Welcome back to the hostel podcast today. I'm here with my new friend, Desiree Garcia. Misery. How's it going? Going. Great. Hello. It's good to see you again. Thanks. Dessert actually stopped by the studio to do this in person. So it's a really special treat to have someone here versus doing

it over. Zoom is nice to see people in person.

It sure is. So, uh, you and I met over Twitter and you wrote this really awesome article that we're gonna talk about today. But before we do that, why don't we learn a little bit about you? Let me read a few words about disarray, and then she can say a little something. She's a senior designer, Automatic, the company behind We're Press and most recently, Tumbler. Their goal is to democratize publishing's that anyone with story can tell it. She's also the an editor at a list of part webzine explorers design development in meeting a Web content with a special focus on Web standards and practices. So hitting it over to you tell us about dessert,

so I'm I'm a designer. I got my start in the web community. Well, let me let me take it back. I live in Austin, Texas. Broom. It was born and raised in Santa Ana, California. So that was where my parents ended up when they came over to the U S from Mexico in the mid eighties. Most my family still in Mexico. But I got my start making Web layouts when frames were cool.

Like I frames

and stuff like that. You remember this? Yes. Yes, yes. So that's how you got my start. And then I went to school for psychology. Totally not not thinking twice about the layout thing. But I ended up working at a Web agency when I was in school because I had to work. To get through college and working at the agency would end up being one of the biggest blessings in my life. Since then, I have worked in house mostly, mostly, I worked in D. C for most my twenties. I ended up in D. C. After school and I worked at one of the agencies there. The one that Elizabeth Warren started. Um and then I moved to Austin because my husband's from Austin and we wanted to be closer to family. And so I took a job at IBM.

So you moved to Austin. That was your doing it for

family kind of move. That was like one of the first. Okay, when the settle down kind of think d c was awesome. So when I moved here, I specifically wanted to work on the Watson team over at IBM. So I went from working in the government. So on government stuff, financial transparency to a I and machine learning. So it's kind of like a big switch. But after doing that for a few years, I guess I got existential little bit about the industry started thinking a lot about how what we designed as what we're designing, how we're designing what we hold up as the best design today and a za result of that discernment. I ended up in the role that I met now at Automatic, which happens to be the parent company of WordPress. So over the course of like 10 to 15 ish years, I went from having professors and people telling me that I needed to stop blogging and stop making websites.

If I wanted to be taken seriously because a psychologist or as an academic to working on the very thing that runs working on the very thing that runs like 35% of the of the websites on the Internet, including most of its box. So the irony is not lost on me, but ad I didn't pick for this to be my journey or anything like that. The Web just changed so much during that time that I'm just really grateful that it worked out and that my nerd side hustle is definitely a legit job that apparently a lot of people want now. So I love being a designer. I think it's a great fit. It makes perfect sense. And

I'm just glad that it worked out awesome. Have a couple questions for you. How have you found that your psychology degree has helped in your design? God, uh, I imagine it has to be very used

all the time and used to be that you had to kind of make it yet to really sell it. They started off as a as a Web developer, a Web designer, but then I moved into u X because I was I was fine as a Web designer. I was I wrote code that was fine but I was better as a u x er ones that started in, like picking up steam. So a lot of the psychology kicks in when you start looking at user behavior, customer behavior, customer emotions, anything that's emotions, behaviour, beliefs, thoughts, anything in your head training, learning, howto, teaching a person how to use a product or even a website,

all that psychology. But it gets even cooler when you look at, like the interpersonal aspect of a job. Team dynamics. If you're like it. If you work in an agency, I imagine a lot of it has to do with client relations and things like that. But so much of this job is about people.

