Justin Dauer
Finding Fulfilment: A Designer's Journey
In this episode of Brave UX, Justin Dauer shares how he conquered his ego to become a better designer 👂, why he’s left executive design leadership 🚪, and how unfulfilled designers make bad products 😈.
Highlights include:
- Has digital visual design become a little bit boring?
- Why is humility the most important trait for a designer?
- What made you realise you were done with in-house design leadership?
- Why is it unacceptable for design leaders to ‘coast’ in their careers?
- How have you’ve been able to reach a high level of professional fulfilment?
Who is Justin Dauer?
Justin is the Founder of Anomali by Design, a consultancy specialising in design strategy, product design, and engagement. Through Anomali, Justin helps organisations to develop their design leaders 🌱, so that they in turn foster healthier processes, methods, and cultures.
Before founding Anomali, Justin was the Vice President of Human-Centred Design and Development at bswift, a tech company owned by CVS Health 💊, that transforms the way millions of employees perceive and engage with their benefits.
Justin also spent a number of years as Design Director of Nansen, a Swedish-American design firm 🇸🇪🇺🇸. In this role, he established the Chicago office and managed a multi-disciplinary team of designers, front-end developers, and UX architects.
He is the author of two celebrated books on design 📚. His first, the beautifully illustrated “Cultivating a Creative Culture” was published in 2017, with a second-edition released in 2020. His latest book, “In Fulfillment: The Designer’s Journey” was released is early 2022.
Transcript
- Justin Dauer:
- We can still design hierarchically and with accessibility at the forefront of what we're doing and not fall back on the same design over and over and over and over. So yeah, I absolutely feel like the web is stagnated.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of The Space InBetween, the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who need an independent perspective to align hearts and minds, and also the home of New Zealand's first and only world-class, human-centered research and innovation lab. You can find out a bit more about what we do at thespaceinbetween.co.nz.
- Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting the fields of UX research, product management, and design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders in those fields.
- My guest today is Justin Dauer. Justin is the founder of Anomali by Design, a consultancy specialising in design strategy, product design, and engagement. Through Anomali, Justin helps organisations to develop their design leaders so that they in turn foster healthier processes, methods, and cultures.
- Before founding Anomali, Justin was the vice president of human-centered design and development at bswift, a tech company owned by CVS Health that transforms the way millions of employees perceive and engage with their benefits.
- Justin also spent a number of years as a design director of Nansen, a Swedish American design firm. In this role, he established the Chicago office and managed a multidisciplinary team of designers, front-end developers, and UX architects.
- He's the author of two celebrated books on design. His first, the beautifully illustrated "Cultivating a Creative Culture" was first published in 2017 with a second edition released in 2020. His latest book, "In Fulfilment, the Designer's Journey", was released in early 2022.
- Justin has graced the stage at many notable design events, including at UXPA International, Midwest UX, and St. Louis Design Week. His insights can also be found in podcasts such as Jeffrey Feldman's, "The Big Web Show", and Donovan Berry's "The Reflex Blue Show".
- And now I'm pleased to have him here with me on my show for this conversation on Brave UX. Justin, hello and a very warm welcome to the show.
- Justin Dauer:
- Hi, Brendan. Thank you. Thank you for that phenomenal intro.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, you're most welcome. You're most welcome. Now, Justin, when I say the words Bruce Wayne, what's the first thing that comes to mind?
- Justin Dauer:
- Probably 75% of my wardrobe is what comes to mind. I have a little anecdote. I said when I dial into a meeting, the usual response I get is another Batman shirt because I'm wearing Batman right now. Big fan, long story short of Batman and Mr. Wayne.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's go into that. Clearly you are a big fan. What is it about Batman and when did this fascination start?
- Justin Dauer:
- Fascination started when I was 13, and I'll date myself here. When the Keaton Batman movie came out 1989, and I saw it five times in the theatre. I was a Spider-Man guy up until that point, and boy, that just changed everything for me, and I love in the comics, and of course I read the comics. Now Batman is a normal person amongst folks with who are effectively gods and he is able to be a step ahead and he's able to strategize and he's very flawed. So I don't know. I love all those dynamics. And then just as a silhouette, I think of just the way he's illustrated and his graphic novels and there's just a lot to geek out on there. So week we could do an entire podcast and me geeking out about Batman. I'm sure that's not what you want to do, but the opening salvo put a big smile on my face.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- We're still in that opening salvo. I brought that up because A, it's interesting, right? It's interesting to explore what people are into B personally, my son's favourite character and he's five is Batman. He just did Halloween, dressed up as Batman. He had a Batman or superhero themed fifth birthday party, and it was all about Batman. He's just fully into it. He's playing the Lego Batman games, and there's just something like what you were talking about there that just captivated him like it did you about that particular character. We'd also recently just watched the Batman, and I was curious to think, to ask you what your thoughts were about that particular portrayal of Batman.
- Justin Dauer:
- I thought it was really good. The cinematography of that film is fantastic. Tonally, I thought it was very strong in terms of an initial mythology of the character. I am hugely into Affleck design of the character and the way he portrayed like an older Batman. So I was a little not to get into Snyder, Zach Snyder fanboy as here. I was a little bummed that there weren't more Affleck Batman films, so I was kind of like, oh, this is a cool film. But yeah, just on its own. That's the shirt I'm wearing right now is the Batman.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And what was it like for you seeing Caton back on screen in the Flash recently?
- Justin Dauer:
- I loved it. I took my eldest son to see it with me and I was like, oh, look at this, or you remember that? And he was just like, dad, whatever.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Kids are brutal. Yeah, they sound brutal,
- Justin Dauer:
- Brutal candour. But I loved it. Yeah, I loved it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hey, this one might be a bit of a weird one, but I was curious what the story was behind your online handle pseudo room.
- Justin Dauer:
- So pseudo room when I was in the Art Institute, I think it was my sophomore year, and we had just one of our classes, I forgot what it was, some intro to design class and we were in the computer lab and we were tasked with in Photoshop designing a website, and this is rudimentary, this is when you would tell your mom or your dad, you're a web designer and they had no idea what you're talking about. So very early in that sphere of design and tech and I designed my portfolio site and it was a couch and it had pictures behind it and the pictures linked air quotes to my portfolio pieces and I called the design the pseudo room. And then from there, once Ashley learned how to code and I taught myself how to code because I wanted mean design and the digital landscape was fascinating to me. It always has been. And I taught myself the code and I actually ended up building a rudimentary, which probably is now the ces, a postage stamp when you think of how resolution has increased over the years, but that name has stuck that handle. That was a long time ago when I was in art school, so I've had it for quite a
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Bit. Was that in the times of, was it 10 24 by 7 68 resolution?
