Scaling design teams, what you need to know.

Learn from the people who've been there and are currently doing it, what to look for, how to recruit and what you need to know.

How to Scale a Design Team From a One-Man Show to a Well-Functioning Design Team.

What is the Problem with Scaling a Design Team? and Why You Should Treat Your Hiring Process Like an Investment for Long-Term Sustainability.

We ask these questions while keeping you entertained with humorous chat, off-topic tangents and lots and lots of important information to keep you and your teams mentally healthy.

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!

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🎥 Watch: https://youtu.be/GYjaKrOt1VE

#Podcast #Design

PEACE!

Sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_09: 0:04

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_07: 0:16

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

SPEAKER_03: 0:23

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

SPEAKER_09: 0:28

Coming up, we'll be talking about design, user experience and technology, followed by UX Tom Bowler, 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_12: 0:46

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

SPEAKER_09: 0:49

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

SPEAKER_03: 1:26

Oh, let's not use all the painted Nick as a um all the Nick memes in one go. A year-long quarter, and we've already got fifty percent of the way through it. Already blown my ward on episode one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:44

Oh nice. Oh standard. That is good.

SPEAKER_09: 1:48

You have a good Christmas mark.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51

Christmas was a challenging one for me. I had COVID over Christmas.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54

Oh, not you as well. Yeah, yeah. Um, it was more of a pain in the arse than anything else because the symptoms were very mild. And the NHS were app and track and trace were bloody useless. So um yeah, I had three different responses um when it came to isolation. Uh, three different times I had um, of course, my legal obligation to to isolate for 10 days, which I was fine with. Um, and then I had an email saying I had to isolate for 12, and then the track and trace app tried to have me isolate for 18. What?

SPEAKER_07: 2:35

Um I think in different end dates as well.

SPEAKER_03: 2:38

Yeah, so uh well our old system, it's definitely not as if it's just been um palmed out to the first firm that a conservative politician had some level of investment in. Or the cheapest bidder, or the cheapest bidder, you know, or all of the above. Yeah, so yeah, my Christmas was actually fine, uh despite all that. Um I made up for it a new year. I was at a nice New Year's party, so that was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_09: 3:07

Cool.

SPEAKER_03: 3:07

Yeah, I like it.

SPEAKER_09: 3:08

How about you? How about uh uh pretty pretty quiet, pretty quiet. Um yeah, we were ill over Christmas as well, but I don't we didn't test positive, so oh I know I tested very positive.

SPEAKER_03: 3:22

Like the lateral flow test I did basically jumped off the table. God the line came up immediately twice. Yeah. That's not faulty.

SPEAKER_09: 3:37

Yeah, but apart from that, good, good. Play my new toys, lots of gaming. Oh yeah, what did you get? Did you get any Lego? I didn't get any Lego, no. Um I got um boring stuff really, like shirts and after shirts.

SPEAKER_03: 3:53

One thing I insist on, Paul, is that your shirts are never boring.

SPEAKER_09: 3:57

Well, it's not as exciting as Lego though.

SPEAKER_03: 4:03

I received a very beautiful gift from my brother, actually, quite a controversial one. But it is an antique, um, and it was a wallet. Oh yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:14

It's like a giant swastika flag.

SPEAKER_04: 4:16

Yeah, yeah. It was um no, I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say. I don't want to tend the new year with with um with what I was going to say then.

SPEAKER_03: 4:29

Um but no, it was a a wallet, a lovely wallet, vintage wallet made out of elephant leather, which um is which is controversial. Is controversial, yes. Uh didn't come with the tusks, so they must have been used in some uh Chinese medicine somewhere. Um so you know, at least they're using every part of the animal as they portrait. So I decided not to ask too many questions. Uh I know it's an antique. How old would you say though constitutes an antique now?

SPEAKER_07: 5:00

Oh do you know what I'd I genuinely have no idea?

SPEAKER_03: 5:03

Like it's 30 years old, if it's if it's 50 years old, it's 1970. Jesus Christ. Yeah. If it's 30 years old, it's 1990.

SPEAKER_07: 5:18

I mean, I'm older than 13 years old, and I wouldn't class myself as an antique. Depends on circles you're in. Not with these classes, anyway.

SPEAKER_03: 5:28

That's it. But um, you know, you have a 30-year-old cotton of milk, it's not an antique, so you know. Yeah. It's cheese.

unknown: 5:38

Oh god.

SPEAKER_09: 5:43

Oh dear. Just imagine like you just pouring it out on your breakfast cereal. It's lump.

SPEAKER_07: 5:49

After 30 years old, it might be a civilization by that time, so culture than a Mozart concert.

SPEAKER_03: 5:58

Umliners today. Oh no. Another thing I received is, and I don't know if this happens to you guys, but I made what I have since discovered was the error of giving a list of things I'd like. You know, just I don't need it every don't want everything on the list per se. It's just inspiration for what to get me.

SPEAKER_05: 6:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 6:21

Um, and I gave the same list to uh to excuse me to everyone. Oh. And um a lot of people got me the same thing.

SPEAKER_07: 6:30

Seven elephant skin wallets.

SPEAKER_03: 6:33

That's it. That's it, that's it. Um, each one from a different elephant. Um but no, it was it was actually glassware. Um, we didn't have a complete set of wine glasses, and now I have about 14 sets of wine glasses.

SPEAKER_04: 6:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 6:52

So, you know, it's clear that my family doesn't see an issue with my drinking. Certainly not anymore, because apparently the issue they had was what I was was with what I was drinking out of, as opposed to what I was drinking. So yeah, I think I went from three wine glasses to about twenty.

SPEAKER_09: 7:13

I thought I thought you had wine mugs anyway. I remember you were just sipping wine out of a mug one day.

SPEAKER_03: 7:21

That is um I called it a wine mug, but I'll be brutally honest, it was just a mug.

SPEAKER_07: 7:32

Oh, we can't hear you, Nick. Nick, you've gone on to uh I muted myself because I was fighting around with my uh because you were farting. That that means Nick. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:45

That reminds me of uh a story that our friend of the show, James Med told me once, but we won't get into that now.

SPEAKER_07: 7:52

If he's listening to this episode, he'll be sat at home laughing to himself because he knows exactly what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_04: 7:56

I know the story you mean. Yeah. Microphone is used.

SPEAKER_01: 8:00

Um sorry, Paul, go on.

SPEAKER_09: 8:02

No, I I feel like we should uh let the listeners into the story. Oh no, we can't do that without his without his consent.

SPEAKER_07: 8:10

Maybe next time he's on he can tell us a story. Um I don't know what I was saying then. Should we should we should we fire up the the episode proper since I forgot what I was gonna say?

SPEAKER_03: 8:20

Yeah I think that seems like a salubrious manoeuvre. Which is of course that sounds like it's being more of a horizontal sliding sensation, but uh that's not what it meant to tell. Uh yes, so what are we talking about today then, Nick?

SPEAKER_07: 8:36

Oh. Uh so today we're talking about establishing a new UX team and filling the UX team out, I believe. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02: 8:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 8:49

Yeah. Cool. So um what was the inspiration for this episode then? Was there any?

SPEAKER_07: 8:55

Yeah, so I'm currently uh building a UX team and filling the UX team out. Yeah, yeah. I had a feeling what was going on there. So there are some parallels between you know the the subject matter and and life. Yes. I in this case is an imitating life. But I just thought, you know, having both worked under Paul, um both uh metaphorically and literally.

SPEAKER_03: 9:22

Well and you can see that on our Patreon only episode. This is only available to the top tier of that's uh that's part of the Faster Horses Only fans service.

SPEAKER_09: 9:35

Um I don't share this link anymore with my parents.

SPEAKER_07: 9:46

Nice. Um yeah, but yeah, I just thought seen as uh you know Paul's got experience of um starting and and filling the UX team, it'd be you'd be a good person to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03: 9:57

So and I'm also here, yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 10:05

So there's that although you're doing yourself a disservice there, Mark. Uh, because you've you've done a fair few interviews.

SPEAKER_03: 10:15

I've done quite a lot of team building over the past 12 months, yes. I think I found myself in a surprisingly similar position to Nick Um following um you both getting new jobs and the the the company I work for grew exponentially, the UX team grew a little less exponentially, but also grew alongside it. Um and as such, yes, I am still I was very much part of that. So I think it's gonna be some interesting um excuse me. Sorry, um cut that.

SPEAKER_10: 10:49

There's gonna be some interesting sense of that.

