Ehab Bandar
Designing a Life of Creative Freedom
In this brand new episode of Brave UX, Ehab Bandar shares why creative freedom, curiosity, and human connection matter more than ever in design 🧠 — exploring how resilience, adaptability, and gratitude shape a lasting career in UX 🚀.
Highlights include:
- Immigrating to the US from Lebanon at Age Six
- Choosing Autonomy Over Authority in Career Paths
- The Three-Lens Framework: Content, Lifestyle, Money
- The U-Curve of Design Leadership Explained
- The Soulless Product: Avoiding AI-Driven Blandness
Who is Ehab Bandar?
Ehab Bandar is a seasoned UX design leader and independent consultant whose career spans fintech, real estate, hospitality, and beyond 🌎. He’s the Founder and Managing Director of Bigtable, partnering with clients like Charles Schwab, Airbnb, and Wells Fargo to shape digital experiences through research, strategy, and design.
Originally from Lebanon, Ehab immigrated to the US as a child, an experience that shaped his deep curiosity for human behavior and diverse cultures. He’s worked with both startups and large enterprises, driven by a belief in autonomy and continual learning.
Ehab shares his insights through his Substack newsletter The Experience Architect, mentors startups, supports small businesses as a SCORE mentor, and has taught graduate design courses at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco 🎓.
Transcript
- Ehab Bandar:
- We're doing design. It's a fun, creative outlet. Being able to be creative in your work is a very rare thing. So the fact that you are hired to be a creative, to design ideas and to explore in an industry that's constantly changing, I think it's a privilege to keep learning and to privilege to be challenged. My worst nightmare is to have sort of this groundhog day of repetition and doing the same thing. So that's where I kind of come back and say there's a gratitude in being able to work in an industry that you can make a difference, that you can connect with really interesting people and keep learning.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave ux. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of the Space in Between the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who want an independent perspective to align hearts and minds. You can find out more about me and what we do at the space in between.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 our field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders. My guest today is Ehab Bandar. Ehab is a seasoned UX design leader with over 20 years of experience accelerating, creating and launching digital experiences across industries such as FinTech, real estate and hospitality. With a strategic mindset and hands-on approach, he has helped organisations to align their goals with customer needs to deliver intuitive and impactful experiences.
- Currently, Ehab is the founder and managing director of Big Table, a design and innovation consulting firm specialising in product research strategy and UI and UX design. Through Bigtable, he partners with ambitious teams to shape a better future through design and technology, collaborating with clients such as Charles Schwab, Airbnb and Wells Fargo. In addition to his consulting work, Ehab has led design and product teams in both early stage startups and large enterprises, bringing a deep understanding of what it takes to scale user experience teams. His career includes collaborations with companies such as Intuit, Fiser, and Aveta. Beyond his professional achievements, Ahab is a dedicated contributor to the design community. He shares his insights through his Substack newsletter, the experience architect mentors startups through plug and play and supports small businesses as a score mentor also contributed to design education as a graduate school lecturer at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. And now he's here with me for this episode of Brave UX Ehab, a very warm welcome to the show.
- Ehab Bandar:
- Oh my gosh, Brendan, thank you so much. It's a pleasure being here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's a pleasure to have you Ehab. And I wanted to start almost right back at your start, which is around the age of six. And I understand at that age you immigrated to the US from Lebanon. What was it that brought you and your family from Lebanon to the US at that time?
- Ehab Bandar:
- So unfortunately there was a big war, a civil war that kind of tore the country apart and I was one of three boys, the eldest at six, and my parents decided to immigrate to the States and that's what led us there. We had some family there and we were just, the idea was to sort of wait it out. Unfortunately, it lasted another 15 years and so we stuck around and haven't looked back.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And it's an area, Lebanon is an area of the world, the Middle East, which has experienced prolonged conflict and it's no secret to anyone that's listening today that there's conflict between Israel and Lebanon recently as the last couple of months. So that hasn't really changed. And I was curious about your perspective. You obviously grew up in the us there's not even a hint of an accent anymore, right? You are a naturalised US citizen. What influence have your roots, your origin, and those experiences as a young boy had in the way that you view your relationship with those that you're in community with having grown up in the us?
