CEO of, Offintech startup that Lynne also

(20:17):
helped me with a little bit, um,and then when in house to source
toad for me, the timing of thatdecision was interesting.
Because on one hand, one thingthat I love about being a
consultant about being on myown, I share the same viewpoint
that Lynne does, which is I lovecalling the shots.
fairly type a, I'm anentrepreneur CEO type of person.

(20:40):
And so I tend to be cut out tojust do my own thing just by
personality.
Right.
And also consulting afforded methe ability to work across a lot
of different problems with a lotof different people and see a
lot of different things and sortof cross train the skills.
Right.
And I think that isextraordinarily valuable, um,

(21:01):
because It allows me and I thinkwhat it has done for me over the
years has allowed me to likevery quickly be able to
understand problems and systemsand apply things across the
board from one thing to another,just because I've seen so many
things now going in house hasbeen an interesting experience
because, you know, even though Isaw a lot of those different
things in the variety was sointeresting and there was always

(21:23):
a lot of really cool things towork on, there was always a
nagging thing to me where And Isort of would do a project most
of the time, and then sort ofhand it over and be like, here's
your thing.
And then I would go on to do thenext thing.
Right.
And there was a little bit oflike kind of the baby leaving
the nest and the kind of startupentrepreneur in me wanted to
continue working on the problem,right?

(21:43):
Continue solving the problem,right?
Cause the problem wasn't solvedwhen you first designed the
product, right?
That's like the first iterationof the solution.
And then there's going to beforever, um, adapting that and
learning from users and thatkind of thing.
And so going in house.
Has afforded me the ability tolook to work on longer projects
and longer things, initiatives,over a period of time and solve,

(22:06):
continually improve a thinginstead of just.
Doing one thing, right?
And so that's an interestingchange.
The other thing that it is, hasdone for me going in house and
I'm very lucky with source toad,source toad is run by, um, a
great friend of mine, Greg RossMonroe, who's been running it
for about 15 years.
And I'm very lucky.

(22:27):
A lot of my local friends fromTampa, work at source toad, and
I used to contract with sourcetoad.
So it was a very natural fit forme to move in there.
And I'm very lucky in that forme moving in a house.
I have a lot of autonomy and alot of say over what we do at
Source Toad of my, I am in theposition now is sort of driving
our product development process,right?

(22:48):
UX and entire productdevelopment process.
And I have colleagues thatreally respect that.
And We work together.
I don't feel like I'm sort ofinheriting somebody else's thing
that I'm running, right?
Which is really nice.
And, it puts me in a reallygreat position.
So now I'm getting to work onother things that I didn't have
the opportunity to do.
I get to now work with teams andcoach people and mentor people

(23:11):
and be more of a leader and workon operational things and that.
Which when I was just aconsultant, I was so in the work
all the time that I never sortof like stepped out of it and
kind of worked on the work,right.
I was just in the work, right.
On the person in the business.
And so it's, it's, there areparts of it now that are
refreshing to be able to, to dothat.
Yeah.

Kyle Soucy (23:30):
I really appreciate just hearing your experience,
both of you with the pros andcons of it and how, how you felt
doing that, because.
I get that a lot from a lot ofother consultants.
They ask like, Oh, you know, I'mthinking of taking this is
really attractive, but do I, doI ruin my business?
Could I ever go back again?

(23:50):
If I go internal for a littlebit and you can, you've, you've
both proven that.
Yeah,

you always can.
I think that's one of

yeah,

kind of, like, one of the things that I've
heard over over the years is,you know, I could never be a
consultant, like, I need thestability of working for
someone.
And I think one thing we've seenover the past, especially a
couple of years, is that.
No job is safe.

(24:17):
Um,

Kyle Soucy (24:18):
yeah, that's true.

I'm seeing so many researchers and design
folks, UX folks, losing jobsbeing laid off.
And I think the.
The good thing about being aconsultant is that I feel like I
have a lot more control.
I know when I go into anengagement, specifically, how
long it's going to last.
Um, I know that at a certainpoint in that project, I'm

(24:41):
probably going to be looking tomy pipeline to bring in some
more work.
One thing I noticed when I wasin house for that year is.
You just don't have the samelevel of control.
And, and I think for me, it's abit scary.
And I think seeing everythingthat's shifted in our industry
over the past couple of years,it's made me really thankful,

(25:02):
for the entrepreneurial side ofmy brain and the scrappiness.
There is a lot more stability inconsulting.
I think than people realize.
However, it does take time tobuild up those muscles and to
build up a network and apipeline that enables that.
Um, I think that's a core thingwith this and I think too, you

(25:24):
know, you can take breaks.
I certainly have taken a coupleof medical sabbaticals over the
past couple of years.
And like I said, I've been inhouse for a year.
It is a little bit, it's notsimple to take your foot off the
gas and then jump back in.
It is doable, but it requiressome real, again, scrappiness

(25:44):
and digging and, justin, onething you raised that's like
super, super important andinteresting is just that, We do
get exposed as consultants to,such a vast array of industries
and problems.
I've worked in the publicsector.
I've worked in the privatesector.
I've worked in tech.
I've worked in health care, youknow, we worked in finance, um,

(26:08):
worked in media.
I think it's so interesting, thevast amount of, random subject
matter expertise we have.
We really bring that as aquality and as a value to our
clients as consultants, youknow, I'm doing a project right
now, around special education,technology and, a couple of

(26:28):
years ago, I did a project.
On the other side of this, forthe federal government,
department of education, lookingat inconsistencies they were
seeing because of thistechnology.
So, you know, this project was aperfect fit because now I'm
looking at it from.
The school's perspective, but,the knowledge I've picked up
along the way really feeds intothis project.

(26:51):
There's so many projects I gointo that, you know, if I hadn't
done 1 or 2 projects in the samespace prior, I couldn't have
done them.
And I think that's such aincredible piece of value that
we bring to our clients is, youknow, we do have subject matter
and we have had eyes on thingsthat go beyond their
organization.
Um, and, you know.

(27:12):
This is business leaders want toknow what other folks are doing
and consultants are very able tospeak to that, which is great.

