the ux matto show

+1 Diverse Experience — A conversation with Tim McKenna — E04

Duration:: 1h 0m
Broadcast on:: 04 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

The conversation covers topics such as Tim's transition from music to design, the different paths people take to enter the design profession, and the need for foundational knowledge in design. We also explore the challenges of assessing skill gaps in a team and helping individuals fill those gaps.

In this conversation, Tim McKenna discusses the need to create a more unified and inclusive design profession. He highlights the importance of embracing the diverse backgrounds and experiences of designers and finding ways to integrate them into the field. Tim also reflects on the challenges of balancing work and personal life, overcoming fear and uncertainty, and the value of continuous learning. He shares his passion for brewing beer and the satisfaction he finds in helping others. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of growth, balance, and community in the design profession.

00:00 Introduction and the Unreliability of Memory
00:38 From Music to Design: Tim's Journey
02:23 The Different Paths to Design
07:51 Wherein we actually start talking about design stuff...
14:19 Comparing the Then and Now
29:18 Filling... Bridging? ... Skill Gaps
37:46 7 +/- 2 Questions
37:59 What is one thing you would change about your profession?
41:25 What's one thing you wish more people cared about?
42:49 What accomplishment are you most proud of that you weren't paid to do?
45:21 No salsa, mild salsa, or spicy salsa?
45:43 What's your favorite place on earth?
47:19 What do you wish you'd done differently?
52:55 What would you do for a living if you left what you're doing now?
57:37 What do you hope to not be carrying anymore?
59:54 Like and Subscribe?

- Yeah, it's perfect. - But you, I'm the third person you spoke to who came in through music, like that was their profile. - Yep. - A lot of former musicians, now designers. - Yeah. - How many of them said they would go back to music? - Yeah, I didn't figure any of them. We got out for a reason. - Yeah, exactly. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So Tim, who the hell are you? - Well, Matt, that's a good question. Who are all we? Let's see, I'm a design leader, put this in the air quotes. Meaning I do a lot of cat herding throughout my day, but then a designer for the last 18 years, ever since I got out of music. And fell in love with design because it was something that I didn't really know was a career, but then when I learned about it, I was like, "Holy hell, yeah, I'm really good at this. "I know I can talk about this, I can do this." So that I've been working in design in all facets of design for the last, like I said, 18 years. And then I got into people management about 10 years ago because as much as I was a pretty good designer, I'm better at actually helping people understand how to do their work really well and help them be successful. So yeah, but I have a PMP, which I got for jokes, I was like, "I wanna have a PIMP at the end of my name." And I thought that would be hilarious, but then I didn't realize how actually hopeful that would be for me as a designer and design leader to like organize all my stuff. And I got a bunch of other certifications from other industries and stuff. So my name could be AlphabetSoup at the end on LinkedIn for the Riz and for all the professionals. Yeah, now I'm at this point where I'm just like, I'm helping to lead design and helping my designers be successful and help them navigate the waters that is professional life 2024. All right, so let's dig into the, so you're the fourth person I've talked to so far and the third of the fourth person who has mentioned previously being a musician before getting into design and not doing this on purpose, but what the hell? I mean, tell me more about the music stuff if you want to talk about it. Oh yeah, no, music's fun. So we're going to go back to the good old days of the early 2000s when there was a metal core band, a dime a dozen everywhere. There were tons of bands that were starting to get a lot of like interest from like the Indian alt scene, but then like started becoming like darlings on MTV and MTV two was big at this time and they just had tons of hardcore and metal core bands left and right. Warp Tor was still a major festival that people went on. It was a lovely little music festival called Health Fest in New Jersey that was just metal core, metal bands, punk rock bands and this was my time in high school. Like I was in, I was in high school from '99, 2003. This music scene really exploded. And before that, like the most metal, most punk rock and it was like Metallica or Slayer and all my other friends were in a Blink-182 and I was into the exploited. So I was definitely on the heavier side of things. And in high school, there was just this explosion of music, bands that you would have laughed at like five years ago were becoming big. Green Day was getting recognized for rock and roll Hall of Fame and I really wanted to be a part of that scene. And I didn't have the greatest of the counselors, the high school counselors was like, "Oh, you could go to school here." They were like, "Yeah, you can continue working at your job at the convenience store down the street." So in typical kind of like my own punk fashion at the time, I said, "Screw them." And I had been playing drums for a little bit with just some friends, but I really went into it like whole hog throughout high school. So there's a number of bands. And during my last year of school, I got connected with some guys who live in the text town over. I live in central Pennsylvania. So it is super small. It's always like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Like if you know one guy, that person knows this other person over here. And having grown up in Mechanicsburg, which is like Brett Michael's hometown from Poison, music was just kind of everywhere. So I got connected with a couple of guys in Camp Hill and they were doing this like metal core, hardcore type style music and they needed a drummer. I auditioned. I joined or playing in this little squat basement of theirs they had in this house they rented. And we started playing shows locally. Wasn't many places that would like a metal core band to play at. But then we started playing a lot more and we were getting invited out to shows in Philadelphia and in Baltimore and Pittsburgh. And I was the one that really wanted to make this like a career. So I was the one calling up venues. I was the one like kind of booking shows. I was the one that was renting the vans so that we