Hustle: Whose Job is UX? (feat. Peter Merholz)

05/05/15 • 48 min

The Funsize Show

Show Notes:

0:55 Rick is back from paternity leave. His new son is awesome.
1:11 Joining us on this episode is the Senior Director of Design at Jawbone, friend of Funsize, and a hugely inspirational designer, Mr. Peter Merholz.
1:30 Anthony chronicles Peter's background with the international consulting firm, Adaptive Path, which is perhaps best known for championing "User Experience."
1:50 Fun Peter Merholz facts: Peter hired Funsize while at Groupon and was Funsize's first client. Thanks, Peter! He also coined the term 'blog'.
3:44 Fun fact about the new Up4 from Jawbone is that it can do NFC payments!
4:00 The theme for this episode was conceived following Peter's blog post "There's no such thing as UX design."
5:20 Don Norman, credited with the coining the term User Experience in the early 90s, created the User Experience Architect's office at Apple.
6:25 Initially, Adaptive Path considered themselves a user experience consultancy because no one else was talking about user experience at the time. The term "design" was an avoided term because designers were not involved in product strategy, often reduced to pixel pushers and production workers.
8:40 "User experience is an outcome, not a practice." - Peter Merholz. There are many contributing factors to good or bad user experience, but design is only one part of the whole.
9:32 User experience designers were actually interaction designers, information architects, or other designers cloaking themselves with the phrase because it sounded good.
11:11 Picking apart the concept of the "User Experience Designer." A litmus test for the viability of the "User Experience Designer" career path: How would one grow as a UX designer? What's that path or evolution look like?
14:20 The thing that we call "User Experience design" may fit in two buckets: 1) Product Management & 2) Design Execution.
15:00 A historic lapse in balanced Product Management may have generated "User Experience Design."
17:00 Product designers began to create a set of user research & persona development practices in order to ensure product strategy would not forget to acknowledge the user.
18:20 Strategically-minded designers can lead products as well as strategically-minded engineers or business persons.
21:55 If we do call "User Experience Designer" a profession, it would be best compared to a film director.
25:00 Anyone who tells you they've figured out how the formula for the perfect product team is lying to you.
25:50 Peter eventually left consulting because he found the relationship they had with clients wasn't leveraging his agency enough impact on final products. Peter effortlessly flips the interview around on Funsize to discuss how we ensure impact with clients and products.
28:00 Funsize discusses our team structures and project pacing.
29:25 We share about a tactical program we run called Special Ops, in which designers may do work that can help steer the product in the direction we believe it should go. Special Ops often strengthens our impact within the client organization.
32:00 We discuss pairing design teams with clients and the importance spreading out designer's velocity across more than one project at a time. No designer works alone!
33:45 We talk about the problems with in-house designers at product companies and how to avoid driving designers insane.
35:00 Peter discusses tactical hiring decisions and team formation at Groupon, to which he gives credit for stronger impact of designers and decisions.
38:30 We recall our discussion with our friends at Adobe, where we learned that there's two designers to 60+ engineers at Photoshop.
39:00 Peter recalls hiring outside design support while at Groupon.
42:15 We note how, for consultancies, it's becoming just as important to help the people and companies you work with hiring internal teams as it is to help them with needed design work.
43:00 Design teams in an organization are very different from other types of teams, and they shouldn't be structured or managed as though they were...

Show Notes:

