Faster Horses | A podcast about UI design, user experience, UX design, product and technology

Should designers code?

• Faster Horses • Season 4 • Episode 2

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In this episode, we debate whether designers should code. We find out that there are many different opinions about this topic – what should you be doing?

In the past few years, has coding become an essential skill in design? But with so many new technologies popping up every day, is it really necessary?

We also tackle the tricky UX Tombola machine to discuss the UX of a random object, place or service. What will it be – how will Mark Steeler sell this one?

All these questions, and even ones you didn't want to know, ANSWERED!

Plus the off-topic tangents you love.

🎥 Watch: https://youtu.be/GYjaKrOt1VE

#Podcast #Design #Code


Produced by:
Paul Wilshaw
Nick Tomlinson
Mark Sutcliffe
James Medd
Anthony Jones
Chris Sutcliffe

Title music: James Medd
Sound effects: https://www.zapsplat.com

Support the show

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 👆.

SPEAKER_00:

Shall we roll it? Here we go then. Hello and welcome to Faster Horses. I'm one of your hosts, Paul Wilshaw. I've led design and development teams at Barclays and other well-known brands, won lots of awards and a few hackathons.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Nick Tom Linson. I'm a digital illustrator and lead UX designer at a Manchester-based investment company.

SPEAKER_04:

And I'm Mark Sutcliffe, lead UX designer in the digital automation sphere.

SPEAKER_00:

Coming up, we'll be talking about design, user experience and technology, followed by UX Combola, where we pick apart the experience of a random product, object, service, or place. And a special advert from Mark Steeler from Bolton Arcade.

SPEAKER_07:

Hello, thank you. I'm with the show.

SPEAKER_00:

If you want to be part of the show, you can send us questions on Twitter with the hashtag FasterHorsesPodcast. Now, on to the show.

SPEAKER_03:

That was fantastic. That was the new intro, everyone. Why for series four?

SPEAKER_00:

Can you believe it? Mark Steele has become so ingrained into the production. He even features on the ease.

SPEAKER_03:

He is the athlete below the surface of podcasts personalities. I was gonna have another uh viral infection suggestion there.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, technically it's not a viral infection, so you this floor's yours. If you if you want to I don't if you want to talk about your herpes.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, well I don't I don't want to, but I think it's I think it's fair to be open with my partners about that particular Mark Steeler among them, I tell 'cause that's a bit of gossip. If I count if I count my cards right, he may well be. That's the aim, anyway.

SPEAKER_07:

I mean things personal.

SPEAKER_00:

There he is.

SPEAKER_06:

There he is. How's Yeah, he's back. How's things? What with me or with with Mark Steeler? Well, Mark Steeler.

SPEAKER_04:

Kind of a symbiotic relationship forming, I think.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't know if that I've said that in the world.

SPEAKER_04:

I always thought gander was a kind of a verb.

SPEAKER_05:

Um is it the female goose?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, or a herd a herd of geese. It's uh I think it's a female goose, but it's also slang for having a look, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04:

It's also a town in Newfoundland.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh good. Well, let's go and have a look at the female geese. It's actually a male goose. Oh, is that a simpleton?

SPEAKER_00:

Who knew there was such a rich lore around this word? Oh no. This is adding to everybody's highlight, the word of the day is gander. You're gonna say gandalfend for a second, don't say yeah, yeah. Try and fit that in your word all you fuckers.

SPEAKER_04:

Did you know that the the word gander is actually related to the Dutch word gander? Um I could have hazarded the guess, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Is that like is that like the the French word for garage? Which is garage. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I think it's similar. Actually, I think you find it's pronounced garage.

SPEAKER_00:

Depends what part of French you go to. Normandy, not so much. Just slagged off a whole nation.

SPEAKER_03:

We've been recording for at least a minute.

SPEAKER_05:

We need to at least.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, yeah, the thing about the French is Paul, they've got nothing but good things to say about.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh someone's given me a request for uh um there we go. I'll mark I'll mark this as a clip.

SPEAKER_06:

What the fuck was that? That was uh one of one of Paul's spawn. Yeah, namely the demon spawn one.

SPEAKER_00:

It's the angry gamer one. Yeah, you're gonna have to narrow it down, Paul. Yeah, once more time. Um so yeah, so we we've uh been battling COVID in our house for uh for this last few days. Here we go. And squeaky doors. My good breed. I know, yeah. You know what? I I took out the spectrum loading and introduced. So that's just good. Um yeah, so we've been battling COVID here. Don't don't hit your dad. So they're both evil. They're both evil. Um they're both pacified by Wi-Fi. So um, yeah, but um, they've both got COVID, so they're both off school. Oh, which is nice. So back to the case.

SPEAKER_04:

So I see I see the fatigue symptom of COVID isn't really taking hold. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You've got time, you've got all the time in the world.

SPEAKER_04:

Why didn't you think about giving them all this time? The the time approximately equivalent to the duration of the podcast, I'd say I'd have recommended.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yes, they've they they should have more time, but um, yeah, they they've kind of been using up uh by um XP farming during lunch. Right, I see, I see. What is it they're playing dare, I ask? Um Ted's playing Roblox, some kaiju universe. So he's um he was very excited to announce uh today that um his school uh has setting the homework of game level 75 on the schedule. Oh, is that so?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, that's a bold player there. I mean, I'm not in charge of curriculums and I probably shouldn't be. Um I wouldn't put that high among the priorities of the British societal system.

SPEAKER_00:

No, me, me neither. Me neither. Uh, but um, yeah, and Coco is currently playing with uh dolls. So that's nice. She's done all the work for today. Which is nice, yeah. Sounds good. It's good. Nick looks bored out of his brain to have.

SPEAKER_03:

I've got absolutely no idea what any of those words he was saying.

SPEAKER_07:

It's creating a kaiju in his Roblox and uh it's manifesting epidemiology inside a toad death cahedron. No idea.

SPEAKER_00:

Is that how I sound to you?

SPEAKER_03:

I just I just realised I slipped into like a faux knockoff uh Mark Steeler there, didn't I? Which is absolutely not Will Shaw sounds like Stark Mealer.

SPEAKER_07:

Stark Mealer, you can buy from the upside down. My sopchists.

SPEAKER_03:

Buy soptchists from uh all good stockists. Stopchists sopchists, they're like for eating uh for eating gravy cubes. Gravy cubes?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah. I approve. I approve.

SPEAKER_03:

Anyway, have we got like an episode planned today? Or no, it's just this. Just this. It's just chaos. Um, the internal monologues of three lunatics. Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, three and a half fitted by uh additional dramatic persona.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um yeah, so if you do want to learn something about UX, we've come to the wrong place. We've got lots of insight. Can we not put that you just yeah, just fast forward us?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. That should just take you to the sign off. Yeah, that's uh record. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06:

So do we have a topic for today then, gentlemen?

SPEAKER_00:

We do have a we do have a topic, I think a very poignant one, um, with uh New Year's resolutions and things like that. Should designers code the age old question. Well, it's not that age old question.

SPEAKER_03:

Relatively speech leafing through the old testament and uh happening upon should thou I don't know if you know you know the story of Joe and how he had everything taken from him.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Umrightly a designer with a significant cord knowledge, and that was the first thing God took away from him. The question we'll be addressing is how adri how adrift was Job in those Old Testament times.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't a whale, it was um a basic markup kind of book that he found so overwhelm overwhelming he likened to being trapped in a giant aquatic mammal. I think that's um that's a interpretation, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Ul ult Ultex equals quote uh giant whale.

SPEAKER_03:

So does anyone have any uh non-psychotic opinions on this then?

SPEAKER_04:

That is an ask. That is an ask.

