It seems that people are very often confusing a Design System with a component library. The differences are nuanced, drawing the line between those two will be hard, and there’s no right or wrong — but maybe this story might help us understand those differences a little bit better, and maybe it will help us understand the effort it takes to build and maintain a Design System.
It is more than just a UI Library. The whole purpose of a Design System is to define the design principles, style guide, patterns, content tone, and the rules and specifications of the “reusable” components. These rules are very specific to the product and can differ from company to company.
When does a UI library turn into a design system?
For a design system to thrive and survive, it needs a sufficient level of management:
A Design System isn’t a Project. It’s a Product, Serving Products.
Discuss!
All this and more are answered in this episode of Faster Horses.
🐎 80% comedy, 20% UX, 0% filler
👕 Get stickers and tees at https://www.paulwilshaw.com/shop/
💎 Support the show and sign up for early and exclusive content: https://www.patreon.com/FasterHorses
🎙 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5wF48uFWHs5a7gpr3eNwrC
🎙 Apple:
🎥 Watch: https://youtu.be/GYjaKrOt1VE
PEACE!
Produced by:
Paul Wilshaw
Nick Tomlinson
Mark Sutcliffe
Anthony Jones
Chris Sutcliffe
Title mus
All this and more are answered in this episode of Faster Horses, a podcast about UX, UXR, UI design, products and technology (sometimes!)
🐎 80% comedy, 20% UX, 0% filler
👕 Get stickers and tees at https://www.paulwilshaw.com/shop/
The show is hosted by:
Paul Wilshaw
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwilshaw/
and
Mark Sutcliffe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sutcliffemark/
If you want to suggest an idea, or join us on the show, send us a message 👆.
It seems that people are very often confusing a Design System with a component library. The differences are nuanced, drawing the line between those two will be hard, and there’s no right or wrong — but maybe this story might help us understand those differences a little bit better, and maybe it will help us understand the effort it takes to build and maintain a Design System.
It is more than just a UI Library. The whole purpose of a Design System is to define the design principles, style guide, patterns, content tone, and the rules and specifications of the “reusable” components. These rules are very specific to the product and can differ from company to company.
When does a UI library turn into a design system?
For a design system to thrive and survive, it needs a sufficient level of management:
A Design System isn’t a Project. It’s a Product, Serving Products.
Discuss!
All this and more are answered in this episode of Faster Horses.
🐎 80% comedy, 20% UX, 0% filler
👕 Get stickers and tees at https://www.paulwilshaw.com/shop/
💎 Support the show and sign up for early and exclusive content: https://www.patreon.com/FasterHorses
🎙 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5wF48uFWHs5a7gpr3eNwrC
🎙 Apple:
🎥 Watch: https://youtu.be/GYjaKrOt1VE
PEACE!
Produced by:
Paul Wilshaw
Nick Tomlinson
Mark Sutcliffe
Anthony Jones
Chris Sutcliffe
Title mus
All this and more are answered in this episode of Faster Horses, a podcast about UX, UXR, UI design, products and technology (sometimes!)
🐎 80% comedy, 20% UX, 0% filler
👕 Get stickers and tees at https://www.paulwilshaw.com/shop/
The show is hosted by:
Paul Wilshaw
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwilshaw/
and
Mark Sutcliffe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sutcliffemark/
If you want to suggest an idea, or join us on the show, send us a message 👆.
Well, let's talk about UX.
Paul:Yeah.
Mark:So how... woo
Nick:Yeah.
Mark:who's in charge of today's session,
Paul:the, ghosts in the machine.
Mark:the little UX Gremlin's
Paul:Yeah. Yeah,
Mark:this sound goes on a bit
Nick:right, settle, settle down now.
Paul:I know. Yeah. We've that? It's that extra listener we've got,
Mark:Not
Paul:just in. yeah,
Mark:Bloss in our common sense
Paul:Yeah. In a very echoey room, so So thank you. I we've now got three listeners, appreciate that.
Mark:Love it Love Yeah. today we are actually.
Paul:do some UX.
Mark:we're actually continuing on from, last week's session. No. anyone remember last week's session What the fuck talking Oh no Yeah And definitely not definitely not, an
Nick:boy what was last week session
Mark:haven't got a,
Paul:it's a little bit of a continuation and a bit of a different topic as well. So it
Nick:at the end of at the end of the last episode mark launched into a really good point and It was so good that I was like we could probably talk about this for another hour
Mark:right there. Mark.
Paul:yeah
Nick:not giving away this free content
Paul:yeah,
Nick:the one episode yet So um mark kind of paused the question didn't they That it or is design system product that needs separate consideration why why is the answer Yes
Mark:yeah. yeah It's good to know. Is three white men all agree on something, you
Nick:Yeah
Mark:UX?
Nick:Especially if it's something that benefits us
Paul:Well, that's only a intro.
Mark:yes, of course. I forgot we have do this but
Paul:Oh Yeah. a polished
Nick:turd
mediaboard_video:sound design and development teams. A box please. Another well-known brand will lots of rewards a few. Nick Tomlinson X designer, best investment company. And lead. You find it in the digital mesh. Yeah.
Nick:I never really before oh
mediaboard_video:technology fully. Why don't we pick apart the product objectives, service we'll place a special. From Bolton. Okay. This question is on Twitter. No
Nick:Thanks Paul yeah I've never noticed before but. I sound high off my ass in that in that clip
Mark:I, to be
Nick:Yeah
Mark:know if I've ever been around you when you've been high off your ass.
Nick:I have not been high in ever if you're listening mom
Mark:yeah Oh no, no. In a previous episode we asked to 10 doesn't give a shit about this podcast. So you can say what you're like,
Nick:yeah. no I haven't been high since Like probably uni which was quite some time ago now
Mark:gosh, was black and white back then.
Nick:Yeah According to that person I heard on the bus that time Yeah
Mark:The bus, it was called an omnibus it was, you know, a horse, horse legs and the wholesome Plath crap, crap. That's someone else
Paul:well, Jim, generally there is horse crap around.
Mark:Yeah I also appreciate that as you went oh, you didn't realize that there was more to the intro through
Nick:I've only heard that intro a thousand times
Mark:you nearly straight up killed Paul lineally drones on these sunny delight or whatever it is. He's drinking
Paul:God, I didn't realize. Oh, there's more so,
Mark:Yeah
Nick:a
Paul:yeah.
Nick:that I wrote the
Mark:Yeah I'm recorded. Yeah. Wonderful. So, yeah.
Paul:Love it.
Mark:Okay, lovely
Paul:Cool Is,
Mark:design system as a product. Is
Paul:is, a design system, a product? Yes. Why
Nick:product
Paul:a product?
Nick:That's the duct That's the thing under your eye produces Prague
Mark:yes. yeah, yeah,
Paul:And, it's the, it's the pro version. So you got extra features.
Mark:yeah, yeah, but you have to pay it you have to pair for it the ducks
Nick:You get to use the features
Mark:not going anywhere trying desperately to get him back on track So, so give a bit of context last week. The word is started that, last week's discussion last week's topic was, off the back of us, Nick you asking, what goes into a design. I think the short answer you know, it depends on how you at the word design system, ho ho inclusive. You want to be and where you are within your But we quickly on the stewards came to an agreement that a product can, a PR design system can contain almost anything. and it can be owned by various people. It's more than just your component library is greater than the sum of its parts, et cetera, et cetera, but then comes the question of how you manage that how that delivers value. And that's where I'd say the question. it a product from, it's at that point that I would pose that question to and Nick, but next just left the room. So Paul
Paul:it's a good question. Cause I say a lot of places, a lot of companies don't consider the design system as a product, which I can understand because it's not that tangible. But, at the same time you'd pay, I, say a CRM, like Salesforce or there's others. I'll if you please want us to do a promo, Salesforce will ability to do that. And, but if you wanted to have a CRM. That adds value to your business because it streamlines sales, it puts all your customers in one place, kind of like, you know, kind of manages the whole life cycle of, that, pipeline. So that's product, but yet a design system quite often isn't considered a product because I don't, I think a lot of it is people don't quite understand what a design system is or what the value of it is. some of the stuff I've been doing recently is to say actually, design system is a product.