Kyle Soucy (27:20):
Absolutely.
We take that experience whereverwe go.
Uh, and it's, it's a lot of verydifferent things that we work
on.
To switch gears just a bit, I'mcurious.
You both have such greatinsights.
We've talked before, and I wantto know, how do you both see the
state of UX consulting today?

It's changed.

Kyle Soucy (27:42):
How so?

Well, I think, there has been a sudden influx
of folks who were in full timeroles and have been laid off or
come out of those roles forwhatever reason.
I feel like we're seeing, a realkind of supply demand situation,
where there was suddenly a lotof supply and we know what
happens when that happens.

(28:05):
The wages, the hourly ratesstart dropping.
I have seen that a lot comingback into this space over the
past few months.
Um, whereas a recruiter in thepast would reach out with an
opportunity and it would neverbe less than 90, 100, 150
dollars an hour.
Now they're looking forresearchers somewhere in the 40
to 50 an hour range.

(28:27):
And

Kyle Soucy (28:28):
yeah,

and I mean, from someone who has been
consulting for a long time.
The dollars and cents of thatjust don't work.
Like, they really, I'm inVancouver, our cost of living
here is, you know, notoriouslyhigh.
Um, when you factor in thingslike expenses and benefits, all
that stuff, you really, I mean,it doesn't make financial sense

(28:51):
to work at that rate.
But I think what we're seeing isa lot of folks who are coming
out of full time jobs, they arejumping into the, into the
contracting, the consultingpool, and they're accepting
these rates.
Which hurts us all.

Kyle Soucy (29:08):
Yep.

but I think it's, it's just, it's a learning
curve, right?
Like, I think.
For a long time, we've operated,you know, in this space where
the consultants tended to bevery senior, very experienced,
um, you know, held their groundfirm on rates and project, you
know, value based pricing, allthis stuff.
And so now we're seeing a lotmore people who are coming into

(29:30):
the consulting space whoabsolutely have the chops to do
UX.
Work and research work, but Ithink they, they don't fully
understand the business and theeconomics of it, um, as a
consultant, which is tough.

Yeah, it's definitely changed, right?
And I think that, there is akind of a larger thing happening
as well.
I think there's kind of aconfluence of events.
One thing that we were lookingfor.
The kind of Len, you, Kyle, me,uh, like all of us were lucky in
one respect in that the sort ofgolden age of UX, if you will,

(30:06):
right, which like we can say,probably started to started to
churn around the early mid2000s, right, uh, with web 2.
0 and then, and then sort of hasgrown since then coincided with
a worldwide bull market that wasunlike anything else for like a
decade.
Right?
And there was tons of money andit was easy to come by and

(30:26):
everything was great.
Right?
And so what you ended up seeinghappening was teams got really
big.
The UX field specialized andbroke down.
People would just do IA peoplewould just do research.
People would just do this,right?
And it was fine because thebudgets could support it.
The economy could support it.
Investment dollars for startupswere flowing.
There was a lot of money goingaround, and so the world could

(30:47):
support it.
When 2020 happened, it Whatended up happening is another
confluence of events that sortof quickly, I think much more
quickly than a lot of usthought, um, changed the
dynamics of it.
The bull run came to an end, themarkets globally cooled off,
budget started to shrink.
We saw that more and more.

(31:08):
We're going through a crunchright now that some people say
might be dot com era.
Ask in its nature, which I thinkis maybe a little hyperbole, but
still it is indicative of thefact that there's a big, like,
kind of macro level change inthe economics of this type of
work, right?
When you combine that with whathas happened in the past two

(31:28):
years with LLMs and Gen AI,right?
Um, because the transformerpaper by Google was 2018, right?
So right near the end of thatbull run comes in covid and
comes in An entire new way toproduce work that.
Completely will change how weget our work done and the entire

(31:50):
tech industry.
And quite frankly, the entireworld gets our work done.
And so I think what it's alittle bit like we had the, and
I don't mean this to sound sortof like victim, maybe about it.
Cause that's not the way thatI'm playing this, but, um, it
sort of was a little bit of arug pull moment, right?
And I think everybody kind oflooked around and goes, Whoa,
what happened?
Like.
All of this all of a suddenchanged and all of a sudden,

(32:11):
like very talented people that Iknew who had been working at big
companies and doing really greatwork for years, all of a sudden
couldn't find work and stillseeing that today.
And that is a, I think it.
It could be viewed as atroubling sign, and it could
also be viewed as just like thisreally interesting metamorphosis
that's happening right now inthe tech industry at large, and

(32:34):
the UX industry is certainlysharing in that change.

We're seeing exactly what Justin said.
Like, you know, the easy moneyis now gone from our industry.
And, when dollars become harderto come by, certain things
become nice to haves.
I think design and UX has, well,I mean, internally, we've been
going through the whole definethe damn thing since we started.

(32:59):
Um, what are we called?
Should we code?
Like, you know, all thosequestions that make us want to
pull our hair out at this point.
And I think this is 1 of thereasons that product has taken
off is because, you know, I, Ithink of product management as,
the UX people who understood howto speak to business.
Like, to me, and that's acontroversial statement, but

(33:22):
that's what I feel.
You know, I, I think it's, it'sinteresting.
Like, yes, the work we do istied to user experience, but
we've always been working in, acapitalist society.
And I think product equalsprofit.
I think folks who have kind ofmoved over into that space, you
know, I don't think the natureof their work has changed, but I

(33:44):
think the way that they have.
Positioned themselves to thebusiness, makes them not a nice
to have, it really makes them,core core to the income and the,
you know, the economics ofhaving a business.
So, as Justin said, I thinkthere's a couple of ways we can
look at this.
You know, we can take a verysort of I hate using the word

(34:08):
victim me, but a little bit, youknow, people just don't
understand us.
We obviously haven't gotten ourseat at the table.
We don't evangelize still wellenough, but I think 1 thing that
we lost sight of is, we've beenso.
Internally focused about ourkind of existence as, you know,

(34:29):
UX and designers.
We really haven't we haven'treally learned the business side
of things as much as we should.
I think I always have feltdifferent because I came to this
space from marketing and fromweb analytics, where.
Numbers were my whole job, andthen I got into design, as a way

(34:53):
to improve those numbers.
Um, but I think a lot of folks,they really are struggling
because the way that we havetraditionally positioned
ourselves in this industry andin this business has not really
paid off, as we can see now withpeople kind of ending up.
Cut or laid off.

