Jaime Levy
Where Did All the Design Heroes Go?
In this episode of Brave UX, Jaime Levy shares the importance (and danger) of putting yourself into your work, how UX going mainstream has changed the field, and wonders where are all of our design heroes?
Highlights include:
- How is the mainstreaming of UX changing the field?
- Why is it important to put yourself into your work?
- How far do we have to go to create a meaningful career?
- Why did you stop teaching UX design at university?
- How do you reconcile being burned out with being an overachiever?
Who is Jaime Levy?
Jaime is a world-leading UX and Product Strategist, based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 30 years she has been a pioneer of digital products and services, working for Fortune 500 companies and award-winning agencies, across many sectors.
The author of the best selling book, “UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Solutions”, which has been translated into 9 languages and is now in its second edition - Jaime knows a thing or two about UX strategy.
A passionate and longstanding contributor to the UX community, Jaime regularly delivers workshops, online masterclasses, and speeches at conferences, such as Interaction Latin America, From Business to Buttons, and UX Week, on top of her consulting engagements.
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 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 Jaime Levy. Jaime is a world-leading UX product strategist based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 30 years, she has been a pioneer of digital products and services working for Fortune 500 companies and award-winning agencies across many sectors. The author of the best-selling book, UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Solutions, which has been translated into nine languages and is now in its second edition.
- Jaime knows a thing or two about UX strategy and she's so passionate about UX strategy that she regularly delivers both public and private workshops, online masterclass and speeches at conferences such as Interaction Latin America, From Business to Buttons, and UX Week. On top of her consulting engagements, Jaime also shares her knowledge with the upcoming generation of UXers, having previously taught product design and strategy at universities, including the University of Southern California, New York University, Claremont Graduate University, Royal College of Art, the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, and the University of Oxford. A straight talker who pulls no punches, I've been looking forward to exploring UX strategy and the changing nature of our field with Jaime on Brave UX today. Jaime, welcome to the show,
- Jaime Levy:
- Brendan. Brendan, thank you for having me. I hope I can live up to that amazing bio. Who is that person?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- All you. That's all you. And I'm sure, I have no doubt given our pre-recording chat that you will love up live up to those expectations. And Jaime, I believe you have a connection, a bit of a connection to New Zealand and it's a musical one. What's the story there?
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, it goes back to the post-punk era. Actually in the late eighties, I was living in Europe and someone turned me onto this New Zealand compilation that was put out by flying none. All of a sudden I got exposed to all these amazing bands and one of the bands I really loved was The Chills, and another band that I really liked on there was this band. They became Belter Space. I know they had another name before that, but then I ended up hooking up is what I guess people would say, although it turned into a full on relationship with the drummer of Belcher Space, Brent. And it was really great to have that experience because I got to go on tour with 'em when they toured parts of Europe, including going to Berlin and then on tour through the US when they opened for pavement and kind of just see what it's like and how horrible it is to really be in a band that's struggling. But they were such sweet guys really. I regret forever when I had the option to go with them to Europe versus go with them to New Zealand where they were headlining in Famous that I did not go to New Zealand. That would've been the most amazing experience to see that so some other time.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So just let's rewind that a little bit. How did you go from getting a mix CD or a mixtape to actually dating the drummer of one of the bands? How does that happen?
- Jaime Levy:
- Well, New York City, I went, I was in New York City living there after I went to nyu a friend of mine was going through a bit of a alcoholic crisis and he's like, Hey, do you need a place to stay? And I hated my horrible apartment there. He come check out my loft and I went to his two-story loft on Avenue Way and it was really amazing. And he's like, would you like it? And I'm like, yeah, I'd love it. And he's like, well, it's $800 a month, but there's two floors. But the thing is, is that there's this drummer living upstairs from this band and I'm like, oh my God, what band? And he's like Belcher space. And so basically we moved in together as kids that were invited by this person simultaneously and given different floors and fell I guess in love. I don't know what the In Love plus drugs plus music plus New York City. But that was a really fun experience to get to know someone from New Zealand. And he was a very sweet man. Sorry that I can't remember all the last names in the bands my memory shot.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh good. And what a collision. What a wonderful collision. Now you mentioned that you didn't end up going back to New Zealand with him. Have you been to New Zealand since
- Jaime Levy:
- I've never been there. I've been to Australia. I came out there a few years ago and did a workshop in Melbourne and then another workshop in Sydney and visited a cousin of mine who lives in some lakeside community near Sydney. So I did make it over to Australia, but woo. Oh my God, what a trippy place.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, they speak funny over there. I've just lost all of my Australian audience now, but that That's okay. Okay with that. No, it's all in jest. Very, it was interesting too. Yeah, they're, they're our cousins over there and we love them very much. Now I wanted to come back to what you'd mentioned about music and the post punk sort of era. I was talking to Greg Bernstein who is now a user research lead at Conde Nas a couple of weeks ago, and he ended up somehow meeting the credit director of R E m and then that threw him into his early career of designing record labels and record covers for punk bands. And I asked him the question that I'm about to ask you, is punk dead?
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, these is something dead I think is a ridiculous question. I'm sorry to say. John just asked me yesterday, is our persona's dead? What is punk for me to, what's your version of punk?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- See, I'm possibly a little bit younger than you, but my version of punk that I was exposed to would've been around the time of the mid to late nineties. So bands like No Effects Pennywise Me First and The Gimme Gimmies. So they were probably, I don't know what you'd call second or third wave. So we're not talking about the Clash or the Misfits or some of the ones that preceded them, but they of course did come into the picture. But that's kind of my idea of punk.
