Darren Hood

Episode 58
Brave UX

Is Design Thinking Killing Design?

In this episode of Brave UX, Darren Hood challenges us to learn the history of UX, to beware of snake-oil when assessing training options, and to revisit our thinking on imposter syndrome.

Highlights include:

How are UX bootcamps and courses impacting the field?
Why is it important to know the history of UX?
What’s driving people to declare imposter syndrome?
Is the popularisation of UX enabling better design practice?
What does the field of UX need to become more effective?

January 25, 202201:17:43

Listen on:

Who is Darren Hood?

Darren is a Principal Product Designer at Omnicell, the world-leader in pharmacy robotics. There, he champions product design and coaches other designers, cultivating a culture of curiosity, clear communication and collaboration.

Alongside his work as a designer, Darren is helping to prepare the next generation of UXers, serving as an Adjunct Professor at Kent State University and Lawrence Technological University. He is also on the faculty of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.

A passionate contributor the global UX community, Darren is the host of the podcast The World of UX. He is also a regular conference speaker, blogger and podcast guest - sharing his refreshingly unfiltered views on the field.

Transcript

Brendan Jarvis:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together, I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings and expert advice of world-class UX, design and product management professionals.
My guest today is Darren Hood. Darren is a Principal Product Designer at Omnicell, the world leader in pharmacy robotics. There he champions product design and coaches other designers, cultivating a culture of curiosity, clear communication and collaboration. But to do Darren's work experience justice would frankly eat into too much of our precious time together.
So I am going to summarize by saying that since 1995, Darren has worked as a design practitioner and manager. His experience spans many industries including automotive, technology, financial and medical for both Fortune 50 companies and agencies. Darren currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Kent State University and Lawrence Technological University, where he's helping to prepare the next generation of UXers. He's also a member of the corporate faculty at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. Speaking of university, Darren holds two master's degrees, one from Syracuse University in Information Management and the other from Kent State University in User Experience Design. He's also currently most of the way through a PhD in Educational Leadership at North Central University. A passionate educator and contributor to the global UX community, Darren is the host of the podcast, The World of UX. He's also a regular conference speaker, blogger and podcast guest sharing his refreshingly, unfiltered views on the field. And now it's my pleasure to welcome Darren, live from Southfield, Michigan to this conversation on Brave UX today. Darren, welcome to the show.
Darren Hood:
Thank you Brendan. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Wonderful introduction. You nailed it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, you nailed it. That was all you [laugh]. I just wrote it.
Darren Hood:
What? Oh yeah. But that was, I love the way you presented it. Yes, thank you. And thank you for, for giving that shout out to Harrisburg University.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well that's great. Appreciate that. It was really great to have you here. Darren and I also really thoroughly enjoyed researching for today. And something that I left out of your intro there, which I wanted to bring up cuz I thought it was such a fascinating little sort of side conversation to have with you, is that I learned that you're a former amateur bowls to a champion and a previous professional bowler with two 300 games. So for people, wow. Yeah. So for people that don't know, what type of bowling are we talking about?
Darren Hood:
Oh my god. You're talking about the kind of bowling where we don't just walk into the bowling alley and grab a ball off the rack. Pre pandemic. I purchased somewhere in the vicinity of 260 bowling balls in the last 10 to 12 years.
Brendan Jarvis:
Just a few
Darren Hood:
All just to get that one little bit of an advantage every time. So I currently have about 15 of those balls here and I do not come into the bowling alley with less than five at any given time. So it that that's the kind of bowler
Brendan Jarvis:
And just what is a 300 game and how rare is that
Darren Hood:
300 game is 12 strikes. That means all, there are essentially 12 opportunities to strike in one game of bowling. And if you a 300 then you got 12 stripes.
Brendan Jarvis:
So as we say here,
Darren Hood:
That
Brendan Jarvis:
Gang, as we say here in New Zealand, we're a little understated. That's pretty good, right?
Darren Hood:
It's almost nonexistent. I think that, oh, you ask how often does it happen? I don't know the statistics, but I know it's extremely rare. And even when you do it, it takes some luck. Basically something went your way, something happened that shouldn't have happened. And when you don't get a 300 you're, you're actually happier about the games than aren't 300 [laugh] for some reason. But yeah, it is rare. It is rare. And I'm fortunate to have done it twice.
Brendan Jarvis:
I get the sense that you might be a little bit competitive
Darren Hood:
Very, but only at the right times.
Brendan Jarvis:
What is the right time? Let's go into that. What constitutes the right time?
Darren Hood:
Oh wow. It is funny you mentioned that. I'm doing a series now on my podcast called Emotional Intelligence and UX and there's one of the red flags I call out and I call it detrimental ambition. And I don't believe I said this on my show. I think I did say it, it hasn't aired yet. In the segment that we did to had me, Aaron, I talk about how I absolutely will not compete with a coworker under any circumstances whatsoever. If somebody is on my team, I'm not going to compete with them. I'm not trying to look better than them. I'm not trying to get an upper leg on them, nothing of that sort. But if I'm playing a game and competition is part of the game, but when it's time to compete, I'm going to compete. If I'm playing chess, which I like to play, I'm going to compete.
So if competition is part of what it is, part of the structure of what we're doing, I compete. But I'm really, really big on when it comes to teammates, when it comes to other UXers things of that nature. I love building people Brendan, I absolutely love it. I will bend, I refer to myself as bending my bending over backwards and tying myself into knots to do whatever I have to do to make sure that somebody else can be successful and will lay down my life in a sense, figuratively speaking and have done so to make sure that other people get what they need so that they can be the best that they can be. So I'm not going to compete and I've actually said that before and anger people because I said I wouldn't compete. I have a saying that whatever you touch excel at it. So
Brendan Jarvis:
Speaking of relentless, do you know where you go if you type relentless.com into the browser?
Darren Hood:
No,
Brendan Jarvis:
It goes to amazon.com and that's what Jeff
Darren Hood:
[laugh],
Brendan Jarvis:
Jeff Jeff Bezos registered that as another domain for Amazon when he started the company, which is a bit of an aside, but I do wanna come. That's
Darren Hood:
Funny.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. And so true, isn't it? So yeah, I do wanna come to emotional intelligence with you, but just before we do that, you mentioned that you were a bit of a lion and I watched your Ted talk, the Garrison of excellence, enabling the lion within. And there was a picture that you had in that Ted talk, which I'm sure very well it was yourself as a young boy, you were dressed in white shorts in a white shirt and you were kneeling on a wrought iron bed [laugh]. All right, so it's very specific photo. And given the title of that talk and that photo, it made me quite curious, Darren, as to your background and your story, what is that story? What's that story of that little boy on that wrought iron bed now? Where did you grow up? What was it like? And when you reflect back on where you are now, how has that story unfolded?
Darren Hood:
Wow, that story, man, if I remember correctly, that picture was taken when I was about two and a half years old. I could already read [laugh]. I was the entertainment at family functions in events. Look, this little kid can read, they would've gimme the newspaper and I would read it.
