Hey, welcome to Hustle. This is a podcast about product design. I'm here with my co host, Anthony. Arm adores you. I'm Rick Messer, and we have, ah, special guests, unlike all the other guests who are not special. Um, Thanks. Rick Guest. Uh, Steven Rae today. What's up,

Steven? Hey, not much. How's it going, guys?

Okay. Pretty good. Stevens. One of my

best friends. Really? Thanks for, uh, no, no,

no, no. Forever. Steve. Steve was in my wedding. Yeah. Steve and I had a business together. We had a lot of good time. We're just talking last night about how we might have been a little early.

Yeah, re a few things. Definitely doing some cool stuff. Kind of by accident. I don't know. I don't know if you guys have ever Well, hey, first of all, I'm supposed to introduce myself. Yeah. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about your, Like maybe just some bullet points? Because then I want to ask you guys about how you and Anthony know each other. Cool. Yes. Oh,

my name's Steven Rae. I'm the chief creative officer of a product to design and development company called Die Alexa. We're based in Dallas. We do software hardware. Really? We do a lot of stuff. One of the things that we did that's gained a lot of notoriety is product called Vin Lee. So Finley is basically a connected car platform. A lot of people look at it and see the hardware, and so they associate it with this hardware. But really, what we were doing with Finley was, uh, trying to democratize smart cars s. So we built a platform that developers can build on top of, um, it's open platform so that v i n dot ally die. Alexa is D i A l e x a dot com

check it out. So you guys created that and in dialects and spun it out is a separate company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. So that was our first labs project. So, you know, that's a pretty successful First Labs project. Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately, we were a little ahead of the curve. I think, um, you know, with some of the ideas that we had, Of course, there were a few products in the market, uh, sort of,

you know, you know, automatic, I think is one that comes to mind for people that plug into your car and give you some information. The thing that we're trying to do that was a bit different was create something that you could really do use in a far more versatile manners. So being able to build any type of product on top of it, if you have the ability to, you know, do some coding a little bit of design, you could basically build your own product. Obviously we, you know, launched it with products out of the box as well. Yeah, man, that's so cool.

That's a pretty cool, like little side projects. I'm just gonna build a platform for hours on the side. I knocked that out and then, you know, get back to work The way it kind of happened was, you know, and you guys, I know we've talked about this before, even Auntie and I back in the day, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a bit. You talk about, you know, worst service is cos you're doing these projects for, you know, other companies.

And hopefully they're all really cool sometimes. Maybe some of the more. It is cool, but you are, even if they're really cool. You're still thinking like, man, you know, we've got this great talent. We want to do some cool stuff for ourselves. Um, just kind of, you know, explore some other things. You know, some of our own little passion projects with a team that we can build something together.

S o. You know, we had talked about it. You know, once I joined up with the dialects of guys. We talked about it for maybe a year before the two co founders were like, Hey, so markets Scott, co founders. Um, basically, they called, you know, the team was still pretty small. We were, I think,

between six or eight on there, like, hey, guys like, let's quit talking about this. Like, let's get serious. If one serious like, then let's put together a schedule. So basically, we put together this sort of like idea of what the life cycle of building a product is, And so then we just, you know, we started treating it like a riel, like it's wanting it almost like a client or else I was about to say that I kind of hate saying that because you can never really. It's like the dream.

That's the ideal situation is that you can really treat your own projects like a client project. Yeah, and it starts to suck when that gets tossed around too much, because the reality is that it's not a client project. You're not paying your own If a if a client, a paying client, you know, has a need that's gonna take priority. That's right. Yeah, yeah. But what we did do is we basically all committed to just going for it like, Hey, we're some of the you know, we felt, ah,

a lot of confidence in our team and we individually, I think we all wanted Thio have an opportunity to leverage each other's talents. And so we went for and we started just kicking ass, you know, working pretty pretty long days, um, for ah pretty. Someone extended period of time and then when it really kicked into overdrive, I guess is ah, when we have got an opportunity to, uh, uh, participate in TechCrunch and ah ah, Disrupt. Okay, so then at that point,

we had to have some sort of, like, real product. And so, you know, everyone just like double down worked, worked a lot of ours, and we were able to get down with kind of this. You know, uh, you know, V one of this product or, uh, you know, this proof of concept, functional proof of concept,

right before disrupt. And so way presented were we made it to the finals. We didn't win, but we still got a lot of notoriety. And, you know, it was really an opportunity for a lot of people that kind of see what we're doing. That was a bit different. It led to some pretty cool things.