Kyle Soucy (35:15):
I have to just say, Lynne, when you were talking
about the defined the damn thingconversations, it just drove me
nuts.
Like I think our industry.
It should get a gold medal innavel gazing

Oh

Kyle Soucy (35:26):
gazing Like

Yes.
Uh huh.
Yeah.
Oh,

the early IXDA mailing list was like the case.

for real.

Kyle Soucy (35:36):
It drives me nuts, but you know, Justin, I'm
curious to like, uh, you know,talking about this current
climate, what hand do you thinkwe, as the UX community, the UX
industry had in getting to thispoint?

I guess there's a few ways to look at that.
The define the damn thingconversation in some way.
I mean, obviously it hurt usbecause navel gazing, but also
it created all these littlemicro factions.
Right.
And people are kind of isolatedthemselves into these like
little bitty, like, well, I justdo this, this specific flavor of
UX and that's great.
But like, it's kind of the firstthing to go when the budgets get

(36:13):
tight, unfortunately, right.
Because at the end of the day,and this is.
Important and hard to hearcompanies just want to ship
products and the products haveto make money and they have to
have users that use them andlove them.
Right?
And at the end of the day, thatis the goal.
UX is not the goal.
Research is not the goal.
All of those things that we doas UX people, and quite frankly,

(36:35):
across the wider than UX in techin general, one thing I say a
lot is like code is a hack.
I kind of think of code is like,nobody wants to write code.
Nobody wants code.
We only write code because it'sthe only way that we have to
instruct a computer to do stufffor us.
And it turns out that computersare pretty useful and good at
doing stuff.
And so we kind of have to writethis code to make it do a thing.
But nobody wants to write code,right?

(36:56):
And by the same token, nobodywants user research.
Nobody wants UX work.
Nobody wants these things.
These things are simply toolsthat we use to ensure that the
stuff we make for other peopleWill be hopefully as successful
as it can be.
And I think that like somewherealong the way.
We sort of like, this is alittle critical of the UX

(37:19):
community.
And then I'm going to talk aboutthe good things that we did.

Yeah.

We sort of became very insular.
Right.
And we sort of just startedtalking about like how great we
were and like, Oh, where's ourseat at the table when in.
When the businesses were goingfine, you can have a seat at the
table when you prove that you'remaking the products better.
But like, I'm still waiting onthat.
And there was a lot of patiencefor that.
I mean, we've had thesediscussions over the past 15
years about, like, how do youtie UX to analytics?

(37:48):
How do we make the business casemore?
How do we get to see the table?
But we've had theseconversations for years about
this, right?
And essentially, the underlyingthing around that is I don't
think businesses a lot of timeunderstand that this is
valuable.
And the fact of the matter is,is that if it was not driving
success in the products, itwasn't, valuable in and of
itself.
It is only valuable as a meansto an end.

(38:10):
And that's kind of a hard thingto sit here.
I feel like sometimes I can belike, Oh man, that sounds very
reductionist or whatever, but itkind of is.
The unfortunate truth.
Now, one of the great thingsthat we have done over the past
decade and a half.
As a, I'm going to just say likea, the product industry.
And I think UX has driven amassive amount of this.

(38:31):
The engineering world has thevisual design role has just
across the board.
But, What we have done in thepast year and a half is we have
actually figured out how todeliver a lot of value in
products and services to usersquickly and at scale, and we've
learned every year how to do itbetter and better.
We've developed componentlibraries and patterns and tools
and this kind of thing that didnot exist 20 years ago, and we

(38:54):
had to invent those, and weinvented them when we created
them in the and now We actuallysort of in some ways worked
ourselves out of a job, right?
Because now if I go to design aproduct, right, if I'm going to
go design an app or a site forsomebody, it is not the same
process that I used to use 15years ago.
I'm not designing stuff fromscratch.
I'm not designing drop downsfrom scratch.

(39:14):
I'm not designing navigationfrom scratch because these
problems have been solved.
We did a great job coming upwith standards.
Figuring out like tested usableways to do stuff in products.
And now those patterns arethere.
Now we just kind of assemblethem.
And so in a way, what hashappened is that our work in the
UX world and the product worldhas moved from design.

(39:38):
Classical design, as we think ofit in like dragging boxes around
on a page and kind of figuringout how things should look and
operate and act.
And there is obviously stillsome of that, but it's moved
into a world of moreorchestration of sort of taking
bits and pieces of things thatare already built, already
available, already out there andcombining them into interesting

(39:59):
experiences.
And that's a slightly differentway of approaching product
design and UX than it was like.
A decade or so ago, I think

Kyle Soucy (40:11):
And now that we're here as consultants, where can
we provide the most value?

This industry is very bottom heavy.
In general, right now, um,across the board, whether you're
in house consulting, whatever,we have a ton of people now who
are coming into this space fromdesign programs from interaction
design programs from universitycourses.
And, when I went to university,the Internet didn't really

(40:39):
exist.
I'm super old, but we're allsuper old.
Like, let's admit.
Um, but.
You know, this wasn't an optionand now you have a real and
it's, it's a great foundation offolks coming into the space who
are extremely skilled, in termsof the tools and who know, all

(41:00):
those patterns and libraries andthey've got that great maker
skill, but a lot of the timefolks who are earlier career,
they don't have the expertise,the experience in kind of the
overall service design around aproduct.
They don't have enough expertiseto kind of deal with, like.

(41:22):
A long term product roadmap and.
Again, in this time of, smallerbudgets, like, being brutally.
Prioritizing, you know, productsand features and those kinds of
things.
So I think what's interesting isright now consultants, like us,
we have a real opportunity andwe present a real value and
there are fewer of us around togo around.

