Dan Brown

Episode 44
Brave UX

Essential Mindsets for Being an Effective Designer

In this episode of Brave UX, Dan Brown dives into creative and collaborative mindsets, the importance of self-reflection in UX Design, and why we shouldn’t be too rigid in our design process.

Highlights include:

Which design battles need to be fought and which don’t?
Why do we need to develop better Information Architecture skills?
Do we rely too much on established design processes?
What does it mean to be assertive in a positive way?
Can you admit that you don’t know and still be seen as an expert?

October 12, 202101:13:20

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Who is Dan Brown?

Dan is the Co-Founder and Principal of EightShapes, a user experience consultancy based in the Washington DC area, whose clients have included large enterprises like Capital One, 3M, and Sprint, as well as tech giants such as Google, eBay and Cisco.

Dan is the creator of “Surviving Design Projects”, a game that helps teams to improve their conflict management skills, as well as “Information Architecture Lenses”, a deck of cards that helps designers to interrogate their IA in different ways.

He is also the author of three books (1) Communicating Design (2) Designing Together, and (3) Practical Design Discovery, all of which are widely considered to be essential reading for UX designers.

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 Dan Brown. Dan is the co-founder and principal of Eight Shapes, a user experience consultancy based in the Washington DC area whose clients have included large enterprises such as Capital One, 3M, and Sprint, as well as tech giants such as Google, eBay, and Cisco. Since 1994, Dan has focused on helping organizations to discover and define their digital products, understand their users better through research and to shape the information architecture, content strategy and interaction design of complex systems.
He is a critical thinker and a generous contributor to the UX community regularly sharing his thoughts on Medium and speaking at events such as UX, New Zealand, UX Lisbon, enterprise UX, the Interaction Conference and Confab. Dan is the creator of Surviving Design Projects, a game that helps teams to improve their conflict management skills, as well as the incredibly useful information architecture lenses, a deck of cards that helps designers to interrogate their IA in different ways. Here's also the author of three books, communicating Design, designing Together and Practical Design Discovery, all of which are widely considered to be essential reading for UX designers looking to communicate, collaborate, and practice design more effectively today. It's my great pleasure, you guessed it, to be speaking with Dan on Brave UX. Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Brown:
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's great to have you here. Dan and I have a little bird that told me that you're a big fan of tabletop games.
Dan Brown:
Yes. That is an was correct statement. Yes,
Brendan Jarvis:
Yes. I understand. As I mentioned in your intro, you even created your own tabletop game, and this isn't really a world that I know very much about. I mean, when I was a kid I did collect magic cards, so I do have to put my hand up for that. I mean magic, the gathering. And I also once played a game of Star Wars rebellion that nearly ended up in my relationship with my brother-in-law ending in tears. But other than that, yeah, it was pretty intense. Other than that, I'm a complete novice.
Dan Brown:
Usually when that happens to me, when someone's in tears, they're not an adult, it's usually one of my kids. But yeah, so I've played rebellion. That is a brutal, vicious game. So I can
Brendan Jarvis:
Understand It went over two days.
Dan Brown:
Yes, yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh yeah. It took us two days. The final role was on the floor and there were knees and there were fists in the air and there was almost a, a scream that was let out. It was pretty intense. Yeah. What is it about tabletop games for you? Why do you love them so much?
Dan Brown:
Oh, well, let's just divide the world of tabletop games into two spheres. There are board games we've been, and card games we've been talking about, right? These are interesting systems and they're systems by through which we follow rules to achieve an outcome. And as a designer I see myself as someone who designs systems, not necessarily design systems, but as an information architect, someone who creates structures in which information and users need to inhabit the same space. And I see it as a real parallel to the work or engaging in that way because it's similar to the work that I do. But the other sphere is role playing games. So obviously the most famous of these is Dungeons and Dragons, but there are many, many, many kinds of role playing games and I've been playing RPGs since I was a kid. The hobby is really ballooned a lot since then.
And there are all kinds of games now that kind of occupy that space. And what I love about them is that unlike many board games, there is a collaborative creative element to role playing games where we are working together to tell a story. If that isn't a good description of the design process, I don't know what is. And so I find a lot of value and parallels in that work in my work as well as in playing those games. But I also just find them fun. I just love the process of sitting down with usually my children to occupy this world that the game creates for us and to see what happens, right? It's a great way of exercising the brain, watching your children do some problem solving on the fly and just interact with someone in a structured way, I guess
Brendan Jarvis:
So. And it seems, you mentioned that you saw design as a way of working together to tell a story. It seems like you felt that designers were having difficulty doing that and that inspired you to create surviving design projects.
Dan Brown:
Yeah, I mean I think there's a myth as that one might hold, as someone seeking to enter the design field, that as a designer you will sit at your desk and you'll move boxes around on a screen all day long or that occasionally you will get up and go for a walk because that's what everyone says you need to do and you need inspiration. But 90% of your work is interacting with someone else. It's either to get feedback on the work, to gather requirements for the work, to coordinate activities, because the project is too big for you to do by yourself. So there's any number of reasons why you're interacting with other people. And this is not something they teach in design school. So I created surviving design projects because the more projects I worked on, the more I realized that I was seeing the same kinds of situations over and over and over again, and that I had sort of built up a toolbox of things that I do to help navigate or mitigate those situations.
And there wasn't a simple recipe. There isn't like, well, my client is getting distracted by shiny objects, so I'm going to always bring out this tool. The tool, what I call the patterns really varied depending on myriad of circumstances. And so the best thing I could do was build up as many of those patterns as I could so I could evaluate what would be most appropriate given the situation, given the players involved, given what I was trying to achieve in the situation. And so surviving design projects came around where I was like, okay, well I've got catalog of situations that I deal with on projects and I've got this toolbox and my work often involves evaluating a situation to understand how do I navigate through this and selecting the right tool for that job. And by then I was already playing, that was like 2012, and by then I was already playing lots of card games and board games. And so I used apples to apples as a really well known kinda party game and I used that as the framework for the project or for the game.
