A transcript of Episode 262 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Kate Rutter, Kim Goodwin and Pamela Pavliscak to discuss why tools are on everyone’s mind and how we can ready ourselves for the demands of designing in the future.
This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Hannah Sawbridge.
Transcript
James Royal-Lawson
UX podcast is funded by me and Per together with contributions we get from you, our listeners. If you’d like to contribute, you can do so financially, just visit UX podcast.com/support. But you can also contribute as a volunteer. We’d love your help to make sure we get our transcripts and various other things created and published for each show. Raise your hand to help by emailing UX podcast at UXpodcast.com
Computer voice
UX podcast episode 262.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
I’m James, and I’m Per. This is UX podcast, bouncing Business, Technology, People and Society every Friday for 10 whole years. And reaching out to listeners in 199 countries and territories from Cambodia to Mexico.
Per Axbom
Is that a new record like 199?
James Royal-Lawson
Well, it’s not going down Per.
Per Axbom
We have a quite special show today with no less than three guests. And the background behind this show is that we were invited to UXLx masters. And longtime listeners of the show will know that UXLx, where this past podcast started out 10 years ago,
James Royal-Lawson
Back in May 2011.
Per Axbom
So for UX ELEKs, we invited three brilliant people to join us and talk about confidence, confidence and surviving the demands of the future. And what we’re trying to get at is this notion that more and more of UXers are actually feeling stressed about the fact that we’re expected to know so much about technology, and tools. And this sort of, came out of a discussion we were having about within UX education, it’s quite evident that a lot of students are asking about the tools, what tools do I need to know? Whereas those of us who have been in the industry for quite a while we think about it along the ways of we’re not, it’s not about the tools, it’s about the process, it’s about the methodology.
James Royal-Lawson
As its both me and your parents we’re members of boards or steering committees for two of the vocational education courses offered here in Sweden. And this has been something that’s come up a lot that, you know, the students really want to learn a lot about specific tools, you know, and the employees, employers are actually asking for those specific tools.
Per Axbom
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
But we’re more than this, aren’t we?
Per Axbom
Exactly. Let’s hope so. And to help us bring more light on this topic, the three people we have invited are Kim Goodwin, UX legend and the author of ‘Designing for the digital age.’
James Royal-Lawson
Kate Rutter, Professor at California College of the Arts and co-host of the, well, its definitely a funny podcast, and I was ‘What is wrong with UX’ and co author of ‘Build Better Products.’
Per Axbom
And Pamela Pavliscak, Tech Emotionographer.
James Royal-Lawson
And I’m so glad you said that word.
Per Axbom
But I love the title. And people say well people just making up words now about well, what is UX? Who knows what UX, but emotionographer, emotionography and that actually triggers something, that triggers an emotion in people when you say it. So a fabulous teacher of speculative design at Pratt Institute, and is the author of ‘Emotionally Intelligent Design.’ So, we’re gonna start off this show, and you’ll be hearing clips from each of these people. We’re starting off with Kate. And we wanted to ask her more about looking at UX education and, and people just assuming that they need to know specific tools, and all of this technology approaching and it’s changing all the time, and people feel that they need to know voice and AI and chatbots. But how much of our time, do we really need to be spending on understanding all these new technologies?
[Music]
Kate Rutter
Yeah, you know, just thinking back so it’s been a transition and I think especially for structured education, so you have a school or you have a programme, the shift from a tools-practice into a more methods, or even of applicable practice where you might have partner companies that are creating design challenges within the context of a studio or even a classroom. I think that is an evolution. And it takes a while for people’s expectations. To change for the material that you use to communicate about the programme to change, etc. And so, it can take a few years before you stop listing, this is the set of software you need, right?