SPEAKER_03:

That is an ask. Well, um so I guess sorry, Matt, just to sort of sort of set set the actual parameters. Set the scene. Yeah, sort of set the parameters of the question. The question is should designers code, right? Mm-hmm. Which is kind of like is that different to well it'd be beneficial if they did. It would possibly make you a more rounded designer. Is that a different question to should they? It that seems like a binary yes or no sort of answer, which you're probably not gonna see us through 40 minutes of content. I don't think we're gonna go yes, yes, no, and uh thank you for listening. Yeah. Yeah, so my answer is yes.

SPEAKER_06:

Mark, like bye. That's the end of the day. That was the end of people's news segments.

SPEAKER_04:

Ask Nick a question.

SPEAKER_00:

Or can we please, please, can we do that? I'd I'm gonna dis tangent off here onto the horrific format of uh Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I uh flicked her over once, and uh there's now an option to ask Jeremy Clarkson ask the host uh if they know the answer to the question. And I've never well, I've only watched it once or twice uh for kind of like 10 minutes max, and both occasions he did not know the answer whatsoever. So I'm just thinking, what an absolute shit.

SPEAKER_04:

One thing you should be able to do is you should be able to ring Chris Tarrant, the old host. Just to see what he has to say.

SPEAKER_03:

That's that's my Chris Tarrant impression. Uh Chris Tarrant here. Hello!

SPEAKER_01:

Uh before the break, we were we were ringing Jeremy Clarkson.

SPEAKER_06:

I think that's accurate.

SPEAKER_03:

It's not a thought, it's not a voice that really sticks in my mind. Um that's that's it. That's 100% accurate, I can assure you.

SPEAKER_00:

So behind the scenes footage, they've got Chris Tarrant in the background, and when Jeremy Clarkson asks the question, he just coughed. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And then Jeremy Clarkson then Jeremy Clarkson blows a car up and everyone laughs. So go on then.

SPEAKER_04:

If you could ask Jeremy Clarkson one question, what would it be? Why?

SPEAKER_05:

That was why Jeremy? That was exactly the same question that I was going to ask. So I'm not going to even bother thinking of another one.

SPEAKER_03:

What's it all for, Jeremy?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06:

I think I'd ask him the age-old question, should he retire? I think that's kind of the same question as why. Ultimately. Ultimately. There's a few leapholes of why though. Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, uh, to go back to the uh the topic at hand, should design school and to your question, Nick, as to what is the question uh in terms of its nature, I think uh it's a starting point. Um I think should is a very interesting way of phrasing it, and I think uh it's it's something that I would like to broach because when I started off in um my university career, I did a video game course, a very generic and ultimately not very good um video game course, but perhaps because it was too generic. I then went on to specialise in um digital art, and that was far more structured for me. That was a different university. Um and we did a couple of programming classes there. So this was um I think it was in Engine, but I I I think it was in Unity, and I can't even remember which language it was in now. Um and it just never never clicked with me. And I think it was the way it was taught. Uh the teacher was had the personality of a brick, and um in fact, I think you'd have more fun sat across for a brick, and you'd probably learn more about coding as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Um and so I hope they don't listen to this show.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, actually, I hope they do. Well, you know, they might revise their uh tactics when it comes to teaching um eccentric teenagers how to code, but um that's all you can really ask for.

SPEAKER_00:

I can just hear in the background they're tearing up the floma as we speak.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I only did the first three years at that uni, so I it only says pass on it anyway. So uh that's the that's the amount of qualification I got from it. But basically, um it wasn't structured enough to give us any actual um equipment to then go on and teach ourselves. So and it just didn't click with me at all. It really turned me off the idea of coding full stop because it gave me the impression that it was far more monolithic, far more um impenetrable as a skill than perhaps it actually was. Um and so I went into graphic design uh following that, as uh I may have mentioned a few times in the past, I became a graphic designer for a signage company, uh an archaic signage company, um, that started off hand painting signs. So when I by the time I joined, um everyone had taught themselves Photoshop and Illustrator, which was a crazy experience. Um and then um and so there was absolutely no code cog just no consciousness that that actually existed as a thing uh within this traditional sphere. Um and then of course I moved into user experience design, which is where it started to rear its head again. When I was applying for jobs, I was actually specifically applying for ones that didn't require um any prior cord knowledge, and that wouldn't be part of the day-to-day routine simply because I've become averse almost to it. Now, incidentally, I am doing a front-end development uh course in my spare time, um, which is incidentally being taught in Spanish, which is another language ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03:

Ridiculous. That is the most marked thing I've ever fucking like. Um I I thought that coding was way too monolithic, so I've decided to take another crack at it in Spanish. And funnily enough, it's actually sticking this time, which is the surprising thing. Is so wait a minute, just to go off on another tangent then, is is code, if you're a developer in Spain and you're coding, do you code in Spanish? You code in English.

SPEAKER_04:

Um American English, yeah. Uh your tags and stuff, your IDs, they can be in whatever language you like, but uh the syntax is all English and the HTML editors.

SPEAKER_03:

Um so it really is a language then.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, in that sense, yeah. Yeah. Um but it very much piggybacks off English uh syntax. Yeah. Um so yeah, and I found that the one of the biggest difficulties I found trying to get over how um difficult and I don't mean learning Spanish.

SPEAKER_05:

I'm not fluent in Spanish, there are English subtitles, just so Hamza found this course, and the trailer was really good.

SPEAKER_03:

So that you're doing it in English with extra steps.

SPEAKER_05:

Basically, yeah. But I found I don't know, I feel like I've just broken through the other side of it now. It's so complex and daunting that it's I've just made it so overwhelming that I've just given up and thought, well fuck it.

SPEAKER_04:

If it doesn't stick, it doesn't stick, and incidentally it hasn't. Uh but one of the most interesting things for me was knowing where to start with it with code. And for some reason, this domestica course in Spanish is exactly the ticket.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh Marky, we'll have to share a link in this uh this episode for this course because this this sounds like an atmosphere again.

SPEAKER_03:

I just want to watch you doing it.

SPEAKER_05:

I am for what it's worth, I do speak a little Spanish, so that's beneficial. So you know, and I and I'm finding that I speak a lot more Spanish than I thought I did, uh which may be born out of necessity in this case.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, if we wrote the comedy script, you just could not write this in.

SPEAKER_03:

This would just be kind of like Yeah, if you if if we wrote that in accommodate, people would say it was too unrealistic.

SPEAKER_05:

The fucking thing is it's working. It's working.

SPEAKER_04:

I've learned more about the structures of HTML and the a decoration of CSS and the functions of JavaScript in three units of this course than I have in years of slamming my head against the wall that is trying to learn to cause. And uh, you know, it just took finding the right course, and of course, it would be something that was ridiculously complex in terms of my requirements.

SPEAKER_06:

Uh but yeah, it's good, it's going well.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh god, that is absolutely crazy, Mark. So, what what is the reason you've decided to to start the code again?

SPEAKER_04:

What started me off is um I c don't really currently have a functional portfolio. I was using and at the minute I don't necessarily need one. I'm not especially looking for new opportunities, not with that kind of drive. I'm open to them, but um I'm not you can contact that through uh Twitter. Don't do it through LinkedIn because that burning slag heat gets ignored.

SPEAKER_03:

Um yeah, um and I put as Twitter is white. Oh yeah, Twitter is lovely.

SPEAKER_04:

I wouldn't even know how people would contact me because I just don't use social media at the moment.

SPEAKER_00:

I I can only imagine the content you think comes through.