Brendan Jarvis:
So you put personal and professional worlds kind of dovetailed together there. It sounds like a lot of work to create a tabletop game like surviving design projects. Was it more work or more difficult than you expected when you first started?
Dan Brown:
I don't remember. I don't think so. I've been doing this for a long time and you'd think that question would occur to me before I start these things. And I surround myself with very responsible, smart people and I say to them things like, I'm going to design a card game. And they say to me, that's crazy. And I say, well, I'm going to do it anyway. So I mean everything is more work when you wanna do it. Well, everything is more work than you think it's going to be. I think what I found surprising about that process was, and again this is going to sound ridiculous, was how important testing was. So I got, at the time, I got some of my teammates from H Shapes to come over to my house and play the game a bunch, and I just watched them play the game. I was literally usability testing the game and I realized how important that process was cuz it provoked as simple as the game is. It provoked some interesting changes, things that I thought about in terms of how to write the rules and how to run the game. I ended up running the game a lot in workshops, so how I ran the game in workshops, things like that. So it just validated the idea that we need to do testing of our products, which again, as a user experience professional is something I should know already.
Brendan Jarvis:
So. Well, it's great to hear that you did apply one of the techniques or plays that we all talk about in the field to the creation of your own game and that it was of value. Yes. Dan, you strike me. Given what I know about you and what I've seen that you're a bit of a master at externalizing your thinking now, I was curious about this trait that you have as evident in the game that we were just talking about and what you like to do and some of the other things that you've done including writing books. Did you write a journal or did you draw as a child? I was curious, where did this need to externalize your thinking come from?
Dan Brown:
That's a great question. I think there's some interesting directions that we could go there. I think I have two chronic illnesses and I was diagnosed with one when I was six and the other when I was 15. And when you're that young, you don't know why these things happen to you and you don't know a world without them. So these are very much a part of my identity, but in order to process them, I felt like I needed to express myself and I didn't have good venues for doing that. But the way I had expressed itself was sort of trying to explain how the world works or whatever sort of model I had concocted as a kid for how people have a soul or how people experience each other. And I would diagram these things out and I see that now as a person a middle-aged man, I see this as a means by which I was trying to make sense of the complicated things that were happening to me.
I don't like having these conditions, but at the same time they've given me tools that I can use to maybe do a little tiny bit of good if not in the world than in our industry. And that is to think is to, the idea of self-reflection comes very naturally to me. Self-awareness comes very naturally to me because of these things that I was dealing with throughout my life. And so by being self-reflective, I can then, I think what I try and do is then translate the things that I'm thinking about to make them tangible or meaningful to other folks.
Brendan Jarvis:
And the direct output or product or outcomes from your own self-reflection and need to make sense of the world has obviously led to a wonderful career and a field that really embraces those skills that you've got. But you've also, you are trying to help other people in design to have the same practice of self-reflection. Is this a practice that you feel that the field is in need of more or is it something that you feel like it's part of your mission to help us as designers to embrace and adapt that into our own way of working?
Dan Brown:
I mean, I think that the field needs that designers need to develop the capacity to reflect on themselves and their work full. Whether I think there's ever enough of that is irrelevant, right? Because there's always the capacity there's always a need to reflect more. There's always a need to examine our work more. In the nineties we thought we were doing a pretty good job and here we are 20 years later realizing just how screwed up the world is because of some of the design decisions that we've been making over the years. So one of the things I think that, again, another myth might be that people think there's an end to self-reflection, but it is a practice that you'll need for the rest of your design career. And the sooner you cultivate it, I think the more successful you can be as a designer. I wonder if, I guess I'm sort of a hopeless optimist. So part of me thinks that with a greater capacity for self-reflection, we might not have been in the position that we are in today with sort of some of the harm that modern technologies have caused in the world.
Brendan Jarvis:
And there's definitely a big rabbit hole we could go down there. Before we do go down there, I wanted to bring you back to your childhood. You mentioned these conditions that you were diagnosed with and this is where your self-reflection and your need to externalize your thinking came from. Yeah. If you put yourself back in that teen, those teenage years of yours where you were using self-reflection and externalization of thinking, what was it that practice gave you personally at that time of your life?
Dan Brown:
I think there's a need to put complicated things into words that other people can find accessible by going through that process. We take thoughts in our heads that are complex, that are sort of inherently complex and we try and break them down and make them accessible for other people. I'm experiencing X, Y, and Z. How do I articulate that in a way that someone will understand it, maybe empathize a little bit with me, but also maybe help me too. And by creating these frameworks, creating these vocabularies that are accessible to other people, we can create a shared experience. So even though you are not experiencing the same illnesses that I am, you are experiencing other things that maybe bring these feelings out that brings this kind of self-reflection out and a shared vocabulary, which is one of the outcomes of externalizing your internal world. That shared vocabulary builds that bridge between us.
I mean, both of my parents are teachers too. And so I can't discount that I grew up in a home that prioritized education. And I mean I'm in a profession that neither of them could really, neither of my folks could have imagined. And what I see is a direct line between the work that I do today and the work that they were doing when I was a kid, as educators, as storytellers, as people who are responsible for helping other folks internalize certain ideas. And so I think that part of that externalization comes from that instinct as well that I got from that particular aspect of my childhood.
Brendan Jarvis:
I get the sense that your house must have had quite a few books available.
Dan Brown:
You would think there are no big readers. My dad, not a big reader. So my dad is a film professor, so we watched a lot of weird movies when I was a kid.
Brendan Jarvis:
Thinking about what you said earlier about the state of big technology and some of the decisions that were made in the nineties, let's come back to that. And you've been doing this for a wee while now. By my count it's about 25 or 26 years. I wanted to get a sense from you, looking back on that time in the field, what have been some of the things that we have forgotten as a field that we discovered earlier on that we're lost in our practice and that we need to be reminded of?
