Dan Hill
Technology Is the Answer but What Was the Question?
In this episode of Brave UX, Dan Hill challenges us to think differently about our cities and civic spaces, to consider the second order effects of our work, and to think carefully about the questions we’re asking.
Highlights include:
- Who should be responsible for the negative externalities of technology?
- When and why did the financialisation of our public spaces begin?
- Technology is the answer. But what was the question?
- Do people have cause to be grumpy about cycle lanes?
- Why do we make cities?
Who is Dan Hill?
Dan recently finished up as the Director of Strategic Design at Vinnova, the Swedish Government’s innovation agency, to become the Director of the Melbourne School of Design, at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
He has also been an Associate Director and Head of Arup Digital Studio, a Strategic Design Lead at SITRA (Finland’s government innovation fund) and the Head of Interactive Technology and Design at the BBC.
Dan was one of the Mayor of London’s - Sadiq Khan’s - inaugural Design Advocates. He has been a Trustee of the Participatory City Foundation and he is a founding member of the UN HABITAT Council for Urban Initiatives.
The author of the influential book “Dark Matter & Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary” and a a prolific blogger, Dan has been writing about design, technology, cities and culture for over 20 years on his blog, “City of Sound”.
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. You can find out a bit more about that at thespaceinbetween.co.nz. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Dan Hill. Dan is, well many things. A designer, urbanist educator and experienced leader who has worked across multiple industries and sectors for the past 30 years. In particular, he's found his sweet spot working at the intersection of design technology and cities.
- In April, Dan became the director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne Australia. There he's working to elevate the graduate educational experience through a holistic approach to interdisciplinary design practices and learning. Dan has also held roles as a Professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Visiting Professor of Ppractice at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Visiting Professor at Design Academy Eindhoven and a Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. Prior to joining the Melbourne School of Design, Dan was the Director of Strategic design at Vinnova, the Swedish Government's Innovation Agency. He has also previously been an Associate Director and head of Arup Digital Studio at Arup in London, CEO of Fabrica in Italy, a Strategic Design Lead at SITRA, Finland's Governments Innovation Fund and the Head of Interactive Technology and Design at the BBC. Dan has developed and delivered city strategy and urban development projects for local governments in Amsterdam, Melbourne, Stockholm, Manchester, Sydney, and London.
- As well as for Google's parent company, Alphabet and Lendlease. He was one of the Mayor of London's - Sadiq Khan’s - inaugural design advocates. He has been a Trustee of the Participatory City Foundation and is a Founding Member of the UN Habitat Council for Urban Initiatives. Dan is the author of the influential book, Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary and is a prolific blogger who has been writing about design technology, cities and culture for over 20 years. Definitely check out his blog. It's called City of Sound and you can find it on Medium. Honestly, I could go on. Dan has done plenty of amazing things, but it will be much better if I don't and we find out about them from him directly. Dan, welcome to the show.
- Dan Hill:
- Thank you. Sorry, my CV takes half an hour to get through. I suppose it took about 30 years for me to get through it, so
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I feel like I've got the better end of that bargain to be fair.
- Dan Hill:
- Exactly.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hey Dan, I really enjoyed preparing for today. I watched a number of your previous talks and read some of the things that you've written and I did notice a couple of times you referred to a football and I just wanna clarify for our American audience that when we speak about football, we're talking about what they refer to as soccer. Yeah, just how large a football fan are you?
- Dan Hill:
- Pretty big, I would say in the, I'm a Liverpool fan for what it's worth. And I probably think about them every 20 minutes I would say, but then because I'm not a fan that can go to games anymore cause I live on side of the world. Other than that, yeah. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check the football news, read the Liverpool football website this morning. The players just returned to training for the start of the new season yesterday. So yeah, why someone like me would waste their time watching photos of 20 year old grown men doing training over the other side of the world. It's not even a game, it's just running through up and down in straight lines. Having with electrode attach,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well some things just can't
- Dan Hill:
- Do that kind of thing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So if you're missing the subtlety of that people Dan's an incredibly large fan of Liverpool. Am I right or am I wrong? That they're referred to as the scousers is that
- Dan Hill:
- Scousers is what you call people from Liverpool generally or rather what they would call themselves. Right. So I dunno where that comes from, but yeah, it's, that's not term for any kind of liver puddle. But yeah, in Liverpool one of the two big teams in Liverpool and obviously the biggest I would say, but yes, for our American friends it's talking about the world game here. We're talking about the one that most countries spend a lot of time obsessing about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Tell me what was it that
- Dan Hill:
- New Zealand a little bit right.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well I don't know if we actually qualified for the World Cup this time round or maybe even last time round, but we give it our best. We give it our best. Yeah. What was it that got you interested in football?
- Dan Hill:
- Oh, I mean I grew up in a fairly sporty household I suppose. My mom was a tennis coach professionally. My dad was a teacher but was also a qualified coach I think in football, tennis, and cricket. So we were just sort of, I surrounded by balls of various sizes littering around your feet from a very early age. So I was playing a lot. And then the age of seven or eight then you start noticing you can also support it and get into it just like kids into any kinda hobby. But yeah. And was you as a footballer as well? So think I playing and regularly in either a five or side or something up until about let's say five years ago when my knees finally gave out, not being a professional and being a man of a certain age. So yes, I find it immensely interesting.
- And then I do write about it a bit. I read about it going beyond sort of silly everydayness of being a football fan as a thing itself. I find it an interesting way of thinking about the world. I think interesting. It's interesting from a design point of view, it's definitely interesting from a management and leadership point of view because if you think about it, your football, managing a football team is a bit like designing an outta control system as in no matter how much practice you do. And of course they practice X most of the day for all of their lives, no matter you're still at the chance, depends what the other team do. It depends what the weather is. There's so many impossible out control elements. You have this really interesting interplay between something you can prepare for and have a strategy about and design for and create conditions for.