My mom raised me to be relentless basically. She was, I didn't do well at it, but she tried to teach me three languages before I was five. I did however still excel and I was triple promoted out of kindergarten and my mother said No, I found this out later. They didn't tell me this earlier. I found out later I was triple promoted out of kindergarten cuz I was too smart to put in the second grade. But my mother was concerned that she didn't, my mother went through the same thing and didn't want me to suffer from an interpersonal perspective. So she only let them double promote me. [laugh] the thing that nobody expected. And I loved excelling at school and that whatever you touch excel at it is has been my mindset my entire life as far back as I can remember. We fast forward from me being in the second grade and getting beat up all the time because I was smart.
Fast forward to me being promoted out of the second grade, the next thing that comes to mind is, well I got beat up because I was smart when I was a kid. So I got used to excelling in the face of extreme adversity. And I found that out because the kids would beat me up and my mother would come to school and then the parents would all talk and I remember the conversations that they had. Why do you jump on 'em all the time? Because he's smart. So I remember that that's what happened. Fast forward a few years beyond that.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well let's actually, let's go. Let's stay in that space. Right? Yeah. So sure. You mentioned you were raised by your mother. Yeah. When you mentioned that, what I heard was that your mother was a solo mother.
Darren Hood:
Yeah, she was. My mom and dad separated when I was one.
Brendan Jarvis:
So I've got a similar story there. So when you said that I kind of get you in some respects, well at least get you from the perspective of what I have lived. But I wanted to ask you about your mother because there's often a special relationship between the children of solo mums and their mums [laugh] who? And this is,
Darren Hood:
And we didn't have it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh you didn't have it. Well that's interesting. No, tell us about that.
Darren Hood:
No we
Brendan Jarvis:
Didn't not. So when you are facing this adversity at school, you're getting beat up by people for being smarter than they are, which is really telling of the world that we live in.
Darren Hood:
Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Who was it that taught you to overcome these obstacles?
Darren Hood:
It's funny, I cannot single out one single family member, including my mother that instilled that in me. Not one. I was so smart, smart that talk about home alone. I would get left at home alone a lot when I was a kid because I could fend for myself. So just let me at home. And my mother refused to go on aid and so she worked two jobs and I would be at home. But going back to when I was four years old, I was left at home and I was four as well. And well I'm lonely so what does a lonely kid do? God knows What I did was I would go on the phone book and call people
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh]
Darren Hood:
Because I [laugh] because I was lonely and I would befriend people and hold these conversations and my mother eventually found out and put an M to all of that. But I don't know what I learned from those people. I only remember one person that would talk to me that I really talked to quite a bit. And I remember her instilling certain things in me. This really older elderly woman el to her lame was the last name in the phone book. So I called her. But a lot of them I remember wanting to be like Martin Luther King Jr. When I was a kid. And I remember once I got beat up and I refused to fight back cuz I wanted to be like him so that there was an impression there. I remember once and I told the story recently and people were really cracking up about it where I got beat up, I refused to fight back.
I was laying on the ground, prostrate on the ground, [laugh] it just there and they get up and go home Darren and I refuse, no I'm going to be like Martin Luther King. I still remember saying that. And I just laid there and they had to go get my mother and they literally slid me into the back seat of the car cause I refused to go home. I refused to get up. So on top of the fact that there, there's a relentlessness, you even see it, I was determined to see something through to the end. I was determined to, once I was focused on something that it
Brendan Jarvis:
Sounded like you wanted them to beat you up properly. You guys haven't beaten me up properly here, keep going.
Darren Hood:
And it was amazing that curiosity, it just such a driver. So I always want to learn about everything, whether it was spiders or diseases. And I had my mother gave me all the encyclopedias and I would sit there and go through these encyclopedias. Everybody else is running around outside and I'm looking at encyclopedias. I used to have to do homework before I went out to play as a kid. I used to have to press clothes before I went out to play a little bit different [laugh]. Lot of other folks I would press press I my wife's clothes sometimes now too. But
Brendan Jarvis:
It sounds like you were an only child.
Darren Hood:
I was my mother's only child. My dad, I actually have a Japanese brother and sister cause my dad got married when he was in World War ii. So they tell age a little bit but I had a never met them but I know that they exist. I don't know if they know I exist, but I know they exist. There's five of us. So four kids that my dad had beside me, but I'm my mother's only. And funny thing about that I learned something about only children that folks don't know is that if you want to get something done and you have a choice, you have three people to choose from. Pick the only child because the stereotype was that only children were spoiled and brats and just nasty. You don't wanna have to deal with only children. But research actually proved that only children were the most resourceful because we had to do everything ourselves. And so when you fast forward x number of years and you need something done, the only child is going to be the most resourceful of the group on average.
Brendan Jarvis:
You know what Darren? I'm going to agree with you wholeheartedly here. And that's because I am also another child.
Darren Hood:
The drive that we have, the imagination that we used to have to use the creativity and the things we had to do was completely different. It was completely different. And so I'm glad that I knew that and it kept me from being gaslit about being an only child and stumbling into the stereotypes cuz what people said about only children. I never saw it. I know that there are some that are, but I've seen folks that are not only children that are far words. A matter of fact, the research that I looked at said that, forgive me, two child household [laugh] kids, but it's the sibling rivalry between two child households made two child households the worst of the scenarios according to the research. So because they fight all the time, I fought with no one [laugh].
Brendan Jarvis:
Fast forward now to Darren of now I was listening to your podcast recently and I've actually heard you say this a number of times and that's paraphrasing. You've said that you feel indebted to the discipline of UX and you are also someone that strikes me as being a very intentional person and quite careful with the choice of words that you use. And being indebted is not something that's not a light word to use, right? That's quite a significant word. Why do you feel that way about this field?
Darren Hood:
Yeah, I recognize my path in UX as many UX early UX practitioners were, they didn't call it UX in 1995. I was doing US usability research, but I didn't call it usability research. I came to learn that that's what it was. Especially gorilla research in particular. I was work on information architecture, didn't learn about that until like 98, 99. And I was already doing it. I didn't know anything at the time about cognitive load, but I was trying to make sure retrospectively speaking, so I'm doing all of these things and I'm engaging and I'm learning and looking at the books and there were no classes that I could go to at the time, at least not like what we have today. And when I talk about being indebted, I think I've been afforded a ton of phenomenal opportunities because one of the things I found is that the places where we work has direct impact on our trajectory.
So if I am working at, you mentioned that I worked Fortune 50, I worked in automotive, I I'm working now in medical and I worked the little work in medical before. I've worked in the financial services industry. I, I've worked for in education I've worked in a lot of different places. But what I found was that where you work determines the types of things you will work on and then the types of things that you work on yields certain types of experiences for you. Career development acumen building, things of that nature. The discipline's been good to me. Has I, I've been afforded against a ton of opportunities. I've worked at a lot of different places and the fact that the discipline has been good to me, I feel a responsibility, which is why I fight as I do. Because I want other people to have the same as many opportunities as possible as I had.
If people really want to develop then they have every right to be able to develop. People wanna learn, they have every right to learn. And I feel that being in a position to download things to other people to give, afford them many of the same experiences I had, I wanna be able to give that to them. So the podcast, when Michigan State came to me and asked me to do my podcast, I had been on the radio for eight years prior to that and I thought, you know what, we can tap into my knowledge of that and I could turn this off. I had already been doing a lot of educating in UX, I already been doing a lot of writing in UX. So for me to turn around and produce something, it really won't take any effort. So yes, I opted in not to be heard, not to be a star, not to become a UX celebrity, which I think is really happening at it like epidemic levels today.