Dan Brown:
Oh, that's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I would've taken that perspective, but I mean, the thing that I see or the thing that I don't see, one of the things I don't see is information architecture. I will show up on design teams and they've got incredibly talented designers like folks who can produce a set of mockups in Figma, work collaboratively, work effectively with developers, all the things that we prize today. But the navigation will just be this hodgepodge of [laugh] of menu items. And I'm like, why did, does that get the short shift there? And so I think we have long discounted the value of deep thinking about structural problems. Were we better at it back then? I don't know. This field was smaller, so maybe it was easier to, for we information architects to be louder about it. The IA conference, formerly the IA summit, has always been just one of my favorite events. But even that has become, I think out of necessity, this is not a knock, but not strictly about information architecture anymore. And so we see fewer and fewer people engaged in that, the complexity around underlying structures and which is a shame because the products are getting complicated and their reach is getting further. And so there is an increased need for these things.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, that's interesting. And I asked you about what we are not doing that we were doing earlier, and you've obviously raised IA as an example of something that's fallen by the wayside, the ability to really think about the structural components of what it is that we are creating. But I, I'm drawing going to draw a line here between what I believe you were touching on when you first raised this topic, which was some of the errant decision making that has led to some of the abominations that we've ended up creating in the social side effects of those. And we don't need to name names unless you want to, but that seems to me to be somewhat as a result of not being enno critical enough in our thinking about some of those structural things that we were putting in place and what they might lead to, which could be easy to look back on and say, oh, it's evident that because we didn't ended up with B. What are your thoughts on the role of IA in that deep critical thinking and how that may or may not have helped to shape the world in a different way if we'd been more deliberate in its practice?
Dan Brown:
Well, I'm going to, I'll start there, but I kinda wanna shift it because I do think that with information architecture comes a certain amount of critical thinking, thinking deeply about the kinds of connections and relationships that are being moved. So I do think information architecture plays a role in that. But I think what's missing is something that has never ever been present, which is this, and it's hard for me to articulate this as a middle-aged white man, a notion of the way other people experience technology, the way people who don't look like us or have our same background experience technology and experience social technologies if we're being very specific. And that as long as we've been using the e word empathy, I think has, it's always been lip service and it is not something that I think has ever really been sufficiently present. I love seeing some of the dialogue that's happening today. It is hard and it's challenging and it can be painful, but for me, that helps me recognize that there is an opportunity for growth, at least in me to recognize what's been missing from my process all along or
Brendan Jarvis:
What's, what is that? What has challenged you? What have you realized that's been missing?
Dan Brown:
I think there's, and again, I don't feel qualified to talk about these things cuz I am sort of part of the problem in a sense. I am a person who has spoken about the value of user-centered design without really understanding necessarily what that could possibly entail. I haven't really thought deeply about the recruiting practices that we use when we recruit for user research studies. And my attitude has always been something is better than nothing. Any user voice is better than no user voice. Any feedback that I get on my design is better than no feedback on my design. But I think even now I am coming to understand that any is not good enough. Any is any feedback or any input or any outcome of a discovery process is still not good enough to fully capture and create a foundation for building meaningful experiences until we've spoken to an sufficient, not even a sufficient, again, I don't have the right words, but a better representation of the range of people who will make use of our products.
Brendan Jarvis:
This is a huge topic and I'm not really that qualified to speak on it, but I do wonder what you've observed as a consulting UXO from the internal teams that you've worked with, you know, talked earlier on about creating surviving design the game as a result of pattern matching the problems that you saw, right? Inherent with the engagements that you'd had as a consulting UXer. So if we think about that and then we apply this back to this bigger topic of diversity inclusion that we're touching on here, what are the positive signs or gaps, maybe the negative things that you are, you're still seeing internal teams wrestle with to try and do the best they can to address this issue? Yeah,
Dan Brown:
I mean I can still see homogenous design teams and that is just depressing to me. I don't know if it's depressing because I grew up in Manhattan where I was sort of always surrounded by people who were very different for me or most of my working life. I've lived in the Washington DC area, which is not perfect, but is, it is a very diverse city with lots going on here. And so I always feel very uncomfortable in very homogenous areas. And even earlier this year I felt like I was on a client where there was some lip service paid to diversity and inclusion, but it was not adequately represented. The teams that I feel like operate best are those with a broad inclusion of varying folks at varying levels in the organization as well. So folks who are work working designers and folks who are at the management level.
And the other red flag honestly that I see is siloed design teams, like design teams that if this is not just about race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality and all these things, it's literally just do you have different perspectives of people participating in the design process because they're the ones who have to build it or they're the ones who are going to have to use it or whatever. And I just feel like I still show up in design teams that are heavily siloed from other areas of the organization. Just to change gears a little bit, one of the things that I have been seeing is product managers, more product managers, some of those product managers are based, come out of the business side, so they don't really have a good handle on how to build product, but they have a good handle on the business. And I've been on both sides of the fence here in terms of I find these folks incredibly refreshing and on the other hand I find it incredibly frustrating that they don't know how to manage product. But at the end of the day, I feel like they represent a opportunity to break down some of these
Brendan Jarvis:
Silos. Is that through their sort of fresh pair of eyes that they bring?
Dan Brown:
I think there's the fresh pair of eyes. I think it's just their perspective coming outta the business side. They've got a different set of connections than we on the implementation side and we on the building side coming outta the business side, they've got other connections, other perspectives that they're bringing to the table and they presumably, at least on paper have a capacity to break down some of those silos.
Brendan Jarvis:
And silos are a problem in any enterprise and there's no, getting around at that design at scale within the enterprise is definitely challenging. Plenty of shades of gray, lots of politics. And as you would probably know, being in external as I am, lots of painful and efficiencies that go on in large businesses, whether we are in-house or consulting. It's a rare thing that we get to do design in the way in which it's written in the books that we read. Oh yeah. There's sort of like there's not the perfect, it doesn't really exist. How do you keep a positive mindset and moving forward for so long? You've done this for 25 years now in a business world that seems to be constantly trying to revert to a mean of mediocrity.
