welcome. This is a hustle podcast, my fun size about creating great digital products. I'm Anthony Armendariz, and I'll be hosting today's episode. Our guest today is Peter Mayer Holtz, and we're gonna have an exciting talk about why there's no such thing as user experience before we get into it. Today's podcast is sponsored by the Iron Yard. The iron yard will teach you the tools and skills you need to become a professional interface designer or developer and then help you find an awesome job. Check out the iron yard dot com to learn more. Actually, we're gonna be heading over there to the Austin office today to see the portfolio reviews from their first class as soon as we're done. Yeah, eso first and foremost welcome back, Rick. From being gone for forever from maternity leaf. Yeah,

I'm back. I had my wife rather had a baby, and he's awesome. And I'm happy to be back on the podcast. Yeah, it's good to have you back, man. Um, little introduction here for a guest. I'm very excited about today's episode. Peter is one of the most inspirational designers, at least for my career. A good friend of fun size Peter Mur holds. Um Hey, Peter. So for our listeners that don't know Peter in ah,

2001 he cofounded adopt a path. Um, maybe one of the first agencies that really championed user experience. And they grew that company from a small shop to an international consultancy between San Francisco, Austin and Amsterdam. After he left, adapted a path. He was the VP Global design. A group on. We actually hired fun size and was fun. Size is first client. Thanks for that. By the way, if it wasn't for for you, we may not have this podcast right now, so, um, truth. And currently he's a senior director of design at Jawbone. But one of the most interesting things about Peter is he actually coined the word blawg.

Is that true? That is true.

Wow, that's awesome. So, Peter, why don't you, uh, tell her listeners a little little bit more about about yourself and what

you're doing? Yeah, so I mean, you you pretty much hit the nail on the head with those various things. Most recently, I am the senior director of design here. A job bone, folks. Not familiar. Jawbone produces the up fitness tracker as well as the jam box on Dhe joined just a about four months ago. Uh, working now. I've never before work directly in wearables and Internet of things and health and fitness. And so I'm I'm learning a lot and enjoying it. It's been a lot of fun.

Sounds really awesome. I saw yesterday some people in the office or passing around links that new product that you guys

just released. It's been a long time coming, and we had already announced what we call the up three. But we also have now announced are up to and are up four. So we have a A family of products in market now, price points for every wallet size and a range of kind of interesting features and capabilities. And what's interesting to me is knowing what I do know about what's coming here. A job on what we've shared so far is scratching the surface of what we will be delivering over the next 6 to 12 months, and

that that new one before it does like payment.

It does payment, because why not is one while it's on your wrist? NFC, uh, chip in a band and, uh, make it easier to buy stuff. Why wouldn't you?

Huh? That's pretty cool. That's awesome. So, Peter, in December, you wrote an article article that was titled There's no such thing as user experience design. When I saw that just the headline I was a little bit shocked, you know, just because of your background. But I was also really excited because I've always had a sort of internal debate about what exactly is you act, you know, people you know, everyone is advertising themselves says that U ex person or you exit by person is vague, and I've always sort of believe that U X is the result of what teams create together, right? I always felt like it was,

you know, it doesn't matter what you create. It's gonna be a good or bad or mediocre user experience and that, you know, and so I you know, we read this article and we really, really surprised there's a couple of quotes that I'll read. And then I'm hoping that you can walk us through more of the details. So in the first, after the headline, you state that the entire field of user experience emerged for one reason. To accommodate and overcome poor or non existent product management practices. And then you also went later in the article state that the job title, a career path of view X design is broad and meaningless. Can you, uh, let's tell us more about this. And it's

also let me let me let me unpack that for you and all. I'm trying to think how far back to go. I could go back to 1998 when I email Don Norman and asked him about the coining of the phrase user experience, which he is credited with. It turns out there might have been some earlier ones, but I think when Don Normal was an apple, he was the first to use it in a kind of professional context he created. This was in the early nineties. I talkto him about it in 1998. But when he was an apple in the early nineties, he created what was called the user experience architect's office, and the reason he did that was he didn't want his team to be seen as focusing simply on user interface but on the entire system that a user is engaging with. And that could include the out of the box experience manuals, software, hardware interface is all of that stuff. He recognized that it needed to be tackled, uh,