It was for the express purpose of giving back because of that sense of indebtedness. So that's what drives me to do the things that I do today. I'm indebted and so I'm indebted and I will continue. I can never pay that debt off. So I will in my mind. So I just continue to pay on the debt by giving back to the discipline and educating in any way I can and building people and reviewing portfolio. I have so many private sessions people don't even know about it cause I don't advertise it. But when people ask me, I usually comply as long as I can cause I'm not going to do it to my own detriment. But as long as I can, yeah I do. And I help people out and point them in the right direction.
Brendan Jarvis:
You use the word continue to fight in order term. I'm going to paraphrase now. So just correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but in order to afford others the same benefits that the field has afforded yourself. Absolutely. And your brand that you've put out there, I believe recently is UX Uncensored. And I feel like people are going to get a really good taste of refreshing taste of what that is on this conversation. Well I certainly hope that they will. What is the story behind that need to fight behind that need to be uncensored? Because again, that is a very potentially provocative word and it suggests that you are not happy with the status quo.
Darren Hood:
And I'd say I'm, I'm going to address that first. Id say, not that I'm not happy Uncensored, although I'm not happy, but the, the uncensored is more about no holds Bard. I actually just rolled out my world of UX website today. I just rolled it out and it's a byline on this site that says the Noll holds Bard UX podcast [laugh] really what uncensored is about because a lot of people, there's no shortage of people talking about how to do the work. If you wanna learn about research, somebody's talking about what to do with regard to research. If you wanna talk about information architecture, not as much content today but it's still out there. Inter interaction design. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on out there. So certain information about UX is plentiful. It might not all be accurate, but the attempts are there still constitutes, it's plenty.
It's plentiful, it, it's going on. A lot of the things that I talk about is not plentiful And frankly here's a UX uncensored moment for somebody in my studies, in my review, especially of people who have been around for 20 plus years, [laugh] basically our discipline suffers from extreme cowardice. People know that there's a lot wrong in the discipline today. They know that misinformation abounds, they know that people are, the hiring process is grossly dysfunctional. That educational efforts that they still edu, the higher learning is still behind when it comes to UX education. And then of the one, the programs that are out there, I have cited, I have instances where they're putting misinformation out there and they're drawing people into their programs through the misinformation. That's pretty ludicrous.
Brendan Jarvis:
Let's go into that cuz I know education, given your background and given what I know of you before this conversation, education is clearly and higher education, university style education is clearly something that you are deeply passionate about. And even since a very early age, like we were talking about when we first started chatting, reading before you were sort of three years old, there has been a massive explosion in the last five to 10 years of bootcamp style training, vocational style training to get into this industry. And there's also been, I wouldn't say it's quite to the same degree, but there has been a number of universities that have also put their toe in the water when it comes to our discipline.
Darren Hood:
Yes.
Brendan Jarvis:
How are these boot camps and these new university courses, how are they impacting for good or Pharrell? The discipline, the field that we work in,
Darren Hood:
They're impacting it for good because they're giving people accredited resources that give people a chance to go through a program and get the quote paper that some of the professional corporations want to see. So the paper requirement, the paper requirement that some organizations have is going to be fulfilled through that. A bootcamp or something else simply won't do. Some companies, they want to see a degree and if they want to see a degree then you need to at least be it in progress or have completed it that that's not going away. Not the way some people try to get people to think. But on the flip side of that, the way that many of the UX educational programs are structured, whether it's higher learning, what we know is MOOCs massively open online courses. M O O C is the acronym. Those abound today, the bootcamps, the certificate programs through the universities such as Cornell.
I do recommend peop that one to people from time to time. The many of these programs are not structured properly. UX is a science and so is education. And there are things that need to be in place in order for education to be properly executed. And if they're not in place such as pedagogy how is the curriculum structured? What is the learning experience, the lx, what is the path that we're offering the people? What is what's in it for the student, the whole with them thing? What's in it for the student if they come to your institution? Those all those things need to be thought of and carefully planned out and executed in order to roll out the proper learning experience. Very few institutions are doing that. And it's actually the same things that are going on within the discipline. They're not good are happening.
And the same root causes in the higher learning, it's happening there. People who don't know anything about UX are putting together the pedagogies and then in some places the pedagogy is put together on a whim. Like the boot camps started. UX boot camps started at about 2011. You can go into the way back machine and look up Career Foundry and the general assembly and look at their early website and look at what they tried to sell people on you. You can see it. And it was wrong. It was somebody realizing that hey, people wanna learn about UX because there was this dearth of qualified candidates. And so if we don't have enough people to fill these positions, if more people need to be educated about this, hey we can put together a school. So they did it to chase after the standard economic supply and demand, there was a demand for UX people and the best way to do it is to get them at least pseudo qualified. We can make X amount of money and we can charge them between seven and $25,000 ahead to do it. And as time has shown people opted into that, even though there was bad pedagogy, there was no ethics education requires both. There were people graduate from bootcamp one week and the next week they're teaching. That's not good.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well let's go into this actually, cuz you're touching on some quite tangible clues that people can look at and to assess their educational options. I mean you obviously have the benefit of a quarter century plus in the field. You obviously have the benefit of being university educated to a high degree. And so you're able to look at this, look backwards and also project forward what these experiences are likely to be for prospective students. But if you think about it from the perspective of someone who might be 20 years old who has heard a lot about UX, thinks it's really exciting and is looking at their options, what are some of the clues that, or things that they can look for to evaluate that pedagogy to evaluate the quality of the instruction that they are likely to receive? How can they tell whether or not they're actually going to get a quality UX education? Because I imagine that these boot camps aren't going to go anywhere and not everybody's going to be able to afford the time and money to go into a university education. So what can people look for
Darren Hood:
When people are evaluating? I'm going to flat out make it easy. Say avoid all UX boot camps. I was going to flat out say that. There
Brendan Jarvis:
We go. That's unfiltered right there.
Darren Hood:
[laugh]. It is. But yeah, because it's like they violate all the major things that a proper educational experience requires in order to have a sound structure. They don't have any of them. What they have is what we refer to. When you look at the dynamics associated with the snake oil salesman back in the 1800, you will find the same exact principles being in place. And so a bunch of promises and providing supposedly a way to make it easy for you to get it. And then they prescribe some type of big benefit that you're supposed to get. It's the same exact template as a snake oil salesman. So there is no pedagogy, you don't have quality instructors. You have them making these attempts to try to find people who will validate them or sign off on them or approve of them even though those people didn't go through the bootcamps.
These are just people you can go through and find a Susan Wein shank endorsement. You can find even a believe it was a Don Norman endorsement something way back. But I've seen that in places those people didn't graduate from the bootcamps folks. It it's, and the fact that they say it's okay, look at the timing of it and you'll find that some of these quotes are very old and it was a good idea at first the boot camps were a good idea, but over time, as you revisit it turned out well good. It was a good idea going wrong. So just if you want to get a good education next to boot camps, you're, you're better. The UX boot camps, you're better off if you can't go the route of a degree. And I'm on record talking about this, you have options. You have self-taught, you have university programs.