could actually go to shows. And slowly but surely we started getting a little bit of a following. So this was like 2002, 2003, a couple of years where we actually made it onto Warp Tour. We did two stints on Warp Tour, one on Hellfest. And we traveled all over the east coast and we did get signed for a little bit the small little mom pop record store out in Philly that also had their own label they signed us. And yeah, that was like my life from 2002 until early 2006. You know, it was a short lived time. I was playing like I said, I was playing drums and I was like the kid in the candy store whenever we go on tour. I would go meet all the other bands and I would talk to them and whenever they needed like a drummer to fill in because their drummer fill, I was like, yeah, I'll do it. But the dream died pretty quickly as much as it grew. I got tired of being the manager of the band. I got tired of like driving everywhere. I ended up getting SARS because we played a show in Toronto when SARS was a big thing. I thought I had like the flu or something and they're like, I saw me in Buffalo and I'm like, dude, you have SARS. I'm like, oh, that's why I feel like crap. So after our last tour, the writing was on the wall. My band was like, they were all tired of each other. We were living in a van for most of our summers and whenever I'd come home, I would work like a dog at like the convenience store at other places. And I was like, guys, I'm out. Like, I'm done. And they were all kind of feeling it too. They all wanted to do different stuff as well. But it was because of music, it was because of the relationships I made on tour that actually led me to design. So most people think, yeah, when you think about design stuff, like, oh, album covers, stuff. There was a lot of like, musicians that were doing album covers. But then I got to meet the Clark brothers from the band, Demon Hunter. And funny enough, they're a Christian metal core band. The name Demon Hunter, they turned a lot of heads in the crowds. But they have their own studio for a while called Asterix Studio. And at the time, they were starting to do more client work for larger organizations. And one of those organizations ended up being Target. They helped to create targets in-house design team. So I met those guys and met those guys on tour, and I met Jacob Bannon from Converge. He's a New England hardcore band, seminal band. And he does a lot of album covers, a lot of graphic design, and a lot of just like really cool art, but also does a lot of industrial design as well. And he was just teaching me terms left and right. And I was just soaking it up. Like, I was learning more about design throughout my touring than I actually ended up doing in college. So what ended up happening was my last tour of my band, we were with the band called Walls of Jericho. Walls of Jericho is like a more modern hardcore, like more modern '80s, like New York hardcore style band. And they had a great sound. They had a great following. And they just released an album called All Hail the Dead. And it was this like skeleton factory of people walking in and dead bodies coming out. It was cool, you know? It was just like, this is some cool imagery. So I was then gonna go to schools and take a look at like what their programs they had to offer. And I went to this small art school in Philadelphia called Hushin School of Art, the tour super tiny. Like the school had only been around like right after World War II and was originally started as a way to give returning vets. An opportunity to get into commercial art. So they were big into illustration and commercial art, which graphic design eventually became. Yeah, it was like 150, 150 kids total. That was it, all four years. So I'm walking around the school and I remember, you know, this little old director of recruitment, she's like, yeah, look at all this stuff. And here I walk into the one room, it's a 10 foot by 10 foot painting of that Walls of Jericho All Hail the Dead album. And I'm like, what is that? And she's like, oh, yeah, like that's one of our seniors. Mark, he did this for this band. And I think like they used it. They took him out and took him to dinner and everything and they actually used his artwork. I'm like, wait a minute. He's a student here. She's like, he's still a student. He's a senior now. That was my entire decision-making process. I'm like, I'm going here. I made no one, I didn't look at any other schools. I didn't look at any other things. They had to show them in the school. I was just like, I'm going here. So then I signed up and I joined in August of 2006 and that's the decision ever. Purely based off of just one album cover that I was like, if they can produce that here, I'm going here. - Yeah. I don't know. I think that, you know, if the school's accredited and it has stuff you want to learn, it doesn't matter where you go as long as you're interested in being there, right? And so I think a 10 by 10 foot album cover is enough of a distinction as like, this place is covered in ivy. Why not? - I was lucky. Based off that entire decision, I'm like, you know, I don't know. I don't know anything else about this school. I was super lucky to have amazing instructors that really gave a shit about design that really cared about quality teaching. They really cared about teaching it too. So first two years was all just like foundational level stuff. There was no differentiating from your major. Like everyone had foundational art, foundational design courses and we were all together and these teachers really did. They cared a lot. And by our third year, we could then either specialize. I went to graphic design and a lot of other students went into illustration. And I initially wanted to be an illustrator, but there was just one problem. That was terrible at illustration. I wanted to go there and be, I wanted to be an illustrator to make monsters for the Dungeons and Dragons like Monster Manual. Like outside of being like a, you know, a music nerd, I'm a true role-playing game nerd in the classic sense. Like I can tell you what is a displacer beast versus, you know, something else made up. And I wanted to do that, but I was terrible. I didn't really develop any sort of skill in illustration whatsoever. But the Dean looked at my portfolio that I kind of hobbled together. And he's like, you've actually got a pretty good eye for design. Oh, there's that word again. Like I learned these from these other guys. Like this is cool. There's a difference. Like I didn't know really what design was. And then I started learning just like the basics. I was eating it up. I was, I was showing up as that like goody-tushu first and