Yeah, well, before we get in to this like, this is really interesting. And I never asked you this. I don't ask you this question because we we've thought about building our own products. And the thing that I think stresses me out the most is what if we create something successful, right? Like, the worst part is I think I think you have. This is probably top of mind for you, because you and your design in tech team and a client service business created this. And then it got spun out of a new company and it became its own company. You had to decide which people are moving from company A company B Company B is now on, you know, You know, it's its own thing. Like, what was that experience like for you?

So, um, yeah, I mean, it was kind of, Ah, there's some difficult things to sort of, you know, deal with it. You know, I guess you could kind of say, you felt like you're losing team members. Um, because, you know, as I said earlier, we're still pretty small company.

There were specific team members that played a bigger role. While some team members had to focus on client projects, some team members that had maybe a bit more down time spent more time starting, develop what the actual what the product actually was. You know, whether it was, you know, some engineers or designers, Uh, so then when it, you know, came time to make that decision, it was kind of and I think there was some obvious people that it made sense to move over with that product. But it was still a conversation that had to happen. At least, you know,

I'm sure it happened throughout the, you know, other teams as well. But, you know, in the design team, um, where you just kind of had to sit down. And I mean, it made sense. Uh, you know, who should move over, but it didn't make it wasn't great toe. Like, you know,

you're building up your team, and then now you're kind of losing someone, even though they're still part of this, like, umbrella of a family. You're not gonna be sitting with them having lunch with them, working on projects together with them every day. And so that wasn't awesome, but it made sense. Um, and so at least that's kind of how we had to do it. Some of them, uh, some of the reason that made sense is because this was a product that, uh, had a lot of momentum,

you know, already going. And we needed to keep that momentum and so losing. Ah, So switching out particular people to fill these roles was gonna be too much downtime and ramp up. Yeah. And then some people, just from a technical perspective, at least, you know, kind of understood the you know, the architecture of what this big thing we were building is and couldn't be really couldn't be replaced, you know, at least not quickly. And so we just had to make some hard decisions. And,

um, you know, it's it's cool. Those guys air I'm not really is involved with the, you know, product. Now, they obviously have got awesome team over there that they've built up and they're kicking ass. So you're you're focuses more with dialects. A client service selects is my day to day. It's your jam. That's it. Um, okay, cool. Well,

I wanted to ask, maybe Have you guys talk a little bit more about background stuff? I wanted to give our listeners a little clue into We, uh, had an interesting, really great south by party last night. Stephen, you're there. And, uh, yeah, I don't know if you can hear it in her voice. I like what I was saying earlier. Was that almost came out of my mouth when I was like, I'm too old for that sick man. That's so lame. You can't say Yeah, yeah. Especially

when someone like Keith Robinson's right next to He's like, Dude, I'm to get you

know what I mean? We're just getting started, so I kind of actually weirdly met you two at the same time. I'm just gonna set some of the history because I just thought of this, Um, you were one of the shittiest client. I was the worst. Quiet. I, uh Yeah. So I was working at a start up in Austin. I was in the process of moving down the Austin at the time that I was looking for Ah, some help for our mobile design, uh, our mobile product, iPhone and Android. And I was more of a Web designer person and branding and stuff.

