Navigating Transparency, Collaboration, and Remote Teams with Tyler Sticka - S2 Ep. 20

In this episode, we're joined by Tyler Sticka, Co-owner, Partner, and Creative Director at Cloud Four. With experience leading teams in both a stealth startup and at WE Communications, Tyler's unique design process, blending hand-drawn sketches and interactive prototypes, sets him apart. In this conversation, he touches on effective consultation strategies, the collaborative learning approach, and the evolving landscape & challenges in web design.

Discussion points -

• What sort of bogus myth, strategy, or misconception would you like to set the record straight on? 2:47
• How do you build trust with clients while guiding them through a transparent and collaborative process? Are there any specific strategies that have been particularly effective? 8:57
• How do you manage collaboration and project success when working with both internal development teams and external partners, especially in the context of remote work? 20:50
• How has your consulting work impacted clients' processes? Can you share an example where a customer adopted a concept or practice from your approach, resulting in a positive change? 25:52
• How do you maintain the quality of your consultation work, ensuring clients adopt and follow recommended processes? How do you minimize instances where clients deviate from the proposed strategies? 30:28
• What led you to take on a leadership role in your career, and how have your interests in art and technology influenced your approach to leadership? 34:10
• What's exciting you about the future? 42:48

Show notes - 

• I feel like it's better to spread that workout, be transparent, and give peeks behind the curtain along the way. Take this as an opportunity to guide the customer, guide your client, and guide your stakeholders through the process so they understand how to participate in it. 4:12
• Once you've established relationships, it's all about figuring out a way to harvest those ideas and thoughts through discovery. 11:50
• A lot of times, we're hired to be the lubrication that helps the gears move forward, using whatever the latest technology is or bridging a technology gap. 15:36
• It's about ensuring a shared understanding and ownership of priorities because inevitably, you'll encounter new information that can alter your initial solution. In a world with finite resources, it then becomes all about prioritization. 21:46
• Our strategy is that you can learn a lot not just by having someone teach you, but you'll learn even more by working on problems together. We delve into the real problems, not just the stated ones. The customer gets to understand how these things work, how they function, and how they come together. Not in the abstract, but in a literal sense, they get to learn by doing. 31:32
• We're at this interesting turning point with the web, where for the last 10 years, there has been an emphasis on frameworks, with React being by far the most prevalent, but all frameworks have been sort of dominating. 43:17
• I'm excited for the opportunity to do the right thing in those regards, to make the best use of these browser capabilities, and to design the best, most accessible experiences I can. And to use these trends to inform and let folks know that we have so much work to do when it comes to the web. 46:11

Myth Busted - Designers work in isolation, creating solutions magically, and revealing a finished product dramatically. Links - 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylersticka/ 

Company website: https://cloudfour.com/                               https://tylersticka.com/ 

Show Credits - 

Host - Varun Bihani & Jessie Coan Produced by Bobby Soni Edited by Harish Khatarkar Content by Yashika Neekhra & Juhie Bhardwaj