Dan Brown:
Wow, that's good. I think my mantra to now this something is better than nothing is what sort of keeps me going. And what I've found painful is it's the thing that's allowed me to progress. It's the thing that's allowed me to feel okay about where I've landed in certain things and now that I'm questioning it, that's where the pain comes in. But I still feel like if by something, I mean doing no harm is a little thing that I can do, then I think I have to feel at least somewhat satisfied with the work. But I've always said that the curse of being designer is being perpetually dissatisfied. The whole idea of our work is iteration and trying to find ways to make the world a even slightly marginally better place that's just sort of inherent to the field. So because of that, I relish small wins but I don't feel like I can rest my laurels entirely upon
Brendan Jarvis:
Them. Thinking about that, do no harm and your practice of self-reflection, what are the sort of things that you ask yourself before you take on an engagement or that you assess through an engagement?
Dan Brown:
Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
About the potential for harm that your work could be contributing to. What does that conversation look like?
Dan Brown:
That's a great question. I mean, clearly the nature of the type of client is the industry that they're in is really top of mind for
Brendan Jarvis:
Us. So no nuclear weapons manufacturers then
Dan Brown:
[laugh] in the DC area. So I can't say one way or the other whether that's true or not.
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh]. All
Dan Brown:
Right. I think also the work that the individual team is trying to do. And so even in a large financial client, whatever one's misgivings are about the financial industry, maybe there's some bit of good that can be done. And I think also I am trying to assess to what extent I will have I be satisfied with this work. That is to say it will be personally rewarding or professionally rewarding to me in so far as the things that I look for are ability to make some kind of change, ability to have some kind of impact. Because if I am not feeling that, then I don't feel like I will be able to do any good as I listen to myself say these things out loud which is a skill that one I think needs to cultivate. If one is doing self-reflection, there's that small part of me that's listening to me say these things out loud and it's still, these things are still laced, threaded with an incredible amount of privilege. Being able to pick and choose my work, looking at a company and being able to me little me assess whether they can or should will do good in the world. Who am I to really understand what harm a company may or may not do? These are the kinds of things that I feel like I will be wrestling with for the rest of my career.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, who are you not to though, given the state of the world? And also just thinking about this, it's reminded me of a conversation that I had with Peter Marvel and also with U Egg agenda. And both of these gentlemen touched on this notion that design itself is actually a political act. How do you feel about that?
Dan Brown:
Oh yeah. I just tweeted the other day at Andy Bud that I all design is political. Not that he was disagreeing with that, but he was sort of making a statement. And I sort of built up upon that statement. If a designer doesn't understand that, then I don't think they really understand design. I think design is not, design can sometimes feel like making a lot of compromises, but there's still a voice that comes out of the product that we're designing. That product still has still expresses an opinion, is still assertive about what it believes and what it wants. And maybe I'm anthropomorphizing products too much, but come on, that's what they do. They express an opinion and if they didn't then we wouldn't see them ever change. But even just watching Amazon's amazon.com sort of change over time, even watching Twitter's change over time, you can see it trying to express itself differently. And those expressions are laced with opinion, have something to say about the world and what they think about you the user when it engages in a dialogue with you.
Brendan Jarvis:
Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. I mean it's the result of a thousand or potentially a million different small decisions that have been made. And I get the sense that even if designers aren't aware of it or even if they're actively abstaining from thinking about their work is having a political impact in the world through the things that they are creating that's still in itself is a political statement. Abstaining is a political statement,
Dan Brown:
No doubt. Yes.
Brendan Jarvis:
Let's come back to the practice of dealing with what I think you described as a series of compromises that you have to make in terms of getting things done in design. What battles have you found that you needed to fight and which battles have you found over time and through experience that you are willing to let go to maintain that sort of bigger picture that you're working to?
Dan Brown:
That's a hard question for me to answer but I'll be transparent. And it's hard because I can't think of a design or a design related battle that I've ever been super passionate about. What I get passionate about more than design, I think than the outcomes of design is the process of design the outcomes. Even though we've just had this long conversation about how problematic they can be if you make irresponsible decisions. My passion has always been are we going about this the right way? Because again, the hopeless optimist in me says if we engage the right process, the outcomes if not perfect will be understandable. And so the hills that I choose to die on are not about a particular design decision, but are about how we go about it. And I don't know what has changed in me over time, but my attitude towards those process conversations have been less about I'm going to make an argument and I intend to win it.
And more I'm going to just help you understand what these decisions will mean. So let's just do a simple one. If we choose to do a recruit and we don't invite and we aren't deliberate about who we invite to that recruit then we're going to face these risks. We're going to get a very skewed set of feedback from that. And ultimately, maybe it's not up to me who we recruit, how we do the recruit, but I do think it is my responsibility to communicate what the risks are, document what the risks are, so that the people who are responsible for making that decision are working with a complete set of information or as complete that I can make it for them.
Brendan Jarvis:
I get the sense that you feel like reli our reliance on processes like the double diamond, we've become overly dog dogmatic in that and that that's led to some intellectual laziness about some of the critical things that you've just touched on there about who do we recruit and what the impact of those decisions may be by just referring back to our way of working as we've always done it.
Dan Brown:
Yeah, I mean I do a lot of cooking and I do most of my cooking without a recipe and I think, well, I haven't been fired yet, so
My kids will complain about my cooking. And I'm like, friends, there's only one person at this table I need to impress and her name is Sarah and if she's happy, I don't care what the rest of you think, but that's my wife. And that kind of cooking is all about, course correction is all about, I'm picturing the goal, I know where I wanna end up. And then imagining the process you need to get there and as things go wrong, oh, the pan was too hot or oops, I put too much butter in, or whatever it is course correcting to make sure that you can still arrive at an approximate destination. And that's in my mind almost a perfect metaphor for the design process because you never know what's going to go wrong. You can have your perfect process outlined and then when you try and recruit users, you get nobody. Or you get the executive coming in right in the middle of that second diamond and you've never seen them before and they're like, oh, I hate all of this. Right? You never know what's going to happen. And it's a creative process. So I like thinking about the design process, not in terms of any particular prescribed recipe, but in terms of how am I going to at any given moment, what decisions do I need to make and what's the right decision given the information that I have.