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, well those guys, those bands are over. I don't know. I think if we're talking about punk as an ethic, it's not dead. It's a way of life, a way of seeing the world. And I, it's saying that anything is anarchy's dead or democracy is dead. It, it's ridiculous to try to make it into more than just a seman seman debate. It's sematic debate, semantical debate. But if you're talking about music, everybody, some of my friends who are a little bit older that grew up in la, they got to see some of the germs and some of these earlier bands when they were much cooler than when I saw them because I didn't start really seeing bands until 82. And a lot of all my really favorite bands, all the post punk stuff from London, if you think about the Joy Division and the early first records of Gang four, that stuff came out.
- I was a little bit where my mom wasn't like legging when you go to clubs in Hollywood. So there's like, there's always that. And then so Myers of Punk is more of the post punk stuff. And I think as depending on when you came of age, there's like certain bands that are going to be that your sweet spot that are influenced that you love, that you're going to love for the rest of your life. Because my son is obsessed. He's almost 17 with this band called The Garden and they're amazing. But they're amazing because they sound like a mashup of joy. Division meets Big Black like eight and you hear Gang of Four and you hear all these other things, but he doesn't hear it and they're great, but how much originality they have, I don't know. So I feel like the intention to get people excited about music that's a bit aggressive is so important cuz mainstream music is boring, but the part of punk, and this is more of a existential crisis where people probably in your area are enough to discovered music, not even just punk by socializing with people in real life and going to shows and going to record stores and hearing what they're playing.
- And now you don't need to put any work, you don't need to be social whatsoever. You can sit in your little basement and listen to Spotify or whatever and have it suggest stuff. And so there's no effort. I don't think there's as much investment into it. It's more disposable. I could be wrong. I mean ask the Gen Z millennials, but I do feel that there's a bit of the punk spirit or any kind of spirit about music that's aggressive or breaking new ground or has something to say politically, it's hard to get that spirit across to me without it really being a live, socialized experience.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Everything is really served to us. It's so easy now, as you said, just to get at everything straight away, I used to buy punk mixtapes on cd, so I'm still on the CD era and they were a way of discovering different bands that I hadn't heard before. But now you're right. You just jump on Spotify. This potential reduction in that punk ethos or attitude that I believe you're talking about. And don't let me put words in your mouth, not that I think that you will, how has that reduction or that shift in say the last 20 years, if at all, impacted the way in which UXers who are newer to the field, people that might be of my generation and the generations after are taking to their work in terms of it really breaking new ground or really coming from a place that I get the sense that people of who came into the industry, when you have brought with them to a greater degree,
- Jaime Levy:
- I mean I feel like that answers, if we look at new apps or platforms and see something cool, I don't wanna really say this cuz I think it's depressing for Gen Z millennial people. My friend was over last night who, he was in his forties and we were having this conversation, it was one of the anti millennial rants because there's so many lazy people out there who were helicoptered to death and freak out. I'm triggered by well and it's like, oh my God, we can't even have a conversation without you being triggered. And this sort of preciousness of, I don't wanna say anything to hurt my feelings. I'm having that issue now where I can't critique a certain person or manage them in a certain way. And I don't know if it's this and I feel like there's a huge lost generation gap and I don't wanna speak, I don't wanna say that's true about people worldwide.
- I can't speak to that. I feel like I can only speak to Americans in my experience managing or teaching that generation. And what I see and what I also see through my teenage son is the lack of heroes. Certainly in my twenties you could come up to me or 19 say, who's the most amazing graphic designer out there? And I'd be like David Carson or Neville Brody, I could just list them, look at their ama, look what they did with fonts, look at this amazing thing and I wanna do that somehow. But with interactive and or you think of people who are outspoken pundits saying things, writers, I don't know. Are there millennial writers who are just breaking new grand? Are there millennial bands don't, there's so many zillion bands that come and go. I'm wondering who are the heroes for this generation to inspire them?
- Because I don't feel like they wanna necessarily be inspired by old asses like me waxing poetic about back in the day. Because the truth is, back in my day there was only 20 of us when I started. I was the first girl who was really doing interactive stuff. Certainly that was why I got so much hype and what that allowed for me to do. I mean, yes, I had to work really hard to discover and what to push the technology cuz it wasn't like, oh let me Google how to make something like low bandwidth and play off a floppy disc. I totally invent that experience and research it and no one I could call that help me or look something up. There was no nothing to look things up. You're going to go to encyclopedia or a microfish. It's not there now. But the flip side of that is I can do almost anything, whether it was with storytelling or interface design, integrating multimedia, doing the first person, I'm going to have this thing on Word where I have three DJs on this illustration.
- I'm going to hire this top illustrator who never done something for the web ever and is going to make me this picture for 75 bucks and I'm going to put dj, spooky, DJ Olive and dj, whoever was really cool in New York at that 1996. And then when you click on it, it goes to a page with their bio and when you click on their turntable, it loads up the real audio player where I've managed to digitize a mix tape of them DJing so that people could listen to it worldwide. I mean can you imagine that I could be the first person to ever think of that or do that? That would be impossible to do Now everything so much has been done, it's really hard. And I did five of those things a day, five days a week at Word. And I had people to spitball these ideas with and it was like, oh, why don't we try this?
