#2 Building, Designing, and Staying Human

(00:00) Gavin

that feeling that you mentioned kind of bubbles up inside you is almost, it’s like one of the many feelings that resonates with either the user or the kind of process that you know deeply and

adds an important value to the problem that you’re trying to solve. And I think that’s part of a skill, is really important in the designer is to be able to know when to kind of bring about these controversial discussions. And some might have more of a control on it. Some might have less.

(00:29) Danny

Yeah.

So amazing, Gavin, I’m so pleased that you’ve come to join me and thanks for being part of this experiment. I feel a little bit nervous just because this is quite a new thing for me, not talking, but talking to people in this kind of format. So I really honour your trust for coming to do this with me. And hopefully people can find this interesting.

(00:53) Gavin

Yeah.

(01:06) Danny

I think that you’re interesting because I’ve met you. We actually met back in, I think it was 2014. Is that, that’s what I had in my head. Is that what you had?

(01:17) Gavin

Uh, yeah, I think so. It was around about that time, wasn’t it? Yeah.

(01:20) Danny

It was a John Lewis and

you came in, I think to help on the iPad app.

(01:27) Gavin

Yeah, was the… I think I joined the iPhone team originally and then got moved over to ⁓ the iPad team.

(01:31) Danny

iPhone team, yeah.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah, brilliant. So I did a little bit of snooping on your LinkedIn because I know you but I don’t know you. And I was sort of like, okay, Gavin, you worked for Rolls Royce. That’s where you started your career, which I thought was so interesting. Like when you think of design, and this podcast is about design, mean, Rolls Royce is, you know, that is a very kind of well known brand that

(01:44) Gavin

Yes.

(02:05) Danny

that evokes design and is known for its design really. So I find that very fascinating. And I see that you, from what I can see, I don’t know if this is your character or framing of it, but you’re one of these designers that also builds. And that seems to be what a lot of people are saying in the market is that, you you’ve got to be the unicorn. And I was looking at your…

everything you’ve done and I was like is Gavin a unicorn? What do you think about that?

And you can build, you can design, you’ve made Figma plugins, like you’ve done UI, you’ve done UX, you’ve done research, like you’re quite well-rounded there from what I can see.

(02:54) Gavin

I like to think of myself as well-rounded, I’ve always been a maker at heart. When I was really young, I don’t know if you remember those books, they’re called How It Works, I think. ⁓ And there’s loads of them on different kind of subjects. And I just remember one of them.

(03:14) Danny

Yeah.

(03:23) Gavin

being about cars. And when I was younger, I used to take little model cars apart and then put them back together. I used to enjoy figuring out how they worked. And so that’s kind of stuck with me, but I’ve always had that ⁓ intuition, I guess, for artistic things for graphic design. So that’s where my background is in graphic design and art.

(03:51) Danny

Mmm.

(03:53) Gavin

But I always wanted to apply it to things that are functional. And so yeah, so I’ve kind of like shifted back and forth between design, like the visual side of stuff, but then also this curiosity to kind of understand how it works and how it can bring it to life.

(03:57) Danny

Hmm.

Job titles, they’re such a mess these days and how, you know, nobody likes UX anymore. It finally died, apparently. Now it’s product design. Now it’s not prompt engineers. What do you call yourself? Like how do you describe what you do to people given that you do so many different things?

(04:19) Gavin

Hmm.

I for me personally, I have two types of personas. So I don’t think I have like one sort of job title that I use when I talk to people because I feel like I live a double life sometimes. So when it comes to the engineering aspect of it or the coding aspect of it, I call myself a design engineer. And when it comes to

What is more typically my day job than I describe myself as a UX designer. And I think, a consultant, the reason why I still call myself a UX designer is because I feel like product design still doesn’t encapsulate what it is I typically do in organizations that require my services. ⁓ I think I was brought up when graphic design.

first, sorry, UX design first came about. And to me, that embodies a lot of the methodologies that are involved to try and understand your users and figure out what it is that they need from your service or your product. And the type of work that I do is a combination of tactical and strategic, but it’s always time-based or scope-based.

So I consider myself leaning more towards a UX designer when I’m doing that role because I have a very particular job that I need to do and I need to go in and do that.