0:55 Rick is back from paternity leave. His new son is awesome.
1:11 Joining us on this episode is the Senior Director of Design at Jawbone, friend of Funsize, and a hugely inspirational designer, Mr. Peter Merholz.
1:30 Anthony chronicles Peter's background with the international consulting firm, Adaptive Path, which is perhaps best known for championing "User Experience."
1:50 Fun Peter Merholz facts: Peter hired Funsize while at Groupon and was Funsize's first client. Thanks, Peter! He also coined the term 'blog'.
3:44 Fun fact about the new Up4 from Jawbone is that it can do NFC payments!
4:00 The theme for this episode was conceived following Peter's blog post "There's no such thing as UX design."
5:20 Don Norman, credited with the coining the term User Experience in the early 90s, created the User Experience Architect's office at Apple.
6:25 Initially, Adaptive Path considered themselves a user experience consultancy because no one else was talking about user experience at the time. The term "design" was an avoided term because designers were not involved in product strategy, often reduced to pixel pushers and production workers.
8:40 "User experience is an outcome, not a practice." - Peter Merholz. There are many contributing factors to good or bad user experience, but design is only one part of the whole.
9:32 User experience designers were actually interaction designers, information architects, or other designers cloaking themselves with the phrase because it sounded good.
11:11 Picking apart the concept of the "User Experience Designer." A litmus test for the viability of the "User Experience Designer" career path: How would one grow as a UX designer? What's that path or evolution look like?
14:20 The thing that we call "User Experience design" may fit in two buckets: 1) Product Management & 2) Design Execution.
15:00 A historic lapse in balanced Product Management may have generated "User Experience Design."
17:00 Product designers began to create a set of user research & persona development practices in order to ensure product strategy would not forget to acknowledge the user.
18:20 Strategically-minded designers can lead products as well as strategically-minded engineers or business persons.
21:55 If we do call "User Experience Designer" a profession, it would be best compared to a film director.
25:00 Anyone who tells you they've figured out how the formula for the perfect product team is lying to you.
25:50 Peter eventually left consulting because he found the relationship they had with clients wasn't leveraging his agency enough impact on final products. Peter effortlessly flips the interview around on Funsize to discuss how we ensure impact with clients and products.
28:00 Funsize discusses our team structures and project pacing.
29:25 We share about a tactical program we run called Special Ops, in which designers may do work that can help steer the product in the direction we believe it should go. Special Ops often strengthens our impact within the client organization.
32:00 We discuss pairing design teams with clients and the importance spreading out designer's velocity across more than one project at a time. No designer works alone!
33:45 We talk about the problems with in-house designers at product companies and how to avoid driving designers insane.
35:00 Peter discusses tactical hiring decisions and team formation at Groupon, to which he gives credit for stronger impact of designers and decisions.
38:30 We recall our discussion with our friends at Adobe, where we learned that there's two designers to 60+ engineers at Photoshop.
39:00 Peter recalls hiring outside design support while at Groupon.
42:15 We note how, for consultancies, it's becoming just as important to help the people and companies you work with hiring internal teams as it is to help them with needed design work.
43:00 Design teams in an organization are very different from other types of teams, and they shouldn't be structured or managed as though they were...

Previous Episode

Hustle: Just Show Me the Damn Thing! (feat. Joel Beukelman & Ted Boda)

It’s a wonderful time to be a product designer. There's more design and prototyping tools available to us than ever before (and more and more keep popping up). It’s safe to say we’ll all be using these tools in various ways to achieve the specific results we need. Keynote is a fantastic low-barrier-of-entry tool that allows product managers, designers, and marketing professionals to achieve product success while maximizing time

In this special SXSW '15 Hustle/Balance Podcast cross-over episode, Joel Beukelman and Ted Boda talk about how Keynote has allowed cross discipline teams at Google, Nest, and Netflix to work quickly and efficiently together to craft great products.

Show Notes:

0:45 Drinking bourbon and opening up the show
1:30 Joel talks about his new job at Google working on Android Auto, how he and Ted started working with Keynote for prototyping at Netflix, and the inspiration of the Balance Podcast.
3:30 Ted introduces himself and his experience working on the Keynote team at Apple, Nest, and his new exciting projects.
4:55 “Keynote is my entire design tool.” - Joel
4:55 Keynote has all the features you need to plan, design, build consensus, track changes, present and spec your entire product; and can maximize valuable time.
9:50 Keynote does everything you need to do 80-90% really well in one tool.
10:50 Ted talks about presenting Design to Steve Jobs.
13:27 There are sooo many prototyping tools available today.
20:00 Just show me the damn thing! Oh that’s the thing!
23:40 Pixel pretty damn perfect. Your mock doesn’t matter. Even if your design is perfect the engineer isn’t going to necessarily make it perfect.
24:22 You’re at an advantage if you're working on a project with an established visual identity.
32:58 When you’re at a big product company it’s all about money and conversion and testing. The last 25% is the polish that happens in implementation.
34:00 You have to know the voice of your product and Keynote makes it easy for writers to hop in and do their work.
37:30 Details matter. When you’re doing something wrong for the driving context people could die.
39:00 Use the tools that works best for you. Joel and Ted prefer tools that save time.
41:25 Get ted and Joel to do a workshop at your company at www.keynote.com
43:23 Joel runs out of Bourbon.

