Welcome to hustle Cast about building great digital. I'm Anthony. I'm here today with Rick Host and a special guest, Ryan Ramsey, a friend of mine that I've seen Maur of since he moved to Switzerland than when he lived in Austin. It's true. Um, Ryan is here today, uh, as he's in the process of moving back to Austin. Um, I wanted to see if we could get together and talk about something. So he's visiting the studio, and we're gonna have some pretty interesting things to talk about today.

Yeah, I'm interested to hear it. Maybe you could give everybody this a little bit about you. I know you work at E A. Sure, and you're friends with Anthony, and that's about Oh, yeah. So maybe a little bit of background. So, yes, I do work for Elektronik Arts video game company. Um, I'm not involved in video games at all. Really? Um, I'm the new director of experience designed for E a.

I t. So e a I t. Is responsible from anything for calendar phone calls. Vidcon to sales analytics platforms. You know, big sort of scaleable projects across multiple teams. Um, I'm the first designer ever any A I t let alone starting a design practice. So it's a new venture. This is my second time being an electronic arts. Um, so I'm happy to be back. Nice. So, do you like the i t involved with that were talking earlier, Just kind of like mentioning a few things that a lot of basically the design that you're doing is sort of four like internal thing,

right? Right for them. So, yeah, that's been the majority of my career. Actually, I've spent the last 10 years doing, I think, what is now coined his enterprise, you x, where all of my customers and my colleagues, um, all of my clients are like what we call stakeholders or sponsors. So those air other, uh, organizations inside of yea who need tools service's products for them to be able to work more efficiently more consistently, these

types of things that sounds pretty similar to your what you were doing at Apple Pre previously.

Yeah. So I worked for apple care for many years. And so within apple care, you have Ah. So if you buy Apple care for your phone and you have to ever contact Apple care wth e agents that handle your calls. Used tools, products. Ah, to handle those calls. And so I was on the team that was responsible for building the tools that they would be able to provide quality service to you. That's cool. It's It's apple building tools for apple.

Yes, crazy cause only. Only a small percentage of people will ever see your

use. Every yes, and even other design teams that Apple didn't even know we were doing that didn't know he existed, right? Not not to get too caught up on this, but it just sort of intrigue. Like, you know, Apple has obviously everyone knows, like under the wraps, like design philosophy that super. You know, a lot of people don't know about it. I was just curious. Was any of that started carry over to your team even though it was just for internal? Yeah. Yeah,

absolutely. So we had the h h c I guidelines. We had all that. We had people at apple building javascript frameworks and libraries before they were really around. He could take advantage of, um, school and sort of holistically that that level of design we had a lot of the same rigor and attention applied even to internal tools. So our customers and clients, even though it was their internal tool, it's still expected that same high quality product experience. Because we were apple, why wouldn't you? I mean, in some ways, I suppose the bar might even be higher. You know,

there's consumer facing, but then there's like, this is for people on. We We talked about this, I think, last week, Anthony, that we were provided conditions and constraints that actually allowed us to really flex our muscle. So internally, everybody uses a Mac. Uh, everybody only uses safari. Um, and so you had the advantage, you know, in 2007 of not having to worry about Firefox or from that's awesome,

E O man. Yeah, that was still a big major thing like, you don't have to worry about PC users at all or didn't have to worry about. And that included, you know, we would use outside companies that we to essentially contract out. They were required to use Max. Wow. So, you know, I was using nightly Web kit builds just to play around and see what we can use. Like using flex box, I think. And oh, jeez 1009 came out like So it was totally,

totally a prototype. But we were playing around with it just to see yeah, back then. Stuff like that for Web designers was like, one day I can use this eyes just, you know yet, Um, but anyway, um, that's that's cool, man, that's interesting. I was just thinking about kind of the little, like exchange we had this morning when you walked in. We were talking about Well, we're talking about enterprise,

right? Yeah. And what it's like working in these enterprise environments. I don't really know what it's like to be on an eternal team in Journal team on a big product. I really only started having, um, experience working interfacing with Enterprise Cos when I started working with fun size because we got a couple contracts with some enterprise companies. It was like 50% instantly is right, like 50% kind of early stage start up. So we're trying to help get off the ground, and then the other 50% had been like some of these enterprise contracts, and, um, I kind of learned what it was like to sort of, um try and sell your designs not necessarily for, uh,