It’s a little bit like implying that someone might go to UC Berkeley, but what they want to know is the full book list of everything they’ll take when they’re there. You know, it’s like, well, that really has a lot of other considerations. And we might recognise that that’s kind of an unhelpful question to ask. But I don’t think we’ve, the world has kind of gotten to the understanding that software tools are less helpful. That said, it’s the means of production, right? If you cannot use Figma, there are certain workplaces that you cannot participate in. And so it is tricky. And for people who don’t have, I’m talking a lot about tools, but for people who don’t have access to those because of price, because of computing equipment, because of just even location or global situation, whatever that is, then they are at a disadvantage. And so the tools are, are important. Not being able, you can use the tools well and still not be able to design well. I think so I think we’re trying to figure that out, too.
But it’s, I’m more interested in, how do people stay on top of what is happening and coming next? Especially when they’re either inculcated into an education programme, or worse yet, in a company, where, you know, your challenges are almost always here, and now. You know, and very immediate. And I think it’s the the lifelong learning, which I talked about at UX Lisbon, but a couple years ago, is, is the only way that our field will and the practitioners in it will have a sense of renewal and self renewal, skills renewal, but also opportunity renewal. That will then fuel our organisations to have the same. I don’t think our companies are gonna be like, ‘we got to go out and chart a new course,’ like, you know, that maybe some of them like r&d, maybe you know, I would love that world. But that world’s not happening, we need the people within those organisations to be pioneer, pioneering what they believe is coming next.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked previously about continuous learning. But I wonder if, if something just important maybe is, is continuous confidence, you know, because the way that we’ve got these, these tools, and the tools change, but there’s a set that you kind of need to experience anywhere. And I guess that confidence about the fact you have got experience of the tools is maybe what we need to look at to.
Kate Rutter
I love that, that continuous confidence in that, that you’re building, and kind of constantly creating that sense of comfort and awareness and capability for yourself. And I might add to that, this continuous exploration. And, you know, I don’t want to talk out of both sides of my mouth, but I’m going to because it’s a thinky topic, and we need to explore it from multiple perspectives. So for every time I say it’s not about the tools, I will also say new tools give new opportunities. There are things that you can do. Sometimes it’s just making it more efficient. So if you go from like, you know, and I get called names, but Photoshop to Sketch, some of the same principles apply, right? Sketch is better at it than Photoshop for certain things. Photoshop is actually still better than sketch is. But they, you know, they kind of fit into the same mindset. If you go from Microsoft Word to Google Docs, then whatever, like, you’re learning the new orientation, you’re not really learning the new mindset. But if you go from something like Figma, to like React, that is a whole different thing in your brain. Right. And so I think that’s, that’s where new and interesting things happen.
And so I, you know, I used to joke last year with some of the colleagues in the East Bay UX scene, and we were what concerned about falling out of tools. Like I’ve got tools I’m so efficient with, like, it is not interesting for me to explore a new tool if I’m on production, or if I’m on a deadline. But I also know that those tools like I’m at some point, I’m going to be clinging to, you know, my desktop versions with my what my dead hand. So I am, I gotta stay fresh. But it’s a little embarrassing, as if someone believes you’re in a seasoned position to ask for help with a tool that everybody else knows. So I get concerned about our senior managers or leaders who are no longer perhaps in the day to day enough that they get efficient with the new tools, not understanding the capabilities of the new tools, and so they can’t effectively kind of make the most of their team. And that’s something that I think about so I almost wanted like a secret speakeasy. We’re gonna call it a Teach-easy where you go and get a drink. And then, you know, folks who knew those tools would come in and clandestine on the on the down low would like teach you how to use that shit so that you didn’t miss an opportunity, because you didn’t know it.
Per Axbom
So we wanted to bring Kim Goodwin into this conversation as well. So we know people assume that they need to know specific tools, but then there’s also the new technology that’s approaching, it’s changing. How much, Kim, do we need to know? And how much of our time do we actually need to spend on understanding the new technologies?
Kim Goodwin
I think we need to understand that that they exist and broadly what they make possible, right? So that that in a project, we might be able to think, Oh, I wonder if this is a thing we could use, if it’s not already something that exists in that team or that organisation. But I don’t think we need to know them in depth until we’re actually working with them. Right? We can’t keep up with everything that we need to know. I think we can draw some comparisons to healthcare, right?