- That's never been done. Why don't we try and to be in an environment where you're getting paid to try that? And my whole career before, and I know I'm jumping ahead, but it's like, so I feel there's one side of being in getting into a field that's early where there's so much opportunity that my was something I could leverage. But at the same time it's much harder. It was harder to do the work and now I feel it's flipped where millennials have to, if they wanna do something original that's innovative, now they have to work very, very hard to figure out what that is. To find something original, whether it be interactive UX stuff or music or film or any other form of commercial art in particular. But then to it isn't so hard, they can Google
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That. Yeah, that's it. That's the reverse, right? Yeah. You can create anything you want to create now, but to stand out from the probably extra couple of billion people that have come online since that time in the mid nineties is almost a gargan gargantuan task. You know, talked about Carson and looking at your heroes as you are growing up and being able to reference those. And there's that cultural connection to what you are doing in the moment at that time and the shoulders of the giants if you like, that you are drawing on and standing on that have come before you. And I was talking to Bob Baxley who was one of the former heads of design at Apple. He was saying that this is the most important software as the most important cultural medium of our time. And I never really considered it in that way. But he also made the point that it's an unattributed medium. And this is sort of tied into what you were saying before, you could reference heroes from other creative arts, but I don't know anyone that can really reference heroes when it comes to product design or product in the same way in the way that we work with this medium now
- Jaime Levy:
- Very outside of Johnny Eyes or whatever. Who made the iPhone or talk about Sergey and Google. Yeah, but people certainly talk about Steve Jobs as if he designed things, but yeah, maybe so I would expect that there might be articles and books about cutting edge product designers that are out there and podcast. But yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure because now we have so many podcasts, so much media, [laugh], oh my God,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So disposable. Disposable, just so disposable.
- Jaime Levy:
- Oh my god. I think about when I started and I wanted people to know about my work and there wasn't the web, I would have to get people to write articles about it. I would send my discs or send my films or send my whatever. It was just marketing. And I think that is what made me strong as an author. I think people forget that or don't even know. Here's the secret, and I bet this is that whatever you make, whether it be design product of digital product or a book or a podcast film, whatever amount of time you spend making that thing, you need to spend that amount of time marketing that thing. Otherwise you made it in vain because nobody will hear about it or see it. And I worked very hard on my stuff and lately the thing was the book and I know the reason it got to bestselling wasn't necessarily was better than all these other O'Reilly books or other UX, but it was because I was constantly touring and doing workshops and sharing stuff and then because now I'm so over it and I'm not pushing it at all, it has to just go on its own, just move forward on its own fart.
- And it's like, cause I'm like, okay, I'm kind of sick of all this stuff and I don't want to do self-promotion, but it basically derails the train. And so anyone who is very talented as a product designer, if they don't make some awesome portfolio and start writing articles and start doing podcasts and be seen as an evangelist and a leader, a spokesperson and they do it consistently like, oh, I'm going to do two podcasts and then they don't do anymore or whatever it is, articles and then how do you stand out? You're going to put them on medium with all that other rub rubbish. But you have to do it, you have to be consistent, you have to do it. I didn't just make one floppy guess I made five and I didn't just do whatever company I worked with. It was just a constantly releasing stuff because you're really only as good as what you've done lately.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You have to show up. And that's the other part of that bargain you make when you create, which is what you're getting at Jaime, is this sort of idea that people will come and find it and see it without it being pushed. I mean you took two years to write your book, I believe I heard you say that that was two years of low to no income in that process. I mean why on earth would you not choose to really give it a good push and really get behind it and be proud of that and get it out there? I mean it just makes no sense. So you're a hundred percent the same thing with the podcast that you've raised. It's part like one half of the job is actually just getting it into people's ears or in front of their eyes. Otherwise what's it for? You mentioned having to do the work. I just want to come to something that I heard somebody ask you. I think it was the end of that talk you gave down in Argentina,
- Jaime Levy:
- I think it was Rio in Brazil.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh Rio. Right in Brazil. And they asked you this question where the leaders of their company, they were frustrated that they hadn't embraced UX as or digital transformation as this person asking, had hoped that they would. And you said to them, and I'm going to quote you now, I promise you no one is going to ask you to do anything besides your job. You have to decide, I'm going ahead, I'm going to make this prototype on my own time at night or on the weekend. How much effort and risk and just share brute force to stand out. Do we have to be willing to take in our careers?
- Jaime Levy:
- If we wanna be leaders and we wanna be successful and we don't have nepotism or some other in to get us promoted, then we need to have killer work and trying to do it. If you're starting out or you're just learning new tools or you're really trying to push it or they're making you do some other garbage during your business hours but you wanna get ahead, then you put whatever hours into it so that you have something to pushes it to stand out from everybody else. Especially when I think what I was referring to more is that a lot of people, the companies aren't convinced of doing any types of experiments or running research as an experiment using prototypes to push product strategy. And so they're like, I don't get to do it so I don't do it. Well, nobody paid me or had me while I was doing my shitty desktop publishing and type setting job, said Jaime, go make that floppy disc over there and then no, I drove home for my shitty job, got a beer, ate some quesadillas and then opened up my, turned on my computer and then created the floppy disc and not to just go on the floppy disc, but that's what I did when I was 22 to 26.