the use cases or the user's specifically but more to people. Right? And, you know, way had recently done ah, project with the client that it was mostly like the focus was just to kind of present to specific, you know, executives. So, um, that whole conversation was sort of rooted with a conversation I was having with Anthony recently about selling your designs and learning how to be good at that. And he brought up to me your your article that you had written, Um, and I read through it was really it was really compelling and interesting. And it was about, um Well,

it was about I liked the I guess it's not that title, right? But, um, letting others have the art of letting others

have your happening when this really resonated with me, by the way, because I've spent in the last 17 years of my career, the majority of that has been like leading teams. So I almost never able to take credit for any outcomes of the project work because I'm contributing things that aren't like pixels contributing. Like the ideas in the motivation and inspiring the muse, if you will, to inspire people to push in this direction and gets one of those things, like you a za leader, you have to be willing to. You have to find a way to do this right, because you have to. You have to sell your ideas to your own internal team. You have to make your some points of time with your clients or internal external. You have to make them believe like it was their idea. Yeah, because if it's their idea than 100% support it and we'll defend it.

And, um, you know, it's just one of these things, like, you know, even even at the basic level of, you know, being a designer visual communicator like it's and actually they really

think that line. I didn't come up with that. That was somebody who was helping me, a mentor where I was struggling a bit, working with a specific client where they didn't necessarily care about the data that I had to present them, or the costs that we're going into it. They just believed they were right. And what typically never goes right with a client or a stakeholder like that is telling them they're wrong right there, just like all right, that's the way it is. So you can spend ah lot of time and energy going through those motions. And I did. I certainly did. You know, just going here is the data it's telling you we're doing it the right way. And so there's an old trick. So this is a little bit of trivia.

I used to be a professional actor s o. I lived out in L A and was designing. I was designing on the side so that I could support my life is a professional actor Wow. Acting between 4003 and, um, I took a bunch of improv classes, and so now it's a well known technique. There's this technique called Yes, and you may have heard of it before. Okay, where the scenario in in comedy and improv is basically whatever somebody says before you, you have to accept it. Ah, just roll with it. You roll with it, and then you say, and and you add on to,

uh okay. And so what's it like coming go

through an example of sure sure. Um um Chickens love submarines. Yes. And I also love hamburgers. Sure. I don't know. Typically. Typically, you want to take that? Yes. And chickens aren't good drivers. Yeah, okay. And so taking that back, that simple approach and going to, uh and I think this has been written about in design as well. A few times I've read read articles about it,

but I just knew it because that was a technique. So, um, when dealing with a client and they say, you know, this is how such and such does it, whether it's relevant to their product or not, this is how such and such does that we should do it that way. So Facebook does it? Yeah. Or Amazon or whatnot. I think the particular conversation was this is what happens when I buy a refrigerator on Amazon. Way we weren't making are selling s Oh, I just had to *** Yeah, OK, great.

I I hear you. Um, So let me think about this, and I'll come back because in the heat of the moment, you're wanted gonna be like telling somebody that they're wrong or that is saying or what? So the idea was to go. Yes. And I'm gonna take some time and come back to you and then coming back to them knowing that what they want is sort of that credit, uh, saying things like, Hey, hey, remember that conversation we had, um, that really inspired me. That got me to thinking about what you said. And with that, I created this what I think. And it may have been exactly what I was trying to

get to in the first place in the same design or same strategy.

I'm handing it over to them. It kind of goes along the lines of if if anybody's ever had to create a logo. And been along that biggest little, however exercise where designers started making the preferred size logo the biggest logo they would present, knowing that the client would always select the biggest one. So it's those things of just it. It's not really designed exercise, but it's knowing how to get your designs which are going to be beneficial for your client, Um, knowing almost how their personality their character is to get that through right. It's almost like if someone's going to be a blocker by like a character flaw. This is like, this is like a maneuver through. This is a spin move, right? Right. And and you know,

their techniques like that with when they're devils advocates in the room, you know how to talk to them and to, you know, typically, they'll bring up a scenario that will never happen, S o. You know. Well, what if What if Niagara Falls floods in Texas is, you know, out of the map or something, you know? Yeah. Just scenarios that never happened and say, Yeah, we could think about that. Let's I agree that that can happen. Yeah,

not my whole life is like moe professional life or full of these kinds of things. Like I have to do deal with this in dealing with the clients that I'm managing. I have to think about these things with the teams that I'm working with. And then probably the biggest client or stakeholder that I have is every employee of the company, right? So, like, that's probably the hardest thing, but, you know, I've had to use, like, tactics like this, you know, to do certain things like not doing client work on Fridays. Yeah. Yeah,

like I had that. Like, you know, I personally didn't wanna work on Friday, so I kind of talked to a couple people. I said, What if we didn't work on Fridays until the point where, like, everyone's talking about it? Are you ready to do this?