(06:21) Danny

Do you think, like, I’ve been very interested in this direction with AI and, you know, how it’s really kind of disrupting our sector. Like, you mentioned, like, your day job, and then when you do consulting, your day job, I suppose your day job is the consulting, and then what you do on the side is more like, do you mean, like, Figma plugins and building things and stuff like that? Can you see a point where…

(06:46) Gavin

Yeah. Yeah.

(06:50) Danny

those two worlds will come together for you and maybe for the sector. I’m seeing this whole thing of everyone can now build and we’re now empowered with AI tools. Do you think that’s gonna start blurring together for you personally, but maybe the sector as a whole?

(07:10) Gavin

Err… I’m… yeah I’m not sure… erm…

I definitely have thoughts and some concerns about where it’s going. know the UX industry is changing, suffering a little bit at the moment. Whether my, yeah, kind of two personas will kind of be utilized more as one.

(07:23) Danny

Mmm.

(07:45) Gavin

think the only real place I can see that happening is where maybe a company needs someone that is has a breadth of that knowledge and can use it in a more strategic capacity potentially or perhaps they need those hard skills that you once had in your kind of experience of the you know I’ve been working in this field

(08:02) Danny

Mmm.

(08:15) Gavin

for I feel like a long time. But I think some of those hard skills are almost like being converted into soft skills. like… ⁓

(08:18) Danny

Yeah.

Can you give me some examples?

(08:31) Gavin

or being able to…

to maybe appreciate what has an impact versus what doesn’t when it comes to some of the more nuanced decisions that you have to make. Like potentially like user research, for example. ⁓ I think you quickly learn that it’s a very useful tool to have, but knowing like how many people you should interview, what types of people.

(08:48) Danny

Mmm.

(09:06) Gavin

to like what extent you should go to and also particularly what industry that company might be in. But I don’t think necessarily they would need someone that can like can actually exercise that and implement that for them. Just someone who has knowledge of it to guide them in the right way.

(09:27) Danny

Yeah, you know, that’s interesting because I was reading something about where AI is at moment and it seems to be very good at giving you like, I think of it as divergent. It’s very good at diverging. It’s very good at converging when you instruct it what to converge on, but to decide what to converge on. Like the decision, like how do you reason? Okay.

we’ve done this research balancing that with where the market is, what the stakeholders want, how confident the tech team is at building something. Maybe they’re not even very good at building something and maybe they’re not ready for that or maybe there’s a variety of inputs, but reasoning all those inputs and some of them, and this is the thing I’m finding interesting about service design, is there is some types of input that isn’t

(10:07) Gavin

Hmm.

(10:25) Danny

you can’t feed into an AI machine. And so it can’t know what the sentiment is. in some bits aren’t data points. what I’m seeing in AI is like, it’s not very good at making decisions. I think it’s good at telling you what the decisions are. It’s good at just immediately jumping into a decision and making it seem like it was a good idea. But it’s not very good at really like reasoning. And my AI, ChatGPT, often tells me whenever I see…

(10:27) Gavin

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yes.

(10:53) Danny

I say I’m going to do this, it tells me how great that is that I’m doing it I get fooled by it. think, oh yeah, it is quite good. And then I go, hang on a minute, that’s a terrible idea. You haven’t thought of this. And then it goes, oh yeah, I haven’t thought of that. You’re absolutely right. And I’m just like, who am I talking to? Does that resonate at all?

(10:56) Gavin

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, massively. mean,

AI at the moment does a really good job of giving the impression that it’s smarter than it is. And I think that’s interesting in itself because it is really smart. in terms of the achievement, it’s gone from a scenario where we didn’t have AI to where we do now. It’s an incredible leap. And I think it also just proves how

(11:24) Danny

Yeah.

(11:46) Gavin

much you can do with very little to a degree. The thing that it doesn’t have at the moment anyway is it doesn’t have lived experiences. It hasn’t been through what you’ve been through or any other kind of human being as far as I know. I mean I’m sure there’s someone out there you know looking at how they can make that happen or or is making it happen.

(12:14) Danny

Do you mean like how, so you’ve had a fair bit experience, know, mean, God, almost, yeah, two decades. Like you must go into a gig and you must reason on the cuff to some extent of like, I don’t think that’s a good way to go. I think we’d be better off building it, you know, in this way or using this design system. Or even, I noticed you’re very into typography, you know, these fonts are…

(12:22) Gavin

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

(12:41) Danny

generally better for this. you have a sort of like, I guess a bit like a gut instinct, which is sort of formulated on unconscious experiences that have kind of gone in there. That’s your LLM, right? That is able to kind of regurgitate and give a good sense of reasoning. And that’s not really necessarily the same as knowing everything.