- And if you do that things really well, of course you're increasing your chance of success. But at the same time the game is so delicately balanced as a sort of design in itself that you can't control it. So I find it very useful for thinking about systems generally, which I think said you know, can't control systems, you can influence them and you always are influencing them by virtue of whatever actions you're taking. But I think it's very interesting and how you can think in those ways. And then as a manager of course you're then thinking about I need a diverse set of skills in the team. I can't just have 11 strikers, that'd be a terrible team. So you're talking about the different balance and the diversity that people bring to a collective act. So yeah, there's a lot in there. I think mini
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Layers as well, right? Because you've got layers, you've got the on the field, the game day layer I suppose that's the operational layer. The constraints are pretty clear, you know, have however many people are living aside, unless someone gets card, you've got 90 minutes to play unless there's a bit of extra time. So and who's won or lost at the end of it or drawn exactly. But then like you say, you've got the manager that's really dealing with that next layer of complexity. But you have these clear feedback loops whether you've done well or not done well.
- Dan Hill:
- Totally. And of course now any professional team, like a high level the premiership or in Germany, those players are, the amount of data analytics going on is nuts. I mean there's machine vision all over them. Every single movement on the pitch, they're wearing sensors during training nonstop. And so you can also talk about data-driven operations and all of those things, but quite literally. And yet at the same time it's a game that also makes room for art and improvisation. So very, very structured and very systematic and very data led. And then if you think about the best players in the world, whether it's Leo or those are people that do things that are completely unpredictable and that's how they succeed. So that's really instructive. I think this balance between what you can control or take care of perhaps might be a better way of thinking about it.
- And then leading room for unpredictability. And then the whole thing itself is also a cultural act and that that's also interesting in my work as well, I'm usually trying to find things that are not, let's just say operational logistic operations with a very clear financial bottom line and feedback loop is profit or loss and it's based on very quant data about sales or widgets or whatever. But actually trying to find things that have other kinds of value that resist that easy kinda quantification. So I think that's really interesting cause you can see people when they struggle to govern football or think about it as a business, it doesn't capture what's going on there. It doesn't capture why people care about it. And that doesn't quantify to a price mechanism in the same way. And so it's really you can see authorities all over the world struggling with this one.
- How do we, we let this club fail because it fail as a business 20 years will always find way to resurrect it much business actually. So I find that interesting in terms of both then my work around say libraries or museums or more recently like streets. How do you value these things that are kinda shared and public and civic and full of life and that they resist that kind of easy quantification saying street is just for traffic or a library, library is failing if it doesn't get the number of people in each group. And that's just not true. It depends what's going on in there. It depends what kinda value is being generated. It's a much wider conversation. So it's almost so kinda useful in that sense
- Brendan Jarvis:
- As well. This has taken unexpected term but again a good one. I feel like football, it could have gone anywhere and it's gone to some really interesting territory. Thinking about that, thinking about our emphasis or over-emphasis on the financial aspects of decision making that affects everything in the private side of things in the private enterprise all the way through now to our public institutions. Has this lens always been the lens that we have applied to deciding whether or not to do something in the civic space? I should
- Dan Hill:
- Clarify, it's got more intense absolutely in the last 30 or 40 years. And I think that's probably beyond doubt people would call that a financialization, like a understanding that the finance aspect dominates our decision making, dominates the way we think about stuff. And I'm sitting in university's universities have been subject to those pressures as much as anywhere else and you could kind of say, well it would be, we could run Melbourne Uni just by kicking the students that will pay the most fees. If you were a business pure business you might well do that. But you know, probably understand that wouldn't be a good thing to do as a public institution like a university. We also should have a responsibility for equitable access to help people that don't have the advantage of growing up in a certain background that they should also be able to go to university if they're smart, they work or they have an opportunity or something to contribute.
- So we have to pull off these balancing acts in things like civic institutions or public spaces are the same. I I'd argue increasingly a huge number of things we understand are the same as that. Where on one level you can run it as a business. So obviously university does have cash flow, does have revenue, does have operational needs and so on. But you also have to pull out of that magical formula things that are well outside of what if I was just being a purely market oriented financialized thinker, you'd say well I'm not interested in those people cause they can't pay and I'm interested in these students cause they can pay double what these ones can pay. And that in the end, that would of course not be a smart thing to do from a university point of view, generally even as a business. But be why
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Not? Tell me about that. Why?
- Dan Hill:
- Well because the reputation of the university is part of, its standing in the community as well. And so you'd understand okay well that university has just gone down the road. I mean it's pretty clear that you'd gone down the road just running effectively a business. But we actually, if we think about how do we value universities, then partly it is what is it doing in the city and the community and can my kids go to work? Things like that. Non quantifiable things. And then partly it's the quality, the research or the quality of teaching. So those are things that are unrelated actually students the most. So yes, I think so in the end that would bite you on the cause it'd be pretty clear that your university had gone down that road cause it's a public entity. It's not just like a business that can do what it's like and argue increasingly.
- It's just, again we've understood the limits of that way of thinking that purely financial valuing probably since about let's just pick 1979 cause that's when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came to power. But since then there's been that kind of creeping movement across things. And so you saw things in the UK for instance, libraries were being closed down throughout the early two thousands, mid 2010, 2020 fairly rapidly. And the argument was that they're not really cost effective in an age of the internet because if you saw this very view of what a library was as a place you'd go to find out something. It was just like a place you look information at. Then of course the internet does that really well and Wikipedia will give you an answer right or wrong, but pretty good actually. And so the lazy way of thinking about libraries would be, okay, the internet's come along, we don't need to have those expensive libraries anymore.
- And that's pretty much what the UK government got to cause it was part of a grander narrative from their point of view. Austerity financialization, it completely ignored that libraries all over the world during that time period were doubling the numbers of people going massively increasing numbers. And so what started happening in the UK was that this kind of attack on libraries didn't really come from a data-driven point of view actually it started from this position of they don't seem right now and we need austerity so let's start closing their opening hours and not have them open the weekend and stuff like that. And then they started looking at the numbers going, oh fewer people are going to libraries and it's close the door at 3:00 PM sort of course they can't get in literally [laugh]. Whereas I was working on the state library Queensland time and we were seeing numbers double, double, double, double because libraries were, yes, they were dealing with knowledge and information but they were doing that as a public space in numerous ways across exhibitions and just workspaces as well as archives, as well as precious books as well as cinemas and coffee shops.