SPEAKER_04: 11:03

I'm actually a sleeper agent, and this is me now being activated.

SPEAKER_05: 11:08

It's going to be interesting to compare and contrast um our experiences. Yep. Cool. So where should we start?

SPEAKER_03: 11:18

That's it. What circumstances do you find yourself under when you need to start a UX team? How does that situation emerge?

SPEAKER_09: 11:30

When you've got budget and when you're super busy, I think uh two things help.

SPEAKER_03: 11:36

And the executive level management recognises the need both to support that.

SPEAKER_07: 11:43

I say, I mean, you can be super busy without having the budget to dig you out of the hole, can't you? So I guess the two aren't mutually exclusive, but um, or maybe they are. I don't know. I I don't think I understand what that's saying means. Um yeah, I guess uh I mean we we were lucky, so you know I've I'm I'm not the most senior person on our UX team. We obviously have a a head of UX, and from the moment that they went into the business, the understanding was that they were going to be able to recruit a team. So in terms of recruiting people, um they had the benefit of you know, that was a a pre I'm you know, I'm sure that was even a prerequisite of even coming on board, um, but it was understood from the start. And I think the the requirements and the level of kind of people um needed on the team has changed a little bit even in the time that I've started working there. Um but we're very lucky where I work that you know they're open to this sort of thing, um and they're open to um us making a case and and for the most part like standing by it and and helping us justify it to the to the wider business as well. So um, yeah, it it's I mean the budget is the budget as far as I'm aware. I don't to be honest, I don't have much say in that. I just we we just I just know what I'm looking for, what I've been told to look for, you know, like roughly the level, but we've kind of identified already that it might be useful further down the line to have like um a you know a full-time researcher, maybe on staff, which was not something that we had um that we were thinking about right at the start. So even that's changed and conversations have been had around that, but it's nice to know that you know you can think along those lines and you can you can think wider than the very prescriptive job roles that have already been sort of pre-approved, it's uh that's quite good.

SPEAKER_03: 13:43

Yeah, it is. I think in a sense you really have to get to that point where you you need that flexibility because as you're building a team and as that happens over time, the needs of your team change because I think very often you'll find that the people you do take on board tend to have skills that you weren't necessarily looking for. Um and they might be especially like softer skills. You might you might recruit someone on a a mid-level, and it turns out that they've got fantastic people skills, or they're great at presentations, or they're um they're just good communicators, and that suits them.

SPEAKER_09: 14:26

Since you're online CV.

SPEAKER_04: 14:30

Well, you said you said that. You think I'm great at presentations and communication.

SPEAKER_03: 14:35

You are um that's why you uh uh you promoted me, Paul. Yeah, yep, promoted. Which is um admittedly a sack of shit.

SPEAKER_09: 14:48

Um not at all. Um it's interesting you mentioned flexibility there, because I think I think a lot of people, especially when they come out of university, they have kind of like a very different, or it doesn't have to be university whatever, coming into UX. There's this kind of like thing you think you're gonna be uh designing all day, or you know, you're just gonna be uh creating beautiful illustrations, or you know, you be kind of like really uh sweating over the the animation and things like that. And I think not many jobs are like that, and and that's not exclusive to UX. You know, if you were a developer, the you know, you guaranteed you wouldn't be coding 100% of the time. But you but you know, you there's there's other things to do, isn't it? Like uh keep track of Jira tickets or uh kind of like you know, do some uh pair of programming, fix books, things like that. And I think there's those edge scopes and that that you have to kind of accommodate and kind of think about. Um and one of the things when I was recruiting uh for you and and the team, um I found it really useful to identify what people were good at, what people needed a bit of help with, um, but and then kind of like work out what the business was, where the business was going to. And then I kind of picked out kind of like five, I don't want to say pillars because um that's like a really twaty business term. I picked out like five skills that I wanted kind of like you know, that people were gonna be good at, and then um I ended up then formalizing that a little bit more into a spider diagram and having kind of like you know, kind of these skills, and at certain levels that somebody had be uh on a scale of uh X out of a hundred. Uh and then it really helped to go through kind of the initial recruitment process to say like, oh, where's somebody on this scale, or where do I think they are on the scale, compared to with what other people are on the team? And like and sometimes that means that the best person doesn't always get the job, if that makes sense. Um because you're giving it to somebody who's got a potential, or B they've got kind of like skills that uh, you know, like when uh Nick joined, we didn't really have like a solid illustrator. So having Nick on the team, you know, can really fill that out, and then Nick was kind enough to pass his skills on, uh, you know, and t and do kind of like a bit of uh, you know, and when you sit in um it's like whenever you do sport, if you play somebody like a world class level, your gain increase goes up uh loads. Um so kind of like you know, if you put Nick in just in the same room uh as kind of like somebody who wants to get into illustration, then you know, instantly they're gonna get kind of like a lot further ahead than than than somebody else. Because you know, you're passing on their skills, you're passing on kind of like a little bit of knowledge, you know, and if they're interested in that, they just kind of like soak up that that niceness of that skill anyway. So I I'd suggest that that's a good way to kind of fill out a team and know kind of like things change and stuff like that, and kind of like priorities change, design tastes change and things like that. So, you know, you might go from kind of like uh photography one minute to illustration the next, but but you know, those skills kind of like as long as they're adaptable, then you know you can kind of fit them in to anything, really.

SPEAKER_03: 19:12

I think um, yes. That's all I've got to say. Well that was a good episode.

SPEAKER_00: 19:19

There you go. Goodbye, everyone.

SPEAKER_03: 19:24

Um it's true though, you have to think about the you've got to you've got to analy analyse your team as it currently stands, such as it is, and there are the to the point where you can do mapping exercises, you know, confidence, skill confidence um is a is a massive part of of team culture and team dynamic, and it's something that is quite different from skills. I think a lot of people sometimes misattribute this. Um you can have um a fantastic skill and then just not have the confidence to to put yourself forward and that is a a self-perception and I think if you if you're able to purs um map out those confidence levels that can give you another di uh another dimension that's the word I'm looking for for how to um how to broach your development as a team because when it comes to building a team there isn't just getting new people in it's about how they grow it's the future so you've got to look at the team as it currently exists but also how that team will grow and how someone you are interviewing will fit into that team uh the dynamics what they'll contribute to that culture um and at least something I look for is how that they'll actually be um formative to that culture how they'll inform it and change it and actually potentially influence the way the wider organisation works yeah in in I was thinking about this earlier when when we brought up the subject uh this sorry um um I was handed while you were talking mark I was handed a uh giant straw I'm still kind of chewing uh some of those a giant what straw and uh straw yeah I'm still masticating on that straw first advance is ASMR it's all mastication I'd just like to say other giant strawberry flavoured confections are available yeah yeah this is this is not sponsored by Haribor it's not sponsored by anybody despite our best efforts it's not it's not even sponsored by faster horses um but in interesting you because you mentioned then the kind of like skills and kind of like uh people growing and things like that and and you mentioned as well we on the Christmas episode uh one of your predictions Nick was um the house style of uh people and I think that that's quite key as well if you're gonna recruit somebody so say somebody's got a portfolio of um smiley faces let's say and kind of cartoon characters and then you bring them into the business and you ask them to draw graphs all day and kind of like do lots of data or or kind of things that is totally against their style they've built up for years and years guarantee you that person's not going to stay in the business for very long.