together. Um, but what What happened when I reached out to him And 1998 1999. Already, user experience had become kind of so Vegas to be meaningless. And then in 2001 though, when we started adaptive path, we were very explicit. We called ourselves the user Experience consultancy on dhe. We were, I think, unique at the time. In doing that, there were usability consultancies like Nielsen Norman Group and creative Good, but no one who was talking about user experience, um,

and adaptive path stuck with user experience for quite a while. At some point 2008 or nine, we shifted from user experience to experience design on. That was, I think, as design was becoming a, um more a term who that was elevated when we when we launched after path in 1 4002 We were actually very conscious about trying not to use the word design too much in describing what we did because we saw that what most of our clients thought of as design was styling was pixel pushing waas. I was, um, graphic design and very little else. And not the more kind of systems type of design that you get with interaction, design and information architecture. And most definitely, uh, designers were not involved in issues of product strategy and and really kind of defining what it is that you were building. The designers were expected simply to execute on decisions that other people had made,

so we were very cautious around our use of the word designed for quite a while. But around 8 4009 largely with the advancement of the design thinking movement that Ideo, probably more than any other entity kind of lead designs, started getting a broader, um, understanding and was seen not just as something that was about styling. Many people still do, but but But there was a conversation had shifted. And so, um, my challenge, though, and a challenge I had for a long time. And I think you hit on it exactly, Anthony. Is that at?

I see and I have some essay written in 2005 or six about this. I see user experience as an outcome, not as a practice write. Something can have a good or bad user experience, and a lot of things go into whether or not a user experience is good or bad. The design of it is one piece of that, but the engineering of it eyes another piece. The customer service and customer care aspects is another piece. How marketing communicates the product and sets expectations is another piece. So there's a user experience is not simply the thing that eyes that designers deliver. Designers influence it, but they influence it alongside a lot of other practices. And, um uh, what I also saw, uh, more recently is that user experience design someone who called themselves the user experience designer was usually what I would have called an interaction designer and an information architect, right that,

Yeah, I definitely

agree with that. Yeah, they there and we have terms in interaction. Designer and information are protecting their perfectly good terms, and they those define those better describe what you do then you ex designer, because you looks designer. While it mostly means interaction, designer and information architect, it can also mean you I designer visual designer, like people were We're cloaking themselves in this phrase, I think, because it sounded highfalutin in fancy. Um,

by probably the equivalent of today's product designer.

Well, a product designer I'm actually okay with and we can touch on that in a moment. Um, but I remember I think it was shortly after I left Adaptive Path in 2010 or 11. Um, I was talking with, uh, one of adaptive pats new employees that were women named Toy Valentine. And she was she was wanting to reflect on kind of user experience from a new person's perspective. Kind of enlightened, intelligent, but younger professionals. Perspective. And the challenge she was having is as a you know, let's imagine you're a couple of years out of college. You maybe had a job. You're thinking about your second job.

Uh, there's there's a job called U ex designer. What is the path that you're putting yourself on? And I think this is something that the quote unquote u ex design community has never been able to answer. Which is how do you grow as a U X designer? What is that? What is that path What is that? Evolution? I can tell you have a visual designer grows in an interaction designer grows and an information architect rose and the user researcher grows. And like all these other elements, I can tell you kind of what that evolution is. But U ex designer is not really, uh, career or profession that you can be on a journey with. And so was the more I would kind of poke it. This idea of you ex designed, the more it would kind of crumble, uh, under any scrutiny,

right? And I mean, that's a good question, and I don't want to jump ahead. But, I mean, what is the next step for a U X designer? Is it not product?