- Justin Dauer:
- No, it was probably six 40 by four 80, so true post stamp size.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Am I remembering correctly, was it a technique called an image map or something like that, that you used to do that?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, you would bring it into Image Ready, which was you would click something on the toolbar in Photoshop and it would kind of kick you over to image Ready, and then you would manually drag guides to slice your image and it would output gifs or JPEGs and ta. You had a website. That's how we used to do it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you mentioned your parents, they wouldn't understand. This is kind of a general comment, I suppose, and my mom, I don't think she still understands exactly what it is that I do. You mentioned your parents there around web design. I understand that your mom was a fine artist. I think she was a painter and an illustrator. Other than that, I haven't heard you speak much else or say much else about her. What influenced did her art practise have on your life?
- Justin Dauer:
- Pretty huge. Her portfolio, and I've seen her work. I mean, she's a phenomenal illustrator and a painter, and you picked that up. I was always inspired by what she did in her work around the house. She had some of her paintings hung up. She certainly pushed academics when I was in school, but at the same time, when I knew design was it for me and I wanted to go to art school, she stopped in a dime and she supported that immediately as well. So helped me get my portfolio together when I got into the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, but I had the leanings more toward the design side of things. I started taking fine art classes in high school and once I saw what design was and I was like, oh my gosh, you are marrying both sides of my brain. The problem solving side and the arts are the artistic side. This is my rudimentary processing of what design was. This is it. I knew it was it. And I've had very few moments of clarity like that at that point, but I knew this is what I want to do that has never veered or faltered or vacillated for a second between that and anything
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Else. Yeah. I heard you recount the, I think it was the moment in time where you first were awoken to design and I believe it was around say 25 years ago or so. I think you were a sophomore in high school and you're in study hall and you looked at the back of the wall there and you saw something. What was it that you saw on that wall?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, there were these album covers and not like professional vinyl covers. You could tell they were handmade and at study hall, so you're supposed to go in there and read or do homework and just put your head down your desk. And I went up to the teacher at the front of study hall and I said, where did those come from? And she said, those were from her design class and those were from her students' work. And I said, what do you do in there? Tell me more. Tell me what is design? And she said, we're visually problem solving was the soundbite, and that was tattooed in my brain from that moment. Then those words, I think in an animated sense just kind of lifted out of her mouth and floated into the space and the clouds parted and I was like, oh my gosh, that is fascinating to me because the painting and drawing and painting was cool for me in an exploratory sense. But we will talk about fulfilment a lot. I'm sure it was like 80% of the way there when I started taking design classes and we were cutting paper and I was learning about typeface and very hands-on tactile kind of rudimentary work, but holy moly, just constructing things with my hands and making mistakes and learning from those mistakes just so fulfilling in charging for me.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You left high school clearly, you went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts and visual communication from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and that was in around about 1998. And you made the decision an interesting decision for a graduate at this point, right? Instead of pursuing a career that most of your friends who graduated at the same time were and print design, you decided, and you talked about this earlier, to teach yourself how to code and in your own words, you described this desire to do so as to better understand the underlying implications of what my design decisions meant once they were rendered in a browser. Now that seemed to me to be a fairly radical path to pursue at that point in time when the web was still so very early. What did your friends think about, and maybe even your mom, what did she think about that decision that you made?
- Justin Dauer:
- So one of the jobs I had when I was in art school was at the IT Research Institute and IT is a tech school that now is a design school as well in downtown Chicago. And my mom worked at the IT Research Institute and she got me a summer slash afterschool gig there to do some work in the library and help file things. And then I did some design for them as well in a student capacity. And when I had downtime, there was a free computer in the back and the internet in its very rudimentary days, I would just go back there and kind of tinker around and play with websites. And I remember of all websites, the Austin Powers website, that's when the first Austin Powers came out and it had animated gifs and it had little mini sound bites now it was like, this is so cool, this stuff is moving and it's like bright colours and I can interact with it and I can click on things. So through that role is how the whole internet is a career. I want to help discover what I can do here. That's how that was put myself. My career was because of Austin Powers, I guess at the end of the day, but she was very
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Support. How many people can say that, right?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, really that's the first time that's ever been said. But yeah, from there, immediately after graduating the art institute with the girl I was dating at the time, I drove to the East coast. I lived in Portland, Maine for about a year and a half in this small little apartment that had fleas and I was on food stamps, but I was struggling to get by. I was completely on my own, but it was fantastic because I was doing everything on my own. And I remember I got my first design job at this place called, it was in the old Port Technology Centre, which I doubt still exists. It was called Interface Monthly Magazine. It was an internet magazine. I got a job as their first web designer there making $18,500 a year barely scraping by, but very early experience. I built their first website where they were able to take some orders for their pub via a contact form that was probably not secure, but again, I was figuring all this stuff out and making mistakes and learning. So it was a really exciting, yet equally terrifying time for sure.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Like you were saying, you were really experimenting during this time. I think you've referred to this time nostalgically as the wild west era of design, and you've been at some point recently somewhat critical of modern digital design or web design. And you've said, and I'll quote you again here, today's web is in dire need of thought towards layout and typography and visual engagement that goes hand in hand with all the modern considerations. It's essential. We are mindful of those, but not at the expense of creativity and visual communication or via replicating cookie cutter layouts. It sounds like you feel that we've gotten a little bit boring as of late.
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, that's a hill I'll die on for sure. I feel like the hero image, three columns of content down below hamburger menu in the top right corner Icon Library that vaguely relates to the content, that formula has just become so widespread. And so the go-to for so many organisations and WordPress sites and portfolio sites, and when somebody posts a design, there's a Twitter account called Web Design Museum, and when they post some of the grunge themed websites from the late nineties, early two thousands or pixel websites, it gets hundreds if not low, thousands of likes because people are just like, this is so cool, or this is how it used to work, or I missed that, or just the open unbridled creativity at the time and learning and exploring just to couch that accessibility, not a thing at that time, mobile first, not a thing, using the web on your mobile device.
- So there was a lot of imperative things today that were not top of mind for folks back then. So I just want to caveat that. So it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows, but I think we can still design hierarchically and intuitively and usable and with accessibility at the forefront of what we're doing and not fall back on the same design over and over and over and over and be mindful of people who have lower band with connections and all the modern considerations that we have. So yeah, I absolutely feel like the web is stagnated now and visual communication needs to be pushed much further. If
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You had to point the finger anything, any trend or any point in time, perhaps in the history of the web or a company or whatever it may be, what would you attribute the stagnation to?