SPEAKER_07: 22:42

Yeah so you know kind of like if if you want to go down that route you know back them and and kind of like go go full hog down that route but don't don't you know and I'm sure the person when they get rejection um kind of you know from that kind of like that job that doesn't quite fit them they'll be thankful in the long run and you never know kind of like you know you may end up kind of working with them in the future in a different role sort of Paul Arden approach in it have you read um the book by Paul Arden it's not how good you want to it's not how good you are it's how good you want to be yeah he talks a lot about in that of like if your aim should be to get fired from every job because uh because if it's not a good fit then you shouldn't be there kind of thing and that's you know that's exactly what you've just said if you're if you're in a job where yeah you're getting paid to illustrate but it's not fulfilling you and you're not doing the kind of illustration that you want to be doing then you should a push to do that illustration and the result of that is either you get fired and you go somewhere else where there's the chance where you can do it or that you you win and you become able to do that illustration where you are just think of all the severance pay you could accumulate getting fired from one place to the next yeah well yeah yeah I've uh I'm just thinking well I have been fired but I was a temp and that kind of comes with the territory doesn't it and yeah when you tempt causes it's in the title yeah definitely um but yeah it's and and you know and then the same as well kind of like for kind of like uh those soft skills as well the non-UX ones the non um kind of things you know if you know somebody you know and you interview somebody and they kind of like ask questions that you think oh they're not gonna like this or kind of like you know they're not gonna oh they're not gonna fit in here or they're kind of like oh you know kind of finish at two o'clock every day um and you know well you can but as long as you do all the work and um well that's it that's quite different in it yeah and it's yeah and you kind of get those little warning bells I find and I and I think I'm I'm probably being a UX professional I think I've got a bit more empathy with people as well and kind of like understanding their problems understanding kind of you know from the UX research side um I think I'm a quite a good judge of character although um the stock of the room you said you hired a hundred percent of the people in this call and and people's people can hear this conversation yeah um but but I think that that that helps that soft skill helps with the recruiting because you can you can kind of like you I think as a as a you know if you bring in some of that UXR into your recruitment process you do a lot of listening and watching and seeing how people interact and what they do and and how they do things and you pick up or at least I do pick up those little signs that say would that be you know or I think they'd be potential in people yeah I think they'd be good at this but I don't think they could go there or you know they'd be good in this role and with a bit of a nudge they could go you know and be superstars like YouTube. Oh it's oh bless you but it informs what the role ends up becoming as well in it because um this is something I've been thinking a lot about like you can you can write whatever you want in a in a job spec within reason you you're still constrained to the people that apply to it like yeah where if the job title is UX designer essentially the description in it is is interchangeable you're gonna get people who want to be UX designers applying to it and they're either going to be fit for the role or they're not and uh it's it's all about yeah like talking to that person and maybe they turn out to be really good at something you'd not even considered or perhaps they've got a good head for like research user research which is not something that you specifically set out to find in the user in the UX designer role that you're looking for and obviously like a well-rounded designer has to have a good head for research but you might not necessarily might identify that you know that is actually their primary skill and they might not even have been aware of that before they spoke to you which you know which which does happen doesn't it but I think yeah the person that applies ends up um colouring the the role that you you know you end up uh filling more than like what you originally intended to to you set out to to recruit for in a sense you certainly hope they do don't you because that way they've turned that job into their own and and they've perceived the objectives that that you know that you set out for them in that role and interpreted them according to the you know to their skill set and and so you really want that to happen.

SPEAKER_03: 28:22

And I I I actually want to come back to what Paul was saying about empathy actually because um one of the things that I focus on as as a lead in um in the organization I work is that I I look a lot at the morale and the culture as I I've said culture a couple of times already but my focus is the people which is uh it's what I'm good at I've been told any world um and one of the things that you get a measure of from people especially through an extensive interview process like the three stages or whatever you do get a feel for how they are going to influence the morale and the future and and the and the relationships in the team how you can imagine obviously you can't you can't second guess it you've got to be careful um but you can certainly imagine when someone is or isn't going to be a good fit and I think that is a very important part one of the things we've seen um at least in my opinion is uh over COVID um and since we've gone work in remote and my organisation now works over several geographies I've seen a very vast difference in the nature of collaboration uh in the nature of just talking and and and relationship building and development between team members as a result of different geographies different cultures different language barriers and stuff like that and I think that stuff whilst it shouldn't be uniquely informing the decisions you make it is a factor ultimately uh the way that we come together as a team has fundamentally changed that's interesting in it that we we assumed that was like a short term thing that we would have to deal with in the short term and now it's actually becoming a criteria that you're hiring people under.

SPEAKER_09: 30:15

Yeah yeah exactly I've been saying for a long long time that the the you know digital anyway makes the world a lot smaller and kind of like I think I mentioned on the show before kind of like digital nomads and it was kind of like that that's where you can kind of work from anywhere because all you need is uh you know your your laptop or whatever hardware uh and an internet connection and you've got absolutely everything you know you possibly need or want um and I find it quite weird now doing in-person meetings and where you can like if you stand around a whiteboard or things like that and then somebody has to take a photo of the whiteboard and then put that in a digital format and I just find that like should we have not used a digital whiteboard in the first place and we all could have sat in the comfort of our own home and saved saved like the world and and and everything else by not kind of travelling in for this meeting but um yeah and some sometimes it is nice to kind of like see people face to face but yeah I wonder where I think there's a time and a place for it now like yeah you know workshopping and working collaboratively it depends what you're doing because like even brainstorming now you can do over things like figure and fig jam can't yeah I was I was gonna ask you guys a question question actually which is t tangentially related but how do you perceive like UI labs working in the remote setting now you think they're still being defined or do you think there's something that we you know one could launch straight into to create a a UI lab or a think tank entirely remotely? I I think entirely remotely I mean again you know what what's always bugged me about UX labs is you bring people in and instantly they're gonna have like a bias in that in that environment because it's not their environment you they're probably gonna get pampered their expenses paid free gifts uh you know kind of like somebody kind of going like oh thank you so much for being here you know you sound so valuable no kind of thing and and and that instantly puts a bias onto making them think whatever they're gonna be viewing or kind of like giving a verdict on is better than it is. So if you put somebody in a lab then you've got lab conditions. Um and I'm always a big fan of like gorilla testing and like but and I think then there's there's the the labs of kind of like you know kind of bring the lab to somebody with technology and I think we tr we tested something out where you could kind of like um somebody on a browser and with their permission you can access the camera and record and track their eyeball movement and things like that wherever they are so kind of you could then get a real world situation.

SPEAKER_07: 33:22

How do they use your app or you know your uh software on a moving train how do they use it can like you know when you know they're they're watching TV at night or things like that and that's actually that's the that's when people do use stuff yeah I'm gonna say if you're using if you if you user testing something with someone and you're doing it remotely and they're sat at home in their office then is that better conditions than than doing it in a lab I guess if you're doing a lab test properly you're you're recreating those conditions as best you can anyway aren't you? Yeah it's never going to be a hundred percent the same as it is kind of it's it's kind of defined better.

SPEAKER_03: 34:08

It depends what it is you're trying to find out if you want a natural environment um it's probably easier to go remote if you're trying to uh if you're trying to work on something say in a high stress environment it's probably not psychologically moral to ask someone to go into willingly a high stress environment such as a building that's on fire and it's probably better to recreate it in a lab rather than put them at peril. The reason I I raised that and how it links into team things is because one of the things that I'm still personally overcoming is the the psychological difference between working as part of a remote team and working um working uh in in person. I am a ridiculously extroverted person as as you all both know if I'm on my own for about four hours or or let or more I start to go a bit crazy um which probably means that I've got dependency issues but never mind that that's that can go in UX ombola or something but um you know I found that for example having everything confined to a single screen which is how I usually work because I don't have much office space or any office space actually um has been psychologically limited when I've been trying to um brainstorm because I'm I'm a traditional artist originally so I prefer pen and paper all the time but of course I'm not going to I've not got the time I've not got the inclination to uh then digitize all that um and I think that again working remotely has created a very different dynamic for me because I don't get the same level of social energy shall we say from a meeting I can give a very specific example of this actually from last week I gave a presentation on Wednesday just to welcome everyone back and I took the opportunity after what was a very tough year both personally for a lot of people and professionally to go through the highlights and some of the challenges we face and how we overcame them and then go through some of our design principles to remind everyone what we what we work towards and then some of the goals we want to to focus on in in uh 2022 and I think it was well received I think because everyone had their cameras off and was muted so I was talking into a blank empty room for half an hour trying to uh moralize trying to encourage and with zero feedback whatsoever and I think there's a a par a parallel here between it's like telling a joke on stage and just getting nothing back.

SPEAKER_07: 37:12

And I think you know I think as a result of that and the situations like that I personally believe there's still some some place where either the technology that we're using or the or the social um consciousness has got somewhere to to develop yeah it depends because I used to really hate that like the the blank screens the no feedback I remember um in my role previous to the one where I worked with you guys I did um presentations to to clients and like you know tried to like crack jokes and stuff and then just got nothing and it really threw me like I really lost where I was and like started getting like the sweaty palms and stuff like that. But since that point I I've I've like I think the more I've worked remotely and the more I've done that it it's it's it's played on my mind less but also you're not a stand-up comedian you're not an actor your success isn't based on the reaction of the crowd so you know if you're if you're a stand up comedian and you try to tell jokes on Skype and everyone's muted and everyone's screen's off you don't know whether you're bombing or killing do you whereas if you're if you're a UX designer and you're doing a presentation on a drop down menu it doesn't matter if people are laughing or not well depends what the drop down menu is doing some people will be crying all the devs will be crying going we only chased it last week in those instances it's better to have everyone muted and cameras off. Yeah well yeah I think I find myself like way more argumentative and combatitive on on Skype and Teams and stuff than I am like in person.

