Jane Austin

Episode 45
Brave UX

From Designer to Executive Design Leader

In this episode of Brave UX, Jane Austin speaks openly about the twists and turns of her journey from designer to executive-level design leader, and reminds us that it’s okay to be both vulnerable and assertive.

Highlights include:

How do you help people to be more comfortable with being wrong?
Why is it important to find your voice as a design leader?
How does “strong opinions loosely held” work in practice?
Why is it so important to do qualitative UX research?
How are you helping other women to succeed in the business world?

October 19, 202101:07:17

Listen on:

Who is Jane Austin?

Jane is the Chief Experience Officer at Digitas UK, where she’s been charged with creating best-in-class connected experiences for the agency’s clients.

Before Digitas, Jane was the Chief Design Officer for Flo Health, the company behind one of the world’s most popular apps for helping women to take control of menstruation.

From late 2018 to late 2020, Jane was the Director of Product Design at Babylon Health, where she led a global team of 100 talented designers, researchers, content specialists, product and operations people.

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 Drisk 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 Jane Austin. In July, Jane joined Digitas UK as their Chief Experience Officer, where she's been charged with creating best in class connected experiences for the agency's clients, which include GSK, Samsung, British Telecom and Honda. This is somewhat of a homecoming for Jane as between 2005 and 2007, Jane worked at the agency's predecessor LBi, as an experience architect. Before Digitas Jane was the Chief Design Officer for Flow Health, the company behind one of the world's most popular apps for helping women to prior prioritize their health and take control of menstruation. From late 2018 to late 2020, Jane was the Director of Product Design at Babylon Health, an online healthcare company soon to launch on the NASDAQ that's on a mission to put accessible health and affordable healthcare in the hands of everyone on earth. There Jane led a global team of 100 talented designers, researchers, content specialists, product and operations people rebranding the business and completely transforming the patient experience. To give you an even better idea of the depth of Jane's design leadership experience, she was also the Director of Design and UX for Moo, an award-winning online print business and the head of UX for the Telegraph, one of the United Kingdom's leading newspapers, an internationally recognized design leader. Jane has been a keynote speaker at industry-leading events such as mine, the product leading design and UX London. In her spare time if she has any, Jane is an advisor to Founders Academy, a new type of business school that aims to harness technology to build a better world. Funny, insightful, and incredibly self-reflexive. It's my great pleasure to have Jane here with me on Brave UX today. Jane, welcome to the show.
Jane Austin:
Hi there. Hey, thanks for having me.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's great to have you Jane. And just before we go on, you are from Glasgow and Scotland and I'm from New Zealand, so I just wanted to check that you understood more than just a few words of what I've just said. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Oh good. That's good. We're off to a good start then. [laugh], Jane, you bring, having had a look at your previous talks, a refreshingly honest amount of energy to how you talk about leadership and your career and the things that you've learned during that career, which has been a stellar career. Have you always been so forthcoming?
Jane Austin:
Okay, so yeah, possibly. I think it's maybe just a very Scottish way of being is sort of no bullshit and it really occurred to me to do anything other than just talk about things honestly.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I mean it's such a refreshing thing, particularly being somebody who operates at very senior levels of design and leadership. I had wondered, given the amount of politics that can be inherent in large organizations that are trying to do big things, has that ever worked against you?
Jane Austin:
Possibly I'm not sure that I would know, but I bet it has. Mm-hmm And I think that's as I got older, I think possibly being more aware of the politics I think I'm a bit naive in many ways cuz I'm quite straightforward and I didn't even realize that we're sort of office politics until after I've been working quite some time. And then I started realizing that lot of people didn't like each other and there was gossip and somehow it all passed me by. So I think now I'm trying to be more nuanced, not really get involved in the gossip or anything like that, but just be aware of the patterns and eddies lurking below the surface.
Brendan Jarvis:
Interesting. I suppose that is one of the benefits of experiences, isn't it? As you start to be able to see patterns and know which eddie's to avoid.
Jane Austin:
Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, probably I'm sure had I been able to play the game and operate it in a very political way, I might have been much more successful in previous jobs and it's definitely something to reflect on.
Brendan Jarvis:
Now, speaking of jobs, you've just taken on a new job this time, as I mentioned in your introduction at Digitas, which is an agency. So you've gone from big tech product companies back to agency and that seems like quite a different design leadership challenge, at least to me. What's your vision behind this move back to agency and this new leadership setting? What are you really sitting out to achieve?
Jane Austin:
Well, being client side, it was great, it was brilliant working on products, but often product and marketing were completely separate, sometimes even at each other's throat. Its, I observed talking of office politics, [laugh] not shooting data, product would decide to build something but market wants, marketing would want to build something else. And it just seemed absolutely crazy being different organizations sort of doing some consulting for organizations or talking to friends over client side or attending conferences. There was a bit of a theme which is that the CMO and the CPO were not really acting in a United way. They weren't share, not that they weren't sharing data, the data was just siloed work was siloed often that they weren't be an input for marketing and what to build so product wouldn't be having an impact on marketing. And it just felt like very separate worlds. And often a lot of organizations have real problems with data as well.
Data again is silos. They don't have a single view of the customer, they're really struggling. And this is the reason I joined Digitas is that it's wanting to try and connect all of these pieces which are often really fragmented, particularly in legacy organizations. So you know, think about your experience with any brand. You don't think, oh that's the marketing director talking to me. I know there's a C R M people talking to me. You just think it's the brand but actually you've got lots of different people talking to you in different ways and it's not orchestrated and customer experience is more than a product. Your experience with a brand or with any kind of product is more than just using the app. It's what the marketing's the email, the follow up, the customer service. And I think the opportunity, I've been able to work with an organization that's bringing this all together and create really, really interesting and excellent customer experiences.
Which is another thing as well. Cause customer experience has kind of become a thing and it's sort of coming, it's been often run by people who are previously responsible for the call centers. So then you've got another part of the organization and they're working in a slightly different way again and again, things get fragmented and people are sort of reinventing the wheel. So you see these people doing CX and customer journey mapping. Well actually that's been a UX thing for years and it's just lots and lots of fra fragmentation of data, of practice of people within one organization. So the opportunity of bringing this together and creating a really fantastic experience, not just a fantastic product but a fantastic experience is what's brought me to,
Brendan Jarvis:
And no one creates fantastic experiences, particularly not at the scale at which you are going to be creating them by themselves. Sure. Have you inherited a team or what does it look like at the moment? What's that? What does that people challenge look like?
Jane Austin:
So there is a team, but we are expanding. There's lots of people, lots of different clients I think that need someone like us to come together and to help them deliver great experiences to combine data. So yeah, I'm definitely hiring, hiring people who have that sort of product mindset, that product design mindset where you are sort of data led, you do experiments, you're always trying to think about value, you have shippable increments, you make sure that you're doing proper discovery, you're concentrating in the customer and bringing that rigor and discipline, but spreading it more widely perhaps across campaigns or across C R M or just thinking about how everything connects. So I want, I'm looking for people I think, who are both designers but who have that kind of rigorous mindset to understand how everything fits together. Maybe a bit of entrepreneurial business aspect to them as well. So we're there to help the clients have a successful business. So it's not just about being customer centered, it's about understanding the business context as well. So yeah, I'm looking for people, rigorous thinkers, analytical thinkers, great designers, people who really get business who have that entrepreneurial streak.
Brendan Jarvis:
And the pace of agency is quite different to the pace and the rhythm of being embedded in a tech product company. How has that been, that shift back to agency been for you and what could people coming from tech into agency expect from that? Mm-hmm Change of pace and rhythm.
Jane Austin:
Well, it's actually not as hectic. I think agency is obvious this you
Brendan Jarvis:
Not.
Jane Austin:
Yeah, I mean coming from startups and scale up and things, I'm actually finding the pace at Digitas, it's really, it's reasonable. It's time to think and consider. It's time to do research to stay in abreast of recent terms, to understand technology. The pace of agency life is, it's fast, but it's not as mad and as hectic as big startups and stick scale up. And because they have a runway, they have to get stuff shipped and they have to have a business before the money runs out. I mean, it is true. I think I need to think of another way to say it because startups, they basically have to get to product market fit and get philosophy and get customers before the money run out. And with an agency you kind of don't have that kinda manic impetus. Not all or nothing but
Brendan Jarvis:
Different pressures because if you don't keep the clients happy or the client's businesses change, you can lose the account. And so there is still that healthy level of, well hopefully healthy level of anxiety that sits over people.
Jane Austin:
Yes, it's true. But then I think the other thing that we want to do or I want to do is not really have a do projects but instead be a partner for clients. Clients, I think. So there's a staff shortage. Everyone knows there's a shortage of skilled people. Some clients don't need a full product team, some of them don't need a full product team for the entire year. They might just need people to do discovery or to shape a new proposition. So being a partner with a set of clients is really interesting as well cuz you're, there's points where you can really impact or have the inflection point of bringing a team in and doing some kind of workshop or delivering an M V mvp, helping people really understand what an MVP is. Helping people understand their customers. So having a long-term relationship with clients rather than just coming in, doing building a microsite and leaving, that's that not really what digitize is about. It's about having long-term relationships where you can help clients be customer-centered and be more connected. So I like that as well. I like the fact it's, it's not really advertising. No, there's nothing wrong with advertising. I, I think the way I like to work is not just do something and then hand over, but building these relationships and helping people focus on the customer. It's what I really love about
Brendan Jarvis:
It. And you've obviously been quite successful building relationships in your career as far as I could tell. Looking through LinkedIn is one of the things I like to do before these conversations is that you've been in the most senior, if not very close to the most senior design leadership role in the companies that you've worked for since about 2013. So for about eight years. When you first took on your very first senior leadership position in design, cast your mind back, what did you think being a design leader was all about? And given where you are now, how has that changed for you over the past eight years?
Jane Austin:
Well, I don't know if I had kind of role models as much. The first thing I happened is I was sort of promoted to people who'd previously been peers. And that was a bit of a disaster because I just didn't know how to act and I apologized for being promoted. I'm really sorry I got promoted and what it just felt like I was letting them down somehow and just really weird psychology. And it took me a while to sort of realize that some people I really like, but the people who were really slacking and letting other people pick up the pace. And I was really worried about addressing this with them in case they didn't like me. And then I realized, well I didn't really like them either so it didn't matter. So I had might let go of this need to be liked. And I was started more clear about what I thought fair and good behavior for your team was and being able to help people understand that and bring a team together.
But generally I've been brought in and sort of built a team from scratch seems to be, or maybe worked with two or three original people. But then I've heard a huge team and that's amazing because you're able to shape the culture. So hiring people that have again, honest and direct and really care about the customer and strong opinions slightly held and who are able to have a really good debate about something without taking it personally. And people who are supportive teammates. And so you're able to shape that culture and that's one of the joys of leadership. You're able to shape a really healthy culture where people really care and respect each other And that's been one of the joys in my career.
Brendan Jarvis:
I wanted to ask you about strong opinions loosely held. That's something that I believe in and it sounds really great and it's great when it's working, but we do fall in love with our own ideas. [laugh], particularly in creative industry and creative professions design. How do you make that work as a leader in a practical sense with your team? Or how do you know if it's not working and what do you do if it isn't?
Jane Austin:
Well, there is sort of processes to follow of checking your assumptions of mm-hmm shipping just a little thing and seeing how people react to it. Is it a button? Do people click on the button? Does the button, maybe you, instead of building an entire feature, you maybe just the smallest thing you can ship to see if people want that feature and how they would interact with it. And that way you're removing yourself from the equation, you know, have your opinions, you test them, you're wrong, you're right. And then you just continue to learn. Nobody knows everything. So I think having this humbleness and thinking about, I have no idea exactly what's going to happen, but let's try it. And being okay with failure because you don't learn. If you're sort of really brittle and scared of trying something and it goes wrong, then you're never going to learn anything.
So I think being comfortable with saying, having an opinion and say I really think we should do this. And also being conscious of when it's not working, how do you measure that? What's the KPIs? How do you know that this has got the right data that you've tested the right thing. So again, it's that rigor around designing something. It's not just making something look really pretty. It's not the kinda designer I am I don't do ui. I think it's more the thought process. Cuz we were talking earlier and I've got philosophy degree, which is basically, although it lended rendered me completely unemployable, it did help me ask questions. So it helped me, it taught me how to think and how to ask questions and how to be wrong and how to debate things and how to think clearly about things. And that's been incredibly useful, as useful as my second masters, which was all about design. And those two combined as been super helpful. Not, it wasn't planned but it turned out brilliantly.
Brendan Jarvis:
And look, there's a couple of things in there. Your second masters has a wonderful name. I think it was a masters of Hypermedia. And when I saw that I was
Jane Austin:
[laugh], it shows that long ago where when the web I'D hyperlinks. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
I loved it because I put a tweet out the other day asking if anybody in the Twitterverse previously worked at a company that described themselves as new media, which again is,
Jane Austin:
Oh my God, yes. Yeah. I worked for someone after my hypermedia degree. I worked for a company that did new media and I designed DVDs. Yeah, this is not DVD CDs, this is how old I am. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
There's any kids listening to this, they'll have no idea what that is.
Jane Austin:
Exactly. I know. This is when you sort of take a step back and say, oh my God, I'm really old. I remember CD Rams and Protect and new media. I don't feel it. But that's how I know I'm old.
Brendan Jarvis:
Coming back to this notion of learning how to ask questions, being comfortable having opinions, being comfortable with being wrong. You mentioned your first helped you to mm-hmm [affirmative] be comfortable with some of those things and no doubt you've refined that over your career. This is actually a bit of a theme if anybody's listened to multiple brave UX episodes that comes up with my guests and is really curious to hear this come up with you as well is and that's that we as people for most part of our education and the West at least, we are not very comfortable with having opinions and voicing them for fear of being wrong. And at least to me, I feel like this is doing a great disservice to well the world and ourselves and design. How do you encourage people that you are leading who may not be as comfortable as your eye voicing our opinions and being willing to be wrong? How do you encourage them to em embrace and adopt that mindset?
Jane Austin:
It's an interesting you say that there's this fear of being wrong. Now the whole scientific method is that you are continually being wrong. And I think we've almost forgotten the scientific method because people, this whole was recently with Covid. People thought that the vaccine might work in one way or that Covid might spread in one way and they were wrong. And now people say no, they've been completely discredited. They were wrong. But actually, yeah, no pure, purely the scientific method of you, you have hypothesis and you're wrong and it's okay and then you've learned something by being wrong. And yeah, we're maybe taught that in science at school, but not really. We're not really thoughts the taught the philosophy of science or the western philosophy of hypothesis and refuting it. So anyway, digress. I think no, but
Brendan Jarvis:
It's fundamental isn't that's a fundamental basis for how we engage. And it is does sometimes feel like at the moment we're slipping back into the dark ages in terms of our mentality of looking at what's going on, particularly with the pandemic.
Jane Austin:
It's true. And yeah, opinions, feelings and opinions are as important as sort of rigor. It's very interesting. We could talk about that a lot about the what's happening to be the way that people communicate and to our media, but we won't, maybe we'll do that over a beer sometime. Sounds good. I think sort of modeling the behavior you want. So being comfortable being wrong or admitting you're wrong. So modeling that and most teams and organizations, you have a sort of set of objectives or behaviors or things that you need to know in order to see what level you are and what you need to do to get promoted to the next level. So making that almost canonical, sort of codifying that you know should be comfortable with ambiguity, with uncertainty and you need to make yourself comfortable with it if you want to progress to the next level.
So making that really clear and modeling it and sort of praising people for this and doing case studies that show this or you have team meetings and you get someone to talk about their project and they talk about how they were, they thought this was going to happen, actually something else happened and you use the data to find this. So just reinforcing the message in a whole variety of ways. And I think the worst possible way of designing is this sort the design hero, the genius, the lone genius that goes into a room and comes out with some kind of beautiful thing. And that might be great for print and brands, but for something that people are actually living with and using. It's, you know, have to use data, you have to spend time understanding the customers, you have to experiment and you have to continually improve both in this sort of small sense, improving buttons or small frictions, but also experimenting to know what feature you should build next or what big bets you should take.
Nobody has the answers. The only way is to unpack everything and do small experiments and small value test. Some small MVPs like proper MVPs, not just a shit website, but most people think an MVP is a shit version of something but an MVP that really helps you understand is my hunch or is this thing I'm going to do right before you invest any time in building it. So I think that sort of rigor is really helpful. Also, getting people to think that product mindset, should we build this feature? If we build this feature, what were we not doing? Why are we spending on the engineering effort? Is it actually going to bring us value? Is it going to bring the customer value? What do we have to do? Do we have to retire something else? So we're able to think really holistically around every sort of step of the design process and become a real partner to product and to technology that between you, between those three disciplines you're able to understand what's the least we can do for the maximum effort. And always thinking that, I think they trying to encourage this way of thinking is how you get people to be comfortable with ambiguity.
Brendan Jarvis:
I wanna come back to what you said at the very beginning and I'm in danger of stereotyping here, but I'll do it anyway because I think this is something that's worthwhile discussing and that is being vulnerable enough to demonstrate to your team your direct reports, particularly in at the level that you've operated where you've had a hundred people effectively in your reporting line that you're willing to be wrong. That strikes me as a very brave thing to do, but it also strikes me as not necessarily embodying the dominant masculine [laugh] business culture that we operate with in tech, which is 80% male and 80% white male. To be fair, being vulnerable as a male is not usually a character trait that is embraced by many male leaders. Now you are obviously a female and not just a female, but you're a woman who has achieved executive level design roles. So that makes you a very rare leader in the field and that's subjectively speaking and you've managed to do that, exhibiting leadership traits that are possibly not the common, not the norm has the descent.
Jane Austin:
Oh I was going to say I probably would've gone better and probably being achieved more from my own career and if I'd been a bit more like maybe not decisive is the word, but more kind of force phone direct in this kind of alpha male type thing. But then I don't think the product would've been as good. I don't think so. I think I'm still learning to how to balance, making sure that I have, that I'm presenting myself in a way that's is as effective as it can be in these male dominated places. And also creates a great team culture and also creates a great product. And that balancing act is been very difficult. I can't say that I've got it right is definitely the reason I wanted to join Digitas. It's got female c e o, it's first female CEO I've worked with. She's fantastic and just a very different kind of culture, a different way of being and the chief creative officer as a woman. And that's the other reason I joined Digitas. Apart from the opportunity of doing, thinking more broadly than product, thinking about the full experience but also the opportunity of working beside these two very, very senior women and learning from them and also not having to have this kind of alpha male thing. Not well having to lean into that too much but be a bit more true to myself.
Brendan Jarvis:
So that alpha male thing, is this a real consideration or has this been for you? Yeah, I know you can't speak for other people, but as you've been sort of coming up through the ranks if you like and getting to where you've managed to get to, has this been something that you've been mindful of and you've had to navigate?
Jane Austin:
Oh totally. I think everybody does as a small working class [laugh] women, definitely. I've often been the only women in the room and maybe not sometimes not the only public school person in the room. And I've definitely been the outsider and it's been difficult and I'm sure if I'd maybe had a better mentor or someone to help me navigate I would've been much more successful. So I think yeah, I've had to sort of learn as I go and I do mentor sort of younger people as well, younger women to try and help them navigate this. So maybe I think I definitely had, I been more sort of speaking the business talk, coming with a bit more of a sort of alpha male attitude. I'm sure I would've been much more successful but maybe I wouldn't have been true to myself and I wouldn't have had enjoyed working with the people that I enjoyed that much. So it's definitely a balancing
Brendan Jarvis:
Act. My wife, she's a ophthalmology registrar so I got one more year of training until she is almost, or she'd be almost a consultant at that point. As you can imagine, medicine's very male dominated as well. But most of the trouble that Rebecca's had with her professional journey has actually come from other women, which is ironic. Yes.
Jane Austin:
But this is, sorry I still speaking over's. Alright, there's a slight lag but I dunno if this is something that we should touch in on, but sometimes the other women who've kind of gone before have had to be that kind of almost verging on aggressive taking the sort of real alpha male traits and they've, maybe they're even more hyper male than the men cuz they've had to do that to succeed. So then it becomes, they're like, why do I have to do that you tour, I dunno what psychology is going on. But yeah, definitely this one particular woman has been dreadful, but apart from that I think I've had some really great supportive women too.
Brendan Jarvis:
Jane, I wanna pick up on something you said a little bit earlier about mentoring other women. Now that you're a senior leader, what sort of things are you telling them? How are you helping them to better navigate their careers?