- Justin Dauer:
- Oh boy. This is a dicey one. So Ethan Marotta is a friend of mine, so if Ethan listens to this, I apologise. But I would say when people started thinking of responsive design or thinking in a related a mobile first capacity, and I think it's obviously changed the way we think and for the better, the way we design and create, but I think people started dialling back brand and started dialling back creativity and started being more mindful of the things we said just in time actions and being more focused on UX and again, imperative to the way we create and think. But I think people have dialled it back too far at that point. If I think of the dial, I think there's a middle point on a dial. There's a grey area where we can kind of hopefully resettle in the field of design at this point, but I think that was an imperative, a seminal moment let's say, towards people scaling back on that unbridled creativity and more being focused on that calibre thinking, which again is an imperative
- Brendan Jarvis:
- In the late nineties and early two thousands, you were busy dialling it up at that point in your career you had a day job, but outside of that, you were designing and I believe freely releasing things like Mac Os customizations, desktop backgrounds, type typefaces, desktop icons, and something that you became quite well known for, which was pixel art, which you touched on earlier. You also co-created a design news portal called Gooey Galaxy, and that developed a little bit of a following, and all of this creative output culminated an invitation to contribute to something called K 10 K. What was K 10 K and what positive things did it do for your career?
- Justin Dauer:
- K 10 K calibre 10,000 was the design portal at the time, design portals were huge. Then there was Ossie in front and K 10 K, and I'll miss a million different websites, but design news portals at the time were kind of a marriage between a forum and what we know as Twitter or X today short form content, limited engagement. But you'd have news authors who would contribute to the website effectively, people who would post their own stuff or things they found in the web. There'd probably be some kind of rudimentary CMS behind the website and you would post like, I did this or I found this, or I did that. And the related design portals would draw some big folks, you mentioned Jeffrey Zelman before, and a lot of other big names at the time would be on these portals and contribute. And I got invited to K 10 K ultimately via my pixel art and my exploratory design at the time, which was huge.
- I was 22, 23, so not too long out of art school with some folks probably twice my age or older at the time. So it was a big opportunity, but what it did was it also made my head equally big at the time because of, like you said, the pixel art and the desktop icons were being published in Japanese Mac magazines and various book collections, and it was getting me freelance work and I kind of couldn't keep up with how fast things were moving at the time. And after struggling to find success and up to that point and then it hit so quickly, I wasn't, wasn't mature enough to kind of pump the brakes on that. So I had a massive, massive ego problem, which was the other side of that success.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What made you realise that something had to give? What happened? Was there something that happened with friends or family or was it a feeling that you just woke up with one day? What made you realise that you had this ego problem?
- Justin Dauer:
- It was the candour of my network via Gooey Galaxy, which was our own, like you mentioned, design portal. And we wouldn't just talk via that website. It was myself and maybe, I don't know, a dozen designers from around the world who I had a very close relationship with, and they had, I don't know, tanem onto an intervention, and it was like, you've got to get a grip man. And they were able to cite specific moments or I kind of was able to have a think through my psychological scrapbook and think through points where I didn't receive feedback in the most healthy way or even think of my design and it stagnated and the quality was I just was not evolving. When you're not mature enough to receive feedback and evolve from immediately, I received it and I kind of went through the stages of grief like, no, that's not right, that can't be it. And I'm like, was that actually me? And then sad, and then I was able to kind of turn it around, thankfully, and to me, that was the greatest gift earlier in my career or very early in my career to make that mistake, to get called out on it and then to be able to evolve from it was a massive, massive gift. And I shudder to think of how I would not have evolved in my career or my craft or my practise had that not happened.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've previously touched on how difficult it can be to receive feedback giving challenging, but receiving it is possibly the more challenging role in there. And you've said about this, and I'll quote you again. You've said, let's be real receiving feedback, even if it's the most goal-focused, objective-based, humbly delivered feedback can sometimes be challenging to digest or entertain. Design can be personal. You made it, you poured yourself into it. So thinking about yourself, how you were back then when you had that intervention and all the road that you've travelled to this point in time now, do you still feel a little bit of a twinge of protest when you receive constructive feedback on your work?
- Justin Dauer:
- Do I still receive? Yeah. The fact that I'm reiterating that tells me I do, and I think that's just inherent in what we do. Like I said, design is work, design is aligned to output and goals and business and metrics 100%, but we're also pouring ourselves into that work even though it's the design field and not fine arts. So I think I might think what I've done is completely aligned to metrics and output and the usability testing I received or aligns to the research we've received and the room, it might not land well with the room. I am much better now at taking feedback and divorcing myself from what are you talking about? But I think there's still something there. There's still something there. I think I'd be lying if I said, oh yeah, I've got it buttoned up. I think there's always a little something there from my lens or from my part because I feel like I've advocated, I've given my best, I've asserted my best self and my best thinking towards this piece of X output. So I think it's always there in some capacity. I am infinitely better at evolving and taking feedback in stride of course, and being a student of my craft, but there's always something there. I'd be lying if I said otherwise.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What do you say to yourself in those moments? Is there some sort of internal monologue that as you're processing what someone is saying to you that you are trying to steer yourself back on track from doing the what the hell kind of reaction? What is it that goes on for you when you're getting that feedback?
- Justin Dauer:
- At this point in my career, I'm able to pivot fairly quickly. I started my own business now, and it's usually me either being involved directly in output of craft or leading a smaller team, but I've led fairly large design organisations within organisations before. And if there has been feedback in that capacity, it's really set the example for your team. Your head has to be in the game, values translate into actions or just being a mouthpiece. So if nothing else, how do the way I react and respond to feedback and process it and evolve from it should really be setting the tone for the rest of the team too. So that really helps me get back on track immediately or near immediately in that capacity. But again, that takes time. That wasn't immediate for me. That takes years of evolution. I'm sure I'm still evolving in that sense. I'm by no means. Perfect.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And this ties into a broader theme around humility, which is something that you've spoken and written about quite passionately in the past and you've previously said about this. I genuinely believe it all comes down to this, the most important trait for a designer is humility and evergreen, willingness to listen, learn, understand, grow, evolve, and connect yields your best work. So why humility? Why not curiosity or talent or technical ability? What is it? Humility.
- Justin Dauer:
- When we're humble, we are able to best connect is my top line answer to that. And what I mean by that is I mentioned J Kwan in my first book and in a lot of my talks, and she has a beautiful quote that creativity and ego cannot mix, cannot be together. And I genuinely believe that because when we have ego guiding us, we have our blinders on. And that is blinders to our evolution, blinders to our growth, blinders to receipt of feedback and humility always means we're students of our craft. I've been doing this 25 years-ish in the field, and I have a lovely portfolio with my initials monogrammed on it. But what does that mean? It means I have expertise, but it does not mean I'm the expert. I'm not hanging my portfolio and my hat up and saying, all right, I know it all folks.