Yeah. Yeah, well, you know it. There's sort of, like tone with this subject matter that we're discussing right now, that sounds like that's really manipulative, or it's, you know, it's like that. That's really like your not honest person if you if you do that. But I think I think like the more I think about it, the more it's like just consider the person that you're talking to and like, what their mindset is. Because if you just react, you know, without you know,

you're just like, might as well be shouting to a wall because you're not like being conducive to like what's coming at you at that moment. And typically, people who say those things are not the people that are actually gonna be using a product or service or going through the pain. So you know, knowing the sort of the users and having empathy for them. Even telling the stakeholder or the client that your users don't feel this way isn't really gonna necessarily always resonate with them. Right? So, yes, I have heard that word manipulation before, but I don't necessarily see it that way because I'm not. I'm not using it for bad. I'm not using it for my best interest to, you know, screw them or,

ah, political device that then I become more powerful than a house of cards tied. Right? Right. I'm I know what? Um, the business outcomes that they want And if they're getting in the way of their own business outcome, Um, what's what's gonna happen if we then get to a product rollout and they're not getting the business outcome? They're not gonna blame themselves, right?

That's Cheddar. Raise this persuasion or sure, even better than that consensus building,

right? I mean, in air prize, I think they call it customer relationship management, you know?

Yeah, that that sounds enterprise. Yeah, that's a tool used to manage

a client. Thea other thing is that you know, if you don't learn how to be conducive like and responsive, you know, at like, moving with it, you know, rolling with these things that these curveballs that comets you, you know you're gonna get steamrolled a lot of times, and that is going to affect the overall, like, share part of the product. You know, it's it's, you know, you have to sort of be defensive and like, be a defender of,

like, these things that you believe in and, you know it happens. You know, typically, in my experience, people who are said if coming at you and saying I'm right, you're wrong These times of things, they tend to be some of the more powerful people in their organizations. Sure, no, they do get things done. And so that's maybe where they're coming from. So if you then find a way to get them that first product out and it delivers the business outcome, they want, suddenly they become your massive advocate,

and suddenly they're like he gets things done. I'm now going to listen to him. Yeah, I like it because it's just not like I got, like, immediate reaction, like emotions they're gonna hit you first were, you know, brought into these situations Well, you don't like my idea, you know, whatever you know. But if you're just sort of like, a little bit, like, calmer about it.

You can sort of, like, evaluated a little more objectively. And, uh, I think part of that article is Well, I think I said just shut up. Just don't talk, you know, just let let it go, you know, because especially when I was younger, your first reaction is just to react or to go do, or to go build and not sort of take that moment to process. And that's But that doesn't necessarily work out that that sort of initial thing. It's your gut reaction.

You're probably right. But if you just don't say anything and you actually just considered a great thank you for the feedback, let me have Ah, I'll consider that. And I'll get back to you. Yeah, or saying things like, I don't know the answer right way. Let me go to investigate. I'll come back to you. Mike Monteiro talks a lot about these things of, you know, discussions where you know, why'd you make it pink? I hate pink, you know,

and then being able to say Okay, well, let's consider that and coming back to them and say, Well, we we can make it pink. But our testing with blue indicates that you're getting 40% better output. We'd be happy to make that pink. You know, um, that's no problem. It'll take two extra weeks of testing two more weeks of development on another week to roll that out, which will cost you this much. And suddenly you get into words that people really care about. Which money? Time? Yeah,

that's where you'd be able, you know, And suddenly, most of the time, they started to let that go. That's their their subjective feeling about color on DDE. Yeah, they realize that they're right.