SPEAKER_03:

Contact me and I'll get in touch with only accepting messages. Send him a message on his beeper. So I'm gonna have to learn how to code and then at the same time learn how to speak Spanish so I can message Mark and tell him that he's got a job referred to.

SPEAKER_04:

Exactly, exactly. But the main reason I wanted is because I don't currently have a portfolio. I was uh and I was swinging round to my website was built on Wix and I was swinging round to the renewal for the year. And all in all, for the domain name, the um packages and the email, it's costing me about 200 quid. And that just felt a bit superfluous to requirement. Um and furthermore, if I ever wanted to, you know, act a high a side hustle, it kind of it was bothering me that I the episode of Resident Evil was just filming in the background accidentally went on the the soundboard classic drinky door sound effect there. I didn't realise they recorded all the stock sounds from your home, Paul.

SPEAKER_03:

In Paul's house. There's gonna be a Wilhelm scream in the background in a minute.

SPEAKER_04:

Um so yeah, uh I kind of realised as well. In fact, this is actually the biggest component. So the source of that uh frustration was my own website, but I discovered that a lot of my experience has been in web design, and I wasn't able to take that further. And I've I've been having discussions with a couple of people who've wanted very light touch web websites, um, either portfolio-based or or uh very basic e-commerce or or stuff like that. Um, and I figured, well, if it's as easy as everyone I know who learned to code and never knows how to tell me why it's easy um or where to start, I've noticed, um, if they say it's that easy, then I want to give it another go simply because um it's diversifying that skill set. And that's kind of why I wanted to do it. My ambition to keep it quite simple is to make my own portfolio website. Um if I can make and maintain that, then I'll consider this skill taught or learned rather.

SPEAKER_03:

So realistically then, how much do you need to know to achieve that goal? Do you need to know do you need to finish an entire like curriculum or can you just learn the basics or what?

SPEAKER_04:

The way I've done it is there are two courses that I've been looking at, um both by the same Spanish guy.

SPEAKER_00:

I was gonna say is one in Spanish, one in Ancelan. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_05:

But I do have three swinging masses lining up after this.

SPEAKER_03:

Um the uh the Spanish the Spanish course is designed to ease you in, and then the second one is in a a long dead language. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

The next course is in Latin. Uh no one knows how it's pronounced. Um they've got some some Mayan expert to try and you know filter it through his understanding.

SPEAKER_03:

Run it through Mayan first.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. So the course I've done I'm doing is a foundation course introduct introducing HTML, uh CSS, and JavaScript through the prism of responsive web design. And then there's another course which is about designing, which I already unknow, so I'll skip those bits. Designing, developing, and uh deploying a website. So I was able to find, and and so I was gonna dive into that second course because that in its title it said exactly what I my goal was and what it's been for a very long time, and I just hadn't found that in yet. Um and so I watched the trailer and it said it recommended some prior understanding to those three languages. Um I have a little bit of understanding simply because I've animated in CSS before and of my contacts with developers. Um but then it recommended a previous course, uh, which was again, it was all this was all£15 a course. I thought, well, sod it, I spend that on three pints um almost daily. So it's a worthwhile investment, um, as well as the old new year, new me bollocks.

SPEAKER_03:

So that's oh that's good. I like it, jeez. That literally was a Wilhelm screen in the background, then that was incredible. Sounds yeah that was amazing. Like someone filmed in a 1930s black and white western in your background.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me. It is interesting. I kind of I like I like it, and I like how you've um you've you've come around to it. I think like I think I I would say do you design this up to code? I'm gonna say yes and no.

SPEAKER_02:

You can't do that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's um it dep it dep it depends. I'd always say yes, but depends on kind of what you want to focus on and what you want to do. No, uh, you don't have to. But at the same time, if you don't know about code, you don't know about semantics, you don't know about stuff like this. I was reading an article actually today. I'll I'll have to dig it out and share it. And I thought, oh, this is just who's talking on this? It was just bollocks.

SPEAKER_04:

But it was uh to Faster Horses, a UX podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that that the article came from a very agency side who don't and the agency who don't do the development either. So the agency just do design then hand it off to another agency to then develop. Yeah, I'm sure there was well exactly, and I was thinking that the whole kind of like you could have solved so many problems along the way if A you knew about code and B um you kind of spoke in the same language and kind of what what Spanish and we spoke well um and we spoke about this in the dribble effect episode uh where kind of like you see these lovely animations and stuff like this, but actually a lot of this although it could technically be builds, yeah. The probably the the uh payoff of uh getting that into through development, into your app, into your website or whatever, would just be you know, six months of development would be never give a return on investment for that kind of amount of uh of debt. So what that's why I say yes or no. Depends kind of where you hand off your designs to or where you want to hand off your designs to. Um and without knowing that code, and without knowing how it works and that the structure and stuff like that, and kind of you know, accessibility being rich in accessibility. We talk a lot about accessibility. And if I didn't know how to code accessible, a lot of the stuff I would try and put into accessible design would just fall flat. But I know I can do a bit of you know, testing and I can say, Oh, you know, I can get kind of, you know, I did it the other day, my accessibility reader, and I was getting like, oh, wait a minute, this this doesn't read out, this doesn't make sense, and things like that. Without knowing that stuff, it makes it very hard for your design to be fit for product or fit for audience. And you know, you can design anything to kind of, you know, you can make it absolutely beautiful, but if you're designing a house with no front door, you know, you've got to climb in the window every day. It's not, you know, that that's not going to be a really useful house, is it? Uh and that that's kind of what I think there's I think with design, you have to kind of like you uh you have to have part kind of product. This oh god, there's more Resident Evil filming in the background getting them. Uh there's uh I think you have to have kind of like part product knowledge, part kind of like um where where your kind of your audience lies. Uh you've got to have part development knowledge and kind of where your you know, could it actually be built? Could it be built in time? Can you iterate on it? Um, can you kind of like then develop it, get feedback? Uh we talk about getting fast feedback, you know, we kind of oh god, it's all going on, isn't it? Crazy. Um then doing it on purpose. I know, I know, yeah. We've got two dogs running around now, kind of like Jay going uh going around in circles through the through the house. Um that's what you get for buying a circular house, Paul. No, I know, yeah, with no doors. Live in one big corridor. Yeah, yeah. Um so so yeah, with without knowing those things, then you you're inevitably not gonna make as good a product as you could.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I I agree with that. Um on my flip side, there's quite a new few new um tools that are coming out that bypass kind of like the product, the the development side. So I I was uh playing around with one called play, and it's a a mobile app designed to make mobile apps, which is really interesting.

SPEAKER_03:

Every time I've seen one of these solutions where they're like, you don't need to know code. You you always need to know code at some point. It there comes a point, it just pushes the code further down like the assembly line, but there comes a point in time where you need to know code to implement it.

SPEAKER_00:

Um well, and this is where we get this kind of like I think where we are now, we get into this kind of very template, and even kind of like, you know, kind of a lot of agencies that you know, you can buy a template uh and have like 90% of the work's done for you, uh, and you can just edit that template and kind of you know, kind of hack away at it. And that's why a lot of websites now become very boilerplate and very kind of samey. Uh, and you kind of see this a lot because it's kind of easy, easier to turn this stuff out, and because it's kind of like, you know, you can do those low-to-no code solutions that just oh it's got that same animation on because someone ripped it off from Apple. You're looking at a bag.

SPEAKER_03:

Fucking cacophony of a fully recording studio right in front of you. Yeah, it's it's like you live in the sound effects booth at Ludativ. It's literally incredible. Like you couldn't have a bigger variety of more frequent noises if you were doing it on purpose. If you sat there with like a Fisher Price keyboard and poor impulse control, there'd be less shit going on in the background.