In many cases, in UX, we are playing the role of that generalist, that family physician, right, where we need to know a little about a lot of things. But there are lots of things that we won’t know in depth. And then there are some people who choose to specialise, right, you can go deep into being a voice AI designer and develop a tonne of expertise there. And that’s great. And, you know, but not everyone needs to do that. And you don’t have to have developed that expertise to do a bit of work in that field necessarily, right. You do need to learn some things about it. But many of those things that are specific to a technology, you can learn by observing some users use the technology, right? There are definitely principles involved in designing for chatbot that are not there when you’re designing for a forum because the interaction is stepwise, it’s slower. It’s more time-consuming. But all you have to do is run a couple usability tests for the chatbot to see ‘Oh, yeah, that’s how it’s different.’ Right? It makes itself pretty clear, pretty quickly.
The other thing I will say about technology is, even though technology is new, everything old is new again, sometimes, right? A lot of what is interesting and new about a technology sometimes is a constraint that has existed before. I remember a number of years ago, some designer who was much younger than I was was saying something about oh, well, you know, designers your age don’t really understand designing for phones and small screen and low resolution and a it was a noxious of him to say but I just had to laugh with it. Okay. Have you ever designed for 640 by 480 or monochrome or 1 colour? You know, have you ever designed the screen on a glucose metre? Which is monochrome and tiny? Yeah, small screens are really not a new thing. So you know, all of these constraints have come up before low bandwidth on some devices all that existed many years ago. So everything old is new again.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I mean, we were, we’re humans still. And the pace of human change, that’s a little bit slower to evolve than the technology in front of us. So it’s, I guess, it makes sense that we loop quicker.
Kim Goodwin
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there are some technologies that fundamentally change human behaviour, right? I mean, even 20 years ago, we were all about trying to be more reachable. And now that we all have, you know, supercomputers in our pockets, we’re like, please, how can I be less reachable? Right, the the behaviour shift, there is pretty profound. But few technologies do that. That quickly.
Per Axbom
I love your point about specialisation as well, because I think we can help people feel a lot better if we help them realise that there’s a person in UX and they know all that stuff. That doesn’t mean you’re not a UXer if you don’t know all that stuff. Yeah, we’re all different. And that’s I think, what’s really awesome about this profession as well.
Kim Goodwin
Yeah, yeah. And it’s very much an umbrella. Right. It certainly has gotten more specialised over the years. What I think is interesting, though, is, you know, again, going back to that parallel in the medical profession, before you can be a neurologist, you have to be a physician. Right? You don’t just go learn neurology without understanding how the skeletal system works, right. So I do think we all need some grounding in some fundamentals. We all need to be able to do a basic user interview, even if user research isn’t our specialty, right? We all need to be able to, to do some of those basics even if we’re, you know, focused in a narrower area of our field.
James Royal-Lawson
Are we still a little bit too focused on the visual aspect of design in where we are today? Pamela suggested that we need to let go of the side of the pool and explore what’s coming. What lies ahead? Means we really do have to broaden our focus.
Pamela Pavliscak
I hope so, I mean, I think that’s a real limitation of where we’re at right now is we’re very focused on visual design. And then kind of weird way too, because we also shy away from like specifics about visual design, and a lot of ways and focus on the structure. So that’s kind of a weird tension to think about. But let’s just set that aside. Um, I would like it to be more multi-sensory, right? Because when we think about our emotional lives, that’s not just like, we can see facial expressions, right? Or we can pick up on the way somebody moves or a gesture. But there’s a lot more to our emotional life. I mean, a lot of it’s just interior, a lot of its cognitive.
A lot of it is sensorial though, how things touch, the touch, the taste, music! And I think we don’t have a good way to design with those materials yet. You know, I think that’s coming. And that’s why I’m my most exciting work, I think now is really experimenting with objects, with things with physical, usually they have, you know, a screen that goes with them, and they’re somewhere in the mix. But I think that’s a new territory for us. And that’s really exciting. And it’s not that people haven’t been thinking about it over the years, and just feels like it’s slower in coming. And maybe that’s a good thing, right? Because sometimes we think, oh, things are changing so fast. I got to know this, I got to know that. But then you look back on it. And you think, well, that’s really been like, what 20 years since people got excited about ubiquitous computing, and where is it? Or VR would be another one, right? There’s lots of possibilities there.