(41:45):
I've been talking to some folksabout this kind of idea of like.
A fractional CXO, a userexperience person who kind of in
the past would probably be hiredas a director of UX, but now, we
can get a lot more done in aconsulting situation.
We can bring value to theseproducts because we do have the

(42:07):
high level expertise and we dohave the ability to kind of see
the wider ecosystem around aproduct.
And we're good at laying theroad map or the blueprints for
folks to come in that areextremely skilled at things like
prototyping and doing the onpage design, for them to build.
So, I think, we're actually inalmost a better position as

(42:29):
consultants now, because we havea set of skills that are not as
common in the industry, but thatare absolutely required.

Kyle Soucy (42:37):
So you feel like we should market and sell ourselves
more as strategists?

Yeah, I think like UX is product, right?
UX is kind of moving into justkind of generic, product
management, but really moreproduct strategy and product
ownership, product leadership.
And I think it's kind ofcollapsing a little bit down
into that.
And I think that the thing aboutthe consultants, like one that I
feel really confident is goingto happen globally is that over

(43:03):
the next.
Decade, even really over thenext five years, but it really
played over the next is theaverage size of companies.
In the world is going to dropprecipitously.
Um, the gen AI is going tocompletely change how we do
work.
I, it's going to completely andfundamentally change how

(43:24):
companies operate.
I was hearing people talk aboutthe one man, 1 billion company,
like there, there will be peoplethat make 1 billion companies.
It's a single individual, right?
What's interesting about thatis.
If you take that premise, andyou say, well, okay, average
size of companies is going todrop because now there's just a
lot of work to do.
That needs to get done thatdoesn't require people to do,

(43:47):
quite frankly, anymore.
Um, and so you have smallerteams, and I think one trend
that we're going to see, andthis is where the consultants
really are going to win out onthis, I think, is that you're
going to see more ad hoc teamscome together for a period of
time, build a thing, and thenPotentially disband or downsize
quite a bit, right?
And almost like what we did atfirst chair, but imagine that if

(44:10):
at first year we were actuallydeveloping a product for
ourselves, and so consultantswho have experience coming into
a team.
Learning, getting up to speed,working in that kind of fashion
are really gonna actually havean upper hand in this kind of
new model.
Because as we continue to movetoward more gig economy, we
talked about gig economy, gigeconomy all the time, right?

(44:30):
And about how, more people aremoving toward that model of
working.
That's going to continue.
And I think that there is a lotof value for us as consultants
in that space.
Because we.
I've operated in that model fora long time.
And I think that for seniorconsultants, especially we can
come in and deliver a lot ofvalue very, very quickly.

(44:53):
And now we can, deliver thatvalue in such a way that doesn't
requires to be an FTE.
Right.
And doesn't require us to bethere all the time because we
can just get a lot of work doneother ways.
So I think that's going to beperhaps an opportunity for
consultants

And I know, you know, folks seem a little,
as we say, you talk about AI,and I know there's probably a
ton of people out there that arelike, oh, yeah, you know, AI
can't do everything.
No, it can't.
But just as a practical example,the economics of consulting.
So, Kyle, Justin, we've talkedabout this a lot of times, and
I've talked about it with, everysenior consultant out there.

(45:31):
The longer you've done thiswork, the better you get at it.
And.
When you are dealing with anhourly pricing model, you end up
punished because, 10 years ago,it would have taken me 3 days to
write a research plan.
Now I can probably do it in halfa day, but I shouldn't be
penalized for my experience.

(45:52):
Right?
I'm bringing a lot more value.
And that's 1 of the reasonsthat, you know, I think a lot of
established consultants andwhere senior consultants have
moved to a value pricing model,because just that, we get more
done in less time, which for thebusiness is fantastic, but for
us, it can hurt us.

(46:14):
And.

Kyle Soucy (46:15):
Mm

terms of like, AI even just on, like, a, a very
micro level, how that's changinghow we work.
I am currently on a project thatwas brought to me client in a
real pinch needed a 10 person,little research study done to
kind of help validate ahypothesis.

(46:38):
Great.
There was a really hard two weekdeadline on it and.
If you'd asked me to do this,even two years ago, I would have
laughed in your face because,oh, my God, that's not enough
time.
And honestly, it's not enoughtime.
But one of the reasons I'm ableto execute it is AI, like Google

(46:59):
Notebook LM, you know, there'ssome of these tools out there
now, where I can feedtranscripts into it and work
that would have taken me a weekof coding my notes.
Is kicked back to me in 5minutes, and this is the thing
where, it's changing not justthe tech industry in the world,
but it's enabling us, if weapply it in intelligent ways,

(47:23):
you know, AI has the power toreally reduce our workload and
as consultants.
We have to account for that.
We don't want our breakfast, ourlunch to be eaten by AI.
But it certainly enables us todo things that in the past we
couldn't have.
This would have been animpossible ask, like I said of,
you know, two years ago, but nowit's doable and doable well, um,

(47:46):
where I feel like I'm deliveringquality to my clients and smart
answers.
But I'm doing it in a fractionof the time.
So I'm fascinated with AI tools.
I was so excited when thisclient brought up Notebook LM.
We're like, we just done this onanother project, you know, and
I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, yes,yes.
Like, let's do this.

(48:07):
It's exciting.
And I think for me, what's greatabout it is that it frees up our
time to do the things that AIcan't do.
Just sit and think about, okay.
This is the business case, thisis the hypothesis, I'm able to
free my mind off the kind ofmenial tasks that drive a lot of
our work.
So I think, again, AI isimportant, I think, for us as

(48:30):
consultants to deeply, quicklyget up to speed on and
understand.
And think about it, not just interms of how it's going to
change content writing, but howit can do things like, really
expedite our own work.
I've learned a lot about AI justthrough trying to apply it in my
own space.
So, the changes in AI arealready shifting the economics

(48:54):
of our work as consultants.
I think we really need to getahead about, laughing I don't
but also understand, like, it,there's a huge benefit.
To getting good with it.

just Yeah, I think this is so important, and I
think everybody really needs tohear this, which is, there is a
interesting line that has sortof set up with sort of the yay
and nay on AI, if you will,right?
And I see a lot of people sayingthings like, Oh, AI, like you
all think AI is so great, but itcan't even do this.
And they can't do that.
And, uh, and I think that thosekinds of comments completely

(49:27):
missed the point.
That is sort of, Where we areright now in, in the AI and, and
really it's like LLMs.
Really?
I mean, we've had AI for what,since the sixties, right?
But like it's LL, a gen AI it'sspecifically, where we are right
now from a timeframe perspectiveis this is sort of like 1995 in
web years.