Brendan Jarvis:
And I understand that you've framed this up in terms of mindsets and that there are several mindsets as creative people, designers would benefit from holding. You've suggested that there are two main categories of these and I'd love to dive into collaborative mindsets with you first. Sure. Which you've framed as adaptive, collective and assertive. I wanna start with adaptive. Yeah. Well you did say it. Yeah. Well, so my notes tell me that you did and I did what you talk about.
Dan Brown:
I believe you. Yes.
Brendan Jarvis:
So let's start with adaptive. This one's about changing what you're doing if what you're doing isn't working. And that's exactly what you've just described. It's sort of the conditions of change. So what do I then do? What decisions do I then make right now? That is something that when we are talking about that, that sounds really easy to do and I think people would understand that intellectually if something's not working, stop doing it. But we as humans suffer from a number of different biases. One of which is I think this is a bias sunk cost fallacy, which is basically, we've spent so much time walking down this road,
Dan Brown:
Let's just keep going.
Brendan Jarvis:
They just keep going regardless of what the new information is. And there's also this political nature of the organization where there's a bit of losing face and just how safe is it for me to go, you know what? I was wrong or things have changed and now we need a bunch more budget to go down this different road. How can we as designers become more brave in recognizing when things have changed and to make better decisions even though it might be really difficult?
Dan Brown:
Arrived at multiple answers to that question. I'll start with the last one I thought of, which is I aspire to always ask myself why am I doing what I'm doing right now? And if I don't have a good answer for that question, then I have to change course. Why am I churning out all of these wire frames even though we just got some feedback that they want to go in a different direction? Or why am I turning out all of these? Why am I running this usability test even though I don't really have goals for what I wanna get outta this? Why am I doing these things? Because this is a certain amount of reaction to bootcamp kind of mentality that we're seeing a lot in UX these days where rote processes are taught. And I don't know how much critical thinking is comes along with that with those processes. But as soon as I'm able to ask myself why and give myself an honest answer, I feel more confident in then going, you know what? This is not working. Let's try something else. So I think that's at least one sort of mechanism that we can use to help us course correct, which is not something I use in cooking. So the metaphor kind of falls apart there, but here
Brendan Jarvis:
We are. That's right. It's not about being perfect.
Dan Brown:
Right. No
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh] something else. What of the other mindsets was this notion of the collective, and that's definitely a conventional wisdom that design is a team sport that's better done with others. Are there any exceptions to that though in design? Are there any areas of design where having an individual mindset actually leads to better outcomes?
Dan Brown:
No but I would add some nuance, which is only that you don't have to do everything with someone else. There are some moments in which sometimes you just need to sit and think about something. And I, I've just wrapped up interviewing a lot of information architects and this was one of the lines of questioning I had, which was, okay, we know we should collaborate with people, but sometimes you just need to sit and think about it. What does that look like? And it was really interesting to me that very few people could answer that question that it was always about bringing in someone else. And I mean we can dive into that, but I know for myself, sometimes I just need to sit and look at the problem or sit and dwell on the problem. And no doubt I will draw someone else in to validate or no one doubt I will draw someone else in to bounce something off of. Sometimes I think my role as design lead is just to sit there and let someone else talk about their work out loud because you hear it differently when you say it out loud. You experience your own work differently when you do it out loud, which again is something you could do by yourself, but it's better when you're talking [laugh] to someone about it. So I do think there are moments in the design process that are somewhat solitary, but we can't just leave it there. Not the be all and end all.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. And it's not, it's sort of runs counter to the common culture at the moment of meetings and workshops and busy work. When do we get that time and how do we make that time to actually do as Dan suggested, and as you've suggested, and take that space, sit and think it's such a luxury. Yeah,
Dan Brown:
It really is. I mean when you were just talking just made me think about Figma and Figma is sort of the hot design tool now and part of the appeal of Figma is that it is collaborative from the ground up. It started out as something where I could see your cursor moving in my Figma file, which is great, right? There is no doubt. But that is definitely a plus over many of the other solutions out there. But it also sort of implies from the ground up, meaning that every part of this process is collaborative. Every spreadsheet that I create is in the cloud and shared with someone else. And that spreadsheet as my brainstorming about categories, every mural board is in the cloud and designed to be shared with someone else, even though it's got sort of a brain dump of whatever I'm thinking about the design problem.
I'm not saying we should create walls in those spaces. I think that would make me a little bit of a hypocrite. But the mindset of collectiveness is built in and I think we don't because of that, maybe we don't give ourselves permission to sit to turn that off and just say, let me sit and think for a second so I can process what I'm dealing with either intellectually like I'm trying to solve a problem or emotionally that was a really hard user interview and I need to just sit and deal with it for a second before I move on to my next one.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, there's definitely some tension there. I can't remember the company and it's probably, there's a few of them, but it's one of the big ones. It might be Amazon where you're not actually allowed to turn up to a meeting unless you've sat with the materials that have been prepared for that meeting and formed your own point of view to discuss at the meeting. I think that's that recognition that coming in half prepared and not really having had the time to think about what might be critical decisions that you are making on your own actually do the collective a disservice.
Dan Brown:
So yeah, I mean find that a little bit frustrating too, because I feel like that can be arbitrary is smacks a bit of gatekeeping of, well if you didn't have the time to sit and read this 20 page report, then I don't really care what your opinion is. And that's baloney. I still value other people's perspectives and especially in this day and age, I forgive you for not doing the homework. I haven't done the homework, all I know I don't do the homework a hundred percent of the time, but I still wanna have a voice. I still wanna be able to contribute to the conversation. And if god forbid my opinion is ill-informed, well I can just get in line between the 7 billion other people on this planet who have uninformed opinions about things. It's just the nature of humanity to sometimes show up, have an opinion about something, but give us space to talk about it. Give us space to consider a topic critically. These are not simple topics. Sometimes I do my best thinking here on a podcast when I have to be spontaneous and just think out loud. That is not, these are not ideas that would've come up had I just turned to medium and started writing something, my brain works differently. So that was a soapbox.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, I love it. I feel like I struck a nerve there and you were rather assertive, which brings us to,
Dan Brown:
We got there.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well it's speaking of assertive, that's a word that that's a mindset that you've proposed as well. And that is a word that can bring up some mixed feelings for people. It can sort of verge on overconfidence or arrogance, sort of what comes to mind or for me at least. So in the context of
Dan Brown:
A fine line. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well let's explore that fine line in the context of design. What does it mean to be assertive in a positive sense?
