Computer voice
UX podcast episode 261.

Per Axbom
You’re listening to UX podcast coming to you from Stockholm, Sweden.

James Royal-Lawson
Helping the UX community explore ideas and share knowledge since 2011.

Per Axbom
We are your hosts, Per Axbom

James Royal-Lawson
and James Royal-Lawson.

Per Axbom
With listeners in 199 countries and territories in the world, from New Zealand to Morocco.

James Royal-Lawson
Scott Berkun, author, speaker, and in what Scott calls his “first career”, he spent a lot of his time leading teams and working with UX design related projects.

Per Axbom
Scott has written eight books now, and many of them have become bestsellers, you’ll want to check out Confessions of a public speaker, The myths of innovation and Making things happen.

James Royal-Lawson
His eighth book is How design makes the world. And Scott starts off the book with in his introduction with this, what is your favourite thing in the world? Why is it better than everything else? The answer is: how it was designed.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
When you were writing, How design makes the world, who did you have in mind for the book?

Scott Berkun
I had two audiences in mind. The first one was, well, the mission for the book, which explains the audience is, I look at the world the way I think most designers do, or user experience folks do, which is that the world needs help. But, if you don’t go into design to believe you’re going to go on a project team and be like, Oh, everything’s great, let’s keep it all the same. You become in this field, because you think the world should be better, and you develop skills to make it better. And so I look at the world, and I’m like, we have a long way to go. I mean, even if you look at the web, and mobile apps, and business tools, and everything could be a lot better, and it is not.

So why is it not? And I think there’s two reasons that I explained, the audience is one, I don’t think designers are great at explaining design. I think we’re actually, it’s a weak spot for us. And our biggest complaint is, oh, we’re not understood. The VP ignores us, the project manager ignores [us], Oh, and what’s wrong with them? And that’s not a very design centric attitude. So I think one goal for the book to give designers, better stories, better language, better metaphors, to explain what we do, why it’s important, and why we’re worthy of trust.

The second audience, which is a bigger audience, is everybody that we complain about, executives, managers, co-workers, friends, parents, people who make decisions in the world that affect design, but don’t know anything about it, and don’t have many resources to learn. Because I don’t think we make it easy. So those are my two audiences. I think designers need to be better at being ambassadors for design. And then I think there’s a lack of good material for people who are in decision making roles, to easily and in a fun way, get acclimated and become design literate, so that they can make better choices.

James Royal-Lawson
I think that just that thing about how bad designers are at kind of designing our own communication of the profession we work with, it’s always been fascinating to me, it’s that blind spot that we have for something that really shouldn’t be a blind spot.

Per Axbom
Let’s call it UX and see if people understand what we mean. It’s weird.

Scott Berkun
Wait, do you mean UX and IA or UI? Wait, let’s before, before we actually convince anybody let’s have an argument amongst ourselves about what we are.

James Royal-Lawson
And at the same time, though, management everyone else who kind of we should be talking to is backing away slowly going. I mean, we’re just gonna leave them to it.

Scott Berkun
Right? Of course. Yeah. And in the abstract, every time I have a conversation like this, we all I was like, yeah, we’re kind of bad this and then five minutes later, we’re on Twitter having the same argument again and again. That’s just embarrassing, because it’s the wrong fight. It’s just like, no one wins in these battles.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Which is such a shame when we have, like you said, that we’re going to design with that, like passion of changing the world, of making it better. And you know, we don’t, we waste that passion by all the kind of like arguing about what what it is we do and how we describe it.

Scott Berkun
Yeah, it is. And that’s, I’ve been in this in this community for a long time. And it seems like it is a perennial problem. It is not like an accidental tactical thing. It’s something fundamental in how either we’re trained or how our professional how our profession works. And so that’s why I wrote the book. I feel like there’s no, that’s a big gap for us. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it we externalise the problem. So I’m in a good position given a lot of my career was spent on the other side, I was mostly a team leader person. I very rarely had the word design in my job title, though, that is my background. So I’ve been on the other side, I know why I rejected designers ideas. I know why those arguments don’t work. I thought I had a, I have an opportunity to maybe help solve the problem.

Per Axbom
You said something there, James about, we want to save the world. I think that’s something you address Scott as well. We, as designers, put ourselves on this, this pedestal thinking that and most companies actually in design, these agencies have all these mission statements where they say they are going to save the world with design. Why is that a problem?