SPEAKER_00:

I should um I should record them. I should record all these um um sound effects and put them on some real T3 I don't know, milk that for all the cash you can.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, double the royalty on it. Um I see what you're saying uh regarding the you know the I think you're both right essentially. I haven't said anything. No, you have about you're pushing it down the the cords. All right, sorry. See, I'm listening. Um because I had the same experience, and it was actually one of the reasons I wanted to move away from uh Wix or or other other website builders do exist. This is just the one I'm using. They're all of a of an ilk, so I've heard. Um but uh that was because whilst the editor at Wix was surprisingly in depth, there are three layers. You've got the basic, really basic stuff, you've got your more advanced controls, and then you have got your full code editor. Um I was quite in depth in the um the advanced editor, so I was able to get good animations, timed animations, quite sophisticated links and and and um timed functionality like that. But it was slow ultimately, it felt quite heavy, it didn't feel particularly well optimised for what was essentially, you know, tantamount to a few lines of CSS. Um so I wanted to move away from that because um because I think when you are in something that uh using a third-party tool, you are beholden to to that their conversions and their ways of approaching it. And there are often more than one way more than one way to skin a cat with this stuff. Um so I think that becomes significant.

SPEAKER_00:

I was expecting a little bit more on the end there, Mark.

SPEAKER_03:

I was too surprised that Mark stopped speaking and there was silence.

SPEAKER_06:

I know.

SPEAKER_03:

Which was which was the if you want. I didn't realise that's what this wasn't. There was no like ancient gong in a oh yeah yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

In the meantime, squeezing the the mental toothpaste tube that is my my efforts with these things.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I I I think the whole I like I I don't know if I agree with the phrasing of the question. So I don't know if you should. Like it's not gonna like no one should be turned down for being a designer because they can't code, right? But it if you take it upon yourself to learn some code, you're just gonna be better all around as a designer, and you're gonna have better relationships with the people in the business whose job it is typically to do that stuff, and you're just gonna understand what they're saying more as well. But to like the point that Paul was making about sort of building better stuff and accessibility, if you've got if you've got a knowledge and an appreciation of code, then that helps you build more accessible stuff because you know about semantic HTML and therefore you your screen readers are gonna work better and your tag in's gonna be better and stuff like that. So that all falls under the header of code. And so therefore, yeah, you you should probably know it. But if but yeah, uh if you don't, if you don't know it, you shouldn't be held like in front of a firing squad or anything. It's not uh it's not an either-or. Um I just think if you strive to be better, it's one of the things that you should investigate and learn as much as you can. And just just gain a knowledge of, even if you don't know how to code, you need to know what people are what people mean when they say certain things, like what they mean when they say semantic HTML or you know, various coding languages, what what people are using to execute whatever functions and stuff. Um I think it just makes you an all all round better designer.

SPEAKER_00:

I think I think you're right. We talk about um quite often on this kind of like a shared design language, but I think having a shared language that cuts across everything, so that you know, whether you're talking to your an end user, whether you're talking to a developer, everybody understands what that thing is and what that thing does. And sometimes those those the naming of things, you know, like um, you know, uh I was in one the other day, you know, is it a card, is it a pod, is it uh something else, is it a button, is it uh an image with like a link on uh you know, a kind of like but actually it's the same component underneath that does all these things, you can just customize it to whatever the content is and whatever the function is. But you have to kind of like say that what it is so that when we talk about those things to anybody, simply we're not making things twice, you know. We can then go, oh, this this this card or pod or whatever block, uh whatever you want to call it, um, and uh uh slice in kind of how Brad Brad Frost does it, he does the uh atoms, uh molecules, organisms, uh pages and templates and things like that. And like I l I kind of like that name in because it gives you a bit of structure and form, but I don't like it because it's so abstract.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's kind of we're just creating a new design system now, and that's something like we noticed pretty quick is that this is not intended to be the naming convention, it's more a way of thinking that you need to adopt and you shouldn't carry those through to actual terminology.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And I think sometimes that comes from developers as well, and they push kind of like, you know, this dis div is called this, and that then becomes well, actually it's not though, you know, kind of like it's it's a bit more customizable that how's how's that, you know, and then you give that to a copywriter, and they've got to understand the use of that and how to use it the same way as like you've designed it, you've uh kind of pre developed it and kind of how the CMS works, how the end user sees it, and all those things tie in together that there's that common language between knowing what code is and what code is.

SPEAKER_03:

But if you if you're a designer and you're uh you know, like if for example I'm I'm sort of leading the design system stuff, and if you're not familiar with the terminology that the devs are using when they're asking certain things or running certain things by you, you'll miss like the opportunity to feedback or adjust or correct things because you just didn't realise literally what was being asked at the time because you're not familiar with the the terminology.

SPEAKER_00:

Definitely. I also you can put it into like I was thinking of a few analogies of this earlier, and I was kind of thinking like, you know, it's the same if you learn to drive. A car with an automatic gearbox, that means you can never drive a car with a manual gearbox unless you take your test again and learn how to do that. So it's it's those kind of things. So if you want to drive an automatic car, then you don't need to learn code. Um if you want to drive a manual car, then probably you need to learn code. And that and that's kind of like fits quite fucking Resident Evil again.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh yeah, Paul's becoming a shadow of informers. Informer cells. I know.

SPEAKER_05:

So we've got the signs, just ends of Paul Wilshaw, the susurrations of of the house of Wilshaw and Nick just losing the faculty of speech altogether. It know him good.

SPEAKER_04:

Um welcome to the Mark Sutcliffe podcast. I'll be speaking to myself and my myriad voices. Anyway, thank you. Lovely to be here um for the remainder of the show so we don't need to suffer through the rest of this this mullet.

SPEAKER_00:

Um in both English and Spanish. Yeah just just to go off on the tangent. I was editing.

SPEAKER_05:

Sorry, we can't do that.

SPEAKER_00:

And see where this goes. Oh no, yeah. Um I was listening to um the we we've recorded a new intro and uh we recorded it all on separate tracks. And it's so so weird when you listen to one track without the other people, yeah, and then it becomes like, oh, I sound a little in unend um context to the end of the day.

SPEAKER_03:

It's so tempting to like edit yourself to get the best version of yourself across as well. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I need to remove all my ums and ahs from this so that's I think exactly that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And like stuck that's stuck quite a bit when I talk as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, you don't you don't. Um but it it was and I kind of listened to it and I kind of thought, God, if I if I put this out as kind of like, you know, I sound like a real weirdo.

SPEAKER_04:

That's kind of toxically what we've agreed to, though. That's that's um that's what's that's exactly what's happening. Um so to go back to what you were saying, um, well, what both of you were touching on was as we often do, talking about how UX fits into a wider ecosystem of design, development, software, creation, and deployment, uh, etc. etc. And I think that's that's what it comes down to for me and and in my career, because I started without any coding, uh knowledge in in UX kind. So the there's a living testament to answer one question is do you have to? No, you don't, because I didn't, uh I understand Nick, you had uh little to no codes um experience when you you got into UX as well. Um but doing that you do throw yourself in the deep end because you're still having to engage with an ecosystem that is um inevitably fluent in in this kind of language, in this kind of terminology. So I think if you if you do go in and say, right, I don't want a cord, I'm gonna be a more illustration or design focused UX uh, um, I think that is a very possible line of inquiry as a career, especially as things start to specif um diversify and become more specific. Um but I think you'll end up throwing yourself in the deep end because you'll need to learn. And what I did is I kind of picked up a lot of it along the way, and I'm finding out how much I picked up along the way uh whilst I do these courses. Um but I think if you were to do that prior and you take the time to do a bit of education, self-educating or or to do something um else uh pertaining towards it, then when you go into that ecosystem, you'll slot in far more organically. You'll be able to assist with processes and define processes you otherwise weren't able to because you'd just be better informed.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think it just it just makes you a better designer. The more you know, the better you're gonna be. It and that and that's as simple as it is. You could you can focus on one thing, like you said, Mark, illustration, and uh put all your time and effort into doing that, and you may one day become like I mean, depending on what your end goal is, successful or well known for being an illustrator. But if you put as much time as possible into all aspects of of your job, which is like uh illustration, you know, you the UX consideration, um code, and then you know, even things like soft skills, like the management side of it and dealing with people and stuff, you you open up more avenues for yourself to become a a success and like to and to you know appear on people's radars and stuff like that. So it just if that's if your goal is to succeed as a designer and move yourself even incrementally further down the line of like achievement or development or whatever it is, then it should be something that you look at learning, even you know, to to whatever level some appreciation, some knowledge of of code or anything other than what you know already is going to be beneficial for you and and probably the team in the business that you're working for.

