Jon Deragon
Leading UX Design in Vibrant South East Asia
In this episode of Brave UX, Jon Deragon shares with us his UX design leadership journey in South East Asia, how to engage more effectively with stakeholders, and why we mustn’t let life pass us by.
Highlights include:
- How are UX designers like music composers and ER doctors?
- What is it like being a Westerner living and working in Vietnam?
- How do you get past “no” from other stakeholders?
- What characterises a product that is alive versus one that is dead?
- How do you get past your ego when things aren’t going well?
Who is Jon Deragon?
Jon is the Head of Design at FPT Software in Ho Chi Minh City, one of Vietnam’s largest IT services companies, with over 20,000 employees.
When Jon joined FPT in May 2020, the business was heavily engineering focused and design was only practiced informally. Now, after what must have been a wild ride, he leads a practice of over 50 talented designers.
Before joining FPT Software, Jon held several Head, and Director level UX positions at a number of top Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Australian companies.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together, I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Jon Deragon. Jon is the head of design at FPT Software in Ho Chi Minh City, one of Vietnam's largest IT services companies with over 20,000 employees. When Jon joined about 18 months ago, the business was heavily engineering focused with design only practiced informally. Now after what must have been a wild ride, he leads a practice of over 50 talented designers.
- Before joining FPT software, Jon held several head and director level UX positions at a number of top Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Australian companies. Jon is also the founder of cafescene.com, a project fueled by his passion for great coffee and great cafe experiences. Cafe scene highlights the venues, baristas, beans and equipment that bring truly delightful coffee moments to life. A clear and compelling communicator. Jon has spoken at a range of conferences and events across Asia Pacific, including for general assembly product tank, the UX Vietnam Festival, Singapore's Code Summit, and UX Indonesia bringing a unique perspective as an expat working in Southeast Asia, I've been looking forward to hearing about Jon's experience practicing UX in some of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant countries. Jon, welcome to the show.
- Jon Deragon:
- Brendan. I'm very happy to be here with you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm really happy to have you here too, Jon, and I think we were talking just a moment ago off air and I've been researching for this conversation and I have to say you've got some amazing stories to share with the community and I'm very much looking forward to getting into those. Just to start to set the, yeah, just to set the scene for people, I understand that you are Canadian and you grew up in Toronto now by my geography that's quite away, away from Ho Chik City. So I suspect there's a bit of a story there. What is it about Vietnam and Southeast Asia more generally that compels you to leave the west behind?
- Jon Deragon:
- Well, it was interesting cause at the time I was living in Australia and living in Melbourne, so speaking of good coffee, I had bumped into someone just randomly and we got to talking and he mentioned that there were all of these sort of digital nomads that were out across Southeast Asia, but that ho Chi Min City was very much this hub. They all sort of congregated into this one place and Chi Minh was where it was happening and he had such a convincing way of telling me about it. I could almost feel it and it just sounded so tantalizing to me to be able to experience that. I knew very little about Vietnam at that time, to be perfectly honest with you. But that the region had fascinated me prior to that and I think at there was, there's kind of a juncture at that point where you either kind of take 'em up on that story or not and I decided to get a plane ticket and go and amazing part of this is when I landed and I traveled quite a lot across Asia and Europe and America and so forth.
- There was something about touching down on that tarmac and getting into the taxi and just feeling the roads and the buildings and just everything that you're soaking in at that moment was, it was like, I, I'm supposed to be here. There's something special about this place. What an incredible feeling to have that. And here I am years later living and working here and have relationships around me and a life and all these things I love doing here. It panned out quite incredible. When I had first gone and done that first trip to Vietnam, it was sort of exploratory, is this the real deal or not? And had the fortune of meeting up with a lot of people as that person had mentioned to me that we're in the scene here and they did this beautiful job of getting me into all the sort of bits and pieces of what the life was like here. So I had come back from that trip, very excited about Vietnam and just the region in general. But in between that time and the time that I actually had my first working engagement here, an opportunity had come up in Jakarta Indonesia and I was asked to come and join a startup incubator and that was my first real working experience in the region. I would certainly say that Jakarta was a substantially different experience than growing up in Toronto or living in Australia, as you can imagine,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Would've been those key differences. What really stands out for you when you reflect on that sort of initial moment that you arrived in Jakarta and the sites and smells and how it was different to what you'd experienced before
- Jon Deragon:
- You go into sensory overload, I think. Mm-hmm. Someone coming from western countries and you just get dropped into this. It feels like you're being dropped into this organism and you can go as deep and deep as you want into it and all these things reveal themselves to you and there's so much happening on any given street, it's just so cool. It's a very polarizing place. Cause on one hand you have a number of people that have gone there either as tourists or as people that wanted to set up shop and work there or established businesses there and oh, the pollution or the traffic or the this or that. On the other end you had other foreigners living there for long periods of time that absolutely loved it. They loved the lifestyle, they love the diversity of all these things that you could do and it's a place where if you resist it, it will keep pushing it at you and it'll keep nudging and probing you. The more you let go and embrace it and want to put the effort into it, it rewards you for that. It clearly does and it's almost like you're dealing with a live entity in that perspective.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Southeast Asia can seem quite hectic when you first arrive. I've traveled there several times and I was interested to hear your experience having personally never worked in the region as to whether or not you had left any assumptions or any practices that you had in the west behind after a period of time of working in the culture, particularly in Vietnam. Have you changed in any way professionally in the four or five years that you've been there?