(12:51) Gavin

Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I have done a bit of reading in the past with regards to like what, how different parts of your brain work. And ⁓ I’m no expert in this field, but the baseline of what I kind of understand or something that’s really stuck with me is that there’s a part of your brain that’s responsible for rational thinking and a part of your brain which is responsible for emotional thinking.

And it’s the emotional side, is more evolved than the rational side. And it, and it, responds to things instantly much quicker. So I think you can, that that’s the kind of visceral gut reaction that usually comes with that experience, you know, so, ⁓ you know, that story of.

(13:47) Danny

God, that’s me and my four year old son every day.

(14:05) Gavin

the workers who were picking out the chickens, the chicken eggs to find out whether it’s a male or female egg. there’s no visible thing that tells you whether it’s female or male, but they’re incredibly good at filtering out the eggs based on that. They just know, it’s just like an instinct.

(14:30) Danny

They just, they just know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

(14:34) Gavin

⁓

And so I think that’s the same thing that you have as a person when it comes to being able to make some of these decisions. You just have this instinct. You might not even know why yourself is just a feeling. But that feeling is incredibly well tuned.

(14:47) Danny

Interesting.

Yeah, it is feelings, isn’t it? It’s like, I sometimes, and I’ve been exploring this with my therapist actually, when I’m in a meeting or a workshop and something doesn’t feel right, like I was in a gig a few months ago and it was my first meeting, first workshop, and I’ve been really reflecting about this actually, that what they were explaining was they were building something out of the box and one of the designers was…

was basically designing lots of Figma screens, what was about to, and they were pulling it from out of the box, and the developer was like, yeah, I’m gonna go build it, and the designer was like, yeah, I’m gonna go design it. And this feeling came up inside me of like, something doesn’t sound right about that. Why are we designing things when it’s out of the box? And what I saw was a designer and a developer not quite understanding.

what each other was going to be building and they were going to go off separately and then come back together, which I mean, could work, but it didn’t seem like very efficient to me. So I have this feeling coming up and it’s like a bubble and it’s like, ⁓ I’ve got to say it, I’ve got to say it. And this is something I really struggle with in my own practice. I find it really hard to shut up. And so I just said it, I just said that I don’t understand why, why the design is.

(15:58) Gavin

Hmm. Yeah.

(16:14) Danny

doing it out of the box. it was quite like, for me, was was so uncomfortable to not say it. The feeling was there. But then equally, like, I think when I threw that in, it was quite destabilizing for some people, because it was like, who’s this guy? What? Why is he telling me I shouldn’t be doing this? And so feelings for me is something I’m really, I’m really like trying to work out what my relationship with is with my feelings in a work environment, because so much of it is

(16:21) Gavin

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

(16:42) Danny

It’s like logic based and rational and reasoning. I remember someone, John Lewis actually, someone said to me, she said, she said like, the people that do well here are the ones that are less emotional. And she said that’s generally men and women that pretended to be a bit more like men in their emotional expression. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that and…

(16:45) Gavin

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

(17:11) Danny

my own relationship to emotions in work. Does that make any sense to you?

(17:17) Gavin

Yeah, I think it’s, ⁓ well, it makes me think of something that I’ve seen sort of floating around recently in terms of discussions with UXs.

there’s sort of debate as to whether when you have a UX designer join the team, replace it with product designer if you want to. Anyone that sort of empathizes with the user, whether like ⁓ a designer who causes like ruffles some feathers or not is a good thing or not. And I think the point

(17:43) Danny

Yeah.

(18:05) Gavin

that I’ve seen made, which is the best one is they care enough to kind of speak aloud about that. You know, like that feeling that you mentioned kind of bubbles up inside you is almost, it’s like one of the many feelings that resonates with either the user or the kind of process that you know deeply and

adds an important value to the problem that you’re trying to solve. And I think that’s part of a skill, is really important in the designer is to be able to know when to kind of bring about these controversial discussions. And some might have more of a control on it. Some might have less. So yeah, I think, I think emotions important in

(18:57) Danny

Yeah.