- Ehab Bandar:
- So I grew up in Boston dreaming to be a baseball player, and I was just, everything about the culture I was absorbing. I think what I realised was how adaptable people are, but then at the same time, how fragile society can be and how fractured they can be because I'm Christian, but even a subsect of Christianity in Lebanon, so like a minority within a minority. So I also felt like a minority within my own country. And then that sort of gave me a little bit of perspective that there are different ways to live, there are different sort of cultures you can adapt to. And as a result I was sort of a mini sort of social anthropologist, always observing, always seeing how people are living their life and not with a judgmental, but more of an observational sort of perspective.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- One of the words that you mentioned there, which sounds like it's flowed from those observations that you've made, is the fragility of freedom, the fragility of the western democracies that we both enjoy, right? Me here in New Zealand and you there in the us. Do you get a sense that your everyday citizen is keyed in to just how fragile that freedom is that we enjoy?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I don't see any signs of that in my, because I think part of the history we're almost in the us we're sort of like an island. There's been peace for such a long time. I also live in Oakland, so I do, there's definitely a lot of tension and inequality that exists. So I think people are, from a societal, I think people see the tension, but from a broader where it comes to war, I think that's a distant future for a lot of people. Some people may be more anxious, especially with the elections and not going a lot of people's way. I think there are people who are anxious about that sort of prospect of potentially more conflict. You see the January 6th rioters getting excused and we don't know what that's going to happen in terms of the mindset of people and what kind of precedent that sets. So I can't speak for those people who are super, super anxious, but I can see it and it's not quite there yet. But again, things can get fragile if there's a trigger that just like in Lebanon there was a trigger, there was a catalyst, there was an assassination. Those things start to snowball. So we've seen that throughout the world and it doesn't take much that we can't really anticipate always.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Now let's move on and let's talk about something else that I learned about you and that is that you used to have a stutter, but you don't seem to have a stutter at all anymore. And I was curious, I'm not sure what the tongue being a Christian from Lebanon would've been. I'm not sure if you would've spoken Arabic back then, but I was curious to understand, was the stutter something that was always present in whatever language you were speaking or was it something that evolved as a part of you learning how to speak English?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think it was part of me speaking. So I spoke Arabic and French and a little bit of English as a kid. And so English was actually my weakest language until I immigrated. And I think it was a weird thing where I would visit a speech therapist and my stutter would go away, and it was this strange stutter that I had until actually till college where I kind of forced myself to get out of the stutter. It was a skill. Sometimes it comes out if I am talking really fast or Biden is famous for having a stutter and he sort of learned to adapt to it, but I can't quite figure out why it went away, why I had it, why it wouldn't always appear. But I think maybe I haven't been able to pinpoint it. And my speech therapist never really figured it out either. They'd be like, well, he's speaking perfectly, and then the next hour I'd be stuttering. And it wasn't a very harsh stutter, but it was definitely a stutter.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's quite a story, I believe as to how you trained yourself or forced yourself out of stuttering, and I think it was at college. Do you share that with the people that are listening today?
- Ehab Bandar:
- You've done your research? Yes. So I realised that when I'm being observed, I don't stutter. So I volunteered for our local Boston College. So I went to Boston College and I volunteered to do the radio to report the news. And that kind of, I dunno if it was the breathing exercises or just how you talk in a microphone for a larger audience that kind of helped me, maybe scared me to not stutter anymore. And I can credit that to, it was almost like a life lesson to confront your fear and then you can get past the fear with that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What role, if at all, did overcoming your stutter play in your chosen major at college, which I understand was political science.
- Ehab Bandar:
- Yeah, so political science was more, I think partly just again, sort of this interested in politics, interested in the world, how the world functions, and I don't think it had anything to do with my stutter other than I was an avid reader, an avid writer. And political science was something that seemed to gel with that interest.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've obviously gone on to spend, I would say almost your entire career now as a consulting UX designer. And I've heard you talk about this career decision or this career path that you've trodden before. And you said about this, and I'll quote you now, we were a middle class family. The idea of getting into the arts or design was nothing. That was not even an idea that was broached. My dad is a small business owner, he's an accountant. So the creative side of me never shined at all. So to tell me, how did that side of you come to shine then?
- Ehab Bandar:
- A bit of a roundabout way, but you're right. Design was sort of always out of my league, not even a consideration. And it's partly a little bit of the immigrant mentality of you need to earn a living, be an engineer, lawyer, a real job. But I was always a lifelong tinkerer. I always loved to design and create, but that as a profession was never even remotely an idea. And that's why I think right now there's a lot of gratitude that I get to be able to practise what I love to do. It kind of evolved. I have to sort of thank technology for getting me into design because in grad school I did urban design, urban planning, and I started to fall in love with the AutoCAD of the world, the GIS of the world. And then I also, because of my writing background, I actually started a quarterly newsletter for my programme and I remember getting a couple of lessons about web publishing and I published it and did that. And that sort of opened my eyes to saying, wow, this is something that's not only do I love to tinker with the technology, but also the communication part of it as well. So that's what kind of got me into the, hey, maybe this is something I could do again, not professionally, but more I could just do as a fun thing as part of my education.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you became a consultant I believe after working for Wells Fargo for a couple of years, and that seemed to look to me to be your first real job, which may or may not have been the case, let me know. But what inspired you to move from what seems like a fairly prestigious, perhaps at that time quite stable corporate job into something that I think most people's perceptions would be something that had an increased level of risk, albeit a heightened degree of freedom. What was it that inspired you to make that move?
- Ehab Bandar:
- So I was a very young manager at Wells Fargo and I saw corporate governance, corporate lifestyle up close. And I've always felt that the reason why I'm on earth as what moves me is to keep learning, keep doing the craft. And as you know, management and design does not do any design. They're just kind of overseeing budgets, resource allocation and developing partnerships and so forth. So I thought, well, I really want to keep learning and get my hands dirty. And I always didn't care about status or rank. So I remember the CIO, Wells Fargo trying to convince me to stay on and naming my offer. And I just saw, I think the way I phrased it before is I'd rather have autonomy than authority. And I think as a creative that resonates with me. I like project-based work, I like creating and the autonomy to do great things whereas, and maybe this was not from a career perspective, it was a good move, but from a sort of what I enjoy doing, the passion that I would approach every project, that's where I got really enjoyed that part of it. So I never looked back.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Where does that belief or that desire to have autonomy over authority come from, would you say?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think partly that we moved a lot. So when we moved to the states, we moved initially to Boston, then we moved to Western Mass, and then we moved to California. And then every year I would change schools essentially, and I started to become confident about wherever environment that I'm in, I could make it. And so I think that's partly where it came from is this idea that you can learn you environment and if you have enough work ethic and you have enough confidence in doing what you enjoy doing. Also I had seen other people set that example for being independent. Again, you learn a couple of different lessons in terms of how to approach it, and I was very fortunate that I was able to be a people person and could make those connections and still make it. Maybe it was naive, but it
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Worked out. Sometimes we need a little healthy dose of naivety, I think to make the moves that we otherwise perhaps wouldn't make if we fully knew what the consequences or what the requirements would be for us to make them successful. Maybe I'm projecting here, so tell me if I'm off the mark, but it sounds like you didn't really see that move out of Wells Fargo into consulting as that much of a risk.