It is something that:A. you can either offer to your customer or worst case scenario. It's an internal product. That helps you innovate faster, streamline your development, streamline design, reduce risks, and enable you to get to market faster. and, like, if someone who came along and said, I've got product, they'll make your products, you know, make, you reduce 10% of your overhead of products. it'll cost you, two grand a month. Businesses would snap your hand off of that because it's a, it's a massive cost saving. It's a, and I think, but I think when some of the problem is you have to put in that effort from. To, to make it a product, but then it can become kind of automated or, you know, self self-governing, those kinds of things that when it really adds value. And I think that's the, that's the key.
Nick:Yeah. If could that's the thing is the business like try to sell it into a business Your you're saying allow us to build this thing as we as we work Whereas you could buy an off the shelf product that was already done ready it to go they'd find it easier to sign that off and say yes to it Wouldn't
Paul:yeah,
Nick:of ties into a point that I think I made in like a episode from ages ago where I was like I can see Design systems becoming a an industry
Paul:yeah.
Nick:a a sales tool of of agencies and companies and stuff that just sell you a design system
Paul:Yeah.
Mark:Yeah. could investigate that as, a bit as a business idea and business model of, almost as a kind of solution to this, because one of the things that I've been looking into recently with my reading. And I'm kind of learning has been around treating your internal UX team like it's a business within the organization you're in now, this is very distinct from UX as a service, which is typically can be quite a bad thing. it's mainly, kind of a, it happens at a, like a leadership level or a strategy level is about assessing risk and pitching things to, to, to people to get the, the overhead that you need the time and the runway that you need. but it's, it comes down to this being instead of entrepreneurial, is that, it's a nice little word I've not caught in this by stretch, but, that I've been reading a lot of, but yeah, having, having the ability to say this is what you'll get and when, and this is the return that you'll get on that anticipated, no, is a really difficult thing to visualize because. It's almost every other department within your company will have metrics that they measure against whether that's finance, whether it's product and product delivery, whether it's, hair char have, OKRs, KPIs, like that. It's a bit more difficult for UX to, measure that. There's actually, I think it's just because it's not, we've not been around for that long UX has been what, 20, 30 years old, when it started properly galvanize. So we don't have the same laundry list of metrics that in positions where the metrics matter. and that's how they understand value, can understand what those metrics are to be. So that's something that I think we've got to figure out as part of this
Paul:Interestingly. So we're just doing a piece of work on this. In fact, we should get drew on to talk because Drew's done a lot of work. So,
Nick:Drew for the
Paul:yes.
Nick:audience
Paul:So Drew work with me, as a superstar UX researcher. And she's also Nick's better half. I would
Mark:is certainly
Paul:definitely say that.
Mark:Yep Because
Paul:Yeah.
Mark:thing is Nick's other better half is me.
Paul:yeah, true. Yeah. So.
Nick:in the equation
Mark:Which leads to the question, what's it like having two halves, both which you
Nick:think I'm about to have an existential crisis
Paul:so yeah, so I drew has been relayed to work on this. So we're putting in a, it's almost like think MPS of UX. So, an even though I could talk about the shittiness, sit on PS and sort of the dark UX. In fact, we should do an episode on this because there's loads to dig into here.
Nick:can't believe we've never done an
Paul:I know.
Nick:UX
Paul:Yeah, no, it's because
Mark:true.
Nick:I I must say I probably shouldn't say this but it's my favorite type of I I find absolutely fascinating
Paul:is absolutely fascinating. Well, let's get the, a ring of candles we'll right on the floor and chalk, we will couldn't drop the dark UX in a future episode.
Mark:Absolutely
Nick:Halloween
Paul:Oh, oh, oh, a little bit
Mark:I now challenge almost like a UX files are challenged, could be defined the darkest UX
Nick:Oh
Paul:Oh
Nick:And bring it
Mark:And,
Nick:a
Mark:the
Nick:just brainstorming live in the podcast now
Mark:Yeah. yes.
Paul:Yeah.
Mark:This is how the sausage gets
Nick:I was just gonna say exactly the
Mark:but she's the name of one of our podcasts. So I'll go
Paul:yeah.
Nick:go back and listen to that
Mark:Yep
Paul:it's funny. I was in a, to go off on a tangent, I was in a meeting the other day and
Nick:on this podcast
Paul:somebody used that phrase and I went
Mark:yeah Woo. Yeah, love it
Paul:they did. Yeah, they, they did admit later on this store.
Mark:good. Good, These ideas should be stolen
Paul:but anyway, going back to, can't remember what I was talking about.
Nick:talking about drew doing the Doah
Paul:the sauce. So the system usability scale, so think NPS of UX. So basically it's a 10 set questions and we get, our users to rate a product or service on those same things, questions that then we can do those once a quarter, once every six months and stuff. And then we get a metric of, this is the soft score of X product. And then we get, a good kind of flight. This, this is the roadmap for it that we can improve on there. If something's got to ISIS, do we need to kind of light may look like dunk shifts by essentially performs. Okay, let's leave it. You know, it was something kind of like, could look amazing, but it's got low sauce. That could be our next thing to tackle. And it'll just give us that focus, but then it'll give us those metrics to then go, actually, because we've done this, we implement, this is the design system that's going to the, this has got the sauce on it. This has got everything else. We'll have the metrics to back it up. And I think it's because I think a lot of UX is, comes with that designy fluffy of like, oh, it's a feeling it's a, it makes you feel good, but. With you. And I think this is the big difference between UX and traditional graphic design is it's how people interact with it. It's not just about how it looks. And I still think there's that misrepresentation in the whole UX industry that we don't kind of everybody just kind of like, oh, it's design, more than design. It's a lot shit.
Mark:And,
Nick:Is
Mark:result, the very easily dismissed people don't understand and it's not, it's not being dismissed in the sense that no one has seen value in it. They're not just, they're just not seeing the right kind of value in it misaligned it with preconceptions about, graphic design, for instance, with being visually oriented. But much of what we do has got nothing to do with visuals. It's very
Paul:yeah yeah,
Mark:pattern driven and, and, you know, you use it driven ultimately. so yeah, I think a big part of, getting people to think of your design system as a product is first on a level of understanding of what UX is and what it's hoping to achieve. Now, one thing that I've noticed, cause we're, we're again, where I am. I'll just show where I am at work. I'm currently building the UX roadmap. Is happening on two levels. And I think one is far easier to view a product than the other, but they both need to happen simultaneously. And one is what's happening, in UX a centralized way, basically the work we're doing on the design system, which is done by team, the UX team, everyone owns that in the UX team and something we're all working on. Then you've got the UX of the individual products. And I think there's a key differential differentiator there that people in a product management or product ownership situation need to understand is that there's a difference between what goes into the component library, what goes into the design system and then how they ended up identify the UX required for those specific product features. and that there's actually, these are actually two different things, which are very closely related, but ultimately, require a different, different kind of inputs from different.
Paul:yeah,
Nick:That's that's
Paul:Cool.
Nick:that you were talking about Is that something that you've come up with yourself Paul
Paul:No, no it exists, exists, sell direct. So it's a proven scale, so you can Google it. and the good thing about a scale is that if somebody in like a competitor has used it, they've published this, you can actually the benchmark your product against the competitors, and you can then, even, even if they haven't got a published source, you can actually give the same scale to, you know, a, a user on a competitor can use it on yours, and then you can benchmark your products against somebody else's, which then becomes quite a nice tool to say, actually, we are not performing as well as this. And then I think that that's quite an easy. Thing then to kind of go I'll look at the value of this, is that look at this, look at where we are compared to something else in the market,
Mark:so I think this, this needs to be positioned properly as well, because we actually did this a little while ago. it was, I remember it was researcher Dr. Maria Maria Panagioti that, did our SUS study for us? is it S U S, S O S?
Paul:As us.