(49:47):
We are just starting to emergeinto a new modality and a new
reality about how we interactwith technology.
And to your point, Lynne, Ithink you have to embrace this.
It, this is not going away.
And even if right now you lookat it and you go, Oh, I don't,
it doesn't do anything good.
I don't like it.

(50:07):
And then certainly there'splenty of grumbling about that.
I think the perspective shifthas to be the fact that it can
even do what it can do right nowin such a short amount of time
that we have seen this beingdeveloped should be something
that everybody takes very, veryseriously because.
In 1995, when we were all usingMicrosoft Front Page and

(50:29):
Dreamweaver to stand upwebsites, right?
And we were saying things like,you know, we were bitching about
iframes and framesets and all ofthis kind of stuff and these
clunky ways to build web apps,right?
We probably would have laughedat that at the moment and said,
and a lot of people did, a lotof people were like, you don't
need to be on this web thing,websites aren't important, apps
aren't important, what is this,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
right?
Because it didn't look at thetime.

(50:51):
Like it was really all thatpowerful.
It was an interesting toy.
It was something kind of cute toplay with.
But it didn't look like it wasgoing to be something that
completely changed how theentire world worked and invented
entire new industries around it.
That is where we are in LLMyears and in gen AI years.
And so.
You don't want to be the personin 2015 still saying, man, this

(51:15):
web thing is not going to workbecause you look like you're out
the lunch, right?
You wouldn't say that, that'show this gen AI thing is going
to play out.
Um, and it is going to getbetter and better, faster and
faster and faster.
And I think that is a greatthing, because this is a new way
to drive value and provideinteresting experiences to

(51:35):
people.
And I don't see this as a threatto us.
I think it is an incrediblypowerful tool.
There's a thing that a lot ofpeople say, which is AI is not
going to take your job, butpeople using AI will take your
job, right?
And I think that's 100 percenttrue.
There's a lot of fear around it.
And I think a lot of peoplebacklash because of the fear and
they're like, Oh, I don't, Idon't want to like it because

(51:55):
I'm scared that it might take myjob or reduce my value.
And that is probably true forpeople who are not delivering a
lot of value.
But for the people who embraceit and use it and find a way to
fit it into the workflow and toget things done faster at lower
cost to clients, right, anddeliver better experiences and
better products to people usingthose tools will win 100 percent

(52:19):
of the time.
This is very similar.
To what happened in the digitalmusic world in 1998, 99, 2000.
And at the time I was getting adegree in recording industry in
Nashville.
So I had my ear to the pulse ofthe music industry, literally on
music row.
And, the conversation for thebetter part of a decade was.

(52:42):
We got to stop the digital musicthing.
We got to do DCMA.
We've got to figure out how tolike reign this in.
This is going to destroyeverything.
This can't happen.
Digital music will be the deathof everything.
Well, here we are.
And so it's the same song,different verse, no pun
intended, um, uh, here.
and I think the faster you leaninto it and go, all right, this

(53:04):
is our new reality.
Let me figure out how to makethis work for me.
Those are gonna

Yeah, and I think you make an interesting
point, Justin, that, AI has beenaround for a lot longer than we
realized.
Machine learning has been athing, you know, someone said to
me, oh, AI is so new toresearch.
No, it's not if you wereplugging recordings into apps to
get, transcripts kicked outanywhere over the last five
years, that was probably an AIthat was transcribing those

(53:32):
things for you.
I think there are ways it makesour work more efficient, and
like I said, where it makesthings more efficient.
It frees us up to think bigger.
You know, I feel like I havemore mental.
I know I have more mentalbandwidth to think about bigger
problems, more innovativesolutions, although I know we
all innovation is such aoverused term, but it really is

(53:55):
true.
I really feel most of the AItools I've tried, um, are really
making my job easier and reallymaking me available to do more
of the thinking that I justcouldn't get to before.
And also just, it opens up theworld for our clients, too, in
terms of things they can do withtheir products and Justin, you

(54:17):
and I have talked about this,but, there may come a time when
websites are completely moot interms of, well, do I need to go
to my online banking and findthings?
Or, you know, does the, does itbecome just fully a voice
interface where I'm asking myiPhone, how much money do I have
in my checking account?
Yeah.
And I think, like, this iswhere, your analogy of us being

(54:39):
in the 1995 web space is sotrue.
The difference, I think, though,now, we had the dot bomb bust,
back in the early 2000s.
That can't happen now.
I mean, it can, to some degree.
We can have recessions andthings, but we, as consultants,

(55:00):
know that, every business now isa tech company.
You can't exist in our society,in our world, in our capitalist
hellscape, if you don't have anonline presence, if you don't
have technology to drive, if notyour products, like operations,
every company has tech and webembedded in it.
So this is not a situation wherewe could have the early 2000s

(55:24):
happen again, because even atits worst, companies need
technology.
And what we do is so core tomaking it useful, profitable,
efficient, um, fun.
And so I don't see our industryfalling off to that degree
again, but I do see AI becomingkind of like a bit of a sieve

(55:49):
where folks who are not wellversed in how to apply it or use
it.
Um, are going to end up kind offalling out the bottom,

Kyle Soucy (55:59):
That is such a good point about every company being
a tech company.
And before we wrap up, Justin,in our previous conversation,
you mentioned a great analogywhen it came to talking about AI
won't replace us of a race car.
Could you share that?
Do you remember that?

Yeah, this one, I can't take credit for this.
This is, my CEO, Greg RossMonroe at Source Toad who.
Who said Gen AI right now istantamount to having a race car
and thing about that is, isthat, a race car driven by
somebody who doesn't know how todrive a race car, can be very
dangerous and very bad, veryquickly, right?
And can end up in a in afireball.