But it’s not like we have to scramble, that is being implemented everywhere. We have time to think this through and play out different possibilities and get a little bit experimental with that, because it’s not going to be embedded in everything right away. I don’t think anyway, right? Like, I’m not in the job of predicting things, obviously, because a lot of things have changed very suddenly, with the pandemic, right? Like things that we maybe weren’t that into using, we’re using all the time, we were talking about Zoom earlier that [indiscernible]. I mean, I think probably all of us were using stuff like that. But I know, you know, my parents are you know that was a big, big deal. Lots of weird technologies that maybe wouldn’t have been so popular before the pandemic are becoming or are reviving, you know, like friendship lamps, or have these bond touch bracelets where you can, you know, kind of like a Facebook poke, but in real life, number of Facebook pokes. You know, like weird stuff like that.
Like, if there hadn’t been this global upheaval, and this massive event that affected us all, we might not have seen that coming so quickly. So I’m not saying like, oh, ubiquitous computing isn’t going to come right away, or VR isn’t, maybe there’s something unforeseen, but we also have to look at like, we have some time, it’s not going to happen. And when we look at some of these technologies, they’re not very good yet, you know, so there’s not much that can be done with them. But at least I’ll just speak for the emotion piece, it’s kind of, it’s at a toddler level of knowledge right now, or maybe even less than that, you know. It’s, the technology can recognise extremes, and very narrowly defined ones, and one modality, and that’s pretty limited right now, there’s a long way to go with something like that.
Per Axbom
So let’s circle back to our chat with Kate. She makes an excellent point about us being frustrated quite often about tech being slow and tedious. But then if you back up 10 years and compare it to that timeframe, you realise how fast everything is truly moving and how much faster you can actually get work done. So we are getting more time. But what are we doing with the time we saved?
Kate Rutter
And so I think that’s where our time has to come from, is when we own when we gain that time through product technology advancements. We need to hold on to that time and not fill it up with more directed work. I don’t give a shit about the productivity of like ‘business’ right now. We have huge productivity gains, but what I really want is businesses to be able to stay productive for a longer haul, and not just max out. Because they’re killing their people, they’re burning them out. So time to rest time to learn within the construct of our work. That’s what I want.
James Royal-Lawson
Time to play and time to explore the all those kind of curiosities and ‘whys’ and things that you come up with, and ask yourself.
Kate Rutter
And share them! That was one of the most amazing things at Adaptive Path, its we had this brown bag, and we had these design, open design sessions and various different culturally-embraced ways of bringing in new information and sharing experiments, which fostered a sense of play and experimentation. And you didn’t always have to be perfect. You know, and that is also a huge part of that learning is if you expect to have a level of achievement, that would be perfection, whatever that even means to you. And you expect to do that out of the gate? Well, I think that’s very troubling. I actually think that’s an attitude for learners in general, that is deeply troubling to me. And because it just stops you in your tracks, you have to be super excited about the shitty stuff before you can maybe even see a path of what mastery or expertise could look like.
James Royal-Lawson
Our career paths aren’t straight lines, Pamela started off studying Russian literature before she switched to human-computer interaction. We change, things change, and that’s okay. Yeah, we’re still kind of expected to decide exactly what we want to do from the outset.
Pamela Pavliscak
So hopefully, I mean, that’s more of a cultural mythology, though, don’t you think? where it’s like, when you’re a kid, people ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up? The fact is, most people aren’t going to be one thing. They’re gonna be lots of different things. And they might be vastly unrelated things. There are very few people start off in one path and end up in that path. You know, that there are a few certainly, I mean, some people have like a calling, or a real, you know, draw towards something. But I think if you, if you ask people in our field, but in other fields to, you know, where did they start out, or if you look at their career over a larger chunk of time, there’s a lot of a lot of ways that can change us. So I think that may be something we have to kind of keep in the background to is like, yeah, our field is gonna change a lot. And personally, you’re gonna change a lot and want to do different things and explore. So maybe after you pay off your grad student loans.