And one of the reasons I recommend Cornell is because it will give you exposure, structured exposure to the discipline with sound pedagogy from an accredited institution for only about $3,600 the US and it's online. And you don't have to worry about throwing away your, it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg. You're not engaging into an experience that also infuses you with bias at the same time and I won't even get into why I mentioned it that I'll cover that my podcast talk about that. I mean when I say that in short people don't just get exposed to things that they could have found just by looking them up on Google [laugh] and then paying from seven to $25,000 for it. People also go away with this cult-like impact on their cognition when you go to the boot camps. And that's one of the reasons I'm so feverishly against what they do because again, it's not structured and then you're getting more than you actually thought when you go through it.
But again, you've got self, you've the certifications, you've got self-taught where you can just get in books and hook up with a sound mentor. Not these cookie cutter mentors that ADP list. I'm not a fan. I'm on record of saying that multiple times. Somebody connected with me recently on LinkedIn. I said just they were a mentor. I said, just so you know, I don't usually connect with mentors from ADP list. I'm just telling you. Okay, thank you. Oh, I appreciate it. All right. I'm sure we'll have a conversation later because it's cookie cutter. It's another cookie cutter thing. Where did you come from? How long have you been doing UX? If you have time to do what you claiming to do. I'm, I'm not buying into that. I don't know too many people who have time to do what some of these people claim they can do from a mentor perspective. It's just not a good look. So those are things you can do. There's only one, I'm going to throw one more thing on this part. I do recommend David Travis who wrote the book, think Like a UX researcher.
Brendan Jarvis:
User
Darren Hood:
Focus has a yes, he has a course on you, Demi. I do support him when it comes to the MOOCs and I have referred people to the University of Michigan Coursera. Course it is, the lessons are peer reviewed, but you can supplement that and make it better. But the cool thing is it's offered through an accredited source with real teachers. You're going to have to do peer review on your work, which is worth completely worthless pretty much for peer review from a grading perspective. It's a good exercise. But when it comes to grading my grad case from somebody that knows as much as I do, that doesn't mean a whole lot. But those are alternatives that will at least give you a foundation. Now you're still not going to have the paper that I was talking about and eventually you might have to bite the bullet and go that route. But those are some things that you can do if this is a time in your life that you can't afford to do the university.
Brendan Jarvis:
So I went to university and I studied information systems at the time and what I observed as a young person when I was doing that. So we're going back to 2005, six I believe. 5, 6, 7. Okay. Was that already The university course was outta date with what I was learning on the internet at the time when it came to the worldwide web. And this irked me a little because I was paying good money for a good institution to get a piece of paper, a credential that said that I knew this thing. And I just wonder how up to date are the universities now with the way in which the field is practiced?
Darren Hood:
That's a fantastic question. That's one of the problems that I found with the university experience as a whole. I've actually, I don't know, you won't find this online about me. I know you said you did some research. This one you won't find. I conducted what I like to refer to as the quintessential ethnographic study in that jokingly of course when I say that I went to multiple universities. Yes, I graduated from Syracuse. Yes, I graduated from Kent State, but I also went to other nameless institutions. I'm not going to name them today but I went to other universities and in those universities I left because the experiences were not right. They were outdated they were irrelevant. And people want relevance when they have a learning experience, why go through a learning program? So I can't do anything with what they're teaching me.
Brendan Jarvis:
And that's the hook for the boot camps, right? What the hookers, isn't it? It's like that's what they claimed industry ready inside of six months or whatever the timeframe is. That is what people want to hear and it's what people want to believe. But it really is a beware situation is what I'm hearing from
Darren Hood:
You. Big time. Yes. Caveat them. Tour big time. I have worked with X number of bootcamp grads over the course of my career and I only of all the people, and I'm not going to apologize for it, deciding a fact. Only one of them really brought anything to the table. And the person that did feels that their bootcamp experience was worthless and they went back and added something on top of it. Everybody who came out of the bootcamp and wanted to tout the bootcamp as the best thing since sliced bread, as we say, using that old saying word nightmarish. Absolutely nightmarish to work with.
Brendan Jarvis:
What was it about them?
Darren Hood:
Dunning? Usually it's a Dunning Kruger, the common thread. Dunning kruer bias. Dunning Krueger bias. They put themselves on pedestals. Tapping into my current series on emotional intelligence. They have severe inferiority complexes. I love building people. I don't care you went to a bootcamp. I don't care. I'm going to build you. I mean you're going to need what I call a cognitive enema. Gotta, and it's harder to unlearn something that it is to learn it. So now before I can teach you something, you gotta unlearn because they don't teach people information architecture, they don't teach people to respect the history of the discipline. They really don't. Which if you're going to go forward, you actually need to, cuz you need to know where we're coming from.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Let's go in into that then, because I have heard you talk about needing to understand the history of the discipline and where it's come from in order to be an effective practitioner. What is it about understanding the road that has already been walked that makes someone a more effective er?
Darren Hood:
Understanding where we've come from, one of the biggest things that I find to be key is those methodologies. The information architecture, the stuff that's in the polar bear book, that stuff's not outdated at all. And when you understand how the shifts work has come about, what I talk about the four pillars of UX, when you get into the history, you gotta understand what the four pillars are. Whereas if you get into what I'm now starting to call the cult of UX, those things aren't included. So they want you to start talking about design thinking and I'm going, and the first thing we're going to do is empathize everything that they're claiming in design thinking we were already doing. So you basically are taking things we were already doing, slapping a new name on it. And so when you know the history and when you understand what was being practiced, you won't become victimized by things like this.
You won't say, wait a minute, empathize. Can you explain that to me? Then when they explain it, aren't we doing that when we conduct research, aren't we learning more about other people's perspectives when we find out how they use things, we find out what their pain points are when we understand their middle models, we were already doing all of that. So you get to call it something new and then now we're supposed to now put you on a pedestal because you came up with, went in a closet and came out with a new word. People who don't know the history are all, they're all right for being impressed by these newfangled things. And they're really not new. They're actually old.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I get that. I get how understanding the history will help you become more aware of people trying to sell you things that are really just repackaged ways of thinking about old problems or trying to solve old problems. Now I've heard you talk about design thinking before and it doesn't seem to hold or you don't seem to have any love in your heart for it. You've said, and I'll quote you now, what they're doing is they're taking things that we are already doing in UX and just calling it design thinking. They're not doing anything differently, which is pretty much what you just said, right? Yeah, right. But I'm curious about curious who is the they? So if UX is in, what I get a sense of from you, you feel like it's in a bit of crisis. Yes, we have these people that are selling the snake oil and we have people perhaps who are practicing it in a way that isn't true to the history of the origins of the discipline. Who is they? If could, I mean, I'm not asking you to name necessarily individuals. I don't want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, but who is the they that is doing this to us?
Darren Hood:
Is you? You made me think about another saying I have. It's it's not as much about the who as it is about the what. And so there's a lot of people that are guilty of it to the extent that it doesn't really benefit us to know who, but it does benefit us to know the what. So that way we can avoid what's happening. When we understand what you can understand, we can name one person that's doing it and that actually is not going to help you because then you're red flagging that person and then another person comes up right behind 'em and does the same exact thing. And then because you were caught up in the who and not the what, you're still susceptible. So for that reason, I stress the what. And so when you say who is they? Anybody who's guilty?
Speaker 3:
[laugh].