- Ehab Bandar:
- I did not. I did not, and I didn't leave Wells Fargo without having a gig in place. And that's when I jumped into it. And again, in my mind I was doing bigger and better things and I was actually, I felt freer because I could pursue those things. The fact that it had an end date and that I had to worry about the next gig, I kind of didn't think about it. It was sort of this youthful exuberance that led me there. But I think that's how we learn. We learn when we get into uncomfortable situations and we test ourselves and we learn either way. And I always figured, well, if I don't make it there, I can always come back because that was my first real job. I think looking back I'd probably do it again.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned youthful exuberance and no surprises like me, you've got a few grey hairs going on. I've certainly had a few more arrive probably in the last couple of months. How would you describe, if at all, the shift in confidence that you've had over the arc of your career? So back then, you're talking about getting out of your first real job into your first contracting role and you didn't really think about the end date, but is that something that's changed as you've gotten further along your career arc? Are you more or less anxious now at the current phase that you're in about where the next project or where the next gig come from?
- Ehab Bandar:
- Well, the economy has definitely changed. I think the state of ux, the state of design, the impact of AI has definitely hit the innovation space. I would say the types of innovation that's happening, the role of the interface, the role of design, I think is completely being reevaluated. So I've always looked at it as what's the next interesting project? And I think most people don't know what that next interesting thing is. And so my confidence, not in my abilities, but just in the market, what the need is, and our companies actually doing innovation the way they used to. I think I get the sense that people are just sort of waiting in maintenance mode to figure out what's going on, but I know I mentor a lot of designers and they're very anxious and they're actually leaving the field. I know some people in research who are leaving the field because they don't see how they could make an impact or if there is a job that they see themselves in, they are competing with a hundred other people. So I think that after a while starts to wear on you the fact that you're not working. Design is one of those things where it's a muscle, you have to keep doing it. And so I have some thoughts about how to keep that momentum going, but it's definitely shaken a lot of junior designers and a lot of maybe people who were specialists in areas and they don't have the big tech names on their resume. That's definitely a thing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned keeping the momentum going and you've got around about 25 years of momentum as an independent consultant. So there's clearly things that you've been doing over that time that have served you well. Are there things that will serve you well for the next say 25 years? Will they be the same things?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think the answer is yes. It's all about making connections, learning from other people, staying up to date. For me at least, writing is a big part of staying current and really helping understand, clarifying my thoughts and that kind of keeps me going. And I think those things won't stop understanding new industries, understanding new people, figuring out how the latest technology works. So I think that's where tinkering helps to kind of keep the momentum going is to not be afraid to try out new technology and just keep learning. And I think that's going to be a big part of it. I think as I progress, I think the next 25 years or whatever many years I have to go, for me, it's diversifying what I'm applying my design skills to. So I have couple of Airbnbs where I manage it completely from end to end and there it's more of the physical experiences. It's more of how do you communicate, how do you publish, how do you market your, so it's more of the architecture sort of design side of it. And that kind of keeps me going from a creative side as well as just doing these sort of side projects. I think they're always, whether you're into woodworking or you're into other sort of creative outlets, I think that keeps you motivated and inspired. And again, creators have to keep creating, otherwise they start to start to slowly wither and get less. Interesting.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned the Airbnbs and I just wanted to make sure I understood that correctly. So you've got properties that you market through Airbnb that guests come and stay at?
- Ehab Bandar:
- Correct. We have two properties that we rent out. We also use as a family, I have two twin girls, age 13, and so we get to use that, but it's also an investment property that we've designed from the ground up as a, but it's also, it's a creative outlet too because it's really a 360 experience when you are creating something for others to experience. So that's another outlet that I have.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I also imagine that it's a little bit of a risk mitigator perhaps that was part of the strategy that you've had over your career as well, that you're not totally beholden to what's going on in the design space yet you have that as a, I suppose it's a separate income stream and an asset that's building over time, which would give you a different perspective on how you view the risks that you take in terms of your consulting career.
- Ehab Bandar:
- Absolutely. I think diversification and just the reality of, I think I've always thought that way since leaving corporate is that you need to have other income streams because it could dry out, you could end the contract. Having that mentality I think has suited me well. And I know a lot of people who are designers who have invested in real estate early on and they've also done well. So it's partly the mindset of saying, you know what? Things are fragile. You need to be anti-fragile. As one of my sort of authors that I admire a lot who happens to be Lebanese Naem tale, it's all about having this resiliency where if you get a shock here, it's not going to kill you. You can keep going. So I've tried to approach that not only with my own personal, the way I've managed my life, but also with project too. My multidisciplinary approach is really partly about being anti-fragile, having more input into those projects.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How much of this area of your life, this sort of financial smarts, if you like, the way that you've conducted your profession in that regard, as an independent in what you've done with the fruits of your labour, how much of that do you attribute, if at all, back to your father as an accountant being that financially minded influence? I imagine he may have been in your life.