Scott Berkun
Well. I feel like you’re setting me up there. It’s a problem because designers rarely have that power. To say, let’s let’s take the world out of the equation for a second, let’s just say we have a project that’s in trouble. We want to save the project, you know, a website, a mobile, whatever, we want to save the project. Well, the only people that can really save the project are the people who make the project level decisions. They’re the only ones. They can, they can change the budget, they can change the goals, they can change, who’s hired, or who’s fired. Like, that’s how you save something. That’s how you make something really succeed. But by definition, and sometimes it’s a self-limitation.

Designers don’t want that kind of power. We want to have the ideas. So when we say you want to have the ideas, you want to show up and like show the prototype, and then hand it off to someone to do all the negotiating and the arguing. And so we say we want to save the world. But anyone who’s actually making those decisions is kind of like, how is this going to help me? I gotta argue with this VP, I got to deal with that client. We’re not going to make you know, we don’t have enough money to pay payroll next month. Like, what are you talking about? It’s this artistic, dismissible artistic sensibility, that pretension, that because you have ideas, that you’re going to help anybody, and it’s a–.

So I think that on its own is off-putting, as you’re suggesting. Anyone who’s really in the middle of a project is not looking for that kind of … they want practical, they want [someone] to help me with this. Solve this problem. And it’s rarely and the problems really at their heart are not directly about good ideas or not. It’s about these other things that we tend to consider as not design problems, dysfunctional teams and power structures and politics. Oh, that’s not design. And I’m like, Yeah, it is. That’s, that’s why your great idea gets rejected, then it’s a design problem.

Per Axbom
That relates to what you’re… the term design theatre, which I don’t actually use that much, but I see it in your book. And I wonder sometimes, because I’ve seen it on stage, mostly at American events. What does that really refer to?

Scott Berkun
I don’t know where that term comes from. I agree, it’s not used that often. But there is this, this habit in business culture, of doing things that seem important, but are really for show. So there are other kinds of theatre, besides design theatre, but given that, we’re talking about design, there’s definitely design theatre, and a classic example is the head of design at some organisation will come in and talk about the design process. Here’s our design process for the organization. And there’ll be these little lovely steps and thought, what, whatever flavour they’re they’re talking about.

And they’ll they’ll presume that because they, as the leader, the head of design, have this design process, that that is literally what the actual decision-makers and engineers are going to use to make design decisions. When in reality, the engineering team may be completely ignoring what the design team is doing. There are other… they have their own method. So that to me is a classic example for designers, of design theatre. That just because you put something out there that looks good and sounds compelling, unless a decision makers and stakeholders are doing it. It’s just for show. And that’s, sadly, a common situation. The disconnect from reality between what the designers want to do, or have done, and what the people who make the decisions are actually doing.

James Royal-Lawson
You use the example of the customer centric as well, didn’t you?

Scott Berkun
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
…A customer-centric organisation.

Scott Berkun
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
And so, and that being an aspect of theatre as well.

Scott Berkun
Yeah. I think I refer to in the book, it’s kind of marketing speak that corporations and or, you know, organizations will do that. We have, we’re a customer, we’re a customer-centric company. We go: Oh, they’re customer centric. That’s great. And then you try to get, like, support, like you, like you’re their thing broke and you sent an email to their Help, Help me. And you’re told Yes, you’re in the queue you’ll be get… we’ll get to you in like, three years from now. So, the fact that they say their customer-centric, could have no bearing to the reality of what a customer… a good customer experience is like. And so it is a kind of marketing language. And unfortunately, design theatre means sometimes a lot of what designers are doing, is just a kind of, it’s just, it’s a mark, it’s a marketing for themselves, and what they think they’re doing that has no effect, no tangible effect on what the product actually becomes.

James Royal-Lawson
So are they… I know you’ve got a couple of questions that you say is, what good designers can ask. They’re a tool I guess to help you put this situation back on track, to pull the world back into your good designer’s hands.

Scott Berkun
Yes.

James Royal-Lawson
What are those questions for us?

Scott Berkun
So, the questions. So… I spent a lot of time thinking about how do we simplify all this stuff? Like we, it’s so easy to get lost, again in methods and theories. And we feel like that’s our wheelhouse. So we go there, but it’s just not effective. So how do you make it so that some simple lists? Like [a] really simple list that can be unpacked to get to all the nuances of what good design is. But it’s really simple, like something that could fit in a tweet. Could fit on an index card. Could fit on a, on a PowerPoint slide.