Dan Brown:
I think it means having an opinion and showing up. And I struggle with this. This is the one I struggle with most because sometimes I look at something and I'm like, I really don't care. I'm sorry, I'm trying to care, but I really don't. And what's
Brendan Jarvis:
Ironic, that's when you find yourself catching those yawns when you're trying not to yawn with your mouth open. You get those in meetings.
Dan Brown:
It's not that I'm bored, it's just that I don't literally, I don't feel like I'm the right person to render an opinion about this or my opinion is not grounded in anything especially meaningful. So I can sometimes look at something and go, I really don't care. And this is ironic cause I live with very opinionated people
Brendan Jarvis:
Who have lost, you're from New York, right? Yeah,
Dan Brown:
Yeah. Well, none of them, the people I live with are, but strangely they all have very strong opinions specifically about my cooking, which now that we come back to that maybe anyway. But I feel like where this one came from is I will work with designers who I think are very talented and just really good at what they do and then they get into a conversation and they become order takers. And my heart breaks a little bit for those folks because I'm like, part of the process is being assertive, not just about what you think is the right direction, but asking questions, not taking anything for granted. I think if I could find a better word than maybe a better word for this is whatever is encapsulated in not taking anything for granted, not taking anything at face value so that when you get critique, when you get someone kind of pounding on your design, your instinct should not be, no, this it's my way or the highway or no sure, I'll do whatever you tell me to do. Well help me understand why you think that's the case or help me understand why you think this is broken. Being assertive, it means in this case, not simply just accepting what someone is telling you, but trying to dig underneath it to understand it better.
Brendan Jarvis:
And that really pairs well with this creative mindset. The second category where the first creative mindset was curious, and it's fair to say if you're a designer and you're not curious, you're probably not going to be a very good designer. But a lot of people, designers of which are not immune to this, have this fear of not having the right answer. And there's a lot of negative baggage that we carry. My suspicion is that comes from a lot of our formal education that we've had and the way in which we've learned to learn you are an expert and you've had 25 years of experience doing what you're doing. You've written books about it, you've spoken all around the world on information architecture and UX. Surely after all that time there's not much you haven't seen by now.
Dan Brown:
Oh, that's not true.
Brendan Jarvis:
That was a total setup, by the way.
Dan Brown:
Yeah, I mean I thank you for that, but I mean it was a little on the nose. No, I mean I think what I get intrigued about is not design process or, so first of all, I'm inherently curious about domains. One of my big clients deals with licensing architects in the us It is as niche as you can get and I have been engaged with that client for 10 years and I am learning something new every day with them. And I love it. I love how whatever the implica economic and political implications of it are, however you might feel about licensing professionals, I am downright fascinated by all the esoteric stuff to the point where one of my teammates who is doing research on this will message me little obscure bits of trivia that she finds because she knows I find it so entertaining and engaging. So domains.
Brendan Jarvis:
So it's become your muse. The domain has become your muse. Yeah,
Dan Brown:
I mean it's, I'm just genuinely curious about how do people do work in this? How does X work? How does pharmaceutical industry work? I'm just genuinely curious about that. I am also genuinely curious about the perspectives that people bring to the table. So I love working with other designers and I like watching them solve problems in the way, and this is not meant to be patronizing in the way I like watching my kids play board games in the way I like watching a mind that I care about because I have affection for people I work with. I care about those folks and I'm genuinely interested in watching them wrestle with a problem. I find that really engages my curiosity.
Brendan Jarvis:
People are fascinating.
Dan Brown:
Yes, that's what my therapist says. So that's what I think too. Yeah, humans
Brendan Jarvis:
Are, just for the record, I'm not Dan's therapist in case anyone was wondering.
Dan Brown:
So I mean you could start charging me and I would feel like we're being very productive. It's been a good session.
Brendan Jarvis:
So [laugh] send you a link to my stripe after the session. [laugh],
Dan Brown:
Good stuff.
Brendan Jarvis:
This second mindset that you came up with that would help designers in terms of being a creative mindset was skepticism. And I love that you've included skepticism here and it's kind of assertive in the collaborative mindsets where it can polarize people. When you first hear this word, especially when it comes to some pretty topical things that are going on now related to the pandemic, what does positive skepticism, again in the context of design look like, and how do you deploy that tactfully in a team setting without being seen as a buzz killer?
Dan Brown:
Right. Yeah, and I think what's it, I'm really glad that you highlighted that these sort of are in different categories. My collaborative mindsets emerged first. That was the first thing I wrote about. And assertive is very much about the connections to other people that you're working with is to, assertive means you have a voice and I care about it. And that voice might be expressing a strong opinion about a direction that we should be going in, or it might be trying to question some of the things that I've said and I'm happy for both of those things. Skepticism is a different framing, but maybe of a similar type thing where skepticism is part of those creative mindsets as you've said. And I think as a ingredient of creativity, we can't accept anything at face value as well. That both of those, that not accepting things at face value manifest themselves differently in the collaborative realm and in the creative realm, but are equally important in both.
For me, skepticism, I tend to frame, I'm not a confrontational person, so I tend to frame my skepticism as well. Let's do an experiment or I tend to frame my skepticism as well, let me just play devil's advocate here. Or sometimes when I'm working with some designers, I'll say, okay, now how would you critique your own work? What do you feel like is missing from this work? And they'll start to identify things that they feel like problems, aspects of the problem that they haven't solved yet. And that gives me a foundation that I can then build on.