- The whole thing as a public space and a civic space to generate knowledge and as well as librarian shifting their, capturing the memory of Queensland and working that through into exhibition and so on. So all of that stuff meant that library's numbers were going up and up and up and up. And that means you have to then think about their value in a much broader sense. Some of that stuff definitely you can put a price tag on but some of it you can't. And I think it was Robert Kennedy said like about gdp, that GDP captures everything except that which is important. And so we know for that in the late sixties. So we know for a long time that the reasons we do things are actually probably cultural or why do I like football or why do I play football with my kids or why do I write they're not actually things that make me any money at all.
- So it's well outside of traditional economic thinking, but that's the thing that drives most week. Why do you start cooking? Why do you run a podcast? It might come back in some way to the business at some point, but actually of course it's just seemed like this is my contribution I can make. That's a really meaningful thing to do in it's own term. So we know that deep down it's just that the way that we've run national governments in particular for the last 30, 40 years and that which sets the frame for the way we think about the economy. And that's been of course reinforcing the media and various things has been this very financial reductive thing which has been really, really damaging. I think so. And I think we're just coming to the end of that time actually because it doesn't capture the issues around climate or social justice, you know, can't dig your way out of those holes just with the financial metrics. It's not going to work. So we need some other ways of thinking and acting.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Listening to you talk about the changes that happened from the seventies onwards and the challenges I suppose for designing for the urban environment to ensure that public and civic spaces have a role to play in the way in which we build our cities and things that will come to soon, particularly around your views around policy formulation, energy consumption and local transportation. There seems to be a distinct anti-establishment, perhaps even anti-capitalist tone or disdain that comes through. Is that a fair characterization?
- Dan Hill:
- It's not anti-establishment in the sense, well it depends if it's capital e, establi. So it would be, for instance, I'm, I work in institutions actually a lot of my life I've worked in the private sector as well as probably half my life, at least half of my working life has been in, well now I'm at the university, previously it was the Swedish government. Those are pretty institutional places and I believe in them actually. And so I want government to be more meaningful, not less. I want it to be more useful, not less. I want it to be more engaged and participative and that, that's why as a designer I engage with it. Cause I believe in the idea of government. I think the way that we've enacted it perhaps in the last 40 years again, but no doubt before that as well has been problematic often.
- So I'm not trying to destroy or tear it down at all. I'm trying to rebuild it from within. I suppose that's, or me and many, many, many others like me. And that can be very humble, just frontline sort of service improvement staff or it can be deeper about what is the role of government and citizens and how do they work together so a citizen can genuinely meaningful shape their life and their environment and be an actor within that and really engaged and participative. And at the same time, government still exists to do what individuals can't do, which is a lot, which makes fair. So I genuinely believe in that then that's why I'm interested in working there. So I don't think if anything it's, well I mean like I said, maybe it is if we say in the British context, the establishment is people that went and to end as prime certainly is fair and sure that I'm imagining for government it's the exact opposite.
- But institutions I think have a lot of value. Again, why we designed them in the first place or invented them. Capitalism something I'm against either necessarily it, it depends on how you do it. It's and there's a transition from where it goes next. That's what I'm interested in. Now whether that transition partly cuz the thing there I suppose is capitalism is all around us so it's a bit like oxygen, it can't be against oxygen and of course it brings huge value into the world as well as a mechanism. So what I'm interested in is then you know, on a MacBook Pro, right? So that wouldn't exist without capital, but what I'm interested in is what are the limits of that thinking? And it's a bit like our previous conversation about the library. There's a hard limit to how far the kind processes that build a MacBook Pro or they have a limit to when it comes to then trying to those wider civic social outcomes or environmental outcomes.
- So now could capitalism get you through those other ones as well? Maybe? I dunno. But either way my starting point is where we are. So our transition has to be then forward into that so that we start looking at not just the MacBook problem, sorry heard that audio or the Uber and the Uber interface under the problem, but the wider impact of Uber on the city, the environment. That's also part of the design challenge from my point of view. So maybe this gets into the question you hinted at, so sorry if I'm kind of jumping ahead, but
- Brendan Jarvis:
- No don't be sorry. That's
- Dan Hill:
- From a UX point of view, which is my background originally Uber in the interaction design sense say by way or Amazon arguably I'm just using as an example, but from an interaction maybe a service design point of view is pretty bloody good. Technically well design designers there in California, they've done a good job. It works and it's pretty fluid and seamless and we know that's partly why the whole venture works. Cause the internet enables a set of interactions there that are overlaid onto something like a taxi. Let's just call that taxi, that internet plus taxi equals Uber. Well internet plus taxi plus lawyers actually equals Uber. And that's pretty good at that end of the triangle. But the other end of this triangle here is when we scale that up and say but what's the impact of Uber on the city or Lyft or Airbnb?
- It increases congestion, it doesn't decrease it. And you remember the early days of Uber I guess when it was like we're going to reduce traffic cause people are sharing cars, it's going to get cars off the road. And of course the exact opposite happens because the dynamics built into the system. But so good at the interaction design end, the wider sort of urban design end, they're really problematic. Like 50% more traffic in San Francisco. The researchers from, and that's what I'm saying, there's the kind of hard limits now it's sort of whether that's capitalism on neither in or there, but it's from a design point of view I'm saying all of those things are connected and we have responsibility to understand that the decisions we're making at the interaction design end, they're very focused end the pointy end if you like. They scale up and the systems are connected. They have a ripple effect right through. And it's good at this end of that diagram is turns out to be bad at the other end. How do we do that? And that's what I'm trying to move us towards where we understand we have a way of designing and working up and down those scales and a sort of responsibilities there as well. And that would be what that looks like. That's really interesting for us to move to whether it's capitalism, another question but not really what I'm, I mean asking economist.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah and these terms capitalism are really easy to throw out there. I just did and particularly easy to oversimplify. And you talked about taking a systems approach or a systems thinking approach to understanding problems and you've definitely been working at problems that are at a significant scale through cities. These are not simple systems. So I sometimes wonder how much of, and maybe this is an unanswerable question, but how much responsibility can designers who work within the private sector bear for the outcomes of their decisions based on the perspective at which and perhaps the level at which they're operating. Are these outcomes self-evident in advance or are there other mechanisms in our culture, in our society that should be keeping a watchful eye or at least monitoring the temperature of the room so to speak so that when things get a little bit too hot we have the ability to turn it down a little?