- I am parking my portion, the executive spot, now I've got all the answers. I don't have a portion, by the way, I, that's not my angle at all. I have years of experience. I've received tremendous feedback to help me grow and evolve. I can offer my expertise even with clients in an advisory or consultancy perspective, but I'm not the be all and end all expert because I think anytime I put the period on that statement, my career's done. And I don't mean in morbid finality, I mean in terms of my growth, in terms of being able to help others grow and evolve, which is where I am most rewarded now at this point in my career. So I think humility is the absolute bedrock or foundation for any designer's career. And I've said in some of my talks, it doesn't have to be designer, it could be dentist, it could be lawyer, it could be construction worker, what have you, when you're always, I love that you said curiosity. I think this all spawns from humility. I think humility is the jewel and they're all these facets to it that kind of spawn from that. So humility really is the baseline. I think third chapter of my book is humility designer's essential Traits. And I genuinely believe that it sounds like a bumper sticker, but it's something that has been the guiding force in my career.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I suppose the antithesis of humility is not necessarily ego, but maybe like an unbridled ego. And you were touching on that earlier when you were talking about, I'm done, I've made it, I've got the Porsche, now I'm parking in the spot. And basically what I say goes, how have you seen, perhaps even in yourself, but perhaps in others in particular design leaders, how have you seen ego play out in a way that isn't constructive to furthering the field of design?
- Justin Dauer:
- I feel in social media, let me start there. The hot take is if another designer posts their work and a lot of folks kind of pile on and trash them or make them feel like less than human, that really irks the hell out of me. And I think a lot of that is driven by ego or obtaining more followers or I said something incendiary. Everybody kind of give me attention. That really irks me, and I've spoken about that a bit. That's one thing in management, because I want to divorce the positivity of leadership from this in management. That's been a huge challenge in my career, and I'm not going to be unique in this in any capacity. A lot of folks have had managers, folks further up on the hierarchical org chart who suck the air out of the room when they kind of walk in or the energy goes from crackling to just stagnant and staid because they know that there's going to be no evolution for that 30 minute period.
- That's been a huge challenge for me in my career. And one thing I feel I do successfully is I am able to take negatives and learn from those and assert compassion or empathy because I've experienced this before and how to not treat my team or how to best advocate for my team at senior levels that I've been privileged to have that seat at the table to use that term because I know what it feels like to not be able to have my voice stepped on or to have my view as a unique human being kind of be discounted or to be relegated to a name on a spreadsheet over a unique individual. And it feels like garbage. It feels like garbage, and you don't want to be in that environment, but you have to pay the bills and it takes a long time to find a new gig.
- And so anyway, I've taken that feeling, what that feels like in my chest, which you think about going into a new work week on a Sunday, and it's been called the Dreads or the Sunday Scaries, and it's I feeling like, oh, I do not want to go in the office. Oh, I do not want to face X individual during the day. A lot of that is driven from ego and that person making the environment uncomfortable or putting you in a position where you cannot be your true self or your genuine self or do your best work. So really channelling that feeling and advocating for folks so they don't have to feel that way. Writing books that hopefully help folks find their best fit so they don't have to deal with that. That's how I try to circumvent that in my own career.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And this is a clear key theme of your work, your contribution to the field. And it ties back into what I believe was an early career experience that you've just been describing here, or perhaps it's related to an early career experience that you had, which was when you were a junior in an agency. And you've described the culture in that agency as openly hostile towards mistakes, and you also framed it as towards subjective failure. What did that look like in practise, this culture at that place, in that point in time, and what impact did that have on the influence of your career?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, quite a few of the stories in my published work in a negative capacity spawned from that one role, and that's the role where I joined my first day and my supervisor didn't show up until two o'clock, so no one knew who I was or what I was doing. I got thrown right into project work, straight away print project work when I was as more or less as a digital art director. And it was very common to work extra hours at the expense of the famous work-life balance was not a thing there. Some people were there until like 10, 11 o'clock regularly if I was presenting to a client account, kind of ruled the roost there in terms of client, they would have final sign off on all design and all creative, and they would always be in the room right by the telecom device in the room as I was presenting.
- I could feel like the sweat dripping down my temple because I knew if I didn't articulate something that we wanted to say or if I stumbled, like you would get ripped after that call. You would get brought into a room or either in that room in front of your coworkers, you would get demeaned and you would be belittled. It happened to me, it happened to my coworkers. And after almost two years of every day of that, and if you wanted to diffuse for a little bit and just, I don't know, look at Facebook or Google, if the local sports team won, if a supervisor walked by and saw that you'd always get not enough work to do or tapping on your wrist, don't you have something to do over and over? If you wanted to go out and walk around the block, you had to sign out, sign your name out on a ledger so they could see how long you were.
- So after almost two years of that, I said to my wife, I cannot go back. It was a Friday, and I said, I cannot go back in the office on Monday. I just couldn't do it. I had nothing lined up, but I knew it was something I had to do. It was a had to or it was a need to over, I want to. And she fully supported me, and I went in on Monday and I said, I'm going to give my two weeks. And they said, two weeks, go home now. We don't want you here. More or less, you're done. So yeah, I got sent home with the proverbial cardboard box that same day they said, get lost. And that's when I took, I don't remember how many months, a few months of just soul searching, what do I want to do? Do I want to be in design anymore?
- And I think this happens to other folks when they come from toxic environments, you associate your craft with that environment that's the lens through which you see what you do, and it becomes a toxic relationship that just frames everything at that point before you can extricate from that and get that 30,000 foot view in hindsight. And I was like, do I want to teach? Do I want to not do design anymore? Do I want to be a carpenter? Do I want to create with my hands? And that's when I came across that Anson role, and that was absolutely monumental in terms of reframing my view on culture and design and what design can be within a healthy organisation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's talk about that. I understand that working in that organisation, you were exposed to a different set of national values that influenced the way the culture and that organisation worked. And in particular in Sweden, I believe there's a term called Y lagan, also known as the law of Y. What is Y lagan and what do you feel that those of us working in the US or on more other western cultures that perhaps don't share that same value, what is it that you feel that we would gain by embracing some of what that has to hold?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, the mindset effectively means no one person is greater than the other. And if you ask a suite about this, they might groan a bit because I think it's taken to, again, be taken to a bit of an extreme. But as an American worker, and this is my lens, to me, the broad mindset was revolutionary coming from a toxic environment and an environment ruled by ego, an environment defined by belittling others and extracting every drop of output you could get from them at the expense of their humanity. And it was a great opportunity, one, to build the design practise from the ground up for North America. When I was reading that same kind of euphoric energy I had, going back to when that teacher told me about what design was, take that to the job posting, I saw when I found the SEN role, and it was describing the culture and it was describing how folks are treated, and then the role was way at the bottom about building the practise.