That's awesome. I'm gonna save my other question for

later. Yeah, kind of rambled there a little bit. No, no, that's amazing. I can like way I normally I practice because I've had to, like practice, like selling this to people like Hey, look, I don't have a design degree, but I can do the work just fine. Um, and even better have, like this, like practice like in the shower speech. But that's not what I said right

now. That's okay, really awesome. All right, moving on. So Okay, so you have been riding a lot of content. I didn't realize that till today I saw something that you wrote that you posted on Twitter. You know, like a Sunday and I read. I read this article, and the first thing it does it went to my wife. Now that you have to read this article and I was like, Oh, I've read some of her other articles and I was like, We I think we gotta talk about this on the house of podcasts. And today, when I was trying to look for that article I was trying to find on your bog and I was like,

But they're like, Where is this thing? And it's like,

Apparently you've been you've been doing Ah, blogger every What

are you doing? I'm doing one of those 100 day projects. Okay, I started one when I was home on maternity leave with my second baby because she was born in the middle of the Texas summer, which, as you know, is terrible. And so with a newborn you can't, like, go out And do you know your usual thing? And I'm personally a very outdoorsy persons. Why went from like, I don't know, working out before I went into labor to being shut in for weeks. So I tried to write every day for 100 days. Partly not because I want to, like,

accomplish something, say, like, I wrote 100 things. It was more because, like I said, I got existential about the Web a while back and and for me, I blogging was such a big part of how I ended up doing this kind of work, that I just really missed it. I missed the old Internet. I know that it's gone, and I know that the type of work that it started off doing, which is still like to this day, the type of work that probably the most joy I know it's gone. It's okay, um,

but I just wanted to get some of it back and start blogging, So I picked that, and it's been all right. Like, I've missed a few days for sure, but I think we're gonna end up being, like at, like, 60 posts out of 100. That's also fine.

Right quick. What was that? What do you I'm curious to see if we feel the same way about something. What is it that you miss about

the old way? Well, for one, did you ever keep a plug?

I always wanted to, and I in for years I had a project to design my block, but I could never I could never finalized the design of it, so I never

Yeah, that's that's like, That's such a classic Web designer thing to say. I could never for that finalized the design because I didn't get it, and I didn't get into blogging for writing. I got into it because I needed like, something too, like a sandbox for for Web design, and that was an easy way to do it. It's like you kept a block that was like your Web content. That was your Web content, like your blogged. But the thing that I was really, really like getting into was a layout, so I would swap out my layout, like every two weeks.

Yeah, someone featured an interview with me and asked me about if I could transport in time. Where would I go? And I and I had a similar answer. I was like Why would go to somewhere between like 1997 and 2002 were like where the web was just a experimentation place and everything was unique before patterns like I love usability and you exercise. I do also miss those days. All right, let's talk about this article. Okay, So the name of this article is the Kobayashi Maru. Tell us about the Kobayashi Maru.

For those of you that are not Star Trek nerds, the Kobayashi Maru is a fake simulated mission that in Star Trek Starfleet Academy, all its cadets have to go through. So you go through this academy to become an officer, right? And explore space and shit. Ah, to graduate, you have to pass this assignment. It's a hard mission where the Simon is to reach a ship that stranded holding a bunch of innocent civilians. The idea is that you're going to rescue them, except that the mission is intentionally designed to fail. You're never gonna like you're never gonna get out of life yourself or you're never gonna get those civilians out alive. Or even if you do, you're going to get killed, like out of nowhere. Like the enemy's gonna come

in like in like she started

were something absolutely So it's It's specifically not about whether or not a person can pull it off and win. It is about what a person does when they're not gonna win. So you put someone under pressure or you put someone under a situation that is in perfect and you watch them make choices or you watch them break down or whatever. And the academy put so much into this type of assignment because they use it to figure out, like your leadership potential, your decision, making your delegation, all of those things that have nothing or very little to do with how well you can pilot a starship, right? And so you will have people that just, like go in like crazy and their goal like la I'm gonna, you know, get in really fast and get them all out, and they get blown up and, ah, where you'll have people that are just like so fanatically into themselves and like their skill that they believe that they're going to win like that. Somehow they're going to crack it and let's say that they do.

But then they start a war, and then they're like, Well, you know, that's your problem. For then you have people who like, you know, I guess you could say that they might, you know, save people, but also save their crew. But, like, sacrificed themselves. And what does that say about who they might be a za leader. And so depending on how you perform through this thing that determines, like what? What you get assigned as as an officer, you know, like what your job becomes basically.