- Dan Hill:
- Yeah, I think it's probably the second thing you're alluding to there as opposed to the first one, if we said the first one would be I hold the graphic designer responsible for them, the increase in traffic in San Francisco or the interaction designer that figured out the user flow through the signup process that then got used by, you've got by Uber's coders to then build the app around. It's like those are probably too many steps removed to hold everybody accountable in that way. It wouldn't be helpful I don't think. It's a bit blaming a type space designer for what people then write. So it's a long bow. It's a long bow. Exactly. And also you want the type want Chris Sby, one of your brethren, New Zealand amazing typeface designer. I want him to focus on making fantastic type. I'm doing the research that he does about 17th century type forms and things like that.
- So that's great. I think the second thing there is what you're alluding to is that, as you said, you put it quite nicely that he's watching the temperature of that system when it starts to boil or something gets outta kilter or you can actually then see there is a connection between that and that. Who knew? So that's where I'd say you need that. I would say there's a design intelligence you need up and down the chain there and that's where we've created artificial boundaries around things and said designers do this End of the problem. We're sort of almost actually reducing down to the problem solving bit.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's hands right? Yeah, exactly. No hands divorce from the brain.
- Dan Hill:
- Exactly. And it's a bit like engineers are really good at that by the way. They're pretty good at working in at that level and also figuring out a lot of the second order issues and so on. But what designers are supposed to do I think is also ask questions, not just look at problem solving problems. And problem solving isn't unique to designing at time, but we're probably not very good at it to be honest. Cause I think designers are probably better at creating problems or at least finding opportunities or it could also be like this or it could be like this. That's the instinct of the designer, the engineer do it really well. I'm going to go in a room and figure it out. So I think there's two very different characters there and it's not just engineers do real problem solving. My friend Jack Schultz said like dentists do problem solving, plumbers solve problems, they're real problem solvers. [laugh] designers don't
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do that. Yeah, we think we've got a monopoly on it, right? I don't think
- Dan Hill:
- We're anything to do with it. I mean I think we're involved in that process. Obviously we can find ways through it and it helps
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well all of human endeavor, this is generalizing here. Grossly all of human endeavor has been a quest to solve problems and many of them sometimes with greater success than others.
- Dan Hill:
- See I think that's the generalization too far you, which you did say when you said it, so to be fair, but I really think actually what designers are doing is more like cultural invention coming up with new things which isn't problem solving. Actually if you wanted to say that, that's kind of a cultural imagination act actually. And so it's where I really don't buy Maslow's hierarchy of need, which I know sort of stuck around for a lot longer than I have. So I'm going to be respectful of it. But it's not like we organize, okay, first I've got to get some food then I've got some shelter as if it's some bad grilled survival nonsense. It's just not like that actually. Cause he's making a bloody TV show actually. That's what he's doing. So he's making culture and then pretending it's about most hierarchy of, and this kinda shows it's the way around. I've never thought this analogy might not work. Bear
- Puns have been producing from day one, whatever you think they wanted. And in the indigenous Australian sense that was of course spiritual and cultural acts linked exactly at the same time to creating food and environment and shelter simultaneously as the same thing. And so it's only a very western thing to separate those things. We're culture, opera, opera and it's like that's just not much longer tradition of just doing them all simultaneously at the same time. Same in New Zealand obviously in around the world. And I think you can see that in cave paintings. Why are people spending the time doing cave paintings, beautiful works of art, also survival guides, also something to do whilst they were living in a cave. It's like they're not, they've figured out electricity and plumbing and then now we'll do some painting. It's been a continuous process all the way through invention and problem solving, invention, problem solving, library.
- Again back problem, the library's just clearly done. But if you see the possibility of the library as a place to create culture, then it has a value in the world, in our towns, in our cities and stuff. And it is also a digital of course library, physical and digital at the same time. So both of those things are kind of happening simultaneously there. And I think that goes back to what we've been talking about I suppose. And from then from a design point of view, trying to hook it back into this kinda conversation about Uber. What it means is when we're looking at the world in that way where we are looking at problems but we're not just like whack-a-mole our way through them and going, okay now Uber's increasing traffic. Okay, what's the answer? It's sort of change the algorithm but I'm still going to increase traffic.
- Cause we want people to actually get into the vehicle. Oh yeah, how's that going to work? [laugh] like you can't do it. You have to step back outta that and then say there's something else around it which is interesting and there's something around that and then it hits public transport at some point you say, okay well from a city point of view as a designer, I'm going to look at the city's transport and it's got public transport, it's got private transport, it's got Uber in it, it's got taxes, it's got got bikes, it's got cargo bikes, got e-bikes, it's got walking, it's got wheelchair up and down the scale. And our job there is to make that system work. I don't think Uber actually should try and solve that because at that point that is getting into the bigger than the sum of the parts of the city.
- The way the city works is a thing and that's in a democracy where I'm in Melbourne for instance is a democracy then that's a kind of civic responsibility. Again, that's why we invented government to look after the things that can't just be done by individuals or small businesses or startups. There's something much wider there and public transport doesn't stack up if you try and run it as a business except maybe in Japan. Japans a special case. All circumstances even then it's like a public private entity. Yet we know from an urban planning or an urbanism point of view, public transport is absolutely essential to making any city work. So it's outside of market mechanisms fundamentally important. It means that Uber can't really do it or shouldn't really do it. They can do a bit of them transport spectrum and you need to look at those ripple effects either side of it and they could have value there for sure.
- I guess a lot of other problems, you don't sound very convinced. Well once you say there's like and then's racism and sexism and safety issues they're properly falling with. So anyway, there's a lots way they run under those conditions. But the idea of sharing rides or making a better UX around taxes, of course UX around taxes used to be horrible And they've done an amazing job saying well of course I should be able to see where it is on a map and coming towards me and then call them and pay seamlessly all of that's great, thank you Uber for doing that stuff. It's just then you get into some cities in the world around Uber came along and South Korea they saw that and thought, oh well we'll just do that as part of the public taxi service. Of course you should have a good UX, not hard 20 people in a room.