- Jon Deragon:
- That's an interesting question. From the time that I had worked and lived in those other cultures to now I've likely developed myself as a leader and as a practitioner and how I would go about engaging with my team and how I would do all these things. So it's difficult to separate out which of those things were because I had personally developed and have refined my approach. I think as you go into any of these sort of larger organizations, you really have to each time rethink, okay, what went right and wrong in the previous one? What were the takeaways? You're doing an exit interview with yourself to say, ok, what was successful? The key here is that when you drop into a new culture, even at a city level, there are things specific to that city that you have to consider. I think when you're living in a country, there are city-based nuances as well that you have to factor in to how people work in team exercises or respond to the social events or any number of things or how willing they are to put up their hand to volunteer for things.
- And that you have to not just keep pushing away at the ways that work in a western society. You need to look at, if you weren't getting a great response the first time, you need to step back and evaluate and not be afraid to go and ask, do you think that was the right way to approach this? Should I have maybe tried a different method? Not be afraid of doing that because you cannot assume that, okay, well if that didn't work then this will maybe not. So that's been a big one, is being able to ask and be willing to take in that feedback.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I get the sense from looking at your travels and previously having heard you speak about this, that you got a little bit of that regional or city difference. When you first moved to Vietnam, you spent your initial year or so in Chi Minh City and then you had a contract come up in Hanoi, which is in the northern region, and that was the seat of power, I believe for the Viet Cong and is currently the seat of power for Vietnam as it now stands. You quickly realize though, that you wanted to come back to Minh City and I've been to both of these cities, but only as a tourist. I have some sense of what they're like, but for people who aren't familiar with them, how would you describe those places and how would you describe the differences that exist between them and why you wanted to return to Minh City?
- Jon Deragon:
- Sure. In the perspective of a foreigner, when I lived in Hanoi, what I noticed is that there's a great quality of life on a day-to-day basis. When you're going about doing your thing and you have your regular activities and you're going to work and you're enjoying your weekends and if you're spending time with family and so forth, I think it's a really nice setting for that. It, it's really quite fantastic city and it gives you this nice mix of all these things that you would want to do and activities and so forth. So that's fantastic. When I think about men, I think of how it directly aligns to the specific things that I want in my life. Certain types of activities, certain types of venues and the social circles that I have are seem to be very specific to Min City City and you can kind of feel that on a data basis that as you're driving around and as you're doing your daily things and picking and choosing the things that you want to partake in, I just felt personally that I was quite drawn to Chi Min and that this was kind of the place I needed to be.
- It's a nice realization to have that you kind of know that okay, this is meant to be whereas Hanoi was quite a comfortable and very livable city and enjoyable and made many good friends there, but you know, gotta pick where you feel most settled in.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I think that's quite important and being able to decide that after having something else to contrast it against a country. Yeah. Now I don't know if you knew Jon, but I do, cuz I did a bit of research, it's probably an unfair adva unfair advantage that I have, but it is about 46 years ago that the Vietnam War ended or as the Vietnamese to call it, the War of American aggression. Now having traveled Vietnam, as I mentioned myself, I got a little bit of a sense of what that's like for people in Vietnam now, but only from the outsider's point of view. I was interested to get your perspective on this. Having lived in the city and lived in the country for a while now, what scars, if any, are evidence still from the war on the people and the place in which you now live?
- Jon Deragon:
- Oh geez, that's pretty deep. Having dropped into the country within the past several years, you would not sense that that had taken place so long ago. The people, the fabric of the society, the infrastructure, and there's a tremendous sense of entrepreneurship and wanting to continually improve society. It it's kind of like did that happen? I'm sure if you maybe go down at different layers of society, perhaps there are remnants of that left that I don't get exposed to but when I'm here and partaking in society and doing various things, you don't really encounter things that would suggest that this is still an issue or that has had sort of negative impacts. I just see a city, I think more so than many cities I've been to that just feels like it's constantly evolving and growing and is energetic and youthful and all of these things.
- You'd want a city to be you, you'd want it, the cost of living is still reasonable and the variety of things that are there as someone that is in this city that you can do that you have access to and the limited barriers that are in front of that is tremendous. And I think if you look at it in infrastructure just the strides that have taken place since I've lived here, just telecommunications and all of these things are really quite amazing in terms of just having reliable connectivity and infrastructure. It's all there. So I don't see any sort of signs that this is still something that exists.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I got that sense of real energy and momentum from Vietnam as well. And I mean there are obviously the sort of touristy things that you can do and there are the museums and other aspects that talk to the war, but as for things outside of those specific locations, I mean it really is an impressive place with a huge investment that's gone into infrastructure as you'd mentioned. I was interested to explore this notion that actually Thomas Grove raised with Grove, sorry, raised with you in a recent podcast interview where he mentioned the term neocolonialism and that was in reference to an influx of Western talent into south a southeast Asia more specifically. Now colonialism doesn't really have a great reputation, particularly when it comes to Vietnam. How do you think about being a westerner who could be mistaken for an American living and working in Vietnam?