(19:06) Gavin

in those, um, you know, in, in, doing a job of a designer, um, a hundred percent, I guess it’s just a question of, there’s also the like mentality of being able to ship a product. And I think that’s where the emotion can get in the way sometimes, you know, like.

(19:29) Danny

Yeah, you know what, that connects to something that you talked a little bit about. And I don’t know if I’m drawing a bridge here, if this works, but like, the role of emotions in design, like, I think as you say, like, you know, we’re trained to be empathetic. And I personally get like my fuel to feel motivated when…

I sort of feel, yeah, when I feel different emotions, I feel excited about, you know, spotting something that maybe no one else has seen and I can share it and then it gets everyone excited. Or maybe I’ve had really good conversations with the user and then I make a change to my prototype and test it again. And then the next set, it works and I get excited. And that’s what, you know, I don’t really care what sector I’m in. Like I’m just getting excited because something I’ve made is working and it’s connecting. And that’s

(20:05) Gavin

Hmm.

Yeah.

(20:26) Danny

that emotion. But I see the other side of that. And something that you you posted a bit about, and it’s something I’ve had personal experience about is burnout, burnout in design. And I see that there is there is some I’m seeing that like froth up in some of my like LinkedIn feeds and stuff. And people talking about burnout. And I’ve had a personal experience of it over a decade ago. And I know that other people have like, what I wonder like, as someone that

(20:34) Gavin

Hmm.

(20:54) Danny

I think has had some experience and like how does design affect your mental health? How have you navigated that? Like the ups and the downs and the challenging parts? Like what’s been, what are the nuggets that you’ve collected that have worked for you?

(21:11) Gavin

⁓ well, firstly, I think I start off by saying that

Now is it particularly I think is a very difficult time for a lot of people. So I think there’s when people experience burnout, there’s a combination of stuff that are internal factors, things that are going on with your life and and some that you can control some that you can’t and then there’s also external factors like what’s happening in the world. And I think that is what’s

(21:38) Danny

Yeah.

(21:47) Gavin

like it’s especially difficult for me because there are those are things I can’t control.

And then with regards to, I’ve actually, sorry, I’ve actually had a memory blank in terms of what the original question was.

(22:06) Danny

No, well, I was wondering what the impact of design has been on your mental health, positively or negatively. And also, just to touch on what you said, that really resonates. My experience of burnout was that there were some aspects that I couldn’t control that were going on outside of design. But then I was in a design world. I needed it to make money. And I was having to deal with really challenging stakeholders at the same time.

(22:10) Gavin

yes. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

(22:34) Danny

rolling situation and so that just created this kind of temporary collapse in my ability to function really.

(22:40) Gavin

Yes, yeah, I mean,

I can 100 % resonate with that. I actually kind of recently went through some health changes that kind of like had a big impact on my confidence, the way that I treat anxiety. And then in terms of in my job, I had a knock on effect. I think luckily,

the people that I found myself surrounded by in design have always been really supportive. ⁓

I’ve always had the opportunity to kind of like.

have someone maybe support me from the back when I felt like I’ve been at my lowest. I think the most difficult part is the fact that as a freelancer, someone who works for themselves, you’re ultimately responsible for finding that income. So, you know, when you finished a contract, even if you might have the support of people within that job,

in between that time, you’ve got to pick yourself up and find yourself another job. And I think that’s been the most challenging side of it. In terms of like design itself and kind of what effect it’s had, I think for the most part positive, know, design is in everything that I do outside and inside of work. And the skills that I’ve learned in it, especially the problem solving skills I use.

all the time. I guess maybe one side of it, which I don’t know if it’s more because it’s me or if it’s the influence that designers had, but that’s being so like very aware of things. And so that kind of like, I’m the sort of person that gets easily distracted because of that outside of outside of, you know, jobs.

if someone says something and it just takes me that extra second to like compute it, if it’s something that isn’t like a normal straightforward thing. ⁓ because I, because I’ve been kind of trained to think of every edge case as a, as a designer, my job, one of my, one of my responsibilities is to think of every possible scenario that a user could find themselves in. And like when it comes to.

(25:05) Danny

again.

(25:21) Gavin

life I do that it just comes naturally to do the same thing like we had a house renovation that we started 10 years ago and it’s a bit of a curse and a blessing because you know I can plot every possible scenario and detail that will go right and wrong with it and it’s a curse to be someone who is aware of those details but at the same time

(25:32) Danny

can.