Mark:There we go. Cells. We actually phoned that we're actually more usable than we anticipated. And this I think to be positioned properly because that if this is to be used as a conversation staff or not a conversation, and, it needs to be contextualized with competitors that we are doing better, or at least looking at the, how much you'll benefit from, okay. We might be at 60, 70% or however it's measured. if we were 80, 90, how much better it would be. because otherwise you might have people go, oh, I'm better than average the whole thing then
Paul:yes Yes is. There is that worry as well.
Nick:that's One thing I wanted to say is like are all sorts of KPIs you can set against the performance and the improvements that the design system are making thing that worries me is that if you make your design system a product product owners get involved And then. the the the danger then is that the tail starts to wa the dog and the efficiency of producing the components in the design system overtakes like building and properly and building accessibility and and stuff into a that's That's the thing that worries me the master think
Mark:yeah. I can actually
Paul:Yeah
Mark:completely. I've noticed that, as our team's grown, where there's no 20 of us UX designers and researchers in our team and that, so that doesn't include the UI dev as well. And there's even more of them. The process that we've had to implement, just because we've needed structure that happened over the lockdown, went across geography, across department, et cetera, et cetera has created a bottleneck. It becomes a different beast to manage. and I think in one hand there's a symptom of growth, but I think, I think you're absolutely right. And that if you said did that too early on in the process, you'd get in your own way. It should be because you were focusing on not enough on perhaps getting something tangible out there initially to, to use and to prove and validate what it is that you're trying to achieve. you know, trying to do so much.
Paul:But yeah, there is another as well caveat with this as well. Cause it depends on, you know, you've got to take in some biases of the user and their adeptness. So for example, if, you gave her a SUS survey to somebody who uses Photoshop day in, day out, they would rate that very differently than if you presented that to somebody who just opened it for the first time. so there's those levels. And I think it's that he, you do have to be careful about kind of light. well does score is positioned. I think that that's very similar to the, like an NPS though.
Mark:yeah. Yeah
Paul:kind of like, you know, if you gave an NPS survey to somebody who just had shocking user experience say, the, your mobile phone operator, Nick,
Nick:You saw my LinkedIn up there
Paul:I saw your LinkedIn runs.
Nick:it were even a ramp I don't think was it wasn't it wasn't long enough to be a ramp It was just it was just professional opinion as a UX designer
Paul:I just, you know, and if you gave her the NPS to somebody just out of bags, guns, then you know, that, that isn't, and this all comes back to the diet UX, which we'll talk about that future episode. And it's like, it's some of the people and kind of what they do that will give flight the highest scores, bigger numbers, bolded numbers, there'll be, make them more prominent. And like just some of the things that's crazy, but I think, yeah, it's a good scale, but it's gotta be taken with a pinch of salt and it's more of an internal one to show how a product the design system is improve in your product suites or that, that particular
Mark:I think, I think there's a really interesting opportunity with this though, because you, you, what you identified though, was, you know, absolutely rightly two different Photoshop users, is those who use it every day, probably professionally. So a power user for sake of argument, and then someone who's just, just being onboarded motivate.
Paul:Yeah,
Mark:Those are two incredibly valid. Use cases, user sets, protal personas, or whatever you want to call them to explore. and I think if you are using an SQS survey or something like that as a one-off blanket tool to measure it, that's fine, but you do need, I think there's a huge opportunity to go further in it, it to specific types of individuals, know, especially if that aligns with say, what your business is trying to achieve, you know, what your business's mission and vision is for that financial year or whatever. if you can go to, you know, Johnny Green Bollocks and say, I've got, I've got, aligned to your mission statement about improving our onboarding to get more users, customers, as they're, they'll say the, this is your SUS showing how usable we are to those specific, users. Give me lots of money, please. think that's, that's more likely to be effective.
Nick:That that's a really good point though So is S U S S
Paul:yeah System usable. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick:that on this episode is that something that benefits the team and the design system directly Or it a carrot on a stick for like the product department and the product owners Like if if the product owners weren't involved or didn't they'd have to be involved for it to be a product and for it to work properly but let's say didn't get any kind of into the decision as to whether or not it was a product Would you elect to have this like system grid thing
Paul:Aye. Aye. Yes, because for me then that shows the two, two reasons. It gives me kind of like then, this is, this is what I need to focus on next because this has got really bad sauce or if
Nick:List
Paul:a tree lists. Yeah. And it'll give me kind of like, oh, this, this is my, you know, this definitely needs fixing, but also as well over time. Cause I'm doing this regularly. It'll give me a flavor of kind of has this improved or, or what you know, could be, we we've added something in, or we've just changed the word on something and it it's dropped off a cliff, but I'm then doing over that time, it looks. metrics to, to put weight behind kind of improving stuff and kind of focus the effort on, let's do that. Let's do that because I think as much too much UX is detriment is would nice people and we want to solve the world's problems. Other light that isn't, that isn't always the case. was interesting. I was having a conversation, today with a time when we were talking about a product and we were saying like, really, we don't need to do any UX on it. The UX stinks. It's not very good. It doesn't look great, but it's doing its job. like we're not running complaints. We're not having any bad reviews about it. Doesn't really bother me. It looks like a piece of garbage because it's doing its job and like to change, it would just urk people more than it would to solve a problem. And like, you know, are we boiling? What's that phrase boiling the ocean to,
Nick:and effect in it
Paul:yes.
Nick:if if you don't touch it no one will notice Whereas if you tweak were just to tweak the UI
Paul:Yeah. Yeah.
Nick:people on to like complain about it and then a load of other stuff those complaints that everyone will just kind of fine with up until that point
Mark:yeah, I think this form can be quite tricky because, you know, you're not necessary if you go taking this approach, which when you've got a long list of shit to prioritize, I think enough. there is to be things where you can't prioritize that rhino. So let's definitely not upset the cart, not likely to innovate in an environment like that. you will get to a point with your UX where it is kind of fine, but you know, you're not going to, it's very difficult to innovate without disrupting certain things without, you know, without obsessing a few people. No, Again, I think there are contexts where this can, can, can be different. So, it's one of the things that we're really looking at where I work now, which is we have our power users who are generally fine with everything. Whenever we say, what do you think of this? If my favorite RPA tool. It's old and clunky, but it's my favorite RPA. it's difficult.
Paul:Did they say it's my favorite or only.
Mark:Well, that might be why if it's, if it's the favorite, because it's the only one that provides the offering there needs that we've called market in a
Nick:Yeah, that's a big win
Mark:Yeah. exactly
Paul:That's like that's like saying I've only got one child, but it's my favorite child's
Nick:out of my remaining legs This is my favorite one
Mark:So
Nick:So.
Mark:No, no, no, no. You make a very good point, but I think, the other side of that is it's still, they're quite settled with it. They've been using it for a long time, so it's actually more like what next set, which is, you know, it's, it's kind of fine. just kind of, I've done what I need to do with it. I've got paid for it. So jobs are good and can continue to do my job as I expect it to be done right now. However, if we go and speak to the people who are just learning to use Blue Prism, that can even be inside the organization, because we all do the foundation training as part of our onboarding, then it's a whole different tool sets a whole different kettle of fish in terms of, the problems
Nick:I was just gonna scream kettle of into a microphone then I'll save it for the tumble If I
Mark:Yeah. Okay. and I think, the, the, again is where you get these opportunities to, to be disruptive in a more controlled way, shall we say, because you're able to target it to specific use cases and those use cases can be different to how say your power users would interact with it. how that into your design system as a product. However, I don't know. I went on a wild tangent there, so
Paul:No. I just get, cause no, it was good. It's a good point here. Cause I think this, this is where, because this is where if, if your design system is a product, then by default, if it's a good product, it automatically fixes those problems along the way. So. if you can make loads of loads of improvement, I'll give, let's say you make this fancy wizard pattern. That is absolutely amazing. it's a lovely onboarding tool and like, why wouldn't you implement that on absolutely everything. Even those things that performed really well had a good score. If you go down that route, you just implement it because you've got it built, you know, it's kind of free.