- Jon Deragon:
- That's an interesting one. I'm not too worried about whether I'm perceived as a American or Canadian or Australian or a German or the accuracy rate of someone looking at you and being able to determine that is not particularly high. It's when you have those one-on-ones with them and when they've had a chance to meet you and I say, look, I'm a Canadian, they go, oh, okay. And they're quite inquisitive, they're quite interested in that. And maybe if I told them that I was American or any number of countries, I think they would be equally interested and intrigued in wanting to know more. I never thought that that was particularly an issue. I think as a Canadian that's received quite well here. They're always very, very positive in terms of their tone and how they perceive you after that is very positive. But if I taken place and come from somewhere else, whether it would be a different story, I likely not.
- I've been in a lot of social settings and I run something called co-host a Product and Beyond, which is just a really small event and we have it in this little Japanese bar in the city in district one and we just get this random assortment of people. In some cases, people literally landed that day into Chi Minh and they'd go out into meetup.com and they saw that this event exists and they'd show up and we never have any issues about, oh, you're from there, I'm going to treat you differently. I just never see that and I don't encounter it in conversations either that there's any sort of negativity towards any particular country. I find 'em quite welcoming irrespective
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Of that. I dare I say it, maybe I should lighten the mood slightly and come to something that I know you have a great love for and that I mentioned in your introduction and that's coffee. Yeah, and I love coffee too. This is why I was keen to talk to you about this and I realize this isn't UX specifically, but hey, I think we can maybe draw a line between the two somehow. Yeah. So you set up cafe scene.com, what is it about cafes coffee for you that you are so invested in? Why set up this site and what's it for and who's it for?
- Jon Deragon:
- It's just such a wonderful part of my life this, it's sort of this thing that companies you daily and makes the day a bit better. I think it's very much the beverage, but when I'm in cafes and there's this unique experience that has been put together by someone that was truly vested into making this something that is unique and genuine and interesting, it is so good to go and explore that and see different takes on how do you refine or repackage the cafe experience into something amazing. And I think when I'm in Vietnam, my gosh, this is really a coffee place. People readily point to this being while it's a number one, two producer in the world of coffee and so forth. Yeah, sure. But when you actually get on the ground here, I mean often joke that there's some must be some kind of government decree that every street must have at least three or four cafes on it.
- There's this wealth of all these cafes that have really passionate owners that want to create something interesting and have a passion for the coffee. I see that the quality of the baristas and the care that the roasters are taking in the coffee is really quite amazing. And every year there's a substantial jump in the quality of what's being produced. I remember one of the catalysts for me launching, I was going through Google and trying to find new cafes and you don't know what's new. You don't know, you don't know anything, you just get random pictures that are submitted by users. Again, when you look at the travel blogs and the sites that are city guides, there's a very slanted view towards chains and really obvious Main Street cafes. And I believe there's a gap there that can be filled by having a more curated approach that's consistent and reliable in terms of finding good coffee experiences that would otherwise be very hard to find. Even on Facebook. There are plenty of all these cafes around Facebook, but the accessibility of getting to them is not easy unless that they're there or somehow come across them through a chain of events. The user experience of trying to find good coffee and Facebook is not particularly easy. I only know all of these because of the amount of time put into it. Invest it
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh]. So if you're traveling to Vietnam people check out cafe scene.com. It sounds like Jon's done a lot of the hard legwork and can point you in the right direction for a great coffee experience. Jon, you've worked in both Western and eastern countries and you've seen how product design is practiced in both. How do you think of the state of product design in Vietnam compared to say somewhere like Australia where you had worked most recently beforehand? What are the major differences? What do you notice?
- Jon Deragon:
- Yeah, sure. I think one that springs to mind right away is the ability to get a group of people in a room and to be able to just spitball ideas and start to just generate all kinds of ideas and have that energy to ideate very quickly and with little concern about should I be saying something and is what I'm saying valid suitable for this forum that I'm in. What I see in Vietnam and in other, for example in Indonesia is that there's somewhat of a reserved approach that when you're all in a team to allow yourself to express your ideas. And I think there's a number of things that are weighing in on that and sometimes it's just general, a shyness that's there, a genuine I I'm going to just be this little mouse in the corner and not necessarily wanna raise my hand too much that that's okay.
- And I think that that happens everywhere. But I think there's also, there needs to be a license for creativity, not just for teams here. I want to make sure that they feel like they have license for creativity in the products that they're designing, that they feel allowed to explore options and to be critical thinkers and to be able to imagine new things. Not just grab all the pre-made components and templates that are off the shelf, but to really think through how best can we design something. But also they need to be able to express that in team settings and workshop settings that every idea doesn't have to be a gem. You can throw an idea out there and it just contributes into all the other ideas that come up. Even bad ideas or ideas that maybe aren't quite suitable have an amazing effect To be able to change the trajectory of the conversation potentially to the right answer it.