from the class. Like, hey, what are we learning today? I'm taking a bunch of notes. And I'm already a little bit older than most of the folks in this, you know, in this first year because I was already 21. And I've got a bunch of classmates of mine. They're just fresh out of high school. And they just first time away from everything. They're experiencing everything for the first time. And here I am showing up like, you know, like I said, the goody-tushu. Just like, let's learn stuff today. Yeah. So now that you're doing the arithmetic correctly, you know, a decade and a half out of the school, and you're looking back at the instructors and their foundational teachings, and, you know, setting aside the fact that some things have changed in the past 15 years, but how do you feel that prepared you based off of what you know now? That is a great question. When I mentioned that I had really good instructors, there was a couple of facets to that, which was they were teaching me foundational knowledge of color theory, you know, layout, just, you know, human psychology, just like how people interact with stuff. That was great because I didn't have any of that. But at the same time too, because this was a for-profit college, and there's a lot of issues with, you know, for-profit, you know, higher education and stuff. But the great thing about Hushin was that every one of the professors, so all teachers, like that wasn't their full-time job. Like they taught, but they were also like agency directors. They were in-house. We had the gentleman who taught me Quark, which kind of date myself here, Quark Express. He was the in-house design lead for Aramark Tower. You know, a couple of walks over in Center City, Philadelphia. So the other facet of what they taught me was like, here's what it's really like. We're not gonna give you some like fluff of like, you know, work hard and your talent will drive there. They're like, no, you need to show up every day and to be doing your damnedest, you need to be doing 10 designs or 10 sketches and throw nine of them out because you're not gonna get, you know, don't get married to them. The way that they taught was, here's how it actually works in the real world. That same instructor, the one that was the design lead at Aramark, he came into class one day and he's like, remember this number? 28.5, what's that? He asked all of us, what do you think that number means? It's like, I don't know. Getting out of awards I'm going to get. Like, you know, we were all just being like dumb and stuff. We had no idea. It was like 28.5, that's your starting salary that you're gonna get when you get out of here. And you'll be lucky if you get more. And man was he right. First full time job when I got out of school was actually 29.2. So I was like, yes, I'm bucking the trend that he said, but he was right. So what my instructors, what school had taught me really was more of a credit to the instructors because they could have just taught a curriculum and then on your own merry way. But they really cared, they really gave a damn and they really wanted to see all of us succeed because the way that they saw it was, if you're successful in your career, then I'm doing my job as an instructor because then I might hire you. And we've had several students that were then hired on by different folks or different instructors to work on different projects. So that was in a sense, that's the thing that I got the most from school with my experience in school, was that it was a great learning opportunity for what the real world working in design was going to be like at that time. - Yeah, it's one thing that's been kicking around my brain for the past, okay, a while. Is design UX services or whatever is the darling of the day. People come to it from so many different places through so many different paths. - Yeah. - And I think that's both wonderful and both aggravating is not the right word, but a little challenging, maybe, for the people to be like, you know, if I'm trying to build a team or if I'm trying to run a team, I can say, here's the five minute brief, go get 'em, Tiger. And based on everyone's background education experience, you're gonna get as many different perspectives as you have people addressing the problem, which is understandable, again, but at the same time, I'm like, you know, my path was weird. I came, I got a job making 30K and as a tech writer, and then I moved over to the design team and I didn't really know a lot about design and the company brought in Jenny Redish, Jeff Rubin, Bob Bailey, to learn about interviewing techniques, usability testing, human factors. They brought in the people who were writing the books at the time to teach us week long, three week long courses on this stuff. You went to a school specifically about this. Some people go to boot camps, some people learn by doing on YouTube and it's just, it's fascinating to me and also a little frustrating that we are all coming from these different paths and we're supposed to, not supposed to. I don't wanna say that. We try to present as a profession and yet I think it's just, I don't really have a point per se, but like I'm, because I'm still really curious about understanding more of like where people come from, how they get to where they've gotten, how that past has helped them or hindered them. - Yep. - Because I see it hindering a lot of people where they've, it almost doesn't matter so much what the path is, but it does tend to skew more toward the people who do like self-taught stuff. Somehow they've made it to a senior designer position and real examples have never spoken to a customer. - Yeah. - And there's more to it that, it's more like about the organizations and title inflation as a way of, we can't pay you more, but here's a bigger title. So there's a lot going on there, but I've been kind of focused on that whole education part of things. And it's so good to hear what your experience was. - Right. You are definitely hitting on a number of topics there that have been top of mind as of even today, but has also just been something that I've been thinking a lot more about as getting up to close to 20 years now in this field. So I have had a myriad of designers on my team currently and past teams that I've led, they've come in through anthropology and they've come in through psychology and they make great researchers. They understand human psychology in a way that is so innate and in tune with like here's how we can make our products better. And then I have a lot of graphic designers like myself. I went to school for graphic design and through a combination of continuing education, trial and error, mentorship, and just like