- We know you Brendan, you could do that perfectly well no doubt. But there's nothing technically that says that has to be run as a starter versus a chunk of government. It's like it's both got the same conditions around the UX. So to me there's the role up and down the chain and that's when it starts moving into areas of policy making or wider responsibility. And you need to be able to move, you need understand Uber ideally as the dynamics, the interaction design the UX and why that's so important so that you can then draw that up into public transport and so on and see the connections between them. Sorry these are long answers but these are like you did start talking about capitalism and [laugh] big ideas. I've
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Started a bit, started to burn down the house with that question. All that
- Dan Hill:
- Problem solving you said. So I had to take some time just to unpick that carefully.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I might throw a few might more of those at you before we are done. So we'll see how we go. And there was a lot in there and you talked about seeing the possibility of the library and you talked about framing, you also talked about which is tightly related to the questions that we ask of the problems that we're trying to solve and how we're approaching those problems. So it sounded also that there was some caution in there about the role at which we should allow corporations to play in our culture, particularly when that role starts to cross over to the public's sphere. And you've also, in couple of your talks that I've watched in the past, you've quoted Cedric Price's provocation. Now Cedric Price was a British architect from 1966 and he said technology is the answer. But what was the question? What was he really encouraging us to think deeply about? I
- Dan Hill:
- Think it's a little, well you never quite knew Ced Physio. He was an eccentric character but I [laugh] he said things a bit like other people I found interesting that are kind of open and generative. So the way I take what he said was I think that he would've been looking at the time around a lot of, in Britain it was called Harold Wilson, the prime called it the white heat of technology in the sixties you had the motor car coming in big time that had been around for about 30 years. But that's when it really, really started. Obviously people started taking cities apart and reshaping it fundamentally around the car as they did in Auckland and Melbourne and numerous other places. And you could also see it in construction technology, you could see it in communications technology in mainstream TV becoming to be a thing in the mid sixties.
- So really properly. So he would've been as I am now with sort of big tech I suppose what we know coming called big tech just saying well technology is the answer because everything humans have made more or less is technology. The tools that we produce in order to say, I would argue again make culture happen or whatever it might be in all community or commerce or whatever, but those sort of things. And so technology's sort of a given as soon as we started making a bit of and fashioning it into a we've technology can't against it, technology would be against people actually or humans. Which the question that's important again it goes back to, so then if you had taxes plus good UX then so what I'm thinking is how does a city work, I dunno, are you in Auckland or Wellington or somewhere in Auckland?
- Yeah. So in Auckland then you'd say given taxes plus UX that going to help Auckland Now that's the kind of question there before you then just sort of say, well one way of answering that question would just be to let Uber roll across it for 10 years. I would say no. We can see that coming my career has been about being in roughly the right place at the right time. Not through great foresight but just by having a set of, it's a bit going back to a football analogy. If you make the run into the box 20 times in a game, one of those times the ball is going to crush from the wing out roughly at the same time that you're going to be there. You miss the other 19 times you made that run and nothing happened. So as long as you keep on looking and you keep on exploring and you can see when I was at the BBC we could see podcasting about three days after someones XML around MP3 file America, someone in my team BBC podcast, impression of your voice. But why don't we do that? Why don't we ever go at that on Radio four on one of our least popular shows And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're like brilliant.
- Dan Hill:
- Lister was kinda like Matt, I've got no idea what a podcast is. I kind of get it. You can subscribe to you, we can make it so you can subscribe using XML to an audio file that will pop automatically. That sounds kinda handy. But that's it. I mean it's just again, two or three days after someone had just called it that. And I think we were the first broadcaster to do that in Europe for sure and maybe the second in the world, I don't know. But it was, so that's an example of making a run into the box. I suppose in my silly football analogy, I had no idea really what would then happen or what might unfold or that in 20 years time I'd be talking to you on our podcast and podcasts are being massively important. You can't see that but you can kind of see that this has the conditions of something that changes the game a bit.
- And I can't then make a prediction and say this is radical and it's going to mean the end of the license. We're going to need 15 new jobs. But I can see this is worth prototyping and testing and exploring and start small and start building it up and generate feedback loops and insight and watch it and carefully work with it and then go with it point. And you do have to talk people into it. I remember the show producers that we spoke to on first show in our time, no what you're talking about mate, I've gotta make a show, just get outta my hair. And we're just like, let us try a little bit, just let us have a little go and it's be fine.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Isn't that curious though, because this is a state broadcaster and podcast being, well essentially another vehicle for broadcast that doesn't strike me as being that much of a long bo for them to be able to see that potential. But you're also touching on there what we've covered earlier in this conversation, which is this tension that can exist between the financialization of the state service in this case and the state service's role in creating culture, which is essentially what podcasts are a vehicle
- Dan Hill:
- For doing and technology changes the rules there, doesn't it? So the BBC obviously is based around the idea of a license fee paid by people in the UK to generate everything into life. And that made sense when broadcasting was a physically more obvious thing as in it was geographically bound by transmitter towers and how far those signals could reach. It's a lot easier leaving aside the world service, which is little anomaly or rather a hugely important contribution to democracy. Little anomaly. But our radio signals did leak into northern France occasionally would get annoyed people in France saying that our radio signals were opening automatic garage doors and stuff in Normandy, which is kinda hilarious, particularly it's coming from a French person but
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well that was cuz was on purpose. That's the English sense of humor, British sense of humor
- Dan Hill:
- It was. But then you could kind of say, well that's the limit of who's paying for it. That's the limit of who receives it. We don't have to think too hard about that. As soon as the podcast got out there and you started getting listeners in through our time from the middle of Iowa or Auckland of course then the show producers started going this is great, we've got more amazing listeners. They love listeners obviously it's their currency if you like. That's the real currency, not dollars, pounds listeners. And so I love that. But to get them to that point, you gotta bear in mind that they might have grown up in the previous age and for them the internet is just sort of this new thing and it's going to take all of our jobs away and it's going to life harder and it's going to mean lots of the significance of the BBC will be diminished under the weight of people ultimately Netflix and other so on.
- They know that comes with this breaking wave as well. Now what I was saying was that, so that's why we need to be involved. We need to be the first into this game cause we want to be exploring it. Part of our remit as the bbc, we've always explored new technologies and we've also explored new terms of culture that goes back to nine or whatever. And it also helps us understand what's coming and then we're able to then position our ideas, which is what're that much richer landscape which will emerge, doesn't we radio adding And we that's much more powerful. But it's hard. I remember I'm old enough to remember people saying I in a crowded room in Sydney once flicker is the death of photography. Someone once said to me, and people won't even know what flicker is these days still popular photo. I remember who bought it. Yahoo bought Yahoo. Yeah, exactly. And then they sold it. Yeah, but it was, it's still around. But can you imagine that, I mean in a way it's like saying Instagram is the death of photography and yet at the same time there are probably more tape people taking photos than ever. I've thought almost exponentially more numbers of photos and people,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What people aren't declaring when they say things like that is their own self-interest in preserving the status quo.