- It's kind of the stepping stone to that. Maybe that doesn't work, but actually if we modify it in a certain way, actually this is pretty good, this is not bad. And actually solve the problem that we're all there to solve. So I think that to answer your question is vocalizing what's in their mind and feeling like they can be an equal contributor in these group settings. And whether that's online or in person in a meeting room or in a workshop or whatever, that that's a major difference is being able to speak up and being able to share your ideas and partake.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And what sort of things, having built this team that you have over the past 18 months or so, have you been doing to encourage those managers within the design organization that you've created and the people that those managers are leading to open up more and contribute more vocally to the design process?
- Jon Deragon:
- Sure. At a team level, some of the things that I'm doing are every week, all the whole team, we all meet up for our weekly design meeting and we have two presentations that have to be given by a member of the team. One of those is called the Designer Spotlight, which is them being able to share their knowledge and their take on how to do specific activities or go through a case study or any number of things that they feel that they're qualified to talk about or feel comfortable that they can do a presentation for five or 10 minutes, share it with the team. The hope is that there's some transference of knowledge in that process. And I think at the beginning was, I can see from the first time that we had done that initiative to now the quality of both the materials and the way it's presented is radically different.
- It is a completely night and day thing. Likewise we do something called creative space, which is in the same call, but it's much more, let's forget about all of this technical stuff. What inspires you as a designer in the world around you? What things? It could be a piece of art, it could be the way a product's been designed, it could be any number of things. It could just be a painting, it could be a style of art. Anything is fair game. And again, I'm seeing now where it was, it was a bit hard to get people keen to join this, but now I've got a cue of people that want to partake in this and the quality and the effort that's put into each of these and now I'm seeing it is not just a slide deck with a few photos. It's like it's got animations and they're going through and embedding videos and talking through everything and there's a depth in the subject matter and I'm really inspired.
- Last week's one was about virtual reality and mixed reality and the design process for that. Another was this really unique art style that somebody had used. And so every week I'm excited to actually see what's produced. And when you're doing this on a regular basis, it makes them feel a little more comfortable about it. And when they get the hands of plaing in the teams call at the end, I think it makes them feel, yeah, okay, people want to hear what I have to say. And I put a good job in preparing the materials. I think that's gone a long way. The other is there are internal initiatives in the company to share knowledge across organization. So we're taking advantage of that to do presentations and everybody can log in and watch these live to share about design matters. So there's a number of things that we've been doing in that sense. But the weekly call is the one I can very clearly see the value as we've doing more and more of them
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Emulation. Now there's something that I was going to ask you about and that's the negative stereotype about design in Asia, lacking originality and creativity and that being fueled by this sort of rampant counterfeiting of products, both physical ones and digital ones, and then also, not in Vietnam specifically, but the alleged intellectual property theft that goes on in China. I was interested in your experience in the region, whether that stereotype is fair or not, particularly when it comes to Vietnam.
- Jon Deragon:
- Sure. I think there, there's validity in this. I mean it exists that you can't get around that but it exists in large portions of the world. So my challenge is to say, hey, we've got a team of designers here that are incredibly competent. They do genuine design process and research and the quality of the deliverables is very high. So I wish to counter that. I wish to say that may exist, but it doesn't exist here. So it's a mission to separate ourselves out from the noise. And there are a number of very, very qualified agencies here in Vietnam and in the region undoubtedly very talented. But my mission is to make sure that it's very clear that when we reach out to these international sort of global brands, well-known brands, that they have a sense of confidence that we're able to achieve what they want us to do and that we take legitimate means to get there.
- And that I find that f b FBT already had a credibility in the customers that we'd approached and that were already on board. And so now it's my turn to instill confidence in them that we know what we're doing because it's largely a development based a technology based company, not necessarily well known for design. So every sales call is an opportunity for me to share with them how passionate we are about design, what is our process. And most importantly is when we start talking about discovery and research and I go through with them our process of how do we really understand their marketplace and domain, their organization, their company product offerings, their position in the marketplace, and give them evidence that we really do have a thorough way of getting through all of that. Because between all of the people in the team we combine, we have a lot of domain experience across a number of fields but not everything.
- So there's going to be obviously opportunities that we encounter that we simply haven't done work in before. The trick is to show that our research process will get us through that. It will get us up to speed on the specifics of that marketplace so that we're going to build a compelling offering. And so I have basically a research model that I then show to them specific to that engagement to say, okay, look, if you're in the automotive space and you're doing this and you're in this market, here's how we tackle each lens of a funnel. That gets us down to, hey, now we're in a really good position where we're confident in our design decisions. And I think when I present it to them in that light, they feel much more comfortable that we will fill in any gaps that are present in our knowledge of that country, that market, that domain, that organization, that type of product.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like having that framework and being able to articulate that and walk people through that is, and also I suspect having the scale that the organization has as well is quite useful when having those conversations globally. And we've been sort of dancing around this topic of product design and we haven't yet got to it. Specifically, I wanted to ask you about a great talk that you gave not long ago called Bringing Life to Digital Products. And in that talk you suggested that there are a lot of products, apps like banking apps for example, that are soulless and lifeless and that we only really use them cause we have to. So very transactional in the nature of our relationship with them. What is it that characterizes a digital product that's alive compared to a product that's dead?
