huh? Uh, hello and welcome. Duty first Fun sized podcast episode 0.1 Yeah, so here is There's three of us and we have Anthony Armendariz.

Hi, I'm Anthony Apartment, Fun Size

and

Natalie. Hello. Natalie Armendariz, the other partner of fun size.

And my name is Rick. And I'm here and a product designer. Fun sized as well. So we're gonna D'oh! Just a quick overview of what? Um, this podcast is four and why we're doing it and what it's gonna be about. The fun size mobile design podcast is a podcast about mobile design and the life that goes along with it. It's gonna be a monthly podcast we're gonna do on the blank day of every month. And, uh, we'll try and keep up with that on a monthly basis, and we're going to come for a lot of things, But everything is gonna be in some way or another related to mobile design. So we thought just to start. Since this is the first podcast, we would go ahead and just give us get give everyone who's listening a quick overview in background story of how fun size started and why we're doing a podcast right now. Maybe Anthony, you could give us your your background in terms of how you started your career as a designer and then eventually worked

your way to mobile design. Yeah, well, long story short. Natalie and I have both been weapons owners for nearly a decade, and I think we both sort of reached a tipping point where we were so bored of Web design. We probably would have switched careers. Been around. You know, shortly before the iPhone came out, Natalie had already been doing mobile design for, you know, feature phones. And I quit my job because I was Lotus. What does that mean? Feature phones like the flip phones screens that, you know,

the phones that have, like, the little displays on the front and stuff like that. Look, tiny little screens.

And what was the Natalie? What was the screen resolution? Do you remember what this organization was? A

small. A 70 by 100 pixels, maybe 72 pixels. It's tiny. Uh, Natalie, it convinced me that it was okay to quit my job and started started business. And I got in a mobile because, really, because the engagement length, like I was had come from a world of doing like your long website redesigns and doing a mobile project. Back then, iPhones with new thing was like a three, you know, two or three month engagement.

So so mobile products, mobile design projects would be much longer engagements,

but terribly shorter, you know, you know, two months, 1st 2 months for a mobile at versus 12 months for a website resigned. And when you're we're looking at, like being a freelancer at that time was like, Well, I want it. I want variety, you know? And not only that, but I'm gonna learn something completely new. And back then, no one was doing iPhone designed as a service, you know, there was very few.

There are very few people that were doing it, and the agencies that were doing it didn't really know how to sell it, because it was the price point was much lower than what they were used to. You know, imagine being on RG et or company that size and being used to selling a website for 1/2 a $1,000,010 million all of a sudden having New York Times asking you to do mobile effort. $23,000. You know that the ability to do that was kind of crazy. So, you know, I kind of jumped into that space and I started a business, and I started doing that. Natalie was working for a European little design company, and eventually we, you know, the time we moved to Austin, you know,

we were both so advanced and doing what each of us were doing. Um I mean, I mean, skipping a lot of details here, but we started looking at the local industry. Like what would? What kind of salaries would we make if we got jobs versus doing in ourselves? And we'd always talked about this dream of having our own business where we could travel and work when we want the way that we want create the culture that we want do exactly We want the way we knew that it should be done like no, no fluffed work with great people Be really thinking about the products we work

on. What do you mean by no fluff? Like, What was it about working at other agencies that had what you might describe his stuff?

Well, I'm gonna make some very general assumptions. I mean, this is talking a few years back that I think most agencies have been in this world of building hours to clients, you know? How many hours can you build to a client and even down to the employees, Like being measured on how many billable hours they have? You know, I literally remember Natalie telling me one occasional like, I don't know if I'm gonna get fired because I haven't had any billable hours and x may days. And that's how agencies make their money by Billy Ours? Yeah, just a chime in here. I think the client to the agency's perspective, they start becoming more like a number than a person. Yeah. Yeah,

I think that's right. I mean, agencies have struggled massively with this full new, like mobile landscape, which is a topic that I believe that we're gonna cover in one our future podcasts about how the agency model is terribly broken. We feel like we've mastered that, and we have a lot to share that could help other small companies or freelancers here how to really be successful in filling that gap.