And I was just scared of doing mobile. I didn't know howto, you know, get into it. So I was hoping that I could partner with a local Austin, um, design agency. And so when I was looking around, I found this company that I thought just really fit the bill. They were called 39 Argyle. And, uh, I got on the phone with this dude name Anthony, and he said, Hey, start talking to me and,

you know, things were making a lot of sense. Um and yeah, I was the worst client because we ended up Not not way did that in house that. Actually, the reason that I learned Mobile was because we didn't hire you guys. I

wonder if it's too late to send them

an invoice for the discovery. You sure? I was wondering if you're gonna send me an invoice for the, uh you brought me. Awesome. Come on, Steve. But anyway, this is how I met Anthony and Steve was trying to look for somehow mobile designed help. You guys had a company called 39. Our quality time. You guys talk about that? How that got started and what

it was like working there. I guess I'll start. You found it, right? You guys together. I was free. I was working an agency job, and I reached a point in my career where I was like, I guess, a BP level. I was in charge of a team of designers and information architects, and I hit this point, Rose, like I hate this. Like I hate being a manager. I wantto design. So Natalie was,

like, just quit, you know? Yeah, And give it. Give it six months or nine months. Whatever benefit, I'll let you have that runaway. And if it didn't work out, you know, Go get another job. So I freelanced in, um, started getting some, fairly ironically, some very big clients that I really couldn't handle on my own.

And, you know, Steve, Steve, Steve and I had always talked about doing something. It was just This was the only time where it made sense to do it because we had a bunch of work lined up with some serious clients and, you know, like Amazon and stuff like that. Oh, cool. It was It was easy for us to do it. I mean, and, ah, you know, Steve was, um you know, brave enough. Thio quit his job and and try to do with me. It was awesome.

Yeah. So some other interesting things happened around that same time game. Then he said we had talked about it for a while. Actually, I was just remembering last night that you and I, we're doing Project did some a handful of projects a long time ago, back when you would hire me to do all your flash stuff, and, uh, I guess so, Yeah. Yeah. So, um, every time we would get together for, like, someone's wedding or just like all the all the guys back from school would get together.

We always talk about cause we're all you know, all designers. And we're always like, Oh, man, we would we would, you know, have the greatest design company. Whatever. And ah, everyone's always, you know, it always came up. My God, we should all just started design company. And,

uh, then, you know, Anthony had been successfully, like, you know, meeting some really, really great people doing great projects. And around the same time, you know, it was kind of Ah ah, small conversation. But then a good friend of ours actually had a really bad motorcycle accident, and ah, and so that really kind of. And he's a really good friend of mine and Anthony's And so,

you know, you started thinking about things a little bit differently when stuff like that happens, and at the time I have I mean, I was pretty happy at a product company, um, kind of leading leading product design, and ah, but the conversation kind of came back up, and, you know, it was I think I was at a point in my life, at least where I was like Well, man me they're gonna, like, do this or just quit talking about it. Yeah,

um and I thought, Well, I'm still like that. The time didn't have kids. Um, Didn't, like, have this, you know? Didn't have Ah, financially. It was Ah, it was a bit of a risk. Um, but for me personally, I said,

Okay, I'm gonna try it. And if I totally fuck up, I can always get another job. Yeah, I did the same. But interestingly, you know, Anthony, I had had some conversations, and we, um so we weren't doing like Anthony's. Like I tell you what. Let's work on this. Let's get do this one project, like while we're getting everything figured out,

and we'll just put that money in the savings, and then you'll have like this for you. And he basically, like, did this for me. He's like, you will have this runway of, like, a month or two or something that if we immediately realized it's not gonna work like you've got time to find another job, man. Awesome. Yeah. So I don't know if I ever mentioned how much I appreciated that. Does it really lowered the risk? The risk for me

It's scary doing stuff alone to, you know? Yeah, I was doing okay, freelancing, but you know it it was sounded more exciting to me to be ableto like work with one of my best friends and, you know, our wives. I mean, I think, really, the heroes, like, actually letting us do that, Explore that and in, you know, at the time were talking last night like I I don't know how many people were doing this back in 2009 but in 2009 we had a sole focus on mobile.