SPEAKER_00:

I agree. I I think if if I mean because I think a lot of people now are transitioning from traditional graphic design to digital design. You kind of see that in the jobs market. I think we've spoken about this in the past, kind of like you don't see really jobs for graphic designers anymore. You see jobs for uh product designers or uh UX designers or a mix of a myriad of whatever comes under UX. Um, but you very rarely see a pure graphic design job. But I think if you're transitioning over, you know, kind of like if you were a graphic designer or still are a graphic designer, you know, you know shit loads about colours, you know loads about printing, you know loads about you know physical manifestations of that, and all those details and you know how paper works and the the thickness and the quality and how it folds and UV spots and things like that that work really well, and your knowledge of that, you know, kind of like makes makes or breaks a print job. Um exactly the same with your you know UX. It kind of like your level of understanding of the code or what the product is actually made of, you know, goes um tenfold to making you a better designer. And I think sometimes when people say I don't need to code or I don't need to have any knowledge of that because the devs have got it is a bit blinkered in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, yeah, one thing I I want to say, and I feel it would be remiss not to say is something I've said in previous podcasts a couple of times. Developers are designers, and we're we're talking here like there's designers and developers, developers are designers, and I think it's important to say that and point that out and like start start pushing that like narrative, that idea that they are designers and and should be regarded as such. So it's not so much it's not so much should designers learn how to code. It's if you don't know how to code and you are a designer, is it time to start learning? Yeah, I like that. And the answer is yes. I like that.

SPEAKER_04:

I think one thing I want to add to this is those who are in more leadership-based positions, those who are controlling budget, in in looking at training, I think that is probably one of the uh best kind of audits you can do of your of your team. Uh uh, one of the best kind of audits you can do of your team.

SPEAKER_03:

But what's funny that's someone coughed all over me. Yeah, it's alright. So I went to press I went to press the mute button on my microphone and did a big cough and then looked down and realised I'd not press mute. It was your expression as you realised what you'd done, I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I oversold it so that viewers would know that I didn't do that on purpose.

SPEAKER_00:

Um The Royal Paul.

SPEAKER_04:

The Royal Paul, yes. Um if you've done that team audit and you're wondering how to kind of take your team to the next level, or to a better way to put it, because a terminology like that is a bit vague. More importantly, to um increase the maturity of UX within your organization, is to I think look at skills like this, look at coding, keep it obviously relevant to your product, keep it relevant to user experience design and the user side of your product. Um, but what you'll find then is that those UX designers are able to have more meaningful relationships, more meaningful discourse and contributions to processes than if they were just designers. And it it has to if they are just designers who don't know how to code, of course, there's that, as we've been mentioning, that additional layer of translation that it needs to go through, that additional layer of understanding. I think if you want to help increase maturity within an organization, uh UX maturity, it's not just about an organization needing to know about UX, it's also about UX designers understanding every step of a process and working so closely with front-end developers. Um UI developers, I think one of the best skills we can learn is to code.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think as like part of being a UX designer is looking at entire journeys holistically and figuring out the best way to like interact with them. You should be doing that in your own journey at work as well. The best way to interact with the people uh next down the line from you is to figure out how to talk to them and um build a relationship with them.

SPEAKER_05:

I I would say though it's I would I would say though unless four o'clock is a slot for this, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

No. Friday Friday's better when the uh when they're worn down through the week a little bit. Are we all? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Um it's a Friday afternoon, is this a dagger ice easy for me? Alas poor Yorick.

SPEAKER_00:

I I'd all I'd also say as well that you know it it's not it's not a one-way street as well. It's it's I think your job as a UX designer is to engage people, and as you say, every everybody's a designer, not just developers, not just you know, uh UX designers, and being exclusive about it is uh you start then to form barriers and exclusivity and stuff like that. And every everybody hates uh that exclusivity and then just build that wasn't them mentality, don't it? If you yeah, yeah, and you kind of like and then you become as well if you if you build that culture as well, you become then a kind of a funnel for everything, and you know, then you're not being a good designer, you're being um bottleneck, uh a blocker for kind of work to go through because you know you go, Oh, I've got to see that, I've got to make every little detail, I've got to see that check and things like that. But actually, if you um widely distribute design across, and that's not saying everybody you know should be able to line up pixels perfectly, and you know, you don't need to have UX people or designers, uh, you definitely need those people to formalise those things, but you know, they don't go making automated cars and go like, oh, you can only drive this if you know um how to drive an automatic car. Um, they don't design that, they drive it for absolutely everybody to use, and the same the same with design, you know, you should make it that so everybody can use design. It's not just you know, you may have to do all the hard work for them, kind of laying out the blocks and stuff like that, laying out the patents, putting the best practices out there. That's fine.

SPEAKER_04:

That's fundamentally, or one of the fundamental parts of a design system within an organization, isn't it? Sure, it it is consistent for the end user, and there's an experiential point of view, a huge, huge experiential component. But a significant part of a good design system is that everybody who encounters it is able to understand it within the context of that company. So your product owners, your uh customer service people, your marketing people, your brand people, um, your management, and the in fact, more more importantly, perhaps, the executive layer as you go up um becomes uh their knowledge, their understanding, their ability to understand becomes more important.

SPEAKER_00:

I was on mute then because I think Jill Valentine's just died. Eaten by a jail spin.

SPEAKER_05:

Or turned into a Jill sandwich. I was about to do that.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh you're nearly a Jill sandwich. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Looking at the time, is it time? Yeah, just one last thing before we move on. Um how do people, if you want to get into code, what should people do? Read a fucking book. I'd I'd say I'd say the better the best way to do code would be to um go into the uh developer tools on Chrome, Safari, whatever your uh point choice is, have a poke around there.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't think I don't think that is good advice.

SPEAKER_00:

All right.

SPEAKER_04:

That is the advice I've received for years and never knew where to start because I didn't know what I was looking at.

SPEAKER_03:

That's fair. So one thing I one thing I like to do, and it kind of revealed a whole world of the internet that I didn't realise was there, is go on to like uh a website that peddles absolute trash, like maybe the Sun's website. And if you go onto the Sun's website and you go to developer tools, there's a panel in there where you can change headlines on the web page by typing in whatever you want, uh and then taking screen tribes and sending them to people as if these were real titles on Sun's music, which is what I like to do, and that that revealed a whole, you know, like I say, other world, uh other side of the internet that I didn't realise was there behind developer tools. That's a fun way to start.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, I think you can start downloading and taking images.