- Ehab Bandar:
- Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the entrepreneurial side definitely came from him, the bookkeeping accounting side. He was actually more risk averse than I am, and so I think he would like, what property are you looking at now? That world was a little foreign to him. It was too risky because it wasn't familiar to him. But definitely the entrepreneurial side, the careful record keeping doing your cost benefit analysis, I think came from him.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Let's talk about analysis because I've heard you talk about, I think it's a framework or it's definitely a series of three lenses that you've used to assess, I believe consulting opportunities or projects that have come your way and those lenses are content, lifestyle, and money. If I'm accurate in that summary, great. Let me know how these lenses work in practical terms. And if I haven't quite got that right, just correct me and then go from there.
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think I was referring to your what job that you want to do. So it's more about the content of the job, the lifestyle that the job affords you and the income. And so you can never get all three, but to look at it through that lens, let's say you look at it a role or a project, are you interested in the actual subject matter, the content of it? Does it afford you the right lifestyle? Are you going to be travelling every week somewhere and are you going to be surrounded by people that you are not particular fans of? So I think that's what I was getting at is that it's a framework for looking at what you're going to do next and saying you're not going to get all that you want, but these are major factors. There's the money, there's the lifestyle, and there's the actual thing that you're working on itself.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And when you are going through that exercise or you are encouraging others to go through that exercise. You mentioned that you mentor junior designers. Is it as simple as sitting down with a blank piece of paper, chalking up those headings and jotting down some thoughts or is there a bit more to it than that?
- Ehab Bandar:
- Currently a lot of the designers are just trying to figure out where the opportunities are, where the content is, and they're also trying to figure out what's that new income stratus that they have to deal with so they're not getting paid as much as they used to. Are they okay with that? And that's where the and the content piece can come in. It says, well, if these other pieces are going to work for you, then it's a different market that potentially is a driving factor for you. Other designers are not sure what the content is that they're going to do anymore. Are they going to do more of the branding side or more on the system design side? They're just not sure how to tackle the problem. And what I always tell 'em is partly you want to be a generalist in a lot of different areas, but also I'm starting to have people really focus more on being kind of a product partner and having the lens of business to really identify the problem, help them through help product managers through their thinking, identifying it and having these creative solutions for it. So be a little bit more strategic than just tactical is the way I'm advising a lot of my clients.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I have read a recent article of yours, which was called The Hybridization of Specialisation, and perhaps we can go into that a little bit more deeply. But in that, I wanted to pick up on what you were just talking about there, which was advising designers to become a bit more of a product partner because you'd spoken about in the article what's required of designers is changing, and in there you had talked about how generalists are becoming, in your view, less sought after or perhaps less in demand as technology becomes more complex, which is interesting. Also heard you talk about how one of your strengths through the first 25 years of your career has been that you're a generalist and you've been able to apply yourself and adapt to different contexts. So that's perhaps a side thought, but the two personas that you particularly mentioned in that article were the product executioner and the product innovator. And I'm curious for people that are listening, if you could just describe how those two personas are different.
- Ehab Bandar:
- The way I look at it is in a product cycle, you're either trying to identify a new opportunity, try to identify the problem, and that's where research and design and that kind of world fits in. The executor is more about the production side of product development. So it's more the elegant design, the being creative about how something is going to work. So there's really two sides to that equation. One is what Theresa Torres talks about a lot, the product discovery piece of it, and then there's the execution of it, which is the craft and the real insights and prototyping and so forth. And I think they do overlap. They're not very clean in terms of bifurcating because some of the discoveries need to be the result of craft and prototyping it and getting in front of users and tinkering. But that goes back to you can't just think of a problem in one dimensional way.
- You can't just say, well, give me what you want and I'll make it look good or tell me what the requirements are. I think for design to be meaningful and relevant in the future, they really need to be involved in both the discovery innovation side as well as the execution at minimum, to just at least guide the execution to give a sort of rough outline for what it's going to look like. That's sort of where I was getting at, is a little bit more holistic, a little bit more a thought partner to product. And I think product also has to do some learnings in terms of how to work with creatives in the design space so it's not just a one-way street it it's a two-way street.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. You previously said about the role of product, and I'll quote you now from that article you said, the future belongs to product design, hybrids, PMs, who can bridge the gap between design and engineering, fostering a unified vision for the product. These hybrids don't need to be designers themselves, but they need to understand the design process, speak the language, and create an environment where creativity can be channelled in a positive way. Now I keyed into this, right, because it sounded like you were suggesting that you see the product manager as the most consequential role in the creation of modern product.
- Ehab Bandar:
- So I work with a lot of startups and most don't have a designer. They are using an existing framework, they're using, they're testing hypotheses. That's where the drivers are, is the technology and the product. Unless you're doing a social media or some very heavy consumer base where your brand needs to lead, typically it's a hodgepodge of engineers using something off the shelf to test their hypothesis and go from there. Even in the corporate world, product managers now for whatever reason, they've become the go-to factor as almost product owners. And so I've always said in my practise that your project is only as good as the product manager or the product marketer because they're the ones who are driving. They're the ones who have justified the vision, justified the problem space, just efficiency. They end up having a lot more authority than anybody else. They're on the hook for, they're the ones who are accountable.