Per Axbom
For me, that’s so perfect. And on actually,
Pamela Pavliscak
okay, lovely.
Per Axbom
You got one more question, James,
James Royal-Lawson
I was just commenting on that they the whole the whole thing about remaining. So we say about continuous learning, but we kind of really wanted to stay playful and stay curious.
Pamela Pavliscak
Absolutely. I think that, you know, follow your interests, follow your passion. If you get interested in something, then keep going. There’s a lot I mean, we’re so lucky. There’s so many opportunities and ways we can learn from a.. yes, from you know, online learning or whatever, but from other people from playing around with things and experimenting. So I think, you know, and I think generations now that we now we have generations and design, I think we can learn from each other too, and do a better job of that. I think what has happened in tech is it’s sort of like, oh, especially in the coding world, it’s like, oh, you know, the old stuff. I don’t want that anymore. We need the new languages. I feel like you and maybe that’s true of coding. I don’t know, I kind of think not because you’ve learned things about architecting that, that carry over as you go along.
I think UX though, we can, now that we have this kind of more generations coming in, we can all learn from each other. I mean, I know I learn a lot from people who are just coming into the field or junior level. Hopefully they learned something from me. There’s, you know, there’s so much that’s the cool thing about our field was like there’s so much going on, and there’s so much to do. And our work is really, really important. Even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it when you’re doing another like onboarding process. It is important in the big picture. I think, you know, that’s something just that openness. I hope that we can keep that in our field and grow that feeling.
Per Axbom
And finally, bringing it all home. Kim reminds us to remember what UX is truly about, and how our skills are replicable in many types of scenarios. Not just the People on the other end of the digital interface we are working with.
Kim Goodwin
Absolutely. I mean that the core of UX is how do you understand humans and use that to influence decisions and behaviour, right. And that’s, that’s the thing that we can do, not just with our colleagues, but but with our future colleagues, when we’re trying to get them to hire us for a consulting gig or, you know, or promote us into a new job, or whatever it is we’re looking for. We have to help them see the possibilities. And I think that anybody who’s good at UX can be good at that if they approach the problem that way. The great thing about UX is, if you’re actually doing UX, and not just technology, what you’re doing is you’re helping your team or your client, understand humans and make better decisions based on that understanding, right, that’s really the heart of what UX is. And that has nothing to do with the tool or the technology. And I think that, you know, the more that you do it in different contexts, the more you see that that’s true. So as long as you are good at doing that, and at making ideas concrete in a way that your team can sort of look at and poke at, and help you iterate, then those are really the things to focus on mastery of, because tools, tools come along.
[Music]
Per Axbom
Something that really stuck with me from these interviews is something that wasn’t part of any of these clips, actually, is when Kate really pinpointed the fact that students are often excited about tools. And Senior UX designers sometimes say keep saying that, well, it’s not about the tools, it’s about the process. It’s about the methodology. Whereas it’s really unfortunate then that you’re actually killing excitement, they have excitement about a tool. And we should actually be helping that excitement be channelled into something really, really positive instead of trying to make it into something else.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah Kate said about embracing the enthusiasm that was important to embrace that. And the interest is important, and we shouldn’t shut it down. What Kate also said was, you know, as we’ve mentioned, in these interviews, I think that the shift from a tools practice, to a methods one, it does take time. I mean, you know, all of us involved in the show, have been in the industry for decades. And so it’s very easy for us to say, ‘Ah, it’s not about the tools, I mean, you don’t need to worry about Figma, lift, rise above, lift above it, and focus on the methods that are truer and more holy than the actual tool.’ And, you know, that’s very, very easy for us to say.