SPEAKER_03:

Another way I found I found out about how to use developer tools and stuff like that was um there used to be uh a website, I can't remember what it was called now, but uh it basically collated um blogs people had written into one place about songs, and it pulled in that song so you could like listen to it and then read the review. But it was really handy for illegally downloading music. If you if you if you opened up the developer tools, it it showed you the source of the song that was being pulled in and you could download it as an MP3, and that's uh another way that I sort of found out.

SPEAKER_04:

I've done that to get quite a hold of quite a lot of images, like if something's trying to stop you from seeing the full size image, go to the or download. Not so many people are aware of that. I've I've got jumped through quite a few few little situations like that. By the way, I wasn't just gonna say that's terrible advice and and mic drop the fuck out of here. I do have a counterpoint, which is the reason I think that it's not I don't I don't think it's terrible advice, but I think it why why it's not uh necessarily the place to start is because it's not necessarily constructed, it's not got this uh there's no framework to it. Now, this is perhaps just more about how I learn. I know some people do learn better just by talking about. Um, but I think one thing you should do is set yourself an objective. So for me, that is building and uh deploying a portfolio website. I know what that needs to contain because I know my own work. Yeah, a bit of animation, a few pages, nothing that is overwhelming. If your goal is to dick about with uh headlines on the sun, I think that is a perfectly valid goal. But the point is you have something in mind there, and that'll help direct your searches, it'll help you find specific courses um and specific people who can help you as well. Because very often, when I've said to people in the past Um, I want to know how to get into code, they've said, Oh well, learn a bit of HTML, learn a bit of CSS, learn a bit of JavaScript, and it's like go on.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh yeah, is that all so to sum that uh point up in a sound bite? My friend once gave me a very good piece of uh advice once, Jimmy Osang. Um he said, you don't learn to play the guitar, you learn how to play Wonder Wall. Yes, and basically figure out what you want to do, and then figure out how to do that, and then do the next thing. You learn by necessity, basically, which is how I learn how to like illustrate and animate the next step. I just had an idea and then I realized I need to know how to do I need to know how to achieve this effect, and then I went away and I learned how to do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What what I was gonna add before you shot me down to Flamesmark was uh sorry, bitch. But st steel off stuff, oh yeah, kind of like what um you know, go into those developer tools, they kind of like but yeah, I totally have a goal of what you want to do. And and I got into development because I wanted to make little online games uh so I'd learn how to make Pac-Man and shit like that in a flash when that was a thing.

SPEAKER_04:

This stealing and that's a really interesting one because I I actually did this for one of my university submissions. I didn't steal for that, just plagiarized work. No, I did an I I wanted to be an environment artist. Uh that dream is still exists somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious. Um but what I did for that, I did a kind of uh Japanese, it was just a corridor from a Japanese monastery. Um, or Japanese monastery inspired corridor. Um, and I managed to steal open source, so borrow, um, the AI for butterflies. And what I did, I realized that that these butterflies were able to land on surfaces um without being programmed programmed specifically. Like that. So I was able to lift that from the open source project into my own, and I tweaked that so that the textures of the butterflies were different. And so that because they were actually like mechanical insects in the original. So I wanted them normal. And so I was able to do that. And in so doing so in Unreal, I opened up the blueprint and was able to have a pork around. And if I had continued porking around, that would be one way I think I would have been able to say, right, I've got this. How do I take this to the next step? And what what do I need to put into Google to find out? Good advice. Good.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. Fire it up.

SPEAKER_05:

I love that dead air.

SPEAKER_03:

That's what I'm here for. So to anyone listening to that awful pain silence, we're we've we've set up for series four, we've set up a soundboard so we can trigger all the intros, outros, everything live whilst we sat here. Um and we just need to work on being a bit more organic about it, really.

SPEAKER_00:

I just thought you were gonna say something more profound at the end there, you were gonna round it up or something.

SPEAKER_03:

Paul, if you're waiting for me to say something profound, you're gonna be waiting a long time and there's gonna be a lot of dead air.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's have let's have a dead air waiting for it. The oh no dead air.

SPEAKER_04:

No such thing. Um shall we have a profound sound bite? Um let's see. Yeah, so we're just gonna find one.

SPEAKER_03:

I was just gonna say the the postman always rings twice.

SPEAKER_00:

That's not true. Is it the name of the notes?

SPEAKER_03:

Don't even ring once, you just leave shit in the garden. That might be a dog. You think you know. Well, I mean, when you need to go, you need to go, don't you?

SPEAKER_04:

And the fact that it's astro there shouldn't stop it. Okay, I've got a profound sound fight from an essay on buddhism I was reading, because of course. Um, this fits in nicely to the episode. Come on, sorry. When it comes to um whether you want to go into chord or not, walk or sit as you will, but do not stand irresolute.

SPEAKER_03:

Are we gonna get like an explanation of that or do we just think about it? No, that's important.

SPEAKER_04:

You don't get a fucking explanation for anything. Just sit there and yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you learn this code by doing that. Yeah. So what's what's the time? Let's fire up the jingle.

SPEAKER_03:

That sound means it's time for UX Tombowler! The segment of the show where we pick a random product, object, service, or place from the Tomboler machine and discuss its terrible or great UX.

SPEAKER_00:

Spin the wheel, Nick.

SPEAKER_03:

Jesus, that's all I've done.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05:

You sound like about about five, ten seconds in you sound like you've received some very bad news over what's up from the new.

SPEAKER_03:

It's yeah, it sounds like I've got like I've came I came in like super hot, and then and then it's like you've been fired. Yeah, Drew's held up like a whiteboard with cat bed in it, awesome. And then now I'm now I'm just trying to make it to the end of the show. I love it, that's perfect. I should probably tweak that there. Like my uh yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Would you care to reach into the machine today, Nick?

SPEAKER_03:

I will, but I'll have to be very careful with the sharp sharp teeth on the machine. Yeah. Right, so today's UX tumble a subject, which we need to burn through as quickly as possible, is the UX of a hat. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00:

I should I should have given you a drum. Should we do that again?

SPEAKER_04:

The UX of uh UX Beautiful, beautiful, what a quality production.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh is now a good time to tell people that they can uh give us money on Patreon.

SPEAKER_01:

Because we're not begging we fucking need it.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, please give us enough to hire a producer. Yeah. Yeah. Oh it's just to fire the current one.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh would you would you say you guys are hat people?

SPEAKER_03:

I'm very much a hat person, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um I've got a number of hats.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not sure I suit I do I love hats, but I'm not sure. Every time I wear a hat, I think, oh, who's this dick?

SPEAKER_03:

I I I always think that whether you're wearing a hat or not, Paul. I was kind of waiting for that to say. Um I'm here all week, ride a fish.

SPEAKER_04:

Um I have a I I think I am a hat person by and large. Um I am an astute observer of hat etiquette, something I realise the modern populace certainly is not. Um and this gives me more reason to hate you all, um, which I I do do. Um because uh there's there's quite a lot of unwritten rules around good hat etiquette.

SPEAKER_03:

Um never wear a bowler hat on a patio.

SPEAKER_04:

Well no, sorry that but apart from the obvious one, Nick, there is um there is a big one, you're not meant to wear a hat inside.

SPEAKER_03:

I do.

SPEAKER_04:

Or and I I I think I'm willing I'm willing to move on this one, but there is one that I'm not one thing that I think isn't very nice that some people do, and that's wearing a hat whilst at a dining table. Yeah, I do that too. I think that is very poor form. And it's especially bad. I mean it's alright, I think, if you're wearing a beanie, um then I mean it's basically flat against your head anyway. But if you're wearing anything like I remember seeing some meme once, and it was a guy guy at a steak restaurant, and he just looked like such a prick because he insisted on wearing a fedora at the dining table.