- And so I used to beat myself in the head to say, well, designers have to be more like product people and designers have to be business people. And I still think that that's a key thing. But where I've sort of become I've turned in terms of my conversion is that I've seen so many poor product managers who are either just very one dimensional about how they manage a product or they're very good at, let's say the business analytics part of it, or they're very good at one aspect, but they're not able to work with a multidisciplinary team to get a product out the door. So they're product managers only because they know the business, but they don't know product development. And so I think if you can combine those two, that's where I've seen some very, very impressive work where a product person has a really good sense of the creative process and can actually fully leverage design, fully leverage the design thinking approach to problem solving and not just give it sort of lip service but actually execute it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned that you've seen some really great examples or you've been surprised by product managers that have managed to do that, and you mentioned design thinking there, so perhaps that's one example, but what's something that really surprised you that caught you off guard that you were really impressed by that a product manager who didn't have a design background per se, what it was it that they did to make that side of things work and not just bring to bear the business side of things?
- Ehab Bandar:
- To me, the one that comes to mind is just chatt pt. I mean, I think the backstory of that, it was an engineer who was fiddling around with some LLMs and just wanted to, no one thought the chat interface would be sort of the best. Now it's like we take it for granted, but he just was sitting on the side of OpenAI kind of office space, fiddling around with can this work? Can we do this chat interface with prompts to get it to work? And now you can see that maybe the first iteration was very clunky, but it was rudimentary. Now you can see some design elements as it's expanding, give it that sort of life, give it that sort of personality a little bit. And that's where I think design and engineering really, really need to work together because there are opportunities that designers don't know that they could leverage.
- And there are design opportunities that engineers don't know that they could leverage. So I think it's a real partnership that is getting open ai. And what's wonderful about that sort of approach is that even in other perplexity and Gemini, they're all using the kind of the same backend, the same sort of LLM approach, but they're executing in a very different way and they're testing what's going to work and what's going to scale. That's where I think design can really come in is to understand the technology enough so that they could say, how might we, or let's prototype this idea, put it in front of users, is it going to hit our goals that we want? And I think the reason why I've stressed the product design hybrid versus design design product, I think it's possible, but I think it's a lot harder for designers who tend to be a little bit more introspective and a little bit more about the craft to get elevated to that product world where they don't necessarily want to do PRDs or get budgets or deal with all the other stakeholders that product people tend typically don't mind doing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's pull on that thread a little and look into some of the external observations you may have made throughout your career on design leadership as an independent consultant. So what is it that you've seen in the teams that have had the most success that you've been working with? What have you seen that their most senior design leader has been doing that has contributed to that success?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I would say if I had to boil it down to a couple of things, one is just enthusiasm for what they're doing, connection with their team, understanding what they're doing and being a real sort of creative lead rather than just a management lead. Somebody who has a creative vision that gets really excited about ideas and takes risks. So I think those are the things. And I think also just being able to buffer the designers. And I think Peter Mehol has talked about having this sort of shit umbrella, being able to really buffer them and allow creatives to be creative. And so one of the things that I learned recently was if you're familiar with the design sprint model, and one of the big motivations for doing the design sprints and why they called it a sprint is to get the engineers basically off their back so they could focus, have sort of a hundred percent focus on design. And I think the good design leaders could really set that expectation and give the space that designers the space and the sort of the safe space so to speak, and the time to actually do creative work. Whereas if the leader is not involved enough and doesn't really know all the distractions that designers face in a corporate environment and you're going to get shoddy your work as a result. I think
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've also thought a lot about what's required of design leaders throughout the lifecycle of a project to ensure that it has the most chance of success. And back in early 2024, you wrote an article called the U Curve of Design leadership, which looked at the effort that design leaders would need to put into a project over time. And you spoke to I think two key critical parts of a project both at the beginning and the end, but I'm kind of jumping ahead here. So why don't you tell our listeners what the U curve of design leadership is and why it's important?
- Ehab Bandar:
- Yeah, absolutely. In a nutshell, the U curve represents the vertical is the effort of a project, how much they need to be involved, and the horizontal is the time. So the U curve is really implying that the success of a product relies on the upfront work to define the problem, to define the vision, to get the buy-in. It's also a creative and a business effort combined. And then as you go through the process, it's more about learnings and executing and really kind of absorbing the findings and the assumptions and validating those assumptions and those hypotheses that you have. And then towards when it comes closer to launch is where you have to really start to make the trade-offs and make those, hopefully the informed trade-offs that you've had because you've done the upfront work and also really advocate for what you really want to do At the very end, we've all, as designers or even product developers, the very last sort of 20% is where things can get pretty awry. So the effort there to really make the case to prove that the trade-offs are worth it will be sort of more upfront for a lot of the design leaders to be involved in.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I just have this image, I dunno why of Peter standing in the middle of the U curve with an umbrella holding up the umbrella as people are executing trying
- Ehab Bandar:
- To protect It is a trough. It is a trough. Exactly. That's so funny. Yeah, absolutely.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And if you think about, this sounds like quite common sense stuff, right? It's probably not going to raise many eyebrows anywhere as to what's important to ensure a project's success. But are you surprised at all that in 2024 when you wrote that, that it still feels like it's essential to communicate to people, particularly if they're design leaders or anyone that's involved in a project involving evolving product, that it's important to define the vision and objectives of the project before you get started?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I am still surprised and I think it's partly systematic, systematic rather about how projects get funded, who is involved initially in the sort of defining what the goals are where design is not part of that always. I think with design forward companies they are, but with a lot of companies just to get funding for our project requires more identifying the problem rather than the vision for what the solution should be. So they get alignment on the problem and maybe it's very rudimentary, but that's enough to get the funding. And at that point, if you're not a product manager who's inclined work or not resourced enough to work with the creative and research, then you're going to try to run as far as you can and maybe you've promised some dates and you've promised some deadlines and then things start to become a little bit thorny with the actual development of it.