faking it until I make it until I actually learned what the hell I was doing, made the transition into UX and then learned more about service design. And a lot of that was just like my own voracious appetite to continue to learn and grow. I have had other designers that came up kind of similar path, like they got into UX from graphic design and they're really great visual designers and maybe some pretty good UI or interaction folks, but when it comes to talking with customers, they're a little like what? And then when it comes with more of my academic minded or that route with like anthropology or psychology, designing anything in any sort of tool scares the hell out of them. And then you've got a lot of content that influx of that wrote there. So I have a lot of content designers now that have come up as through a UX content strategy, journalism background, maybe some marketing, while where their path came into play and they find themselves also doing a lot of like, product design, but they have a different kind of lens and a focus. And I think you're right, like our industry is interesting because there's so many different routes people can take to get in to design as a whole. But it does create a little bit of a conundrum of like how to present as a profession. What are the things that are going to make us successful as designers? What are the things that are going to uphold our profession? Like what, how do we uphold this? And what are the things that are denigrating it? I'll be honest whenever I see like, hey, which design A or B on LinkedIn? I'm like, guys, this is not, this is not a popularity contest. - Option C. - Yeah, option C. - Yeah, option C. - So we do it again. - Yeah. - And when I found this, I've learned from all of them. I've learned how I can improve. I've learned how I can help other individuals. I've learned like, what's not going to work for certain folks? And then I've also learned like, hey, maybe you're actually like, actually more better suited for this. And I have a story, like I have a really great manager when I work to pro-core technologies, a really great, she was a director on a pizza. She won't, she should be cool if I use her name on a heater. No design background whatsoever. Clinical psychologist. And through her work in clinical psychology and like giving, making some friends in industry network connections, she was a great people leader, great problem solver. But admittedly, she's like, I'm not a designer by trade. So this is, it's interesting that I learned a lot from her in psychology. I learned a ton from her in this regard, but she would never like openly say like, yes, I'm a designer. But here she is working in design capacity in a leadership role. And she's fantastic. And then there's other people in our industry that are in roles and in positions that maybe should have no business in there. And how it makes you wonder like, as a profession, as this profession continues to grow and it continues to mature, how do we think about? And how do we make sure that we are inclusive of all the different ways people come into it? But also how do we create some sort of, I'll say like unification of things are unified front, but there's some word that's escaping me in this regard is like basically I don't want design to shoot itself in its own foot. - Yeah. - And I don't know how we do that. I'm still, it's still top of mind because you know, here years later, I started teaching myself. I actually just wrapped up like my sixth year of teaching at York College of Pennsylvania. I'm teaching web design. And I just remembered all of my professors in school that were like super helpful. And I was trying to teach them everything that I knew. I had an entire class just on interviewing and how to prepare your resume. School didn't care. Like I just teach web design. Like no, I want you to be successful and I want you to have a job after this class. And I want you to like talk about good tenants of design and just pay that forward then. And after teaching for six years, web design one and web design two, pretty glad I've had a pretty good success for you. Most of my students have gone on to move in and actually be employed in design. And, but I just think about how students come into it. And very interestingly, and this is, this actually goes back to when I was in school, there was a number of students when I was in school and then when I taught, there's like, I just want to go and design 'cause I don't want to have to like do business or I don't have to do math or I don't want to do this. I like being creative. And then I'm just thinking, oh, my sweet son or child, have you no idea what's in store for you? - Yeah, yeah. It's like you're going to have to get into all of that. - Yeah. - You want to be successful at this? Eventually you're going to have to involve with all of that. - Yup. I remember telling the students and, you know, I would always have one phrase that would scare the hell out of them. It was like, stakeholder management. What's that? I'm like, oh, you'll learn. - So, you know, I wonder, or I wanted to point out that I have an asterisk and unsaid asterisk until this moment about what I meant with the like the senior designer who hasn't talked to a customer. And I'll put an asterisk there to say, recognize that people work at companies who require them to not step out of a very specific lane that they've asked them to be inside of. - Yeah. - So, I recognize that, but, you know, I still think, you know, it's a lost opportunity if you've got these titles, if you really haven't had the opportunity to expand that experience beyond being ridiculously good at whatever design tool is currently, you know, bring back fireworks is what I'm saying. But, yeah, but, yeah, I don't know, I don't want to be a gatekeeper for how people get into this or what kind of education they need. - Yeah. - But at the same time, I want to contribute to what, a very low bar, but some foundational, you've really got to learn this stuff, even if you're not going to use it. - Right. - Yep. - I don't know what that is. I have opinions on what it should be. I don't want to be one of the people who tells others what it is, 'cause I think. - Yeah, I've thought about this. I had a lot of time to think about this actually late last year. Actually, right around this time, last year, I was affected by reorg, I was laid off. And I think a lot of people in the last couple of years have been experiencing a lot of this, and I'll be honest, I went through the existential dread of it all. I'm like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. Am I gonna have a job? Like, what am I gonna do? And luckily, I