Yeah. And so where in the article referred referencing from December. What I kind of where I ended up Waas realizing there was There were there were at least let's say, if we go back to adaptive path and the work we were doing there that we generally called user experience user experience design, there were kind of two parts to it. There were the execution. Will parts of you ex design, information, architecture, interaction, design, visual design. And then there were the the strategic and more definition parts of you ex practice that involves user research and coming, you know, using that user research to prioritize features and develop a road map and and all those types of concerns and something that I I wasn't aware of when we when I was adaptive. Path is that much of the strategic and planning aspects of of user experience that we were doing it was what inside a product organization was simply called Product Management Way didn't really have that, uh,

view into how how certain types of companies worked. You know, our clients were often really big corporations, very traditional companies that didn't have product management themselves, marketing departments who were told that they were in charge of the digital experience. Marketers don't have product managers, and so so that that phrase wasn't one. The term product management wasn't one that was used, but when we would work with these these clients who didn't have product management, um, we ended up doing product management, not not calling it that we called it experience strategy because we saw it as the thing we needed to do it before we did the experience design, right? Once I left Adaptive Path and started working in house I started, I realized that a lot of that experion quote unquote experience, strategy,

work that we were doing. Product managers considered their responsibility. Um uh, there was there was a significant degree of overlap, and that's when I, you know, it was that kind of as I've done that more and more three or four different companies. Now, you know, that kind of led again to this meat writing this article last December, we're in, like, you know what, u ex, The thing that we call your ex design. If you can kind of split it into those more strategic and planning aspects,

that's product management. And that's great. Someone should be doing that. And the more execution. Alas, specs are typically interaction, design and information architecture of visual design, and we have terms for that. And then what you're left is nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing there anymore. When you when you figured out where these things kind of better live, the phrase you ex designed kind of just evaporates, So

yeah, yeah. I mean, I recall sort of identifying with that when I was reading it, because well, because the way he sort of put put into context the mentality that a designer will have that they'll sort of always be thinking for the user, Um, sort of resonated with me and that the product side is always thinking more like in business terms at least that, you know, maybe I extracted that wasn't there in the article. But that's sort of what I was

sort of like getting from it. I think that's right, I think. And this is why you know that quote that Anthony Red around the Forget what it was. But but the historic lapse in product management practice on why you x had to evolve in the first place. Product management has unfortunately being to business or technology focused on. Maybe, maybe, unfortunately is an overstatement, and it's simply just a product of of time and evolution. But product managers who should have been thinking about users and customers in a deeply empathetic way simply worked. Um, they were, they typically were either business folks. MBA is looking at market sizing and the total addressable market and segmentation, and how is what we're going to create you know, serve a more abstract kind of understanding of a market.

Or if you were, you know, there's a kind of Google strain of product management that are ex engineers, and it's just it's typically a form of engineering management. It's it's it's being able to coordinate technical efforts to lead to some outcome, and any product manager needs to be cognizant of the business and engineering challenges. But they should also be cognizant of the user customer facing challenges. And they simply worked right? And so you kind of had this. You had designers who were bleeding for the user, getting briefs or requirements or whatever documents from product managers that had a lot of a lot of bullet points about business and a lot of, you know, understanding of what was feasible but very little appreciation for what people would actually use. And so designers kind of had to create, um, a set of of practices,

three user research and persona development and all these other, more kind of strategic and defection that definitional practices designers created in order to make sure that the the product strategy acknowledged the users and it was typically the people who were called user experience designers who were doing this. Um, I think what we're starting to see that kind of I find quite affirming is more and more people who you had been thought of. His user experience designer is becoming product managers because companies air realizing that that that is as legitimate of perspective into leading a product as the business and engineering one is again as long as that user experience bread product manager is also paying attention to issues of business and technology. So while I was at, I did a five month did a five month contract at Open Table Restaurant Reservation Company, and my my thing I bought was brought in to do was to actually lead both product and designed for the launch of their website redesign and what, as it turned out, the design was basically done. So I was serving mostly as a product manager and, um uh, you know, and doing a perfectly good job at it. And then, while I was there,