So there, you know that it was pretty easy for us to get work because not not a lot of people had that boutique sole focus on mobile. And, you know, we were lucky enough to have a lot of, you know, big clients. It sort of gave us the funds that we need to keep the business going and some smaller stuff, but, um, yeah, I mean, ah, well, interesting

time. I think the other thing is that, you know, we're calling ourselves, you know, boutique, which meant we didn't have that many people. We didn't have a lot of overhead, and I think some of our clients literally could afford to take a risk with us. And if we totally screwed up, they still have this huge budget goto one of the other big agencies.

That's good point. So something that people may not know. I mean, we were completely distributed, so none of us worked, you know, we had no, uh, we had no physical office. Um, we use Skype and these fugitives scanners to scan stuff in and share ideas back and forth and his real time as we could. And, you know, we never had a had a space, actually liked it a lot. But it was hard for me too, with fun size to get back into the idea of working in an office because I got so used to working, being productive, like, at home in my home office.

Yeah, well, I actually, once I started working with people again, I was pretty happy about it. Totally. Yeah. Um, you know, had to learn how to, like, dress myself again. Basically. Ah, yeah. Eyes the same. No joke.

I literally did the meeting one time where I didn't realize we were doing a video call literally sitting in my underwear. And then, um, Anthony is like, Hey, we're doing video. I'm like, Oh, my God. And grab a shirt. Really? The whole joke of, like doing a meeting with no pants on? Yeah, that's what really happened. Get a tie on and everything. Nice.

Yeah. So, uh, Steve, now, now you're a dialect. So you know, one of things that, you know, you and I keep in touch and one of things that we've been talking a lot about, I guess. And when are we getting opportunities? How we're building these teams. It took us a long time to figure out, like how to do it. And our guest, our point of view has always been,

you know, fine people that have proven that they have devoting their lives to this career field and kind of make sure they fit our values and then kind of, you know, bring him in and work with them and then, you know, figure it out. Like, how do you guys approach like, you know, your structure, your team in building your team, recruiting, training. And what is your life like?

Yeah, So this is it's been kind of a constantly evolving um, you know, process where, you know, I think at one point, you know, I you know, I was on this sort of like, Well, every designer needs to know how to do at least a little bit of like, front end, you know, presentational development, at least. And And then I would, you know,

have these designers that were really amazing, and they knew how to do other things. Like maybe they understood, You know, they're really good research designers or design researchers, and and then they were really good at visual design, you know? So all the u x, all the visual design, but they didn't do any coding at all. And what doesn't make sense like for this to be, definitely doesn't make sense for it to be a, um you know, a deal breaker here. Now, do I make it a requirement for them to learn president,

you know, front and development. And I went back and forth on that quite a bit. And finally, where I got two is what I've come to right now is that I think there's this idea that you're sort of I think every designer needs to be first of all. I think we're similar to you guys, like every designer does a lot of stuff. You're not just not just official design or not just this or that, but you kind of do definitely more than one thing. So kind of where I've come to is that, you know, each person sort of is a master of one portion of the craft. Um, it is also good at other stuff. Maybe they're not the master, but they're calm,

confident doing it. And because there's another designer on the team we've built in, basically just these, like designer standups. So it's not per project. It's like kind of like, Hey, you know, what are we working on? So do you like the 15 minute stand up? You know, we're still working on that process, but you know, like twice a week, it's like, Hey,

what you working on? What kind of stuff do you want feedback on? And from that, we may even schedule kind of a bigger meeting where just the designer design team gets together to kind of work through Cem. You know any big, complex problems or you even kind of just give feedback on like visual design or, you know, whatever. So basically, what I'm getting at is that we want to fill out what I So I think we might talk about this in a bit. Have been kind of putting everything in, like charts since I'm always trying to put stuff in charts and spreadsheets and reminds me of when Anthony Side aside. No. Ah, long time ago when Anthony was just doing a lot of management. He was like,