SPEAKER_03: 39:03

I've definitely noticed that about myself well that's the other side to to this kind of forum isn't it any anything that is virtual isn't real which sounds like a a silly thing to say but there's that additional layer of interpretation yeah um you know especially when it comes to messages I think messaging on Slack is a very dangerous thing um because people are free to interpret what you say however however they like um and intonation doesn't come into it obviously it can't but at the same time it takes twice as long to record a voice note than it does to have a conversation because the person you've got to say it then they've got to listen to it. Whereas that usually happens mutually um so yeah I think a lot of this has changed how I perceive team dynamics and and what I want from team dynamics. I'm trying to Build a community of practice. Um and at the minute, my biggest struggle is just how to get in, how to get a foot in the door, because bringing people together in a virtual space to have fun in a work environment feels like just futile sometimes, you know. Uh and sitting at your dining table in a laptop screen with a glass of wine, which I am wont to do, is still not the same as doing it at a wine bar or um even at uh in the office.

SPEAKER_09: 40:36

Yeah. There is there is the kind of like over, you know, especially uh if we're uh taking it back to the topic, interviewing over screens can be a a challenge for some people. You know, not not only because of kind of like you know, they may need kind of like some uh assistance with digital technology or things like that, or can even having the the bandwidth or the access to uh the program you want to kind of interview them on. And I always find that's uh that's a kind of like a a little bit of a test or a challenge to get people in uh to do that, and I'm I'm sure there's it must be a hugely better way for you know kind of for us to interview people than kind of like saying like, oh, you know, I know for the last uh ten interviews you've been on Teams, let's do this one on Zoom and then next one we'll do it on buddy um what's the Cisco one that buddy oh uh We share or something Wibbly bird yeah and and then you think oh god I've got to install another thing and you can't test it before or things like that, and then then you kind of get panicked and WebEx as yes.

SPEAKER_03: 42:04

That was it.

SPEAKER_09: 42:06

And then then you thinking, and then you're kind of thinking, oh god, I've got the pressure of kind of getting this on, and anxieties and all all manner of kind of like putting people at ease, you know, and kind of like especially when they've not interviewed, you know, kind of like they've been in the same job during the pandemic, and before then it was face-to-face interviews. I think that that's a bit of a challenge, and that's uh that's a skill set that everybody's had to learn very quickly, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 42:37

And that's something yeah, I'd I exactly the same, like both actually both sides of it, like interviewing on on teams, but also then interviewing people um for the jobs that I had, and it's not something I even thought about before I started recruiting, and you know, like you say, it's a skill set that I had to pick up pretty quickly, but it makes me like as someone who has done both sides of that conversation, it was way better for me as someone applying for a job to attend a Teams call than like take time out of my day to travel somewhere physically and have a meeting in an office, you know, because I can I could take literally the the time required for the call out of my day to do it over Teams, and no one you know from my job would ever know that I'd applied for a job. Whereas whereas if you have to do it physically, you you're gone for you know potential.

SPEAKER_03: 43:35

I think that's a really important point though, because it speaks to the a kind of a new type of liberty, if you will, that um that employees have because it is easier for them to interview. And you know, there are met there's many an organization that exists or has existed which would scrutinize employees, and the moment they're going to interview somewhere else, ooh you can't quit because you're fired, sort of thing. Um and so I think I I do and I do enjoy that level of of freedom that that people have. I think it's an important uh it's important that employees have that power. I think it's justified.

SPEAKER_09: 44:20

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think um and it's kind of getting people, you know, to kind of feel comfortable. And I think as as an employee, uh, you know, it's kind of those you that's a skill you have to imply and make people comfortable and kind of like make them at ease, and you know, and that's that's why I always like to on kind of like any first conversations is have like a no pressure chat, yeah. Uh over uh anything else, and it's just kind of like, you know, have you got any questions about the role, kind of like what you do now, you know, and let's have a chat about your day, which is loads more insightful than going like, right, what have you done in the last five years or what have you done in the last two years? And tell me your success metrics and how two percent uh you know, you drove two percent more traffic, um, you know, straight away. Um it yeah, and then I I found like doing that I could quite quickly get through a lot of candidates than than kind of like going through kind of like loads of formal questions and then not having kind of like the answers.

SPEAKER_07: 45:35

If you want in that kind of relationship with them where it's like friendly, it's very difficult to establish that tone after you've had the like a formal conversation, isn't it? Whereas if you do it the other way around and it's like informal first, then you can you can it's probably arguably easier to switch to as and when you need it, like the slightly more formal way of like doing the business side of it. You get you get someone in like Paul says, and you're like, Hi, we've got 40 minutes to discuss uh the bullet points of your career over the past five years, shoot, and it's and then after that you're like, Oh, but I'm also a really cool and approachable guy. Like, let's let's talk, let's go for drinks or something.

SPEAKER_03: 46:18

Here's a panel of seven people, uh, you have 20 minutes to finish a technical exercise, we'll be sat here with our videos. You'll be watching challenges. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 46:27

I've actually I actually had an interview a little bit like that where it was just a fairly standard um first interview, and just like six like five or six people just attended the call and all just sat there silently as one person interviewed me, and I was just like, this is so unnecessary. And then did you say anything at the time? Uh no, I didn't. No, I didn't actually, but I almost I almost did, but I got like really weirdly uncharacteristically nervous by the end of the call.

SPEAKER_03: 47:02

Yeah, I'm not surprised though. You were in a room with six strangers and one person babbling at you like a fucking cauldron. I mean Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 47:12

They were still on the call from uh the the previous call.

SPEAKER_10: 47:16

Yeah, just got a front room. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 47:21

Yeah, I find I find stuff like that is and I think that's the that I mean this is what we were saying, isn't it? The it's it's it's one thing to be prepared as a interviewee to you know what how to how to communicate over over um virtual means or whatever. But uh I think there's it needs to be become more incumbent on uh organizations and interviewers to know the etiquette and to know how to put people and to have that empathy should be a basic requirement. The moment you think it's appropriate to have seven people interviewing one, you just I mean you you are clearly per saying you are one-seventh of the skills needed for the role you're interviewing for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're not, you know, you need other six other people to identify the other you're not trusted. That's it.

SPEAKER_07: 48:19

Have your own opinion on this, you need the backup of seven other people.

SPEAKER_03: 48:22

I I mean I remember Paul and I were in a grim interviewing situation as part of a panel of seven people, and it was one of the most harrowing experiences in my career. Never mind the poor bastards we were interviewing. That wasn't even for a job, as well. He was a customer. Um god, yeah. I don't think so for long, because he was um he was trained in our competitors software, so he was an active champion for it. Um any road. Yeah, so I think it's it's really important that um when you are building a team that you as an interviewer know what you want and know how to communicate that and can get that from your interviewees.

SPEAKER_07: 49:07

I think it's probably important as well to I know it I know you it might you might want to save face, but if you don't think you're capable of interviewing people, it's probably best that you say that because I had an interview with someone as a as an interviewee, had an interview with someone once, and the person leading the interview was like super nervous, and and it really put me off, and I probably didn't interview that well because this person was like nervous and a bit janky and quite hard to read, um, and put me on edge. And I think if if you're not if you feel like you're not up to the task of interviewing someone, it's in their best interest that you like tell someone within your team or your business that you know someone else might be best off doing this to read.

SPEAKER_03: 49:59

I did this the first couple of times. Paul asked Paul asked me if I wanted to be in an interview situation. And I said quite frankly, or at least I thought quite frankly, I don't know if I phrased it like this. I remember saying as much to Chris, I'm not going to interview someone for a job when they're that they'll get paid more than I do in. And I thought that was a that for me, I mean it's different for everyone, but that was my metric, you know. Um it wasn't even levels of seniority, to be honest.