- Jon Deragon:
- And I think the foundation for that is who whoever's building this product, you can kind of sense when it's just soulless, it's a money grab or it's, it's a soulless company. Building a soulless product, you can feel it. It's like architecture. You can sense when there's passion in that. The people that had architected and crafted this physical thing, it's no different in the digital space at the most basic level, I think there's a transference of the intention of who's designing this and for what motives and why does this thing exist comes through. And as people and our ability to pick up on these things even at a deeper level than we probably realize, you get a sense of whether this thing is has a soul or has life in it or not. At a more technical level. When you're designing these products, there are so many hints and little things that we pick up on little subtleties that make us feel whether it's alive or not.
- And that can be something as simple as little tiny animations, but it's also about how you handle whether you as a user know that there's a presence of all these other people that are also using this product. And how is that portrayed in the interface in such a way that you feel like, wow, there's kind of gone into the town square, there's some products that make you feel like that. Now obviously there's Facebook and all of those social platforms that give you that feeling. Maybe that's part of why it has the effect that it has is cuz you've entered town square and that feels good as a human. You want to be there with others and conversing and sharing and doing all these things. But when you're building other apps, say for example a shopping app, how do you make it feel like that? And often that can come in the form of just a product review system.
- How does that make it feel like when I'm reviewing a particular product that I, I'd like to purchase and I look at the reviews, there's a massive difference between a poor execution of that where it's just basically full of gray avatars with the initials of the person that had filled it and just very drab and others I've used examples in the past where some of the really large Chinese e-commerce marketplaces where you can see thousands, tens of thousands of reviews for very common household appliances and products that you really wouldn't take a second thought on. But there's such liveliness in the reviews of the product, people sort of showing every aspect of it. And if it's a kitchen appliance, they're actually cooking things with it and showing you where they come from it. They're masterpiece that make you feel more alive.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It does. Jon, I was thinking about reviews as well, and there are review graveyards you've just articulated and then there are these amazing places. Amazon, for example, is one that comes to mind that's particularly alive. And what is it that separates the two? What are the successful review features or products doing that the others are not?
- Jon Deragon:
- Yeah, sure. Some of the ones that I saw were very much around just how it's designed and how it encourages people to contribute to it. It's very hard to jumpstart a review component of a e-commerce site. It is not easy. And one of the major players here, they simply just gave you money to do a review
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And
- Jon Deragon:
- They gave you more
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Money. Sounds effective.
- Jon Deragon:
- Hey, it works. I wouldn't wanna be the one handling the budget. I, I'd assume that almost goes out of the marketing budget. It's helping to reaffirm that this is the right product through people actively showing and participating in using the product. But they pay you more if there's a video or a photo because I think that that goes so much further into showing not only does this product exist in a perfectly crafted and photoshopped product page screen like shots in the product detail page, but people have actually got it home and it's in a real setting that we can all relate to. It's in someone's kitchen and that person's setup. And so the product does exist and this is how it actually looks without being retouched to death. And particularly the videos give a further depth of hearing sounds when it's being opened or closed or all of these things. And so there's a life that it breathes into the product beyond the very carefully correlated look that the manufacturer wants you to have of
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It. Is there any hope for product designers working on banking apps to make their apps feel alive?
- Jon Deragon:
- Well, I think there's a huge movement over the past number of years to be the, I'm not a bank, but I'm a bank and having a much more friendly, approachable, kind of affable feel to the design of their products. Catering to a much younger demographic that really isn't particularly interested in banking as a concept, banking products. But these are essential things that we all need. So I assume they have to tread this very careful line, these digital banks or I'm not a bank type products that are out there in the form of an app of being friendly and approachable and train, trying to reimagine how does it feel as someone that needs financial services and products and the friendliness and the guidance that goes along with that and reworking the messaging. A lot of these products, a good content strategy goes a long way to changing how people are digesting whether a product is right for them or not.
- One of the main differences that I've realized living in Southeast Asia, not particularly Vietnam, but across the region, is the maturity of understanding of insurance products of credit cards credit card adoption is still quite a low penetration rate in the region particularly here in Vietnam. Still very cash based society, but suddenly all of these EALs and other apps where you can easily transact money, I could be sitting at the 7-Eleven lineup and the portion of people that are pulling out their phone to do payments. We've kind of leapfrogged that whole credit card thing. And that's really fascinating to look at
- Brendan Jarvis:
- In the process of trying to move a product that might be a dead product to a live product. And particular in industries we've just been speaking about finance and insurance, you're going to have to deal with a few nos and challenge a few sacred cows. Now hearing no as a designer from somebody else in the business is often quite a confronting thing. And most people, and again I'm generalizing here, want to run and hide frankly when they hear the word no or they want to dig in and really go overboard in supporting their position. How have you found in your experience, having these conversations with other parts of the business or businesses has been the most effective way to get past? No, and actually start to shift that products design into a space that's more alive
- Jon Deragon:
- Is being prepared and being able to clearly articulate the why of what you're proposing. It's very easy to shoot an idea down and it happens all the time, but when you become more prepared, both just because you have a lot of research or insights that you can base your decision on, but it's also how that aligns to who you're presenting it to and what's important to them and the terminology that makes the most sense to them. I guess there's a lot to unpack here, but firstly is the rigor and the appropriateness of your research methods that have gone into the decision making on what you're proposing to design. That's just really important. Secondly is to look at your audience and realize that if you're presenting to a steering committee or a board or a product owner, they all have very specific key things that they're looking for from you.