was smart with finances, so it was really no issue for me. I was very lucky, I'm very conscientious of that. Through connections, and I got to meet another gentleman, Giuseppe, who kind of in the same boat, we were both doing object-oriented UX courses with Sophia Prater, and we're just learning like other ways to think about different stuff. Part of our own, like voracious appetite, I was like, hey, this seems cool. Let me learn about this. And throughout our conversations, we were talking just about what you were bringing up is like, you know, do you wanna be a gatekeeper for anything? But like, there's things about our profession. There's practices, there's methodologies. There's a lot of things that like, you should at least know if you don't have the ability or the permission, which I don't like whatever permission stuff. But you should at least know to continue in your career growth. So like, when I hear about a senior designer who has an ever interviewed a customer, I actually worked at a place that vehemently said, do not talk to the public. This was in GovTech. And they were afraid of the idea that, because we were asking questions about experience that it could lead to a bad reputation for said agency or said, you know, department. And they were like, definitely afraid of asking, you know, do not talk to the public. So we tried to do like proxies. And there's no real proxy for sitting down with someone and like getting to understand, you know, their experience and how they're working with things and like, what's their motivations? Like how they're feeling about stuff. And then using that, the synthesizing like, all right, here are the pain points, here's what we can, you know, improve, it's very clear. My friend, Giuseppe and I, we were kind of spitballing. We would meet every Friday for a little bit and just kind of like talk through ideas. And at one point, we got on this very subject, like there's so much stuff that designers coming up into maybe their first job or maybe, you know, second, maybe even third, even like they know about, they know about how to conduct a user interview. Do they know how to do, you know, UX audit? Do they know how to do this? And so many of them for the first time, like, I've never heard this term, stakeholder management. How do you keep a room full of people with all their own individual like agendas and how do you keep them focused on the topic at hand and make sure that they don't go, well, like this blue better. So he and I were even thinking like, what if we created like a course just to talk about that, just like relationship management as a designer? And I was like, are we becoming the bad guys? Like, are we becoming our own bootcamp? We were like, that does feel icky, but I don't know who else is doing this right or how to do it. Like, I don't know, it was just our first idea. So yeah, we still have an idea of like, this is the shit you need to learn as a designer that you were never taught in school, taught by people who screwed it up a lot and have now gotten somewhat better at. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, it's, again, like you said, there's so much to learn and I wouldn't expect someone who's starting their first job to absolutely know about everything, but you know, I don't know, I guess maybe transition that to where you're at now. Like, how do you go about assessing your team's skill gaps and helping them fill those gaps or bridge whatever metaphor you want for that? Yeah, no, that's a good question 'cause I've actually done this on a couple of different levels. Individually wise, team wise, organization wise. So when I joined, I joined Survey Monkey, like the end of December last year, basically started in January. And I was told that, you know, we're doing this big transformation work and you know, this team has been kind of already rocking on things for a while. Yeah, so you're becoming in, there's already a plan, roadmap in place. So it's just part of my like get-to-know use that I would have with people. It was like, you know, getting to understand each and everyone's background. And luckily the company is this really great thing where everyone has their own playbook. You can do a little bit learning about like who they are, how they came into, you know, what drew them to whatever their industry or career path they had. So I was pouring over those playbooks, having my get-to-know use, and then learning a little bit more about like what they were working on. And just through like conversation, like certain key words I would hear or not hear about how they came up with their concept, what they have, what they're thinking about, you know, business impacts. Like how are they thinking about requirements? How are they, what's the thing they're going to die in the hill for versus like, what's the compromise for things? And started kind of building a more larger profile of my team members and individually where they had their strengths and where they had opportunities for growth. And then did that as a team. Like, this team is really good. Honestly, my team's really good at, you know, information architecture. Great information architects all the way across the board. Areas for growth for visual design. And I don't expect all of them to have like massive skills for visual design that come through different fields and different experiences. So that makes a lot of sense. And then I look at the organization, like how have we historically hired and what have we looked for in, you know, designers? And then who is at the right level? Who's not at the right level? These were all things I took into consideration with like seeing where my team strengths are. And then identifying opportunities for them to use those strengths or lean in hard to where they've either identified correctly that they have a gap or help them identify like, hey, I think there's an opportunity for you to grow over here. Let's do this together. 