So what are the what the options again, like you. You can there you die. Do you Do you have the ability to accept the mission or you have you just you have to make

a decision. You must take the decision because it's life like it's it's a parallel for life. You're like, let's say we can weave in and out about, like, how this has to do with design, right? You're gonna get a design project or a problem or an assignment or client that you're not gonna like. And you can't just say like,

I don't know, work on this right. That's the reason why I asked that question because then your your follow up on the at the end, you said Well, you had extra thoughts. Well, maybe you could say no to the project, but not everyone gets to do that like only the owner of the business or the business of the like. Not every designer has the ability to do that. Yeah, So just to just to help set some context here, Like in your article, you explain this dilemma and this concept from Star Trek and you you should you talk a little bit about your experience with projects and a little bit, you know, go into too much detail. Can you give us an idea? An example of a project? Either the project that you were referencing that you were on or an example projects just so we can unpack that a little bit more.

Ah, sure, it's not so much like a specific project as it is. Ah, a situation that I think all designer, they're gonna find themselves in that one moment at one point or another in the types of jobs that have had. I've always worked on messy, complex problems. So in government not used to having its own in house design team, For example, if you take something like, Hey, uh, the housing crash of 2009 had, you know, how do we fix that? How do we keep that from Not happen again?

That's a messy design problem. If you like, try and, like, smash that problem into, like a prescribed design process, it's probably not gonna fit its prey. Not gonna work out. So the parallels I was I was drawing upon her. Like what? I was reflecting on this, just like years of being in situations where design definitely added some sort of value, but not in the sense off, like we made some mock ups and we built a nap and it fixed everything. It was more of like, day to day.

You had to build a relationship with people on the other side of the table, people that had never worked with designers before and probably thought we were foolish it, and to some extent we were. But it's more like a long term process of building trust and relationship and camaraderie and an alliance. And then as a team, as a crew, that's really when things started to change. But it was all a long game. She wanted to go in there and try to pull off some, like heroic. I can do it. I am that good of a designer. It was probably

not gonna work out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's what I got from that. And that's well, I'm excited for this conversation today because I think that the situations that you explain in your article or over relevant, like a you can correct me from wrong. But some things you're talking about were like, When you feel like you have your expertise, your experience like, gives you a gut feeling like, should you follow that gut feeling and really champion that, you know, knowing that there might be some risk? Or do you offer, like,

quick winds to try to develop trust even if you know, it's not necessarily like the thing that solving them the most impactful problem or maybe even the right problem in a few things like that? So, like, what are your? I'm just gonna assume that, like maybe every mission or project requires a different strategy, Sure. But in the process you went through thinking about this and running this like, what is your thought on how designers should think about that. And howto can identify that What the needs are a of a project mission or simulation And how how should they sort of make those decisions about what approach they're gonna

take? I think part of it has involves making peace with the fact that if your designer today some of your more impactful or valuable work is not going to come in mocks or comp, sir, or what have you prototypes? So you might not be able to put it on your portfolio in the way that, you know, I guess we talked about putting it on, you know, take some screenshots la, la la. And people are going to get it. It's more like a relationship in problem solving situation, and sometimes that's not going to look like an interface is going to look more in the road map is gonna come out more on the road map for the planning, with strategy that your client or your team, because I say client cause you run an agency. Blake, come in house,

right, that kind of work. And so I've talked to some some designers who are starting out or trying to get a job here and there and they and they say, Well, I can't work there because I don't have anything on my portfolio or I can't show anything on my portfolio And sometimes it's because it's n d A. But sometimes you get the sense that it's because there's something that, like they feel like, the only thing that they can put on their portfolios, something that ship I felt that way to. Uh, I don't have a great answer for it, but, uh, I don't know if that answers your question. It

does. It's actually something that I think about every day. I don't know the conversation would go here, but I'm glad it did. You know, we were just talking about this yesterday, trying to redesign our website. 95% of the work that we do is confidential. We can't show it. And even if it did like, we're in a journey with these clients of ours for long periods of time, So even if we were to show so even if we could show screenshots and stuff like that, it might only be something existed for a moment in time. You're in this this world of continuous improvement in delivery. But you can talk about outcomes, right? The things that,

like you mentioned that, like were important, like that could be everything from like creating the ability to create stakeholder alignment or team alignment, you know, are improving this metric of this metric. There's a lot of other ways to talk about your work that is not just visual, but I don't know if it I get it like I get that it's meaningful to me Like I think we're talking more. You know, we're putting our narratives out there in the world. I think our clients gravitate to what it was a problem. And what would the metrics clients want? To see a few visuals is to see if you

can. You can execute stuff. Yeah,

but I think all designers see the world differently. You know, they may be. They may be designers think that that has more value. I don't know.