Mark:lift and shift.
Paul:the air lift and shift, and it's really easy to do. is it, it's interesting. Cause I love when people say, is it a product these come from, product owners, a project, product managers, and question whether a design system is a product and I wonder. If, for example, if they were doing like an agile product and they didn't use Trello or they didn't use, Jira or, any other agile project management tool, which is a product, would they be able to affectively do product management? And product they want to share without that product?
Mark:exactly. Yeah. And I think that's a, that's an incredibly good point. The Paul, yeah. I want to snap that off immediately because yeah, it's what we're designing internally with a design system is a product that facilitates UX. Now even go a step further with advocacy as UX, design system as a product, it is ultimately the users use it. It is ultimately your users, your customers who benefit from it. But yeah, I think you've got a really good point. There is a it's owners and managers, depend on particular tool sets to do their job, but seem to be okay with that because the outsourced, because as UX designers, we have to build a toolkit, a toolkit, a toolkit, for everyone to use, that becomes a challenge that becomes something that needs to be or approved or, or excused.
Paul:Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah.
Nick:thing about the design system that I always used to kind Push back about it being a product is when we release like a V one of it or whatever you could potentially that to the public and people could use it. Like you know like material or like Shara or something like that And I don't I mean material I don't know how material works but there's absolutely no way a company like Google is releasing that to the public without somehow making a profit on it .Whether that's through like the data of the people that use it or you know I I don't I don't know how that works but that is potentially one day a product or something You can make a name off or you know if you do it particularly well something you can go around and talk to people about and become like a an industry leader on and if it wasn't a product and you couldn't get that value out of it you wouldn't be able to do that.
Paul:Yeah. But essentially they were where design systems came from were kind of like from, so for example, apple have their human interface guidelines. They were a rigid set of rules that you must adhere to, to put your products into the app store. And the reason they did that is because they wanted to maintain control over the quality of what was going into the store. So they didn't want and loads of shitty links, cars, style apps, going into the app store that were really confusing and what essentially they didn't want the bottom line of it. What they didn't want is for loads of people to go into an apple store and say, I've got a problem with an app that. will know don't belong. and they didn't want to think loads of shifts for, if you didn't follow these guidelines that they'd have to resolve and fix. And essentially that's what they did and for, and it was a profit making, tool. So it's a product, it was a way of reducing, support our products. and then,
Nick:sort of compliance
Paul:yeah, yeah, yeah. and then it was, it was also a good kind of like, you know, a quality control thing to sell products. and then Google, when they released Android, they, released material design, and that was essentially a way for developers to quickly make apps that they could say. Onto the Google play store for then Google to cream off 30% or 15% now, or whatever, wherever the you, so it was a way for Google to make profits. So you told me, right. Is, you know, they put a lot of effort into it to, to, to make profit. And it is, that's what, that's, what it decides to sell them. Does that, I think there's. Not the grasp, but it actually makes money. It does. It makes your company money, whatever you want to do with it, whether it's an eternal process, because it will either save money or be, or get more users onto the system, you'll have more happy users. You'll, you know, it'll do your marketing for you because your word of mouth people, you know, unlike people are quite happy throwing shitloads of money into marketing and say, let's run a campaign. We don't know for work, but it's proven that time and time again, if somebody loves the product, they'll tell the friend about it. and they'll tell their friend about it. like that's a no brainer. I like that. That's the gold standard for marketing. It gets lost along the way in UX. And I think it just gets kind of like what, why we're doing, why we're making this, why are we putting this effort into it?
Nick:Were were you talking about some kind of algorithm Awesome At mark last week about the
Paul:Yes.
Nick:out how much money the design system is serving you through efficiency
Mark:something I'm currently working on, based on a, a principal. Let me just find the principal on seconds
Nick:Because that got monetization all over it Just
Mark:yeah.
Paul:the word formula.
Nick:Yeah, Yeah.
Mark:and it's,
Nick:Algorithm
Mark:on fits and Fitz law is,
Nick:that the one that if it exists as porn of it
Mark:unfortunately not but interestingly rule 34 does mean, does steps that fits law will have. Of
Nick:yeah
Mark:will be of fence law. Yeah. so fit law is, basically the idea that the time to acquire a target a function of the distance to, and size of the target. So essentially the time it takes your users something they're interacting with
Nick:not Yeah
Mark:component. It's something that needs to be considered. Part of the component itself. it does of course depend, on, on where things are. but then it's also crossed with the another law, which is which one it's the doc Doherty, Doherty Doherty, the DAPA
Nick:Docker
Mark:the O H E R T Y doctor did, for our short, which is that productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at pairs of less than 400 milliseconds per interaction. And that ensures that the computer isn't waiting for the user and the user isn't waiting for the computer. is where you can do a lot of, it could do a lot of research into the responsiveness of your system potentially save for pneumonia. the algorithm I was talking about.
Nick:That's a that's a scientific term
Mark:Yeah, fucked on and money you will
Nick:the
Mark:surprised how many people are willing to listen to that scientific term.
Nick:Oh yeah
Mark:but the idea was from last week, I've not been able to work on this, since, and when I do, I dunno, I should probably write an article or something, we are using it our intend to use it to, as one reason to make our components more accessible. And the idea is, is that if it's using, if use a component in a particular way, for example, so you've got a combo box it takes your user. let's say for the sake of accessibility, this could be applied to any user, but for the sake of accessibility, say, it's your users who are, who have a visual impairment, be it permanent, temporary, or situation. And it takes them, so many seconds longer than it should use that particular component. say that within your software, the average day that they're using your software or average user journey, they're on, about barking on the end, came to that interaction, say 10 times far, so far, they're five seconds longer than it should. 10 times a day. The rain came through in that 50 seconds. for each user doing that. If you've then got 2000 users in that bracket, you can times that 50 seconds by 2000 understand that you've got 100,000 seconds being lost a day, which can be, turned into a monetary value based on how many that person implied to do that or
Nick:But in industry that you are in and the company you are in you can use that. as a USP to sell your product to the person who is saving that time which which is is an incredible like tool
Mark:exactly it because, because it's, and this will work for almost any complex system, because as you all our dear listeners systems depend on specialized trained users, which means that of the time they're being paid to use your software, or at least they're using it themselves as part of job and, making their income, which means that there's someone paying them and you can go to that person. So it's going to save them this amount of time. going to save them this amount of money. Now believe it or not money, won't be the metric that you want to use if you're thinking of a more generic user. and this is again where
Nick:So
Mark:be more accessible. Someone who isn't specialized, isn't being fair to you, then saving them time is the next person. and if you're able to serve them so many minutes out of a process, so many hours out of an interaction,
Nick:Sorry I thought you were gonna say so many time then and I
Mark:you
Nick:laughing
Mark:can
Nick:you're gonna save them so many time
Mark:many times that,
Paul:me talk
Nick:Sorry
Mark:no, no,
Nick:no, no no
Mark:that, that becomes something very, tangible to, to the people who wouldn't understand, you know, why such a thing as good, a good thing to do
Paul:It's interesting, isn't it? Because I think again, kind of, if you, if you applied that to something else, so say for example, you were working on a really old laptop and it was really slow and it took ages to boot up. You'd go to it. And my 9.9 times out of 10, you'd get a new laptop. but, but to do that, to reduce, next woman up for your ex tombola is making sure the, arms are greased
Nick:Loop in the
Paul:yeah. And if, if one employee had like a slow cyst, and it was kinda like something that could fix it was, you know, an old laptop. It was the, hard driver veiled, just go off and fix it and there'd be no quibble whatsoever. you equip all her news, you know, but at the same time, if he said like, oh, I'm going to fix this, that'll make it five seconds for every single one of our users and turns that by, you know, kind of like, sometimes it goes like the whole year, but it's a bit hard to
Mark:Yeah, but if you've got 2 million users, then you start getting these ridiculous figures that sound so big, that they're abstract, that's just the reality of, know, there's other ways you can think about this, there are, you can type it into Google and you will be told how much time average you spend of your life on the toilet. And it's pretty depressing. You spend, we spend a third of our life asleep, a third of our life, and this is a lead. And if that's, if you're sleeping properly,
Nick:That's what people who get up in the morning
Mark:yeah. you know, and so these things have come from. The compound effect, compound consequences.