Man, I just got really Well, because Anthony would create these spreadsheets that were just beautiful when I was like, Dude, this is crazy. Let's spreadsheet bra. Yeah, it was like, Well, um, you know, I don't do any design anymore. So this is where I get my creative outlet is in a spreadsheet. That sounds really sad. And now I sort of do that. So,

uh, but anyway, so most recently, I've started trying to think of the things that are really pieces off. What build up our rick. So we're going up in his mouth? Um, it started basically most recently built. This little star. Would you call it a spider Web graph? O, have these, like, Okay, You know what? I'm talking about radar graph.

Okay, He's got a a couple of names, but, um, so I put in all the things that were important. So, like, you know, or that make up like our, you know, division of the company. So it's like visual design research, you know, general user experience to design front in development. So, uh,

and then what I started doing was sort of, ah, making a scale where each of the designers live. Like, Hey, there's, you know, one person, that man there, like they're owning the research aspect of our practice, like whether or not they're like the absolute, you know, master of it, they're headed that way. And so what kind of putting this grade on them, Which sounds awful like just trying,

just trying to figure out stuff here. But But anyway, so everyone's sort of like, um, put this little dot It starts to build out this like, um, you know, this radar chart, and so my goal is for it's, like, completely fill out the whole radar chart. Not have you know, for example, if everyone just did visual design and I've got a really lopsided radar chart, I'm like, Well,

I need to, like, think about, you know, I need to think about interviewing some people that maybe do this other thing a little bit better.

That's that's really need. Um I don't know if you guys saw this, and I wish I had. I wish I knew we were gonna talk about this because I think you would find this fascinating to there was someone in, I guess that I'm connected with on Twitter that built a spreadsheet is kind of, I guess I don't know what your chart looks like. I'd love to see it, but he same concept that you protect the spreadsheet and took all the like main disciplines and in sub disciplines inside each discipline. And then through Siri's of one on ones and team meetings, he kind of figured out Okay, well, the's air, the skills that the team have, like, ranked in like expert or mediocre or whatever, and use colors to sort of signify that the variance between beginner and expertise. And then when the team the team had a war room where this was presented so they could like every quarter,

they could see how the skill, like just by my scene concentration of colors in certain areas that could see how the team is growing. And I assume that that that is also meant to help figure out Well, you know, Rick, Rick wants to learn more about this. Okay, So the cell help him do that? Yeah. Kind of interesting. He open open source, the spreadsheet. I think I'm gonna check it out. I'm really That sounds really interesting. Yeah. How do you share that with your team?

So they actually don't know about that one yet, But they do know that I've been nerd ing out and kind of spreadsheets on a gravel. And, uh, I'm just looking for different ways. Um, to just visualize kind of where we're at, like from a lot of different aspects. You know, you get stuff in your head and you can write it down. It's kind of trying to figure out the best way to, like, synthesize everything that's going on so that I can look at it And without really I want to reduce the amount of thinking I have to do so If I could make something visual and go Oh, yeah, this blank spot. That's what I need to think about right now, you know,

that's the goal for me. Um, do you think you guys are just like that? Is more, like, valuable to go through the process of doing it, then actually, like the artifact that it creates sometimes, Like, you know, your time. Like collecting and organizing thoughts and, like a the end, you like? Look, I got this thing,

like, people dogs, Bert Coleman, you know, But it's like that The value is is more in, like, the process of creating that thing because you have an understanding of it and know what to do about. You know, I think that makes sense. I think going through the process helps you mentally organize it a bit better. Um, but I do think it's funny. You can show someone. What for? You may have been this a huge amount of word you showing this little picture in like, Well,

that's really cool. Done? Yeah. What else is talking about? Everything. So, how do you How

do you decide on the spectrum of safe skill sets for just to generalize it? What? Which is important for the studio and not important for this studio.

