#4 Navigating the UX Landscape

(00:10) Danny

Carmen, I am so excited that you’re here. I’m always excited when people are here, but Carmen, we go back a little bit as well, which is really fun because I feel like I know you and also there’s been a gap where I haven’t spent time with you and you probably had loads of different experiences and different times and learned lots of new things. I wanted to start and just go back a little bit because I was having a look at your

(00:12) Carmen

Thank you.

(00:37) Danny

LinkedIn. I didn’t know that you actually started at Yahoo, which I find very interesting because that’s sort of like a little bit where some of the internet started in some form of the internet. It kind of began a little bit there. I was just curious, what was Yahoo like? was a long time ago.

(00:57) Carmen

It’s a long time ago. That was my opportunity to get into the industry, to be honest, in our sector, because I was looking for a job. I was not really sure what I was going to end up doing. I’m a computer scientist, so I actually was looking for things that I could do as a computer scientist, but I my master’s in interaction design.

They got me in because of the computer science, actually, more than for my interaction with the background. Quite quickly, when in my first interview, they realized I had that skill set. And then they switched and they offered me, it was an internship. They were saying, we could twist it for you into, you will be doing more of, it was not called UX back then. So information architecture.

(01:34) Danny

Mmm.

(01:45) Carmen

you know, a bit of research and so on. And yeah, that was, be honest, it was quite sure. The team was quite really good. And it felt pretty much what I, a digital team, you know, what we call a product team today.

(02:03) Danny

Yeah, because it’s

2006. we’re going back quite a bit, like, like product teams and things like that. Like, I don’t remember, it wasn’t the language back then, was it? was like, it was sort of e-commerce teams and things like that. And, and where was that? that in central London, I guess, was it?

(02:12) Carmen

you

Yeah,

was. It was in central London in South… I don’t know if they’re still there, but Southbury Avenue, like central, central. It was quite exciting for me, my first actual, you know, first job on what I did is study, met lots of really nice people, really good contacts. Also, you know, start establishing, I think your first experiences established your mindset, so how you should be working. So if I remember…

We were not sitting with the developers, but we were quite close to the developers. And because they knew I had a computer science background, they will invite me to their meetings. It was quite exciting for me. So yeah, and it was actually the head of engineering who directed me to… I didn’t even know what I needed to look for. And he said, are really good. You need to look…

for information architecture. That’s what he was the one I didn’t even know what I had to look for. you know, he said, you are really good at this. You should be looking for this, you know, and they wanted me to stay. I experienced early in my career, the effects of redundancy. My team was my redundant. So I was in this side because, you know, they really wanted me to stay. But then, yeah, the redundancy happened.

(03:19) Danny

Okay.

Yeah.

(03:46) Carmen

and then they couldn’t keep me but you ⁓

(03:51) Danny

interesting

though that there’s a couple of lots of interesting things in that but there’s something that I can resonate with in my experience as well is like someone when someone sort of spots something in you or sort of, you know, gives you a nudge, you know, and, and, why don’t you try this, you know, I, that was really similar in my, experience as well as I was a web designer at Eurostar, and pretty much at the same time, actually, it was about 2005 2006. I had a manager and I was

I was just like a web designer, you know, and he said, why don’t you look at information architecture? You know, and I said, yeah, I can do that. And I remember going back to my desk and Googling like, what is information architecture? And then it was like, ⁓ right. Okay. So it’s kind of like web design, but you have to worry about the colors and you have to worry about the style and you think more about the flow and, and, and the structure and, and how things are the hierarchy. And that for me, I don’t know about you, but I felt, I felt a lot more.

(04:35) Carmen

Yes.

(04:46) Danny

comfortable in that place, actually. It felt a lot less subjective and it felt more about like reasoning and rational and things like that. Things that I could see and measure as opposed to like shiny buttons and colours and fonts. You know, I preferred to be in, I found early that that space worked better for me. But I wonder how that was for you when you started Information Architecture. Was that something that clicked for you, do you think?

(04:47) Carmen

Thanks.

Yes sir.

Thank

Well, the thing is my start was straight into that. actually found a few months later, I found a role at U-Switch, the comparison side, as an information architect, which in no time, it was in the moment where ⁓ UX design was starting to emerge. And in no time, they basically ⁓ changed our title to UX designer.

(05:20) Danny

Cool, let’s see how.

(05:42) Carmen

So yeah, I became a UX designer quite randomly, you know, as an information architect and then UX designer. But for me has always been, I’m not a visual designer. have never done visual design. So I never had that skill set. come from a, you know, I’m a computer scientist who went to Stockholm to KTH, one of the, it’s one really good university in Sweden. This is equivalent of Imperial College here.

And I did a course for technical people. Actually, we were engineers and computer scientists on interaction design, but interaction design, not what it is today. was, we didn’t have a name for design thinking basically. And that’s what I was learning in my masters. They were teaching us basically they were following this school. And I learned design thinking without knowing it was, it didn’t have that name yet.

(06:24) Danny

Yeah.

No, no. Yeah, I don’t remember even hearing design thinking. And I was woefully ignorant in micro. I was not as well read as you were. But I don’t remember hearing it until sort of 2016 kind of time. don’t remember, like in John Lewis, I don’t remember anybody using those words. You like I just, well, you probably did, but I didn’t ever, I never heard it sort of as a thing. I feel like I was like late to the party.

It’s been around IDEO and all that, but just when it came to kind of like big enterprises and, you know, like, I don’t remember them talking about that. Like it was agile was the thing, but they didn’t use the word design thinking that from my memory. I don’t know if you remember it differently.

(07:21) Carmen

you were doing this, I’m thinking it’s just that it didn’t have the name, you know, I think I don’t remember exactly when, ideal coin this, was ideal. Basically what they did is the founders of ideal thing. One of them still teaches at Stanford. Yeah. So yes, basically packets the thing that they do in this school as the, and it

(07:25) Danny

We didn’t call it that, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

(07:48) Carmen

It is like an agency thing. They had to give it a name, ⁓ a process. The process exists, but they just branded it and they call it design thinking. I don’t remember exactly when they started doing it. Obviously, when we were starting our careers, no one was talking about this. We were practicing it without the name. learned that when I look at what we were doing in my masters.