a knoll colleague of mine from Adaptive Paths, Alexander Cesky, who had created a startup called Food Spotting, which had been acquired by open table, she had been leading design mobile design at Open table. While I was there, her boss said, You know what? You know what? You're now leading mobile product. Um, you know, because the her boss, the S V P of product and open table is only named Jocelyn Megan, which also and realized is like, Yeah,

there's no reason that a a strategically a minded designer couldn't lead product in the same way that a strategically might it engineer or business person could lead product. And in fact, for certain products, I think like mobile, where experience is so key to the success of that platform. It's not simply a matter of feature parody. It's It's a matter of of the nuances of experience. You want product managers who really understand design and and kind of have that empathetic, uh, mindset.

I definitely I definitely do that. I mean, I mean, what you just described is basically the same sort of experience in battle with that I've had, you know, like when I worked at behavior people real hard and then same time frame. You know, 6 4008 time frame people were hiring us and giving us big budgets to do website redesigns. And this is before, you know, people were doing software on a scale that it's happening right now. So you know the information architects, interaction Designers were definitely driving the strategic vision. Like, you know, the equivalent today is like backlog. You know,

road map was like the future value analysis and trying to get the scope locked down for this. You know, your long website that you're gonna build. I think it makes a lot of sense to, especially in the weight and the things that are happening with product teams and mobile, for example, where you don't have as many people working on it. So the designers have sort of inherited a lot of the prototype being interaction, design, visual design aspects and in, ah, the product world had it in. And it makes sense now, like why the product was world has kind of resisted some of the more traditional, you know, aye,

aye. And research worrying. It's tough because their product managers doing it. And I think anyone that has worked with the product company and really closely with good product manager, like, understands that this person that you're working with is is very, very broad and skilled. And you know he's talking to the customer hopefully and planning the features and know it's knows what's gonna be successful and complain a good road map and can critique, design and critique features and and the polish on the final product and everything. And

yeah, I think that's exactly right. Uh, analogy I used. I gave a talk it adaptive pats you ex week in 2012 where I that was my last attempt. Defining U ex design is a profession like If there is such a thing as a U X designer, this is what that person is, and where it ended up is as a role that other people were calling product manager because the ideal waas it's a if you ex designer is a profession, it's a coordinating role across a bunch of other design disciplines. You know, a an interaction is under visual designer information architect. You know who has the vision? Who's the leading all that work? I could see a U X designer leading it in much the same way. The analogy I drew was in much the same way that a film director, you know, coordinates the efforts of actors and cinematographers and editors,

sound designers, et cetera, to into a single kind of a singular vision. And if an m and the other realization whether you call it a u X design, your product manager and as as an analogue it as an analogy to this film director on a film director can come from any number of different backgrounds, right? Some. Some come from ah, more of a camera oriented cinematography background. Some are former actors, summer writers. Some are our editors, right? But they have evolved such that not only do they know the craft that they learned they have that that bigger picture view of understanding how to coordinate multiple crafts people toward a common goal. And I see that as what? A a successful product manager, um should be able to d'oh, you know, kind of in the in the way that you just described. Anthony

Yeah, uh, so I mean, I hate to, you know, bring this in out of left field, but kind of related to this is ah, I heard a podcast Iran on Discovery session when you were talking about your your ideas around organizing teams to achieve like ideal outcomes. And, you know, I think a lot of people that listen to our show our engineers product designers that are at product companies and designers who are at freelancers or agency. So I was hoping we could talk a little bit about, you know, just this structure, how these people work together and then, you know, and then maybe focus a little more on how the agency can work with the product team,

Knowing that the product manager on the client side is actually owning the strategy no longer, you know, at a senior level person on the design side that's really owning that process and how these teams can work together to, you know, create the best possible things.