We really like to make Yeah, And so when we make a lot in school and we land that job and then we find out that we're not making or we are, But what we make doesn't get built or doesn't like isn't riel. I think a lot of people, including myself at some point or another, like go through this, like, phase of like Okay, so then am I a bad designer? Is this actually the job? What is the drop or it is my team or my company? Bananas. Hey, it was like a sore, like trying to put the blame on something or try like, fix the situation because, like we're trying to solve,

you know, ultimately, like problem soldiers. Also, I think it's just part of where the industry is at right now, and I think it's okay. Soar like the long game. So, like it if you if we extend the analogy or whatever, Um, that one mission that you're running is not meant to save the world. It's just one assignment in a much bigger situation. At the end of the simulation, what happens is the Klingons. So a different people come and shoot you down because you are rescuing people in a no man's land. So you break,

you break like a treaty or something. So with the situation is much bigger, you're in a war. You're in a complex political whatever, but that's the big picture. You're just playing a small part and it's okay. You're not gonna solve, like you're not gonna like end that problem. We're like, bring peace to those people through your actions. And so I think there's a lot there that's similar to the industry right now. I design this week this Sprint or whatever. It's not gonna fix the problem, Like the product since Certainly not gonna change the world. And if it does change the world's party, like in a bad way,

Um, 10 years later. But but it feels like it's so like, big picture now, which is okay. But it can also be hard to think about when, 10 years ago, what you made was very riel. If you made website. So where if you made layouts or if you were a Web designer, um,

release, it would last a little

bit. Would last a little bit longer enough for you to like. Let's say if you did want to put it on your portfolio, someone could go be like I'm going to google this site and then they would see Oh, yes, this is the area website. Yeah, you are a real web designer.

Money gets even more crazy when you think about the fact that none of the things that we make into individual designer actually real anyway they're all like ones zeros. It's not like it is riel, but it's not like a physical thing. It's a it's a digital thing that I think about that contest you didn't like, you know, kind of freaks me out a little bit.

Is something you have people who like, if you don't mind, like steering the conversation, that's really like they'll be like, Well, if it's not riel, if it's so like if a mock up is so ephemeral, the only thing that matters is code. Okay, so, like if you can't build it and show that it's riel, that it's not real. But we can't you know that, like, just like Opens another kind of warm because I know you don't e

you know what? You don't code? No, I don't

anymore. I don't either. But like it's it's This is, like 10 gentle. What it would have meant to say is that even even great agencies these days they don't necessarily build whatever it is that they're designing. And so this idea that in order for it to count, you have to also build it. I also don't like I don't think e think it misses the point.

Yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, some projects and things that people work on are so complex that I think that it requires Ah, you know, a lot of different people to work on it. Like, obviously you can't deliver that thing to a customer or two years or until it is built. But it requires a lot of different skill from people to pull this off like not just in development or design or in research, but also and just like simply getting stakeholders to make a decision or, you know, develop a strategy or something that where you could just do something at all. You know, it cries a lot of work, which is another thing that I don't know. If a lot of designers think about especially young designers,

like how long it can actually take for corporate American and a team in a big enterprise to just make a decision, you know, it can be grueling, right? For some people, I can see that could be pretty grueling. Yeah, differently doesn't get that

way, definitely just not happen over a two week sprint in a natural environment.

So let's get back to the Kobayashi Maru simulation. Could you set up? Assimilation may be using the example that you pervert. You don't have to give me any details you want talk about, but provide a simulation. And then let's look at the scenarios and what might happen in those scenarios. And then let's talk about how you might coach people through those decisions were or how you think about them.

Sure, let's say that you are a designer and you're dropped into a project where engineering and marketing have essentially already decided on what's gonna be the solution. Say that it's because, ah, strategy or or direction that marketing needs to go in in order to to to deliver for the business. Let's say that it's engineering. They've already had every had something built, but it's not performing the way it is. So many people have already worked on it. It's out there. It works. It's the real thing to use a designer. Come in and you're supposed to like Rangel, deliver something. You take a look at the situation and you see Well, my job is to provide value or a solution for the user. And I see what I have to work with.