'Cause I know this thing really well, I can help. And I can help you at the speed and the amount that you want me to. And that's created an, that's created an environment for my team to be like thriving in everything. So I feel like I'm lucky with my team thus far in this regards to they're very competent in their areas. They know what their strengths are. They know where their growth opportunities are and they actually want to learn. They actually want to flex those muscles. And I think part of it is always been my goal when I was teaching and also what was taught by me in school is like help somebody else like pass it on, like pay it forward that they can be successful. So I think that's always been a little bit of a driving factor for me and why my team right now is doing so damn well. - That's cool, I like that. So one of the things I've been asking people a set of questions, I call it seven plus or minus two questions because it makes me laugh. What is one thing that you would change about your profession? - This kind of goes back to what you and I were talking about in regards to like how many different paths people can come into design. I think that there is a level of gatekeeping. I think there's definitely a level of hotiness and denigration that does happens for a lot of folks coming in and then they think they have to emulate that attitude and mentality. I think that if we want to create more unified kind of front or unified kind of like definitional what the design profession is, we need to in a way find some way to not gatekeep or not like other or like embrace the fact that so many people come into design from so many different like backgrounds and expert uses and celebrate that in a way would find a way to bring all those different experiences together to help really shape what the design profession is. So mentioned, there's a lot of UX designers that came up through graphic design and there's a lot of UI designers, the same thing. There's a lot of researchers and folks that came in through psychology and you've got all these different backgrounds. We find a way to really celebrate them, celebrate their backgrounds and find some way to integrate all of their various kind of past experiences into design. And if you look at what we have right now, content design and a content designer as a profession itself. As like I'll kind of say under the umbrella of all design, I can remember not too long ago content designer was not a term. And it's kind of like how we got serviced as a, we got all these different types, whatever the title is today. And it goes back to the fact that so many designers may have not had certain opportunities to practice XYZ methodology or process or do this or have these experiences. I think that what design to be seen as a much more respected profession, which I think it is, but I think we can always strive for greater respect. I think we, as an industry, as individuals, find ways to better integrate everyone's past experiences and find some way that their experiences can help the wider profession of design. And I've seen that a lot with researchers lately. I've seen a lot of researchers who've come into UX research from an academic background who are bringing rigor and process that maybe UX research hasn't always had in the past. I see a lot of folks are coming in from motion, coming into motion design that are bringing a lot of, here's how we approach things, here's how we think about things and that is improving UI capabilities. I think that we could do a better job at that 'cause there still are some gatekeepers and that's why you still see some folks who are going on LinkedIn and being like, which design is better because they almost kind of taught or trained and like, oh, I gotta go out and crowdsource my subjective design opinions from people and I think that can change. And I think that's something I would change about design or improve it. That was a difficult question. - And they only get harder. - Perfect. - What's one thing you wish more people cared about? - Well, that's easy. - And that's easy. - That's easy. Don't use quote marks instead of inch marks. I had a professor that always like, he'd always get so pissed off when he'd see like, oh, they're using inch marks. Instead of quote marks, I'm like, only you would figure that out. Now here I am, I'm 18 years later getting bitchy about it myself. No, what would I change? That's also a difficult question. I don't want to sound like back in my day, old man, yelling at the clouds kind of thing, but, you know. - I need not on your belt. Come on, let's go. - I don't know. I think sites like Dribble and Behance were noble and there are reasons for starting, but I think they ended up doing more of a disservice than anything. And I think it's because of just proliferation of like, oh, people just like seeing cool little like nifty animations or this little cool design. Like, oh, that gets people here. It's the equivalent of like click bait or like, you know, title click bait on YouTube. And it's like, yeah. I think that's done a disservice. I would, I would change that. Like, show, show shot. If you're going to do Dribble shots, show work in progress. Let me see your nasty sandbox file of like, you're thinking. I love to see that. - What accomplishment are you most proud of that you weren't paid to do? - This is a collective accomplishment. Every one of the designers I've ever worked for, I've ever worked with. The ones that have, they were early on their career kind of figuring their stuff out. And I wasn't that too much more further along in my career, just teaching them what I knew, what, you know, what not to step into, what to say here. If you certain folks, I've had the privilege and the honor of working with so many great designers and the ones that I feel like I've imparted some sort of knowledge on them that's been helpful. Great. My first job, I had a student from York College before I started teaching there. He was my intern and I had him do a whole bunch of ads all the time for a city regional magazine. And I had him work on basically all the grunt work, but I was teaching him how to do layout, how to set stuff up for prints. I had him, you know, working on all, he learned a lot, but I also taught him like how to present, how to showcase your work, like how to talk about outcomes and stuff. And he ended his internship and he got a job at a controls company, like controls and switches. Like he was doing a lot of like user manuals and stuff for there. Well, years later, he was the design manager for both care tech company that created like RFID tags, like kind of like the Apple tags, but for hospitals to like locate patients and locate equipment within a hospital. It was like super interesting stuff. And he was the design manager. He came back to me later. All those years later, he was like, "Hey man, I'm the design manager here." I'm like, "Dude, perfect." Like, "That's great." And I had many stories like that of folks that I've worked with and I've helped them like give them some advice, mentor and they're further along in their career. And I would like to think in some small way, I've contributed to that. And funny enough, that old intern of mine ended up actually hiring me to redesign their company website. So I ended up getting paid eventually, but it was because he thought of me, he remembered me and he was one of the first