Brendan Jarvis:
So you use either a design play, like an interview or a test to externalize some feedback on a particular piece of work or a line of questioning where you're trying to get the other person into a mindset of being reflective about what it is that they've created rather than going at it directly yourself. Right, right. Yeah. Those are some excellent tactics for the people that are listening to, to deploy and to think about. This brings us to the last creative mindset, which is humility. And you've said, and I'm going to paraphrase here, that experience is often used as a mask for someone who has stopped learning. And that was what I was shamefully goading you into earlier in my question about your experience and what else could you possibly have to learn. Can you be seen as an expert though, as an authority, while still being open with others that you don't know everything, particularly in high stake situations like executives?
Dan Brown:
Yes. I don't know why, but yes, I, I try never to feel like I must have the answer because I know that that is a recipe for humiliation, that it is, it will end up being more embarrassing if I try to make up an answer and more arrogant in a sense. If I try and make up an answer then simply say, you know what? I don't know, but I know how I'm going to find out. I don't know the answer to that, but we need to look into that and I appreciate you bringing it up or I really wanna hear what other people have to say. Humility is even when you have decades of experience acknowledging the value of every voice in the room and as I'm trying to learn voices that are not in the room, but humility is, it's understanding that even if this person didn't do the homework, they've got something potentially meaningful and interesting to say and they're not going to be penalized if they don't.
They may be corrected, they may be, we may sort of discuss why their ideas don't have merit, but humility is acknowledging that there must be there, that in order for design to succeed, there must be a level foundation regardless of what we bring to the table initially, it's business that asks us, it's business that asks us to, that imposes decision makers and designing to thrive in a business world, I guess. So it's business that says this person because of their title, has been imbued with power to make a final decision. But my role in that is to provide that person with the best information that I can. And if that sometimes means I don't have the information I need to go find it, then I am very comfortable saying, I dunno.
Brendan Jarvis:
Just coming back to that notion of realizing that everybody's voice is able to be heard, even if you do have the most experience on a topic, it sounded like what you were saying is that while they might not necessarily be right, you leave the space open to the possibility that's something that they might say might lead you to a different conclusion or change or shift your perspective or teach you something. Yes.
Dan Brown:
Yeah. Even if, I mean, I don't know how your brain works, but when you're talking, I'm listening, I'm trying to listen to what you're saying, but I'm also sort of making other kinds of connections. And so all of that dialogue and that the sort of, I don't know, fodder of that dialogue is what nurtures is what nurtures design as a process. And so I, it's the nutrition right of design. So that kind of conversation for everything we said about solitary work, ultimately there's getting all of those voices, as many of them as we can and make sense of them think is what leads to better products.
Brendan Jarvis:
So speaking of getting more voices and leading to better products, you've recently started a video series and it's also a podcast called A Lens Day Conversations about Information Architecture. Yes. And literally, I was super impressed by this cuz I know how much work goes into just doing an episode a week, you've, you've been releasing literally an episode a day, which is just phenomenal. And this is based on your set of cards that you created, your information architecture lenses.
Dan Brown:
So I have why a lot of things that Brendan does not have, which is a deck of prompts that I can use and no desire to do as much research as you have done in this interview. So I basically told him, Hey, I'm just going to ask you a bunch of questions. My dad is an interviewer by Trey. He was a film professor, but what he was really, really known for was interviewing people who make movies and he is so good at it. And so that's my interest in interviewing, I think comes from watching him as a kid. And he would be appalled that I don't do any prep for those interviews because most of my childhood was watching him do a tremendous amount of research in advance of interviewing folks. But yeah, I kept them short. I asked the same basic set of questions. I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet. So they would say something and I would try to respond to that. And I always had a lens that I could come to prompt a certain amount of conversation. So,
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, I'm taking notes. Maybe I need to simplify my process. Oh, you are
Dan Brown:
Doing fantastic. It's been a joy to have these conversations given the amount of research that you've done. I mean, this is, just to put the lenses aside for a second, when I talk about experience and how I'm sad that the industry as a whole does not value experience as much as it values say youth or novelty, it's because what comes with experience is the amount of research that you are drawing upon. I can cook a meal without looking at a recipe because I've cooked literally hundreds of meals and during the pandemic, it's basically all I've done is just every, there's a meal, I gotta go cook for the family. So I feel like that experience, there's value in that experience as well because it allows us to ask to get to a depth that I don't normally get to get to when we're talking about this stuff because the interviewer has not necessarily done this amount of research. So it's sort of a meta illustration of why experience is so valuable because we are drawing you drawing on a well that would not have been there without that experience of doing the research that you've done.
Brendan Jarvis:
So thank you. You talked in, oh, you're most welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed researching for today. Dan, you are drawing on something that comes to mind from your talk at UX Australia last year where you explored questions and depth and we're not going to have time to go into that today in any detail. Can we do another, which is a shame, I would love to do another one. Let's do another one. But you talked about one of the particular types of questioning is to plumb the depths. Right? And that's definitely the approach that I take to brave UX and the kind of questions and what I really love that I get from this, and what I was curious about with your new podcast series A Lens Day was as the person who created the lenses, who's now interviewing other well-known, respected information architects who are also experts, some with comparable levels of experience to yourself, how has this process of having these conversations changed the way that you think about ia?
Dan Brown:
Oh, what a good question. And to be super clear, I did not just interview people with a lot of experience. I've spoke to folks with maybe 10 years under their belt, maybe with two years under their belt. It was important to me to get a range of perspectives. So what I did not do in depth, I tried to overcompensate in breadth and I felt like what 50 lenses gives me is an opportunity to talk to 50 different people and see lots and lots of perspectives. To answer your question, I think it ended up, and maybe this was just due to the format, but it validated my opinion about information architecture, which is that it's super important that there is a hunger to think about design problems at this level and that it thrives on collaboration. And if I were to say, I mean those are sort of the themes that ended up emerging.
When I sort of think back on the highlights, for me it was the fact that whenever I asked people about process, it was always about asking questions of others. It was always about drawing other people into the or. I mean, I specifically asked how do you draw people into the process? But it was always about the need and the value of having these conversations. It was always about trying to make things that are abstract, more accessible so more people could participate. It was always about curiosity. It was always about asking questions which was very gratifying for me because I met my current, as you pointed out, my current topic of interest is how do we ask a good question? So I think I found it just very validating. So it's again, a very therapeutic exercise, [laugh] selfishly therapeutic exercise for me.