- And if I didn't do the floppy disc and I had then once I had it this thing because there was no distribution, I had to go put it in the bookstore and putting in the bookstore, all of a sudden people started seeing it and that opened up more opportunities. And so people need to be self-motivated and be driven on their own if they want to have those jobs that are really, really interesting, they need the portfolio or something to convince either this where they're at now or the next job that doing these processes and tactics, whatever it is. Particularly in that example, rapid prototyping. If they're not getting to do it during the day, then they should get really fast at it. That's what you need to do is get good and fast so you can just articulate your concepts and get them in front of whoever it is that you need to convince so they look and tell an amazing story. And so people need to do the work. There's no shortcuts.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You have to do the work. It sounds like what you're saying is that design is more than a job.
- Jaime Levy:
- I think it is. I guess if you see your, it's like, I wouldn't say design your career is more than a job. I mean their career des desire, if their desire is to be a designer, which wasn't or isn't my thing at all, my thing was not anymore, now I'm burned out. But I did my thing, I'm good was to be an inventor and my way of expressing these inventions was using technology cuz I decided during graduate film school that doing narrative long format films was kind of boring and I didn't wanna do music videos for mtv. So I just look at it as what is it that you're really into? What is it about prototyping? Please don't tell me it's cuz you wanna get good at envision or some garbage tool that you can learn overnight or okay, get good at it. But really what you're getting good at is what is the story that you're telling?
- How are you really making that product alive without building any product and not overdesigning it but showing the concept so that you push that concept far enough in front of people that it, it's so far along that they can't imagine doing it any other way. You've taken liberties, you've taken those affordances, you have the freedom by pushing it forward so those bosses can't go, they're like No, we should do it like this. Oh now you've thought these steps ahead and you only have that freedom to do it sometimes when nobody's looking over your shoulder, which might be now with people working from home, they might be able to do it during the day because a lot of our jobs we can do in a few hours of the day. So you got the other five hours to do something, were you really pushing your skillset and taking it up a notch?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. You said that you chose to work in the interactive medium as opposed to say long format or music videos in terms of film because you weren't interested by those other mediums. And when you were talking about that, I just occurred to me that it's almost, it seems like you were almost trying to satisfy a need that sits beneath the medium that you chose but through the medium you were able to do that. So it's almost like people have to realize what is it actually that's going to give me satisfaction and then how can I use the medium, whether it be software or whatever in order to get some of that satisfaction.
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, look that's definitely, wow, this is an interesting conversation Brendan. You're good at this. If your pool is to do something innovative, then it's definitely you're looking at what is, how am I going to deliver it? What tool set am I using? Is it going to be more about people? There's still so much room to explore I feel with the tools and non-linear storytelling like that. One thing fine millennial did was that girl that did that thing, I don't know it was Instagram storytelling about Anna Frank, why are there 20 of those? It got so much hype and it, it probably got a lot of hype cause it was about the Holocaust. Ah. But she did something new and she put herself into it and that's
- Brendan Jarvis:
- A key point she put herself into it. That's a huge point. How often have you seen that in your students of them really putting themselves into it?
- Jaime Levy:
- No, I quit teaching last year. I'm done with that and it was because I saw nothing from my students at a couple of universities. I just saw people trying to either cheat their way through UX U, an easy A and a UX course at one university and another one that was just, they're so overwhelmed by just learning how to use a computer cuz it happened to be in a psychology department and learning the tools that they trying to teach them anything really theoretical or be innovative was too soon. A couple of 'em could handle it but a lot of them were still new at the tool set. Another thing that influenced me was my decision to go into at that point non-linear storytelling in short format interactive was because when I was in the graduate film school, I had worked on a film, very cool film about sonic youth and John Zorn and they brought me in of course as a production assistant, a lowly pa.
- And for six weeks I was like either I wasn't watching them shoot the film, I wasn't involved in any creative decision making. Not to say I had any talent at that point. I just produced a bunch of high videos and edited them on some, but I produced them my, I decided what to shoot, I decided how the edits should be and so now I'm watching the back of trucks and so no gear gets stolen and I'm driving people around and I'm sitting around waiting and doing nothing, mostly not even getting to watch the shoot And I was like, oh no, is this what it's going to be? And going on enough shoots where there are no female directors and being in an environment, I was like, oh no. Also I realized, oh no, I'm going to have to work 12 hour days for weeks and weeks and then have nowhere work. How am I going to have a life that sucks? And I started realizing that it was, the whole career around making films was something that I couldn't stomach in terms of my ego and wanting to have creative control. And in terms of who that I was a woman, it's still really bad for women in film. I mean that's only cuz they're big shining a bright, big, bright light at it now. So there's more opportunity for different minorities. But
- Brendan Jarvis:
- No wait till that light starts shining on advertising.