- And you can't just keep saying, rah rah, the user empathy and all of this stuff, [laugh] it. It's work that way. That can be the intention of it, that ultimately we're there to nicely balance the needs of the business and the needs of the user. But what you need to present to them is something much more compelling about how the return on investment and the improvement to the business and a clear demonstration that the positive impact that this is going to have. And that comes through the research as I had mentioned. And then secondly, it's how you're presenting that specific to the person, the audience, and kind of like a TED talk, you're the best, most effective presentations I've ever, again given, were much more along a narrative, kind of a storyline that you're telling them so that they can imagine it. They're not in your space all the time. And for you to give them the dry technicals filled with all sorts of terminology that's unfamiliar to them, the further they fade out
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And not beating them to death with process. Cuz quite frankly, a lot of people outside of design don't really care about our process. And we're talking about what Uday agenda, who I spoke to a few weeks ago on the podcast, he calls stagecraft and he also frames up statecraft as well, which is that next level of conversation within the organization. I wanted to ask you a bit about the soft skills, which it seems like we've been talking about here that help to support the success of design. These are clearly important things for designers to develop and to possess, to be an individual contributor or a design leader. It's going to take a lot of building relationships and telling compelling stories, but we don't really get this education handed to us in a contemporary way at the places in which people study or designers study. Where can designers who are new to the field get the practice or the feedback or the ways in which they can become more effective in their communication of design?
- Jon Deragon:
- There would be a lot of materials out there now about how to present design, but I think the first step is that designers need to realize that that's an area that needs to be improved. Because I think a lot of designers are under the false impression that when they're presenting designs to the audience that just going field by field and saying, this happens and that happens. They're doing their job and that's what they want to hear. But the first step is to come to the realization that it has to be more than that and to have, I guess, empathy for the audience that they're presenting to. So I think a number of years ago, I remember being in a steering committee presentation and I had all the designs laid out. It was an interactive prototype and it was for a pretty complex product with a lot of rules feeding what all of the interactions and there's a lot of inputs that had to be put in by the user and based on that it would churn away and come up with a result.
- But it was a very difficult one to articulate all of those factors that played into it. And I remember sitting in that presentation and going through step by step and okay, this screen does this and this screen does that. And sure people could kind of nitpick at it and say, Hey, well I think this field should be over here and change this and that. It wasn't a wire frame. So a lot of the subjective stuff wasn't present, which was great, but there was a lot of, well we should move this here and change that. And I was realizing that wasn't the intended outcome of having that presentation. And I think through that realization, I really started to figure out how can I craft the messaging better so that it creates a different conversation, a different dialogue, and it also creates better credibility to what has been produced in the eyes of the audience. I think the first step in all of this is to have a realization that your current method isn't up to snuff. And it's that realization that if I keep doing this over and over again, I get the same output and so I have to up my game. And so the more that I started to look out and go all to the usual suspects of channels, articles and books and videos and so forth, the more I realize that you're talking to another human. And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's a big point. Yeah, a huge point. And they're just people
- Jon Deragon:
- And they don't know much about your realm, but they know that there's certain things that they believe will satisfy the business requirements. And so there's this interesting intersection that you need to get into as someone presenting that nicely balances the credibility of what you've done to get to this conclusion. And the thoroughness of it, the delivery, which is your presentation skills and firstly being approachable, they don't get to see you often these in unique positions where the board suddenly shows up or whoever the stakeholders are, they show up in a room and they may not have seen you for a long time, is to have just a friendly, affable approach to, Hey, I'm the designer and hey, we're really excited about this project. But continuing that through the whole presentation goes a long way of just having this friendly, approachable feel to it. I think it was very good. It goes a long way. Oh undoubtedly.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you can feel when you're losing people in a presentation as well. And I think looking up and actually taking a second to get a read of the room every now and then is actually quite good. A lot of this also when we are presenting design, we're often so tightly tied to the work, rightly or wrongly, and that can feel really great work. But it can also be quite hard on the ego when feedback isn't complimentary or when the key points that you're trying to make aren't really hitting home, not landing with the people you're trying to influence. How as designers or as a design leader, how are you in or even your own personal story to be honest? How have you moved past the ego that can scream at you when things aren't going well and how are you encouraging others to do the same?
- Jon Deragon:
- Our field requires a certain level of grit, doesn't it? And persistence to get through it. And yeah, your ego can very easily be beaten up. I've been on a few projects and engagements that you know, just go, my gosh really taking a beating. And I've had a lot of stories from other designers where they put their heart's work into something that they've spent months of their life, some cases years of their life. And by the end of it once everybody's had a pick at it, it's a shadow of its former self. And you really, it's almost unrecognizable from what you've produced. This is a very sad state. Some products have been completely shelved you, you've been working on it for months and months and they decide not to go ahead with it. All of these things. And yes, at a level of a particular design and as just not received well, of course it impacts you, but I think there needs to be, in this field of UX, there has to be some level of detachment from that.