So there are four questions that almost every story in the book ties back to in some way. And the four questions to us, are really simple. But that’s part of the problem. So the four questions are: What are you trying to improve? Who are you’re trying to improve it for? How will you ensure that you’re successful? And then last question is, who might be harmed by what you make, now or in the future? Within our community? Like, oh, that’s obvious. You can go back 50 years, and people, human factors have been talking about these are important questions. But the problem isn’t the questions, the problem is that the questions get ignored. And they’re ignored, because they’re often asked in a complicated way.

So one goal for the book was to provide these questions, simple to reuse, can put it up… put it on your slide deck, review them at every meeting. And it’s so simple and lightweight, that it makes it easy to refer back to them. And then the book unpacks, all those questions and explores why so often, the answer is that project teams have are bad. The biggest one being the third one, how do we ensure we’re successful? If you ask any startup founder, what are you trying to improve? They can tell you. And you say, Who are you trying to improve it for? They’ll say everybody, and feel good about that answer. And well, you’re laughing. And we’re like that means you don’t know.

But then the third question like, how do you how do you ensure this? That’s a really a lot of what we do. How do you know? What research have you? What biases have you checked? What research have you done? Have you made a prototype? And that’s a lot of what we do. But to frame it that way about ensuring success is a different way to get in there of like, yes, you think you know what you’re doing. But let’s explore that more. How do you know? what biases do you have? What are the better kinds of data you can get? Who has the, who really has decision making power? About to decide what actually goes out the door? Is that in line with the goals of these questions? So those were the four.

James Royal-Lawson
Which is nice because it covers the full spectrum of it, though the problem, the solution, the measurement, and the safety net, with the ethical side of stuff, of who we’re going to harm for this. I mean, I recognise, sometimes what you’re trying to improve, that variation of that anyway, something I know that I say quite a lot during work is when you’ve, you’ve got to those kind of stalemates or those kind of you realising you’ve spent hours discussing the placement of a button on a little screen somewhere and you you’re no longer, you’re kind of now working out should it go there? Or there? Or there? And suddenly, it’s like, well, you know, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve here? It’s not where to place the button, which is actually what you’re doing in the meeting room. But it’s not, you’ve lost the bigger picture. That reminder’s vanished at some point, in the chaos of it all, or in the demands of, of whatever sprint you’re in and trying to push something out the door.

Per Axbom
That’s so interesting, because I went a completely different way, when you were thinking about that question, because I was thinking about a huge project I’m working on now with nurses, trying to improve the interface they’re using when they’re answering phones, for national health services. And then some people are saying so well, it will improve it for nurses, and that will also improve it for the citizens. Oh, yeah. Then we can add statistics and that will improve. And in the end, we don’t know which, which one of them are more, is more important than the other and which one do we start with and start forgetting?

Scott Berkun
Yeah.

Per Axbom
So it’s, just having those questions I realised, maybe think about well, what do I really mean when I ask this question?

Scott Berkun
Yeah. The… what you were alluding to James, about what problem we’re trying to solve. That’s the way I have always in my whole career. That’s my sensibility. That’s the question I ask. And in working on the book, there’s a long Twitter thread that happened maybe two years ago, while I was working on the book, where I asked, I had a different version of the questions. I’m like, hey, are there better versions of this? And a bunch of people chimed in with different alternatives. And I was convinced. I’m a sceptical New York, New Yorker type, like I tend to work like what’s wrong? like it’s, but a lot of people don’t.

And so that’s why I inverted the question. I made it a positive one. But to me, it’s a that’s really, hey what problem are we trying to solve here? Like, what are we doing? But, you know, to the point about questions and like prioritising the answers, that’s really what makes design hard, is people will end up rambling away, there’s so many different possibilities for what you could do. And if you’re not asking the question, right, and ensuring you work your way through to a coherent answer, about prioritisation, like, Is it the nurse that we’re focusing on? The patient? The administrator? Who? Like without that, that explains why so much of what gets made doesn’t really progress. Because they’ve never sorted, they never prioritised those things.

Per Axbom
You suggest that we use the word quality more to, rather than design, to actually frame what we do.

Scott Berkun
Yeah, I, this is sort of the like, language thing for designers, who really, really like our language, who want it to be on our turf. But our turf tends to be small. So we have more to gain by using terminology, whoever we’re trying to convince. And quality is a word to me, that always gets people to stop for a second. Everyone, every engineer, every executive believes, however misguided, that they do quality work. And that’s really what they want to do. So when you use the word quality, it engages a part of their brain, that they have an emotional connection.