Cool. Yeah. So, uh, what about you, Natalie. Where did you like first step into, like, how did your design career start?

I kind of started in the basement with my brother. He I was probably 12 13 years old, and I was watching my brother and one day just playing with photo shop. And it was back in the days where grunge was like a very hip thing. So I started off designing my own templates for things like Zynga, an asian dot com, one Agent Avenue calm. It was probably like late nineties. And then from there I know I had an interest. But then I knew that my parents were pushing me to become like the pharmacist or what have you? I took that rap for a while. I was in medical medical fields, and then I decided I wanted to give it back over to the art. So when I started at UT after graduating, I decided that I would just end up leaving college and taking an internship. And then I moved to New York after a few years, take a job in R. J. And then I had a boss who believed in me enough to let me work on Mobile on the rise

in wireless team. What kind of what kind of interest internship was? It was like a assignment

for that agency designing pharmaceutical banners. That's actually where we met. Yes,

there. Really? So you were doing You're pursuing potential, like pharmacy job.

And they were doing, like designing diarrhea, diarrhea, medicine, tip online. And that's where we met.

Really? That's like, Wow, talk to that girl.

I got two more design through the variety and Wireless team on RG

at Archie. Oh, okay. Cool. Excellent. So how did your career progress? I mean, did you have a lot of other positions between that and the most recent job before fun size? Or was it pretty much just those two?

I'm between RG and fun size. I wore Jet Fjord for a while, and that's when I actually really mastered the craft of mobile design because they just primarily focused on design. Well, fjord, I mean, had been doing mobile designed exclusively in Europe 10 years before the iPhone came out in the United States. So fewer and at the time, I really believe that was like a great place for Natalie be because that was the on Li like service company at that skill that really knew what they were doing, right? And they brought that Tina to the United States,

then office in New York. But they're based here in London. Wanted awesome. What did they do? Mostly mobile, Or were Were you like I'm a specifically global team or

it was all about the whole entire company with mobile base, like, specific, Really? All the clients that we had it was more products. We really do any web It all.

So did you predate the big names in mobile design today? Like, Did Did few word, I guess. Predate like Mutual mobile. Or

I would think so. Yeah. They started out about 10 years ago like, Well, they were

in 2013. I phone came out 2007 right? So,

to the heart, Was that your word? Actually there, Working with Nokia before then itself. They've been in it for a while now.

So what was Did you have a lot of freedom as a mobile designer? Designing foot phone application. I mean, was was basically it was just us, right? It's Paris, like tonight for bit map. Nice.

You don't really think about it. Imagine a company like Verizon has eight phones that they sell to their customers. And for some reason, one vendor decides they want at two pixels to the width of their display of the device, right? I mean, it would literally cost millions of dollars of late, you know, nineties, early, two thousands. Imagine, Like, millions of other person, you can imagine what it would cost now.

Yeah, plus, yeah, multiply eight devices by think of Samsung, my count, How many devices they have. So So Okay, So your designer and you're working at this company that does mobile design, which isn't really anything that a lot of people know about at that point, right? It's, like, totally new. Feel like we don't even have the iPhone. No one sort of that. Um And you're designing for mobile at that point. Like,

how do you learn mobile when it doesn't exist? Like, what was the process of of learning? Hey, there's there's a completely a new device and it's like this tiny little screen. And we need to design that. Like, who learns that? Like how you heard Who teaches you how to do that?