So what about other scenarios? Kind of piggyback off that lecture. Let's say the three of us are a team, right? And we have to We have to be. We have to be cautious of the things that were just talking about in terms of how we're dealing selling our work and getting client approval. Yeah, but how do we like? How do we take the same principles and work together to create a a vision that we all believe in right? So principles

are a really, really good word. I think principles are uncovered. Not necessarily developed. And so a lot of where I've been going in my career is more doors, the design strategy like being consistent, that even as an internal team, you may do your own workshop to say, Make sure that we're all on the same page. Make sure we're speaking from the same voice and doing structured activity to get that out. You know, this is where you get into your typical post its, uh, affinity diagramming even for an internal team to sort of, say, Where do we stand from when it comes to this project, so that when we are going out and talking to various customers,

we're not talking on top of each other, contradicting each other, That's the other. And principles are certainly a good way to have that. Like, if you if I tell my team I'm going thio, you know annually when we do our reviews, look att principles and ask you about principles when you apply them to projects. If you're not following principles, that's when I'll get mad. But if you're you know, not bad, but you know that's when I'll have some. But if you're following principles but then still making decisions that are slightly different. But they applied to the principles. Then it's okay.

So you also have to sell the principles, right? Right. Like you're safe. Are if we have 10 company principals on one of those is transparency who correct? Like, I mean, there's only only two ways to do that. You say I'm the I'm the owner of this project or this company, and these are my principles. You will follow them or Hey, yeah, I think one of our principles should be, like working really fast and sharing work early and often instead of like, doing the whole you know, You know, that is an example of also, something that has

so yeah, the the reality in my job is I always need somebody above me who supports that. Yep. And what what I need from them. And when I go and interview for a job like when I was coming back to you, is those are the things I'm looking for and asking about is if we establish these, um, this is the framework upon which they'll be applied. All I need you to say is used the principles on, make sure everybody is just on the same page. You know, there's an interesting thing about creativity is, if not if you don't have any sort of structure or even a little boundary or framework about that, you don't know where to put your creativity. And that makes for very dispersed sort of shotgun approach, and you end up focusing on things that might not actually need creativity. You know,

um, that's where the development of you I frameworks or, ah, design language. That's where it becomes powerful. And for my particular job, that becomes fundamentally more important than, say, fine tune pixel perfect things. Because, um, I'm in an organization where I think they're about 350 engineers to one of me. No, my gosh, rum. And then the larger organization is about 700 people.

So that's program managers, project managers, these types of people as well. I'm never gonna be involved in any project. And so, having frameworks of design, I can then hand over to somebody and essentially apply design methodology. Even if I'm not there. Yeah, team isn't there. It becomes a tool. You hand them right, right? And so the principles are used. The framework first, right?

Kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Well, that's that's awesome. I think that Yeah, that that that kind of cuts at the heart of why I was hoping we could kind of kind of touch on a little bit. It's been an interesting thought, you know, for us to internally because, um, some of the things you're saying about principles on working in an enterprise, you need thio. Make sure that you said someone above you, you know,

is sort of a line with that principle. Um, in the situation were in where we're basically a product design company that does service is for products. We need to make sure that our clients are at least agreeing with the same principles. If we have that off, Yeah, um, then it's gonna be a constant struggle. So how do you How do you do? You start off a client relationship with any type of kickoff workshop or or, you know, structured activity where within that you're essentially saying this is how we work.

So we not yet, but we're I think we're close to that. I did a workshop on, you know, design sprints, you know, covering two different designs, prints and from that exercise of creating that workshop. My wife and I, who is my business partner, we created a game. It is basically shows people that Okay, you have three sprints. You're trying to create this product. You're not gonna be able to get all of it done. And it's an activity. And it's something that I've been trying really hard to influence,

if you will, our project managers to take this and use it as the way to kick off a project instead of the first meeting being like a formal business meeting. Um, this is an area where my influences failed to, like, really, if you effect change and, you know, on boarding in the first time experience working with with a client is really important, in my opinion. And I would really prefer that it's something more creative and fun than in, like going over a schedule or a negative

view. Creative and fun, but has structure.

Yeah, but I also don't want I want to step. I want to be out of the way. You know? I want to let our teams Yeah, figure it out themselves. I don't want to enforce these things. That's right. I'm hoping teams will start

taking these things and right, Right, you are. There is tthe e facilitator, right? Not the participant. Yeah, well, I think to like, you know, Anthony said we don't have those things like in place, like exactly yet, and we kind of don't. But I think we're at the point of company like we've been. We've been funds has been around for basically, like, two years now.