###Links:

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

Next Episode

Hustle: The Client-Agency Relationship (feat.Brandon Breitenbach)

Brandon Breitenbach is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pare Booking, a kick ass digital product that’s changing the way musicians and artists book shows and get paid. Recently, Brandon stopped by the studio while visiting Funsize to discuss the history of our working relationship, how we made decisions, the process and tools we used and what the ideal client and design agency relationship can look and feel like.

2:00
Introduction to the Pare Booking's product and user experience. Pare Booking modernizes the process for musicians and artists to book shows, manage contracts, and get paid.

4:00
Brandon’s share's his music and music booking industry background.

4:47
How Funsize met Pare Booking. Brandon and Anthony talk about the history of how Pare Booking and Funsize found each other and how quickly we were able to get started.

6:25
Why Pare Booking chose to work with Funsize. Brandon talks about what it feels like to hire a design and development vendors. Joel Beukelman recommended they work with Funsize and Brandon trusted his friend and moved forward. You can usually tell at the first conversation if there’s a match between a client and an agency. You gotta follow your gut!

8:20
Phi talks about how awesome it is to be held accountable but also to have the breathing room and trust to move forward in making design decisions.

9:00
Brandon discusses his experience working relationship with Funsize. Phi shares how we used Sketch and Marvel, two completely new tools on this project, to maximize our effort and time, and how we crafted a unique design process to be able to design the MVP app in a very short period of time.

10:50
Clients are subject matter experts. Sometimes designers don’t always know “what’s best”.

11:40
A dream client is one that that has good taste.

12:30
We discuss conceptual design, atomic design, and how they were applied in the Pare Booking project. For Pare Booking, Funsize presented multiple concepts as screen designs supplemented with mood boards/style tiles to expand on the concepts voice, feel, and visual language. This is a good way to explore and create the personality of the brand or product, outside of just focusing on what it can look like. For Pare, this lets them see the scope of the “why” behind each concept.

15:19
“We didn’t have a brand or identity when we started this project...”

16:09
Brandon mentioned that 3 concepts was just the right amount. If we had delivered any more it would have been overwhelming for him. Brandon was playing golf (and left at the 16th hole!) when he reviewed our concepts for the first time.

17:10
Brandon and Anthony talk about what’s it’s like working together in an agile design engagement. What worked was the amount of communication and transparency Pare and Funsize had throughout the project. This resulted in a high amount of trust. Both companies did their part in getting each other what the other needed to be successful.

19:45
How Funsize uses [Pivotal Tracker to manage design sprints and transparency with our team, clients, and stakeholders. Keeping your team's best interest in mind while estimating design sprint stories will help create the best work possible. Pare has now adopted Pivotal Tracker as their internal product management tool. We recall [Hustle Season 1, Episode 7: "Death to Time Tracking", where we talked about how Funsize stopped time tracking and how Pivotal Tracker has been critical in allowing the client and agency relationship to flourish.

22:50
Pare Booking was the first project in which Funsize used Sketch 100% through the duration of the project from wireframes to finished design. Phi talks about the advantages of Sketch and how it helped meet our project objectives and save time.

25:00
Whether you use Photoshop or Sketch, having a system in place to dynamically design empowers the designer to make a change in the overall design without having to worry about accumulating unnecessary design debt.

26:19
“I will use Funsize as long as I possibly can.”

26:30
Pare’s iPhone app is launching in the Apple App store between August and September 2015. If you’re a touring musician, artist, or speaker, please check out www.parebooking.com and sign up for early access!

27:00
Check out Funsize's Pare Booking Dribble Collection to see what the Pare Booking design will look like. Also feel free to demo the Pare Marvel Prototype for a hands-on experience with the app's design and user experience.

27:40
Rick announce...