people that ever gave me a recommendation on LinkedIn. And I was like, "Man." I would say everyone that I've ever mentored or helped, I feel like that's the most meaningful stuff. - Right on, that's good. All right, now possibly the most important question, no salsa, mild salsa or spicy salsa. Bicy salsa all the way. I don't wanna feel my tongue afterwards. Like it needs to be, I need to not feel the cap seats and burning away everything. That was an easy question. (laughs) - What's your favorite place on earth? - This is gonna sound real sappy right here where I live at. I live in a very small town middle of nowhere central Pennsylvania. I have a lake right out in front of my door, 20 feet from my front door. I have ducks and geese all fighting each other to take over this one log is laying in this lake. It looks like Mayberry. And for those of you who are not old enough to get like the Andy Griffith Show, it's like this idyllic town. I absolutely love living in this town. It's my happy space. It is my wife and I moved here a couple of years ago. It was like a dream come true, 'cause I took her on a date here years ago when she first moved to central PA almost like 10 years ago at this point. We had wedding photos. We had engagement photos here. And here we are actually living in this town that is just like our little oasis from everything. And it's middle of nowhere. I'm close to New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh. Everything's a couple of hours drive away. And that is, it truly is my absolute favorite place here. If anything, I can just see the ducks, just like take over the road and not let cars pass. It is the funniest thing on the planet. They're just like, hey, you wanna drive? Nope. So yeah, that's an easy one too. Little sappy, but that's an easy one. - Snow, there's no wrong answer. And I don't feel like there's any such thing as a sappy answer to something like this. Next question, what do you wish you'd done differently? And again, a constraint on just whatever comes to mind. - I wish I wouldn't have gave a shit too much. Like, that was really hard on myself in school. As I'd mentioned, goodie too. She was wanting to do best. Fear drove me in school. I did not wanna be one of the other guys in my high school that like, okay, I'm filled out, I came back home and didn't amount too much. And previous music stuff fell apart and I was working at the same sheets, convenience store ever since I was like 16. So I wanted to do my absolute best. And instead of that motivating me, it was fear. I can't go home. Like, you need to work your ass off, Tim. And that fear served me well in school, graduated, did really well, got a job, lined up before I was, you know, before I left. And I kept that fear motivation for me. And it would beat me up afterwards. Like, I screwed up, I remember I screwed up a magazine spread all low res and it went to print. And like, it was a lot of money. We just kind of like went down the drain. And that fear turned into like self-loathing, real negative talk for me. And I would push myself so much to be like, kind of like a workaholic, like do the most. Try this. One point I was leading our local AIGA chapter. I was going to like tech conferences. I was doing all this stuff. And it was the fear of screwing up. I eventually had to let some of that go. And I was almost ready to have like a nervous breakdown. And I started like, hey, you know what, there's more to life than everything. That's the one thing I would change is like, dude, not everything's worth a shit. Take some time, balance. And I feel like I've gotten to that point now. But early on in my career, I was neurotic. That fear kept me going where it should have been not fear, but like the excitement of it. And I let that actually get in the way of doing the work. Like fear overrode my excitement of actually doing design. - If you don't mind sharing, like, how do you feel like you've made that transition away from the fear driving to where you're at now? - First couple of things was that the amount of fear that I was having of screwing up, like not being seen as a professional, that I would see other people kind of interact or see how they're doing. And they wouldn't act the same way. Like I had an account exec that I was like fretting over, like getting all of his work done. And by the time I got all of his ads done and some of his work stuff that he was like, oh, cool, thanks. And I'm like, wait, you gave me all of this like a 445 on a Friday. I busted my ass that night to get it done. And here on Monday, like you're like, oh, cool. It's like, what the hell? So that was the first thing that was like, okay, not everybody is holding themselves to the same standard that you aren't in. And then later on when I was going in, I was more into user experience and I was doing a lot more like kind of like early product work, I also was like putting a lot of pressure on me to present and like make sure you had every answer to him. Like you had to know everything. And then I learned, they didn't have all the fucking answers either. Like they would have questions. And I learned to kind of like relax a bit. And when I started relaxing and having a little bit more of a confident kind of go with a flowman, I ended up seeing people responding better. So because of my fear, people were like and receiving a lot of things. When I started to let go, that was, I could see the response. And I will say once I actually, when I started, you know, dating my wife, when we started like actually ended up getting a life like outside of work. Like I would be the one that would go home, read all these design blogs, watch a ton of videos, taking online courses. I didn't have a life outside of design for the longest time. When I started getting a life and getting like to see other things and like, oh my God, even rediscovering music, that's when I started to have like a little bit more of a balanced view of things. And the things that I thought were super important are like, yeah, that's okay. But the things I really did care about, instead of having the fear of them drive it, I read and covered my love of it. So getting a life helped a good deal to lose the fear as a motivator. - That's great. - Yeah, this came up on one of my other chests too, but you know, I don't remember exactly when I learned this. It's probably some around the middle of my career, but there's no such thing as a design emergency. - In go. (laughing) - So chill out, y'all. - Yes, the work will still be there. You can come back to it, just because of somebody else's emergency, it doesn't mean it's always like, there's no such thing as a design emergency. Like no one's