- Jaime Levy:
- Exactly. But I saw this opportunity to just be able to do whatever I wanted and with this new medium that no one knew what the hell it could do where people were still doubting it well before the web. So I really got a chance to taste what it's like to explore. But I still encourage so much for people to just think a little bit more about what it is it that you really want to come up with a personal product project beyond whatever your master's degree is or was and what is it that you can make or even make a fake product if it's somewhere that you wanna work. Let's say you wanna go work for a dating app company. Let go ahead and prototype the most craziest dating app you could ever imagine that makes online dating better since it's the most horrible thing in the world. And just imagine what it could be with no one telling you what to do and put that in your portfolio as just concepts. Give yourself the freedom to
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Eat and then tell the story behind it. Right? Yeah. Tell have a story, not just some manufactured design system off the shelf kind of UI kit representation of something boring. Put yourself in it, go and road test it. Put it in front of some people. Record some of those sessions. Yeah,
- Jaime Levy:
- Do the work. I don't know. I did the work. Do the work, see a bunch of scary cat and I not just, it's all generations. If everybody was like how I was then we'd have a lot of broken anxiety written folks out there who invented a lot of cool stuff. Where would be everyone else. They can't always be everywhere like that. But if you are the type of person that really wants to have creative control and be an innovator, then it's going to be a lot more work than just saying, I'm going to go do a job where I can get off at five or 6:00 PM and go home and have a life and not be stressed that I get that too.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. I often beat up on the education system, the western education system, having been through it. And we all have to various degrees if we're in the west and I can't help but put some of the blame on the perceived lack of choice or the constraint and choice that people choose about where they spend and invest their time at university. Because what I mean by that is that we spend a lot of our time and we are taught to spend a lot of our time thinking about what box we can fit in when we finish our formal education. So we do things at university to get jobs, which seems absurd to me now that I'm 10, 15 years into my career after university. Looking back on it, how much of the, and again, we're getting pretty deep and dark here, but I feel like this is a good space to hold for a little while. How much of this is actually cuz of this, I suppose it's the industrialization of education that we have put ourselves through the last a hundred, hundred and 50 years. How much of this is just the system manifesting in a lack of dream and ambition and ideals?
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, for sure. I think it's gotten definitely commodified. It's been that way a long time. And UX has now just this gross, disgusting part of it where people think they don't, I mean maybe they don't need to go to university, you'll get master's if people could just be self-motivated, they could teach themselves all this stuff. It's on the internet. They could watch lecturers by inspiring innovators and designers all day long and never run out and just be making their own cool stuff and making the killer portfolio and getting a job. Geez Louis. But they aren't. So they put themselves into a framework. They structured environment like a graduate school and then all of a sudden they have to take these certain classes in a certain order. And whether it be a wonderful university or even general assembly, design, foundry, whatever, these shortcut technical degrees, they come out and they're like, I have a UX certificate or I have a master's in design unthinking.
- It's like, oh great they've now passed that test. But it makes me, from my experience as a professor and seeing so few people really stand out with whatever their thesis was. What about the days? And Germany has this, I love Germany so much from different things, but a lot of my friends who have kids who are 17 to 20, they're not in the university, they're in these app apprenticeship programs for three years learning some highly specific thing like engineering parts for a water system and then a sense in these classes and then working and just learning something and then we're learning a work ethic. I feel like the idea of just being in college for 22 years, you're just a child. Why are you deciding when you're a child to go to? I always regretted going to graduate school straight outta college. I wish I had gotten a job and had some more, but I did.
- I could have waited a couple. I'm glad I didn't cause I would've come in later on. It was perfect timing for me as far as where tech was moving. But I feel like people need to, it's so much stress on these degrees as if they're the A means to an end when they're not. It's really let people learn passion and let people learn just what it's like to work and go to this job and say, oh, I don't want this to be, I wanna sit in the front of a computer all day. I want to interact with people. I wanna be out there researching and interviewing. They should learn what it's going to be like. Who
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Knows? 100%. We never allow ourselves, and I'm trying not to do this with my son who's three and a half, so he got a few years yet, but every moment counts. I feel as a parent without being a helicopter, you're touching on before. But we don't give children and young people enough space to explore. We put them into tracks and we encourage them to lock themselves into tracks far too early. So the conversation that my wife and I are having, and my wife knows us better than anyone. I mean she has a PhD in neuroscience and she's also a medical doctor. So she's been through the whole track of education. She's still going through it, doing ophthalmology now. But at what age should we send Teddy to primary school, which I believe is called grade school in the us. For me, I, I'm in no rush.
- I don't wanna send him on his birthday if he doesn't have to go, let him enjoy. We lock ourselves, as I said, into these tracks and I don't know if it does as a service. And I got the sense, Jaime, hearing you talk about, you said you were burned out and you said you quit teaching and it's fairly clear that you're not that plus about the state of the young people coming through education in general. Why did you quit teaching? I get the sense you're quite bummed out about that and teaching is something that you have loved in the past.
- Jaime Levy:
- I did it long enough, 30 years. I started teaching when I was, I mean I taught my first class at nyu. They hired, they would hire the graduates, teach the classes. Cause we were the only ones that knew the software and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I love that.
- Jaime Levy:
- So of course I was like, yeah, I'll be a professor at NYU and ITT P. So I was always teaching people to make stuff and I taught at it's different universities. And during the last couple years of teaching the classes online, I was already kind of over it. In the final class that I taught in person at the University of Southern California, I was getting tired of, I wasn't enjoying it. I was sick of the babysitting and the cheating and the apathy and I was like, I don't need to do this anymore. When I was writing my book, it was great because I could create these lectures and test it out and then get back the homework and say, did the homework connect did or did I not tell them something? If I add this line here, add this slide here, add this paragraph to my book, it'll make that how I teach it so much better. And so the teaching drove the book. But once the second edition was done, and I co-wrote that with one of my students from U usc, it was amazing. And we wrote it over Zoom with Google Docs for a year and a half. And it was very collaborative and super fun. And so there was no reason to teach. And I certainly did not wanna go mask up and go teach and eh,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sorry, what was that Jen? I didn't complain.