SPEAKER_09: 50:28

I disagree with that though, because what I what I've found um really useful, and I think I think what I tried to do with you know the the team I used to manage is bring in people who've never had any interviewing experience, uh, and some juniors as well, uh, for two reasons. They can answer any questions, you know, kind of like what's it like on like the coalface, or what's it like, you know, the day-to-day that I could answer, but it'd be disingenuous for me to answer because I'm not doing that stuff. Um, but and then on the other side, you know, your colleague, your junior, the the person, uh they'll they'll they'll be able to gather feedback as well from a different perspective, and they'll also uh learn skills, you know, whether it's from you uh or whether it's from the interviewee. And they they'll then know going into a next interview uh you know, kind of what what they should do, what they look for, things like that. And I found that really useful to do. And and when I was junior-ish, um, you know, I remember going into an interview with the kind of like, you know, my manager, and it kinda it really opened my eyes, and it kind of you know, I saw work from a totally different perspective, and it was a really nice kind of like way of kind of like going, oh yeah, I need to focus on that, or you see somebody and kind of like they've got a like a nice portfolio or the presents something really well, and you know, you like what they do, you know, and then A, you make the case for them to be part of the team, and B, you know, you uh as we do in design, you steal their ideas. That's true enough.

SPEAKER_07: 52:24

Oh that will come in. Oh god, let's let's talk about doing design tasks as part of the interview process because fucking hit oh man. So I'm I'm at the point now where I've um recently like just refused, so I've just said I'm not doing that. You can see you can see that I can do the work and and there's also a probationary period, so if I do con you into taking me on board and I don't know what I'm doing, you can get rid of me anyway. But I'm not gonna sit at home and do free work, you know, like something I would charge quite a lot of money to do for for a company I'm not even that sure I want to work for. Yeah, that's another thing. That's another thing that I got asked once. Um, is that they said we we need you to prepare um an answer to the question, why do you want to work at so and so? And I was like, I don't know if I want to work in or not. That's what the interview's for.

SPEAKER_09: 53:21

You tell you tell me, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 53:24

It's a two-way process, is interviewing someone, it's not just um it's not just where the company, we've got all the money in there for you know, all the power once, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 53:33

You want to work for us because we say so, yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what that was. And I think a lot of that's something that I think is steadily changing, especially in um our type of role. It is uh an employees market now.

SPEAKER_07: 53:48

Um there are especially now, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 53:51

So to turn around and and assume that you that people want to work for you, it's quite a bold statement.

SPEAKER_07: 54:01

Well, yeah, so this is it. It it wasn't it wasn't the audacity of asking me the question, it was actually a good indication of the fact that this business is probably quite out of touch.

SPEAKER_03: 54:12

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And if the the user experience of the interview process was like assuming that everything was tickety-boo and perfect, then imagine what their UX approach to the product was going to be like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, this customer told us um they don't like this input, they're wrong. So can you go and do your proof wise? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 54:37

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, design tasks. Um I was I was very hesitant to to do that, like in in my in this current round of like employment that we went through. I think it's it's it's a little bit lazy, maybe. Like I should have I should be able to investigate their portfolio and speak to them and find out more or less everything I need to know, rather than just going like, go away and do something for me and bring it back.

SPEAKER_03: 55:06

Uh this is it. I think so. We do a design task uh as part of our interview process, which I've spoken about in the past, but it's a it's a live one. We'll give you a brief, you've got 20 minutes to talk us through how you'd approach it and to write it down. Um I don't think it's necessarily perfect because I think you're absolutely right. Realistically, we've got you know, we've got the ability to um ascertain someone's skill level through other means. I do wonder though, if there is a possibility for a new type of design task which is far more collaborative. Using something like Figma now, yeah, yeah, and something that again is that mutual interviewee interviewing the company as much as the interviewer, you could hop into a Figma file as as the interviewer and say, right, we're gonna work this out together. Maybe it's a mob session task. Yeah, yeah. I think that would be a far more interesting way to understand how someone works because very rarely do we work in isolation now.

SPEAKER_07: 56:08

Yeah, exactly, and how you would work with that person, which is like a really, really important part of hiring someone. It I'd thankfully I'd never had to make this decision, but I I did wonder what if someone on paper was absolutely ideal for the role, but we just couldn't talk, or we just couldn't get on, or you know, we didn't have that engagement when we talked to each other, and I did wonder like what what do you do in that situation? I think thankfully, you know, the people um I've spoken to that that were suitable for the role were also like really good engaged people, which is obviously you know why you end up hiring people, but yeah, what is that is that unfair? Like, is that a is that a valid thing to recruit under, like a specification to recruit under?

SPEAKER_03: 56:55

It's a specification, that's it. And I think as long as you're not saying great though you are, I hate you. Um it's it has to be taken into consideration because it's a soft skill. You know, um you don't have to love all of your colleagues. Um you know it helps, sure, but it's not a commune at the end of the day. You want to um you want to be able to work together, and so if you if a person has to put on a bit of a show, maybe they're an extremely introverted person that has certain mechanisms, but that again, that's fine. Yeah, as long as they work, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and I think understanding that um you know the the dynamics around a person's personality and how that fits into your team is very important because if you bring someone in and they might be brilliant, but let's say they are and you know, I'm gonna describe a very a fictional person, don't worry. I'll call him Nick to be fully make sure there's no confusion. But no, imagine that um you hire someone who was perfect on paper, but they were an arrogant swine, basically. They were they were overconfident or or the you know a bit of the old Dun and Kruger effect going on. That could re and and or let's say that they were um a bit a bit passive aggressive, uh a few microaggressions in there, those that could really undermine the the psychological safety of your team. And I think if you're managing a team, you have a responsibility to be mindful of that psychological safety.

SPEAKER_07: 58:39

Yeah, I think I think if someone's very good at what they do, but when they talk, they're a bit passive, aggressive, and arrogant. I don't think there's any danger of saying no to that person. Well, that's that's quite different. Like if you were to get someone in an interview who is good at what they do, clearly, from the work that they've done, and you know, maybe you've exchanged emails with them or you've chatted to them on LinkedIn when they saw the job spec or something, and it's clear that they can communicate. But when they get into the interview, the nervous, like being nervous in an interview is not a reason to discount someone for a job role, is it? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 59:17

No, no, I agreed.

SPEAKER_07: 59:18

But it's up to you as the person who's interviewing to identify that that you know this isn't necessarily how this person behaves all the time, it is an interview, and it can be um you know, interview conditions can be off-putting for some people, which is another thing about interviews, like they're completely unnatural, aren't they? And they're not even representative of the relationship between you and the person you're interviewing or the job that they're gonna be doing.

SPEAKER_09: 59:43

Yeah. I on on a little bit of a uh devil's advocate of kind of like you know, your um I'd I'd say kind of some of the things I look for when I'm recruiting is to be challenged in a in a good way. that in a you know and kind of like to push me out of my comfort zones um and i and i would always uh rather recruit somebody uh that uh would do that whether they were the best designer or the your best ux person in the world I'd rather have that person that helps and it's a little bit selfish but can like you know challenge me challenge my norms oh yeah totally and and kind of push me out of my comfort zone yeah yeah when I someone who can push back against you you can challenge your assertions yeah yeah or someone who knows something you know you don't know well well yeah exactly someone the best possible hire you could make is someone who you're scared is gonna take your job because it shows that they're really fucking good at what they do and you've got you've actually found a great candidate like if I could if I could fill out an entire team of people who absolutely terrify me that'd be great because we'd fucking fly through work. That would be good wouldn't it? Yeah yeah yeah um it's good um and going back to the um design challenge as well I'm I'm gonna play a bit of devil's advocate on this and I think I think where the where the design challenge is kind of like I and I do think it's lazy to pass a certain level but where I do think it's good is you know kind of like if people are coming into a different industry they've never worked in before or going into uh you know kind of like they may be a junior and they want to go from I don't know graphic design or webmastery uh into um into UX design webmaster the webmaster uh and you know and I think the design task then gives somebody an opportunity to prove they can do something else that's yeah that's a really good point yeah they haven't been boxed into their yeah they they haven't forced to been forced to specialise or yeah to to relate it helps your peace of mind yeah and it helps them to prove that they can do this thing they've never done before but it helps your peace of mind in potential for another job as well I think I'd not thought of that that's a really good point.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:29

I don't think that's entirely incom incompatible with with the point you were making though Nick which was mainly around you know the idea of of just handing some work over that you'd probably get a junior to do and then just plagiarising it after yeah well that's one thing yeah I mean I think I think the the diff the sort of with the new information that Paul's sort of brought up there I think the key is the amount of time you expect them to spend on it.