- And that's not to say you're not passionately involved in its creation and seeing it through and having the perseverance to get a good quality product out there, but emotionally you need to be somewhat detached. Cause at the end of the day, you're producing this for a company that also has their specific needs in mind and it's doesn't always necessarily align up to exactly what you've produced. You gotta let that go. So your ego has an interesting role in your daily life and how you handle situations. And in your early years, it's very easy to let any negative feedback impact you greatly. Like a lot. And some people carry that with them and it's a baggage that feels like baggage. You go, oh geez, another suitcase, another [laugh]. And you're trying to get through the airport and you go, my God, I can't carry all this. That'll happen if you let it and you don't wanna be in that state. It's much better early on to realize that. I think some of the most striking negative feedback that I had early on, very candid discussions that I had with people, I'm so grateful that they had happened. Cuz whether I realized it then or shortly thereafter or years later, I'm so glad that they had that ability to raise it with me and I was able to process it and adapt accordingly. And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So I think that's the key. It's the ability to process and adapt and see it for what it is. And I really like the way that you framed this in one of your talks. You said as you ex pr, and I'm quoting you now as you ex practitioners, we kind of have detachment like an ER doctor with the passion of a music composer. And I thought that was such a neat analogy for framing the professionalism and the energy that we need to bring both of to the practice of design and still say, still stay sane. Yeah,
- Jon Deragon:
- Thank you. Yeah, I think the ER doctor so intensely desiring a good outcome and they're so committed to it and focused on it mean they have to be, but it doesn't always work out the way they want it to. So sad. Yet they're back there the next day and they gotta let it go because there's other patients coming down down the pipe and they have to keep going. So as designers, if we can take a little bit of that and incorporate into how we look at this that not every design's going to be a success, and it's okay you just gotta let it go. And if
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Life's not a series of Instagram posts,
- Jon Deragon:
- Well no kidding. Yeah. And you'll realize that when you start getting into more and more complex projects, if you're at the beginning of your career and you've joined a couple startups and you're kind of doing some cool stuff, it is a real eyeopener When you start going into the large enterprise stuff and you have rooms full of important people to deal with and the complexities that all of a sudden information architecture is a make or break deal and all of these things that normally weren't really being factored in. Once you get into that realm, you will have people telling you no, you will have people telling you, no, this isn't going to work based on this and this so many use cases, it's impossible for you to hit a home run each time. So as you go through your career and you get into that realm of highly complex products, there's that jump of like, oh my gosh, there's a lot to take in and you're just going to make mistakes. But the ER doctor is, I think the more that we think about that and how there's a persistence there of them keeping and doing their job, they get through that. And there would be some really devastating moments there, I think as designers would be okay with being able to overcome some of those obstacles.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that analogy of the ER doctor, they're often the most senior person in the room with the responsibility and the decision making ability for what's unfolding in front of them. So they kind of have to own the result. But you've talked just a second ago, Jon, about the complexities that are inherent in enterprise level projects, particularly when it comes to design, dealing with 20 different stakeholders across 10 different departments. It's just epic and it's it's scale and it's difference. And you have to kind of walk as a designer, a line between being overly assertive, fighting your corner too hard and being too much of a doormat, not actually addressing those nos in a positive way that's actually seeking change that's good for the organization and for the user. Yeah. Now I'm just going to quote you as well, cause you said something, Alison, this talk that I thought was really insightful. You said when you tell someone what to do, they try really hard to make who's in control and will put up every roadblock block to defeat you. So if you can't just go around telling people what to do, how do you get things done at the level of scale on which you're currently operating?
- Jon Deragon:
- Pick your battles, pick battles. I think there's some situations in UX where you need to go with the flow. You need to know your position in the overall, all of the cogs that make up the machine of this business that you're working with and realize that you're not the only one. There's other factors at play and you need to be realistic that not everything that you are contributing into. That is the answer. On the other hand, and I think going back to your question earlier about what are some of the unique factors working here is no one to pick your battle and to do it and to go into that battle, being well prepared, having the facts at hand and having a strategy, having a plan of how you're going to tackle it. Because in your soul that the outcome, everyone's going to benefit from it if we can get it in that direction.
- And businesses don't always play along when you say, Hey look, I really think we need to go in this direction. The number of different parties that you may need to convince is it's hardcore. But if you come armed with a perseverance to be able to go and address everyone's issue, pitch it and become a salesperson, sell what you're proposing you almost have to set up a campaign. In some cases, it depends on how much of a change it is or how much you're reworking something that people believe should go another way. But you have to look at it. You're launching a campaign or you're, you're going to go right into, not into battle. I think that's not the right analogy. That you're strongly stating your case and you're giving very compelling reasons why. And you're trying to challenge the status quo in such a way that you'll get enough support to get it that direction.