- The whole thing was about the culture, and it was just such a unique take that I was not exposed to at all. I really thought this might be it. So I wrote, I sat and I crafted this email over, I don't know, an hour and a half or two hours really wanting this role. And I sent it and I didn't attach my portfolio. And I was like, ah, there it goes. So I had to send that follow up email with your tail between your legs, like, whoops, here's the PDF. And I'm like, I blew it straight out of the gate. But what I ultimately found out is me sending two emails helped me rise to the top of the inbox because I got a lot of responses. So that actually ended up to be to my benefit. But I'll tell you what, when I got that role being exposed to Swedish culture and the egalitarianism and the humility and the respect not being defined by your output, I remember my first day they were like, show up nine ish between nine and nine 30.
- And I was like, what? Show up when? Give me the exact time. And I just showed up in the window there as I was instructed. And my first day ended two o'clock in the afternoon with a walk around the city and I was just like, what is happening? Is this really happening? Does this really work? And as I was there longer, in the middle of the day, folks would just stop working like two o'clock and some of the partners and friends of the workers would come in and bring pastries and coffee and they would sit it on the middle table and people, it was largely, predominantly Swedes. They would get up and go to the table and just start having cake and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Coffee. Just to be clear here, right, you're actually getting paid to do this work.
- Justin Dauer:
- Yes, yes. And I was absolutely shackled to my, I could not get up and I could kind see 'em out of my peripheral what was happening. And they were like, come over here, hang out with us. And I was like, okay. And it was just all the revolutionary thought after revolutionary thought was happening, particularly coming from that massively toxic environment. It was massive for me. And that ended up leading to me writing my article, resetting agency culture for a List Apart, which kind of set everything in motion from there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you've recently made another big change like this one with Nansen that you were just describing, and that was about a year ago. You founded Anomali by Design, which is your consulting practise that I mentioned in your introduction and your aim has been to bring humble and practical design leadership to people in organisations. And you've characterised this as putting your money where your mouth is in terms of fulfilment, how fulfilling has this journey been for you so far
- Justin Dauer:
- To money where my mouth is porch and of that intro? So when I was a VP of design at CVS Health for almost five years, we were acquired, as you said, it was with Bswift and they were acquired by Aetna who was then acquired by CVS Health, so double acquired, and I worked for a very brilliant fellow CTO at that role. And we ultimately went our separate ways after five years and come back around to now. And he offered me a similar role and he said more or less said, I'd love working with you. I want to do it again. I want you to build a creative practise, a design practise from the ground up and maybe a nice offer. Long story short, and I, for about a year, I had been working at a design and tech consultant business kind of building up my consultant shops.
- And I thought about it and what seemed like an affront to the design gods, and I thought, I don't think this is it. And it's a very privileged thing for me to say I've done it before, but I had done it before. I had worked within that sphere, within tech and within healthcare, and I built the practise and I dealt with the internal politics. It's a nontrivial feat to kind of do some of that air quote stuff. And I turned him down, I turned down his offer, and he said to me, I think you're done. He has a really good read on me and who I am and what drives me. He said, I think you're done with politics. I think you're done being in house. And I told him what I want to do, and he said, I'm bummed that you're not going to work with me, but I think you're doing what's right for you.
- And so it's not the best time out there right now. Uncomfortable laugh out there in the market and a lot of businesses, I have tight pocketbooks and it's really hard to, I have a livelihood right now, so I might've not chosen the best time to build my own practise, but like you said, I've made it a year. I think things are finally starting to, the bricks are falling into place a bit more now. I got some exciting things in the opera that are evolving on the client front and otherwise, but not a day goes by where I go to sleep, regardless of how hard it is in the market right now and getting work. And a lot of folks are struggling where I question what I had done because I have such a clear sense of where my fulfilment lies
- Brendan Jarvis:
- To reach that point of clarity. There must have been something specific, it feels like to me, this is my projection. Right, but it feels like your previous CTO who'd offered you that new position and who'd come to the realisation that you were done with the politics, was there a moment through the acquisitions, through your role as VP where you just thought to yourself, I am done? Or was it more of a gradual kind of creeping sense of dread? And again, my own words, but what was it for you? When did you realise and what made you realise that you had done
- Justin Dauer:
- Well? I had a seat at the table, not to use that term again, but within tech leadership, within the tech organisation with the other VPs within tech. And he knew intimately what we dealt with and what I dealt with in terms of building the organisation and advocating for design, et cetera, et cetera. The political challenges of dealing with other groups within a Fortune five organisation. So no, there was no fist slamming on the desk. I'm done moment. I mean, I left on very good terms and I think they're still doing fantastic work there, but he knew when I articulated why I was turning down his offer, why I was declining and what I was going to do, and I articulated my practise and the pillars of what I was hoping to accomplish, then he's like, yeah, it makes sense. I see what you're doing and why this is the best fit for you.
- I articulated working with teams on craft in an advisory or hands-on capacity design leadership, helping other design leaders grow their organisations, helping design, helping organisations infuse design into the organisation at the upper echelons of decision-making and helping organisations work with engagement and culture, which can largely be an intangible kind of ethereal thing, but helping them assign actions, values to actions, to outcomes, to metrics is something that's also very near and dear to me. And I articulated that to him as well. And that's when he was like, yeah, I get it. I see why you're doing what you're doing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So this might come across as quite a pointed question, but what is it that you feel that you can achieve in your capacity as an external that you perhaps felt that you couldn't achieve or you didn't want to try and achieve again in the capacity of an internal design leader?
- Justin Dauer:
- I'm going to answer that with a story, a brief story the first time in my career where I gave an intro for myself, let's go around the room and introduce ourselves capacity where I wasn't stumbling over my words or I wasn't questioning, should I say this? Should I say that? And I've spoken at large events, I've done copious podcasts, and I always feel, because I'm talking about things I know about, and I'm an environment of mutual respect and mutual collaborative energy, I've never had a challenge there, but it could be in a room of five people or 25 people, let's go around the room in a business. And I always kind of tripped them up on myself the first time where that question came up and I was able to organically, seamlessly and confidently give an answer, articulate who I was, what I do, what I'm going to bring to the table was when I did it under my organisation, anomaly by design.
- And I did that in a client prospecting meeting, and I went back to my car and I was like, what the hell just happened before I even put my key in the ignition, I kind of paused for a second. I recognised something changed there and I wanted to kind of not let that moment slip by. I wanted to analyse what happened there. And it's because I was in an environment where my values were aligned to everything that was happening, the topics whom I was meeting with, what I was talking about, what I might be working with them with. I didn't have someone over my shoulder in a political capacity. We go back to that previous role where I was about to get my wrist slapped for saying something. There weren't other politically fraught machinations happening in that group. And it was because that was an environment that I had crafted, revolving, and predicated upon my clearly articulated values. So I think it's all spawns from that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That sounds like fulfilment. That sounds like a moment where you've realised the pursuit of fulfilment, which is, that sounds a little bit like the pursuit of happiness, right? It's the thing that people chase, but it's very rare that they actually are able to wrap their arms around it and hold onto it, or at least in any sort of sustainable sense. Was this an accident? Was this a happy accident of the cascade of a few good but lucky decisions or is this something that you have purposefully worked at and crafted and tried to get yourself into that state that you experienced in that room?