Sure, um, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts around around team makeup, kind of it at a couple levels. There's the, um, within a design organization, um, kind of what makes sense for a good design team and then within a more kind of cross functional world of, uh, you know, So like, say, my experience here, a job owner, a group on where you know we have designers and engineers and product managers and possibly other people,

writers and data, scientists and all. And how do you get that group of folks working together as effectively as possible? And And I think the first thing to say is it is not solved. And it is hard and anyone who tells you they figured it out is lying. They might They might be lying to themselves. They might think they figured it out, But, um, it is, It is. It is still it is still quite it's quite I'm finding it quite challenging. Like identifying some, um, optimal organization that woodwork everywhere. Um uh,

So I just took a preface. Whatever we say with that, Yeah, so that I'm not coming across because I'll probably say things that sound definitive. And I want to make it clear that I'm still figuring this

out as much as anyone else while we're on the same page there. I mean, even our team, you know, there's there's nine of us, but we all had were all broad, but we all have erlich area focus, So we're definitely Iterating. Are

we'll announce Curious. I'm kind of curious. You know, I left consulting in part because I found, um the relationships we were having with their clients. We're not. We weren't having the level of impact that I wanted to have in terms of that final product. And, um, I'm curious. You know how you guys structure your engagements? Obviously, I worked with you early in your earlier in your organizational development. Um, and maybe it continues to work that way. Or maybe it's changed. But how How are you structuring your engagements such that you're not,

um, feeling like a, uh, I don't know, a a design factory that's that's getting in a brief and and and spitting out a design and also such that you feel like you are if you have. If you want to challenge the client on assumptions that they're making, how are you able to do that in a way such that that challenge if if you are, If you have a good point and it's something to be considered, you feel like that challenge is being kind of recognized within the client organization because, you know, uh, the bane of a design firm is handing over a design and then when that design gets finally delivered, it doesn't look anything like what you did. Or you You work with them, say on that launch, right?

And so the design looks exactly like what you did. But then when you come back six months later, after you've left and they've iterated to something that now it doesn't look like anything like you did. And so I'm have you. What have you figured out or what are you in the process of figuring out when it comes to how a an external design capability can best relate to an internal product,

we kind of turned that one around. Yeah, well, I mean, and I have a lot of thoughts on this, and if you ever want to talk one on one, I'd love to have a more in depth conversation with you. But even though what we have right now isn't perfect, it works really well. I mean, from the from the engagement side, we just kind of simply put together a team. Ah, a three person team. It's a project manager, slash agile coach. And to product designers that work at a consistent pace every sprint and every month.

So while we're working on these engagements, we may be working on multiple products So we bring our ideas to the table or clients bring their ideas to the table, their priorities to the table. And we very simply just plan work in the order that makes the best sense. We're allowed to, uh, put ideas into the quote unquote icebox and try to drive the road map were involved in, You know, at least quarterly meetings, text sort of here, a recap of where the product company is going in the recent research and what we can do to help steer in the right directions. But you're right. I mean, a lot of the work that we're doing is two weeks Sprint based works here. The design designers are usually only able to see, you know,

2 to 3 sprints out. But we believe that we wantto like we actually want to add value to the long term, so we're not always able to. So the way that we were able to find a solution to that was by simply doing that kind of work for free when we want to on the side, right. So, like like right now the way it works is we work Monday through Thursday with our clients on the road map work. And then we have a program called Special Ops and Special Ops. Teams can design anything for a client that they're working with, but there's only one rule it has. It has to be something that is not in the road map, so we'll use that as a way to, you know, to try to steer the product or change the product. And there's really two kinds of engagements. We have a group on scenario where were brought in on an existing product where somewhere one or more product managers or executives or members are owning the strategy and other products,

which are the sort of zero to first release kind of projects where we get to drive more of the strategy of on the qualities in the actual first release. So I find, at least for my interest in running the studio, it's good to have a mix of those that way. You know, every all the designers get to flex their muscles and and have different requirements every time. Yeah, and as being one of those designers is sort of on that whole thing, we were you know, we do client work from Monday to Thursday. So those Fridays allow us to sort of, you know, drift away from, like, being, like on this hard schedule that were on all the time.