Darren Hood:
It's a B really broad net.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. I mean look, there are design processes have sort of mushroomed o over recent years. And I know that you have a talk specifically on design process. And for my way of looking at design process, it's somebody trying to articulate what it is that we do in the field of design. And they are a theme on each other. They all sort of have core central tenants around empathy and iteration and all these things that are quite central to the way in which we have become accustomed to think about doing design. But what I'm getting to is a question in here somewhere, which is aren't the theys that are putting out these different models and ways of thinking, which aren't that different? To your point, are they not helping to normalize this field of design and UX and get it in the heads of business stakeholders and into the mainstream? In order for us as practitioners to be able to do what it is that we've wanted to do for 20 to 30 years?
Darren Hood:
I'd say no because there is a problem in UX where you probably saw this post I had last week about UX celebr. A lot of the people that are rebranding things are doing it because it puts them on a pedestal. And if you're putting yourself on a pedestal, then you really don't care that much about the discipline. If we imagine with all these people coming in, one person's talking about devil diamond, another person's talking about design thinking. Another person's talking about, we call it waterfall. Where's a mix of agile and well agile fall as we agile fall [laugh] where they're mixing agile waterfall and everybody's got all these different things that are going on. How much further along would the discipline be if we were more unified, not necessarily all doing things the same exact way, but if there was more continuity and a bit more cohesiveness with UXers presentation, would we not be further along and how much further along would we be?
Because you have organizational UX maturity levels, personal UX maturity level, which nobody talks about. You have the discipline wide UX atory level and the discipline wide UX maturity level as one that's always gathering data to understand it. In talking to people around the world in hiring practices and just getting massive data points, the discipline wide US material level is grossly off target. And part of the reason is too many people are saying too many different things. And then when you get up and you say, we should be doing this, then you get a group of people that accuses you of being a gatekeeper.
Brendan Jarvis:
Here we
Darren Hood:
Go. Not knowing that they are really demonstrating their ignorance because a gatekeeper is act. If you really look at what a gatekeeper is and they have a project that's about to come out on this, a gatekeeper's actually a good thing. They say, well, why can't we be certified? And then they always mention them in unison doctors or accountants or lawyers. Number one, the work we do is not on that level, number one. And we definitely don't have the longevity. How long did it take them to get matured? How long? Cause they have maturing levels too. And all three of those fields are mature. How long did it take for them to get there? What thousands of years for the medical practice you read about medical doctors going back a lot of these things. So why mention us in who've been around only in the mainstream for 20 to 25 years in the mainstream.
We existed before that, but we're in the mainstream. Why do people mention us in the same breath as disciplines that have been around for a long time and has had the opportunity to mature and have full, you don't find a university that don't have programs in any one of those three things that I mentioned. UX still barely scratching the surface. So it's going to be a while before we get there, but we need to be better. We need to be better about the way that we represent the discipline and not try to put ourselves on a pedestal. So there is no normalization that that's not what's going to back to the question. Cause I'm about to get off track. [laugh] the reel myself in here. The normalization is not going to occur until people drop their egos. It won't. It simply won't. And that's the biggest problem.
One of the biggest problems today plagiarism is huge in UX and it's accepted because people don't know the history. Somebody would not have been able to write a book taking information that already existed. I'm trying not to say what the book was in this particular, and I would, but I'm just not going to do it. I'm not afraid to do it. I do. I've done it before. If somebody wrote a book and they took information that you and I could have Googled and I had Googled, I already knew the information that was in the book, which is why I was so outspoken about it. But the person did all this, put together a book and took a little psychological factor and the only thing they did was create an icon for each one of the psychological factors rolled it out and everybody was like, oh, this is the best thing I've ever seen.
This stuff's already existed. All they did was create an icon. That's it. But people, when you know these things, you're not, wait a minute, why is this person doing this? This stuff is all on the I E F website. Well, the interaction design, design foundation, encyclopedia. So wait a minute, you mean to tell me that I could go extract certain related things from out encyclopedia, create an icon and somebody's going to publish the book and everybody's going to think it's the best thing since sliced bread and think that I've really opened people's eyes? No, they're just new. But if you're new and you're coming in and you learn the history and this keeps happening over and over again and it's a type of plagiarism. So no, that's not doing the,
Brendan Jarvis:
Let's come back to what you were saying about gatekeepers and yeah, the lack of standards is what I heard when you were talking about that, about how we judge ourselves to what degree do we hold ourselves to. And I've seen the medical side of that. Cause my wife is almost through her ophthalmology training, which is to become an eye doctor. An eye surgeon, nice. And so I've seen the extreme of what they put doctors through to earn those letters that go after their name and to enable them to practice surgery on another human. So I I've seen that extreme. There's something like only 150 of them in New Zealand, which is a country of 5 million people and it will be similar ratios worldwide. So that's one extreme. And like you said, it's been built on thousands of years of history. And then you've got our discipline, which is relatively new, [laugh], what do we need? So what if we have right now isn't working for us? If we've got these aspects of plagiarism that are going on that aren't being called out. If we've got institutions training the next generation of UXers but aren't really doing them justice, what is it? What is our middle ground? What is our thing that we are lacking in the moment that if we would make us some more effective field in a more unified field?
Darren Hood:
What a fantastic question. And it's one that's, I don't have a perfect answer for it and it's because what I would've said if we were doing this seven years ago, we just need to strengthen education and blah blah, blah. I understand that it's more complex than that. I mean theoretically speaking and figuratively speaking, education, if we could come together and okay, what are the tenets, fundamentals of this discipline, can we agree upon that? Okay, if we can agree upon that, let's put together an educational track that revolves around that. There is something similar. Someone else realize that that's the key. It is the key. The reason that I said that I can't answer it is because while I know that that's the key, getting it done is another story that requires res the resolution in other areas. Because I know that Don Norman has been working on something like that, and I'm going to borrow from one of my peers, Debbie Levitt, who said that he's working on it, but it is being done at an academic pace.
It is. So that means that it is going to, knowing what I know, that's what I'm getting my PhD in. That takes a while to get it done. So we've got time. That's an issue. And because UX is an infinite science and it has a lot of moving parts while they're working on things, the things that need to go into that are changing. I don't know if they're keeping their eye on things that are changing so they can modify what they're proposing. But that's not the problem. The biggest problem, it's a problem, but it's a standard problem. The biggest problem is there are people who are partnering, I'm going to get in trouble for this one, but there are people who are partnering with Norman that don't have a horse in the race. So because there are people that are supposedly partnering to resolve UX educational issues that are not part of UX education's leadership, there's no way they're going to come up with the right answer.
There are organizations that are contributing to the current spiral of problems that we have in UX that are sitting on that committee that are working. So they're not going matter of fact, and they heard me say this on social media and reached out to me to get my input because I'm trying to protect, protect my people who are working on this project. Folks are so busy protecting folks that people in UX are spending more time protecting people's feelings and egos than they are protecting the integrity of the discipline. And so no matter what they're trying to do about education, if that work continues on the trajectory it's on, they're going to say, Hey, we came up with some standards, but I already know they're going to be wrong. They're going to be wrong. And then the wrong thing is going to be instituted and everybody's going to, everybody being in a general consensus, they're going to get up and they're going to say, Hey, we've got a standard now. We've been looking for this for years, but Darren Hood is on record right now telling you that thing that they're doing. Love you Don Norman. But what you're doing that's wrong, it going to come out the wrong way because the wrong people are part of the solution.