- Justin Dauer:
- It was much more the latter. It was a designed environment based by designed intent. I will say I do a lot of speaking on this, and it's a key part of my book because I've been able to clearly identify what my value system is in my personal and professional spheres of existence. I've been able to prioritise those values and I've been able to align them to my craft. I've been able to align them to relationships. I've been able to align them to those clients I want to work with who share similar values. It's kind of a simple notion, why can't I work with the companies I want to work with? Why can't I just work on stuff that charges? I'm very into men's fashion, I'm very into Apple and Macintosh stuff. I'm very into tech and music. Why can't I just work with that stuff? So I wanted to give it a shot. I wanted to see if I can actually do that and have be able to put food on the table for my kids. And thus far it's been working out and hopefully it continues to do so. So it was all I knew where I wanted to get to, which is what I just articulated. And getting to that point was very specifically curated and crafted and designed to make that happen.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's talk about that design, and you've mentioned values before, and I understand that you're a big fan of the Make Meaningful Work framework, and I also understand that you've been collaborating with its creators, Josephine Wong and Daniel Sukuk, and one of the Make Meaningful Works key tools that I learned from preparing for today is called the character card. What is the character card and why is it something that you would recommend that other people make use of?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, so Dan Zu and Joe Long, the founders of UX Hong Kong, they've been in the UX space and involved with UX, PA and anything UX. They've probably been around it for as long as I've been in design. And they've taken this, they kind of took a look at conferences and their own conference, their own event. They were so very tools focused or speakers, just more or less putting things up there to charge the crowd, but we're not ultimately actionable in practise or were tweet calibre, but then you couldn't take anything from beyond that. And they wanted to go deeper, make meaningful work ultimately is about going deeper. And they leverage a tool called practise spotting of which a character card is a key aspect. And it is about finding the environment in which you can best thrive by identifying your values, by being able to project them outward.
- So your organisation, your environment, and your coworkers can understand them and take advantage of them as well in a healthy capacity. And a character card is more or less you helping you build your character by identifying where you best thrive. What are environments where you're not going to connect best? What is your take on relationships? What is your take on your environment? It's a very simple, your pictures to the left, you sketch yourself to the right. There's 12 blanks that you kind of fill in. It's a very simple artefact. And you have these, a designer and a researcher more or less between Joe and Dan putting these things together. So as fellow designers and researchers and creative problem solvers, it feels like you're at home amongst these artefacts as you're going through them. And the character card is a foundational aspect of that practise. Spotting is the aspect where it's such a beautiful notion where it kind of all comes together and practise spotting effectively helps us develop our own personal narrative for us to kind of understand where we're going in our careers and what best charges us.
- And it's based upon us telling a story where we know we've been fulfilled. I'm using my own language here. You kind of take that story and you just look at aspects of it. What did I tangibly do here? What were the thoughts behind why I tangibly did what? And you kind of just extract that and you ultimately get your values from that, and then you can kind of track the efficacy of aligning those values back to an environment. So it's not just all ethereal stuff, you're able to actually have outcomes and trackable metrics assigned to it. So I think it hits all those sweet spots, and I summarised it quickly and within two or three minutes, but there is so much wonderful meat on the bone here that supports everything we're talking about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And part of that meat that you've previously suggested that people eat, I'm not sure if that's the right analogy, but do at least is to take some time. Once they've fleshed out those values, gosh, there's a lot of meat puns going on here. Just
- Justin Dauer:
- Give me a,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Maybe I should move on and actually ask you the question, which is you've suggested that people should take some time and prioritise their values, not just do this lovely exercise, create your values, think about your story. That's all important. But you talked about it getting a bit more pointed. What is it that is important about taking the time to put values in order of priority, and how do you actually do that? Is that something that's different for everyone, or is there a method that people can use to weight them and order them appropriately?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, so the first thing is getting a sense of what your values are. And I think you can kind of take a look at any instance in your life where you felt fulfilled or charged and extract from that story values, from taking a look at that through practise spotting. Once you have your values three to five, five to 10, what have you, it is essential to prioritise them because not every role you take or every environment you exist within is going to hit all 10, or maybe it's going to hit 1, 2, 3, and 4, 5, 6 sometimes. So the metaphor I like to use is a forced ranking exercise. I'm sure a lot of us have been in a workshop before, and you take a client in a room and you kind of go through things they want to accomplished for 2025 or features for a product, you put them on a board and you say the left end is least important.
- The right end is most important. You give everyone dots or squares and you say, go through there and put a dot where it's least important, most important one thing you have to rank least one thing you have to rank most at the end. You get a forced ranking and it shows what is most important to the organisation. It's hard to work through, right? Because you might say everything's the most important to me and it has some constructive conflict. And that's where workshop facilitators earn their bucks. So I think taking that same mentality with your values is huge because when you're on the job hunt, when you go from signing on the dotted line to stepping foot in the door, metaphorically or literally on the first day of work, knowing clearly what is going to be satiated and fulfilled here versus what might be in a diminished capacity, not having those blinders on, being crystal clear, there's not going to be that disconnect between signing on the dotted line.
- And I've told that story before. I was sold a pretty sweet role and an organisation and I walk in the first day and it all fell apart. I felt that feeling of the pit of my stomach. I was not bold enough to just say, this is not the right fit, folks, I'm sorry I made him a horrible mistake. Goodbye. I was there for almost two years. So what I'm trying to do is articulate all these various considerations and practises and thoughts and outcomes and tactics so folks don't fall into that same kind of scenario. But a prioritised sense of values is a huge first step towards setting yourself up for success for certain.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you clearly feel very strongly about this. You've got the personal experience that you've drawn on reflected and the artefacts that you've created for others. Off the back of that, in terms of the books and the conference presentations that you've presented, I also get the sense that you see this pursuit of fulfilment as a non-negotiable. Like it's something that we must do. And tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth here, of course, but you've said, or you've at least suggested in the past that the stakes aren't just the personal stakes for us in terms of existing in a job for two years, that we should have walked out on day one, but that we're actually playing a bigger role in the lives of other people. And just on this note, just to give a bit more context to people, you've previously said about this, why is career fulfilment so important? Because it's bigger than us in creative jobs when product designers, researchers and service designers are disconnected from their work, those on the receiving end of it, so our users or our customers can feel the biggest sting of all. So it sounds like what you are doing is you're tying a lack of personal fulfilment with shitty product, basically shitty experiences, shitty design.