This is my theory, right, I don’t have data to support this. Other than anecdotal life experience, but you say quality now, and somehow that opens their mind a bit more. When you say design, there’s a lot of preconceptions they have about that, that as a designer are probably limiting. When you say quality, we want to make a quality product, don’t we boss? And they go Yeah, of course we do! Well, and then you’re setting them up. Well, then how can it be this hard for our primary customer to do this task? You’re challenging them on their integrity around quality. That’s way better than saying, you know, we’re violating heuristic number seven on Jakob Nielsen’s… like, what, like, they’re just gonna look at you like you’re from another planet. And so, that was the spirit of that. Use the language of who the most powerful people in the room, and quality will get you a lot closer.

James Royal-Lawson
I mean, I like that. Because, yeah, design. That’s one of the things I think everyone has an opinion about design. And we were kind of like, I suppose built to say, you know, good sofa, bad sofa or, you know, that’s a nice coffee cup, that’s not. I mean, we’re doing that kind of value judgement the whole time, that subjective opinion of design the whole time. But I think you’re right about quality. That’s, that’s not something we judge as subjective I don’t think, in the same way. We’re trained during our lives in a different way to kind of like, Oh, that’s a quality car, or that’s a quality. It’s not subjective in the same way as we’re taught to be with design.

Scott Berkun
Or at least it just, it gets you out of this, the limitations of how you’re perceived, you know? And so that’s part of my experience. When I was a PM, I’m lead. I am the leader of a project. So engineers, testers, designers, they looked [to me as the] decision maker, at least I’m leading the decision making process. And so the ones who were more effective with me were ones who could speak on my terms as the trade off person. Yes, your design is great. But if I invest in this, I have less resources for something else. So the fact you’re telling me that this is an important design consideration, has value, doesn’t help me make the decision. If you’re telling me that the argument is the overall quality in totality, is going to be better if I follow your advice.

And it’s better than investing in this other thing, that makes my judgement… I’m far more receptive to being persuaded if it’s at this great, you’re thinking a little bit bigger than just your specialisation and quality starts to get you on that path. As does saying, arguing as a design person, I believe we should go this way, it’s probably a better business decision. Like if the designer says that, then the product manager who’s usually the defender of the business is in a very different posture in the conversation. It’s not a head to head battle any more. What the design so now there’s more room in the conversation for the best interest of the project. And so, that’s where I’ve tried to poke at for the designers reading the book. And it’s subtle, I don’t hit designers over the head with it, I’m suggesting there are better ways to tell the story. There are better metaphors to use, there’s better language and the book is steeped in these, what I think are smarter and better ways to talk about what we do.

James Royal-Lawson
Do you tackle bad design, as a phrase that we we use? I am thinking there like, you know, we, I’ve said myself during this episode, good design and bad design. I mean, and then also kind of like, that hasn’t been designed. So you’ve got that three way thing, haven’t you? It’s so no one’s bothered designing that.

Scott Berkun
Yeah. There’s a quote early in the book. I forget, I forget who it’s from. But he’s a bookmaker. And his quote was basically that, there’s never a question of there not being not being a design, anything that is made has a design, even if the people making it weren’t thinking about the design at all. It still has a design, and it’s probably going to be bad. If no one was, no one was conscientiously thinking about it, it’s probably not going to have a clear problem to solve. It probably was not thoughtful about who was designed for it, all the four questions and all the other ones too.

But bad design is always context-sensitive. And that’s one of the big things in the book. And like chapter three or four is about, how do you know something is good without asking these questions? You know, you could you look at a car and go, that’s a great looking, it’s a great car, it drives so fast, and I like fast cars. But then if you ask what, wait a second, who’s the car for? Is it for a family of six, where they need to go to soccer practice. And then this is actually now a bad car for that purpose. And even as designers, I think we often jump into projecting our values on to objects, without asking the question of who is it for? And what was it trying to improve for those people?

Per Axbom
Wow, that that actually brought back a memory for me where my dad bought a Jaguar when I was little, and the engine broke down after a week. That was — I had not thought about — yeah after one week — I had not thought about that for years and years. That was so funny. Because that when he was a family, man, that was too small of a car for us, probably.

Scott Berkun
Yeah, yeah. Probably not, not the right product, not the right customer market fit for your family.