Yeah.

(25:50) Gavin

you know, to have that ability to see those details to have an influence and to create something that no one else might think of doing.

(25:58) Danny

It’s a muscle that we’ve been encouraged to cultivate in our jobs. I always kind of feel like it’s a slightly kind of hyper anxious state of sort of having this peripheral awareness that in some gigs, not all gigs, but some gigs can be really useful because you’re like spotting on the horizon, know, oh.

(26:11) Gavin

Hmm.

(26:25) Danny

you know, that that juror ticket didn’t have that detail, you know, that edge case was missed, you know, nobody’s thought of this scenario, you know, or your coding, you know, you might be thinking about certain aspects of the code. And that’s it for me, like, I find I find there’s like, a sort of mixed relationship with that, like some of it, I have this like deep thought, which I kind of like, just love that space where my mind is just going to that place. But in another

especially when things get operational, that’s where I get, you and I try to steer away from gigs where it’s about going live and about launching and ops and stuff like that, because that just scares the crap out of me, because it’s just so hairy, you you press the button, all, it’s not, I it reminds me, my first gig, I was working for a travel company and I hadn’t really like, I didn’t have much experience, you know, I was coding in… ⁓

(26:56) Gavin

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

(27:24) Danny

ASP and the whole website had a header on it. It made an ASP and the header had an ASP header on it. You know, it’s just a banner and I had made a code change to the banner and these days like in Dreamweaver, there’s no like syntax, you know, like it doesn’t tell you if you’ve broken the syntax and stuff. And so I just put like a bracket in the wrong place or something. But because what ASP would do is if one part of the code is broken,

(27:33) Gavin

Yeah.

(27:52) Danny

It kills the whole runtime thing. So the whole site went down. And I had someone coming down to me and they’re like, we’re losing 10 grand an hour, which doesn’t sound like a lot these days, but back in 2000, it was a big deal. And I was alone. There was no one there. And I was sweating trying to figure it out. I was just like, after that, I was like, you know what? I just can’t do operational stuff. Like it’s too, it doesn’t work for my nervous state at all.

(27:54) Gavin

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that you say that because I think I quite like some of the operational stuff. ⁓

(28:29) Danny

Really?

(28:32) Gavin

I like being a person who knows how the stuff operates. I don’t know if I’d like to be the person, like you say, especially now and today’s like technology stack that, you know, exists and the number of users that some services get to actually be the person that pushes the button. But like for me that

element of how it gets out of my monitor onto, you know, someone’s device and in what way and how they react to it and what’s actually happening in the real world, you know, like even beyond like it’s one thing to do user testing and have people using a prototype or even using the real thing, but in that kind of fake environment. So I’m really interested in that.

well I say really like to a degree interested in the operational side of stuff. You know at the end of the day if you’re working on something as a designer and it doesn’t operate or it doesn’t make it make you know it never sees the light of day then I’m sure you’re the same you know like there’s you’re in it for it to be real. Yeah.

(29:51) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah, to have an impact, right?

Yeah, definitely. I’m curious, like thinking, thinking about this, kind of types of roles that work for different emotional types or non emotional types. And what, what do you think, what kind of environments do you think create good designers? Like, you know, so less about the, the person, but more the environment as something I’ve always been fascinated in.

Like what cultures and environments make good designers? Do you have any thoughts on that?

(30:28) Gavin

⁓ I’m just trying to think of like my past and kind of.

(30:33) Danny

I can

speak a little bit to it John Lewis, if that’s just to give you a minute to think. I used to think about things like, well, not at John Lewis, I didn’t think about it, but it existed, was a fair degree of psychological safety. And I think that what I’m learning is what I’ve had in certain environments, but I didn’t know that’s what it was called. But it was kind of where I didn’t really feel like I’d get fired.

(30:37) Gavin

Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure.

(31:01) Danny

unless I was really offensive or said something really awful, I wasn’t going to get kicked out any minute and I didn’t see other people just getting canned instantly. I can remember my first 10 years, I’d never saw anyone get fired, never saw anyone quit or anything like that. Whereas in the last 10 years, I’ve been in environments where I’ve seen people get fired, I’ve seen people just not turning up one day, they’ve left and…

(31:10) Gavin

Hmm.