- So I think it's partly how projects get funded and partly the training for product managers about how to work and when is it to work. I kind of blame a little bit the prevalence of all these sort of frameworks and all these sort of ways to shortcuts to great design, that design is messy and a lot of people don't like to get messy and don't like to explore tangents and ideas that may not be aligned with their original thinking. So it's almost like that's why you don't see innovation as much because they're just trying to steamroll, not intentionally, it's just the way the system is set up and that's where innovation is coming from the startup world or from very sort of design forward companies who are really saying, we want invest time and effort to understanding what that's going to look like. So unfortunately, you're right, it is surprising. I'm hopeful that things will change.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke about the steam rolling ahead with a particular direction, that situation where people have already really decided what needs to be built and it's going to happen regardless of whatever anyone else says. That kind of mindset, if you think about, well, if I think about myself, it is very easy to get wedded to your first idea as an individual as well. And I'm sure that there are many designers who are guilty of holding their ideas too tightly when it comes to early design expressions. So how are UX designers closer to Wikipedia authors in the context of modern product than they are to artists or musicians?
- Ehab Bandar:
- Yeah, I mean I think artists and musicians, they have their own vision, they have their own creation and they're realising without a lot of external influences, it's very pure and we never see that in the real world. And Wikipedia is more of a collection of different insights and voting and feedback that gives you this sort of almost evolutionary end product of it's withstood enough editorial review and eyes to make it to the end of the day. So the only reason why we see a Wikipedia article the way it is is that because everybody is happy with it and they've had enough stressors. And it goes sort of back to the anti-fragile motto of if you have something that's in the public and been reviewed enough times, it's going to come out the other day better because it's withstood those stressors and withstood that feedback to scrutiny. If you had a single vision that hasn't had that, it may be a beautiful thing at the end of the day, but it's less likely to survive a real modern day product, I would say.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How far through your career were you when it seems like you became comfortable with that level of collaboration or influence from external parties in the design work that you were doing?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think it came pretty naturally to me. Again, I studied city planning and there was just always sort of this idea of first listening and getting feedback and understanding what the needs are. And I also worked quite a bit when the agency world and in the agency world, you always want to present options and present different ways of doing the same thing because you are on constraints. So not sure if I'm answering your question directly, but it's always about giving as much thought and diversity of deliverables for them to look at and say, I want to go this direction or this direction. And I've always loved partnering with engineers and business people and being on the front lines of customer service because I think that sort of helps inform, gets more eyes on the product and to me it's become a natural thing that I actually look forward to help with my design output. Getting more voices in always helps. I know some people don't like to hear the bad news or don't want to make enough effort to maybe dispel their assumptions, but I've always appreciated that particular angle.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you've previously acknowledged that because design has an inherently visual aspect to it, it invites many subjective judgements and viewpoints on its quality. And because of this, and I'm paraphrasing, you hear designers need to earn the trust of those stakeholders that they're working with. And you spoke there about, I also came up through the agency world and the role that providing options, the psychology of choice plays in helping to get client feedback on certain, maybe it's a direction or maybe it's getting to the pointer end of the project, but that's certainly one of those things that's useful for that. So when you are working with a client team today, whether it's within an enterprise or a startup and perhaps those, they're quite dramatically different contexts, so maybe things are different in each of those contexts, but how do you go about earning the trust that you need to deliver the best outcome you can for the project at hand?
- Ehab Bandar:
- Driving towards trust, there's a couple of levers for me. One is speaking their language, understanding their problem, maybe even at a deeper level than they understand it and understanding it from a different perspective, adding to their understanding of what the problem is and really being a partner that they could talk to, that they could rely on and really doing more listening than talking. That's a thing for me that I think you end up getting the things that what's motivating them and what they prioritise and then you could kind of play with that. And then also thinking a little bit more strategically about the execution of that product. So if you're hearing this, and I've seen a lot of, especially product managers who aren't able to visualise what that thing is going to look like. They know from A PRD what it's supposed to do, but then showing them what it is and showing that you actually have an understanding of what they're seeing and what they want to see and then using that and identifying what the potential issues are, posing a lot of questions. I think that becomes a, you're pulling them in with those questions because then you're posing questions that they haven't even considered yet and that may have them reframe or rethink a problem. So it's really getting in the weeds of the problem, kind of nerding out, talking to a lot of people, a lot of stakeholders to give them a fuller picture of what the problem, maybe a valid problem that they're identifying, but that we need to be thinking about these other factors that potentially may impact the solution.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned product manager, again, that relationship is something that you and other people on the show have encouraged people to invest more time and energy and effort into in terms of developing that. What does a healthy relationship between say yourself and the product manager you're consulting with look like
- Ehab Bandar:
- A lot of communication. Sometimes it's reviewing an idea together in just more of an internal to be able to generate brainstorming ideas to look at a problem in different ways. It's really both the trust of being able to share what you really think both ways, but it also, the design has to think about some of the things that are motivating the product person in terms of let's say, let's say they're interested in particular metric or a particular conversion, starting to contribute maybe other examples that could help inform the thinking for that particular feature. Maybe even a simplifying that they could make to actually save some time and save some money in how they execute it, how they could roll it out in terms of design, the pieces there, what they could leverage, what they not kind of building that MVP, which is a big part of design collaboration.