I think for me honestly like it. I think it's very specific to the type of person that you are. But for me it was trial and error, like I looked at what was designed previously, and I learned from that, and I kept Iterating on that. But I think people do that depending on what kind of designer you are. You do that in a very different way. Like I'm sure Anthony would approach that in a different way. I mean, for me, it was I was desperately looking for a change. I mean, I was sober Now on doing Web design. I would almost rather have gotten a job at Starbucks centers on the website. I mean, I'm not fitting in,

so burned out on it like, so stressed out. So don't let that mobile. It had been a long time since I had an opportunity to learn something new and mobile was this thing right? It was this this nugget, and I think for me I would have never had the opportunity to get in this space if it wasn't for a client. I was working with harvest apathy time working on Web stuff, and then I heard, overheard that they were gonna do and their first iPhone app

and in harvest, as you know, billing.

And that's yeah, time time sheets and time tracking. And I'd always use their products. I was, you know, as an advanced user. And I keep in mind I've been doing websites for over a decade, and I and I approached them and I said, Look, I don't know anything about mobile. I'm gonna reduce my costs by 50%. Please give me a chance to do this. If it wasn't for that one opportunity, it was that one project, that springboard in my career, which is kind of another recurring topic that's sort of come up at fun size, like there's a lot of people in the Web trying to bring their talents over to mobile.

And sure, maybe you're a talented Web designer, but that doesn't mean that you're a talented mobile designer. And just because you could design pretty pixel, does that mean you know shit about mobile? And if you really want to learn something, you need it. You almost need to be willing to like, you know, break down those barriers of what you think, your work and put yourself in a position where you could work on something awesome and that's what did it for me. And then my life changed completely and never look back.

Will you say there's a big disconnect between Web and Mobile? Like what? Can you describe it all? Like what? What that is. Or maybe what? People not knowing, not understanding what the biggest difference is like

Well, I mean, that kind of goes back to our in this podcast. I mean on we do native mobile products native to I'll s native to Android Native Windows, they to BlackBerry. We do Absolutely. Zero Web design. Zero response of stuff. There's plenty of conferences and topics of people talking about responsive Web design. We have nothing to do with that. We have nothing to share about that. We are trying to create some concept for people that want to focus on native products. I can't believe there's not more people talking

about. I can't believe it either. Like we were like, OK, it would be kind of fun to do a mobile design podcast like Who else has done it like, who can we sort of like like learn from, or whatever and I just I scoured the Internet and I scoured Iife, iTunes, you know, and there were a couple of, like, U ex podcasts or whatever. And they were They were interesting, but they like you. X is like just a minor. Well, not mine.

It's a major part of what mobile design has, but there's not like a mobile design podcast that was super weird. Like I don't know. I feel like, uh and I'm sure you guys gonna test this to, um, just being in Austin. There's a lot of shops around town and a lot of design boutiques and even bigger shops, too. But if they do, mobile Web is also like a huge part of what they do. It's a huge part of their business, and I would say, like even a major part of their business in comparison to mobile, like Mobile is sort of like definitely a smaller part. And I think that's it. Surprised it surprised because I guess it's just because Mobil's newer right, like Webb's been around longer and

it's it's newer and people haven't are just now trying to deal with the struggle of figuring out how to profit from it, you know, like imagine being, you know Munson earlier. Imagine being a boutique or a medium sized company. I mean it. Seriously. Even the boutiques and guarantee you're having a hard time doing mobile finding, finding ways to be profitable off doing mobile products. Just because clients these days are very educated. They've hired multiple companies to do various Web or mobile design projects. They know exactly what they're looking for. You can't. You can't bullshit them with cost or deliverables and know what they want. And the time frames are astronomically shorter. You know, if you're gonna do a big if you're going to redesign the New York Times,

you know? Okay, sure. Maybe you got a year. You're gonna redesign the New York Times mobile product. You probably have six, you know, a fraction of time. I mean, just the expectation of the

ways. Do you think it feels like that? It's judged that way because literally, like a Web sites 10 24 by 7 68 And a mobile device nowadays is a smaller amount. Pixels like Is that the reason that it's given less? Uh, it's It's given less budget, less timeline, less attention

I think the assumption when that is that you have you, like amounted to the number of pixels. People assume that because there's probably fewer pixels, that maybe it could be cheaper and that it's easier to design you. Think about it, you break it down. It's a lot more daunting because mobile space right now is the wild, Wild West. And it's people think that if you scale down a website and you have less pixels, it's easier to figure out what you put on it. But quite honestly, it's like the vice versa, like like it's that you had to figure out You have to actually boil it down to it kind of an honest way of thinking about what you're trying to put out in the world. So meaning like you have to figure out what is important and figure out how. How do you leverage the size? Thio. I think it goes way deeper than that.