Nick:But but when you're talking about numbers that. so big that the almost abstract if you then put a pound sign in front of that and show it to a like a board member of a company can pretty much sell 'em Any idea
Mark:Yeah. absolutely Absolutely. Because the way that it works is that there's appreciation that this is an abstract figure, but it's so high that you aim for the and land among the stars as it were. you know, you're still gonna be better than where you were. so yeah, I think to bring this back to, your design system as a product, I think you do need to have, it is, if you want to treat your design system as a product, which we're all advocating for you, I think have to have a bit of a strategy around how that side of things is, is managed, it is communicated. you know, one of the things that I'm working on now, as part of my roadmap, you know, I've got, I think six or seven different strategies I'm having to figure out. one of them a leadership communication strategy. How the fuck do I communicate the good things we're doing to the people who otherwise wouldn't know? because everyone else has got one, even though they don't call it that even though it's probably automated through their processes, it's not been, it's not been treated like that in UX so So we need to look at that
Paul:And then going back to. If it was another product, then, you know, when you release new version of that product, then certain things have to happen. So like, you might have to kind of update your support documentation. You might have to have a diff you know, someone, employed in support that, you know, totally new to the business because that's a new feature and nobody could do before. You'd have to kind of in, in telesales, you'd have to do all, you know, you'd have to do a promo or you'd have to tell customers about it, all those kinds of things that come seem to come kind of like by default the, not the, not because, but there's, there's a strict process for kind of when you release a, a product product, designed to, but essentially a design system should have that same rigor as it were product. So, you know, he needed.
Nick:bordering on the point that. I really wanted to to talk about on
Mark:Yes, please.
Nick:so the reason that I think uh well this is this is it So again like getting really pedantic about the question So reason I want
Mark:about the question. No.
Nick:the the reason I want a product to be treated sorry A design system be treated a product is because in order to get the maximum effect out of it you constantly as a team got things on the boil and creating iterating components Then you need to get them into the code and get 'em into the product and not just the work stream and the arm that you're currently work working on but everything that looks like it behaves like it everywhere And if you treated the design system as a product and you had regular release window that's like sprint based or um you know quarterly in the year or whatever it is assured that it works its way product regularly consistently And you've got a date by which you can you can say right this is done for now Let's get it in everywhere once And and there's there's light level good UX isn't there because you could design the best component in the world But if that component is only used in one out of four areas on the website or or the reverse even if it's used in three out of four places one place that's inconsistent compounds like the bad because you you are used to one pattern So not only have you got a different pattern but the pattern that is different is worse as well So it's like a the two-fold problem
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:so I I think that that's why I want it to be considered as a a a product the the issue I'm having or the issue that I foresee is like like I said earlier like the tails starting to wag the dog with it and you know having to having to have things ready for a certain day or having like product owners breathing down neck about your product
Mark:yeah.
Nick:like how do you how combat that
Mark:I think, oh, thank you. I think it's, it's a two way street in that regard, because I think there's a certain degree of if you are a, if you have the right lead time as a UX, on, on another, on your, not on your prototype, the design system, but on the, on the organization's products that you're working for, because ultimately are you work both on your centralized design system, as well as the specific UX of, of, of a product then what you need to be working for, or what hopefully gets identified for you is that lead time. This is what we're trying to get from okay. Miles away from it yet. But we're trying is getting the lead time so that as UX designers and UX researchers, we can identify potential components there's any. development early, ideally at least a quarter ahead of any kind of development and that's generating lead time, best art, so that you do have time to well, we anticipate you need an accordion component for, for this new form pattern that's coming through. we have got to do, we've got, let's see, you've got a quality to do it, and there's a bit of research time, but it's design time, implementation, validation time, et cetera, et cetera. But by the time it comes to put in that in the UX design of that product, your UX designer has already got that in the component library and then the design kit D drag from. and I do think you need to emphasize that kind of separation. I think there's a point and this becomes a bit diplomatic because I, I think, and I think you're like this, Nick, I reserve the right if a product owner says, well, we need that component yesterday. You'd have to just kind of tell them fuck off followed. Rome processes.
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:well Yeah, I mean that's the thing and it that's that that's the one thing app that that always seems to happen everywhere you go is that the the process of product creation or whatever is the most important thing in world until it's not
Mark:Yeah.
Nick:And then it's you know it's run one rule for them one rule for you kind of thing And it that as soon as it benefits them to throw the process out of the window then that's absolutely fine But if you do it then it's you know
Mark:That's it. I think if you're, if you, dear listener are lucky enough to be a UX designer where your companies, a startup or it's a small team, or even. You're like the very start of a UX team in a larger organization. And maybe you're ahead of, or you're able to, you're having basically lots of workshops and lots of meetings. Now's your opportunity to say UX happens before an UX research happens product managers or product owners, whoever it is in your organization features and do that say that until basically you, they threatened to fire you either for saying it so much and they go in yeah, we've got the picture. Or they go in whenever going to do that, mark, and then you can just walk off anywhere cause you don't want to work, but
Nick:yeah
Mark:opportunity if you're in that situation, and scream and scream that,
Nick:I I just picked up on the fact that you went you like this Nick and then suggested that I tell someone at work to fuck off
Mark:Darling, darling, Nick darling. I wrong?
Nick:well well no but I don't want all the people at home to know that that's uh well yeah one of my what are my personality traits or was let's say that it was at least I could probably
Mark:Yeah
Nick:I could probably cop to that Yeah, I've grown person since then
Mark:course Of course Yeah.
Paul:yeah, but I do do think
Nick:Paul's
Paul:no, but I think it's that it's that I wouldn't. Yeah. Cause, cause you should be the product owner of that design system there. So if, if you've got somebody you can get, so, I mean, so there's a difference between product manager and product owner, see your, the owner. So if somebody is saying this at the time, I want this, this at the time, but it's like, so
Nick:stakeholder
Paul:the stakeholder. Yeah. And then because then you, you own that design system as a prototype. know, you've got full control over, over what goes in, what goes out when it should be done and things like that.
Nick:I'm gonna write down
Paul:but, but as well as, as a product, you know, if you then turn your design system into a product, it does come with some rigors and things like that. And you think of, and sometimes, you know, a release is, you know, you kind of go like, oh, Figma, I've done a new release. What's in it today will be fixed. Some bugs would be, you know, it's not very exciting, but it's a release. It's a release schedule one and things happen like that. I like in there. I think sometimes people, when they say I want to release, they sometimes have this misconception of It
Nick:about rule 34 right there
Paul:Yeah. Sometimes they have a misconception, you can deliver shit loads of stuff for them when actually
Mark:be a 0.0, zero one release. It could
Paul:yeah, yeah, yeah,
Nick:thing's really good because Yeah, the sometimes they'll do a release and you won't even realize that they've it cuz it updates automatically anyway And then sometimes they'll do a release they do YouTube videos all week about it
Paul:yeah. Yeah.
Nick:it's the same company It's the same release cycle sometimes it's just hygiene and bug fixes and stuff and sometimes it's like
Paul:Yeah. Yeah.
Nick:features or entirely new products
Mark:think, that fits really nicely into like an internal. Kind of thing that you have to do here, because if you want product to be treated like a design system, be treated like a product you want to be the owner of that product as your, as a UX team, which I think is a very fair thing, because quite frankly, unless you've got a very mature organization and hire specific product owners and product managers for this, are you know, the most about what your design system needs and how, and certainly the collective energies of your UX team. you have to be willing to communicate with the owners of other products within that system. And this is where they're, they're more, you, you might become a bit of a shit shield if they're breathing down your neck, kind of, kind of of the job, unfortunately. and you know, you'll have to. As we've been saying certain rigors in place yourself to, to, to mitigate those scenarios. yeah, you have to be willing and willing to communicate
Nick:The Freudian slip Wasn't it
Mark:yeah. Friday and all the way maybe, but, yeah, you have to be willing stick your Dick in it. No, you have you have to communicate with, other people who are doing similar ownership tasks for their products, that's how you're gonna manage the influx of requests. The influx of features that are required because, well, the idea is you're building a product or they are feature requests, requirements. It's just what might be the. Customer on one side, you know, your, your user also be a pro your other product people on, on another.