(08:08) Danny

Mm-hmm.

(08:13) Carmen

It is exactly the same thing. they were telling us, I mean, imagine a room of engineers, computer scientists and engineers telling us that we have to go out and observe people and do ethnography. And we were looking at each other. Why? Why do we need to go out and look at people? We can’t do that. And we were like, I remember we had to design this new system.

(08:33) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(08:39) Carmen

A digital system for the tunnel banner in Stockholm where people could buy like here, you know, we had it for a long time, but actually in Stockholm, you need to go to a shop to buy your physical ticket. So at least in 2005 when I was there, so they were saying, oh, you need to turn this into a digital system. And we were like, okay, why do we need to go out and observe people?

That was in between us and they were like, well, they knew really well who we were. We were coming from these degrees where it’s more technical. You think about in really logical terms how you’re going to design the system and you don’t have that consideration of understanding the human side of it. So for me, it was an eye opener because I was like them, to be fair, we were like, this is crazy, we need to go out.

And it was, I opened up because then I started going out and the stuff, for instance, one of the observations, one of my tunnel stations was outside in Sweden in the winter where it snows. If we haven’t been there and observed people, how, you know, they move around and in that station, you couldn’t really have, ⁓ we were already talking, you know,

that screen system that wouldn’t work in that station

(10:05) Danny

Right, well, because it’s so cold.

(10:06) Carmen

because apart from, you know, think, see, these people probably can remove their gloves and touch, but it’s snowing. So how are you going to deal with the snow falling down in the touch screen? you know, so is the weather, is the conditions? But then there were many other observations we went through. Actually, I started being a researcher. I got really excited.

And I was like, we need to go to different types of tunnel van stations. We can go to big stations and medium stations and smaller stations. And my team were like, gosh, you go.

(10:47) Danny

You’ve always had a passion for that. I’m thinking what you were doing was that phrase, get out the building. That’s exactly what you’re embodying. I think you’re probably UX’s most passionate person. The enthusiasm you have to learn something and connect to users’ experience and stuff like that.

I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere else, something that I will always remember about you, when we work together, is that you have a real deep curiosity to learn. You’re always reading books. You’re always looking at podcasts. And I’m really curious, there’s someone who is much better well-read than me in UX. What role does learning play?

about theory and different ideas and concepts. Are you able to transfer that into a practical level in your jobs? Because sometimes I can see people understand theory, but they don’t know how to apply it. And is that something that you’ve, have you kind of mastered or worked with that? How do you work with that? Like taking the theory and making it practical?

(11:50) Carmen

I think this is, at least for me, it kind of tough for all people who do any engineering or, you know, computer science lies a little bit more on the engineering type of, of degrees. And, you know, I’m really good at getting principles and I get, I connect with, with what I’ve been taught and I, what I resonate, I take into my way of thinking, my mindset, UBS mindset. So.

When I did computer science and I studied previously, I always connected with science. I think it’s a way of thinking. It’s like, you need to understand the theory first and then you apply it. Theory in itself is not going to give you what you need. And I think in engineering, we have that more practical side of things. Quite quickly, you need to go and say, okay, what can I do with this? And where will it be useful?

(12:31) Danny

Yeah

(12:47) Carmen

because that’s an engineer’s mindset, isn’t it?

(12:50) Danny

I I, you know what, I really like your emphasis on principles and the way that you talk about applying what you know, because something I’ve had a few failures in is where I’ve tried to impose a framework into various organisations. I sort of like it, the framework is great. If it were followed, if it were brought into, if everybody adapted into the framework, it’d be perfect.

(13:13) Carmen

Thank you so much.

(13:17) Danny

Something that I’ve come to realize, and I wonder what you might think about this, like being a consultant, being a freelancer, you can’t kind of cookie cutter your way into stuff. Like you might have read, you know, all the design thinking books or been on a boot camp and have an idea about GDS or something like that. But quite often what happens is, is I found, is I go into a gig.

And it’s like, well, there wasn’t time for this. Jimmy’s sick. And now we’ve just got to do it in two weeks. And so how can you then still apply? You can’t reuse a framework at that point. So it’s like, you can only rely on principles and just do the best you can within the constraints you have. I feel like that’s what we have to do all the time. We’ve never had that perfect scenario where we can just use the frameworks that we read about in a kind of perfect way.

Does that resonate with you?

(14:10) Carmen

I think it is, think, my masters, asked me, they asked all of us for feedback. And my feedback was, I think what you teach is amazing. Keep it, the whole thing is perfect. But it needs an extra module of how to, how to work in the real world.

Because what you think is, and it should be that way, personally, I think it should be that way. We should learn this is how it is. science is the same. You have the principle, know, the frameworks, that’s how it is. But then you need to be realistic that you are going to go in an imperfect environment. And particularly in design, we are in the most imperfect environment because we don’t decide anything. We influence decisions.

And that’s when they tell you, you are the voice of the customer, all of these kind of phrases, but you are not because you are not, you cannot really make a decision. You cannot say, well, we’re not doing that because it is not viable and is the structures we work in. So you have to learn quite early in your career. You are an influencer of that decision.

(15:20) Danny

This is that I completely agree. there’s something that’s blown up on LinkedIn recently around I think I saw some comments. You know how there’s a lot of stuff at the moment in the market? You know, the market’s just, we’ll talk about the market. mean, what is going on? This is crazy. But there’s this whole thing about outcomes and how UXers, we can’t.

do CVs that talk about, you I was responsible for this and I produced this and these are my, we have to talk about outcomes. And I really wonder what you’re taking on it is, cause I, I, I’m to your point there, you were talking about like, influence things. And so if I, if I go into a product team and I’m a UXer, like I can influence the product owner to prioritize certain stories.