- Justin Dauer:
- I would say that's not far off the market all. And when I first put this mindset concept, what have you out there for the masses, was that I gave the opening keynote at UXPA International two or three years ago at this point, and I gave the talk our imperatives connection and fulfilment. And that's the first time I had kind of put this stuff out there. And after when I kind of conclude a presentation, I always say, I want this to be a dialogue over a monologue and please give me feedback. Approach the Food Lion, I'll be sitting here, let's talk it through it to disconnect. Do you think I'm full of it? Let's go at it constructively. One of the feedback that came up a couple times was when I saw the title of your talk, it sounded like a privileged notion like why do I have to be fulfilled?
- Not everyone can say they have to, some people just have to pay their bills and some people just have to go into work. But as I started going through the material, and I appreciate the soundbite you just quoted me on and I talked about how it's bigger than us, it's being fulfilment and if we are going through the motions or sleepwalking or checked out and just ticking the boxes, I think in our profession, and I'm not saying we're brain surgeons or it's always crisis stage, but sometimes it is, and I worked in healthcare and very often it is we have to be mindful of where meeting people where they're at and it's kind of a marketing speak notion and it's kind of impossible to fathom because people are in a billion, trillion, whatever, infinite amount of circumstances at any given point from comfortable to sitting on your couch to crisis mode to what have you.
- And it's impossible to fathom where everybody is when we are most connected to our design and we are leveraging our humility to evolve and we are advocating for more research. If we feel like there hasn't been enough or we're advocating for another iteration or we are pushing for greater amounts of accessibility or inclusion or diversity in the way we are bringing the folks we are creating for into the creative process. That is where quality comes from. That is where quality output comes from. Quality of work, quality of relationships, quality of culture. It all comes from pushing it a little further. And I'm not talking quality of life calibre pushing. I'm not saying giving 150% in the employee manual. I'm talking about being most connected to what we are crafting, being most connected to those we are crafting with and those we are crafting for. I think there's a beautiful kind of triangle there, a quadrant based graphic of design that can be put together that kind of aligns to that. So it is bigger than us to be fulfilled by our work because we have to ultimately be thinking of number one of course, but also the myriad of folks we are ultimately crafting for. I think that's the bigger consideration.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- The final chapter of in Fulfilment, the designer's journey is titled in leadership and I had a look at your website for the book and there's a summary of that chapter and all the other chapters on the site and it says, and I'll quote the website now, which I'm assuming is you. It says Coasting is not an option for designers, not as a team member, not as an independent contributor and beyond a doubt, not in a leadership position. Just riffing off what you were saying a little bit earlier there about the importance of pursuing fulfilment and being fulfilled because it actually impacts the people that we're designing for. Is that the intent that you had behind that statement on the website saying that coasting is not an option beyond a doubt, not in a leadership position, so not for us as design leaders, this is why we can't coast or were you getting at something different there?
- Justin Dauer:
- No, I'd say that's very much it. And again, I want to start responding to that with a clear delineation between leader and manager. And I say in the book, they're not often the same thing. I say manager is a LinkedIn header manager is a parking spot. Anyone can be a leader. A leader can be someone joining an organisation their first day right out of school. And a leader could be someone who's been working for 45 years and when we are leaders or looked up to as leaders or our value is what we bring to the table as leaders, I think it is absolutely vital that we are connected to what we are doing because that's where impact occurs is in leadership and design leaders. We kind of covered some of this stuff that they face on the day-to-Day, the value of design, like massive things, the value of design within the organisation and why should I spend for more designers when I can use AI or not to go into that, but there's a million challenges that designers deal with let alone in design leadership day over day and being as connected to everything we've talked about thus far, our values and our craft and advocating for our team and advocating for those, we're creating for while also being mindful of with the new organisation ROI and business outcomes and it's a lot to juggle.
- I genuinely, and this is why design for me and my lens specifically design for me is not something I clock in and clock out about. It's something I am always considering or thinking about or reading about or trying to evolve from or I don't know, going way back to the high school eureka moments. It is been my bag more or less for a long time and it's something that part of everything I do and in that capacity I'm always trying to learn and evolve and grow and I genuinely empathise for designers from their first day through the levels of seniority of what they have to put on the table so that in leadership quote is very much about not sleepwalking, not going through the motions because I think about regrets or going through years of operating with ego or going through years of operating an environment where you're not able to do your best work or connect. I'm trying to eliminate that and get out in front of that and set designers and researchers, anyone adjacent to that career path as well up for success as much as humanly possible and hopefully that's some value I'm able to bring to people.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke about just a little earlier than this, I suppose the contribution that you clearly made from a very early age to the field to what you found fulfilling in the work. And I suspect that there are many people listening, including myself that can connect with this. You talked about how, and I'm using my words here, how you don't really have a delineation between that work and life as such. It's something that you're very much always present with or keyed into. I'm not suggesting that you can't do things outside of work, but it's one of the things that clearly drives and motivates you. And what I was curious to ask you about was this reflection on where you've got to with in fulfilment and it struck me that it was perhaps aimed at those of us that are in our mid to perhaps senior career that we've had a bit of water flow under this bridge and we have some of our own reflections that can help us signpost our way to greater fulfilment.
- And you were speaking about this on the Reflex Blue show and you were speaking about the trade-offs that get made in order to produce great design work. And in this sense, I believe you were talking about the output of great design work and you said about this, you were talking more about the inputs you said, I also think about at what expense was this potentially great work achieved? Did you not see your family for a week or did you have to sleep in the office in a cot? You have this beautiful portfolio piece, but what did you trade off to get there? I started reflecting on my own career. I feel like I'm in the second phase of it and I feel like the first phase of it was characterised by me just giving everything I possibly could not going on an OE and overseas experience that we call here, getting stuck into business early, working as long and as hard as I possibly could to get ahead and that has changed in the last five or so years for me. So I've been thinking about this and what I've been wondering, and I'm getting to a question here, is there a time to sacrifice what might be perceived as wellbeing for achieving great work when you are first getting started in your career and you have that I suppose, and this is my own subjective reflection, that energy and that will to make that trade off, can that in itself be a sense of fulfilment?
- Justin Dauer:
- So a few things there. So first of all, a lot of the book is geared for folks who are maybe mid to senior career level but not in a naval gazing. What does it all mean capacity? I think there's a lot in there that also apply to folks just entering the field and the job hunt and how to suss out organisations that align to your values and finding environments and cultures where you could do your best work. And in terms of is there a time in your career where kind of pushing I think of that dial again into the red, the orange red zone? Is that okay? And I think there's grey areas and everything and when I was early in my career in the.com era, I worked for a tech consultancy where I was designer. The role was called a visioner and I was effectively a design consultant and I was single.