Per Axbom
But you touched on something else that is very related to this, which sort of was painful to think about almost. Because you want to do your best as a designer, but you talk about, there’s also something called budget products. And those also need to be put out there, because they are part of doing business. And sometimes so they are these fundamental things you have to think about, to actually, well, trade offs, I guess, as a designer, where you actually have to realise that, I’m not doing my best work, because I’m not supposed to right here.

Scott Berkun
Yeah, that’s a very sensible thing to acknowledge about any kind of work, that I’m on this project, in this business, and the goals of the project, for this project, my expertise might be of low value to this project. And that’s okay. That’s okay. I’m employed by this company, they have money to pay me, because of all the different kinds of projects they choose, and the different priorities they put on those projects. That is okay, that is part of how I am paid for these projects that are not exciting for me, but have value and serve a customer possibly well. That’s a mature attitude about the role that design plays in the world. But again, that’s not what we go into design for.

That’s not what we’re taught in design school, about how you’re going to fit into corporate, the realities of corporations and organisations. But what you’re suggesting there is a much more mature attitude, or at least to say, if I do want this project to be something I’m excited about, then I have to influence the stakeholders of the project, to change the goals of the project. I have to have that skill and develop it and realise that’s part of my job, then. If I want to work on more things in this organisation, that are more exciting for me, I have to come up with a good business argument for that. And if you don’t want to do that, I’ll ignore the advice you’re provoking me to try to give. I end up hearing a lot: Okay, but why should I have to do that? My answer is, you don’t!

I’m not telling you, you have to do any of these things. But if you’re gonna complain that the company that pays you — you knew what products they made before they hired you. You have some sensibility about what, who has power and who doesn’t. To Look at that and go, it’s broken and wrong, and I’m just not going to participate. All right, like you have put yourself in that place. You’re limiting yourself then to, their definition of what design is their definition of what you can contribute, you’re limiting yourself because you’re allowing them to decide it for you. And I don’t think that’s really what we want. I think we really do want to be more influential, we really do want to help the company do better and make better products, but that’s not going to come out of your design expertise. It’s going to come out of the relationships you build, whose trust you earn, how you learned to become influential and persuasive. And, a lot of designers just don’t seem to want to do that. Which is fine. But then don’t complain about why no one listens to you. Because that’s, we’re on their turf.

Per Axbom
That’s some really, really good solid advice. That I don’t hear a lot of people say, actually, so thank you for that. And thank you for being on the show Scott, it was so much fun. I could speak for an hour more, I guess. But, we’re ah gonna round off there.

Scott Berkun
This was fun. Your questions are good. And you folks are delightful hosts, thanks for having me.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
A whole load of things I’m thinking about, reflecting about Per, after talking to Scott. But one thing is, this whole idea about that we do good design. And we do, occasionally bad design. And we’re maybe very conscious, or self conscious about when we’ve done bad design. When I was thinking about how even our good design can be bad, and how maybe as designers, we have to be more ready to accept that our good design isn’t a final majestic thing. And there’s actually, I’m gonna grill a quote from Scott’s book that we didn’t bring up an interview, I think is relevant. Sometimes bad experiences happen, because you’re using something that was designed to solve someone else’s problem. It’s like trying on a shirt, two sizes too large or two sizes too small. The design itself might be okay for another person. But it’s a mismatch for you.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
So you know…

Per Axbom
…exactly,

James Royal-Lawson
yeah, I don’t know how much we are, how good we are really accepting and understanding that, how good design can be bad as well.

Per Axbom
It has to do with intent. I mean, we talked about that everything is design. And sometimes, you know, and realise that you are designing and you pay attention to two things that can go wrong. But that also means that you have to acknowledge that you’ll never be able to understand everything that can happen. And all the parameters that go into it. actually having experience with almost the opposite, that my bad design is good.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah.

Per Axbom
Something that I feel is not my best work… I mean, I don’t have a portfolio, I don’t use a portfolios. But if I had one, I wouldn’t put it in there Briggs it, I really don’t like the look of it. And but when I meet users who use that platform, they are so happy with it. I’ve seen people blog about it, how much it’s solved so many of their problems. And I realise, I am not the target group. And I’m so happy that I made it into something that I don’t really like myself, because that means someone else likes it more.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And, as well, one of the things that I teach is, I highlight the point of when you’re doing analytics, like you maybe would have to be aware of measuring things that go off the the righteous path, you know, when you when you we do all these flows, and plan all these specific paths through products and things. And we don’t always design when you’ve skidded off the edges and gone on to other routes and things. And that’s, again, I suppose, accepting or understanding at least there are many paths that we don’t design for. So good designs can be both good and bad…

Per Axbom
Sort of like you were saying when we were talking with Scott, is that I mean, should we even be using the words good and bad design? Shouldn’t we be talking about the outcomes? Really?