And then maybe I can do a really good job on the stories that I’m told that I have to do, you know, or we’re agreed. Maybe, maybe engagement goes up or maybe it doesn’t like, okay, so let’s say it went up. Like, was that all me that did that? Like I was in a team, you know, like I maybe influenced it. So am I going to put five X engagement on my CV, like achieved five X engagement, like with, do you know what I mean? Like, I kind of feel like this emphasis on outcomes.

(16:19) Carmen

See you.

Thank

(16:43) Danny

I get it, but I’m also feeling like, I don’t know, I don’t know really what it’s, how, what it actually tells someone about someone, like how true it really is and how, how you can really trace back an outcome to one individual. But I wonder what you think about that. Cause I know that’s what the market is so hungry for, but you know, is it, it, is it a good thing?

(17:01) Carmen

Yeah.

It is, I believe in outcomes. quite, I would say, I kind of did a course in product management and I followed Mati Kagan and all of the big thinkers in product. And I believe in that outcomes over outputs. And I totally agree with that. The problem is I think, and this is where I’m thinking the problem with this is,

(17:24) Danny

health fits.

(17:31) Carmen

We are misunderstanding the outcomes that we influence. Because we influence, we know the silence. So for instance, I can tell you, like I’m not going to say companies, but I was in a team and we did in a really low mature, agile and design thinking kind of company. We did a project where we show the value. Actually, we did the discovery.

(17:37) Danny

Okay.

(17:58) Carmen

even shape a roadmap, a new roadmap. One of the designers was telling me with frustration, this went nowhere because there were some other issues, you know, what happens in companies? The backend is not ready. We need to do all of this work. So he cannot, he, was a really good project, but he was telling me, I cannot talk about it because there is no outcomes. Yeah. Because it’s

(18:21) Danny

Yeah, yeah, what does someone do? Yeah, yeah, I can relate.

I’ve done that. You work for ages on a project and it gets canned. It’s nothing to with you. And then your outcome was I worked on a project that didn’t get delivered. It’s like, what can you say?

(18:33) Carmen

But you can say things. told him you can say a lot of things. You can say how, for instance, as a designer, you came with me into research sessions and what you learned from those research sessions, how you shape your thinking when you were designing the features, how instead of only thinking of the usual best practices in UX and UI, how you also consider

the, you know, what we saw in the research and the key insights that, know, because it’s not only about, I saw, I think Nikki Anderson had an amazing post the other day about what is the difference between findings and insights, you know, and how not all insights are the same. know this, you know, we have objectives. We work for companies. We have to balance, you know, what is the human center side with.

(19:18) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(19:31) Carmen

the business side and we want to make sure that our teams and our stakeholders and product managers achieve their objectives. So you need to prioritize those insights. And all of those to me are outcomes because for instance, I think I can say this one because they were talking openly about it. When I was at the Economist, towards the end we were designing the new app at the time.

Um, and I did a lot of research for it and towards the end, the product manager said to me, I cannot do the night mode. Could you in the next sessions explore what would be, you know, a little bit of a sense, how bad it can be or not. And I did, you know, I just added as a one task in the session. And, know, the economist, high brow, highly intelligent, say, you know, type of wealthy type of

readers, they got emotional, but really bad emotional. And I listened to emotion, and particularly with the type of people we are dealing with, know, the type of ⁓ as well, they have a 70 % of back then they had a 70 % male kind of audience. So you see this type of, you know, people getting highly emotional.

I was like, that is not good. Anyway, I raised it. said, the reasons, I told them the reasons. basically, not having night mode meant for these people that they couldn’t read at night because they would be with their partners. And if it was not night mode, they were disturbing their partners. couldn’t sleep. that’s

(21:10) Danny

I think.

(21:17) Carmen

experience. I have mapped out the whole reading experience. People during the day tend to kind of, we call it context snacking. You know, I read a little bit this, I want to read this later. And that is the time when you have deep reading, which is really important in your day. And all of sudden you kind of have it. That was the emotional reaction, the reason behind that emotional reaction. So I explained it to them, to the product team, but they didn’t have time. And actually, the funny thing is when you…

place it this way as a research. I don’t need the product manager to come and tell me I can’t not do this, but he was actually explaining. understood this when we released the app was I was screening the reaction of the subscribers. This was the biggest what I saw in the lab magnified people in capitals. Someone telling us that we should be fired.

(22:13) Danny

Really?

(22:15) Carmen

It

(22:15) Danny

Wow.

(22:17) Carmen

was, and you know, this was, you know, like, this is what I say always when people dismiss qualitative, when I caught it and then we quantify it. Unfortunately, we quantify it by the anger of a lot of the people. But you know, the team value this, my team value and the head of product talk openly about this.

(22:35) Danny

Hmm. Hmm.

(22:39) Carmen

and see value how the research code on this. And that for me is an outcome.

(22:46) Danny

That’s a great story. An insight could have the outcome to not deliver something or to know that if we don’t deliver something, this will be the impact. That could be the outcome. Rather than say a straight business metric, having a business intuition and awareness is an outcome. It doesn’t sound as good as

(22:49) Carmen

you

(23:14) Danny

20 % extra sales conversion or something. It might lead to that, but there’s a lot of stuff that happens in business intelligence. You’re developing their intelligence as a team. That’s got to be worth something. I think you’re right. It’s about how you tell that story, I suppose. On a CV, you’ve got a bullet point or two under each role. It’s quite hard to convey that story.

That’s a really interesting tale. I like that.

(23:44) Carmen

Yeah, I think for me, what I’ve been thinking a lot about is, know, because over the past year, I’m on the job market. So I’m looking for, and I’m quite particular with NDAs. So I don’t, I actually went back to some of the, my product teams and I asked, can I, can you give me some metrics? And they were like, no, no. So I, yeah. So I, one thing I will say,

(24:02) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(24:07) Carmen

for everyone in the both sides of this job market is the ones hiring and asking the question and the ones in the interviews.