SPEAKER_03:

It's just like there's no reason to wear a fedora anything. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04:

Unless you are 1920s press, there is no reason to wear a fedora.

SPEAKER_03:

Unless you rush into a telephone to phone back the hot story of the day to the newsroom, there's absolutely no reason to be wearing a fedora.

SPEAKER_04:

I do have, incidentally, within my reach um a top hat and a bowler hat. Um old Marky 2 hats, we're calling. Yeah, yeah. Oh my two hats.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, got two hats. Within my reach, I've got about 72 hats. But I'm not gonna show you.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, it's this is an audio format.

SPEAKER_03:

About so it was my birthday this month, about two weeks ago. Oh. And uh at the weekend me and Drew went um shopping. So what I like to do sometimes on my birthday is we just get up and we have like a nice breakfast and then just go shopping. And if I see something I like, I'll generally buy it as long as it's not like a jet ski or something, I can actually afford it. But but if it's something I like and I'm you know and and it's uh very me, I'll I'll kind of put price to the back of my mind and just be like, I'm just gonna get that and not and not worry about it. Um and on my birthday we went to um a designer outlet and they had a Versace shop. We walked in there, and Versace is very like it's way over, it's very I don't want to sound like a dick when I say this, but it's very me. It's very sort of gaudy and intentionally well I I don't know if it's supposed to be awful, but it is.

SPEAKER_04:

And uh it would sound like like conceited if you say it's very me and then describe it. No, but it's gaudy and looking like shit.

SPEAKER_03:

But it's very no, but yeah, alright. But we went quite quite quite negative to yourself there. No, but I hadn't got that far at the time, so it was it Versace's very me was the start of that sentence, so I felt I had to I very I had to clarify it. Um so we went in and we were looking around and there was like silk dressing gowns and and all that stuff, and I kind of turned to the side and there was what Drew described as the most Nick Tomlinson hat ever, which was a bright orange uh bubble, you know, like bubble coats and made out of that material and the stuffed with like padding. It was that so it was like a bubble coat style hat, so it was filled with padding and it had like pleats in it, and it was pat and it was made out of that stuff. Bright orange with a Versace badge on the front of it and two ear flaps that that fasten under the chin. So me and Drew just looked at each other um immediately and I took it to the counter and bought it. Cara, is it is it rude to ask how much that set you back? Um no, not at all. So it was okay. Okay, no, I don't unless you're about to have an asthma attack. That husky sound. So bearing in mind I'd I'd made a painstaking attempt to clarify at the start of this. I don't really uh when I see something. No, that's clear.

SPEAKER_04:

That's true, you're still going to be judged accordingly.

SPEAKER_03:

Which is uh yeah, which is my only excuse. It was£155.

SPEAKER_04:

That is significantly more expensive than the grey top hat I'm not going to show you that I have just out of reason. But I mean, granted, um if I wanted to get me myself a bespoke made bowler hat from a popular shop well I say popular, popular for this kind of thing, shop in London, it would set me back about£400.

SPEAKER_03:

So I I mean in terms of Versace clothing, I feel like£155 is pretty good. And like certainly in terms of like bespoke feltered hats from a hattery. Yeah, from a Milner. A Miller. Sorry. I think I might have said that wrong first. I think it's a Miller, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I I I should have known um Juke with a well-known children's character, the mad milner.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, you've you've hung around with me long enough now to have got this understanding in the same way I've understood code through osmosis within the UX context. There's a callback. In Spanish. In Spanish.

SPEAKER_03:

That's Spanish for we. How often are you wearing this hat then? Oh, every opportunity. But you know, it's very there are very few opportunities.

SPEAKER_04:

I was gonna say yeah, I wear my grey top hat every opportunity, but the opportunity to wear a grey top hat is surprisingly.

SPEAKER_03:

In frequent, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean it's been very cold and windy, so there is the opportunity to wear it quite a lot. I wear it in a house fairly often. Yeah, but I have definitely eaten on the patio on the exclusively on the patio. Yeah. I won it to the co-op. I'm the I'm the best dressed gent at the co-op in uh where I live, I can tell you that. On my sign visiting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Are you?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What? What? I yeah, I actually have been to that co-op in. It's very cool. When it comes to Yeah, it's it's easy to be a dressing and well fire.

SPEAKER_04:

When it comes to the UX of hats, though, uh do we do we need to be more specific about what of the UX of a hat? What is that noise?

SPEAKER_03:

Windows noise, it sounds like Ted's getting a wish granted every five minutes.

SPEAKER_05:

Well we don't. We want clarity on that situation.

SPEAKER_03:

The fact that your house isn't being trampled by elephants is probably a good indicator.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's uh yeah, I think yeah, I think it's yeah, the genie finishes its shift for that sense. Incidentally, but we'll probably finish this call.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

The genie's uh frantically wish it this at the end.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm the genie.

SPEAKER_06:

I listen to the genie.

SPEAKER_04:

They do have that power, we just don't like to readily advertise that they can pause and do anything else at any other time.

SPEAKER_06:

Uh this time. Oh, that that was a good episode.

SPEAKER_00:

I listened to that for three minutes.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh god, I've channels a bit of easy, yeah. So um what of the UX of a hat do we want to to fit? I think yeah, it's um that was it. Therefore I am.

SPEAKER_03:

I do not think therefore I not am. I mean, this is a massive cause because like hats come in all shapes and sizes, so you could have kind of like I I think if you if you're talking about the UX of hats, whoever came up with hats pretty much nailed it on the first try, didn't they?

SPEAKER_04:

Probably, yeah. Well, probably not the first. Because it was probably like a sheep's intestine that they shoved their head into.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh like they uh they made a sock or something. This thing big, which turned into a very lucrative size. So can I ask can I ask you a hat-related question?

SPEAKER_04:

Please. Oh I wish you would. If you were left in a room with a tea cozy, how long would it take before you put it onto your head?

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, you're assuming that I would wait until I was left alone. There's no point, there's no point in putting the tea cozy on your head if there's no one there to laugh at it, is there? I'd immediately the man in the white coat is stood there and he's like, so Nick, we're gonna put a tea cozy on the table in front of you. And yeah, no, go on, carry on.

SPEAKER_06:

You were saying oh god, yeah. Have you never tried this?

SPEAKER_00:

I've never tried.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, to be honest. In your head, yeah. Not since I last encountered a tea cozy, which was quite a while ago.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um what was that for to keep the tea warm? That's what it's meant to do. It's an extra layer of insulation on your teapot, which I always find superfluous requirement when I'm drinking tea.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, surely the scalding hot water keeps the tea warm. Uh for a time, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Generally. It's um yeah, I think it was it was when it was a a real effort to make uh fire.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The tea coursey, uh predated um electricals.

SPEAKER_03:

But when when the older pastime was knitting, you needed every excuse you could get to knit something, didn't you?

SPEAKER_05:

Everyone in your local community was wearing fully knitted jumpsuits and and all the chickens outside have got little hats on.

SPEAKER_03:

There's nothing left to do but knit a coat for the tea pot.

SPEAKER_05:

I want that sound bite.

SPEAKER_01:

That sound bite really.

SPEAKER_04:

I um I did see an interesting performance, it was a clown performance um uh outside of this show, incidentally. An interesting clown performance. Yeah, yeah. Well it was I was at a balleste show on New Year's Eve, um, which is a story for another time, and and there was a variety of acts on one. One was a very talented uh clown. But and what he did what he did was um he had a ring of felt, just like a hoop of felt, if you will, and he turned that on stage into about 15 different kinds of hats. Um and went around um was he a Milner by any chance? No, no. But um I did ask him if he considered the line of work and told him I'd pay 400 pounds for a top hat.