- And you don't wanna do this all the time. You wanna really pick the ones that have a clear impact on maybe for the team or for yourself or the quality of the output that's going to happen. For example, a lot of cases when you go into a project, everyone's rah rah about doing usability testing. But when it actually comes down to saying, okay, now we need 10 customers, or we need 10 internal employees to do testing with, and everyone's Ming and eyeing and saying, well, everyone's kind of busy, or Well, we don't really have the budget to go and find these users. That's the time to ramp up and put a compelling case together and be strong and to say, actually this is what you hired me for. This is why I'm here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, yeah. And look, if you can't find the budget to do usability testing with 10 participants or 10 customers, you are not really interested in creating great
- Jon Deragon:
- Ux. Exactly, Brendan. Exactly. So you're trying to put this together in the most appealing package that convinces them to say, well actually, yeah, I think we're being a bit stubborn here. We should just get those 10 users, or we should just accommodate designers because they've put together a very compelling reason to. And you just picked these very carefully, and I've been very pleased when I've decided to pick that moment and be relatively assertive about it and not aggressive. Cuz again, like you said, I think that comes back to bite you. And when people feel threatened, it works working against you very quickly. But if you have a strength in your approach, extremely powerful. Because I think in general, everyone's kind of just doing their thing. And when somebody stands out from the crowd and is willing to put themselves out like that there, there's not necessarily a respect, but it's a, it's like, oh, I'm going to listen to this person because they've obviously gone out of their way to say, Hey, something's up. We should be looking at it this in a different way.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Jon, you spoke a moment ago about choosing your moment and I feel that this is a good moment for us to bring the show down to a close. And I wanna do that by asking you a really important question. And it's after I read something where you were reflecting on your move to Vietnam, just to give you that context, and I'm going to quote you now. You said, if I was brutally honest for a large portion of my life, I should have been here or somewhere similar to here, but I just didn't pull the fucking trigger. For the people listening to this episode who are worried that life may be passing them by, what's your message for them?
- Jon Deragon:
- Life is passing us by, isn't it? And if I look back over the past several years of my life, having done what I was really dreaming of, this was the phase of my life over the past several years that I'd lived the most. It feels so good because you'd done it and you, you'd realize just what a profound impact it had on those several years. But you can't help. But looking back to the years before that and realizing what you may have lost and that we all have these dreams of maybe being in another place in this world, it's such a beautiful world to go and see and be part of. I feel infinitely blessed that the career path that I had chosen had somehow enabled me to be able to do this. Not every career path does let you just have companies sponsor you to move to other countries and to allow for that.
- Not everybody gets to do that, but I think in UX, we actually do have that as a vehicle for being able to see the world. If you get really good at what you do if you're right now, you're sort of coming into the field and you're sort of becoming more sure and you're learning what you need to, and you have that dream of exploring the world, this can enable that. And so you don't want to allow a series of factors to close that dream. I think there are too many perceived roadblocks and obligations and all of these things that get in the way of just being able to go and do it. Now, when I look back, I'd done this over the past several years because I think the climate, the marketplace allowed for it because they needed UX expertise here. They had identified that need and were willing to bring people in to service that.
- But maybe prior to that, maybe it would not have gone as well if I tried to explore this earlier. So you start to realize, well actually everything happens when it happens for a reason. It's supposed to play out that way. I mean, I guess that's life. But my advice to someone coming through and building their career, if going around the world or just going to another country that you're so fascinated with, it would be so sad not to so sad not to do that. And I think it's well within everyone's means, if they're really aggressive about building the skills and their offering to a point where companies are saying, yes, we were willing to invest in you in that way and bring you to our country to help us with our design efforts, you should be doing that. I love my time in Canada and my time in Australia gave me so many great things.
- I think that was really some of my really formative stuff that had happened to me in my career was in Australia. But I think in a life perspective, when I landed here, it was just a total change of everything and even my own personality and my own priorities and outlook on life, everything changed a lot because of that, and I would hate for others not to get that same experience, particularly people that I may have talked to in my lifetime that had hadn't left their hometown or the city that they live in. I really encourage them to realize what a vast world this is. And I know that sounds a bit cliche, but actually once you've gone and done it, you become a different person in such a positive way.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, that's an important message, Jon. Be brave. People live the life that you want. You've only got one shot at it. I think that's a really great place for us to wrap things up, Jon, I've really enjoyed today's conversation. I think it's been a interesting conversation, a wide ranging conversation. We've certainly gotten into some deep topics there and given people something really meaningful to think about at the end. Thank you for so generously sharing those with me today.
- Jon Deragon:
- Oh, Brendan, this was really wonderful to just have this chat with you and to be part of your show. This is really great. So thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Jon, you're most welcome. If people want to find out more about you and what you're up to in Vietnam and more broadly in your career, what's the best way for them to do that? Well,
- Jon Deragon:
- They can just go to JonDeragon.com and I'll, I'll have everything there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Great. Thanks Jon. And to everyone else that's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Jon Cafe Scene as well. If you're heading to Vietnam, I recommend check it out and any of the resources that we've mentioned. If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe and tell someone else about the show. If you think there's another design or a product engineer or a product manager that might be interested in the show, pass it along. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn. There's a link to my profile in the show notes, or head on over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.