What are we saying? Are we all reaching NDAs? Because if this were like, you know, as I work for good companies, everyone has worked for good companies. the companies that… Metrics are quite something that companies don’t disclose. So one of them told me, you can say this, but it’s not metric. I can say this was… the new feature…

(24:36) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it’s-

(24:42) Carmen

they exceeded their expectations from what they wanted to achieve. That’s as much as I can go. So I would say that most people are making them up because they force. I don’t know.

(24:58) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that’s it. mean, people can put anything on a CV. mean, who’s going to check if that last company had X engagement uplift? Like, no one’s going to know that. No one’s going to check that. So something I’ve wanted to talk to you about, and I’ve noticed that you in the last, particularly the last six, 12 months, like you become quite active on LinkedIn, and you’ve been, you know, sort of almost like becoming a bit of a like a voice.

that is kind of you’re throwing things out there and you’re kind of commenting on the sector and the industry. And I also noticed that you partnered with Alex a little bit on this flawless CX stuff to try and create a kind of centralized hub of UX job roles. So a little bit shortcutting recruiters, maybe. I maybe some of those come from recruiters, but kind of creating a centralized place. So you must be quite close to the pulse of what’s going on.

And I like, can you, there’s my hard question. you know, not, I don’t know the answer to this is really welcome in this podcast. So, but what is this, what is going on? What is, what is going on right now? What, why, why am I seeing people on LinkedIn remortgaging their house after who’ve got 20 years experience? I’m seeing posts everywhere with like people just saying, I’ve been unemployed for six months and all this or longer.

What’s your read on this? Like what on earth is going on?

(26:26) Carmen

I personally think it’s the economy. I we are in the West having, I don’t know, another… I think the AI has a factor, but I think the economy is the biggest factor. I think in the US, from what I understand, was some sort of change they had on the legislation where it was something with R &D that could kind of save money and…

(26:33) Danny

Is it AI?

(26:52) Carmen

And it affected that they put a lot of our work in through that. don’t know the specific name, but it was something about, and they recently changed that back. So hopefully in the market, they can see a little bit of a better situation because their economy is slightly better than ours. I think that is a huge factor because obviously when companies, and we have been in this situation, this economic situation is not.

(27:09) Danny

Yeah.

(27:19) Carmen

know, something that is one year we have been since the pandemic is getting worse and worse. And we don’t see if you look at me following people who understands about the economy, but they talk from a scientist, I want data and I want that they give me the reasons behind what they say things. And it feels to me the economy is not any any close to get better. So think about a company think about investors, when they think

You know, we know how they think because we work for them. This is one of the biggest things I will say that is creating the situation. But the AI, this is my view. This is my theory, hypothesis.

(28:01) Danny

Carmen’s take on AI. Let’s hear it.

(28:03) Carmen

I think, mean, I went back to, I wanted to understand. Initially, really thought they’re getting rid, clearly they’re getting rid of us because of AI. They need less of us and of evil. We are all out. Then I started going, can they really replace us? Are these large language models able to replace us? So I went to start listening to computer scientists who

I specialize in artificial intelligence. And I have a little bit of knowledge. did a module on my masters in artificial intelligence and modeling. So, slight knowledge on that. One of my lecturers was an expert on modeling, by the way, and he works professionally as well on that. So, have an element of, you know, I’ve been more than a student.

(28:48) Danny

Yeah, yeah, you sound,

I just read LinkedIn posts. You’re far more educated than me. Tell me, what do you think?

(28:54) Carmen

So for me,

I started seeing is quite a lot of computer scientists sharing a scientific way of why you, a scientist, is arguing a point, presents a hypothesis and it presents all the sources where it’s basing the hypothesis on. So this is the type of people I would listen to.

(29:17) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(29:18) Carmen

Agree or disagree? That’s another thing in engineering, will tell you, you need to listen to both sides. You cannot go for what you think is the right side. So that’s what I do. I listen to both sides. The ones that are talking about it from, yeah, this is the future, this is what is coming and we need to adapt, versus the ones who are arguing that these technologies are not what they are telling us.

And my take is they’re right. I don’t think, the more I’m following this, these technologies, I know what they are telling us. I need to understand why they are promoting this when it’s clearly not, it’s not intelligent. They’re not intelligent. They, obviously we know all the downsides. hallucinate and, know, sometimes, then always I notice I use them. So you ask them, what is the source for this?

They don’t have a source.

(30:14) Danny

Do you not think that’s just today? then if you go forward in like, because the curve of like how AI is going, it’s not like, you you think of like Photoshop, and you think how fast, you know, Photoshop would get a bit better, you know, every couple of years, it gets a new feature. AI, that it’s not that curve. It’s so like what, yeah, what we see now in and 12 months time could be

(30:33) Carmen

Yeah, he was. He was like…

No, but it’s not. This is the thing.

It’s not anymore. And that’s what they’re not talking about. It’s not like this anymore. It has plateau. I think it was not even last year. I don’t know. was late 2023, particularly because they run out of content. These things need a lot of content. They work with probabilities. Yeah. What they do, they’re not intelligent, by the way. And that’s another thing.

(30:42) Danny

⁓ okay.

Really?

Hoover up. Yeah

just pattern matching.

(31:06) Carmen

They basically were with probability. What is the probability of if someone is saying this, that the next thing that comes, something like this. I’m not an expert, but basically they’re not intelligent. They don’t have logic. That’s why they lie as well because they’re not necessarily… We are thinking this is another thing that trading humans. We tend to humanize. has a name, I forgot the name, but we humanize everything.

Yeah, we tend to see human attributes. It’s like when you look at a cloud, you see a face and you know, so when I was in my masters in this modeling course, actually, our lecturer, Magnus, he took a little robot, they do this. They were participating in this football league with they like dogs and they play football and the winning team is not the robot, it says it’s the technology that what you, you know, the

(31:38) Danny

Yeah.

(32:02) Carmen

strategies that you put into the machines. And he took the robot, it was like a dog, and it didn’t have any code on it. So when it has no code, it just walks around and sits down because it has no instructions. What we did, he does this every time in the course. So we all went, it’s so cute.