No.

(31:31) Danny

and it seems very tense and there’s a sort of, know, and I don’t think that’s just me. think cultures and stuff have shifted. And I’ve also seen environments, positive ones, where there’s been a real effort to spend time getting to know each other without necessarily just going straight into like the project or the work, but like, you know, how are you doing? Like, what’s your world, you know?

(31:36) Gavin

Yeah.

Yeah.

(31:58) Danny

just people caring a little bit, I think can help one feel bit safer and then for me that helps me do better work. Does any of that resonate?

(32:06) Gavin

Yeah,

yeah, definitely. As a freelancer or as a contractor, you often find yourself in environments where you have worries and concerns about how comfortable you’ll feel psychologically within, you know, within that project. And the projects that I’ve enjoyed the most, I think have been where I felt

Like, you say, like there isn’t necessarily that feeling that I feel like I’m going to lose my job if I say the wrong thing. there’s, there’s always, there’s always an element of that in contracting, especially when you’re working with, you know, the end client. ⁓ and I think it’s good to have it because it kind of keeps you, keeps you on form. ⁓ but to.

(32:58) Danny

Mm.

(33:07) Gavin

have some support within the project, whether it’s with the end client or if you’re working with an agency where they respect that you’re a human being as well. ⁓ you know, and people make mistakes and people have lives and, you know, need to be able to take your cat to the vet, for example, you know, maybe like a moment’s notice or

(33:21) Danny

Yeah.

(33:36) Gavin

you’ve got a hospital appointment or something like that. Those are the ones where I feel like I produce the better work because I’m not there to mimic the idea of working. I’m there, I’m actually producing work that’s meaningful. You know, I’ve been on projects where I’ve had someone

(33:45) Danny

Mm-hmm.

(34:06) Gavin

checking my Figma file to see like how the progress has been. And as a freelancer who loves autonomy, you know, to kind of like rejig my day, you know, I even had to go to the lengths of like copying and pasting stuff in the file just to make it appear like, you know, the file history was like having an effect. Like, I don’t know whether that person was actually like…

(34:10) Danny

Really?

Yeah.

⁓ my god.

(34:35) Gavin

going to that detail to see it. I would always work in another file because as a freelancer, that’s kind of like how I, know, what works best for me, you know, in this particular project wasn’t a very collaborative one. But yeah, sometimes, you know, like you do feel under that pressure to maybe avoid conflict. I don’t know whether that, you know, that maybe that’s something I could have learned from.

(34:38) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(35:05) Gavin

in terms of maybe there was a better way to handle it but it was a way that worked for me at the time.

(35:13) Danny

Yeah, it’s a hard one, isn’t it? As a freelancer about like, what I think a lot about is like, what kind of relationships do I want with my clients? Like, I like to have an honest relationship where I’ll tell them if I think that what they’re telling me to do doesn’t need to be done. And so it’s better that they don’t pay me anymore.

(35:23) Gavin

Hmm.

Yes.

(35:39) Danny

and start the work. I’d like to feel that I can be that honest as opposed to like, well, I’ll just, you know, take the money and do whatever, because I feel like it’s two way, you know, if I can bring that authenticity in, then hopefully they can bring authenticity in. And I think where I feel the most stressed is where I’m having to read, like multiple layers of what’s, of what’s really happening. And I think that’s something that I’ve, when I was in managerial roles, I used to do quite a lot.

(35:59) Gavin

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

(36:09) Danny

they might say effectively or not, I’d let them judge whether I was effective at it, to sort of story tell. And I’ve done that in jobs I was in where the whole company was in freefall, and people didn’t know if they were going to be fired any day and people were getting fired. And so I then had to, my role then was to sort of give some orientation about what is happening. So and so has said that because they think this is going to happen.

(36:21) Gavin

Mm-hmm.

(36:37) Danny

And so-and-so doesn’t want that to happen. So they always say this, but they don’t really mean this. And it’s just kind of like, and I did on a recent gig with a colleague I was working with and I was explaining to them why I, my read on the situation of why meetings seemed odd. And I was like, I think it’s odd because so-and-so doesn’t understand agile or so-and-so hasn’t done a GDS project before or has only learned this in a bootcamp or what have you. And so that’s why they’re coming at it from this angle. That’s so much cognitive drag.