Um well,

is it based on, like,

Well, I actually

needs that the company has or is it about

what you are is about keeping a balance of, like, we have too many on this side. We want more to even out the other side are Well, okay, so I think that because of I'm going to say the kind of, like, typical process, Um and obviously you guys, no, no project is the same, but they're sort of like this probably means you have a process that you follow. And I think we see that we have, you know, usually have needs similar needs. And it may be more less of whatever that need is but that the duration of the project, there are certain needs at a certain percentage that are required to get the deliverables that make sense.

So for us, Yeah. I mean, I can I can look at my team and say, Well, you know, based on what projects we have in the pipe, what projects we currently have, You know who is going to be running running this part of this project? Kind of what discipline. We may be lacking or what focus that we might be lacking, um, coming up. And then I think about if we sign this project Monday, and when I started soon, um,

what am I going to do if I don't have this? You know, somebody who is an expert at this particular part of the craft, right? And then I get worried, and I'm like, there's not enough designers that do this thing. And so what, I kind of you know, I'm always trying to do is kind of keep this open conversation going with with designers that, and finding out like we like to just have people buy for conversations. We don't have the same sort of community you guys have here in Austin. Um, so I actually just have to invite people buy that I think are, you know, seemed like there,

you know, doing stuff. And, you know, you can kind of get an idea if it looks like how much someone cares about their craft from just kind of checking, checking him out. Only Dan and Twitter dribble Whatever. Doing a little spying or whatever. Um, creeping. And so if somebody looks like they're, you know, one top of it we just wanted get to know each other, and there may or may not be an immediate sort of opportunity. But now we've got this relationship, and then when there is an opportunity and I say,

Hey, you know you know us, we know you. Let's get serious and talk about you know, what we might be able to do together.

Are you guys going?

We are, you know? Yeah. We've actually, uh, growing relatively fast, and it sort of will happen in spurts sometimes, you know, because of a big project or whatever. You know how

big, how big's that is. A cool. Let's just Just look at the design team, I guess, um, how, like, how big was designed team when you joined and how many there now And, like, where do you think, Like, how many do you think they'll be? Like? You're

too. So, um, yeah, when we started the design, So I'm curious about your designer to engineer ratio. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've actually been I was looking that up recently, Um, to see what sort of this this, uh, what the community felt like, made a sense different. And it's all over the place. Yeah.

Um, and off the top of my head. I should know that. But I don't think I could give you an accurate, accurate Um, I don't need at, like 100% accuracy, more more developers than probably between. It's either 3 to 1 or 4 to 1. That's not too bad. I have heard much

less. I mean, what these guys were doing. I mean, they have from understanding not only just software engineers, but hardware engineers, electrical engineers, like they're doing stuff in space and things in airports and to buy and like all kinds

of Yeah, so it's like no big deal, Just normal stuff. S o. This is something I'm also trying to figure out what I've you know had Thio. I've had to improve. Ah, and myself is doing a better job like staffing projects, so I don't know. I don't know how many people do this, but I'm always thinking about, like, you know, kind of keeping, you know, trying to, like,

minimize. You definitely don't want to just put people on a project if it's not necessary. But I think I was probably, um, not staffing them a cz, uh, appropriately, as I should have in the past. And so now what? I'm what we're starting to do, and we've gotten found a lot of success in, um, upping the amount of designer designer allocation throughout the entirety of development. So there used to be this time where, you know, there's a kind of this front loaded,

um, design phase of the project, and, um, and then, you know, and we run our projects agile a cz well, but then once you got into the engineering or the development of the project, we drastically reduced design designer to wear. You know, uh, it was difficult if we ran into any problems that we hadn't thought through or because of, you know, the client. Maybe you had a great idea way. Don't have another time.

We have allocated enough time. Um, sorry question about that. Um, at what point do you get engineering involved? Is it right away? Day one or two? You d'oh kind of flips at a certain point. So right in the beginning. Typically, there's an engineer. Um, well, so everyone there's ah, usual lead from each practice that, um,

is part of the discovery. Um, and then we, you know, throughout the you know, design portion of the discovery phase. It's, you know, heavy, heavy from a design perspective. Um, and then, you know, and then engineering has some things to start figuring out, like, kind of big sort of architecture.