(32:07) Danny

I see.

So to you, so what

I’m hearing you say then, coming back to that question about what is going on, the economy you think plays a really big part in this. it’s at the moment you see its evolution is it’s a sort of, it’s like a butler. It’s a tool. It’s not a replacement. You don’t think that AI has got there and you don’t seem to be overly concerned that it’s going to get to that point where they’re hiring an AI bot instead of

instead of common.

(32:53) Carmen

They try. Let’s go for it. For the people claiming that they is going to, you know, now they have agents and they’re going to come and substitute us. Yeah. Before the agents, got rid of content designers. Yeah. They got rid of them. casualty of this. what do we need this guys? AI is going to write for us.

(33:00) Danny

synthetic users, all that, yeah, yeah.

(33:16) Carmen

Then we saw the major, major, companies have major, big, you know, flaws. so, and I can tell you, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been posting about jobs since mid last year. I was like, I wish I was a content designer. All of sudden they hiring them back. Yeah.

(33:31) Danny

Mmm.

⁓ really,

is that what you’re saying?

(33:39) Carmen

They learned the lesson. Yeah, these things, this is a tool. It’s a good tool. I think it can improve inefficiency. I think it has a lot of good things for us in discovery, but it’s not something that substitute us. And it’s another thing is that whole topic I eventually found because I follow a few people who are investors. This is all about investment. It’s a situation where companies

you know, have to get investment and the way these days to get investment is say you have AI and you have to justify it. And many times it’s like, you know, we’re getting rid of all of these people because now we have AI. And then I go to people privately because I’m sharing jobs and people, you know, in jobs contact me and say, I want to leave my job because yeah, people are spread.

(34:11) Danny

⁓

Right.

Yeah, yeah. know, something I’ve been reflecting

on us being a little bit older in this field than perhaps people that have just arrived into it is I remember starting in the jobs I was in back in the day, like, you know, go back to 2005 and stuff. I never saw anyone get fired. I never saw anyone quit. I would be in a job for two, three years, wouldn’t see anyone quit. mean, you know, remember when we were John Lewis, like, I don’t think I saw anyone get fired the whole time we were there. You know, like,

actually on the spot or something like that. Never saw it. In the last five to seven years, almost every contract I’ve been on, I’ve seen someone get fired. Sometimes perm, mostly contractors, just getting canned. Quite abruptly as well. I’ve been in a perm role and then we would come in and they’d say, okay, gather round and they say, so-and-so has exited the business. It’s like,

exited the business. What do mean fired? Like what? And that culture and that sort of like way of experiencing your job, like I really felt there was a period that I experienced where your job was safe, like no one’s going to fire you. There’s going to be loads of alarm bells before that happens. Whereas now I feel like being a perme or being a freelancer doesn’t really make any difference, you know, like there isn’t job security and kind of like

(35:28) Carmen

Thank

(35:49) Danny

it, you know, like the market is so frothy, and there’s something has changed, there’s a bit more of a sort of brutal edge to it, is my feeling. Do you resonate with that?

(35:59) Carmen

I think there were some, I did experience, I saw redundancies throughout my career. It’s not something that, yeah, it was my team and I was made redundant, but I feel that the level of, you know, the frequency that this is happening and there are huge amounts of people and you only have to go and look at people who publish the data. It is now.

(36:05) Danny

Did you? Well, at Yahoo, you saw it right at the start, didn’t you?

(36:25) Carmen

ridiculous the amount of people that are getting made redundant or let go in for whatever reason because you know now it looks bad. Yeah, it looks bad. You let go but it might be nothing to do with you or maybe has to do with you try to do your job in an environment that actually doesn’t you know now they want you to do you know and they don’t understand that you are doing your job you know and I think it’s a little bit of they

(36:44) Danny

I don’t want you to do your job. ⁓

(36:54) Carmen

Companies are not understanding what they are doing. They are really short term. think of what do we need now? Neither the systems thinking behind all of this. And particularly for us, that we work in the creative industry, where we need to be creative and innovative. When you do all of these things, what you bring into the people that work for you is fear.

(37:06) Danny

I’ve been thinking about that with…

(37:22) Carmen

Fear reduces collaboration. It puts people into saving mode. I have to protect myself. So you’re not collaborating. You’re working for you. To justify that you have done the things right. And it’s a normal human thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a human thing. The most nice people that you can find that will do that. So you don’t have collaboration anymore. You have people that are fearful. You have people that stressed.

(37:35) Danny

survivalist.

Yeah, yes.

(37:49) Carmen

in fight or flight mode that is not conducive of creativity.

(37:54) Danny

It’s quite a spiral,

isn’t it? It’s like the market contracts. There’s less jobs. People in the jobs are feeling scared that they might get fired. Someone has behaviors where they’re saying, hey, let’s collaborate. I’ve got an idea. If you’ve got 10 minutes to look at it. No, I haven’t got any time. I don’t want to get fired. I’m going to just kind of stay in my box. And I can see how it could kind of encourage certain behaviors of shutting down, being more siloed. I see what happens.

(38:00) Carmen

So.

(38:21) Danny

when senior managers get stressed, they go into a directive mode. And so they don’t let teams be empowered. They start saying, no, do this, do this, do this, do exactly like I say. And then the team become a kind of, OK, I’ll just deliver what you tell me to do. I won’t use my brain. And then innovation gets stifled. And it’s just kind of like this race to the bottom at that point. It’s quite depressing, isn’t it?

(38:45) Carmen

Yes,

I think it is. And as well, no understanding how to use your design and product teams. Because we are actually the ones that can get you out. I keep talking about this. I post a little bit in LinkedIn. Companies think, let’s do VAU really well. Let’s focus on that. Let’s get rid of all. There’s no innovation because they don’t understand what innovation is. They think innovation is the latest. They would say, AI. AI is our innovation thing.

(39:13) Danny

Yeah

(39:15) Carmen

And then we see AI goes nowhere because, you know, people don’t use something because AI actually Jared Spoole recently post. I don’t remember who it was, but they actually advertising. If you talk to our people, you would talk to our people, it won’t be an AI. So actually competitive advantage is that you’re talking to humans. So.