SPEAKER_00:

Um I think I I can only imagine this is his hat has got budget cuts than he used to have. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Previously it was just a man putting different hats on.

SPEAKER_04:

But as the budget cuts came, he had to get more and more innovative and essentially ended up with a ring of felt, uh, which um which he then used to turn into many different ones. So what the stick stick of it and sell it to me.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll buy it.

SPEAKER_04:

My point here was exactly because he managed to turn it into what's the name of the uh like a the headpiece of a nun's um outfit. Habit. Is it the habit? Habit um Yes. You managed to turn it into a a bicorn hat, you managed to turn it into a cowboy hat, uh, you managed to turn all these different things you managed to do. Um and I think that's what we should sell. I think that's what we should give to Mark Steeler. As you say, there are so many different kinds of hats we kind of need a one-fits-all solution.

SPEAKER_03:

So please can I just request that when you're doing when the when the evil spirit known as Mark Steeler inhabits your earthly bodies um and you're doing the advert, can you please make a joke about something like um I want to start making hats, but I don't want to make a habit out of it or something like that.

SPEAKER_06:

Alright. Okay. There we go.

SPEAKER_04:

I can I can I can see what I can do. I I'll see um I'll see what happens when um when the corporeal part of of Yeah yeah. I'm just gonna have to get out of Ouija board and communicate with him.

SPEAKER_03:

Flop twist. It was Bruce Willis all along.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll have to re edit the fucking intro now.

SPEAKER_07:

I'm Max Dealer and I'm a ghost. But you won't find that out until series four, episode one.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, that was that's the that's the twist. So is that is that the product we're going for? I mean it's the one suggestion and everyone.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, no, I'll

SPEAKER_04:

Are we sold? I'll give you£155 for it back. I wonder what Mark Steele's brand, if he had a designer brand, what would it be called? Like I think it would be so close to a knockoff, or so close to something that is definitely not a designer brand. But Mark Steelers convinced that he is. Like uh Marks and Spencer's. Yeah, Texo, he's called it. And the good stuff.

SPEAKER_07:

Mark pohom. Pohom. Steel Steelers Pahom. Just with no in not even a threat of a French accent in there. Yeah. Steelers pawn. It's French, so you know it's good. Bonjour. Badly made. I'm Max Steeler. And I've got for you today a new special product. Have you got within reach of you at any time 72 hats? No, most of us haven't. Can you not afford to spread your hat budget to cover all of your hat-based needs? Well, I've got the solution for you. If you are a cowboy with a need for a hat, if you are a fedora boy from the 1920s, if you are a nun with a bad habit, then I've got the product for you from uh from Steeler for Home. It is the Swiss Army hat as employed by none of the Swiss Army. The Swish Army, as we now call them. And it is a circle of felt you put on your head and pretend it's any hat you want. Thank you. That's£155. Love, Mark Steeler. Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

I'll take it.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh god, absolutely nice.

SPEAKER_04:

There you go. I think that was a bit a bit less sad than his usual delivery. Oh no, I love it.

SPEAKER_00:

He had scales.

SPEAKER_06:

Well, this is it, I had the nun with a bad habit line, and then everything I ended up caring about it was just Are you a man with a hat?

SPEAKER_05:

Are you another man with a hat? Are you a dumb boy? Are you a killer? Just had no idea. Press man. Journalist.

SPEAKER_03:

Journalist is what I was looking for. Or a news. I thought you meant like a newser. Like a s. Oh little news app. I love how that kind of quite quickly turned into um Whose Line Is It Anyway, where I gave you like you've got to say a bad habit, and then you've and then I typed into the chat Swiss Army hat as well. We should do that next time. Turn it into like Whose Line Is It Anyway?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, and just see what what I can get in there. You can go ahead to head with Greg Proop. You know, I've had a dream like that. How is your head, Mark? Um well I've not had any complaints.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh god dear.

SPEAKER_00:

I can't. Fast enough. If I gave it to you on the dot, it would just be funny. It wouldn't be funny.

SPEAKER_03:

Anyone can do a rim shot immediately after something funny's happened. The real connoisseurs wait an inordinate amount of time just and then the rim shot. Yeah, and then they've got to figure out what was the funny thing that was said. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Leave it long enough that they start thinking of other things and to start doing it long enough that they start to think.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh maybe that wasn't funny.

SPEAKER_06:

That wasn't really a joke. Which they were probably thinking in the first instance, anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Just say rim shot again, Nick.

SPEAKER_01:

Rimshot. I feel dirty.

SPEAKER_04:

Amazing. I've now got to go and contact this guy because I didn't know we'd stole his idea. Which is a sentence I didn't think I'd have to say again today.

SPEAKER_03:

That can go on, yeah. That could be another sound bite for the episode. Have we done? Take us home, Paul. Take it home, here we go.

SPEAKER_04:

Well that's it for this episode of Faster Horses. If you like the show, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. It really does help. You can join us on patreon.com forward slash fasterhorses from one pound a month for more chat, UX Tombola and the hottest new products from Bolton Arcade's own Mark Steeler. Special thanks to James Med for our theme tune. I'm Mark Sutcliffe. I'm Nick Tom Rinson. I'm Paul Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Fasterhorses UX and we'll catch you in two weeks for more Faster Horses.

SPEAKER_03:

Did the juggler in the background drop all the silver things?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was gonna think.

SPEAKER_05:

And you paid him in silverware by throwing a couple of draft him.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and then he threw it to the ground like this is not silverware. Yeah, like biting each one, and it in his teeth. No. No. Oh that's a good weapon. No!

SPEAKER_00:

I love how the cloud sounds like that.

SPEAKER_03:

Everyone sounds like everyone is the he's the people's person is Mark Steeler. It's just the voices in my head all sound the same. They're quite confusing sometimes.

SPEAKER_04:

I think I think the sound is actually the voice of the Jungian collective unconscious. And that that is that's why every single voice in Faster Horses is Mark Steeler.

SPEAKER_03:

That's that voice that you do, Paul, is what I assume pugs would sound like if they could speak.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I kind of imagine they'd just be like, kill me.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, well cry about you. Everyone with that move is agony.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I d I actually that is one of my dog voices, so I do um voices of what my dogs are one of them. Um yeah, and what the dogs are actually thinking too, and sometimes they engage in uh deep conversation with Coco uh mainly.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah. They've tried, they've tried to have the philosophical cloak to maintain that kind of dialogue.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello, Coco! They're both girl, both girl dogs. Hello, Coco. Surprise. I'm gonna eat you I'm gonna eat your doll if you leave it on the floor like that.

SPEAKER_04:

That is heroin smoking forty a day. Just that yeah, that little inhaling a cigarette in a single drag. Like a voluntary.

SPEAKER_00:

It's the cheap chews I get from that raw high in it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Undigestible raw high. Hello, I'm just chewing on a chew. I'm all you know. I don't know what else you expect me to do with it with a name like that.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sorry, I peed on the bloody floor again.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh that dog's not sorry. That doesn't sound like a dog that's not. Swiss army. Yeah, the Swish army hat.

SPEAKER_04:

Swish army hat. Because I can't fucking speak.

SPEAKER_03:

I like that though, because you look pretty Swiss when you've got it on.

SPEAKER_00:

I can see the marketing coming out on the back. And the Swish army hat.

SPEAKER_04:

A journalist, a newspaper boy, and a cowboy. That's like some funny. Or walking road to my MCA.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, I'm getting passed around like a shwish army hat. Oh. Right. That's us.

SPEAKER_06:

No, thank you. That's us.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's the best way to end an episode ever. I thought we ended after the intro.

Head Shot

Paul Wilshaw

Host