I see that it's not gonna work out as you get more and more experience. You kind of you learn how to see this, like, a mile away, right? If you're starting out or even if you've got, like, if you're not starting out But you you, um you have a few years and you might say this is wrong. This is not user centered. This is not going to solve the design problem. This isn't even the design problem. This is wrong. This is what it should be like. I have designed it in a mock up. Please build this.

And then you send it over to engineering there like we can't build this. This is if you actually want to build this design we're looking at to find two fiscal quarters. Say, in the real world situation where people's salaries have to get paid, that's not gonna happen. And so, you know, you take it back as a designer, maybe venerate. Move, You know, move this over here, move that over there. You try to like scope it down, but east, it's still too much.

That is what I mean by like a No. One design situation. Because, let's say you're part of ah, of an agency or a new design department at a company where design is supposed to come in and fix everything. That's that's a big burden to bear. And as a designer you wanted, you know, you want to deliver on that responsibility, you want to add value. You don't want to just push your pixels. You also want to solve problems and and contribute to what the company is doing. But you're in a situation where you're not gonna win where it's just not going to be feasible. And so then how do you act on that? Um, do you just put your foot down like this is this is just not what's what the right thing to do.

This is the right thing to do, and I'm just going to throw over, you know, throw my mock ups or my clickable prototypes over the wall and let engineering deal with it. You could do that. And then, when it gets built, scope down to what is actually technically feasible, it's not gonna look anything like what you designed. Then you're gonna get mad about that. Here is a well, I didn't design that I designed the right thing. Or you could take the approach of playing a longer game and building trust are starting to get to know those engineers. Why're like they probably don't feel awesome about the situation there. Smart too. They probably know that the solution is not gonna,

you know, provide the value are or what it is that everyone wants. What I've learned is that most people want to do the right thing, and they know what the right solution is. But they don't always have the ability or they're not in the situation to make it happen, because life happens and things are not perfect. And so how do you work together and build trust to move forward together as a team? Because, like in the simulation, it's really more like you're you're if your leader, if you're in a leadership position, your lake commanding a ship or you're part of that ship, right? Sometimes I feel like as designers, we think that design is more like if we can extend the analogy like Luke Skywalker, who,

like homeboy, learns how to pilot an X wing for a few days and then he likes saves the galaxy, right? Like that's not on. And if you think about it, if you like, if you like chase that type of vision, you're gonna peak cause, like, homeboy peaked, like, a couple years after that. And then he's like, Well, I actually didn't save the galaxy. I'm gonna go overto an island

and get old feeling the only one like one little battle,

right? And that was it. Like, Do you want to be like that? Or people are like but being a like design history, like was made, um, accidentally. So I think about an example. The woman who designed all the icons for for the the one who designed the icons for the Mac. The early

Mac. Yeah, I know what you're talking

about. But Susan Care and I don't want to mess up her name. It's got it or care k a r e

I can't recall, but I know exactly

sure, right, But it was an accident. And so it's like, Do you wanna continue? Do you wanna continue your design career cause I'm assuming that most designers want to be designers for a very long time. Do you want to continue on your design career hoping for the accident toe happen? Or do you want to live more in the present and, you know, Yeah, so

that's really it's really interesting. I think that these are the kinds of things that leaders should be talking to their teams about. It doesn't like you can't always, like, catch everything. But like I think these are the real important things to talk about, I'm not sure, but I think that well, what I took away from your article is that, just personally, is that okay? There's probably this exhibit is an example of a simulation that's probably done in the Star Trek universe away, too. It's done consistently, is a way for people evaluate people. But in the relationship to design like thes simulations, emissions are different.

There's probably there's probably different choices you should make, depending on all of these different factors, right. But I imagine that have, after going through this exercise that you've you have a perspective on the way that someone might understand the problem. The challenge that's been in front of them in order to make the right call. What's your thought on that?

I think we think it reminded me something about that. That's about something that I wrote was, uh and one of the times I found myself in this situation, I was a little like the success of design that the team or my own output or whatever was measured by output.