And, you know, we sort of have, like, visions for products that we work on two. And it's sort of a chance, Thio. It's sort of a chance to like Okay, well, this is this is how we think it could be better. And we sort of, like, break down a lot of red tape and, you know, just let them, like,

CR vision on it doesn't always, like, get built. But you know what? It has a couple times with a couple of our couple of clients that we liked. It's actually even like, as I recall, I don't know if it's okay, so I won't say the name of the client, but, um, it even changed like the the the plan. Like the direction that 11 of the products we were working on. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

when? When? When you have these kind of duel designer teams plus project manager. For one thing, that sounds a little bit like what Cooper does. And I don't know, a few for compared notes with anyone over there. They, they're big proponents of they actually do formalized, paired designing. Um, I don't know. I don't know if that's how you're approaching it, but, um, are those is that designer pair dedicated to a client and a project and of the whatever it is 40 hours a week or 32 hours a week? If it's well Monday through Thursday,

or the struggle that we have is that, um, about half of our clients or enterprise clients with good budget that can afford like, two or three full time people the time. But the other half are the early states start ups of the Serie Xabi Cos that really can't afford the cost of two full time designers. But we strongly believe in teams working together having more than one head, because what happens is if we were to staff one designer, even if you know, even if that designer is fully confident and you know an interaction, design and visual design and prototyping, if they're working on that one project by themselves for 3 to 6 or nine months, they're gonna leave our company just like just just like they would leave a startup designer. You're not even really employees of the agency anymore. You're looking so so. What we typically do is we'll have the two designers working on that, but they're sharing a velocity, meaning that every designer at fun size has one project in which they are accountable for and one where they're supporting another design lead.

But all the designers on on our on our team are, um, broadly verse in an interaction design, information, architecture, user testing, visual design, et cetera, et cetera. But all but every person has their own strength and weaknesses. So we try to pair the teams up with complementary skill sets and even our project managers design now. Yeah, so we're help with, you know, gathering user feedback. Er,

prototyping that. Yeah. I mean, it's it's our challenge. Is there a little bit different? Because we're not? We're not a product company that has a lot of cash flow. We're trying to accommodate the cash flow needs of a product company.

Got it interesting. Um, well, and what thing you mentioned that I think is worth highlighting, which is that no designer work alone? I think one of the problems that I've seen at Cousins coming in house on. I saw the group on when I joined on, but it's it's not uncommon in the Valley. Is this idea that you need. You can only hire, you know, quote unquote unicorn slash full stack product designers, because you need to be ableto have an individual who works with, you know, four engineers in a product manager to execute on some part of the product experience. And, um, I find that a recipe partly for crazy making because because that designers only really dealing, Yeah, you know, they're not dealing with other designers much day to

day. It's Yeah, it's not really fair.

Almost. I think that's right. I think that that's right. And the other thing I saw was that too often designers would do may be perfectly fine work in the isolation of their product team. But when you brought together the efforts of all these kind of soloed and siloed designers into, uh into a hole, those different decisions that they were making it different parts of the product experience didn't come together well, yeah, and so I one of the first things I did well, not one of the first. It took a while, so a group on it took me about nine months. But because when I joined, I inherited this pile of of maverick cowboy product designers who tended to operate like this. I brought on a kind of design manager design director for lack of a better word layer five or six of these folks who could who around whom I could form design teens that these people would now be part off so that you never is a designer. You were never working alone because I think I think that's exactly right. And you don't want designers to work alone. At least having one other person is like is more than twice a cz good.