SPEAKER_07: 1:02:57

That's how they use because these people clearly have jobs already but the other thing is like I have definitely without question done design jobs that the companies have then gone on to use but not hire me for the job.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:09

Yeah yeah yeah definitely and that's that's a crime at the end of the day because um you didn't sign anything to say they own that yeah um and I think it's absolutely reprehensible but you know it's about the format and I think having a design task that allows you to observe one on one the way that someone f breaks out of their mould could be a very very useful experience.

SPEAKER_09: 1:03:40

Yeah I think I think the live the live tasks and you know the collaboration there's definitely you know that that for me is the way forward. I think that's a really nice but I think after a certain level um I remember speaking to um Tina about this and like you know I I don't even think you know my portfolio does me any justice anymore. You know more a more than portfolio and more than more than that if I present that and kind of like well yeah but you know it's some pictures it's good yeah yeah and it can tell a bit of a story around it and what I did and stuff like that but then it gets into this kind of like LinkedIn kind of like uh it grossing bullshitness you know everybody could like you know there's there's templates out there and things like that and I can like it doesn't I don't know you know I'm not you know not the run of the mill designer so don't yeah so don't don't tie me down guy yeah at what point does like the interview process or what level should I say does the interview process like change like if you're interviewing to be the head of UX is it still like in you have to interview and you maybe even at that level potentially have to do a task like at what point if you if you're coming in as like CEO you probably don't interview do you you just shake someone's hand on the golf course and that's that goes yeah yeah yeah I think you have to interview I still think you ought to interview as a farm yeah but that's probably it though innit man it's like it's like thank you dear cousin for this opportunity you don't go like here's a business you need to run do this for a month and then depending on how you well you do that we'll we'll bring you into the role um yeah there's a there's a possibility of a good uh boob c one uh reality TV show there's you could do that around our own government not to get too spicy but you know that's my opinion yeah um I noticed I noticed obviously the further up the chain you go as it were um the obviously the softer and more managerial your skills become and the the the wider your vision needs to be uh but at the same time if you were doing something like a collaborative task so say you run with that Figma idea and you do a collaborative figma task I think that would be a pretty universal thing to do because you'd want to know that your potential head of design was a collaborative spirit and could do whatever needed being to do you know if they needed to plug a gap.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:28

But I think the the actually the point I was going to make I think the nature of the interview depends on exactly who's hiring. And I'm fearful that when it comes to hiring head of UX very there's very little UX knowledge on the interviewer side.

SPEAKER_09: 1:06:46

Yeah yeah you know they've identified a need for this thing they've seen called user experience and the idea is that you sir go do that yeah yeah it's tricky yeah if that if that role has never existed there's no way of benchmarking it or things like that and I think sometimes as well you know um I remember working in big big corporate organizations there's there's certain questions you have to ask and there's certain kind of like forms you have to fill in after interviews and things like that and you have to follow exactly the same process no matter who comes in you know what the role is for who's coming in for it and things like that and I think that isn't right because those those you know kind of like say say you're going into um Bitcoin you know you're getting a job in Bitcoin do you need to know kind of like you know the how the code works behind Bitcoin as a UX designer maybe not perhaps it helps um oh I see what you mean right yeah yeah kind of like do you need to know kind of like the rules of accounting and uh the maybe it helps but no you don't need it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:03

Well that links back to complex systems in a way doesn't it yeah yeah and you don't have to understand the ins and outs of your software or your organization necessarily to influence a design in a positive way and to add value.

SPEAKER_07: 1:08:19

You don't have to understand astronomy you have to understand astronomers is that what it we said it was it was it was similar.

SPEAKER_09: 1:08:29

It was seismologists yeah yeah yeah that's it yeah wobble people wobble people oh yeah that was one of our uh most popular episodes wasn't it popular in a very loose sense of the term it's all relative yeah that they came into it and realised it wasn't about wobbling people or jelly and uh left straight away after about two minutes um but yeah I think personally I think you know kind of like the interview process should be tailored to the role that your employees I think what they were trying attempting to do there and failing was like the due diligence and fairness thing weren't they? Yeah but actually they were going maybe a little bit too far with it like you say yeah I think and that is a that is definitely important as well you know kind of like and then you know you're not just kind of like you know um get your mates around to refurbish your flat or uh asy and you know and I think I think putting those standards in that you know you're not recruiting and you kind of like but then I think that is then that skill isn't it being being challenged and being able to kind of like recruit people that you know you're not recruiting kind of like your you know your best mates you know you're recruiting from a a diverse pool of talent available at that time.

SPEAKER_07: 1:10:00

Yeah that was something that was really heartening to see myself is that this the the pool of people that we ended up with to to interview from was really quite diverse and I think you could probably always do more work to make sure it's even more inclusive and diverse but I was really impressed that it wasn't all just people that looked like me that uh you know we were we were talking to it was it was a very diverse pool of people which always which was really nice to see.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:27

I think it's a unnecessary part I think it's probably not spoken about in the spirit but when it comes to user experience design and creating universal experiences if you don't have a diverse representation then you're doing yourself a disservice.

SPEAKER_07: 1:10:43

Yeah uh but of course there's the you know the symptoms of of who who goes for a job and stuff like that um that is that's another podcast in itself like how far far down the quality um rabbit hole you've got to go before you understand just how systematic some of these things are um I uh to go again back to something Paul said though there was uh something that really brought this right around for me which was when you said when we are building a new team you don't necessarily have the benchmarks and I think that is fundamental to to obviously the conversation now which is building a new team so how do you how do you conceive of those benchmarks when you don't have the hard data do you remember what point you were gonna make no idea I was gonna I was just gonna say I do I do yeah I was gonna talk about the trading card the trading cards the kind of like um that we did that kind of give a bit of a flavour of kind of what people liked what they didn't like and a bit of personality to everybody that was um really useful we've done something similar or we're in the middle of doing user manuals like how to operate this member of the team kind of thing which is really nice it was um Tina's idea but yeah we've kind of filled it out a sort of individually and it it's it that's exactly what it is. So it's like you know if I've got my headphones on what does that mean? Does it mean you know like just off the top of my head it just means like if I've got my headphones on I'm I'm either in a call or I'm busy doing something I need to get finished kind of thing. And if if you needed to know that information you'd just open up the manual and be like oh Nick's got his headphones on that means fuck off basically but it's you know it's other things as well it's like what to talk to me about and that extends to like professionally like you know if you need to know something about Figma I'm probably one of the better people in the office to talk to or the component library which I'm uh and the design system which I'm leading you know that's for me you know come talk to me about that and then maybe Abby says like accessibility because she's very very good at that stuff yeah um you know like the the champion for that in the business or and then but you know it also extends to like movies or you know anime or video games and stuff like that it's quite the first the first two things we ever talked about in the 15 minutes of our meeting was uh cartoons I think it was Looney Tunes um more specifically and and then existentialism and we just sidled from one to the other um I've been wanting to do something similar to those persona um to to stuff like this to um we had persona cards um for us and that started actually with yourself Paul um and I'm hoping to to introduce something similar but you know this is it that changes a lot because of the virtual space yeah if Nick if Nick's got his headphones on it means he's listening to you in the meeting yeah yeah yeah if he's got his headphones off I was gonna say it means he's gone for a piss but in my experience he tends to leave his headphones on whilst he's doing that and the microphone and the microphone yeah yeah that could also could be uh listened to on the Patreon 20 pounds to faster horses only fans right should we do uh should we do a UX tombowler then the first UX tombower of 2022 I think we should shouldn't weird the width do it now make it so Mark Wheeler's stall is empty he needs a new product he needs a new product after selling out of all of Wilshaw trademark's frozen Christmas dinner for one he needs a new uh he needs some new products for he did have a bit of a nervous breakdown over over Christmas as we all saw he started crying in the podcast but that happens with with mark so so it's fine he's kinda kind of give him a curly whirly and send him on his way he's alright what the fuck are we talking about you crying I wasn't Mark was the other Mark I love that I love that you've got another personality also called Mark trying to mark it yourself as a creative while stuff there's a character I made up what's he called Mark it's called Mark um right so you don't think of mine I did not give him his name no no no that was I think that was me was it and the voice was yeah which which says yeah yeah which apparently I could just adopt submediately which is its special brand of disturbing yeah amazing yeah I don't know what came first there the the like the voice or the like whether I made the character up or you like put it in my head you just both I think it mutually arose it which is tectonically at the same time what what you don't know Nick is that every night Mark comes around your house and then whispers secret messages into your ear. Yeah yeah that like when you wake up the next morning you go ooh I've got this brilliant idea and Mark's the guy lowers himself down from the ceiling and goes job zips job zips it's just a series of buzzwords but somehow it retroactively turns into a product yeah right are we doing this That sound means it's time for UX Tomboler 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 spin the wheel Nick have we got any music or am I just making it up let's uh oh well we need a theme tune don't we but oh we yeah do we have our uh that's that's uh you deleted the the best one I had oh by accident when I was when you were fucking about with the soundboard yeah I've not found it since I remember that name I hear that right UX a bowler mark needs some things he can sell in the market at the weekend it's you're today worse every time it's just the atrophy atrophy of the universe personified the funniest thing about this is I know it's coming every time we do a podcast and I never think about it like ever. Not me either the joy of it though that's the absolute joy of it though but I could come up with something really snappy and intelligent and pretend to make it up but I don't even do that. I don't care enough to do it right and we will crank that crank that Tombola boy do it I love that you always put like it's more of a it's a lot of a temporal tomb tombola machine it's a bit it's a bit sticky around the axle that'll think well sorry about that right so today's subject I don't know if we've please stop I don't know if we've done this I feel like we might have done this one before shopping trolleys No I don't think we have a look we've talked about supermarkets and stuff like this I feel like shopping trolleys is a bit of a hack subject because I'm sure like every stand up comedian in the nineties has got a bit about shopping trolleys.