(36:41) Gavin

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

(37:06) Danny

Like

I’m using up so much brain power to try and interpret some signals that I think I’m seeing because like everything doesn’t seem authentic and real. And so I’m having to kind of disentangle and translate it. And then I’ve got to go and do some research or design on top of that. But I find that all of that mess that can happen with people and humans and awkwardness and lack of psychological safety, like just creates all of that wash.

(37:09) Gavin

Yeah.

Yeah.

(37:36) Danny

You know, does that make sense?

(37:38) Gavin

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you’re incredibly sensitive to all the details as a designer, aren’t you? So, you know, it doesn’t just include the problem itself, it includes the team you work with. And if you’re an introvert like me, those things can tie you out really quickly, you know, like drain your battery as such.

(37:50) Danny

products.

(38:08) Gavin

I think, yeah, I think it’s trying to find yourself, protect yourself from some of those conversations. And sometimes, you know, managers really good for doing some of that. but it probably also comes from the culture of the company you’re working with.

(38:30) Danny

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. And what people are seeing modeled by the leaders, I think is very important. saw in credit, like, John Lewis is probably, was a senior director there and he was just remarkable. I’ve never seen anyone like him and he modeled like what he preached and he would, yeah, would genuinely like care about people, but yet he was also like, you very effective and.

(38:35) Gavin

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

(38:58) Danny

and all this, but his communication skill was off the chart. Like he could explain the complexities of pensions to everybody and keep the room like attentive.

(39:10) Gavin

It’s really

inspiring, isn’t it, when you meet people like that and you think maybe there is hope for me after all.

(39:17) Danny

Yeah, yeah, I’m curious, and if you need a minute to think about this, please take it. But could you can you think of anyone that you’ve worked with and you don’t have to call their name out, but just sort of maybe remark upon what it was that was inspiring about them? But have you worked with someone or a couple of people in particular that have reshaped your your design practice?

And yeah, take your time.

(39:45) Gavin

Yeah.

Yeah, there’s been quite a few people. think I take a little bit from a lot of people that I work with. I think the first experience was probably, you mentioned that I used to work at Rolls Royce. That was kind of like a, that was what was called a year in industry. So it was like the opportunity to experience working for a company before you went into further education.

And I was actually using, ⁓ front page. ⁓ yeah. So, ⁓ I’m glad I’m not doing that anymore, but, ⁓ my manager, my manager at the time, he was such, such a supportive person as, as a human being that it just showed me what.

(40:29) Danny

Boom.

Yeah.

(40:52) Gavin

real warm

supportive.

⁓ like a supportive person that you work with actually feels like and I’m fortunate that had it at such a young age. Other people that I’ve worked with other thing I mean I work is not often that I work in companies where I’m a contractor and there’s another contractor

Like the difficulty I’ve got when I have people who like they come to me for recommendations. say, Hey Gavin, can you like recommend, you know, a good UX designer and

I think if you’re like me and you have such a high standard, high bar for like what you think makes someone good or like maybe it’s not so much that they’re good but that you know enough about them that you would recommend them and like have your name on the line I think is probably a better way to put it.

(42:02) Danny

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

(42:07) Gavin

And there’s not many people that I feel like I understand enough, but the people that I’ve really enjoyed working with, you get to see their inner workings a lot easier. And I’ve had one person in particular, which I’m happy to shout out, which is Laura Block. And she’s just such an amazing person to work with because she kind of shows you what her thought process is.

And at the same time, very empathetic kind of gets, you know, what, you’ve got going on in, in life. ⁓ but at the same time, ⁓ you know, adds the context when it matters, you know, when, when you need to kind of move a project forward, applies what’s important at that moment.

(42:50) Danny

Yeah.

Sounds like she’s

able to really balance the left and the right side of the brain, you know, being both empathetic and deeply pragmatic and practical all at the same time.

(43:04) Gavin

massively.

Yeah,

I think that’s another skill that you just mentioned, ⁓ being pragmatic. think being able to, when we were talking earlier about like emotional, bringing emotions into it, is being able to like compartmentalize those. I think it doesn’t mean that you don’t still have those emotions, you you might feel that frustration or you might feel that passionately about something, but you’re able to…

choose when it’s exposed.