(56:38):
But for the people who areexperienced and use it as a tool
and know how to use it, it canmassively accelerate what
they're trying to do.
But you still have to be thetrained driver, and no, we are
not yet at the point in theworld where we have fully
autonomous AI, AGI, fullyautonomous agents that just can
pick up a piece of work and godo it, right?

(57:00):
You do still have to coach it.
You do still have to be a leaderto the AI, right?
You still do have to be in thedriver's seat.
And that's why there's still alot of value for us.
And that's why I'm not at allworried about AI, quote unquote,
taking my job.
Because somebody's got to sit inthe seat and drive it.
And somebody's still going tohave to sit in the seat and
drive it for a while, becausewe're still probably a ways away

(57:21):
from full autonomy in a way thatwe really think would be good.
And so if you want to have aplace in this industry, if you
want to keep working in this.
You gotta start taking drivinglessons.

and I think I was going to say just that I
fully agree, with that, you needto be Lewis Hamilton to drive an
F1 car, but I think people, whenthey think about AI, they're
talking about a lot of extremes.
Right?
And yes, I am 100 percentbehind, The idea that it needs
to be taken seriously.
It needs to be applied in ameasured way.

(57:57):
I think if I'm looking at itfrom the point of being a writer
or an artist, yeah, I thinkgenerative AI is kind of
problematic.
Margot Bloomstein, just wrote agreat little piece on LinkedIn
and she said that, AI is great,but that it is really
regurgitative and notgenerative.

(58:17):
Which is true.
And that places some deep limitson it.
We're not trying to go all inand say, you don't need to talk
to users.
Just talk to chat GPT and ask itto try things or to answer
questions.
Um, I'm actually seeing I'veseen a couple of tools come
across my, my screen wherepeople are like, yeah, it's a

(58:38):
chat bot that allows you to doresearch.
No, like, no, that's not, that'snot how we can use this.
But again, if, I have a bot thatcan sit and pull out pull quotes
from my transcripts for me.
Awesome.
Because, you know, there areparts of my job that I've never
loved and that, frankly, AI cando even if it's not perfect.

(59:02):
And this is the other thing,too.
I think we get really hung upon, the idea of perfect.
And we've said in research for along time that, knowing 80
percent is better than knowingnothing.
And it's the same with AI, if itcan do a job to like 80 percent
of what I need it to, and take afraction of the time, that's

(59:23):
great, it's the same way that,again, transcribing our research
sessions for so long, you werewilling to go in and read
through and fix some of themistakes the AI made, because
you didn't actually have to sitfor three hours trying to
transcribe something.
So I think A.
I.
It definitely is in its infancy.

(59:44):
I think, though, we're alreadyseeing places where it can make
us more efficient.
And I think again, like Justinsaid, it's driving us to a place
of, you know, when freed fromkind of the grunt work of our
jobs.
We can do so much more, forcompanies and for clients.
And I think that, we already arevaluable with our kind of

(01:00:05):
collective expertise andexperience and our
entrepreneurial brains.
I've had a couple of clients inrecent times be like, wow, like
I don't even need to manage you.
You just take all thisinitiative and you just do the
project.
And I mean, that's something webring to this as well.
You know, we don't requirehandholding or babysitting.

(01:00:26):
So I think positioning ourselvesas that and then helping us do
more work via tools like GoogleNotebook LM or however many, you
know, I think ask Marvin was theother one, um, Kyle, that you
mentioned to me.
That was yeah, amazing.
And so I don't know.

(01:00:46):
I think I don't want to sound,uninformed or kind of like,
Insanely optimistic about AI.
I think in a reasonable sense,though, it's already helping us
so much.
I think we just haven't beenfully aware of it.
And I think people, again, justkind of run to extremes with it,
and fearmonger a bit, but it'snot needed.

Kyle Soucy (01:01:09):
And that's what it is.
Fear.
I, I think that you both reallynailed it when it came to a key
point of not fearing.
Market efficiency, you know,that's not going to be the end
of us just because we can workmore efficiently well, just to
wrap up, I want to do some,rapid fire questions here, for

(01:01:31):
both of you.
If you had to describe UXconsulting in one word, how
would you describe it?
Justin, how would you do it?

Justin Davis (01:01:40):
I would say, UX consulting it's helping people
figure out how to build thingsthat people want.
Most people don't build thingsthat people want and don't build
things that people like.
Our job as product people is tobuild things that people like in
the service of keeping thosethings and the businesses that
sponsor them alive.
And, that's kind of part of howI see it.

(01:02:00):
You know, it's

funny.
I say rapid fire, but you knowwhat, that sparks to me.
I have to, probe on that a bitbecause you said something to me
in another conversation, or youput it in a way.
That was so great about how.
UX has in the past, um, beenreally good at divorcing
ourselves from the bottom lineand being anti business.

(01:02:22):
It was such a good point thatyou made.
And I think what you just said,just really, it, it's all about,
you know, bringing theseproducts to life so that
business can do well, we have tobe on the side of business as
well as the users.

You remember the show shark tank.
One of the sharks, RobertHerjavec, Canadian, I believe,
was on there.
And this moment on this showmade a really lasting impact on
me.
There was like, there was afounder who could not make his
business work and he was likehell bent on.
On having everything produced inthe U S and the costs were super
high and he couldn't sellanything because the cost was
too high.
And there was a margin and thecompany was going out of

(01:02:57):
business and they needed toraise money and all this, Rob
Herjavec said, he was arguingwith him and he said, you need
to offshore this stuff.
You need to send this overseasand do this at a much cheaper
thing.
And he was like, no, I don'twant to do that when you're,
we're all about American made,we're going to do it up.
And Herjavec said, you can'tmake decisions for values that
kill the entire company becausethen you have nothing.

(01:03:17):
Right.
And you cannot let this thing godown and watch it go down
because you're going to hurteveryone else around that.
Right.
I understand that you want to doa thing a certain way and
understand that you have valuesand you have things you care
about, but it's not working andyou are going to end up causing
a lot of people to lose theirjobs.