SPEAKER_06: 1:19:49

Oh they don't go where you want them to go do they oh shopping trolleys hey who made them the wheels the wheels are funny aren't they shopping trolleys

SPEAKER_07: 1:20:01

Do you remember? Do you remember shopping trolleys? Do you remember when your mum used to have a shopping trolley? She put you in it, wouldn't she? The shopping trolley. And the wheel, the wheel on the back could go like this, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:16

Or is this because this is a Peter Kerr joke, but you but you're well that was yeah, like my yeah, that was taking the piss out of Peter K.

SPEAKER_07: 1:20:25

Taking the piss out of Britain's most successful stand-up comedian, like I could do any better.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:30

You know, so I mean you did just did, by all accounts.

SPEAKER_07: 1:20:33

Yeah, do you remember? Remember Georgian architecture. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:38

Just talked about things northerners do. I mean, I do think it's hilarious, but you know, that says more about me as a northerner than I think anything else. Um trolleys. Shopping trolleys, I think, are a necessary evil. Um I still think it's fucking absurd that I have to remember in times of love in the time of COVID, a pound coin. Yeah. Not to mention love in the time of inflation, what's the fucking pound coin now? What costs a pound coin?

SPEAKER_07: 1:21:10

Well, it's a cashless society as well, isn't it, pretty much now?

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:13

Well, that's it, that's it. And I think that well, they should just not have them secured that way. Secure them at night so no one gets at them. Have your security guard do his job and make sure no one's pissing about with the trolleys. And make it so I don't have to arm myself with three baskets because I happen to have forgotten a pound coin because I've not used cash in the past six fucking months.

SPEAKER_09: 1:21:40

That is the worst ever. And then you get you go in and go like, oh shit, I've not got a pound coin, and then you've got like yeah, baskets on each hand, yeah. And then kind of like you by the time you get to like the um the wine aisle for you, Mark, you know, you're kind of like you're trying to put like 20 20 bottles of wine in a shopping basket, it's just impossible.

SPEAKER_07: 1:22:01

So I've already got a UX solution to this, which is I've got a little keyring on my car keys that have a token on it, so it's a keyring with a hole through it, and you undo the token and the token goes in the pound slot of the trolley. And I will never go to a supermarket without driving there, which ensures that I've always got that token on my car keys.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:21

But that's your solution, that is something you had to come up with. Why the fuck was it incumbent on you to carry around a small bit of plastic or metal, which has no doubt got some pounds?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:32

The supermarket sold me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:35

For a pound coin, typically for a fucking pound coin. Do you know? Do you want to know something really interesting about those little those little counters? Because they are the size and shape of a pound coin, they work in gumball machines. Go and do that. The problem go and do that.

SPEAKER_07: 1:22:55

Cost more than it would cost to get cost more than a pound coin and a gumball.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:02

I suppose that is true. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:04

You'd ripped it yourself off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:07

They get you get the given to them at um corporate events as well, don't you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:23:12

Um I got one with a game. I got one with Rage 2. Do you remember that game? Oh yeah. The fuck?

SPEAKER_06: 1:23:19

I've got so it's a it's a game about a post-apocalyptic uh post-apocalyptic post-apocalyptic.

SPEAKER_07: 1:23:28

Post apocalyptic. Post-apocalyptic. I'm just gonna keep saying that over and over again.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:34

Being Nick Tomlinson.

SPEAKER_07: 1:23:36

A post-apocalyptic wasteland, right? Where it's like a Mad Max dystopian future, and they thought the best thing to promote that with would be a trolley trolley token.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:47

That fame that that game famously had um sub themes of conscientious shopping, so you know it's only natural that they should push that in the marketing.

SPEAKER_07: 1:23:57

It was an invitation on 24 21st century uh consumerism.

SPEAKER_09: 1:24:02

I'm a I'm a strong believer that one of the things that remain after any post-apocalyptic event um would be uh shopping trolleys. Although the wheels, wheels in every river. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:21

Well, I saw I remember one of my I don't know why this is one of my favourite favourite scenes from the film, but um 28 days later, when the uh man and woman, whose name I care not to remember, have uh clambering up a stairwell, and at the bottom of the stairs, he's has an alert alert system, an alarm system, a pile of shopping trollers. Yeah, because they're so fucking awkward to move, and they're so fucking difficult that not even the brainless undead bothered with it. And here we are, a caricature of those very brainless beings pushing them around supermarkets, you know, in our slippers. Well, not me, because I've got integrity at least in some form, in our slippers, fighting over reduced um spam skinned milk and spam, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:16

Skined milk.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:17

Yeah, that's those that's always the one that gets put on reduced because who the fuck drinks that just to eat the skin off the top.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:25

Like a good custard.

SPEAKER_09: 1:25:28

Um but yeah, but back to trolleys though.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:32

Um yeah, love this subject.

SPEAKER_09: 1:25:34

Yeah. So the the trolley itself isn't it's not bad, UX, but there's there's it's got a few holes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:48

Thank you for joining us, but uh 2022. Um that's all you'll be hearing for the rest of the year. I quickly believing I'm going to be murdering Paul's to stay first.

SPEAKER_09: 1:26:03

No, but um, jokes aside shit. Um that one of my massive bunk bags of trolley, you put stuff in it and things fall through the holes, or you get kind of like um especially little items, or you know, and kind of it makes me think as well that people, you know, uh it gets you kind of like things in bags, you want things in bags because, like, you know, you're not gonna put a like a tub of radishers in your shopping trolley because uh without doubt 40% of them will go through the whole thing in the trolley, but yeah, some kind of dystopian Kaplinko machine.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:50

Go on pachinko machine.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:54

Kaplinko machine oh sorry uh to talk about the Kaplinko machine.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:03

That'll be the name of of this of this trolley solution.

SPEAKER_07: 1:27:08

No, I think I think shopping trolleys are pretty good. I think, like I say, it the hacky thing is to say that they're shit and they don't behave, but it the for for what the four they're actually fine, like you're not supposed to use them at high speeds, and if the if the wheel on it, if the wheel on it is going all fucking, then it's just broken, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:29

Anything can broken shopping trolley. But this is this is why exactly why I'm getting so visually upset, is because the shopping trolley is fine. How has such a ridiculous series of systems emerged around it? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:27:45

You know, it's one of those things that just only exists for that purpose, isn't it? Like the it doesn't look like anything else from anything from any other walk of life.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:56

There's a there's different pop culture references to this. I remember there's a Terry Pratchett novel uh where shopping trolleys start to materialise. Um and it's and and I can't remember why, but it is very funny. It's like uh just you'll just have to take my word for that. Um but like there's all it's it's in other references as well where a shopping trolley is the one symbol uh that humans have been there or something like that. Oh right, unlike anything else, yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 1:28:25

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I I another thing about shopping trolleys is I think they're fine with children under the age of like four.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:36

I thought you were gonna say it with children under them as well.

SPEAKER_09: 1:28:44

Because you've got seats and things like that. But then anything beyond that, then it becomes a little bit of a a bloody nightmare.