Jane Austin:
Lots and lots of it is about office politics and about how they present themselves and how they talk and how they deal with imposter syndrome, how they deal with their nerves, how they deal with disagreements or people trying to steamroll them. And it's really interesting, there's, when I was more junior and I mentored people more junior than me, a lot of it was like here's the technique you should use or here's this particular tool you should use. But now it's all about navigating and trying to protect who people in your team are trying to make a project happen or trying to make sure that processes are followed and really helping people find their voice and not get sort of talked over or not feel that they're inadequate. As I said, imposter syndromes a real thing for so many people and I don't think that things are getting better now. So much better. So obviously I'm older as we talked about, but when I started when I was younger there was some older women I think who'd what, a couple in particular I think who'd had to become almost a sort of cartoonish version of a tough badass so they could get on. And I've not really seen people having to behave like that now. I do think things are getting better. I think people are more conscious of privilege and giving people space to speak and not looking like a jerk. So I do think people,
Brendan Jarvis:
So were they embodying Maggie Thatcher or something? Is that what sort of comes to mind for you?
Jane Austin:
Yes, yes. Yeah, it's a bit of that, yeah. Whereas now I think people are, there's lots of different ways of being and people are more comfortable with different ways of being and people are, I think given the space to be themselves in a way that hadn't certainly, gosh, when I was much younger and I was witnessing these older people and how they behaved. But yeah, it's still not easy. It's definitely still not easy. I think you have to develop a bit of a thick skin and then you also as a designer you have to learn to speak business. Business is a language that was something I did not know how to speak the hell's a kpi, what does it mean? What's the revenue? And that's, I know I observed as well sometimes marketing was able to dominate the conversation about customers cause the marketing people had numbers so they were able to say, well we did this and it's resulted in this 2% uplift.
But then perhaps the product of the brand, people were saying, well we changed this but they weren't able to measure it or they weren't able to, it was a bit more fluffy. And so the marketing were able to drive the conversation a lot more because they were talking about money and revenue and business numbers, which had this really hard factual, quite recognizable impact in a way that some other design perhaps doesn't. So that's the thing to learn as well, is to try and talk about design in a much more kind of impactful numbers revenue type way to me ages to learn that. I wish somebody told me that years ago because being able to assume this way of talking and it helps people understand why you're important. You can't just say, well users like it or that is doesn't mean anything. You have to construct a narrative about what you're doing and why you're doing it that will resonate.
And so it's almost like you have to do user research with your organization. Not just cause your users, but you have to do research with your organization to think who's in charge, what sort of things matter to them, how do people talk, how do people act, how do I camouflage myself and get people to listen? And that took me just to learn as well. I wish somebody told me that too, to take a step back and listen and just see how things work and don't try and change people's mind by telling they should be doing a particular technique. People don't care. You know, have to talk about what the outcome is for them in a way that resonates and is important to them. So that's been my big advice. People are so often there's a stage in your career when you get really hung up in methodologies and process and why you're doing something and actually it's meaningless. You just have to think about what is the impact you're having and what's the least you can do to have the biggest impact. And then how do you tell people about
Brendan Jarvis:
It? Yeah, be friends with the spread spreadsheet but also be friends with the one pager. Yeah.
Jane Austin:
If you don't know how much your business revenue is and what your targets are and why you've contributed to them, even if you can't really quantify it, but what you've done, you think that and you're not telling people about it, then you're not really going to get the recognition that you need.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, well your language, you are failing to communicate with the business. Yes. And your language is falling on deaf ears. Yes. I wanna come back to the context of mentoring these young and upcoming or younger and upcoming female leaders. Is it more important for them to be authentic or to be professional?
Jane Austin:
I don't think that's a binary question. I think you have to be both. You know, can't, you'd absolutely have to be both. You have to be professional, but you can do it by still being human and being funny and not having, you're working in design, we're not like barristers or something. You can still be getting yourself to work. But you know, definitely have to be professional. You have to understand the culture of where you are. If you were working in a trading company or the ft, you'd probably be different work than if you were a startup or one of these funky advertising agencies. So you really, I think have to think about how you fit in, but in a way that's still true to you. So yeah, both it's not a binary, binary one or another.
Brendan Jarvis:
You also would to, were talking about needing to speak the language of business and communicate to your other stakeholders with numbers and in a way that makes sense to them so that you can actually affect change. One of the gripes that design designers often have particularly in enterprise is that they feel like they're viewed as the coloring in department. Yes.
Jane Austin:
How
Brendan Jarvis:
Much of that is actually our own fault?
Jane Austin:
Oh, that's a good question. Isn't it a hard one to answer? Well I think a lot of certainly more legacy businesses or big enterprise businesses that haven't got that product mindset, then design can be sort of ended up coloring in. And if you're in an organization like that, either you leave [laugh] or you maybe have to have some small projects and you have to start changing the conversation. Design is not about what things look like. Design is about purpose and about the outcomes and it's about the experience and this is why it matters. And then you can't just tell people you have to show them. But it is easier in some places than others. But yeah, definitely design is seen as being sort of color in or the order takers go and do this for me. Andy did a very interesting thread on Twitter, the expression hippos highest paid person on the organization where it's like hippos actually no more than you as a designer.
You are just as arrogant as a designer. Hippo has full context, the hippo understands business. So why do you think the Hippo should listen to you as a designer? You should listen to the hippo. And I thought it's a really interesting reframing. So I think you have to try again. It comes to understanding person's, your internal client. So it's actually not that different being in an agency because you have, if you are a designer and you're working with these big stakeholders there, your internal client and you have to sell to them and you have to get them to buy into what you'd want to do and you have to show them results and otherwise you will just end up being a color or inner.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. You mentioned the important of showing design and we've obviously talked about the sort of quantitative aspects of being able to, at the leadership level communicate with the business about why we should be doing certain things, the trade offs that we are making, the reasons for taking a risk and pursuing value that might be different to what you thought before. I remember reading something that you'd said or maybe watching something you've said while you're at the telegraph. And I realize this is going back a little while now. So if things have changed, let me know that you said that you found that your team, and I'm quote you now you said they got a better solution faster when they all took part in solving the problems. And that was in the context of observing research. You also recommended that very senior executives, so people that occupy your type of position now and across the business get an involved and observe what's actually going on. And my question to you, now that you've sort of seen what your other leaders are at your level now are doing the things that they're having to contend within their work weeks, these people have better things to do than go and watch customers use product.
Jane Austin:
So you've actually asked me two things there. The first one was collaborative decision making and that was actually talk about cross discipline. So developers and product. And I still think that's absolutely vital because if you do, I get the completely rounded view of the problem and you're able to come, the designer might come with research and a view of the customer and the developer. The tech person might tell you that something's easy or difficult or might propose a completely different solution. And if the tech person didn't know about really what problems they were trying to solve, they might not been able to propose the correct solution and product person has to make the decisions and the tradeoffs. So you really, the great product work is done I think with all three people talking about the users, no I wouldn't get CO to come and work usability testing, but there's different kinds of research and some that's really, really impactful.
There's some where you're talking about a proposition or a big problem and you can package us up and get them to watch it. We actually had lots of people come in to watch some customers at The Telegraph, which was pretty incredible cuz they'd never actually met a customer before some of them. And they were making decisions without really knowing about the customer. So yeah, if you can somehow, I know it's a bit of a cliche, be the voice of the customer. Loads of people say we are the voice of the customer, but they're not. There's different ways of representing that and there's different stories you can tell. But I think actually telling the stories of real people that are using your product or brand, however that is really, really important. And that's one of your jobs as a designer or a researcher is to be able to be that voice and explain to people or the rest of the organization why they should do X rather than y.
I heard today I work website, a woman Amazon who's just joined Digitas and she would tell me a story that in every Amazon meeting they keep an empty chair for the customer. Even if a Jeff business is in the meeting, he would stand or somebody would have to stand, I'm sure just keep that chair empty and it's the chair for the customer. And that's just so that there is continually thinking about what the customer needs. And I think having this customer mindset to do that, you have to actually understand the customer and that's the value that design and research can add.
Brendan Jarvis:
That's humility, that story right there of keeping that seat empty for the customer. That's a really powerful and humbling demonstration of just how important the customer is to the business.
Jane Austin:
If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business really.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I know is I think people intellectually understand this, but you mentioned earlier just a few seconds ago that people had never even met a customer yet they were making all these big important decisions about how the customer experience would be shaped. And we do in enterprise in particular. And as businesses scale, we have increasing levels of abstraction that we put in the way. And I dunno where I'm going with this, but I'm keen to hear your thoughts on it.
Jane Austin:
I think one an interesting, this is the two kind of views of customers. You've got the customers in aggregate, which is all the data customers and that's used to make decisions and quite rightly so because you understand patterns and you are able to understand people across different contexts in different devices and you're able to see changes, you're able to see indicators. But often what's missing is the qualitative aspect. And this is another Jeff Bezos quote, I think it was Jeff Bezos, we'd have to check this. Which is if the anecdote contradicts the data, believe the anecdote, which just seems really counterintuitive at first. But actually you realize that you can have enormous amounts of data and it's really great and it helps make fantastic decisions. But sometimes to have that breakthrough innovation or to really understand what the key thing is or to really been able to be innovative or to transform, you really have to understand people's hopes and fears and the problems they're experiencing.
And you have to have the quo. And I think it's very difficult to innovate from data because data is lagging, it's stuff that's already happened. But if you talk to people, you are able to predict the future. You're able to say, oh well people have this problems and refix this problem in this particular kind of way, then here's something new that's got. And that's how innovation happens. So I think it's great that you have data but you need qual and you can't have quo without data. And a lot of places I think are missing that kind of quo and that innovation. And often they'll just see user researchers doing a bit of usability testing at the end of the project, which is meaningless, really can use data for that is a meaningless, you need quo and proper research at the start when you're trying to understand what problem you should solve and who you're solving it for and what problems they have and what they really need. Not what they're telling you, but actually trying to understand their lives to the point where there's, there's a solution there that you've never, maybe not thought of before. And that's where you should put your effort and your money into researching is these, trying to really understand people's lives and how your business can connect with them rather than doing a usability test. Anyone could do a usability test really.
Brendan Jarvis:
And we're not saying that usability testing isn't important, but we are saying that there are better ways of de-risking, well this is at least what I'm absolutely, I'm hearing de better ways of de-risking.
Jane Austin:
Yes, early. And I think early a lot, early and often and small. And I think rather than waiting and you do your research and it's a usability test at the end, which is great, it's really important, but it's not going to transform your business. It's not going to change things. It's not going to give you that step change. It's not going to make, it's not really going to de-risk anything cause you've already built everything or you've already spent time in designing something if you want to. I think it's understanding these trends and your customer what they need in their lives and then understanding what you should do for them. And then experimenting to see if you're doing the right thing and if it's actually worth doing. And it's so it's lots of points of talking to the customer rather than starting with assumptions, building something and then doing one round of user research at the end. Not, and in fact for that kind of user research you could know that's where you could do testing at scale optimization. You can use data to see where the funnel's broken, what problems people are having. And you can be a little bit removed from customers. So I think you need to fill picture, you need call and quant and you need it at different times and you need it for different purposes.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, gotta be really smart about what you use and when. Mm-hmm. And thinking about the dynamics we were talking about, the cross cross-functional collaboration, the different disciplines that are involved in making product and that can sometimes involve SMEs that actually sit outside the product or design organization as totally as well hey, you've got this sort of mantra and I really like it, which is so managed by consent, not by consensus. And I thought that was really powerful, at least where my mind went with that when I thought about what that might mean. But then I also am aware that that's probably one of those things that again, that is easier to say and harder to achieve because at least I see it relying on is a huge degree of trust amongst people to operate in that way. How have you shaped your design orgs to have that trust in each other and from the rest of the business to work with consent and not consensus?
Jane Austin:
I think it depends on the organization, but ideally you would have teams that own a bit of the product. So you have the big product vision and you understand where the product's going, but you have teams that own that bit of the product and consent, not consensus. Usually that's about the product manager. If you have a really great product person, the box stops with them and you give, as a designer, a researcher, you give them all the information and the arguments to say that this should be happening, but it might not or it might have to be done in a different way because a product manager has to think about tech restraints, about budgets, about feasibility, about how you would sell the features. So eventually they have to make the decision and your job is to say, okay, they've made the decision, maybe I don't agree with it, but that's their decision.