(01:03:37):
And not be able to feed theirfamilies and show up at home and
go, I don't have any workanymore.
That's a really seriousresponsibility.
And that's why we in the UX, Icannot be anti business.
We literally are in the job ofkeeping businesses running.
And if we take the other side.
Then we will be out of a job,very cut and dry.
No,

Lynne Polischuik (01:04:00):
um, how we describe consulting in one word
and, the word that immediatelycame to mind for me is value.
Justin had talked about earlier,the fact that the work is not
the thing.
Right.
The, the UX deliverables andwork, that's not our product.
Our product is the end product.

(01:04:21):
Our product is, the servicethat's helping people get things
done.
If you know, for thinking ofservice design, if you're doing
a project for government, the UXstuff is how we get to a place,
but ultimately it's the servicecounter.
That people need to go to, torenew a license or to file a

(01:04:41):
permit.
In product, the work is onbuilding websites, but the
actual product is the leads thatthat website is going to bring
into a company.
And I think it's just that we'vegotten so focused over this past
decade or however many years.
In like an internal focus.
Who are we?

(01:05:02):
Why do we exist?
How can we, make the workbetter?
We haven't, like I said, hadthat focus on the actual value
we provide.
I've always said this toclients, you spend a dollar with
me, I'm going to save you 10 indevelopment costs.
Because you're not going to haveto go and build insane features

(01:05:26):
that nobody's going to use.
Or you're not going to buildsomething in such a way that
like you have to like throw itout and start over in six
months.
That's always been a big part ofmy selling to clients is just
that, yeah, you know, I am acost.
But I am a cost that likeactually reduces a ton of your
overhead in bringing a productto market.

(01:05:48):
And I think that value and wetalk about value based pricing.
I don't cost 100 an hour.
I cost whatever makes sense interms of the value.
I bring to your business and Ithink that's something that.
We really need to focus on.
And again, I think that'ssomething where product, product

(01:06:10):
management, product design hasreally eaten our lunch because
again, they have never beendivorced from the business, you
know, from the actual thing thatthe UX is driving towards.
So to me, it all comes down tovalue.
We have to continuouslyarticulate our value.
And if you go into a salesmeeting with a client and you

(01:06:32):
say, well, I'm going to makethese fantastic wireframes and
I'm going to do all this IA, andI'm going to talk to all these
people, do this research, um, ifyou just sell that, it doesn't
inspire a lot of, you know, needin the client's mind.
But if you go in and you say,yeah, I'm here to provide value

(01:06:54):
in terms of reducing yourdevelopment costs, um, ensuring
your product, your go to marketstrategy is tight, ensuring
that, the service design aroundyour product.
Is what it needs to be that youhave a proper support staff that
you have a proper sales teamthat you're marketing and
selling in the right places i'vehad a couple of projects in

(01:07:17):
recent years Um where they weretrying to understand how do we
market ourselves in this likeincredibly fractured?
Chaotic social space and whereshould we be putting our ads and
it ended up that the answerwasn't, we should be putting our
ads on a website.
The answer was, we need to makea partnership with Costco so

(01:07:37):
that we're offered to theirbusiness clients as part of
their, benefit package.
When you buy a Costco businessmembership.
You get a free trial of ourproduct that has nothing to do
with making wireframes But ithas everything to do with
connecting those dots and makingthat value for that client That

(01:07:58):
they might not have seenotherwise.
So I mean that's a long way ofgiving a one worded answer But I
think it does come back to valueall the time and our value is
not the process Our value is theproduct

It's great.
It's such an important point.
Just two more questions here.
So I would love to know what'sthe best.
Best piece of business adviceyou've ever received.

I know um, I know in general, one.
piece of advice that my fathergave me long ago, I was starting
out in the spaces.
If you go into every interviewor sales call, with the mindset
that, I've already got the job.
This is my job.

(01:08:45):
I've got the job.
It just kind of helps youmanifest, success or what, but I
think it really has alwayshelped me sell myself, and help
me sell my value to clients isjust having this mindset of.
I got this and I know that'snot, specifically business

(01:09:05):
advice, I think it has reallyplayed into my ability to build
a business and to be successfulat it is just, this mindset of,
I can do this, I can do biggerthings.
And not doubting yourself.
That's an important aspect ofmaking a consultancy or any
small business happen.
Right?

(01:09:26):
So for me, it's that.

Yeah.
It's a hard question to answerbecause I can't think of any
like quotables, right.
That I'm trying to think of.
But I think one of the mostimportant things that I have
learned and that I quitehonestly, A buddy of mine, Josh
Sherman, who I've been greatfriends with for a long time,
he's an engineer, lives inAustin, used to live in Tampa,
joshtronic.com.

(01:09:49):
He taught me over the years, wewould joke, our saying was ship,
ship, ship, ship, and we talkedabout shipping, shipping,
shipping, get things out intothe world.
And, I think one of the mostimportant lessons that I've
learned is that You cannot getthings in front of people, and
this is from a design standpointor a business standpoint, a
product sample, anything youcan't get things in front of

(01:10:11):
people fast enough.
And I think that especially as aconsultant, the kind of mantra
of ship.
I have a sticker on my laptopthat says ship, right?
And the idea behind that isevery day, get things out into
the world, do things that touchpeople and it get feedback and
start conversations and thatkind of thing, because at the
end of the day, the more you dothat, the better your products

(01:10:34):
will get.
The better your marketing willget, the better your networking
we talked about will get.
All of these things get betterwhen you get things out of the
building faster.
And so I think that from aphilosophical standpoint, from a
business standpoint, what that'sabout is taking risks, go and
getting things out into theworld because At the end of the
day, the people who ship and getthings out are the people who

(01:11:00):
win, not the ones who wait toget it right or something like
that, right?
Get it close and get it out.
And I think that's one of themost valuable things that I've
learned definitely over the pastdecade.

The good enough MVP mindset.