Uh, you know, uh, aspects of a project to sort of at least start toe down in the beginning. And, um, just, like, have a voice there, right? Yeah. And they need to understand kind of what we're getting into a cz. Well, so we're not just doing stuff over, um, and then and then it sort of flips at a certain point where,

um you know, design is reduced and engineering just ramps up full speed toe build a product. In a typical project is that typically, like, pretty much like the 1st 50% is designed. The 2nd 50% is engineering or, like, more lopsided, and one way or the other is typically quite a bit more lopsided. Okay, um, what we will do is you know, we have a really heavy, um, design phase where, you know,

we may have Ah ah ah. A handful of designers, depending on how big the project is, really trying to figure out a lot of these, um, you know, problems pretty quickly so that we can start to better understand what the really make sure that we understand what the full duration of the project is going to be. And typically, you know, um, engineering is a lot longer. I mean, it's a lot of project is Yeah, it's definitely not 50 50. Um, I don't I'm not sure I could give you a real good ratio on that will actually go for,

you know, a year on. And, you know, maybe the design, you know, the design. Ah, phase of that project was maybe, you know, six weeks, maybe eight weeks. Wow. Yeah. Wow. But because we now allocate a good portion of a designer throughout the duration of the project,

there's there's enough enough allocation to make real good. Ah, uh, design, you know, decisions throughout the project. So, yeah, there's a design presence there. Yeah, greatly reduced once you get to you. And it's more than like support. Because in the beginning, it was like, Well, we need to have a designer on for support because,

you know, Yeah, um, probably mistakenly. Early on, it was just like well designed, drops off completely and sound really dumb now, but at the time, you know, we're trying to like the's things within budget and our

car. It's OK. Puzzle. Yeah. These teams and projects, I mean and skills and all the stuff we're talking about. This consumes my almost all brain capacity. Have on every day, everything feels like a giant puzzle, right? Discreet puzzles and themselves. And then they all have to fit together. Yeah, and it just seems like every time you think you figure it out like something new comes up and you're like the puzzles,

Just like any other tricks. Like what you working on your like? Nothing I for anything that I'm thinking about. Another feeling.

Well, Steve, you're You know, you spend a lot of your career as an independent contributing designer. You've been you know, you have a You have an executive leadership position. Now, how do you You have time for passion projects and And, um how do you How do you make sure that you're, you know, maintaining your eye, your DNA as a designer? And what kind of legacy do you hoped to leave behind?

Yeah, When you die the deep one. So, yeah. Now, like I said, spreadsheets, like I just designed think

the Google spreadsheet stores and desperate need of

a new template. So, uh, that can make

that can't make any money

on it, But well, does that really matter? I didn't know existed. Uh, okay, so, yeah, at a certain point, um, you know, I realized that I wasn't able to allocate myself on client projects a cz much. Um, and so you know what? Well, one thing we do now at dialects is so we've had we have labs, and we've had a lot of success with the two companies that we spun out of labs.

And, um, so we raised the bar pretty high. And so now you know, we have a lot of really talented people that have really great ideas. Um, but because we are first labs, project was vainly like the bar's really high. So, uh, we basically, like, have to have, like, a business model around, you know,

any idea? And I really believe that the idea is like a sustainable product that's gonna have some sort of, like, real meaningful impact. Um, so we created a weekly time slot in our week. Uh, I know you guys take Friday what you take Friday to do passion projects and things like that internally. So we didn't really We don't formally have that. Um, but what we did start was a portion of the day on Friday, roughly half the day. Um, the team members, if they're if they know they have to use their own judgment if they feel like they're where they need to be with their, you know,