(39:31) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(39:37) Carmen

Because the technology, and this is the misconception of innovation, innovation is not technology. Innovation is what you do. What it is that the customers are achieving with whatever it is you provided. We know this. is the exact levels need to understand. This is not innovation. So the second one is VA you. In a world, let’s say pre pandemic.

where people were, you know, have money, have jobs. We were in first world type of, you know, you could sell subscriptions and all sorts of products that today won’t work because now move five years here, you know, people are losing their jobs. The ones that are not losing their jobs, they’re scared of losing their jobs. So VAEU won’t work.

I predict this, I will say to any company, if you only focus on VAU, good luck to you, because VAU last year is not this year. Two years ago, it’s definitely not this year. Your customers, their jobs to be done have changed, because before the jobs to be done in the hierarchy of Maslow were quite high up. But today, they go in psychology, how is it psychology?

(40:41) Danny

Mmm.

Mm.

(40:58) Carmen

protection and physical protection. We are in basics now. How can I save money? Because I have, you know, we have a cost of living crisis and innovation can be fantastic in this environment. We are made for these times. I’ve been saying this and companies should be using us as where is the opportunity? Where are the opportunities in this environment? How we can satisfy actually the jobs have changed.

(41:22) Danny

Mmm.

(41:26) Carmen

Which jobs can we actually satisfy and make money? You know, and actually help is a double thing because we are helping people and we are making money out of them.

(41:38) Danny

There’s something, yeah, that touched on there that really resonated for me about, like you’re talking about, you know, how society is changing and how people have got new and emerging challenges and how companies can’t be very BAU, they can’t be sort of too, like, just working the old ways and they have to kind of innovate. And something that doesn’t feel right about AI is in that conversation, it’s like, it’s solution first, problem second.

(41:49) Carmen

Thank you.

(42:06) Danny

And I just find that just never works. I just think you’ve got to start with the problem. And it’s such an old adage in our sector. You know, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? But there’s something about AI that says, hey, we’ve got this cool thing. Let’s try and find a bunch of problems that we can solve. And I find it really hard to do that. And I’ve been guilty of it myself where I’ve been getting into vibe coding recently. And I’m like, you know, what can I build? What can I build? And then it’s like,

I’m thinking of it solution, I have AI, what problems will work with it. And it’s so hard to do that. And I think you have to start with, okay, understanding people problems, and then maybe it’s AI, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s something else. But I imagine that might be a pitfall that people fall into.

(42:49) Carmen

Maybe.

Maybe it’s a mix, you know? There are some things where AI can be quite useful, and there are some things, I don’t know, I’m just, I’m gonna, again, this is my thinking, I have no… Anything behind is all alleged and collective conspiracy theory or whatever. But we have seen things that we have never seen before, like companies, big failures recently, huge things happening.

You know, and we have, we have worked in this for a long time. Have you seen an e-commerce going down and going down? It’s not like one day or two days, no months. Or like that big thing with what was the cybersecurity one that took down every windows machine? ⁓ Mars and Spencer’s were down. mean, it’s not even, I recently was buying something and you cannot click and collect.

(43:38) Danny

Marks and Spencer’s went down and stuff didn’t they?

(43:50) Carmen

⁓ I don’t know. It was last month. I don’t know if they already reestablished that. I’m thinking, you know, was it some AI thing there? Because, you we know that technology is being played with and it’s dangerous. Playing with something with this hype. This is what I’m calling. I’ve been calling it. It’s not I’m against these tools. It’s that I’m against the hype.

(44:17) Danny

you

(44:18) Carmen

is extreme at the moment. It’s like we are, they are saying things and they have been proven. They’ve been proven lies. You know, I must, it’s been published. I can say this because

(44:23) Danny

Yeah. Yeah.

There’s something off about it, isn’t it? I I saw it a little bit with crypto. And there’s these kind of waves that come in where there’s a new thing. And then suddenly, everyone does that thing. And then now that’s old and the new thing comes in. And there’s something familiar about this cycle that we’ve seen before. I wanted to ask you, and just move us into a slightly different territory, because something I really want to talk about

outside of the wider sector is more like on the individual level. we were having a conversation before we started about imposter syndrome. And especially like given the market being so challenging, my feeling like it’s a conversation that needs to continually happen, especially if from people like

who might be like us who have been around the block a little bit, just because I kind of just can’t imagine what junior people might be feeling and thinking who are like in these first time jobs or trying to get a job right now. And the role that imposter syndrome might be playing and I feel like it’s a conversation that needs to be needs to be out there. I mean, I know, I’ve personally felt imposter syndrome

probably on every job I’ve ever had. I’ve sort of felt kind of anxious that someone will say, like, what are you doing? Who let you in? Can we just get your CV up a minute? I just worry that’s going to happen. And it never has, but I kind of have that anxiety. Is that something that you can relate with?

(46:05) Carmen

Well, yes, I actually have a different take on imposter syndrome. I think it is. It’s not a bad thing. Something that is a part of us that will always be there. And I kind of talk to anyone who has someone you admire, someone, I don’t know, who does talks, know, like Simon Sinek and, you know, this type of people. If you talk to them, they will tell you they had imposter syndrome. They will tell you that

(46:32) Danny

I have a turn. Yeah.

(46:35) Carmen

before any big talk, they still they have their techniques, but they still get nervous and, anyone is like, I don’t know, I think we think that you will see, I think we live in the world of the

It’s influences. Everything is beautiful, know, the social media, everything is perfect. Right. Life is not like that. We are humans and we have both sides. have really great performances, but behind any great performance is a lot of things that go with it. imposter syndrome is part of you. It’s something that is telling you, hey, you don’t know everything. I actually always thank my imposter syndrome.