- Dan Hill:
- Exactly. And of course I would say if you're a professional photographer you will be doing fine in this age. If you're doing things in a, if you're good at what you do, I think you'll be all right. And it's a kind of all boats rise on the tide kind of argument, which you should always be careful about that cause I'm sure that's what again Airbnb would also say, I think that's when you have a civic institution involved in that, that is part of our remit to make sure that it is all boats rising on the tide actually that we are training kids about images and photography and they have a place to make art or culture one way or another that is not just financialized but can do something else. That would be the BBC position on it. So let's use the technology, let's go back to the point, ask the deeper questions behind it and then start exploring and building.
- Same with mobility, same with energy, same whatever. Those are also cultural things as much as they're technical. So I'm just trying to make this point, I suppose that the designer who's working on the front end of the interface, you don't necessarily have to ask them to resolve all of this stuff. They can tell you a lot because the guy Matt Webb who told me about the is a genius and he's partly a genius cause he knows inside out the technical fabric of that medium as well as creative possibilities around them. And he was involved in making and so he's a bit like a type designer. I said earlier he's also bigger than that. He can think outside of those things. But he gives you such amazing insight by being involved in that making my job at that point was less of a maker. I did do that once but now my job is then to think ok, so organizationally what does that mean?
- What's the bigger, how does that change what the BBC is about? Need to figure that out with my colleagues. Matt's also conversation fyi but I think that's then kind at the other end of that telescope. It's kind saying what's the BBC and that and an on-demand media age with user generated content and pervasive media, that's a huge question that changes what the organization is probably changes certainly changes that license conversation. It's not about opening Garage Normandy anymore, it's about genuinely making the BBC relevant globally. That then changes what our remit is. It changes what the government thinks we're for. It's a political question. I mean it all comes from that tiny little, hey why don't we chuck an XML file around this mp3 you can get from that one end of the telescope up to the other end of what is the bbc? You know it's not that many steps.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How much of the success of the BBC's transformation do you attribute to senior leadership's comfort or at least ability to be uncomfortable with asking questions that were new and novel and led to areas of inquiry that didn't necessarily have clear answers?
- Dan Hill:
- Yeah, that's a great question and I think I should be clear as though I left the BBC in 2007, so it's a long time ago now, but was there 2002 one to 2007. So kind a formative time in those early internet ages ish or second wave of internet actually. And I was one of a thousand people there working in that area and many more were more influential and would've seen a lot more closely how senior leadership worked. I did work at senior leadership levels on a couple of big projects, creative Futures as one. The one was called Beyond Broadcasting. One thing I did on those was actually did a sort of speculative design piece it would be called now, which was made a fake copy of the Economist magazine set in two 15. We did this in two five. So it's like a1 year pun into the future.
- And I obsessively made it look like The Economist cause I knew that the senior leaders, they choose to read the [laugh] by it. So it was putting the ideas in a language that they were already drawn towards. Don't give 'em a PowerPoint or a Word doc cause no one really wants to open those files. But if you make the Economist they actually want spend their money on. So we translated some of the strategic thinking that my colleagues have done and I've done a bit and then put that into this. I'll share it somewhere. I think it's only internet somewhere now.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Post it in the show notes. Yeah.
- Dan Hill:
- Yeah. And it was kinda of interesting cuz it was, so there's a good example of a senior leader who was a guy called Richard Derell who was running children's BC at the time I think. And he really opened the door for that. He really went with it. I think a lot of other people had said, what you doing? Making a fake copy thet a the board to read do what you told [laugh]. But he completely saw the possibility in that and was probably one proselytizing well than I was ultimately with the board level. So very powerful individuals were like Richard and I would say Mark Thompson who then went on to run the New York Times, XBC Darris General before him, Greg Dyke to some extent Jenny Osky on the radio side. These are key people and senior figures that were often from a creative background or had come up through to the program making side and then ended up being in charge one way or another.
- They were open and they were full of possibility And that's being very difficult questions of people like me. You need to, cause it could be true that the internet stuff was all baloney, but we had to really figure that out quite carefully in those early days. It wasn't obvious. This was post com crash, remember where you can imagine people would've been like, yeah well that was, that's over now let's go back to BBC version one. But they actually triggered other things there. Like BBC 2.0 was a thing in two four internally and that was led by a few people. I'd say they were slightly, as is often the case I suppose in any organization. There were a lot of people that hadn't come up for the program side that really understanding of the role of the bbc. So they're much more narrowly inclined towards financial things like that.
- They were often blockers. And then there were people, as you said, that were a bit like the photographer I mentioned that would just saw it as a hassle or they saw it as the end of broadcasting and therefore the end of the BBC not able to transition their thinking into some unknown future, which is hard to do admittedly. But they weren't really even open to say, well we do have some practices like design that can talk about things that aren't just here yet but can begin to put together a set of visions or ideas around that you can kick the tires on. That's the really, that's cult cultural invention role of design that was talking about earlier.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've used the word possibility again several times. It's almost as if what you're articulating is a tension that can exist within organizations and again potentially generalizing here between people who see that possibility and people who are more conservatively minded and for whatever reason aren't able to or are not comfortable with lifting their gaze just a little bit higher and staring out of the window and pondering and wondering what things could be like.
- Dan Hill:
- Yeah, I think that's very common. And to be clear as well, the hand break is also a handy tool in a car. So if you just have the accelerator pedal, obviously it'll be a disaster. Maybe that's what Uber is, but it's just need also that kind of friction because those people are asking smart questions. It's just that they might just not be as positive about the other thing and there might be some good reasons for that. So that's fair enough. And so again, it's a bit like my football analogy. If you just look like 11 mosts 11 s, it wouldn't be very handy. You also need a defender, so you need that person that's going to ask the difficult questions. And sometimes you probably need a bit transition and in transition theory, this the sort of regime and these sort of niche emerging actors and they both exist in any large organization or small organization, whatever it might be, or a culture more broadly or a sector.