And we've been really fortunate enough to, you know, we've certainly It's sort of, like, curated the clients that we've we've chosen to work with, and we've had the great opportunity to work with people that were very, like, close on vision with us on. That's going really, really well. We've been very fortunate with that. I think we're getting the point as a company where we are trying to set those things up, like Okay, now that we know what our principles are, let's see if we can figure out how to establish that, like,

right out of the gay, you know, and in some sort of formalized, you know, Leanne Curation or something. It's the same for us. It essentially, um because we have a very broad range of clients. You know, again, anybody from picking up a phone and having problems with their hardware or the software that's going into that phone verse, somebody that walks into a conferencing room or somebody that's using, um, business intelligence, analytics tools, these types of things,

that there's consistency, that when each of these groups meet us, because often the stakeholders own several parts of those groups, that the pattern upon which we work is consistent, the outputs are different. The outcomes are different but the patterns of work. So when you come meet us, we collect this demand is what we call, and then we have sort of a kickoff workshop to them. Put that into a project kind of thing. So right establishing that is almost like a post postmortem. Seeing what's been successful and just refund right establishing is is great in something that we hope to do. But I think it's hard for us to sort of like set these rules in motion and be like this is the rule forever because it sort of saying that is saying like we know the answer 100%. This works perfectly every time, so, yeah,

we don't, and that's for sure. There there is no perfect. There is no forever. Right? So to be clear, this saying when it's coming to principles or arrive and frameworks of joining back to the princess just like product, this is This is an evolutionary process. This is where we're at right now. This is good enough for principles right now. Could we may expand on them? We may get rid of them. We may change them on. Typically, when things start not working, that's when it's a time to look back at your principles.

That's awesome, Brian. Thanks for walking us through that. So the Ryans articles called influence and design success The art of letting others have your way. Check it out on medium Ryan. How can our listeners connect with you?

Yeah. So I'm on Twitter. Just Ryan Rumsey handle pretty easy. Uh, otherwise instagram, you gonna be starring in in any new broad wave? No, no musicals are gave that up a long time ago. Um, you can find me on a YouTube thing, but not by my name. We're gonna have to link that. Uh, there. There may have been a Yeah, well, just say so if you enjoy the music of Stained Oh,

you may find a video from 2001 that may or may not have my face. Awesome. And it's getting really embarrassing. Now, those were the days.

Well, if you want to write, you know, design team, the musical work with you,

that would be fantastic. Yeah, I'd actually also like to take this opportunity to mention that Anthony is starting a band if anybody is interested. No, Israel. Austria. I know you had no idea I was gonna bring that up because he said that I had

Yes. Yeah. I am trying to start a dirty, raw, crappy punk band. Fantastic. I don't really expect anyone thio how to play instruments. So, like Operation Ivy or several notches might be face to face like there's a lot of things.

One of my favorite bands a long time

ago. Yeah, actually, have, like, on a tab of my browser right now, like a face to face T shirt that I'm trying. I just I just, you know, go off the rails, But just I'm still very excited about that moment in music history. Yeah, and and people didn't care about, you know,

fine tuning and know as much, you know. Yeah, In university, I would be a three or four shows a week. Oh, yeah. Uh, you know, even even bands like Green Day. We're touring around in a old book Mobile. Do you know what a bookmobile? Yeah, I know. What a book library bookmobile that was That was there during bus and awesome. You know, pre Dukie days stuff.

Sweet. I really like the turn that this whole thing just right. That's awesome. All right, cool. Well, I've embarrassed you both. Probably enough for today, Bringing up old stuff, but yeah, um, thank you very much, Ryan. And, uh, if you're out there listening, um, check us out on iTunes. Subscribe two.

What? Eso Also last thing. I think this episode is gonna conclude Season one of the hustle podcast, and Rick and I will be coming back in, Um, you know, in a few weeks or so with a slightly different format with an all new recording room. Yeah, and some new ideas to talk about. So yeah, we're excited about that. And,

you know, I actually listen to the podcast ball on commuting on a train

on the way. So it's it's made it over there. Whoa, thanks. Thanks for having me on, man. Stoke three Coming back to Austin being around this way. Yeah, We're happy that you're moving back, right? Yeah, I'll be back. Okay. Thank you very much. This episode is brought to you by Pair. Pair is a talent booking agency that allows any artist regardless of demand, to independently book events through a clean and simple mobile application. The application and compresses every aspect of the booking process. Integrating paper was contracts, Elektronik payments and even calendar organization pair will diminish the unnecessary in order to increase profitability and productivity of the artist. Find out more at pair booking dot com.