Nick:So the reason I kind of recoiled a little bit when you said you would be your own product owner is there's like a certain amount of extra work involved in or like inferred inferred implied by that And I don't want to do it so so but but not only that but there were people in the business who were better suited to do that work Like there were you know there are product owners there already so
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:the what's the division of like responsibility in
Mark:I
Nick:labor fund the product
Mark:about
Paul:Oh
Nick:Yeah
Mark:straight off the bat. think this is so intrinsically related to UX maturity, because I think if you're starting off with a, you know, a company that has no idea what. Everything's going to be a bit of an uphill battle, almost definitely not going to get a dedicated product on the, on your, on your component library, on your design system. So you will have, you'll have to, as a design team, pick up that work push at key points because you're also the ones pushing for the UX maturity for those jobs to become dedicated roles in themselves. and we're at a stage now with, say we're around, going off an NNGs UX maturity, emergent destruction. That's where we're moving And that's certainly, this is halfway through the whole scale. We still got a long way to go, but that means that we're now starting to get dedicated people. We've got a dedicated accessibility team. Now we've got dedicated product owner. We don't have a dedicated product for that. but we're, you know, we're pushing for that kind of, that kind of thing in that kind of space. So yeah, I think at first it's gonna be, you've got a lot of jobs that you're probably not the best person to do, but it's better than not having them done at all. then people start to see the value of this and become more UX aware, they'll start to, there'll be someone, fact, ideally with someone in your organization who signed steps into that space, says, I really want to become a UX product or, and I've, we've got the
Nick:Yeah
Mark:clearly a heap of work to do here. Let me do it. so that yeah, th yeah, and design ops is there's, we've got we've, I've been currently working with our ops manager and it's like, there's so much in design ops that maybe one day we'll have someone to do all that in now. It's fucking McKinsey. So.
Paul:yeah,
Nick:ops as well as a call
Paul:and then I think this, this is a lot of, kind of like the, the bowels I think Buicks have, and again, it goes back to kind of like full circles. Start the episode, kind of like, you know, graphic design over UX. There's so much more that a UX person has to do than just make stuff look pretty. And I think it's that I was thinking you were talking kind of like reminded me of the phrase that if a, if a tree falls in the world, And no one's around to hear it fall. Did it actually ever fall? That's the same as if you've got your design system as a product and you don't tell anybody about it then?
Nick:My you well have
Paul:Well, no, I'm saying you might as well not have it, but people are not going to realize you chopping down loads of trees
Mark:Oh, I like that. No way that circle or was it
Paul:Yeah,
Nick:until we start to asphyxiate
Mark:Yeah, planet dies and
Paul:yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Mark:have fallen on them because we didn't acknowledge this
Paul:yeah.
Nick:that's over an hour Do we wanna
Paul:yeah. Let's no, let let's let's
Mark:yeah. Yeah. That's all, I
Nick:the pipes
Mark:I mean, there's great deal. More, we can, we can go into this, but I think there is, if you want to treat your design system as a product, you do have to, I I think hook into the existing product systems before you start to build a role. and that's kind of what I'll, that's probably my bit of advice, TM, on treating that
Paul:And I'd say what the product team are doing. Watch, listen closely and apply those same regulars
Mark:yeah.
Paul:because that's what they're doing for a reason. So
Mark:clause Oh, if you're speaking their language,
Nick:Yeah
Mark:it is, you have to put the effort in to, to do that and to translate that if you're speaking their language, oh my God. They onboard so much easier. because they don't have to learn anything. And, and so the bar barrier to entry is so much lower for
Paul:guess again, that's the UX wheelhouse will make lives
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. That's it,
Nick:Well not
Mark:it
Nick:that but we we learn how to speak to multiple different types of people in their own manner as well Don't we which
Mark:a products on a podcast going on right now they're having this very conversation about how their tops are X person and this person, this person,
Paul:Probably. yeah,
Nick:Tomlinson Nick Wilshaw and Paul Suler where Paul SU
Paul:yeah,
Nick:prolific murderer were
Mark:was Peter Sutcliffe.
Nick:Okay
Mark:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul:So
Mark:Yeah, taught me everything. I know
Paul:that smokes.
Mark:it's a no no, no people
Nick:don't talk about
Mark:a pay. People asked me if there's any relation. And I said, yeah, he's my mom me everything. I know.
Paul:oh, I love it. I love it. Right.
Nick:I I I guess we we take it that the end of all that the the answer is yes
Mark:certainly fucking for me.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah
Mark:not to be an easy
Paul:It's. Yeah, not.
Nick:yeah
Mark:If you're, in a big company,
Paul:Yeah. And yeah. And what I'd say is start small, small. Don't do not take on the world, you know, kind of like treat it like a star, so
Nick:No take on the world
Mark:Yeah. Do it You are Atlas. You can do this, know
Paul:start, with your basic offering and then build it out.
Mark:You
Nick:Yeah
Mark:and you could
Nick:Okay
Mark:think maybe exercising your internal processes happen and kind of defining them can happen with probably your smallest atoms. go back into last
Nick:Yeah
Mark:look at the foundations of your design system how you can manage that, like a product or features of a product and, and see how that goes, because it's stuff that probably want, know, they're so foundational that your product owners want kind of, it'll be like those features that, you know, that are just bug fixes, or maybe go for the book fixes first, you know, maybe do that first, the smallest information and
Paul:See what your score
Mark:Yeah, yeah. See what your score is. Yeah. Ours is pretty high, pretty fucking
Paul:Nice. Cool.
Nick:sauce
Paul:so
Nick:Nice I've been I've been waiting to make that joke The entire episode
Paul:but so it's not time to turn the volume down. Take your
Mark:Yeah.
Nick:Apologize to N sleeping in
Mark:Yeah But our bar, a gunman bar a door and maybe buy a shotgun just in case, you know just to defend yourself, from tombola
Paul:oh, no, this one. What am I doing?
Nick:Oh God No
Mark:oh,
Paul:Oh, here we go seamless.
mediaboard_video:we pick a random object and this terrible, all grit.
Paul:love it. Love it. I'm glad you got that spring out earlier.
Mark:right. The machine or a neck.
Nick:So is that I just realized that I'm I'm channeling the Ainsley Harriott in that intro Ah
Mark:Yes. Yeah Yeah
Nick:went to the tip the other day And As I was driving off I saw a car next to me and the guy had an Ainsley Harriott like cardboard cut out just laid in the back like this And and as I drove passed I went hi Jill and the guy like spun round and looked at me So it must it must it must have been very it must have been a very big Ainsley Harriott fan
Paul:Oh,
Nick:although so big that he
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:the cardboard out
Paul:That's that's what,
Nick:old
Paul:That's the same skip the BBC to take the old props.
Mark:Yeah yeah It's also incidentally.
Nick:all TV presenters
Mark:Yeah It's what I a rashy skin shortly
Nick:Yeah
Mark:arrest. When a stroke, a chef shouted at her in her own living room
Nick:Came in with Oh if if if you don't know what we're talking about I highly advise that you go on the internet on YouTube and search for"Ainsley Harriott Hi Jill" And all will be revealed
Mark:I did think you were just going to end the sentence there. hardly add value. You go on the internet because you
Nick:Yeah
Mark:time that it will
Nick:of
Mark:you It will come see you
Nick:will see It Yeah Eventually
Paul:we'd need
Mark:retain
Nick:what was the Thing I said I was gonna sing
Mark:of fish.
Paul:Katla fish.
Mark:fish. Rich sounds like the name of mark Steelers sushi restaurant.