(43:41) Danny

Yeah,

Amazing. I want to slowly draw us to a close. I’m so enjoying this conversation, but I’m also wanting to keep the fire hot as well. So I have three final questions, which I think are fairly easy to answer, could you say what you’re most proud of that you’ve designed? Is that something that you can?

(43:54) Gavin

Yeah.

(44:10) Danny

draw upon quite quickly.

(44:17) Gavin

It’s actually a difficult one because I think there’s some things that I’ve designed, which I feel I’m most proud of because of the impact it’s had. And then there are other projects that I’m proud of because of guess what I’ve been able to achieve. probably the most, the thing that’s had the most impact, I think it’s probably been my government work that I’ve done working.

(44:28) Danny

Yeah, great.

Yeah.

(44:47) Gavin

in the government has been really rewarding to be able to see how that’s made an impact to every everyday life and in people in in the country that you know I’m part of and also to to see that policy change happen within governments has been really interesting and then the other thing that I’ve been really proud of is

the Figma plugins which is like a massive part of what I’ve been doing for the last four years.

(45:17) Danny

Yeah.

Do want to give a quick shout out to the, maybe some of the best plugin that you’ve made?

(45:26) Gavin

⁓ yeah, I think, I think it has to be Table Creator, which just makes it easier to create tables.

(45:30) Danny

I’m a creator, yeah, I’ve had that one.

Yeah. sorry, just share for people that don’t know what it is. Yeah, tell me.

(45:37) Gavin

Yeah,

sure. So ⁓ if you use Figma and you’ve tried to create a table in your UI design, you find that actually it’s quite convoluted. It’s quite difficult. It’s a bit easier now that you’ve got grids, but otherwise it’s still quite a pain. So Table Creator allows you to create tables more easily, but what makes it different from some of the other

plugins that also create tables is it connects to your design system. So when you’re creating the tables, if you ever need to update the design of those tables, it comes back to your design system. You can modify your components, your cell component, and it will propagate that change through all the tables you’ve created.

(46:29) Danny

Amazing. that’s the one that’s had like 500k plus downloads. Is that right?

(46:34) Gavin

Yeah,

it’s nearing on 600 something thousand now. Yeah, so as a cheat and as a as an achievement. Yeah, I think that’s something I’m really, really proud of.

(46:39) Danny

Very impressive. That’s a great number.

And finally, what are you working on right now?

(46:50) Gavin

⁓ Right now I am working on a toolkit for people who want to create their own plugins, Figma plugins. it’s ⁓ version one already exists, but the next version, it just kind of takes it to that next level in terms of the problem that I see with Figma plugins at the moment is that they’re very low barrier to entry to actually create a plugin.

But when it comes to creating one that is enterprise ready or kind of works within ⁓ works as like other modern software does, ⁓ it’s quite difficult. And that’s where Plugma helps because it allows you to create enterprise grade plugins that are testable and are easy to manage.

(47:25) Danny

Great. ⁓

(47:49) Gavin

predictable. It gets rid of all the unnecessary configuration and just makes it so you can just focus on developing a plugin and ensuring that it works for your users.

(48:02) Danny

Amazing. I was going to say Figma must love you, but I think I read they gave you a grant to work on this, right? Did I read that right?

(48:08) Gavin

So the grant

the grant was on another plugin, which I created which is called figlet and Again, you can see a theme happening. So hi. I just I just like ⁓ showing people how easy it is to I guess not just create plugins but also to like how to learn how to code ⁓ because I came from ⁓ That same position where I wanted to bring things to life and I think

(48:12) Danny

the plugin. Figlet.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

(48:37) Gavin

creating plugins, whether it’s a Figma plugin or a plugin for something else like Framer or Canva, they’re really good places to start because you, they’re not too big of a problem to solve and you have complete autonomy over every aspect of it. Yeah, yeah.

(49:01) Danny

A designer’s dream. Amazing.

Gavin, it’s been so good to talk to you. You have kicked this off in the best way that I could have wanted. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. This is exactly what Deeply Human Design podcast is all about, is just understanding what’s it like for the people that do the design. And I think you’ve shared that really well. So thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Thank you, Gavin. And we’ll be having many more of these conversations and maybe Gavin, we can have another conversation a little further down the track if people like this kind of content and material, we can chat again, that’d be great. Awesome. Great. Thanks, Gavin.

(49:40) Gavin

Yeah, definitely. Thanks ever so much for having me.