I mean, I think when the iPhone came out, it intrinsically changed the design community forever. It used to be that you had to live in New York City or San Francisco. The work in a popular shop to have a chance of being successful. Here comes the small device for people you know can create amazing things, and it created in my experience. It completely changed everything. You don't have to live in New York City anymore. You can live in your mother's basement in Kansas. You perform this specialized skill set, and what happened, I think, is that the clients realize this. Sure, you could go to a big agency and spend a $1,000,000 to get a mobile product design.

But I guarantee you that's a lower price point that they're used to. So you're gonna get the B, C or D Teen, where freelancers put on it instead of someone that specialize in it. So what happens? It's a It's a paradigm shift between people looking for big agencies of their work and actually seeking individuals or very small companies through the work, because people realize that they're going to get what they pay for. You know, if you you know, you know, take a $20,000 budget, right, just as an example, and you, you know, at a big agency that's nothing.

They wouldn't even talk to you. But a small company at one or two people. That's enough for them to put all 100% of their effort into it and making sure they get the attention they need. And it's It's really just not about what it's changing with designers, that client clan for smarter and budgets are smaller. I mean, there's there's not a you know, it's just a fact, like there's not. No one is paying a $1,000,000 for a mobile app unless you're like a enterprise bank or financial institution, right?

Unless you go to the big boys and it feels like those bigger agencies that get the big budget APs it's it's is totally contradictory. But, um, in in my like, just experience of what I've seen, it almost seems like the bigger the agency with less attention, you get to your app. You know what I mean? Like you go in for for a really big budget, and then you're suddenly like a as as a business, a product or a business owner, you are suddenly like a small fish

in a big again. Another thing that we've talked about is this is tackling this this approach, you know? I mean, every agency is different in a minute make too many assumptions, but there is no value in being an agency and redesigning a project on disappearing. It took tow us. I think the value is being involved in a long term and being involved in the day to day shipping people ship people ship product in two or three week increments. They're not shipping things that six or 12 inch increments people are shipping product daily sometimes,

and by and by ship you, just me and like it is, for instance, is an iPhone app. And that iPhone app has been updated. There's some sort of update to the APP and so that actors then submitted to the APP store and then essentially delivered to the user. Yeah, so shipping is like a major,

I think, Yeah, and I don't know if agencies know how to deal with that because, you know, in the past, thing didn't use to redesigning things. You know, like if a company approaches an agency and says, Hey, we need help, shipping features. I mean, how many vacancies would be interested in being involved? Just ship one or two features? I don't know, but that's the name of the game. these days,

you know? I mean, it's not always a redesign. Sometimes it's just a supporting role in helping someone. I mean, think about a product that has millions use around the world. You're not just gonna drastically redesign that like, every 3 to 6 months, you're gonna roll it up mentally, and that's the name of the game. That's how people are successful in this face.