- Jaime Levy:
- Like, nah, no, I'm not doing that. And I feel, I like to do things where you're like, once I hit 30 years, what do I need to say? 31 years. That's lame. I taught at top universities and not top everything from linear storytelling to UX strategy. That became a book for 30 years. It's enough. As my father said 20 years ago, stop teaching people UX because you're the word. What is it when you eat people can cannibal cannibalizing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're training, you're training your, I'm
- Jaime Levy:
- Cannibalizing, you're training my future jobs. I'm teaching everyone to be me. And so all the opportunity, I taught so many people, like 5,000 people to be UX people and to go and get jobs and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's a generous act. It's
- Jaime Levy:
- Enough. The book's enough I to wanna cook and plan and enjoy my son before he disappears to NYU or wherever he thinks he's going and enjoy my life. I just really, I wanna enjoy life. And I feel like I said enough. And it's up to that, your generation and the ones after you to tell their, I told my stories in the book, so I have a full-time job now. I'm getting paid right now doing nothing but talking to you KK chink every hour and then every two weeks of money just goes into my checking account and then I can go blow it on sushi or my sign or whatever. And that's just fine. It wasn't fine 10 years ago I was like, no, I have to be inventing something and teaching and evangelizing and touring the world. Ugh. I just came back from Denmark and Estonia. It was horrible to travel during the thing that we're not talking about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes, we are not talking about it. We still haven't said it. Yeah. And we're not going to say it, are we Jaime? Nope.
- Jaime Levy:
- We're not going to say it. We're dancing around
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It. Not going to sit it.
- Jaime Levy:
- But yes, we're not the best time to be touring and no one wants to go into online conferences is stupid. You're not connecting. So I don't need to do that stuff. I felt like I really gave it my all and now I wanna give myself more of that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I mean, I get the sense that you have been frustrated and that you've made some choices recently to invest in other areas of your life like you talked about, by just enjoying not having to have that pressure and that stress, that burn, that investment in others that you've been doing for such a long time. And I really appreciate you being open to have that quite a real conversation. This isn't like we are not putting our best happy face forward here. This is a real conversation that people are listening to. We are. I've also heard you describe yourself in the past as a, and it's clear. I mean, look at the body of work. Look at what you've achieved as an overachiever. So given that you have recently gone through or may still be going through burnout, how does that sit with Jaime? The overachiever?
- Jaime Levy:
- I'm trying to overachieve on other things in my personal life or actually work on why, what the overachieving is about, because it's a distraction from focusing on your emotional and physical health. I go on a walks around the array every day. I'm sure I listen to podcasts, but I'm starting not to listen to podcasts about teaching myself German or listening to anything related to tech. God forbid, just listening to stuff about life. I love this so-called the Daily about, I always love investigative journalism and then going running and listening to my son's favorite bands and trying to figure out just everything like cooking a recipe that's beyond my pay grade. Going to get those ingredients at the farmer's market and connecting with the people, selling the ingredients and asking them, did this cow have friends before you killed it? [laugh] horrible.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I think you should have a conversation with Peter Marvel about that. He'll have some thoughts and feelings on that question.
- Jaime Levy:
- Is he hardcore vegan or is he I Well, I can eat mean I don't give
- Brendan Jarvis:
- A shit. See, this is the interesting thing. He, he's vegan ish was the way that he described it. I mean obviously he know he is the author or co-author of the Polar Bear book and he's an information architect. And I thought that was an interesting way for a information architect usually puts things in boxes and labels them to be but he was way more on, I'm more about spectrums when it comes to human behavior than absolutes. So anyway, that's a side note. But he's vegan ish and he loves, loves goats. I don't know why he loves goats, I think.
- Jaime Levy:
- Cause they, there's something that they do. I don't know. There's something that's sustainable that, I don't know what it is exactly, but people, there was a goat craze going on in LA for a while. I never quite understood it.
- But yeah, I feel like this need it. It's kind of pathetic maybe that this need to get attention to prove myself over and over again has also been the undoing of Jaime Levy, where I don't put that same amount of energy and love into myself and into my relationships and I need to stop doing that. It's just not healthy. So that's really the intersection of, I've said enough, I need to chill out now. My book is good. I'm proud of it. I also have this whole art career that was the start of my career, that was the digital art. Until I'm using this opportunity with this full-time job, when I have downtime, it's like, well, I'm not sitting there throwing paper up in the air. I can work on the website that has my old digital art and I can research on doing an N N F T I can or not.
- I should can't. I'm like this person with the lists. I got lists everywhere and lists up there and I like to knock things off. But now it's like there's two lists. There's the list of being productive and furthering my career, which I should stop doing completely. And the list of removing things from my life that give me stress or cost me money so that I can have a better life. And those are the two lists now. And so yeah, the overachieving, if I'm going to put it into something, it's to get myself to be an underachiever who optimizes her work hours and her time to be a healthy, happy human.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds though that you still have that creative fire burning. There are still things on that list that might not be commercial and they might not fall into the nine to five and they might sit alongside walks in nature and listening to your son's favorite band and cooking a recipe that's above your pay grade. But they're still there.