- So a lot of it is just being confident enough to understand the problem and not just looking at yourself as sort of this ivory tower design where you're the expert. And I think that's where you can quickly kind of have a slippery slope of saying design because you are the designer. I think design is inherently solving a problem which is being set up and teed up by the product manager who understands hopefully the market space. And so we can talk about that as well as whether they understand the problem enough and how do you confront that. But I think it's a real partnership to me to get the best output
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You have. How much of your work the last three or four years has actually been in person versus remotely?
- Ehab Bandar:
- It's almost been a hundred percent remote these days. There's very few every now and then there's sort of for collaboration purposes, it's onsite, but it's mostly remote. And I think with the tools that we have now between Figma and Zoom, and I don't think we've missed a lot, but I think what we've missed is I find it's harder to build the trust doing this asynchronously or what have you not being in person. I think there's a lot of different messages that you could get that you don't get by not being in person. Think about it that may have impacted some of the design influence is because you're not actually able to collaborate as easily or as dynamically as if you were in person. So I haven't thought much about that, but I think there is potentially a correlation there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's talk about something that I understand you have thought a bit about and that you've also as a practitioner most likely been using yourself. And that is, and we've kind of skirted around this, that is the topic of ai. And you have also recently published another article called 10 Harsh Truths about UX design. And there's a quote in that article that I want to start with here, which is where you said with AI comes a loss of control for UXs where design decisions are made not by humans, but by data rich large language models. And why I wanted to start here is I was curious on your observations as to what made you feel that UXs are losing control as a result of developments in ai?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think it's moving so fast and it's so powerful. The way I look at it is AI is scaffolding around a product and some of the scaffolding goes up all the way and you're building new floors with ai. Sometimes you're using AI scaffolding to redesign an experience and it's really driven by what the capabilities are. So that's one part. It's very much dependent on something that's sort of a black box. You don't really know how it's going to influence the ux. The other part of it is that I think it's also changing how people use technology. There's this trend to almost make, and this is enabled by AI to make technology sort of agnostic of what the product is. So it's almost like you don't need a product, you don't need an app, you don't need a website. If you just have this one interface that's going to give you all that you need, where does UX fit into that?
- If you don't need all these other products and apps and sites and so forth. It's raising that prospect of having one tool that connects multiple products, multiple apps. And I could see why we're like, well, where does UX fit into that? We are, and we've always, as UXers, we've always wanted to get rid of technology. We've always wanted the connection between the human and what you're getting at the content itself. And so AI sort of does that in some ways and it's getting closer to that sort of agent bot, whatever you want to call it, where you're just getting things directly, not even having to go through an interface almost. You can do voice or whatever. So the opportunities from a experience and design become something very different at that point. That's where we have to sort of rethink about what our levers are to make an impact there. So I work a lot with the financial services and there you could see some opportunities for better financial management, better, more streamlined research for the best product. The financial planning that goes on could be much more streamlined, but that's a very much of a capabilities function that you have to understand to be able to create those experiences.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I think where we could go to here from here is you've talked previously about the risk of creating soulless products, and this is the partly tied into the danger you see in increasing specialisation, but I'm not really coming at it from that angle. I'm looking at what you're saying here regarding the scaffolding or perhaps the entire building of something using ai. What is a solace product? And perhaps you don't have to name one, but maybe you do have an example, but what can we do? What do you think we can do as designers from where we currently stand to avoid those being created?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I think the thing that comes to mind is sort of the soulless communication, the scripted emails that you get or the generic kind of recommendations that you may get, the algorithm that is really tied to driving a certain behaviour rather than actually accommodating your particular wants and needs. A lot of it is losing the personality. And I'll think a lot of it is actually in writing in how communication happens between companies that I'm feeling is very AI driven and soulless because you don't even feel like you're talking with a person. Now, is that going to change? Can that improve with better models, with better data? We'll see, we'll see. I know that is one of the things that they're driving is to be a little bit more sentient, to be more human. But if you look at the AI images that people create, they look robotic. You can feel that they're creative, but they're, they're not human. So what's scary is how fast it is getting better. And so hopefully we'll get to the point where we could at least influence, we could train it to be more human. So I think that's sort of the next step.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Let's talk about that. You are also a practising designer, so how are you using AI in a practical sense in your day-to-day work?
- Ehab Bandar:
- A lot for research, a lot for putting myself in other people's shoes about what their needs are. So it's very good at giving you kind of a 80% there in terms of what the particular considerations are, what are the things, and then you can actually probe it to say, elaborate on this, give me some data on this. It's also, I haven't used it for analytics quite yet, but I can imagine using it for analytics to really parse out and really finding those patterns that are causing drop-off rates or causing poor experiences and doing more. And one of the things I always get frustrated about is how limited and how delayed data is to all these questions that I would have about a product. Now with ai, I could do those scripts myself. I could actually really find that data and present it back to the client in a much faster way.