Thank you for reminding me. Maybe I’ve been a little bit big headed. Maybe because now I know a lot of things, yeah, but you don’t know everything. it reminds me, reminds me that it me humble, you know, gives me, it brings me, but it’s how you deal with imposter syndrome. For me, this is the key. The key is not saying, I have imposter syndrome and I have to do something to get rid of it. No, it’s going to be first. Let’s be honest, it’s always going to be that.

(47:16) Danny

You think it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that’s a really good point because I had it early on in my career. And then it’s like, well, if I’ve still got it now, like, and I remember saying to myself once, I was like, what would have to happen for me to feel that I, you know, like I don’t have it. The one thing I did wonder was if I was in the same job with the same people, and we delivered the same product,

(47:47) Carmen

It’s part of you. It’s a part of you.

Thank

(48:15) Danny

we did the same work for 10 years, then maybe I wouldn’t have it because I’d be like, well, I’ve done every scenario, every situation has happened, but that’s just not how I work. I change jobs all the time. I change projects, sectors, and there is an element when you do that, especially as a freelancer. I know the market doesn’t like generalists anymore and they like people that have the same job back to back, but as a generalist, you go in and yeah, you don’t quite know everything.

(48:26) Carmen

I can’t understand anything.

you

I ⁓

(48:43) Danny

And I feel like that’s sometimes a

hard place to navigate of saying, I don’t know that yet. Or can I come back to you and think about that? Sometimes it’s simple to say, but it’s hard to do somehow. Am I making any sense?

(49:00) Carmen

Yeah, no, makes sense. And I think, you know, I can see the projects that you’ve been doing, you know, and I’ve been doing, we are good at discovery, aren’t we? And we have been for a long time. Why? Because we had a mindset. Because for me, the moment that starts getting established, it’s just boring. It’s like, okay, now everything is known.

(49:23) Danny

Yes

(49:26) Carmen

next, let’s go. We drive on that and not everyone has that. So, and I think it is another thing I’ve been, I don’t know why companies don’t, know, product teams need to read a little bit more. But, some, Watley, the one of them, is he’s known for the Watley maps, but he’s got this framework of the pioneers, the town planners, the settlers and the town planners.

(49:27) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(49:53) Carmen

And these are personas, personas working in innovation. And what he called the pioneers is us. It’s the people who arrive and see opportunities and don’t get scared with, you know, when things are unknown, actually they get excited about it. there is something to come here. And you thrive in that environment. You’re a pioneer mindset. And then…

(50:10) Danny

Yes.

(50:18) Carmen

You don’t need, you need that, but then you need to go into, ⁓ I think it’s the settlers mindset. I might be saying it the other way around, but I think it’s the settlers, the next one. So once you have discovered all of these things, you need to go, okay, let’s not go. ⁓

(50:32) Danny

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, a pioneer is someone who’s going out there discovering and a settler is someone who’s who’s settling

(50:39) Carmen

opportunities,

(50:39) Danny

in.

(50:40) Carmen

but some of those opportunities won’t work. Some of those opportunities might have risks that companies don’t want to take. So then that’s you need to bring and you can be, I am both pioneer and settled mindset because that’s where I have been. That’s what I enjoyed. Then you go, okay, how do we frame this within the remit of this company, these objectives, you know, this customer base of you go. And then at the end, we give it to the town planners.

who are the ones what companies think about product teams delivery. Yeah. So you need, if you go into a dual track model, you need the pioneer and the set down kind of mindset in your discovery track.

(51:09) Danny

I know, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, ⁓

Aren’t you describing the diamond here? Because isn’t the pioneer diverging and the settler is converging and you know, maybe there’s a town planner and then maybe there’s a builder, you know, like, and I it’s something that I talked about on the previous conversation I have someone is like, I love divergent space. I really like that. I’ve never really been into convergency. So, convergency for me is like,

buttons, arrows, design systems, know, it’s that sort of stuff and convert and, and divergency tends to be more like, you know, interviewing, prototyping, you know, sort of really going out there, ask ideation, you know, being in that space where we don’t know the answers. I, I, that’s the space I feel comfortable in. but I also like, I feel like this whole thing of like, ⁓ product designer that that’s, that’s so, it’s so like the hot ticket right now.

(52:06) Carmen

It’s just.

(52:23) Danny

I look at a product designer and I see that as a converging role. don’t see that as a divergent. Unless I’ve misunderstood it, it looks to me like what they want is like high Figma skills. They say they want all the things like user research and all that, but really what the thing is that they evaluate you on is your Figma skills is what I see. what I’m seeing in another lens of that is they want someone to come in and converge to deliver someone’s vision.

⁓ Maybe to do a little bit of exploration within an execution, but keep converging. So people that like the divergency space are less needed or wanted at the moment, and they’re wanting people that can realise founders’ visions. I think that’s what I’m seeing. that make any sense as theory? I don’t know if it’s true.

(52:53) Carmen

and

I know I

have the same theory. think it’s, Anna has seen it in a few jokes, the contract. So it is not anymore. They say the problem is what is said and what is done is different. You know, it’s like that thing that we researchers know, because it’s one of the things we’re supporting. Besides when participants say one thing, but they do in the behavior doesn’t matter. So yeah, I think it’s quite clear. don’t know. I think there is a product design role that exists.

(53:34) Danny

Yeah.

(53:41) Carmen

But even if you look, are product designers complaining about what you are saying, you know, what is the most, what people think of product design is not reflecting who they are because exactly of this, because it’s not, it’s all time planning. It’s the last mindset because that’s the thing at the moment companies want. They don’t want thinkers. They don’t want design thinking. That’s what is the reality. They think it’s a waste of time. And to be fair to companies,

I think there was a time when the hype of design thinking, like the same with Agile, the same with Lean. And I’ve been saying this for a long time. It’s not the frameworks, problem. It’s the bad practice of those frameworks that has made companies not believe because they haven’t been delivered. And I compare it cooking. Everyone can follow a recipe. Everyone.

(54:28) Danny

Yeah, it was done badly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(54:38) Carmen

But not everyone is a master chef.

(54:39) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(54:40) Carmen

Yeah. So you can go

and follow the design thinking model and do it really badly and have a really, really bad outcome.