I've given them all the information I possibly can, how can I help them de-risk that decision? How can I help them be as successful as they can? And so I think it's to do with teams, autonomous teams to do with features or parts of the product rather than the design team. Cuz the design team's kinda like home base. But really for a designer to be effective, they have to be working in this collaborative way on a particular problem. And it's not like we are a sort of centralized design team that somebody comes to us and said, oh, I need two wire frames this week. And you go off, you go, not really how you get the great work by having people that really understand the customer and understand the problem and even if it's just for a short period of time. But they're able to take in the data, the quant understand the tech feasibility and they're able to collaborate. And then you need a really strong decision maker who decides what they're going to do next.
Brendan Jarvis:
And with that decision maker calling the shots as to what happens next, it sometimes means that the thing that you've poured your heart and soul into and the research that you've carried out or the design that you've created may not go ahead. So there's this mm-hmm risk inherent in the way in which we work. And this is probably in all professions, but particularly in design that we overinvest in what we do and we get our feelings hurt when it doesn't see the light of day. And I'm going to quote you now, you've said to be a good designer you need stamina and you need to be comfortable with failure and ambiguity. So when you are hiring for your design organization, you are sitting say, I'm sitting across the table from you and I've applied for a job to work for you, Jane, how do you work out as the design leader, the hiring manager, whether or not I'm someone who embodies that stamina and that comf comfort with failure in ambiguity.
Jane Austin:
There's a technique called behavioral interviewing, which I've been trying to train myself in and read lots of books and talk to people who do it really well. And you ask people to tell you stories about that help you uncover, do they have stamina? You don't say to someone, do you have stamina? I say, tell me about a time that it was really difficult to get something shipped. What did you do? How did you feel? Tell me about a time that you know might have done a presentation and then it got canceled at the last minute. Tell me about a time. So you tried to think about some examples that would be the opposite, things that might cause you to need stamina. And then you ask people to tell your stories about it and then you see how they reacted, what their thought process, what did they do, what would they do differently next time to see if there's a growth mindset. So it's interviewing people, it's the same as user research, it's getting people to tell stories and really listen and unpack what they're saying and to ask really good questions to try and dig more deeply into it. But I also think as
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, I like that
Jane Austin:
As a designer, you shouldn't be designing too much before you might do a prototype or a vision something, but then it's a prototype or a vision and that's okay if it doesn't happen. But if you're really spending your time designing stuff that might get shipped, you should be doing the least amount of work until something is actually going to be shipped. And that's up to you and understanding how the product's going, understanding what the roadmap is, what is the least you can do to know that you're right. And then you do the next little thing. So it's like increments. So spending three weeks, designing something end to end is just an absolute waste of time you might have had done in the past and you kind of throw it over the wall to some developers and they dunno what they were doing. But actually the way for things to, I think to get to again sort of innovate, to have efficiency, to de-risk is for things to do the smallest thing possible and everyone to understand what's happening and then do get some data. Oh yes, that's what expected or not. And then the next smallest thing, the smallest thing might be a button or it might be a whole feature in an app. It depends, but you definitely shouldn't be doing huge amounts of stuff before it can be shipped unless it's for a purpose, vision or an experiment or some kind of design spike. But then why you're doing it and it's okay if it doesn't happen.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Yeah, that's really key. I think that's a really key bit of advice there is what's the least you can do to know whether or not not over invest in the work and not get caught up to emotionally in what you're doing. That said in mm-hmm in enterprise, particularly enterprise at scale is often the constraints that are external to the immediate team that you're working in. We're talking about policies here and other things that may affect design, which can frustrate designers and mean that things don't happen necessarily as quickly as they'd like or in the way that they would like. How do you encourage resilience in your team to deal with the ups and downs of just dealing with an imperfect world?
Jane Austin:
Oh, I think, yeah, it's a really interesting question cuz the world is imperfect. Although God who was the philosopher said, this is the best possible world. And oh God, who was, I'll have to Google that later. The best of all possible worlds. So yeah, it could be a lot worse. So I think maybe it's just about being a bit more grown up. The world is not very perfect and things don't happen and it's great to be passionate about your job, but it really is just a job. It's not like you're trying to save lives, shipping a feature to make somebody a lot more money. And maybe you're passionate about it because you can see loads of users are having an absolute nightmare and you want to make their life better and that can be frustrating. But just because you think something, it's okay. I think it's okay just to say, well that didn't work out. Or it's a fine line to dread. Cause you have to really, I think care enough to want to do a good job but also not care enough that it's, take it deeply personally. And maybe that's the thing, you know, should get beaten out of you at the start of your career. You'd like lots of grits and everybody telling you it's wrong. And then in the work and knowing be able to divorce yourself from that I think is a sign of maturity as a design.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yes. Yeah. Mean we've obviously been talking about the sort of designer and the trenches now and let's zoom out and talk about design leadership. I listened to your talk, the three stages of leadership, which is a fantastic talk. I really, really got a lot of value from it. It's something that you said in there that I thought was particularly insightful that I really had to ask you about today was that you said that direct level experience at direct level and above, you need to find out where the actual power lies in the organization. I'm paraphrasing, yeah, but that's pretty much what you said and I thought that was really, really interesting. Why is that so important for design leaders to do
Jane Austin:
So I think, as I said earlier, it's understanding the culture and how decisions are made. I mean, when you go into a new job, one of the things like I always try and find out is how are decisions made? Is it always somebody else have a final say or do you go round and quietly talk to people and then you all get in a room and agree? Or do you go into a room and you'll have an argument or is it the loudest voices? Or actually you've always got to do what the CTO says because, and then you find these things out and then if you are like your job is to try and provide top cover for the team and make things happen and get budget and make try. And if you're, maybe there's an old-fashioned waterfall of working, get buy-in to try something different and get people excited about it. So in order to do that, you have to know who is going to be for it and against it. And you have to understand what their fear might be and who actually owns the budget, who you have to go and convince and why and who might be on your side and why not, and how you talk to people. So yeah, it's a bit of game of thronesy, I think. Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
Sounds like it.
Jane Austin:
If you just go blundering in and go right everybody, we have to get into triads and then we're going to do this user research. And because I say so it's never going to happen.
Brendan Jarvis:
We've just been speaking about power in the context of understanding where the power sits and the wider organization. I wanna bring this down to you now cuz I also heard you describe your relationship with your own power and it was quite a, this is terrible, quite a powerful moment in the tour.
Jane Austin:
I see what you did there.
Brendan Jarvis:
You said that you, and again I'm paraphrasing, you didn't realize your own power and that you used to sit in meetings at MOO at the time in this where the C-suite was present and not say very much.
Jane Austin:
Yes.