You know, it's so crazy. Now I think about a product just just from the concept of app designer all like in the in the 19 eighties or any time before that. Literally. If you wanted Thio create a product that you were gonna sell and make a living off of that, the very first thing you have to think about is I mean, once you've got the idea and it's working, is this is something gonna sell? Like, where am I gonna store it like this is a physical product? This is something that has to go into a warehouse somewhere and have to pay overhead on that warehouse. Don't have to pay shipping costs, and then I have to pay a staff to manage that inventory. Have to track it. I have to see how well I'm doing. You know, if you have I don't know you're selling with lamps or something,

you know, you want to go for that. But, man, 2007 the iPhone came out and there's an APP store, and you could come up with a product idea. That's an app that is basically like an intellectual. I don't know if it it is actually an intellectual property, but that's what it is. And you could basically have ah, business and run a business. And I mean, you certainly have costs involved in a product company, but you no longer have inventory. You no longer have uh, staff to manage that inventory no longer have,

like shipping to worry about and and all that and not to say there are tons of businesses that have that every day now, you know. But, uh, it's just crazy for me to you think about basically, an industry was born right from Mobile APS and suddenly, like all these $1 APS are, we're all spending money on these $1.99 APS that we simply weren't doing before.

You know, the thing that flips out of that just to play Devil's Advocate is that it? Radically, some of my argue that it that it hurt the mobile. It hurt the HTML world a little bit because the Web world yeah, the where world. Because some of these products that we find in the APP store don't necessarily need to be done native. That could have easily been done. Html my forecast i o r number, but they feel stressed out that if they don't put it in the marketplace, no one's gonna find that's true. Like, you know, ugh I heard about for I've heard about all the mobile Web ads from other people, and that's an interesting topic because I think a lot of product companies are driven to ship products in the APP stores because they feel like if they don't, they're not gonna be successful. No,

maybe another topic for another time. But yes, it did completely change everything you know, and and it's weird, right? Because everyone and their in their dog right now is is, is doing something in the space. There's a lot of there's a lot,

you know, this could be a totally separate topic to you, but when you know what having a website was a major part of your business. Like no matter who you were yourself shoes. Or if you fix shoes, you need a website so people can find you. But I saw like that sort of echoing when the app market sort of exploded. Like if you fix use, you need a mobile app and I think that was coming in a lot like it's just the next Web. But I definitely you know at this point what's respectively. Don't think that's the case, you know, like everybody needs app. And then it's like maybe everybody doesn't need it, but their specific like

uses for Well, I mean and I don't know about other companies perspective on that. That our perspective as an organization is that we only want to be working on products that actually better human beings we don't want. We don't want to work on on acts that are distracting to human beings or their lifestyle. We would never do a checkinout. We would never do anything like that. We only want to do things that better. People. There's, I would say, 90% of the stuff out there is took completely useless. Anyway, there's no reason why a person that fix used to have a mobile app.

Now, would you download a app that was for fixing

shoes? E Just my mom. A little telling Mom was a hair stylist. Doesn't have around that. But guess what, like other abs, help her business point The person that fixes shoes they don't either own at you Yelp. Yeah, right at the awesome So that other people confined their shoe store. Or there's hair salon through the El Paso or four square, even which is, like, things that are discoverable.

Yeah, Yeah, it kind of respect what you're saying about every app. Like, what was it? What did you say about the function of every app? It's sort of like I think I lost my way. Should have drink about four less beers before

probably a 12 year old developer

listening. That's right. Now 12 developer that we just watched a tutorial on how to do a podcast before anyway, So, yeah, I mean, I just thought I'd be a good idea to get together tonight and, um, do a little backs back story. We're gonna kind of get things in full swing on this podcast and we'll have things a little bit more regular with a little bit more top regular topics and everything but that this is a great opportunity. Just give it up, give it a first try here and also

just give a little background introduce ourselves to the podcast world. Yeah. Should we talk about some of the things that we would?