Brendan Jarvis:
What is it that you fear will result from those people working on those standards? What is it specifically that is wrong? What is it that's going to do a disservice to the field?
Darren Hood:
That's an easy one. It's going, it is going to render biased solutions that are going to play out to make them look like heroes and to foster people into their already established faux UX type of way, thinking that is already part of the problem to begin with. That in short, that's basically it. That it I B M, who is, I might as well say it because it is actually common knowledge. IBM has a huge volume of people working on that project. IBM hasn't done anything for UX. I used to work for ibm. I know what bm, I know what UX is like in ibm. Even though that was going back to 2013, I know that it hasn't advanced very much since then. Matter of fact, the fact that they are touting design thinking, even though design thinking is easily shot down by anyone with an ounce of critical thinking, if I B M is trying to get companies to adopt their design thinking methodology, do we really think that they're going to come up with a proper educational solution working with Don Norman, or are they going to do that biased approach and infuse a lot of what is they come up with to make sure that it taps into the things that b m is prescribing?
They're definitely going to do
Brendan Jarvis:
It. So it sounds like the issue that you take with this initiative is the impartiality. The lack of impartiality, yes. Between the commercial sector and the future generation of practitioners.
Darren Hood:
Exactly. And the average person isn't going to see IBM and go, oh, ibm. I don't know. That's not what people are going to say. People are starstruck. They hear IBM and they go, Ooh. They hear Google and they go, Ooh. They hear Facebook meta and they go, Ooh. They hear Amazon and they go, Ooh. And they don't think that these companies can do any wrong. But when it comes to UX, big names don't mean a thing. There was a fantastic article that somebody shared in the UX community today about how i's design thinking was applied. I think it was idio that actually did the work that came in and applied their design thinking to some municipality and almost destroyed a city. Yeah, good job design thinking. I call design thinking glorified spitballing. And it is a way to unleash ikea. IKEA bias basically because people get excited when they're involved in the solution.
It doesn't mean the solution is right. You just got a bunch of people in a room and they came up with something. Yeah, they're going to come out and tout it and say that it's great because they got IKEA effect bias. Where's the voice of reason in the room that says that what you came out with is not going to work? Where's the heuristic impact, the heuristic analysis, that thing that we should do. I gave a talk on heuristic analysis once, and the people went into a riot when they heard about it. They refuse to accept it when heuristics should be one of the first things that people learn, but they don't learn it. And now and they hear the term and then they get that buzzwordy reaction. And then I spoke to somebody recently and I started talking about heuristics. The person never used the word heuristics in their life. And then after I said it, they start talking about heuristics.
Brendan Jarvis:
But you had impact Darren
Darren Hood:
[laugh].
Brendan Jarvis:
No, that's impact, right? You got them talking the language. That's a fair step, isn't it?
Darren Hood:
No, that's actor when they're talking. Those are actors. We got enough actors out there. They got another word to throw into their script and then they improv and go into not start acting like they know what you're talking about. No, you
Brendan Jarvis:
Don't know. I know. This is unfiltered and this is exactly what we called for [laugh]. Okay. So this is what we wanted. We wanted this conversation to be the real Darren Hood, the real unfiltered UX. But there are probably some people out there listening to this episode thinking that Darren, your views are overly cynical and perhaps a little bit negative. What do you say to those people?
Darren Hood:
That's fantastic. I'm glad you say that. Number one, I would recommend you to my post on Medium that talks about toxic positivity because it is, and that's one of the things I talk about in my series on emotional intelligence. If you have a nail in your car, in your tire, you need to know that. And when somebody comes along and says, Hey, you got a nail in your tire, it's great that you know that because now people classify that as negative. Is it negative or is it lifesaving? And I'm also on record of saying that there actually is no such thing as negative unless we're talking about batteries. In a sense, there's no such thing as negative. There is constructive and there is destructive. Now, I challenge people who think that what I'm saying is negative, flip it. Look at it from a perspective of constructive or destructive.
If you listen to what I'm saying, is it destru? Because from that perspective, destructive would be parallel with negative and positive and negative. And then constructive would be negative, would be parallel or positive. So if you look at what I'm saying, what would happen to you if you paid attention to what I said and actually implemented something to counter it, would it build you? You better believe it would. So that means it's not destructive. So if it's not destructive, how is it negative? So if you have a nail in your tire, you need to know, or you're going to end up going on a freeway somewhere and you're going to have a blowout. So if you get an attitude, actually have a comic strip was, which I'm sure you've seen, and there's oh, an upcoming episode that I'm working on where there's four frames, and in one frame the person sees a road sign that's warming, warning him on something on the line of the bridge, bridge being out.
Oh, I'm glad I knew that. And then he comes across a second sign and he see, he sees that the there's a construction or something like that. Oh, I'm glad I see that. Basically a sequence of seeing warning signs and being grateful. But then seeing the last frame is the person seeing somebody saying something on social media about UX and then becoming hostile because basically it contradicts your biases. And so that's not negative. These things are, and I've have people tell me that before, but I know better. And I know that if you wanna succeed, you need to identify all pitfalls, all roadblocks, all mountains. And you need to have a strategy for each one. So everything that I'm saying is actually constructive. And what I've found is that people who see it as negative keep watching those same people. Just keep watching them watching.
See what happens as they ignore all of these warnings, as they ignore downloads about the pitfalls. There are pitfalls in UX if you don't learn about them. I almost walked away from UX in about 2007, 2008 because I ran into the pitfalls and nobody told me about them. And when it happened, it blew my mind and I couldn't believe, what do you mean they're not going to pay attention? It completely freaked me out and one day somebody gave me some constructive input and it changed everything. And they said, there is such a thing as healthy friction. And when I heard that, I went, wow, you're right. And it completely changed. And ever since then, those crazy discussions that happened with within UX and those crazy pushing back my clients, all of those things just basically melted away. They no longer floor me. Do they frustrate you?
Yeah. It frustrates you at times. But it's not going to flatten me and it's not going to run me out of the discipline. And I remember, you probably heard me tell this story before as well, where when I first got involved and I was doing a lot more visual design earlier on in my UX pathways and back in the day of the discussion group, the B B s and the discussion area news groups before there was a Facebook or anything like that earlier days of the internet. And we were discussing graphic tools and somebody had said, yeah, really enjoy talking to you when you get serious, you might wanna switch over to Photoshop. I was using COR photo paint to deal with photos at the time, which at the time wasn't bad, but it wasn't the granddaddy, you know, really wanted to be for real. You didn't really need to be in Photoshop. And I know that now, but the guy said, yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
But who could have afforded that license back then? [laugh], what was it, like $3,000 or something? Ridiculous.
Darren Hood:
It was crazy. But there was a way to get into it, especially, which I ended up doing. I went and bought a license right after that. But it floored me because I thought I was serious. So when he said, when you get serious then go to Photoshop. I'm going, but wait a minute, I am serious. Well,
Brendan Jarvis:
Let's get into this, actually, let's get into this because when someone says something like that to you that is potentially gaslighting or something to that effect. And I know that recently you have riled against the rise of imposter syndrome that has presented itself and almost every discipline, not just UX, there's been right, a huge amount of people declaring themselves as imposters in public largely on social media. And quote you. Now, just so that people have some context for what you've said about this in the past, you've said that these people have absolutely no reason to doubt who they are, but succumbed to doing so. Anyway. So when, you know, give that example of that person gaslighting you about using corral, when they used Photoshop, sort of lauding that over you, how did you react or internalize that that was different to how someone who might claim to be feeling like an imposter, like that statement that person made could make someone feel like, how did you treat that opportunity to respond and how did you respond?