projects that they're working on, they have. You know that in the end of Friday, half of the half of Friday to work with other team members, Um, and what we call dialects innovate. And so this is an opportunity for everyone to kind of, you know, uh, try to think about whatever passion projects they might have. And if it makes sense, this these could lead into our dialect the lab's, um, into into dialects labs. But, you know, that's not like, necessarily

they go over, Really. The real

goal was to give all of the team an opportunity to be able to work together with people that they may not have had a chance to work with It was like I said, we get these projects and some of them go on for a really long period of time, and you might be sitting next to someone that, you know, you're like, Wow, they're really good at this thing. And I love to work with them on something and learn from them. And also, you know, from a design perspective, Will you know, we'll experiment with our methodologies that we, you know, you so well try things. And some of them just may not stick and some of them we go. Man,

that was actually really good. Let's let's perfect that And use that with a client, especially some of our research methodology is, um and so in from engineering, you know, engineers like, man, I want to do this thing. And, you know, I want to do some IOS development. I've never done that. So I want to I want to learn this on this project. Um, so from a company perspective, that's how we've tried to give Ah, you know, our team and opportunity to play with their passion projects. Um, there was a lot more

to that question yet. Well, I mean, I was that's I'm glad that you shared that. I was kind of just curious about how you

like. Yeah, so I'm involved in that is Okay. Um uh, I have not yet because of my own. You know, my own time management abilities have not yet played the biggest role in that. Um, I think it took me, like, two weeks to do, like, you know, three wire frames for for a project that I'm contributing to. Um, but there are, you know,

I have you know, we all have ideas, and I have a handful of ideas that I have documented that, um, you know, as I'm able Thio going to try to, you know, let leverage you know, the skills of my team. Um, aside from that from a design, you know, design side projects I don't really have any going on right now. I'm pretty consumed, I think, just with kind of the work we're doing in dialects it now.

The good thing, though, is that, like I said, we're constantly, you know, trying new things. And so, um, I'm still really fulfilled. I'm not like, you know, upset that I'm not getting to do stuff that I don't want it

to you just before he wrapped. One of the things that I realize this year is that it's, um I've really learned, Like, what I enjoy. And what I enjoy right now is growing teams and seeing it, you know, position other people's success. And when it comes to design, I realized that I don't have to be, like, good at all this stuff. Kind like you're saying, like I'm there's parts of the design like they're designed craft that I'm just not good at. That's okay, right? Like,

I think it's okay. Like I'm happy if you know, someone on the team could give me a sketch file and let me do production design or something like that. Like, I don't I don't need to, like, do conceptual design a list. I'm not great at it And don't enjoy it as much. And and I think that, you know, once you're leading a team, you know, like you and I are, you have to you have to figure out howto navigate that let other people

What more? That was Johnny. Yeah, Yeah, no to that as well. Um uh, yeah, I've realized that I'm getting a lot of personal value out of being there for my team. Because, you know, I've been able to build up a team. I think you might feel the same way about your team where I built up this team. That is way better than, um ah, I ever was it any of these particular things? Um, And so anyway,

uh, you know, being there for them, and, uh, trying to help them grow, um is pretty rewarding for me now. Yeah, you know?

No. We guys. Steven Rae is the designer and chief creative Officer Di Alexa. Um, you can find them at Steven Rae on Twitter, check out dialects the labs to see some of the stuff that they've done.

Yeah, actually, just gotta die Alexa dot com. Yeah, you can find me a Steven Rae on Twitter. Um, you know, if you want to, you know, hook up on the linked in. I do that. Probably not on the Facebook, but whatever. Yeah. Thanks for stopping by. Yeah, it's good conversation.

Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for listening today. This is Rick. I'm sure you've all heard of envisioned. The product is practically synonymous with screen design. We're stuck. That envision is now a sponsor of Hustle. Something we love about in vision is that they are so highly involved in the community. These guys really care about where design is going and the support creators with loads of design. Resource is you kids designed process in the interview articles on their block, which is great for just general inspiration when building products. Aside from being a great prototyping tool, they also have features for a project management, creating mood boards and presentations,

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