- So I think data pattern recognition and then research, that's how today I'm using it. But tomorrow, I don't know. I mean again, there's always these use cases that we need to be constantly understanding and learning it. And I was about to use, I dunno if you're familiar with Repli, which is the coding software. You could literally create an app in 15 minutes that can run on the app store by just using prompts. So you can start building prototypes with AI, with a no code knowledge at all. And that's something that I've seen and I know people are starting to do that kind of stuff as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That raises for me a question of value. So previously, part of the value that we as participants in this broader industry have been able to receive is because what we do, our skillset is relatively rare. And you're seeing with engineering by the example you just gave, how our marginal cost is becoming very low to create things like prototypes and perhaps even soon fully fledged apps. So where is the future value in what we do? If anyone can spin up an app that's almost fully functional within 15 minutes,
- Ehab Bandar:
- And that's where I may have alluded to this, is this idea of really finding those connections and those insights that could help inform that prototype and also extend that prototype. And that's where I think the creative process still is a thing where you are questioning assumptions. I mean, the big downside with AI is it's going to give you a derivative answer to whatever's out there, but if you want to be truly innovative, then you need to add that element that is not, that's a curve ball. It would be something that AI hasn't even considered. There's this great book called, I Like How Chat GPT works by Steven Wolfram, and it's really a probabilistic engine that gives you the most likely answer. But if you want to be really creative, you have to sort of think creatively. And I think that's where design is not just about the design, but thinking about the problem in a creative way, thinking about being that sort of provocateur who says, what about this that the AI didn't think about? And then helping visualise what that's going to look like to somebody who hasn't seen that before. So I think that's where I see the design AI partnership. And I mean it's not easy because it's also a moving target, but we have to start to think about what can be and not what we used to do before, which is focus on the interface or the workflow. Both the interface and the workflow are going away. So it's all changing because of ai and that's scary. That's scary. So I wish I had a better answer, but
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, I think if anything that I took from that is that it's consistent with what many other leading voices are saying and that it can be scary. But I want to pick up on perhaps one of the things that you've spoken about previously in your career that's on the ray of sunshine end of the spectrum, seeing as we're in a very uncertain time because I'm just conscious of time and we do need to bring the episode down to a close shortly. My first of two final questions for you, Ehab, is to do with some reflections that you've shared previously on your career as an independent consultant. And that is, and I'll paraphrase you now, that you've felt an immense level of gratitude during this time that you've spent as an independent consultant, but you never elaborated on that. And I was curious to whom or perhaps for what have you felt that gratitude?
- Ehab Bandar:
- It's a great question. I feel gratitude every day for getting to do interesting work to keep learning. And I mean, we're doing design. It's a fun, creative outlet and I think most people forget that it's a, I don't want to call it a privilege, but being able to be creative in your work is a very rare thing. The fact that you are hired to be a creative, to design ideas and to explore in an industry that's constantly changing and I think it's a privilege to keep learning. It's a privilege to being challenged. My worst nightmare is to have sort of this groundhog day of repetition and doing the same thing. So that's where I come back and say, there's a gratitude in being able to work in an industry that you can make a difference, that you can connect with really interesting people and keep learning. And that's where my gratitude comes in.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm grateful that we are having this conversation. And for my final question, iab, I wanted to ask you about, well it's no secret really, that we've been discussing it just recently on the show, how AI is impacting our field and perhaps these have passed, perhaps not. I think meta just announced another wave of redundancies. It's pretty clear that things in tech, which is affecting designer in a state of upheaval. So when you think about those people who may be facing the choice or the prospect, whether it's willingly or unwillingly to become an independent consultant for the first time, what's the most important piece of advice or encouragement that you can share with them?
- Ehab Bandar:
- I would say most jobs are gotten through connections, through networking. So networking relentlessly by staying in touch with people. Also staying up to date with what the market needs are. And that can only happen by talking to a lot of different people and get to better appreciation, understanding what AI can do from a creative sense. It may mean to pivot towards something else. I know some friends of mine who had a branding agency that just completely fell off the cliff and they decided to pivot and double down on AI generated branding. And they're doing extremely well because they're adding their own creativity and their own perspective on what a good brand experience is going to be like. But adding the powerhouse of ai. So I think trying to marry the creative and the AI in different novel ways. And I think the last one is to have a specific thing that you're really known for, whether it is, I dunno, design systems or a particular industry experience on the business side. I think doubling down on more of sort of value add to the product manager I think can go a long way. So four things.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Four things. What a great four things to finish on today. He had, this has been an enjoyable and wide ranging conversation. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
- Ehab Bandar:
- Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure and I loved your questions and you've done your homework, so
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's my pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure. If people want to contact you and find out what you've been up to, want to follow you along, I know you've got your newsletter, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Ehab Bandar:
- So the newsletter Experience Architect on Substack is great for my writings. I'm on LinkedIn and my consulting [email protected].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Wonderful, thanks. And to everyone who's been with us today tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that Ehab and I have covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find him and all of the things that we've spoken about. If you've 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, subscribe so that it pops up in your feed every two weeks and just tell one other person about the show if you feel that they would get value from these conversations at depth. If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn. There's a link to my bio in the show notes, or you can head on over to the website, my website, which is the space in between co nz, that's the space in between co nz. And until next time, keep being brave.