That's that's very true to two. Designers are going to do more and better work than you know one designer, but more than just 200% of what

why, I think. I think that's right. And then and then what? You mentioned the kind of unfairness, one of the things that was important to also about bringing this kind of design leadership layer so you can imagine me when I drink it. But I was a VP on. There were 30 people on my team, including, you know, 12 to 15 product designers who had no structure, no management, like they were all reporting up to me at that point. And so by and and a lot of these most of these folks were in their early twenties. This'll was their first or second job, and so it was easy for, ah,

product manager or an engineer to kind of push them around because they just didn't know any better. They didn't have experience, expertise, gravitas, whatever it is that allowed the designer to to have a real have real influence and authority. They were simply kind of taking what they were given and executing against that. By bringing on this this design leadership layer that kind of sat between me and the team, those design leaders could have way more productive conversations with product management, leadership in engineering leadership to make sure that design perspectives were being appropriately considered. That that ended up being a huge kind of evolution for the design team within group.

That's really smart, because I think you know what you just described happens all the time in almost every you know tech company or product company we work with, and individuals or so you. These days, especially young guys and girls, are used to working quickly and intuitively, but they don't necessarily know when or how to solve some of the bigger challenges that actually steer the product in the right direction. You know when you know I've seen it before, where you know a young designer would spend weeks or months iterating like one screen over and over again and could never get by in on it, and no one and everyone knew that was wrong. But no one knows, say what was wrong about it. It's because they didn't like do enough research or or look at different lenses of where the direction could go before they made a decision. And, you know, you know, money and time being spent on all that is really challenging.

And when you are, you know, one person or even sometimes two people in a ah, large engineering team, it's really difficult. We recently had the two product product designers from photo shop on our podcast, and it was really crazy to learn that there was two designers to 60 engineers about not fair. But eso, mate, maybe you could help because of these things that you were dealing with them. And is that why you brought fun size into the fold Thio to try to complement the team and have other more brains? Or was it more about, like, the workload

arlena heart? That it was We just didn't have enough people. Um, one of the one of the things that I was asked when I joined group that was asked of me was to make it so that design was not a blocker. Um on. That was because the design team wasn't big enough for all of the things that were needed to need it design. And, you know, there's two ways to solve that problem. Hire a bunch of designers and if you can't hire fast enough work with external firms And so I mean, if if, if memory, uh, is not failing me, it was it was that reason that we brought you guys in? I mean, we had been talking to you since before you had started.

Fun size is you were figuring out what was next. Yeah, I really liked your work. And you know, when you started fun size. We were three. Other thing is we had a a fairly well bounded product problem that we could bring someone from the outside into. And that's a challenge. I think, for especially kind of nouveau new model tech companies with product disciplines to figure out is how to appropriately engage external external design. Um, uh, you you know, there's you can either kind of do it like we did where we're like here is a product that you guys can just design and be the design team for it and work with the product manager in the engineers. And we will have a design director kind of keeping tabs just to make sure that it's okay, but but that we can kind of just give off.

The other model is, is when you can't quite peel it off like that, and it's much harder is basically Designer's having to embed within an organization's product team and just be like, possibly working with other in house designers, et cetera. It's kind of a staff augmentation challenge. Yeah, I don't like doing that. I'd rather hire a contractor than an agency for that kind of thing. Um uh, but you guys were, you know, clearly talented product designers. And we had a product that needed design. And, you know,

it was it was conceptually a pretty easy decision to make s oh, that that was what that was about. I'm, uh and this might frustrate you assess what I'm about to say. But, you know, I I tend to be of the mindset, like trying to bring all the design men, all the design that you need in house. And I have not yet gotten to a point where I've been able to hire enough designers and feel like I have all the design in house to then realize OK, There are opportunities for external perspective to change how we're thinking, right? Because that's one of the reasons that stated reasons that a lot of companies hire agencies is they want a fresh perspective. They want someone who's not steeped in this day in and day out to kind of bring that minds.