How much stuff? You're moving to the done column or something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many things that I ship? Did I ship it all? If I didn't ship something, then it wasn't a success If I shipped something, even if it was something terrible or something that, even, like, theoretically could hurt the company. Perhaps that was better than not shipping anything at all. And so if it gets into this, like, weird place of, like, how do we eat?

Actually, at the end of the day, think about designs value, and it's still very output based in my opinion, I personally have been able to move beyond that, even if it sucks. Even if it puts me in the leadership friend zone. In some

ways, the leadership

friends, ownership friend zone. Um because we still like. I don't know. This is like this is like a totally unrelated conversation, but yeah, when we think about who's fit for design leadership, we still, like evaluate people based on who can make out who can, who can make, who can build and put out the most. The fastest, the flashiest. And then you put them in management really like situations, and they hate it because they don't make anymore. But as I sees individual contributors, I don't think we have figured out like a good way to evaluate people for what might make a good manager good leader down the line because we're still looking at. Are you shipping or shipping our shipping? Are you making?

Yeah. Unlike you, I have never spent that much time. I've only had one in house job. I've always been agency side, so I definitely understand what you're saying. But I'm seeing those situations like a number of them, like, spread out like all like for the sake of analogy, all these different simulations, and I think that I don't know if, like, I'm sure everyone has, like, different solution for looking at this stuff. But one of the things that we found that helps us is like we're looking at the organization that in House team that we're working with, for example, as a design challenge in itself and creating a creating the proto personas and the engagement methods for

those people. It's almost like you're designing the team and not the thing,

right? Like so this person has this motivation. She, her boss, wants to hurt output stuff. And that's how she builds trust, to get budget for, like, making the thing. Okay, well, this course of action or this this person is you know, he needs to increase right? Well, like I don't know, like, because I think that, like in our situation like the playbook is often different. And if you try toe, deploy the same playbook to everyone it you'll end up with a lot of clean on

words, you know? Yeah, because you do product design and it every product is different if every product was the same. Product design is not like website design, where you could kind of get away with, like, a couple of templates for restaurants or for hotels or this and that, and you could make it work. Um, these air business. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What is it that What's the takeaway here? Like if if he gets kind of summarized like the biggest takeaway for you personally, when you're when you wrote this with a take away that you would want the listeners to know about this Kobayashi Maru scenario like, what would they be?

Takeaway is that it's today if you want to be a designer, if you are a designer and you want to have a good, rewarding long career doing this line of work, I think it really would help to make peace with Howell chaotic. The industry is right now because it's so young. Yet, like that's still very young and a lot of these things or the way that we define success for design or designers individually, like how good you are. I think they're still modeled after old, like older school graphic design. You know what I mean? But this the things that we make, and it's not even that we don't even really make as much anymore as we do, shape or influence. It's a long game agency after Lake make peace with that being part of the job part of your success. If you define your own worth and talent over how much you make, how much you can point and say, like I made that up, I made that. It's gonna It's gonna suck. It's just going to suck.

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Everyone needs toe. Read this article. It's called the Kobayashi Maru, and you can find it online. We'll tell you where in just a second I want to talk to you more like just personally like after podcast, because a lot of your writings, I think it really interesting. And if you ever wanna get, get a bite or stop by the studio weaken, do more of that. Thanks for making time for coming here today. And talking about this, I think, is really awesome perspective. And it's it's awesome to challenge people to think that way. How can people connect with you on the interwebs and how how can they find this awesome article?

My blogged lives at daisy dot glug Easy, easy. I eat or at my awesome Irish domain does e t e z z dot e. Okay,

you have to you girls

okay? Yeah, because that's just like Come on. You can get your name is the main How? Yeah, Yeah, Why not? Um, yeah.

How could Pete can people you have Twitter? Anything

that people have? A twitter? I'm also the dizzy at Twitter. Yeah.

Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you next time on the house. Podcast

hustle is brought to you by fun size digital service in product design agency that works with inspiring teams. Uncover opportunities of all popular products, Bring new businesses to market and prepare for the future. Learn more fun sized dot CEO. I'm Natalie, a partner design director at fun size and thanks for tuning in.