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, we'll see. I don't wanna make anything new. I wanted to document my earlier work for my career. That's my one left career thing is to basically minimalize my life, which means going through the closet and going through the 2000 fan letters I got, and picking out really the three most interesting ones in terms of how they look and what they said, and getting rid of everything. Getting rid of all these books that I didn't read or will never read, or they were horrible. And why do I have 200 books? I should have five. What's all this stuff? But especially all my artifacts from my 30 years, I really would love one day before I lose my mind entirely or die to have my work in an archive for someone to learn from it. Maybe I'm totally Sunset Boulevard and I'm waiting where my close up.
- Or maybe it's really, since I'm not teaching, it's like, well, if someone does want to know about my stuff, other than all the articles and podcasts about me, let 'em look at the stuff. I wanna throw it away. And it's paper, it's videos, it's in all these different forms and I'd love it to be just minimalized to just the best stuff. And on jamie levy.com/art. And then I have a friend, a, a guy represents me as an artist. Sounds so bloody pretentious, who's trying to get me that museum retrospective or that group show with other people who are innovators back in the day. And I don't want to have to be scrambling If that opportunity presents itself. I want to be like, oh, while you're figuring out what artists should be in that show, guess who's the artist that has everything explained that has all the articles, everything together, all the art in the highest format, available descriptions, written.
- I wanna have all that stuff kind of archived in the best way. Rhizome did this incredible thing for me, this institution in New York City that works with the museums there, the new museum. And they took my floppy, including the Billy Idol floppy dis, and made it so that you can stick a US Cause you can't get these, I have a six 60, you can't get the drawings anymore. You can't get the computers to start now and play. People have been trying to do this born digital shows and you can't get them to work and you can't distribute them. So these guys made it so you, they simulate HyperCard and director projectors by just taking a usb, sticking it into the computer and restarting it. And all of a sudden it's like, woo, we're in 19. No, we're in 1988 or 1990 and people can interact with it and see this crass interactive stuff that I was making with the minute men's samples and the love and rockets art.
- It was so punk rock and so crazy. And now instead of just watching a video of it on YouTube, you can actually, so because they did this wonderful thing for me and it's been in some shows, I wanna get all the stuff to back that stuff up just in case someone gets the bright idea. Hey, what about, what inspired all this interactive stuff back in the day before the web bw? What does that look like? Well, because all that stuff basically evaporated. All of our stuff even now is evaporating. We'll back up all our photos in our films and then they'll get backed up and not backed up and then we lose everything. I feel like I wanna archive it just in case. And that's a fun thing for me to do is kind of look at digital art older stuff and think about the context and then just have it done. And then I'll spend less time, they'll come up with some other project, I don't know.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I was going to say, and then what? Oh
- Jaime Levy:
- No.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. And then,
- Jaime Levy:
- Oh no, I've got three months of this stuff. I don't know. How about if I can learn to go to sleep at night without get rid of insomnia. That could take two years. I don't know. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Next, we've talked about the apathy that you've observed as a professor and the converse of that through your personal story of really burning brightly, I'm into this, I'm putting myself into all of this and I'm doing this for 30 years. And then eventually coming to a place where you've choosing whether by force choice or your own volition, I don't know, to do actively do something different and put that side of you, not in the past, but to the side for now, and is, I don't know if this is a question or if it's just an observation, but seeing both of those sides, that distinct apathy and then this creative passion and fire that then might drive you to a place where you need to make different choices for your own health. Would you do it differently if you could do it again?
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah, definitely. But that's easy to see with, what's it called, 2020 hindsight or,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah.
- Jaime Levy:
- Yeah. I could imagine a different existence for me now that is a bit more, is different than what I have a lot of things to be grateful for. But yeah, I feel like I could have done better in some ways with my personal life. It was just a sacrifice.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's a big trade off. It
- Jaime Levy:
- Can be. I think it can be, but I think maybe it's not too late. You have to really decide on, you know, have to pick a lane in your career. And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's not too early in life though, right? Yeah.