Yeah, yes. So the future We have a couple of topics that we think people are really gonna be interested in that. Well, hopefully they're interested because we're definitely interested in, you know, as mobile designers. We think about a lot of these topics every single day, and we're constantly learning new new, new new ideas and concepts. So without it be great to talk about a few things so well,

I mean, basically, it's kind of broken down between business related topics from, you know, career related stuff, sales related stuff, pricing, climbing for client client experience, process stuff, tips and tricks on how to like organize a project, you know, from like the new degree details of the file management all the way to like a process of an entire process is as Faras waterfall versus Add Dial's methodology behind each one and then a lot of different native Mobile design stuff, definitely arranging in spending the gamut between my phones, tablets, all the different ecosystems I list android windows and they think we're really, really, really taking down deeper and figuring out,

like how to deal with device fragmentation and just, you know, like and then even further than that this production assets how to deal with each platform separately but still be able to be efficient about each one. My hope is that people they're looking for to being an IOS designer are not listening to this, that people that are looking forward to being a mobile product designer are listening to this. Uh, this is definitely gonna be more than I a less because you need to know more than that

business, right? Right? I mean, what's the point of boxing yourself into one platform anyway? I mean, everybody needs thio know what's going on in the mobile round anyway, to just be educated and learn different unique patterns, there's always gonna be overlap. And if you're like experiencing multiple platforms at once, you're gonna be ahead of the game So, um

yeah, Even crazier than that. Like forecasting for future emerging technologies like TV and wearable technologies. And how do you deal with that? When that comes out? Can you adapt?

Designing, uh, APS for smart

TVs. I guarantee if you're not designing Absar TV, your card faces, you're already behind the curve. Yeah, totally. So be here tomorrow.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's design APS for beaming beaming me up. So how do

you like your beating through space? Hopefully your thigh culture as we know it. Because everyone everyone would be trying to be being be beating into the same restaurant the same time. You have to have an interface to see how busy that places that have to be in yourself directly into. So imagine that a set of reservations you actually have to beam yourself into that chair or someone else. Beans. It's a future of force by, right. Like I want that

you chicken everywhere around the world is chicken. Yes, that's right. We're talking about naming, beaming yourself into another broad. None of you had any idea what he'd be into. What? You sir, listen, this all right? Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna fire through literally every discussion idea. We had about an hour. Yeah, I'm just gonna fire through, All right. And,

uh, all right. So for business operations, this these air potential topics, we may talk about broken agency model your office space managing growth, how to sell price, how to sell or price work raids and costs and relationships proposals, value based pricing, psychology about options, client experience. Shoptalk for business owners shoptalk as in photo shop. Talk to, um, freelancers. Um, in house versus client service is agency versus agency will compare and contrast different types of agencies.

Uh, we also have an episode coming up about working with your spouse. For those who don't know, Anthony and Natalie are married, and we'll see if we can get a guest on that. Also does that, um we're gonna have one talking about managing design teams, attracting and retaining talent, work, life balance and flexibility. How to best utilize your team skills. Managing people, in addition to designers and culture. Establishing culture for your your company. Uh, moving on going.

We're gonna have a lot of topics for process. When? When we're gonna call, follow the white rabbit. Finding the perfect process efficiency and committee decisions, organization techniques, anatomy and mobile of a mobile design project. Howto work with project manager and engineers. Waterfall versus agile, agile work. Fall and workflow in methodology. Project management. Visual design process interaction design. Conceptual design. Typography. Working a lot.

Working in house at a product team versus working agency. Native Mobil's line service design. Eco systems Designing with legacy constraints. Android design 101 Wearables TV production design We may or may not even have a podcast about Mad Men and nothing more. Other stuff. Uh, whiskey and designers and just a general topic and discussion about photo shop

and how we can get rid of it.

Place Photoshopped photo. Just getting we all spend 12 hours a day and for that's true, that's true anyway, So over running with a gargantuan list. But these are ideas, and we have a ton on. That was seriously, just like we're shopping for like, 20 minutes together, having a beer at a bar. Um, we want to talk about all of these things, if possible, if time allows. And if any of those things sound interesting to you, you know, thinking stay tuned is tthe e exact phrase. I was looking for that.

Email us that. Howdy. If you have any suggestions

or if you want to come on the ship or if you have an idea of who you want to have a quality or if you wanna have a glass of milk, I will meet you. That's not a guarantee. Okay, guys, Thanks a lot. You have me. Natalie will be back.