But everything from your blog posts to your
products, to your networking, toeverything,

And I think another thing, Justin, that,
just hearing you talk, I'velearned a lot from you, uh,
being a shippet squirrel, theidea of MVP, I think so much of
my learning and so much of mygrowth in this work has come
from working with folks likeJustin, has come from working
with folks like you, Kyle, Ifeel like, A rising tide lifts

(01:11:42):
all boats in the consultingspace.
I know that I could not havedone the work I've done, had the
success I've had without Theability to reach out and
collaborate with folks aroundme.
I think you can take a verycompetitive, secretive stance,

(01:12:02):
or you can really lean on yournetwork and collaborate with
your network.
One of the reasons Justin and Ihave worked together so long,
and so well is because, to behonest, I've said this a million
times.
Justin is a unicorn in alegitimate sense.
He is a fantastic researcher.
He is a fantastic systemsthinker.

(01:12:25):
He can code and he understandsthe tech stack and he's a
fantastic interaction designer.
Amazing at putting ideas intovisuals.
Those are some of the placeswhere I'm not super strong.
I feel like I love the researchand I love the strategy piece.
And I found that, you know, In alot of the projects we've done

(01:12:45):
together, Justin is just kind oflike half my brain and that
brings so much, value to theclient, but also to us as
consultants, like I would nothave learned everything I've
learned.
Kyle watching you work, andseeing how you got to the
answers that we needed.

(01:13:06):
I think we couldn't have donethat research project without
your brain because you areremarkably talented facilitator
and moderator.
And I think like just so much ofour strength in this space as
consultants is.
Working with other folks, likeminded folks, other talented
folks, to help us build ourexpertise and our experience.

(01:13:26):
you know, I really couldn't havedone the work that I've done
over the years or gotten to thelevel of knowledge that I have
without collaborating with otherfolks.
So, I think it's it can belonely working as a consultant
and being on your own.
Um, but having folks you canbounce ideas off of and talk
through problems with is just sofundamental to doing this job.

(01:13:47):
Well, so I highly recommendcollaborating because.
it's made such a massivedifference in my work and in
projects where I've been reallyan island on my own, I, I have
not done my best work.

think that segues nicely to the last question I
have, which is really whatconsulting resources have been
most helpful for you, whether itbe books, podcasts, coaches,
other people, likecollaborating, like you said,
um, just if the listeners, um,Could go off and consume one
thing to help them.
What do you think that would beor follow someone?

one person who has fundamentally shaped how I
think about my work and how Iexecute my work is Erica Hall.
Um, she just actually released,uh, a new edition of her book,
Just Enough Research, which, isnot a book about research.
It is, it is.
But it's also, you know, I thinkI've said this before, Erica

(01:14:45):
really has helped me understandas a consultant and as a
practitioner, how to navigatethe different cultures of a
company.
And, she talks about the factthat like, our job is not
research so much as it isfacilitating like a culture of
learning and that book for mehas been huge.

(01:15:06):
and I'm excited to read the newedition, because I think the
other good thing about Erica isshe is so on the pulse of
things.
And as, as our world shifts, sheis someone whose voice I always
look to immediately.
on top of being an insanelyamazing researcher, she's an
excellent business person.
you know, she and Mike havebeen.
Made Mule like such a, asuccess.

(01:15:29):
And I think it's because theyare transparent and they are
just, incredibly good atmanaging the kind of business
side of what we do, um, and thecultural side of what we do.

can't wait to read her new book.
And, actually that's a goodEaster egg because I am in the
midst of scheduling her andMike.
So hopefully coming soon.

so fun, Like, it'll be great.

Um, I'll say, I actually have this book sitting
in front I'm going to mentionit, because it's a really great
book that I bet a number ofpeople in the UX world probably
actually haven't read or heardof, because it's not a UX book,
but it is, to me, an incrediblyvaluable book in terms of how to
tell good stories.
And how to talk about what youdo as a consultant or what your

(01:16:13):
product does, right?
It's a very hard thing for us todo is talk about what we do,
talk about our product.
there's a book called building astory brand by Donald Miller and
I'm holding it up, but get the,uh, the listening audience
cannot see this.
Miller actually lived down thestreet from me when I was in
Nashville.
And he talks about how to buildand think about effective
stories.
And what is really interestingabout that is that not only does

(01:16:35):
it talk about how to, tell greatstories and how to build
interesting messages aroundstory, it also helps shift your
thinking about what is the roleof a product in somebody's life?
What is the role of a service insomebody's life?
One of his big things that hetalks about is that you are not
the hero.
The user is the hero.
You are the guide that helpsthem accomplish a goal.

(01:16:56):
Right?
it's a very importantperspective shift.
and I believe that storytellingis one of the most powerful
things that we have one of themost powerful stories we have
for everything that we do andgetting better and better at
storytelling is, is one of thebest things that we can do for
our career and personally, uh,so building a story brand highly
recommended.
I would definitely oh, I have tocheck that out.
I'm all about storytelling.

(01:17:17):
Yep.

Yeah.
The other book, Justin, that yourecommended to me that has been
on my desk for, like, years atthis point, um, is Thinking Fast
and Slow.

Yes.

Such a great book in terms of just helping us
understand, yeah, just, howpeople think, how we can kind of
shape our thinking andarticulate ourselves.
That book has been just amazing.
It changed the way I think, theway that I write, the way that I
work, I think that's great.

So I'm going to include links to everything
we've mentioned, all the books,and everything in the show
notes.
And thank you both so much.
I am so glad you could just joinme today to have these important
conversations.
It's been awesome.

Yeah.
We love it.

Thank you, Kyle.
Been

Always good to talk to you.

Yeah.
Until next time.

guys.

Bye.
All right.
That wraps up this episode.
Thanks for joining me.
So do you have a topic or aquestion that you would like us
to explore on a future episodeof the UX consultants lounge?
Perhaps there's an anonymousconsulting story you want to
submit.
If so, click on the link in theshow notes to submit your story

(01:18:26):
or question from the podcastwebsite.
Until next time, keep thatconsultancy going.
I can't wait to have you back inthe lounge for our next episode.

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Lynne Polischuik & Justin Davis - Navigating the Evolution of UX Consulting: Adapting to Industry Shifts

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Lynne Polischuik & Justin Davis - Navigating the Evolution of UX Consulting: Adapting to Industry Shifts