And actually it was a job before Moo. But yeah, this is exactly, this is what I mean about finding your voice and having something to say and seeing it in a way that's actually relevant and resonates with people. Yeah, I had no idea how to operate this. Yeah, it's the job. Couple of jobs before me and yeah, I got promoted and I didn't have a mentor, I didn't have anyone explaining, suddenly I was like flung in his room. I was the only designer, the only women, and they're all talking about these three letter acronyms and about money and I didn't have any data and I was the whole thing. I was completely outta my depth. And I realized that that's you as a designer, you should be training yourself in that bit as well. I know now there's design MBAs and MBAs about product and I think it's, it's become a wider problem. I must've been an early adopter of the problem is just what I did the rest of the business was, there just wasn't a connection. It wasn't relevant. I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't know how to confidently disagree with people. The fact that there was like the CEO there, I didn't know what to say to em. The whole thing was just overwhelming and terrifying. So that was one side about look.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. I imagine a lot of people listening to this either do or have done and felt like it felt like a felt similar to what you did. What's your message for them?
Jane Austin:
Well, you're not alone. And I think one is, I mean it's probably just as I've been seeing is what is relevant to these people? What is relevant? What is the interest in seeing? How can you tell a story about what you do? This may going to help them realize how important what you do is. Cuz it really is, it's not just coloring and how are you going to help them understand it and how are you going to help them see the importance of being customer-centric and the importance of good design but in their language and how are you going to get confident to be able to let maybe disagree or to understand what they're talking about. Be able to couch your disagreement or your recommendations Again, in this kind of business speak, which you're not really taught at design school or anything, it's just very separate.
So I think if you can get funding to do one of those design MBAs, then do it. I think if you want to get to that level, that's really important. And also do you want to get to that level because you don't really be doing any design anymore. It depends if what frustrates you. For me it's kind of like every time I'd kind of felt like I'd fix something, I'd realize actually I'm appreciated with this thing and it's actually, it's going to be a bigger problem and now I want to fix this. And then so it's kind of just fix bigger and bigger problems. So that's I think what my career has been mostly accidental.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I did wonder about that cause you moved from the sort of practitioner path to the men managerial path and I think you described that as almost like an accident. And then at the time there wasn't really the principal designer type roles and other There
Jane Austin:
Wasn't. And I wanted more money from, I wanted more money and the only way to get more money was to be promoted to management. I was like, okay then I'm do it if I wouldn't mind a bit more money
Brendan Jarvis:
Got that's double sword isn't it?
Jane Austin:
And then I was like, oh this isn't designing, what the hell is this? And then I didn't know what this was. That's taken me a about 10 years to figure out and I still haven't figured it out. But yeah, that was my sort of message as well you're really good at your job now. Prepared to totally suck at another dog Cause it's a completely different job that nobody prepares you for.
Brendan Jarvis:
And there's something, there's something interesting in that as well. And I had a chat with Marty Kagan earlier on in the air. Oh
Jane Austin:
He described Mike Jacob so much. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh fantastic. Really, really clear thinker and has had a wonderful career experience as well before he started the Silicon Valley product group. But we were talking about his time I believe it was at hp, his first job out of college. And he had, most of the time he was there, he had two mentors or two people that were coaching him from different one in his discipline. And someone else said he sought out in another part of the business, which was in product cause he started in engineering and there was this real emphasis and I believe it still exists, at least at some of the companies in Silicon Valley of coaching the next generation of leaders. And they're very serious about it. The best companies in the world are very serious about it. Not many companies do that. And I feel that that is doing ourselves. And even through your own experience that you've just described, Jane, that's doing, that's done you a disservice in terms of mm-hmm [affirmative] not being able to accelerate your understanding of how to manage. And you have to learn a lot through trial and error as opposed to having someone help point you in the right direction, which could be useful.
Jane Austin:
I know, think about the waste of money. There's me, you give me a promotion, you gimme more money and I'm not being effective and other people aren't really effective and then I might leave because I feel terrible. And then you have to hire somebody and then are they the right person? And then the other people when they may leave cause the culture's awful, what a waste. But I think you let a lot of people are just kind of dropped in and it would make perfect sense to identify sort of talent or opportunities and really help grow people so that they stay with you and they stay with the organization. I mean most people I think average about mean. In fact in tech it's insane that something like an 18 months tenure in London cuz people are going from startup to startup to new job to bigger job. You've seen a lead, people like work, they've been working five years on at the same salary. So people aren't really motivated to stay around. We go to get different stock options. And so companies should be thinking about this, how do you invest in people? It's so important. And so I think really under underserved people aren't given. So the confidence and the counseling and the coaching and the mentoring and the training and really companies should be investing in this.
Brendan Jarvis:
And I think just because we're all stressed out of our brains with not enough time or at least we perceive there's not enough time. And I think that's worrying for people in general as life goes on and where we are taking this economy. But also it's like you're saying it's quite damaging to the culture of an organization of people are changing every 18 months and moving on to the next. It's very me,
Jane Austin:
Very mercenary. Don't quote me that figure. It was, I can't remember who said to me but was I remember being astonished cuz I thought, well two years is kind of okay, but 18 months just seemed to insane. I don't know where I need them, need to check that data. But yeah, so if you sue, you should give people a reason to stay, which is that you not just paying them more, but that you are investing them. That they, they're learning and that they're feeling that they're growing in the job and that it's not just about coming to doing the work, but you're also understanding what it is that you need, you're going to do next. And being prepared for that. And feeling that you are growing as a person, maybe becoming more comfortable with ambiguity or whatever it is that I think it's really important that the companies invest and they really don't. And it's a, it's interesting because if we've seen the rise of the chief people officer, but I haven't really seen the sort of a reflected rise in mentoring or growing people. It, maybe it's cause I'm coming from startups, I don't know. But there's definitely seems a lack of investment in mentoring and training that somewhere like HP did do. Yeah, that's incredible sort of growth grounding that Marty Agen
Brendan Jarvis:
Had and the, there's something else that's going on related to this labor market that we're in at the moment. And I believe it's global and I think Covid has had a lot to do with this going remote. So there there's companies in New Zealand like Xero who are one of our product success stories who are now quite happy to hire people all around the world on a remote basis. And I know this has been happening as well in companies outside of New Zealand where New Zealand talent is now sitting at home in their bedrooms working for overseas companies for much bigger wages than they can secure here. And the sad story and all of this, and there's possibly a couple of threads here, but one I wanted to ask you about which is related to coaching and developing the next generation is there's a huge amount of gusto to hire mid-career and senior design talent. And yet the barrier to entry for junior design talent to actually get into the industry that is supposedly booming, at least to me seems to have never have been higher reading some of these job ads of what those expectations are, what what's going on there. Absolutely.
Jane Austin:
But it's not just design. I'm a huge Reddit fan and there's some Reddit called recruiting where people share all these insane requirements for entry level positions, five years experience for being an internship. What is going on? I don't know, is there a people scared of risk? But it seems to be junior roles across the board. I've seen it in engineering as well. So I don't know, maybe there just isn't this culture of mentoring and growing people and taking a risk on people and hiring for potential rather than actually where people are there just seems, I think hiring and mentoring and growing people has really become very broken