Paul:Free chop ships with every, every candle
Mark:That's how So,
Nick:just
Mark:methyl capital
Paul:with live fishing.
Mark:yep. the freshest, the freshest
Nick:freshest off
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:off right Okay Yeah. UX Tobo pull it with the swish It's going to be a brand new of fish It's your Exton gave it a pole wash your hands because they might smell
Paul:Well, well dumb.
Mark:I feel like
Nick:Did someone say on call
Paul:No.
Mark:in, certainly, as you said that the entire applause stopped dead. How you will, the applause sign was dropped as, as that person left.
Nick:like a kettle of fish dropped like a kettle of fish
Paul:yup. Cool. So what's what's in today's machine.
Mark:Uh
Nick:Uh the topic is cooking, sausages,
Paul:can you
Nick:As in the kind of sausages, you get to cook like cooking apples
Mark:Mm. Yes.
Nick:the actual act
Paul:oh,
Mark:is, there a variety of sausage that isn't a cooking sausage?
Nick:chorizo
Mark:typically you cook that
Nick:Well you
Mark:but
Nick:you you can buy specifically cooking chorizo can't you
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:I would at that then implies the existence of non
Mark:I suppose, because been cured, cured sausage ah, there we go. Hosted by my own petard. I've answered my own question. A petard are, by the way, I thought would never hoist So. Yes, I do. Yes. It is a experience term. I understand. Or at least that's what the saying comes from. It's a type of firecracker that, was, French in origin the term.
Nick:Are you making this
Mark:no, no.
Paul:yeah.
Mark:a tree that's heisting your own petard? It was used in a Shakespearian comedy, one of them, because
Nick:ah
Mark:it was as if you were to like to firecracker on your ass to lift yourself over a
Nick:Ah like on unreal tournament where you shoot the at ground and it
Mark:Yeah. exactly. That's the modern equivalent of petard heist.
Nick:jumped by my own rocket I thought hoisted by my own patard was also a theatrical term but I thought it meant like the thing that used to lower people down from the ceiling
Mark:the Deus ex machina
Nick:that was where term came from that's what the machine was called Although it could have been
Mark:because I remember something like that because
Nick:Deus ex machina is when you write yourself into a hole and the only way that you can get yourself out of it is for God to descend himself and like dig you out and save the day But
Mark:Yeah,
Paul:sounds like our episode is
Mark:yeah. But, yeah, my understanding was because machina is Latin for machine
Nick:Yeah
Mark:Latin God. but it was what the, in Greco, Roman theater, the, narrator would often be the God of the piece that was either to her. And he would be played at being played by an actor who was suspended a machine, Deus ex machina,
Nick:yeah
Mark:I don't know if that's an actual translation, but,
Nick:think it
Mark:yeah
Nick:yeah the it's the machine that they, use lower the char the person playing the God down Weren't it
Mark:and that person would from that, that spot narrate the thing and thus, provide all the exposition that would get you out of the hole, that otherwise it may exist. So that's my understanding. Yes
Paul:bit.
Nick:Explanation of what I said
Mark:But I do think we should play as, go on Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament or anywhere you can do rocket jumps and go around doing that shooting petard hoist.
Nick:And and then people being like you can't say that anymore
Mark:Yeah.
Nick:ah just just doing it No be shooting and then do a rocket but every single time go aha hoisted by my own petard
Mark:Exactly. Exactly perfection. It would never get old. It would never get old.
Nick:to which
Paul:Oh,
Nick:what
Mark:What? Yeah
Paul:yeah.
Nick:that
Mark:Yeah.
Nick:one else gets
Mark:Well, as this
Nick:which is I was gonna say which explains the last 30 episodes of this podcast Yeah. Right So sausage Sorry how the hell did we get talking
Paul:Oh, gee. I don't know,
Nick:sausages We we we go on some tangents but that was fucking incredible
Paul:that was But at least people have learned something on this episode now
Nick:yeah Oh yeah
Mark:yeah yeah exactly
Paul:Nate. Well wanted to ask. So can you describe your current process of cooking sausage?
Nick:I mean this isn't
Mark:yeah,
Nick:sausage, ones
Mark:ones, so, oh, right. I thought
Nick:one
Mark:one
Nick:lonely a sausage that you'll ever do
Mark:you'll have a cook
Nick:can be as
Paul:yeah,
Nick:one a and sausage One
Mark:oh, I'm in with it
Nick:oh that's nice
Paul:they, I think depending on the sausage depends on the deal method of cooking.
Nick:on your method of sausage
Paul:Yeah
Nick:well yeah no I mean it's not it's not like completely by accident that this has become a a suggestion because
Paul:What did you have for, what did you have for dinner, Nick?
Nick:I like so
Mark:to our next segment, you have for dinner?
Nick:well like I think what has been
Mark:how the stone is slow. Tilly's violently ill and try and guess what he had for dinner, but from the mushy bits.
Paul:Ah,
Nick:con I how much there
Mark:sausage today.
Nick:one lonely right Sorry
Mark:That concludes our segment of what did you have for dinner, Nick?
Nick:A bit of music for that
Mark:And then just the sound of Nick been sick. That was
Paul:ah, a little come, right? Let's get this. get the sausage back on track.
Nick:let's get this sausage on the road Right So uh yeah So the the reason That I kind of wanted That I put it down is that sausages for the most part around aren't they and whenever you see like a clipper or a perhaps a a Hollywood movie where the cooking sausages they're a frying pan
Mark:typically yes.
Nick:And I don't understand why people think that Oh Jesus that people Think that cooking cylindrical meat it the the most efficient way of doing that isn't in a flat bottomed pan because you have to constantly I mean it's like you might as for time for the for the investment of time versus the payout you might as well do a nice result because you've got to stand there the entire time Constantly turning them through 360 degrees So you don't get just two burnt side Cause what'll happen is you leave them you go shit the sausages you'll turn 'em over And one side will be completely but it's not even a side It's not even a complete fourth of the sausage It's like just the know the sliver that's touching the bottom of the pan And then your immediate reaction is to turn them 180 degrees that the burn part is facing up And then probably invariably the other side as well Cuz you forgot So
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:and if you cook 'em in the oven they just go they just look like little cat turds Don't they Cuz they cook all the way around the skin goes like rock ad
Mark:depends on how you're cooking them.
Paul:gosh
Mark:I think well, I think
Nick:I think you, are not well
Mark:unwell. I I, I, mean, I think sausages are one of the most versatile things you can get because,
Nick:things in all of existence
Mark:of existence. It's just a versatile thing. now it's one of the, I think, as far as
Paul:and
Nick:I just gonna say I hope to God one day we are not in like plane crash in which we all survive and we're walking through the forest trying To make like shelter and a fire And everyone's like right anyone got Swiss army knife and Mark's like no but I have brought this sausage
Mark:be honest, there's just, there's just an image of people scrambling around to build shelter whilst I'm nibbling on the sausage.
Nick:Have you seen that meme of the guy who's like sweating in his to pick between two buttons Swiss the Swiss
Mark:That's why I'm late for work work from home. yeah, I think we've got a couple of, of products opportunities here. the first of which is the Swiss army sausage, which I think is just a sausage with other things attached to it. But, but yeah, I was just thinking if you, how cylindrical Nick, is your meat too,
Nick:Well
Mark:because,
Nick:job with friends mark because, I wouldn't normally I wouldn't answer that question on a podcast
Mark:because if it's theory, now I'm talking theory here, I
Nick:theory
Mark:absolutely no expertise in, and I must admit sausage expertise is something I have than no expertise in, but if you've got a flat surface and a cylinder geometrically, it infinitely small, this contact area
Nick:Yeah.
Paul:Yeah,
Mark:infinitely small because of the nature of the
Nick:well Al already thought of the product to solve this problem or solutionize this problem as a product
Paul:yeah,
Nick:so we can dive right into that or we can hypothesize theorize more on the on the sausage problem
Mark:well, I'm keen on making sure we've got all the way through your process
Paul:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick:yeah
Paul:as well, I can only imagine as well, when you, when you, when you find your one sausage, you, you constantly trying to get it on that fine plane of, of like this, and you constantly can try to balance it on there. So it doesn't tip over on the already done side and the not done side. And you're just fiddling around with your sausage about 20
Mark:yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
Paul:all over.