I think another. Another fun thing about the agency world right now is there's a lot of opportunities to help companies bridge the gap from one designer to say four actually helped them interview and hire designers train them on on on the processes and stuff like that Bill, design, culture or heck like even just have a slack channel where people can talk to a design thinker leader like without being alone. Being that one wing, that loan designer, that's where my head's at. Like to me, I feel like it's just a CZ important to help the people you work with find the right people as it is to help them do. It's almost like a design mentorship kind of thing for your

client. Yeah, and I think, and I've been hearing more and more that that's happening as as a CZ. More companies are trying to bring design it house. I mean, this is in the history of of of, you know, things, type of kind of technical business. Still relatively reason. It's only in the last. I would say, uh, 10 years that there's been this kind of understanding of of having internal design teams is as the norm for these types of companies, and now, as we have more and more companies and all these startups and all this activity,

you know, the the number of people trying to do design internally is just, like, gone through the roof, and it's largely being planned by people who know nothing about design, right? You've got your CEOs and your business people in your engineers, and they don't know anything about design. They just know that they need design internally, and they have no idea howto how to do that. And I know Cooper's coming up again. Just because I had drinks with a friend from Cooper recently and was something he mentioned is that, you know, many, if not most of their engagements now are as much about helping these clients understand howto build a design competency internally as it is about doing design work. And it'd add adaptive path.

We had a little bit of that bit by the time I left, at least that that corner hadn't quite been turned on by Think that corner has now been not only turned it sze that's we're all driving down that freeway right now, Um, and it's It's hard because design design teams within an organization are different than other types of teams, you know. And what I've seen is that you know, people tend to take the template of either either a marketing design team, which a lot of companies actually had and tried to apply that to kind of a product design team. And I don't think that's quite right. Or they take the template of an engineering team and try to apply that to a design team. And that's also not quite right. There's, you know, these disciplines air different, that people who practice them are different the way the way that people who do this work, the ways that they feel successful are different. And you need to make sure that you're not just, you know, having your designers operate as if they were just another flavor of engineer. That's that's that's only going to end up frustrating your designers after

awhile. Definitely. I can definitely say that I've been in that very seat, just just feeling like I'm a different flavor of engineer rather than a designer. That's good. Maybe another good podcast. Yeah, we're actually over time. Just seemed a point that out. We're gonna probably have to wrap up here. Well, Peter, looks like we can all hang out at front conference in Salt Lake City. Has got Yeah, I think we're taking the whole company. So maybe I can pick your brain over a beer or something.

If I hear you confined beer in Salt Lake City, but it's a little a little more difficult.

Thio. Okay, out. We'll bring some beer. Ship it.

So I'm looking forward. Different. I think it'll be fun. Salt Lake City is beautiful. Will probably hot in June. But I look forward to hanging out

with you guys. So for those of you who haven't heard of front, it's the first conference that I've seen in a while That seems to be dedicated to the practices of product design and product management. So we're definitely going. You're excited to check it out. Peter, thank you so much for taking the time out of your scheduled chat with us. Has been really awesome. How can our listeners connect with you

online? Well, first, let me thank you for the opportunity. I always enjoy having these conversations. And I I learned something when I was able to turn the tables and ask you some questions structured. I always look for opportunities to toe learn myself. You know, the the easiest way to find me Twitter at Peter Me, my website peter me dot com, which, sadly, I haven't written on much since last December. Whenever that block post, those are probably the two primary ways to find me. Um, email me a peter. Meet peter me dot com. If you want to reach out directly, Always happy to talk about these topics

day. And you just threw his email address out there. Yes. So I'm, uh I'm just at Rick Messer. Um, you wanna follow me too? And I'm Antoine m a N T D v n. And you can find more about the podcast on fun size dot co slash vessel or follow fun size on Twitter. Please take a moment. Thio rate our podcast or subscribe on iTunes, can and Sinise. Any topic suggestions? Yeah. Yeah. Just tweet to us at fun size. If you have,

like, something you wanted to discuss. Well, thanks for listening to you next time. Thanks, Peter. Thank you. Today's podcast is sponsored by the Iron Yard. The Iron Guard will teach you the tools and skills you need to become a professional interface designer or developer, and then help you find an awesome job. Check out the iron yard dot com to learn more Hustle is brought to you by fun sized digital Product Design agency in Austin, Texas, and creates delightful, innovative products for mobile Web and beyond. Visit us on Twitter at fun size or visit our website of fun sized echo.