Same with, I mean, even worse with jobs to be done is one of the hardest techniques I have ever learned. I had to train really heavily for applying it. You know, so you, and I have, I have heard of people going really wrong with it. So it’s all about understanding the frameworks and applying them. And we had what Marty Kagan is calling the theater of product, which comes from Steve Blank, who is the dad of all the lean kind of.

I’m thinking and he called it the theater of innovation. This is why we have the theater of innovation of product of design is when you do something without systems. I mean, we need some element of theater because we need to kind of sell what we do. But when it’s all theater with nothing behind it or even worse when it’s just for the show and the value of life.

(55:47) Danny

know

that. Yeah, the dot I’ve

(55:48) Carmen

That’s it. It is controversial,

but it has to be said.

(55:53) Danny

The dot that connected for me just then is we were talking about, you were talking earlier about innovation and how it’s been stifled at the moment and how there’s these behaviors that are not encouraging people to collaborate and people to kind of be a bit more siloed. And I was thinking about this, rise of the product designer. this is just theory, but it’s like,

(56:15) Carmen

Sorry.

(56:16) Danny

know,

if the economy is retracting, then if the economy was a person, the economy is going to revert to convergent behaviors. It’s not going to go wide and ask lots of questions. It’s going to kind of go, I’m scared, I’m going smaller, I’m going to just like narrow in on things I’ve done before and narrow in like that. And I think of like a role that is mainly about executing vision is a convergency thing. And so I wonder if the market right now is

(56:39) Carmen

If

(56:45) Danny

like allergic to divergency, which is why you see less user research roles and more pulled into convergency, which is why you see a big drive for people with Figma skills. I don’t know if that could be, I could be completely wrong here, but it was just a dot that connected in our conversation.

(56:59) Carmen

No.

No, think, and let me just tell you one thing. think as well our sector has changed significantly, know, and design has changed significantly. I lived through 2008, 2009. I was a mid-weight back then, and I actually did my best work. of a sudden, stakeholders were open because they were desperate for, desperate in the sense of we need results. And all of sudden, we were able to do things that we couldn’t do.

back maybe when previous to the crisis. I think, and if you prove your value, that’s another one. If you do it and you show them that you can do it and you get up to outcomes, no, I call vanity metrics, which is a kind of term. If you actually get outcomes, then they let you do even more because this is the time.

where we can make a difference. The problem, what we call product design is just really narrow to the town planners. There’s no design thinking, there’s no UX, there’s no service design at all. And that’s the problem. what they’re going to deliver is not probably, as I said, it’s a bit like the inmates are running the asylum. Someone must post in about this. People should start reading this again. It’s so relevant today.

because we lost the design thinking and the value where we cannot value. Our value is not on final, you know, output and shaping it and making it. has, I’m not going to diminish the value of a really good sound, usable, beautiful product. But if that product is not addressing key jobs to be done. And I like jobs to be done because these are the, for me, what I frame it to stakeholders is

how your customers make a decision between getting your product or getting someone else’s product. And always it’s your competitor. So.

(59:08) Danny

I mean, just

the insights and the knowledge that flows out of you. I I feel like we could just talk all day. It’s so interesting to hear your take on it. And I’m also, I’m kind of conscious that I’m trying to keep these conversations round about an hour, but it feels like blunt to kind of…

end it too soon, but I wanted to draw it to some kind of close, but I’m really appreciating and listening to what you’re saying. It’s like, oh yeah, I think I need to reflect and go for a walk. I wonder if we could close on…

I guess the podcast is about design and the human aspect of it. And I wonder if you could share maybe what would you think you’re most proud of that you’ve done in your experience? What’s the most proudest design? Design can be research, can be design. What are you most proud of in your work?

(59:47) Carmen

Thank

you

I think my case studies reflect the projects as a researcher particularly because that’s for me my, you know, my most.

(1:00:18) Danny

Yeah.

(1:00:19) Carmen

My key skill, would say. in my case studies I have, the old projects were research informed decisions. And that is when I feel proud. I feel proud that my research was able to kind of shape the direction of a product, shape sometimes a roadmap of product.

(1:00:35) Danny

Mmm.

You can see your influence in end outcome of the design. You’re like, know why that page is there or that button is there or it says that or the flow works like this because I changed it. Is that right?

(1:00:54) Carmen

Yeah. And it’s even like the experience it goes beyond not only that interface, but it’s we are providing a much better experience, you know, and the teams understand the reasons behind of, you know, how, how, why the product is working. So for me, it’s not even me influencing. always feel I did my job if I brought the right.

You know, those insights and I work well with the team to make it, to inform what they are doing and to raise the risk early. Sometimes it’s not only about the new opportunities. So there is a few products that wouldn’t exist today. If we didn’t do, I didn’t do the research or another research is not only me, you know, in this case, it’s me, it was me, but a good researcher will get you those really good opportunities that end up into a product. Also.

Something I’ve been saying as well, we need to start talking about and particular researches because our value has been diminished massively at the moment. So all of the risks we had to avert, but also the products that didn’t make it and were a total disaster, which is not only money, it’s reputational damage for big companies that we actually stopped because we provided the right, you know.

the right insights to help teams understand this has no value. And when not only that, I always say, it’s not telling them this has no value, this has no value, but we have learned, you know, where you can go, where is that value? And I think for me, this is when I light up. When I present these projects, I get quite excited about it because this is where for me,

(1:02:31) Danny

Hmm.

(1:02:43) Carmen

I’m proud. I’m proud that I am helping these teams, you know, to actually, yeah, to find value for the company and for the customers.

(1:02:56) Danny

Amazing. I think that’s a great note to end on. And thank you, Common. It’s been so great to talk to you. And I feel like I’ve learned quite a lot. And I need to go back and listen to it and make some notes. So thank you so much. we should have another conversation. There’s so much more to talk about. So thank you. Yeah, thanks for trusting me. And I think we’re good. So we’ll end it there.

(1:03:07) Carmen

So.

Thank you.

Good on you.