Mark:Which you
Paul:So
Mark:some would say
Nick:I'm delicious
Mark:west it, you know?
Paul:yeah,
Mark:yeah, yeah, No,
Nick:of that
Mark:that was just an audio description of Nick and his self-image.
Paul:yeah.
Nick:with a sausage
Paul:Is, well, what's your, I think I know your solution.
Nick:go on
Mark:I've actually, before I hold that thought, because I've just had a realization, which is
Nick:been talking about sausages for 20 minutes
Mark:no, no, it's, know I'm, I'm very much complicit in that, which is that we have a perfect solution for this, that we apply almost exclusively to non cylindrical things.
Nick:Okay
Mark:not going to tell you what that is, because I feel like you should be able to figure it out.
Nick:Having poop
Mark:no no Mate you can't that. So every question, so one time today, we're about to have this conversation No, the, the
Nick:that's how I lost on mastermind Oh right Yeah,
Mark:the
Nick:Tiny spit rose
Mark:sausage
Nick:but you'd have to have like three or four on the go at once
Mark:you
Nick:It'd be like it's literally like uh spinning plate
Mark:record weight, or you could probably use a system of gears and pulleys. That is that one gear is turning
Nick:an automated
Mark:or even an electric one. in fact, that brings me to my potential solution, which it seems like we've got a few here to go off, so we'll have to evolve, which is the, the automatic cylindrical meet you know is, or, one second. Let me figure out how actually spelled a MTR, the ASAM tra
Paul:go as planned at
Mark:no, no. no no
Nick:The
Paul:the ATM. but that, that what you described, isn't that kind of, have you been to those places with the hot dogs? Whether
Nick:Yeah
Paul:they're the hot dogs, kind of rotate.
Nick:The like heated rollers aren't there
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably a more elegant solution than, than the one I'm proposing.
Paul:I, I, think there's a better solution and I'm more lower cost on, I think, are they for well for us anyway? I think there's two Minecraft, the sausage too, to make good square
Nick:S squish
Paul:cubes. Yeah.
Nick:I'm I I no
Mark:okay.
Nick:that
Mark:I
Nick:reject that
Mark:I'm substituting my own.
Nick:I've been doing that all my life no. I reject that on on the most level because one of the key differentiators as a sausage is that it is a cylinder ship If you start messing with the form like Virgin into like burger territory or or even a very small meatloaf
Mark:or even small meatloaf.
Nick:and that is a sentence I expected to
Mark:think that's a brand new sentence. No one ever said,
Paul:Oh, okay. Okay. I'll I'll take that humbled.
Mark:yeah.
Nick:my
Mark:Okay
Nick:my solution is to a Mobious frying pan So essentially if you think about the reverse of everyone's suggestion if you get like a metal cylinder and you put the sausage in the cylinder then you hold that cylinder over like a fire or
Paul:Yeah.
Nick:or you know
Paul:the giant bonfire.
Nick:and the whole the whole metal cylinder you make it out Something like super conductive like water or No that's probably not the best for over
Mark:cylinder to go over a lot and fire. Yeah.
Nick:Oh I think I'm losing my mind today
Paul:Okay. So
Nick:then you hold that over the fire and the whole cylinder heats equally all the way
Mark:So
Nick:cooks the sausage All the way around through
Mark:part, is that the movement that's taking place of the
Nick:no the part is the fact that it's just if you imagine a frying pan folded into like a Mobious strip it's the same frying pan but like folded in itself
Mark:AAS. So it's it's
Nick:And then you slide the sausage yeah. exactly And
Paul:like a George Foreman grill.
Mark:Okay. So, got we've got three we've got three ideas. Like
Nick:they're all terrible
Mark:got one, which is a product that already exists, which is your automatic meet a cylinder achieve rotator cylindrical, meet tube, get the name. Right. then we've got be honest, I've just thought of the name squash fridges. So, so we might just have, oh man, I ain't got to say it the more,
Paul:Hmm
Mark:they're more versatile, they're easier to stack. They could also double up as either a burger or really been a very small meatloaf, which for some might be a problem.
Paul:I think instantly life you just go with her all over it yes, is. for anybody is on audio only. Nick has disappeared off camera His role is literally roll it around on the floor, laughing,
Mark:this has happened It's far free. We should just fair to black. Oh And then, and then fair to black. And it just says and then his birthday and twenty, twenty two was his death that, and then the Mobius frying pan, which is a continuous
Nick:Oh
Mark:top illogical impossibility, that evenly cooks.
Nick:forget that Oh, God in my eyes I'm was
Mark:I'm like mixed good. Every sick. oh damn me
Paul:amazing look,
Mark:Just, for our non video viewers. I think Mick's actually just been sick. well that was about,
Paul:but that's what happens when you eat to where these corsages,
Mark:you eat too many costly juice. Oh, stack them Oh, I don't know how Mark's dealer can sell, sell it
Paul:ah, th this is, got wedding products
Mark:yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I mean, I feel like it's just like, doing a jig and saying the word over and over again.
Paul:In fact, I think, what I'm gonna, what I'm going to suggest is that I will, or maybe between us we'll design a tee shirts for squash passages. And if you subscribe to our Patrion marks Steelers special,
Mark:will get,
Paul:you will get yourself a squash judges. T-shirts do it now.
Mark:I squash your juice t-shirt you know, maybe, maybe other things we'll go down the line. Maybe it will marked Steeler eating squatted juice with chopsticks.
Nick:I want I wanna see a squa ages advert done like mark the
Mark:Yeah. Yeah.
Paul:Oh yeah, yeah,
Mark:right. Okay.
Paul:Cool. We're doing it
Mark:Well,
Nick:oh my God
Mark:as a video graphs, special
Nick:no
Paul:on a.
Nick:I want to go out on the street and dress my yeah
Mark:yeah.
Nick:you should definitely do one now on the podcast but I'm talking like full full rig
Mark:Yes. Why not? So as Halloween, further Halloween specialist, mark steamer. Okay. That's happening?
Paul:oh,
Mark:happening.
Paul:no. I thought men dressed as a squad.
Mark:Okay, is mark Stiegler and Paul Wilshaw, I'm just saying this officially with your full title. so Mr. Paul will show will be appearing a squash EJ,
Paul:Sounds like most days.
Mark:as a squash a Halloween special. So set you in for that one. right. Okay Let's see. Okay
Paul:Yeah
Mark:Hello? Hello, it's me, your friend. I love her. And I mainly said on kill, man. I remember like the direction we want to take this. So do you find that are in uncontrollable situations whenever you are preparing your alarm sausage? Do you find that knowing this one at a time, because of the 20 minute time it's actually to fiddle with your sausage is with cat turn like results and absolutely nothing to recommend it. Well, because of heat,
Nick:Yeah
Mark:impossibility. That is your meaty to cylinder. And I've got the perfect solution for you and yes, we've taken it. We shared four sides of it given you a squat, go and get your squash, which is now only 49 pound 50. Love you more.
Nick:Oh fucking hell
Paul:Amazing Well I love it. Love
Mark:We are. and I think, I think there should just be a hard copy to, mark Sila smoking a squash message instead of a cigar.
Nick:God I feel I feel like I've I feel I feel like I've been crying
Paul:Oh dear,
Mark:well, I think that brings us up to a tiny
Paul:office tidy.
Mark:bit The final episode ever
Paul:Don't really? not really. Yeah. Cool.
Mark:right then Excellent Excellent
Paul:it.
Nick:Love you
mediaboard_video:That's it for this episode of faster horses. If you liked the show, please like subscribe and leave a review. really does help. You can join us on pets.com/fast the month. The other hospice, new from kids zone. Thanks to James. I'm Mark Sutcliffe Tomlinson,@FasterHorsesUX, and we'll catch you in two weeks fast.