- Jaime Levy:
- But pick a lane, I think by the time you're 25, what is it that I wanna do? Am I going to start a big family or am I going to put all my energy into a career or both and figure out how that's going to work so that you're happy and balanced. It's so easy to think, see things retrospectively and say, oh, I would do these things different. Of course, I could say, oh God, why didn't, after nine 11, I come back from New York and go to San Francisco and then I would've been one of the early people at whatever crappy major platform there. And then I would have gazillions of dollars or something. I don't even know what that would look like. What would me with beyond just having a million dollars? Would I my life be so much better if I had 20 million? I
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Dunno, who knows. Hypotheticals. I just keep coming back to this quote and it's a line from, it's actually a line from a Neil Young song the songs, my Hey, hey. And when you were talking, it made me think of that line. It's better to burn out than to fade away. And I don't know. I don't know why. And I'm not suggesting, I mean you've, you've self labeled yourself as burnt out. But I think it's so much better to have, and again, I'm imposing my own view on top of your situation, so tell me to back off if you need, but to get to that point, after all, that investment of energy, that creative energy, the generosity of the teaching, all of that stuff, and to be burnt out I think is so much better. So much better than to have never started to have faded away before you'd even lit that fire. Which is what you've described that you see in some of students. Yeah,
- Jaime Levy:
- I know. It's hypothetical. I think the students still, when you're young, you still have that chance to throw yourself out something. Yeah, I don't know. I think that it doesn't need to be whatever it is, it shouldn't be so extreme. It shouldn't be extreme. Just I'm constantly in need of attention to be told that I'm great best seller, best this that's too extreme, and then I'm going to do nothing at all that's over here. So I'm just trying to be like, I'm working my way this way.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What's this for the people that are listening closer to what
- Jaime Levy:
- Me, I'm working my way more to be just being a regular person. But I think for people who are looking to start their careers, they need to be putting their energy into getting into what is going to get me attention. I mean, that's kind of what it is. I mean, if you're like, oh, I'm doing it for myself. I wanna be the best prototyper in the world. Really? Okay, you have fun with that but are you doing it to make money or are you doing it to have power or both? And if it's to have power, are the power about managing peoples or the power about being able to have creative control, which was the power I desired. Being able to make things that people see and be like, whoa, that's crazy. And if the power is to innovate, to make big experiences that people see, make the blockbuster of interactive and product design, then better start working hard, stop reading books and start making
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Stuff. Yeah. It's not just going to happen. Yep. Now I really love how you ended your talk at UX grease this year. You said, and I'll quote you again now, the fear of taking risk really prevents us from exploring the world. So as we bring this conversation to a close, that really felt to me like an appropriate place to lead into my final question, which is, how do we get more comfortable with taking risks with the possibility, the very real possibility that we are going to be wrong,
- Jaime Levy:
- To figure out, wait, where are the gaps in your own life or in personal and professional? My friend Rato may talk, he's been staying with me the last few days. Berlin, he's like the Berlin, me and he's a professor. And so we had a lot of talking going on here and I heard him telling his students, I know it's during a thing right now where it's not so safe to travel, but you gotta see the world and have, I agree so much by being in, living in a lot in Berlin in the last couple years. I really learned how important it is to speak a second language, even though I failed at it. But I tried, and I'll try again to learn German, but find out what it is that you're not so good at. Is it traveling? Is it socializing? Is it cooking? Is it exercising?
- Is it being good at disciplining yourself around whatever it is, eating or exercising or work habits and do something extremely. Make yourself a list and start. It has to move from strategy to tactics so that you can start chipping away at things. Otherwise, they just seem impossible. And so figure it out. Like with strategy figure, here I am here, where is it that you wanna be? And if that thing requires you to take risks by going out with different dating, different type of person, or not dating anybody at all and seeing what horrible life is as a single person. See what that's all about. I always admire my guest house tenant for years. He's a violence. Like I don't need relationships. I'm working. I'm making my art. I was never very good at that. I don't like to be alone so much. But yeah, figure out what it is that you're so scared of and do that, but get on a plane and see the world. That's the best way to break outta your comfort zone and make yourself uncomfortable and see how the version of you lives in different places in the world. And that will really disrupt yourself. It's like taking acid without having to take acid.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that is a great thought to end on. I love it. Disrupt yourself. I think it's so important. And travel when the thing that we are not naming and we haven't named during this episode is over. That will be a lot easier. Jaime, I've really enjoyed the depth of the conversation today and the candor and the realness that you've brought to that. I really, really do appreciate it. And I also appreciate your huge contribution to the field of UX that you've made over the last 30 years. I know you're feeling a bit burned out now, but I just want you to know that there are many, many, many other people like me that also appreciate you and your work. So thanks very much for coming on the show and sharing your stories and your insights with me today.
- Jaime Levy:
- You're very welcome, Brendan. You inspired a very good conversation. You're very good at this. Thank you for having me, and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Most welcome, Jaime.
- Jaime Levy:
- Good luck with everything. For sure. Someday we'll meet and have a beer in person. Get me to New Zealand.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I would love that. Come to New Zealand. We'll have it in the sun come during the winter and the north. It'll be, it'll wonderful. We'll have it. We'll look over the waves. It'll be great.
- Jaime Levy:
- That's our two year goal.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, two year goal. Well, I think that probably should be safe with that thing that we're not talking about should be done by then. Let's hope [laugh]. Jaime, if people wanna find out more about you, about your book and all the wonderful things that you've created, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Jaime Levy:
- J-A-I-M-E-L-E-V-Y. My website, JamieLevy.com which should lead to a lot of stuff including the book website, UserExperienceStrategy.com. That's good. Connect with me on LinkedIn. At some point, I'll start promoting myself again. Right now, I'm anti-LinkedIn. Is there a horrible monopoly? Yeah. Check out my book if you're interested in this kind of stuff. The second edition I'm super psyched about was written with a lovely millennial who is very driven American woman, and thank you so much for having me.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, my pleasure. And Jaime, we'll be linking to all of those wonderful resources, the book and all the websites that you've just mentioned, so that people can find it. It is a wonderful book. I know in this episode, we didn't go into UX strategy, tactics or anything that was...
- Jaime Levy:
- Yay, we didn't talk about UX Strategy.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- ...tangible in that regard. Yeah, I know, I know. But I think that's wonderful that we did in many ways, but definitely check it out people. I also wanna say, if you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast. That's super helpful. Only if you feel compelled to though subscribe to the podcast, and also if you feel that other people in your sphere would get value out of conversations like this, then please pass the podcast along to them. If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just under Brendan Jarvis. There's also a link to my profile in the show notes on YouTube, and I believe also on the podcast platforms now as well. Or you can visit me at thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.