- So you might see the regime who's currently in charge and that's cars again, current car manufacturers. And then you see some niches emerging around that obviously. And those niches are everything from al alternatives to the car completely like e-bikes and cargo bike to car sharing different ways of making cars happen without you having to own a private car. I suppose electric vehicles which transmission there are a niche and over time the niche becomes a regime and the regime falls away. But some actors can jump from regime to, they're interesting. So link existing capability and the capacity which all dead now. There's lots alive, but it's actually a transition from one state to another. Some people do fall away and they just retire off business I guess. And then some this niche emerges then of course at some point will challenged by a new niche within organizations.
- It's like that too. And I suppose I'm, I'm always trying to balance my own, I suppose instincts to be in the niches and find these kinda, okay, this is the emerging area, this is the new thing that's coming and I'm drawn towards that and I'm quite bit things I guess. But I really also recognize the value in people that can maintain and my teams at the bbc, I suppose my teams are Arab as well. I've gone through those kinds of phases where my first team at the BBC was very much starting things up. We we're building in a whole bunch of new stuff here. Second team was more like this is then continuing and spreading, which was a different instinct in the different culture. And I think probably around that time I also felt I can probably move on here actually because my work is done in this first phase moving, getting it going, putting something in place, then shifting that first thing into this second mode, which is then now rolling. I'm probably less useful I think in Sweden I just sort of hit that mode as well after three and a half years there setting up the projects I did. They're just rolling now and that's great. I'm really happy that they roll and spread and they kind of relationally spread sideways. I don't need to do those sort of hardy yards in the early days. There's other hardy yards to do now for other
- Brendan Jarvis:
- People. Yeah, it's almost like there's a different type or nature of the work that's being done and also in different cadence or type of person that suits a different cadence of change safe pair of hands to roll it out, but it's not necessarily the same person to conceive of it. Now you talked about hard
- Dan Hill:
- I think
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So, yeah, you talked about hard questions and well I'm thinking that this might be a hard question but I'll soon find out once I ask you of it, which is that there is this tension in our cities as we are starting to remove things like lanes for cars, replace them with cycle lanes, adding in transit lanes for buses putting in more green space and what was high street back in the day and in implementing congestion charges, this sort of change that is happening to our cities. And as a result what we're seeing is a reduction in car parking. And you've talked about the job of the city is to look at transport as a whole and not necessarily just through the lens of say one particular mode or player, but there is a perception that the changes to the cities are being driven by a select group of unelected elite idea ideologues who are really seeking to serve the needs of a privileged few. Do people have reason to believe this? Do they have a real reason to be grumpy about the removal of car parking and the implementation of things like bus lanes and cycle lanes?
- Dan Hill:
- I guess it's a, yeah, complex question. The way you framed it. Cause it depends on, do you think people should be grumpy if they were told one thing very, very strongly and then they were told another thing So it they
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Over
- Dan Hill:
- Time, are they allowed to be Yeah, exactly. Are they allowed to be grumpy in that instance? And I guess I would say yeah, they probably are allowed because imagine if, I dunno, it's one of your kids or kids or as colleague or whatever, you said, okay, this is a hundred percent the way we're going and then at some point you go, actually that was a bit wrong
- And we're have the other way now. Yeah, then someone sorry about that. So that exactly then depends on the way you do way your colleague, your or your family members and he saying, I'm all about this. I'm really strident about it. And then now I'm equally stridently in this direction. Then immediately someone will be like, hang on a minute, what did you know doing? Just, you've just gone 180. What do you believe and what's right and why should I go with you? Cause if you're saying it was all like this a minute ago, I think that's all we've done here. Say all we've done. Because that is a big complex thing for us to unpick now. But cities for two generations ago didn't really have cars in it. Not that long ago, maybe three, but it's really 1930s onwards. So my dad was born in 1938, so he's one generation I've ahead of me. So let's argue two. I don't know. But it's kind of that, whereas street in places low and in the west. Anyway, I'll talk about the West. That's where I grew up. They've been around for hundreds of years, hundreds of years, multiple generations without cars.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So I visited Farham when I was in the UK briefly. And just to give people some context of they haven't strolled a European street before or a British street in this case. The cobbles on the streets have been trot on so many times that you can see the collective grooves that thousand, a thousand years of history represent. And there's something absolutely intangible, beautiful and priceless in seeing the residual effect of lives being lived in an urban environment. Absolutely.
- Dan Hill:
- No, it's beautifully put and it has that story to it and that story is all around us in the non-western world or the south or the east. I mean obviously we've also had streets for a very long time. Kyoto, if the British hadn't destroyed them all, there would've been equivalent Australian New Zealand. Not as we understand them now, but absolutely. Obviously communities coming together in places at scale, thousands of people coming together with thorough affairs through them. I so that's what humans have done for a long time, obviously. So there's only so last, someone getting at the last generation, maybe two, we've taken all that aside. And so we're going to take those places which were previously places of exchange and conversation and culture and kids playing and as well as commerce and moving horses through it, all kinds of stuff. Look at any film of a city from 1920 and you'll see what it was really beautiful, kind of what Jen Jacob's called the Valley of the Street unfolding in front of you.