SPEAKER_07: 1:28:56

Do you know what? You've just you've just pointed out that like they're actually pretty good because whoever designed them thought about putting a child seat into it that like folds that actually folds out and doesn't take up any space when there's no child in it. Like, I think they're actually I think they're actually pretty good. If you're taking your teenage son out, Paul, and he's uh he's acting up and you're and you're saying that there's why is there no you can't blame a trolley for your parenting style at all.

SPEAKER_09: 1:29:27

Can I not have a lid that goes over with a that's it?

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:32

Just the the basket of the trolley again inverted on top as a lid. It's like a cage, and then you've got an immediate cage, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:40

Yeah. That would that would work. But so far, the UX solution we have for a trolley is just a trolley. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:29:47

Um that's fine. Maybe like sometimes we're gonna encounter things in UX Dumbola where the UX of it is actually pretty good. This is uh in which case it's just a celebration of the trolley.

SPEAKER_11: 1:29:58

You know, I'd like to hear an opera about that.

SPEAKER_10: 1:30:05

Trolley Perfects, perfect.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:11

Yes, your Aria.

SPEAKER_13: 1:30:14

Yeah, lovely, lovely.

SPEAKER_10: 1:30:16

That's my Aria.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:20

Um but yeah, the systems around it are what fucked me off. The fact that I uh you know a supermarket goes through all these lengths to make sure that floors are clean and and and shelves are stacked a certain way, and there's no light, so I don't know what time it is, so spend more time in there and things are uh are put in certain ways, and yet they still make me remember to bring a phone coin.

SPEAKER_07: 1:30:43

Yeah, it's just they've added some complexity, what with COVID now, where you get like a cleaning down station that you're encouraged to use.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:52

Yeah, and I think that is ultimately fine because it's provided. Um and I'm happy, you know, I'm happy to do that as part of a COVID initiative, providing I don't have to remember to bring my own trolley cleaning station from home. And so far that's not happened.

SPEAKER_07: 1:31:12

So your your annoyances with the fact that you are it's incumbent upon you to bring your own pound.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:20

That is exactly what my frustration is, yes, and I am going to die on this hill. I think that's fair enough, to be fair.

SPEAKER_07: 1:31:27

There's no the reason to do it is because, as you say, they they end up in like canals and god knows where if because people just can't be trusted. And unfortunately, you can't change the minds of of idiots, so you've got to do something about it and you've got to chain it up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:45

And apparently the one thing that does change the mind of idiots is the surcharge of one pound. One pound. I mean it does, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_09: 1:31:57

Is it the the the the the psychological barrier? But wasn't wasn't there a while ago before they put in some laws uh somebody was putting in pound coins in shopping trolleys, taking them to a metal recycling, and then getting like ten pounds, so kind of like it was up like 90% uh of kind of like his investment uh of one pound and wiped out the whole shopping trolley population in that town. Uh and it just yeah, and it's like the the power. I think as well, didn't um a school kid uh win a James Dyson award for uh solving this, and they kind of like had this thing and uh basically it was uh an Apple Air tag inside the handle, so the the trolleys have GPS location on the similar thing that they do, like this there's a at S well the Sainsbury's in Halifax, I remember famously because it solved one problem but it created another one.

SPEAKER_07: 1:33:00

So you can freely take the trolleys from outside Sainsbury's and around the bounds of the supermarket, they've got like a magnetic strip on the floor, and if the trolley passes that magnet, it locks the wheels, so you can't take them any further. So that stops the problem of people stealing them, and if you really want to take it, you've got to drag it the rest of the way with like locked wheels. However, if you in an empty car park run with a shopping trolley as fast as you possibly can, and then let go of the trolley and make sure that it passes the magnetic strip on the floor, it does a flip.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:38

So me and my friends used to spend evening after evening entertaining themselves watching uh 30 mile an hour shopping carts do flips through the air.

SPEAKER_09: 1:33:48

Oh dear, this is before Netflix was invented.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:51

I think Paul Gladysh, what Gladys walking back past walking a dog gets taken out by a flipping, literally a flipping shawlish.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:01

Literally a cart wheel.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:05

Oh crazy. Oh well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 1:34:08

So have we come up with any kind of solution or products for shopping trolls?

SPEAKER_12: 1:34:12

Yeah. Hello, I'm Mark Sealer, and today I have for you the shopping trolley. Thank you, and good night. What I have done here is I've got two shopping trolleys and I've taped them together. And that way I have two shopping trolleys.

SPEAKER_08: 1:34:34

No, what it should be is I'm Mark Steeler and I've got a fantastic deal for you. I've recently come I've recently come into a collection, a huge backlot of shopping trolleys I acquired for a pound each. I'm selling them. I'm selling them to you for two pounds. A trolley for life. Trolley for life. Trolley for life.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:57

The ability to take your trolley with you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:03

It sounded like somebody was dying.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:10

Just get that's it, that's it. Trolleys are so good, a trolley for life, and once you die, you'll be buried in it. The bottom of a canal with the rest of them.

SPEAKER_09: 1:35:24

Love it. Okay. Well what's what what's the product? Trolleys for life. Love it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:30

Yeah, yeah. It's uh trolleys for life.

SPEAKER_12: 1:35:34

Hello. I'm Mark Sealer, and I'm here today with Trolleys for Life. I already explained the concept twice in the consciousness of two different men. So I'm gonna draw my line here. If it needs me, I'll be in Saint Fritz Car Park on an unrelated adventure.

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:00

Oh well, solved. Solved the trolley, solved because it didn't need any solving.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:11

Well, solved by greater minds than ours. Small holes, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:36:16

Small holes and no no pound coins. If it didn't have such so many holes on it, they wouldn't sink in canal, would they?

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:22

This is true, but then you wouldn't have a trolley, you'd have a boat, and that's a very different solution.

SPEAKER_09: 1:36:27

That sounds perfect. With climate change.

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:30

Uh this is true, yeah, yeah. Increasingly popular in Holland.

SPEAKER_12: 1:36:37

We strapped three of them together, and now I live here.

SPEAKER_09: 1:36:43

You go to Venice and get on the the famous um trolley gondola. Yeah. A man with a big baguette pushing in Sandspries trolley.

SPEAKER_04: 1:36:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:59

Which it looks up the holes with radishes or something. I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_09: 1:37:03

Oh, that that reminds me.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:04

That was the thing of I'm sorry, it reminds you. What could it possibly fucking remind you of? It reminds me of when I was in a sanitarium one time.

SPEAKER_09: 1:37:15

No, the the the baguette. Um trolleys at one point had like baguette holders.

SPEAKER_07: 1:37:20

They did, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 1:37:22

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_07: 1:37:22

And they're that way you're supposed to put your your scan and pay thing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:26

It I think it is now, yes.

SPEAKER_09: 1:37:28

Yeah. You sort of put a baguette into that scan little scan and pay thing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:35

They've got they've got the they've got the little space at the the little fenced off compartment at the front for your bottles.

SPEAKER_10: 1:37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:44

Or in my case, for everything that isn't bottles.

SPEAKER_09: 1:37:48

It's very useful. Can can I uh suggest a product actually for uh Mock Stealer to sell on the is an all-in-one, so it's a device with a pound coin attached to it and a mobile phone holder. So you put it on the shopping trolley, it releases the shopping trolley, and you put your mobile phone in it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:12

That sounds like the kind of thing you get at a convention.

SPEAKER_12: 1:38:15

Hello, I'm Mark Sealer, and I'm announcing my first product roadshow, including all the products from Faster Horses. And you will receive in your goodie bag a block of corn beef and a coin a coin on a string. Faster horses gone at Bolton Arcade. 2021. 2021. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:38:51

Love it. Love it. Nice. Right. I think I'm gonna go and have some corn beef now.

unknown: 1:39:00

Really?

SPEAKER_11: 1:39:00

A nice nice ploughman.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:03

I'm not, I'm actually gonna go and order sushi.

SPEAKER_07: 1:39:05

Oh, I want sushi.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:07

What? Yeah. I'm not eating properly today, so I need to order some food.

SPEAKER_09: 1:39:12

Ah, you're getting the delivery.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:14

Yeah, it will do. 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 hossest new products from Bolton Arcade's own Mark Steeler. Special thanks to James Med for our theme shoot. I'm Mark Sutcliffe. I'm Nick Tomlinson. I'm Paul Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Fasterhorses UX, and we'll catch you in two weeks for more Faster Horses.