James Royal-Lawson
Exactly..

Per Axbom
And it’s, I mean, it’s always a scale,. There’s a grey area, it works for some people, It hurts maybe some people Does it hurt a lot of people? Then it’s really bad. Does it hurt people who are already oppressed and hurt by other things? Then it’s really bad. Does it hurt people who are in a privileged position already but the others people benefit from it? Then maybe it’s better? It’s so hard. It’s not black and white?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And that goes into what we said. Or this thing about whether you saying like designer/quality was what we talked to Scott about, after the interview, and how design is a subjective term. That we have personal opinions about design whereas quality, it’s kind of more accepted that something is good. Quality, or low quality, there’s a different skill to it, it’s not as subjective.

Per Axbom
I really, like the point he’s making about how it’s quite intriguing how bad we are at explaining our own profession and our work and the value we provide, given that we are supposed to be, that is our professional. To be able to explain things so that other people understand them. And I think there’s a lot of work to be done in how we frame our work within project teams, and to stakeholders and to managers. To help them understand why we’re doing the stuff we’re doing.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And also, this whole thing about feedback, was not just individual feedback, the feedback about the things you’re working on. Like when, you know, if you’re embedded deep down in organisations, and you’re working on a specific thing, but you realised something, and it is maybe outside the scope of the area you’re working on. But getting that message across to other parts of organisations or other bits of the product? In some, especially larger organisations, that’s just impossible.

Per Axbom
Exactly. And that also alludes to something Scott was talking about where you I mean, you know, the job you chose, you know, the product you’re working on, how much did you expect to be able to influence it? I mean, and how bad you feel about the work you’re doing? These are all things that you have to be considering. But maybe you can’t change everything. You can’t. And sometimes you need to adapt. And sometimes you need to accept the situation and do good work elsewhere. And sometimes, like we conclude, you have to find another job if you don’t feel okay with it. But just that idea of finding out what you are contributing to, and not feeling okay with it. That’s really important.

James Royal-Lawson
And also, the spinning around to the positive side of things, is like, What are you trying to improve? Like Scott himself said that…

Per Axbom
Yes.

James Royal-Lawson
…rather than that using the questions like: what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? It’s like what you’re trying to improve? So if you, even if maybe you’re not completely satisfied with what you’re working with just now, if you can, if you can hold on to what you’re trying to improve, then maybe you’ll feel a bit better about it anyway?

Per Axbom
Right. And realise that you may not be improving it at the rate you want. You may not be improving it in all the ways that you want. But you’re at least you’re moving in the right direction.

James Royal-Lawson
You’re improving something for someone.

Per Axbom
Yeah. Yeah, I really, I really like that framing of those four questions as well, which helps us. It makes it easier sometimes. And just going back to something that feels easier to talk about helps everyone on a team.

James Royal-Lawson
Yep. Recommended listening. What do you reckon?

Per Axbom
Well, you actually put something in our notes, and you put Episode 195: Infused Design with Jared Spool. And I don’t know what we talked about in that episode.

James Royal-Lawson
Now, the reason why I’ve referenced that one is because if I remember correctly, that’s the one where Jared talks about conch… when you were kind of like conscious of your incompetence, and you’re kind of…

Per Axbom
Oh, yes.

James Royal-Lawson
…unconsciously incompetent, and that kind of thing. We do talk, and we talk about everyone being a designer, and we’re about protectionists, where designers should code, all these kinds of things. So right we look at a few plays. He says its one of his playbooks, Jarvis Spool’s playbook so that….

Per Axbom
Good choice. Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
…you should listen to these things I put in the recommendations for you.

Scott Berkun
So thank you for spending your time with us. Links and notes and a full transcript for this episode can be found on uxpodcast.com. And don’t forget to press follow or subscribe if you haven’t done so already.

James Royal-Lawson
But you can also contribute to funding the show by visiting uxpodcast.com/support.

Per Axbom
Remember to keep moving.

James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
So Per, I’m writing a song right now, about getting my door lock replaced.

Per Axbom
Okay, that sounds pretty cool.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, there’s a key change at the end.

Per Axbom
[Laughter] Oh.