Brendan Jarvis:
And it's very short term it seems to me to be very short term. I mean what just extrapolate this out a decade, where does this leave us as an industry? Where does this leave design
Jane Austin:
One product?
Brendan Jarvis:
Hundred percent. Yeah.
Jane Austin:
Yeah, it's true. Maybe it's risk or people, if people think why should I invest in someone or they're going to bug her off after two years or I don't really know. And then everyone's like you say, is really busy. So you haven't got the time for people to be trained. Maybe there's not a budget for someone to be paid who not actually doing anything except actually you're investing. So I think hiring is not seen as investing. It's quite tactical. You hire someone, they do the job, they go, but it'd be great if the industry could think differently about how you grow talent and how you hire people. And maybe it's like, I know that's actually the advertising industry. It's been pretty good at that new blood, D N A D, there's all sorts of student awards and taking people straight out of art school or whatever and it'd be great. Maybe that's something we could bring into design and product design actually competitions bringing people out of uni, sponsoring people. But yeah, there's a huge gap there. Interesting. Maybe that's given me something to think about.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well let's change gears and talk about something else, which is this challenge that a lot of design leaders face when working with product in particular, which is the cadence of design and the cadence of delivery and the different expectations that sit around that. Now there seems to me to be this at least a bit of a culture clash between delivery and design culture. And they're usually managed in two separate parts of the organization as well, which may have something to do with it. We can't hear your experience of this. How have you balanced that tension between we've gotta ship something and we've gotta make sure that what we're shipping is actually adding value.
Jane Austin:
I don't think there is a tension. There shouldn't be a tension. Yeah. I think if you do it, if you've got a well structured organization, there shouldn't be a tension at all. You should be maybe shipping five experiments and then you increment on the one that's one or that you've done. You've got a roadmap and you've kind of like, it's a bit fuzzy in the way out. And then you're incrementing towards the product vision and you're doing that with tech and you've got a team that's all working together when it works well on market cake and talks about this so brilliantly. But when it works well, it's like you, it's like a machine. Big experimental little experiments, this roadmap. You've got my boss Chad used to talk about operating in three horizons. You've got the near horizon. So they're like, things are pretty solid or you know what you're going to ship, you're just incrementing towards it.
Things are a bit, maybe mid horizon, it's a bit fuzzy. You might do, they're doing some research while the rest of the team are shipping and then you've got big bets and you're kind of working across the horizons and is I this why great product, great tech and great designers are so impactful. Because if you get that sort of cadence and you get that kind of combination of delivery and discovery, you are like, it's an absolute rocket ship, but people really struggle now. It does fall apart. If you're kind of chucking, I don't know, Figma files over the wall to a developers, then yes, I can see that being really problematic. But you ideally wouldn't be working at that. You'd be working in these teams and it's going to be, but that's me coming from a kind of digital transformation and startup kind of background where this is the way of working.
I think it's going to be an interesting challenge taking this into clients. And that's one of the reasons again, why want to be at digital? Cuz I've seen the power of working like this and I want to go and tell people, you know, don't have to be doing shut go them when things are just grinding slowly to halt. Yeah. Cause tech aren't quite sure what they should ship first from this file. And then I've seen organizations grind to halt like this. And in fact the Telegraph when we started things that sort of ground to halt and we did a thing called the laxative project to clear the pipes to show that you, instead of putting grinding to halt, because you're chucking loads of designs of the wall to tech and the tech guys, well, which, what do I build first? What do I do? And if then everyone spent ages doing QA and there was just such, so much waste. But this way of working, which is really efficient, reduces waste, reduces risk, it makes people really empowered you work at speed. So showing the power of this to different organizations, maybe legacy organizations has definitely gotta be excited cuz it's an amazing way to work.
Brendan Jarvis:
Jane, this has been such a great conversation. You're such an inspiring female leader, and I really wanna give you this space right now to share a message with other female design leaders or females that are aspiring to be design leaders. What's your greatest hope for them? What do you really wish they would know or achieve? What's the thing that you want them to go forward and do?
Jane Austin:
I mean, maybe not just female leaders. I think anyone who is not of the sort of model, the archetype of this sort of thrusting businessman, but people who want to [laugh] find their own way to be no, to be leaders. Whether you're like gay, straight, maybe shy neurodiverse women or whatever. But yeah, there's, diversity is power. The world is diversity. Often the way that products are built or decisions are made is come from a very sort of mono monocultural view. So you are, it's an amazing opportunity to, if you can be confident and find your voice and find your place to be able to make, come from different viewpoints, it makes products better, it makes everything better. So yeah, I think it's just be confident, believe in your power and and learn some business lingo.
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh], very important. All very important things to do.
Jane Austin:
That's your kpi. Yeah. Yeah. Just yeah, do treat the organization you would treat a product. How does it work? How are you going to operate in it? How are you going to be effective? And who's your audience?
Brendan Jarvis:
Great. Really important messages. Jane, I've really enjoyed the conversation today. It's been so great to hear your stories directly and in person and the insights that you've come across during your career. Thank you for so generously sharing those with me today.
Jane Austin:
Oh, Brendan, you're so lovely. Thank you. It was lovely spending time with
Brendan Jarvis:
You. You're most welcome. Jane, if people wanna find out more about you and all the wonderful things you're up to, what you're doing at Digitas and building that team, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jane Austin:
Add me on LinkedIn or Twitter. So my Twitter handle is @MsJaneAustin. So it's my name, [email protected]. So they're probably the two ways you can get hold of me most easily. Definitely. I'd love to hear from people, maybe people don't think they're quite right for a role at digital. Come and talk to me anyway. People might want to be mentored or I could find you a mentor or any questions, or you might want to get some advice about how to change things in your organization, or you might even want to work with rather than four. I'd just love to talk to lots of people. I think it's a really exciting new chapter working in an agency because it is solving these, again, I always said it was thinking about the next problem to solve. So this one of sort of connecting everything so that your email and your CRM and your product and your marketing is all connected. And if you're, it's a really nice frictionless experience. So not just a great product, but just a great experience. And that's the challenge we have. We're going to solve it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh, and I have no doubt that you'll do a stellar job of resolving that challenge. Thanks Jane. And to everyone else, thank you tuned in. It's been great having you here as well. Everything that we've covered, including where you can find Jane and digitize and all the great things that are going on will be included in the show notes. If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world class leaders in product design and UX, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe to the podcast, and also tell someone else about the podcast if you think that get some value out of hearing these wonderful conversations that we have on Brave UX. If you wanna reach me, you can also find a link to my LinkedIn profile on the show notes, or you can find me on LinkedIn just by searching Brendan Jarvis. Or you can visit thespaceinbetween.co.nz, that's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.

Jane Austin

From Designer to Executive Design Leader

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Who is Jane Austin?

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