Darren Hood:
When that person told me, and I say they weren't gaslighting me in that setting, that person was not gaslighting me from his perspective. From his perspective. He wasn't being a jerk either. That was his perspective. That was his perspective. And I respect that. And I think if I respected him in what he said, and we had a relationship, we were talking a lot, and I knew his expertise. He had been doing what he was doing a whole lot longer than I was. And so for him to say that, it floored me. Cause of the part about when you were serious, when you get serious and in his mind, I wasn't serious yet, but I wouldn't call it gaslighting, he was just sharing his perspective. When people are gaslighting, they have knowledge that they're spinning some they're, they're spinning, they're doing a little Jedi mine trick.
They know that they're doing something. I can tell stories about that, but I won't go down that road right now unless you ask me later. But I recognize, wow, if I want to get better, I do have to raise my game. I've been working with cor, it's been perfect for what I've been doing thus far, but I need to go. I need go up. Are you willing to rise up and do something better? Are you willing to be more, you've been successful so far doing what you're doing in Corll? I had been the managing editor, this isn't common knowledge, but I had been the managing editor of a publication that was being published in Corll Draw. So I had the whole corll, I went all the way up to Corll eight I think before I, or nine or somewhere I been between eight and 10 before I walked away from Corll Draw.
And the little sub pieces is there, but I realized that what the person was saying, it had merit and I was willing to never talked to 'em again. It wasn't because of what they said, it just worked out that way that we just never talked again. But it changed me for the better. And I tell that story in one of my belong posts on Medium, it changed me forever. Forever. And I remember working at a bank in Detroit and realized that if I want to get better at UX, I, there's a ceiling on what I can talking about earlier. Our trajectory is determined by where we work. And I knew that if I stayed at that bank that I was not going to grow when it came to UX. I simply wasn't going to grow. And so I did the same exact thing that came up with Corell.
So when somebody makes a statement and that statement is it floors you or it doesn't match what you felt your perception of yourself was. And there is room for growth and that's that self-awareness part of eq. There is room for me to grow. I can be better, I can do more. I don't know anything about Photoshop. I was serious. I was serious, but there was still something, some room for growth. So I humbled myself another EQ component, being humble, not so caught up in what I felt I was and not celebrating my accomplishments to the point that it kept me in that state. I was willing to grow. And I encourage people to do the same. You may have been in a bootcamp and you may have been dead on serious about it, but there's other levels, there's other things you can do. If I can throw that example in there, and I'm not demonizing people who go to bootcamps, it's just that I've been in the same position, not necessarily at the UX bootcamp, but there was, when there's something higher to ascend to, I want to do it.
Remember if I touch it, gotta excel at it. So if that's the name of the game, then hey, are you excelling right now? Actually no. Right. Then let's go. And when you opt into UX, it's, it's lifelong learning and it's a neverending growth pattern. So where I am today, 26 years, but I'm still trying to get better, I'm still trying to do more. Do I know everything? Nope, never will. Because there's always something being piled on to all the things that we know and do. So there's always going to be something to grow in. And even when we do something, you always immediately wanna look at what can I do to be better? Now I bowled 2, 300, 2 300 games and the first thing I thought about after I threw the last 300 was what could I have done better? That was my first reaction. I didn't celebrate the 300, what could I do better? It's just the way it is.
Brendan Jarvis:
Constant state of dissatisfaction even with your own success. Yeah, that is so effects guys and Right. It affects a lot of people. I wanna come back to imposter syndrome though. And your story that you told there, clearly that wasn't something that affected you. You became aware of another level that you could get to and that's that almost that conscious, you became conscious of your incompetence and saw that as a challenge rather than being an imposter. So what is it at the moment? And it's not just in UX as I said, but what is it at the moment that is making people come forward and declare that they are imposters in their discipline? What is it that's driving people to do this and are they imposters?
Darren Hood:
Oh boy. Yeah. People aren't going to like this In my observations, the reason that a lot of people are doing it is because it's a pinnacle. It is what I call a pinnacle acknowledgement that because a lot of the people that I've seen that claim to be imposters never try to get beyond that. So it's a pinnacle acknowledgement. I am an imposter, it's a badge. They do it. It's a badge of honor. And I come across people who say that they're imposter. They feel they're imposters, they say they have imposter syndrome and they really don't labor. To get beyond that, when I did my blog, my blog post on share on the truth about imposter syndrome, okay, this is where you are, this is how you feel. And I say it's not really imposter syndrome, it's usually either self-doubt or you're just going through standard growing pains where you lack confidence and everybody feels that way at some time.
It doesn't mean we're, we're all buts of imposters walking down the street together. I got imposter syndrome, you I have it too. No, you're having some self-doubt. You're wondering about whether or not you should be doing this, whether or not you're qualified, whatever the case may be. But you know what, when the time comes, you're going to get up and you're going to try to get yourself equipped as best you can and go and execute. Now the wise thing to do, not to sit here, do you want a doctor with imposter syndrome removing your kidney? Really? I don't think so. And do you want to work next to somebody and do work on some, do UX on something that has life or death connotations associated with it? Anybody? Can anybody afford for either of you? Say there's two people on the team or three, can anybody afford for any of you to be imposters or feel like you're imposters? That's a dangerous state of mind to be in. If you don't know something then go learn it.
Brendan Jarvis:
This is key. And there's exactly, you wrote something else in that post that actually really made me think about that trend to declare imposter syndrome and that it's generally, in terms of the academic litera literature, it is a syndrome that's not actually a psychological syndrome, but it is experienced by people that have already achieved a high level of achievement. So it's people that are at the top of their field that regardless of their credentials, regardless of what other people say about them, they still don't feel like they belong. And if you are experiencing the so-called imposter syndrome and you haven't reached the top of your field and you don't have people laing you for how great you are, then yes, you are just experiencing. And I think, again, I don't think it's a, probably wasn't a popular thing for you to write, but when you think about that, that is so true.
If anything you are, you're an imposter claiming imposter syndrome if you haven't reached the top of your field. And I think exactly, it is actually so refreshing to, was so refreshing to read that and have it a spade called a spade as we say here. And I'm not sure if you have it there when it comes to things like that. Yeah, we do. You were just learning. You are learning and that is okay, but you need to, that's fine. You need to put that somewhere. Yeah, you need to put it somewhere, right? Realize there's another level and then close that gap.
Darren Hood:
And the research you just mentioned, something else I thought about when you said that, was that true if imposter syndrome was indeed a thing, it's only afforded to those individuals. And the other piece is it's something that's more people who are perfectionists are more prone to being in that state of mind, not just any old Tom, Dick and Harry,
Brendan Jarvis:
People that aren't happy with their dick and 300 [laugh], right?
Darren Hood:
Yeah. I mean these people are so, they claim it and in their minds, what I have observed is that once they claim it, they no longer have to get better. Because every time somebody calls them out I have imposter syndrome, I have apologize, and I see people parading it around. It's something to be proud of.