Brendan Jarvis:
But there's a tension in what we've talked about there, what you've just mentioned. It was kind of gratifying and satisfying knowing that the practice of IA is being done in a way in which you believe it should be practiced, which hopefully isn't putting words in your mouth. But earlier on in our conversation, we talked about working with product teams and there are some fantastic designers within those product teams, but I got the sense that they were more tactical focused on UX and UI at a tactical level rather than the deep structure that exists in IA and some of the decisions that are monumental and the impact that they have at other layers of design. There are a lot of thought ish type articles out there on Medium and available for people to read, and they're not really breaking new ground and possibly reinforcing some bad practices or ways of thinking about ia. Where should truly curious maybe early or mid-stage career UXs that realize that they have a bit of a deficiency in their IA skills. Where should they go or who should they go and listen to other than yourself for some really good critical thinking about how to apply IA more effectively in their design practice.
Dan Brown:
Yeah, it's hard. I mean, there are some great books and what's amazing is that those books have withstood the test of time, right? There's the Polar Bear book, which I don't know if that's on the curriculum of a lot of these boot camps cuz it's meaty. There is Abby cover's book, how to Make Sense of Any Mass. There's Lisa Marie Marque's book everyday Information Architecture. Those are some newer entries into the field and I feel like all of them have something interesting and worthwhile and meaningful to say. I think the IA conference is still a fantastic event that is, I am near and dear to my heart and attracts people who understand that how important IA is. Lest you think it is a bunch of middle-aged folks running around rehashing the glory days every year. It half of the conference is brand new every year.
Half of the people who show up are people who have not been to this conference before. So what I love about it is it is this intense mixture of folks who've been doing this for decades and folks who are just discovering it for the first time. And I mean, just to build on that, many of the folks that I sort of mentor on the side, I met at a conference where I met at one person in particular, I'm thinking of we met at the IA IA summit. It was called the Summit at the time. It's now called the IA Conference. But the thing that people have always loved about it is how accessible we old timers are at that conference, right? We are attendees as well. And I think there's just, whether you go to the IA conference or any other conference, I think there's tremendous value in trying to meet some of these folks and have conversations with them. Cuz you never know where that might lead. But other sources, I'm trying to think. I don't know of,
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, I know one, it's called A Lens a Day Conversations about information architecture, and I will be linking to your podcast and your video series Stan, in the show notes. Thank you. It's a wonderful resource for people who wanna understand IA better and hear from a wide range of perspectives on that topic. Thank
Dan Brown:
You. I was just going to say that the one surprise that came out of it for me was, well, probably one of many, but the main surprise that came out of that experience for me was how it was sort of a, it's now a time capsule of IA in 2021. And it didn't occur to me to think about it like that. It was literally just something for me to do over the summer.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, no doubt it kept you occupied.
Dan Brown:
Yes, that is true.
Brendan Jarvis:
Dan, I mentioned last year that you spoke at UX Australia and just for people that want to check out that talk, it's called Questions the Most essential UX tool. It was a great talk, and there's so much in there that we need to go into another time how to ask better questions. And discovery is such an important and essential topic for UXs. I really, really recommend you check it out people. But Dan, if we just take that notion of asking questions and we zoom out a bit, what questions, big questions are we not asking enough of or trying hard enough to answer in the field of UX today?
Dan Brown:
The questions that I'm asking myself more and more are, am I talking to the right people? And I guess I was sort of always asking that question, but I feel like I'm asking it even more now because if we just extend the metaphor of a lens, I feel like the lenses that I've been looking through have been clouded, and it is time for me to look more honestly about who I'm talking to, whether it's research during the discovery process, whether it's a usability test, whether it's stakeholders and who's involved. This comes from following the work of Vivian Castillo and Alba I'm going to get her last name wrong. Forgive me. Villa Mill. I think I saw Alba speak at UX tc. She was fantastic. And Vivian has been doing just some amazing work on trying to lift up the overall practice. So I follow the two of them on Twitter and just watching every tweet is everything that I publish, everything that they write is helps me open my eyes a little bit more. I think we also need to be asking ourselves about structure and what sits below this screen, what sits below this interaction? How are all the pieces connected to each other? How are the pieces that are even not within my product connected to my product? I think that is an extension of inclusivity, is to think about a more, think about our products in that more holistic way. So those are the two things that are top of mind as you ask me that question.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, definitely big things for us as a community to reflect on and have a think about in our own time individually. Dan, this has been a great conversation. It's certainly given me plenty to reflect on and to think about, as I'm sure it has done for our a as well. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights today and for all the great contribution that you've made to the UX community over the past 25 or so years.
Dan Brown:
Brendan, it was my great pleasure chatting with you, and I really appreciate the time as well. Thank you.
Brendan Jarvis:
You're most welcome. Dan, if people wanna find out more about you, about Eight Shapes, about a lens a day, what's the best way for them to do that?
Dan Brown:
Well, they can go to eightshapes.com to learn about Eight Shapes, and you can follow @IAlenses on Twitter, and I've been linking every episode there a few. Go to anchor.fm/a-lensanchor.fm/a-lens-a-day. You can see the podcast version of A Lens A Day.
Brendan Jarvis:
Perfect. Thanks, Dan. And to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well and listened to this wonderful conversation. Everything that we've covered will be in the show notes, including where to find Dan, find A Lens A Day, and all the other great resources that we've spoken about. If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders and UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review and also tell someone else about the show if you think they would get some value out of this conversation and conversations like it. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn under Brendan Jarvis. There's also a link to my LinkedIn profile on the show notes on YouTube, or you can head on over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz or NZ if you're in the us and we know. Until next time, I'm glad. I mean, I do wonder sometimes if anyone can actually understand me on this podcast. Until next time, keep being brave.

Dan Brown

Essential Mindsets for Being an Effective Designer

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