- And then for two generations we said, okay, no, it's all about traffic and we're just going to slide all of that outta the way and we're going to make it build around the car. Instead the car's the main thing we're going to put traffic engineers super. So that's what we told people at scale and we repeatedly, repeatedly hammered that into people's heads by massive infrastructure programs, road building, an enormous scale adverts every bit of media you can imagine, tv, like newspapers, just the whole lot, all creating that vision. And so that's what I'm getting at. We have done that and now we have to go the other way. So how we do that is the question for me, not whether it's fair or not or it's just actually it's more just if we go the other way, actually we talk about social equity and so on. That's many, many people. Many more people will find it more affordable, healthier, the environmental better, the outcomes that everybody are going to be much better if we go the other way. So we have to get through that transition somehow. And that's the tricky thing. How do we do that? It's not whether we do it or not, don't actually, south Wales is basically a mechanism in that plan. So we have to go to this plan B somehow and those floods and fires as they don't really care who they burn down or flood. It's just That's
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's also a degree of trust though, that you're asking for and you and your contemporaries are asking for here from the public to believe that. And I'm not going to call it a siren song, but you are alleging that the previous generations of planners for lack of a better word, of our urban environments, were selling a siren song maybe without full knowledge of what its consequences would be for the planet. And yeah, you've talked about the other way, we need to go the other way now. So there is a degree of trust that's being asked for. And you've said something that's really interesting and one of your talks probably you've echoed it many times, and I'll just quote you here. You said, we don't make cities in order to make buildings, we don't make cities to make infrastructure, we don't make cities to make traffic, we don't make cities to make data. So in terms of addressing that trust aspect of what I was touching upon there, why do we make cities
- Dan Hill:
- I would say culture at the end of the day, again, I know that sort of goes back to my personal cave painting, but I think what humans make is culture at the end of the day and we wrap mechanisms around that to enable it like businesses or our galleries. But I think that's what we're doing often we use technology to do that. That's the tools that we make to produce culture and culture. To be clear, I really, it's a complex word. It's one of the most complex words, but I mean in a couple of senses. One is the act of definitely making culture. So you're making a podcast, it's kinda, Brian I think once said, our art is everything that we don't have to do. So you don't have to make this podcast but you know want to. And so it's great that you do, but that's a drive within you to do this one way or another.
- Numerous reasons why. No doubt. Same with someone doing painting or whatever. So it's that end of culture. And the other end is culture as in the way we live and work together. Our everyday culture, the culture of community. So that's what I mean when I say culture. Both of those, they're glued together actually. And again, particularly if you go back to or back or forward to indigenous thinking around this, it's the same thing. They art that you make is based on the community that you're and vice versa. So I think that's what people do generally. So that applies to cities. We make cities to come together because it's a really good way of making culture. It's kind a mechanism for that. It also makes business, it makes lots of other things as well. So it makes community, it makes conviviality, brings people together that those are the reasons we make city.
- The other stuff that you listed in my quote, there are the enablers of those things. A bit like the technology I would say building is a technology that enables us to make community or culture or commerce. So if you wanna have a business, you probably need a building of some kind. You might own multiple buildings, but you don't make the business to make the building. Usually you make the business to make the business, which is again a broader sense I'm talking about and need electricity, you might need some water and so on and so on and so on. But you probably need some mobility to enable things to happen one way or another. Either to get to the building or to whatever it might be, or to get your thing outta the building again. But that's not the point of the business. It's not why you started a podcast. So going back to that, the accident I think we made was you took this super technical reductive view and we put a little bit the plumbers in charge of the enterprise. And I don't mean to denigrating plumbers cause as you heard me say earlier, they actually solve problems. [laugh],
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Just try going a week without a toilet and you'll know all about the value of a plumber.
- Dan Hill:
- Exactly. So this is the funny thing, infrastructure is fundamentally important, but it's not the point. The point is the other stuff, the culture, the infrastructure is a hundred percent important. And so we have to find this kind weird balancing act. So the mistake we made was properly put, let traffic engineers run. Streets are key public spaces. Public is more just has it got a thousand cars per hour going down it without killing anybody, which is sort of variable to traffic engineers look at. So in another quote I said, if you put a gardener in charge of the street, you get gardens, you put traffic engineers in charge of the street, you get traffic. It's like the clue is in the name. Put plumbers in charge of the street, you get really good waterworks.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I think what you're getting at here is you're not really advocating for city planners or gardeners or plumbers to be in charge. You're more encouraging us to think about what do we actually want from our streets.
- Dan Hill:
- Exactly. So if you step back to that Cedric price question, what is a street? What is the street like I said, what is a library, what is a phone? A project where we looked at just what a phone is. Very interesting. So that kind of phone I used to call it or library or streetness, like what is it that makes it a street? And I say it's a street. We're talking about a public space. It's different to a freeway. Street is a place where we come together and it's got a bunch of jobs to do for sure but it's an interesting diverse bunch of jobs. So as a result you need an interesting diverse bunch of people in charge of what that is. It can't just be one discipline. And so the previous era, let's say fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, that golden age road building was because we kind of put one discipline in charge of something which is actually incredibly complex and diverse.
- So as a result it goes wrong. As a result we get people in annoyed. And so the way forward isn't for me, just find the much smarter person and do exactly the same process. That would be a most smart city projects for instance. There's a bad example of what to do. It's actually to then say, well we have to then figure it out as a community. A community of stakeholders and people and owners locally, like the people who live in the street, work in the street play industry and supported by expertise but a diverse group of experts. We can then figure out what the next steps are. So I don't wanna do a drawing of what I think a future street looks like could do, but it's really matter's important is how that street itself evolves into the future in this more diverse way and who we bring around that discussion. And that's incredibly interesting and rich and I think optimistic. Cause then it's not me telling you that your car is bad riding a bike's, I it's, it's got to be you coming forward with your car and your bike and with your mates and your neighbors and then supported by people like me and others but a very diverse crew for people in the opposite of me as well hopefully. And together we can figure out what the way that would be markedly different to how it's done in the previous planning mode.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Dan, I'm captivated by the possibility of that approach. Also mindful of time and yes, thank you. While we could wax lyrical about what sounds like a very star trek, the next generation future and I ideally hope we get there, we probably should bring things down to a close. So Dan, thank you so much. I have really enjoyed this conversation. It's been challenging but in a really good way and I just wanna say thank you for taking the time to share your stories and insights with me today.
- Dan Hill:
- No thanks Brendan. I really enjoyed it. I'm sorry I rattled on a bit, but you gave such good big questions that it was really nice to talk to you about them all and it always helps me process my own thinking about it when people ask good questions like that. So thank you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh you're most welcome and definitely could have got another 90 minutes for sure.
- Dan Hill:
- I know, exactly. Extra time.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hey Dan, if people wanna find out more about you and all the wonderful work that you've put out into the world, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Dan Hill:
- Oh yeah. If you google Dan Hill at City of Sound, you'll find numerous ways. Perfect. So try that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Alright, thanks Dan. And to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Dan City of Sound and all the other great things we've spoken about. If you've enjoyed the show and you want to find more great conversations like this with Worldclass leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe to the show, and also pass it along to someone else who would enjoy these conversations about design at depth. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis. Or you can find a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes as well on YouTube or just head on over to thespaceinbetween.co nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.