- I was in my early twenties. I would wake up in the morning, I was in Chicago or I'm still in Chicago, my manager was in Canada and he would give me a call and he would say, I need you on the ground in San Diego. And at four o'clock and so this was pre nine 11, so it was very easy to get a plane ticket run at the airport and make your plane and it was no big deal. Flying travel was obviously a bit different then, but again, I had nobody at home, I had no kids. I was a hungry designer. It was an exhilarating experience to me. I would get on the plane and I would have my laptop and my briefcase and I would go into a room and work on site at a client office and I would go to IBM and I would go to Nike and I would help close deals via putting together live supply chain workflows in a design frontend capacity.
- And it was awesome experience for me, but sometimes I would get a hotel room and my other consultant coworkers would be in my room or I'd be in their room till like two in the morning because we had a big sales demo the next day, but we were all kind of in the same life space, if you will at that time. And we knew what we were getting into and we knew kind of the experience where we were getting out of it. So a story-based answer, but the TLDR is, yeah, I do think there's some fuzz there and I do think sometimes running the gas tank a little bit lower healthily is okay. If you go into it knowing what you're going to get out of it, you go into it knowing where you're at in your life and you're able to kind of healthfully operate in that space. And I say healthfully, personal health, psychological health, financial health. So yeah, I do think there's some play there as long as you are very clear on what you're getting into and what you're going to get out of
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It. You also spoke about on the Reflex Blue show, which came from this conversation around that period of your career where you might be able to do a bit more of a grind. This idea of in film that there's crunch time in film and by that people know that it's coming. They work extremely longer hours during that time, but they're generally looked after quite well during that time and there's usually some sort of makeup for it in terms of extra time off at the end. Now I know the dynamics of film and the way that that industry works are quite different to say enterprise design and the types of teams and organisations that you've worked within. But do you sense any benefit that we could borrow for enterprise design from other industries and the way that we regulate the amount of output or the demands that are placed upon the people that are working within our organisations?
- Justin Dauer:
- I think that has to come from the top down. I think that's been the very fibre of the values that the founders kind of put into forming this organisation. So I think it's possible. Yes, and I think if the quotes, the soundbite I gave about film that was largely via my friend Erica Abrams who wrote the forward to my book and director of LA Design Festival also. She has worked in film quite a bit and I had a conversation with her in my own podcast and I asked, we talked about culture and extracting too much from workers unhealthily and she's the one who responded with that lovely story and anecdote about film. And the film crew knew they were going to be pulling some late hours, but they would bring an extra lunch or they would buy them dinner or then you'd get so many, so much time days off after that.
- But you knew what you were getting into. It was very clearly known about the field or on the role description. It was not like a nefarious thing kind of snuck in, Hey, guess what? You're in this agency now, we got you 75 hours a week. Again, I think there's grey areas and everything and I'm not trying to assert super hard opinions on any formal engagement. I think there's always complexities there or nuance that you or I don't have line of sight into. But I use the Ben and Jerry's example in my book, how the founders, everything about their product and their tone of voice and their social justice and their advocacy is built into that organisation everywhere. What they're right on their packaging from day one, the way that organisation was built, how they give back, where the profits go. I think that's one of the more famous examples of living your values, clear articulation of your values, and there being no waffling or vacillation from the way the business is run, the way they treat their employees, their product, their output, what they give back. So it can be done, it can be done, and those who do it get the just amount of praise they should, but it's possible. But by and large, what gets put out there and sensationalised are those who do not do it well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Justin, you've been doing what you've been doing for a roundabout 25 years now and you've contributed a lot to the field from a very early age in that time, and no doubt you've got plenty more contributions to make. Out of all the experiences you've had so far in design, what would you say is the most important lesson that you've learned?
- Justin Dauer:
- I'm going to come back to two things, and it's based on humility and it is based on a culture and a way of crafting and a way of producing output that are built upon humble engagement and humble interactions and humble support. And again, I'm going to come back to the Swedish way of, and again, this is the Swedish environment that I worked in. The Swedish agency that I worked in specifically that articulation of and actual actions, values to actions, environment and practise was just revolutionary to me. And it all spawned from humility and egalitarianism and at the end of the day, knowing it can be done that way. It is okay to not be defined by my name in a spreadsheet or it is okay to not have to work till 7, 8, 9 o'clock at night and be able to see my family. It is okay to pause with intent and have coffee with a coworker and connect with them on a human level and understand what inspires them and why they got into the field to enhance collaboration.
- I think everything kind of has, it's not just that they're nice things, everything when you sit back and you use practise butting or you kind of think through, it has an outcome that you can extract from that that has value, like pausing with intent and having coffee. This simple act in a managerial capacity, I'm making time for this employee to have a coffee with me and I'm not saying, why aren't you billing right now? It's a known quantity that we can connect as human beings and from that we're talking through work things or we're not talking about work things or we're talking about what's coming up next week or if they need time off or they have any challenges right now just slowing down, I say pause with intent very specifically. I'm not just saying pause. I think there should be in any kind of ritual that we put forward, there should be a known quantity outcome that we want to get out from that. And I know I'm giving you a long answer that is predicated upon humility, but there are environments where folks are doing it right. There are environments where folks are putting values to actions and being able to find those I think has been transcendental in my career.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Justin, what a beautiful place to bring our conversation to a close. You've certainly given me plenty of things to think about today and I'm sure the people that are listening to this as well, thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, thanks for having me, Brendan. I appreciate it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's been my pleasure. You're welcome. Justin, if people want to find out more about you want to connect with you, want to find out more about the books and the other contributions that you've been making to the field, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Justin Dauer:
- Yeah, thanks for asking. My website for my business Anomali, with an AnomaliByDesign.com, is where I kind of not only have my business, but also my speaking engagements podcast appearances. If you'd like to reach out and have a dialogue, like I say, have a dialogue over monologue. If you listen to this podcast and you think I'm full of it, please let me know that same kind of closer I give with my talks. The book's website is in-fulfillment.com, for my latest release. The-CultureBook.com for my former slash first release. And yeah, I won't quote social media handles because I don't even know what platform I'm on these days and they seem to change week over week, but you can kind of find out what I'm up to via those websites.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thanks, Justin, and to everyone else who has tuned in, it's great to have you here with us. Everything we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Justin, Anomali by Design, links to his websites and also to his social media presence.
- If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX research, product management and design, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast, subscribe so it turns up every two weeks and tell someone else about the show. Maybe it's just one other person who you feel would get value from these conversations at depth.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis. There's also a link to my LinkedIn profile at the bottom of the show notes, or you can head on over to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz, and until next time, keep being brave.