going to die over the variation of blue that you use. - All right, so next question. What would you do for a living if you left what you're doing now? Left design. - You know, I think there's an interesting meme for folks who work in tech for a long time. Like they get so burnt out, like they just want to become like a sustainable farmer. Afterwards, like you just get away from tech, I want to go out and touch grass. And while that is super fun and interesting, and I do have a little garden out back that I'm always working on, actually it wouldn't be music. I'd actually go on to brewing. I had a great fortune of meeting a local guy who actually made a beer for one of my design events. And he's like, hey, you're going to help me. And I'm like, dude, I don't want to make beer. He's like, can you boil water? I'm like, yeah, he's like, you can make beer. So he gave me this wonderful gift. He taught me how to home brew. I got to learn an entire whole new like subculture of things. And it's just a fun, like physical activity. Like it's a little bit of chemistry. It's a little bit of art in and of itself. A lot of stirring, washed pot will never boil over, but an unwashed pot will always boil over. That's what I've learned. So if I was not working in design, I think I would absolutely be working in the beer industry as a brewer. I've had the opportunity to go down the dogfish head. That was super cool. And yeah, I would probably be brewing right now. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's interesting. As you were explaining that, the thing that was kind of coming to my head was starting to think about transferable skills. And then that made me think about when I was in college and I was in, I was taking a poetry class, I think it was. And we went to visit a printmaker. We went to visit a brewer. We went to visit. I don't remember what the third one was, a metal worker. Someone who makes things out of metal. It was a long time ago. And the big thing we were talking about is like these are all these creative pursuits. And it's not like the professors didn't use the term transferable skills, but it's like, look at the process of creation. Yeah. And look at the things you can see across all these different materials that are the same and the pursuits and the curiosity and the attention to detail and you start with shit and you end up with something good, hopefully. Anyway, so that just popped in my mind while you were explaining that. Kind of funny too, as you and I are talking like, senior designer, you've never interviewed a customer. Sat down, talk with the user at all. Really can't be a good brewer without people trying your brews. And I mean, probably get lucky, make one or two, but eventually you'll make vinegar. And yeah, that's something too. Like again, the attention to detail, process, some things can be followed to a T, some you can kind of finagle with, just quality being to everyone and everything. So yeah, there's a lot of transferable kind of ideas for just like how to think about whatever sort of pursuit that you're doing, whether it's creative or very highly technical or whatever. I think there's a lot of things that are kind of part and parcel to everyone's work in a lot of ways. - Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that I look for in people who work for me or work with me is what their understanding is of what you just said, like the things you can follow to a T and the things you can be a little more relaxed about. And I really believe that, especially as a designer, but whatever your choice of focus is, as fast as you can figure that stuff out of what needs to be truly followed and what can be kind of loosey-goosey, still be good, the faster you'll be living a much more autonomous and interesting career, I think. - Yep, absolutely, like a kind of efficiency that you build up through expertise and then, oh yeah, all right, cool. Here's the things there, here's where I can bring balance to life and to. - Yeah. - All right, last question. Imagine as a year from now, what do you hope to not be carrying anymore? - I think a year from now, and this is different from fear, is still a lot of uncertainty. Do carry around a lot of uncertainty around, just, you know, some of the stuff that I deal with at work, some of the stuff I deal with with my team. I have the annoying pension for kind of second-guessing myself. Not for the fear of making the wrong decision, it's more of like, you know, what's gonna be best, what's gonna provide a better outcome. And I usually think about that in the ways of like, what's gonna provide a better outcome for, you know, my designers, you know, what's gonna provide a better outcome for my team as a whole, what's gonna provide a better outcome for all the work that we're doing inside of research and design. So I think a year from now, I would have let the uncertainty evaporate away and have continued to build confidence in confidence or just like, just knowing of like, yeah, we're in a good path, like things are good. And I think that's important. Maybe a lot of folks have brought this up to you in the past or whatever, like you and I have been both doing this for a long time in this career path. Like we've both been working in design for a long time. I still have those pangs of uncertainty. There are still days where even imposter syndrome creeps in and be like, damn it, am I, I don't know what I'm doing. And it's not a, it's not out of fear, mostly for me. It's more of just like out of uncertainty like him. Did I make the right choice there? So I think that's always a thing that I'll be, I'll be dealing with as a professional. But yeah, maybe this time next year, I'll be a lot more certain about certain things. And that'll bring an even greater level of, and balance to my life as well. Yeah, that's a good one, I like that. All right, well, that's it, easy, peasy. - I think you kind of got the gist of most of this throughout our conversation is that our profession, what we do, it's always a progression. No matter where you're at, in wherever you're part of your career stuff, I think. There's always room to grow. There's always room to learn things. You're never gonna know everything, and that's okay. I think whatever you do, have a healthy appetite to learn. No matter what it is, whether it's design, whether it's brewing, whether it's gardening, whatever. So it's probably the, my last takeaway there for you is whatever you do, have a healthy appetite to learn. - Well said. - Yep. Now I just have too many hobbies where I wanna learn everything, and my wife is like, what the fuck out dude? (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)