But when you are new to the industry, you are expected to understand certain tools, because that’s what the employers are asking for, because they’re using them right now. And they think they get the quickest amount of, you know, quickest onboarding, and the highest amount of instant productivity if you already know those tools, whereas the tools will change. And you will need to know the methods that lie behind it and what you’re really doing. But that does take time.
Per Axbom
Yeah, I felt really targeted by that comment actually by Kate. Because I feel like I’ve actually done that to people. And I don’t feel, feel happy about that. I mean, I really need to reframe how I express my doubts about excitement about tools in certain contexts. But we always need to remember as you were saying, the context that the students are in, or that the junior designers are in. Because people in UX will be doing lots of different things. That’s, that’s the industry. So let them pursue stuff. Let them be excited about that, because that also teaches them to learn new stuff. And it is always about the learning. Because if we, if things change, as we’re saying now, the tools change, well, the ability to learn new tools, that is something that we should encourage all the time.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s the classic ‘yes, and’ thing, isn’t it. I mean, you take the enthusiasm for learning the tools, of the day, and through experience, you maybe share more stories about how similar tools were used to achieve things before and maintain the excitement and share your excitement with the stuff you’ve achieved with previous iterations. Without kind of like, being preachy, I guess about ‘well, it was better when we used Photoshop,’ you know, with or Front Page or whatever, we don’t need to go like that. But I think that’s maybe how we speed up the process is by not dismissing the tools and the enthusiasm, but holding their hand and being quicker at sharing the methods and the processes that we see through the tools earlier in these people’s careers, I guess.
Per Axbom
Yeah. And I think I think one of the wonderful things is in UX is that we meet a lot of people with so many different types of backgrounds and the examples that Pamela gave I mean, not everyone has the type of background that Pamela has. And also turns into a tech emotionographer. But, I mean, I’ve met people from I mean, I think I’ve met carpenters who have become UX-ers, it’s anything. And I love that about design. Because we always realise that everything is designed everything that people have done in the past is relevant to what they’re doing now and to UX.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah and I think Kim was alluding to this, we were talking about how we are humans. The stuff that we deal with is human. Sometimes, I don’t know, maybe we just get lost in the technology. And we do become distant from the fact that we ourselves are humans, and we interact with humans as part of our work. And this is sticky, icky, messy stuff dealing with humans. And that, I think, would be more of an it’s not one of the things more healthy for us to keep in mind that the other end is a human, not just when we’re designing because that’s what we talk about a lot, isn’t it when you use interfaces, you design or your, you know, your chat bots, you design or whatever your AI. It’s going to have a user, a human on the other side of it, and we push the kind of human-centred design and so on. But we are humans too. And we interact with humans as part of the designing process, before it even reaches the humans on the other side.
Per Axbom
Oh, that’s so wise.
James Royal-Lawson
Oh god stop
Per Axbom
I love that. But I mean that alludes to, for me that also it’s about recognising your own vulnerabilities, your own shortcomings, your own biases. And just realising that it’s hard. And it’s okay that it’s hard. But we’re in it together. And I love these clips that we play today. And I hope you really enjoy these incredible nuggets of wisdom. I wish we could share it all but that would make it seven episodes.
James Royal-Lawson
But you can, though can listen back as recommended listening. All three of these guests have been guests before. So there are five interviews and a couple of link shows involving articles made by the guests that you can go back to and listen to, and all of them will be included in the show notes.
Per Axbom
We have a newsletter.
James Royal-Lawson
We do.
Per Axbom
And it’s been a while since we mentioned it. The backstage newsletter is sent out along with each episode and usually contains a few extra thoughts and the occasional discount code and special offers UXpodcast.com/newsletter. Were you going to say something?
James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know I was gonna say something but it was just gonna complicate matters.
Per Axbom
Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
Okay, Per, the past, the present, and future walked into a bar.
Per Axbom
Okay, and then what happened?
James Royal-Lawson
It was tense.
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom and Kate Rutter, Kim Goodwin and Pamela Pavliscak recorded in April 2021 and published as episode 262 of UX Podcast. Cover art image by Matt Artz (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).