Brendan Jarvis:
There's also something, there's else in here which I wanna raise with you, which is in your article you mentioned in there that it's something that affects women more than men and also people that come from minority races. And there's almost something disingenuous for the masses or people that aren't from minorities to claim that they are experiencing that, irrespective of their level of achievement. If they do not really truly understand why that term was coined and who actually legitimately experiences this. And as an African American man who is operating in the world of UX for a quarter century, this is something that I really wanted to ask you about because you of course bring to bear that perspective, which is, have you ever felt in this field of UX as if an African American man, as if you were an imposter?
Darren Hood:
No, I have, if I ever have, there been times where I felt that I needed to up my game. Absolutely. And I'm always looking for that if I remember, okay, so I did my first, I could read it my first website in 95 using what we now know as UX principles. So that's why I claim that. Cause some people get mad at me about that. I don't care. Cause it's true. If other people are claiming stuff and they're lying, I might as well claim that because it really happened. But as you fast forward throughout my career, even when I got my first full-time UX role, I felt really, really confident when I was in that role. But I was just always looking for opportunities to improve. And right now as I sit here, I'm looking for opportunities to improve about whatever I touch. When I went to my next gig, cause I said if I stay here at the bank, I'm going to limit my growth.
And I went to one of the largest digital agencies in metro Detroit. I immediately went from the bank to Wonderman Digital and was working there and I saw gaps. I saw, wow, these people have more on the ball than me when it comes to certain things. I didn't go into inferior inferiority complex mode. I didn't think I was an imposter. I knew I wasn't an imposter. I knew what I w I knew who I was and what I was. And that's again why I said the EQ is so critical because you always need to know who and what you are so that you can always manage things. But I saw this person's really good at that. I need to start studying that more. This person is good as this, I need to study this one. So I would acknow see gaps and then looking at the discipline as well as a whole, what can I do to get better?
So I never saw myself as an imposter cause and that it never even crossed my mind. It was just what can I do to improve, improve, improve, improve, improve, improve, improve. And that's what I did. Your question does remind me though, about one instance where I was working with a group of people and someone presented the same question and without the minority piece being a part of it. And they said, do you ever feel, they asked a whole group of us, do you ever feel like you're an imposter? And immediately the entire room turned me off. Like nobody, we were on a zoom call. Nobody wanted to hear what I was saying. I'd raised my hand, I tried to talk, they would talk over me. I typed my response in the chat, nobody paid attention to it. And I finally got a moment. Cause I believe in being polite on conference calls, unlike a lot of things I've experienced, but for what that's worth. But I eventually got a chance to put my 2 cents out there and I said, I've never felt like an imposter, but I've had people try to impute an imposter state onto me. Now that's where the folks were gaslighting, where they tried to make me feel I was something that I'm not because they had something to gain by me being what they were fabricating.
Brendan Jarvis:
So they wanted you to say answer in the affirmative.
Darren Hood:
Yeah, they did. And so when I told them that, no, but I say have other people try to make me feel like an am imposter. Those same people that wouldn't let me talk, the same people who were talking over me, the same people who wouldn't read my chat note in Zoom, some of them never talk to me again. And to this day haven't said a single solitary thing to me because, so some of the people who opt in to this whole imposter thing are doing it also because they get accepted by other people. It's, it's more acceptable to be an imposter or imposter that it is for somebody to be an expert. And people, a lot of people who claim to be imposter, going to see an imposter that's not an imposter or an imposter claiming imposter A person, lemme back up, wanna see a person claiming imposter syndrome.
That's actually an imposter. Those people have issues with experts and you can't have issues with an expert and wanna be an expert because the love affairs with expertise, not with people. It it's, if I wanna measure up, your wife is trying to be an ophthalmologist. She'll admire some people who've done a lot, but she's always racing with and comparing herself to the standards. The Hippocratic Oath calls for such. And so the same thing apply. I'm actually doing a job. Something for that hopefully is going to be with the folks over in the uk the tech circus folks. I think that's what we call I'm actually talking about doing a talk for them called UX and the Good Doctor because they're parallels between the Hippocratic Oath and what we should be doing as UX professionals. So it is just amazing how people, I get accused of being a gatekeeper because what really all that means is that I'm a quality advocate. But they don't know that that's what they're saying. You love quality, we don't like you [laugh]. That doesn't make sense. So yeah, I've never felt like an imposter and I make sure I'm going to make that I'm not, cause I'm always going to labor to make sure that I'm qualified.
Brendan Jarvis:
And now I have a much clearer sense of why people claiming imposter syndrome makes you angry in a positive sense. You don't want people to claim that for themselves now. Yeah. Darren, you are clearly someone who is very determined, very honest, and you've been very successful in achieving and pursuing your goals. What's your message for the people who are listening today who may not have yet found their line within?
Darren Hood:
I would say, and I'm going to refer to one of my talks that I got called in to deliver this talk for an automobile, a leading automobile manufacturer to a team of about 30 UXers. And then I was able to deliver it later. And it's the talk I did on the UX cycle of excellence since I had to leave one thing, embrace the UX cycle of excellence and tweak it as you need to. But you gotta have that plan because none of us is going to achieve excellence by osmosis. None of us will. So we have to put, what are you going to do? I did a talk on my podcast about building A P L N, build a per, that's part of it. Build a personalized learning network. Tap into sound, trustworthy resources that will help you to grow. Cuz it doesn't matter where you are in your journey, you always need to tap into somebody else.
You always need to listen. And because it's the perspectives of others that help to sharpen us, we can never, the knife, the sharp knife in the drawer will never get any sharper it. It's not until you come into contact with another knife that's just as sharp as you or sharper and then you bring those knives together and now you can begin to optimize the sharpening process. But if you keep hanging around plastic knives, that's not going to work. You can't get sharpen against plastic knives and the plastic knives. They like to boast cuz they can cut Maloney lunch meat and things like that. But you can't sharpen anybody. There's certain things that plastic knives can't do. So don't be a plastic knife. Subscribe to excellence [laugh], subscribe to excellence. And you'll always, not only will you excel, but you'll be a truly be a benefit to everybody that you encounter. And that makes the discipline work.
Brendan Jarvis:
I definitely feel sharper having had this conversation, I have really appreciated the unfiltered nature of it as well. And I just wanna say absolutely thank you for so generously and openly sharing your stories and experiences today.
Darren Hood:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, as always. I love sharing with the community and I wish everybody the best in your new next
Brendan Jarvis:
Journey. You're most welcome and it's much appreciated. Darren, if people wanna find out more about you, about UX Unfiltered, about the podcast, all the great things that you do, what's the best way for them to do that?
Darren Hood:
Oh my goodness. I would say the best way is LinkedIn. That's probably where I spend most of my time. People reach out to me. I'm everywhere. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook. We have a private social media network that we established not too long ago. Some people are connecting out there but LinkedIn is probably the best way. Perfect to connect with me.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yep. Thanks Darren. And to everyone that's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. We will be linking to everything that Darren has mentioned there as to how you can find Darren, all the things that he is up to in the show notes on YouTube, and also on the podcast, on the audio platforms as well. 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, subscribe to it, and also pass it along if you feel that there's someone else that would get some value out of these kind of conversations. And if you wanna reach out to me, you can also find my LinkedIn profile in the show notes at the very bottom, or you can head on over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz, that's thespaceinbetween.co nz. And until next time, keep being brave.

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