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my name is Nate Clinton I'm executive director of design at North America design that's part of

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Wipro digital and Wipro globally and what we do is we do strategic design for clients around the

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world my role is really focused on North America and you know building teams here in our primary

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studios in San Francisco and Brooklyn New York as well as other places around the United States

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and Canada and you know working with them to understand their needs and really create design

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you know design solutions whether it's a digital design or service design or you know the launch of

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new ventures or really the future of their business all of those kinds of questions great and Tim why

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don't you introduce yourself I'm Tim McCoy I'm senior director of user experience at Pivotal I've been

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with Pivotal for about eight years now I started on the consulting side Pivotal Labs and for the last

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several years I've been in our R&D organization working with Pivotal Cloud Foundry Pivotal Green Plum and

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now my main focus is with Pivotal Gemfire and Pivotal Cloud Cash kind of our big question today is to is to

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talk a little bit about the state of modern design as it relates to software development I'd also love

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to get into a bit of the past and the evolution of design and and how that has evolved as software

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development has evolved around agile agile methodologies lean those kinds of things I

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imagine it's changed pretty dramatically over the years and you guys have a bit of a quite a bit of

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experience in this space so maybe we can start talking a little bit about how you guys kind of your past at

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Cooper tell us a little bit about that and then maybe we can get into some of the things you're doing

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now so I joined Cooper in 2004 maybe and worked there for a number of years really at a point in the

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maturity of the design practice in software where it was a lot of waterfall work a lot of upfront front

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loaded research heavy then working to develop a design that you thought was going to be a really

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great solution outcome for your your customer for your users and then once you had that and you

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had it nice and documented up you then engage more directly with engineering organization to see that

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that thing built right and in my evolution in design I think goes along with how a lot of the industry is

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going around the 2010 timeframe when we saw that designers just weren't seeing outcomes they wanted from

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the work we were doing right like we designed great things only to see them a shadow of themselves of

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their former selves when they actually made it to someone's screen and so I got involved in the agile

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community and understanding how we could get the work that we were doing is user experience and interaction

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designers to mesh better and that has that's a two-way street mesh better with the actual craft of building and

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shipping software and that's what led me to pivotal great and Nate maybe you could similarly share kind

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of your journey to how you got here today yeah yeah it's interesting I I guess I could say I I sort

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of took the baton so to speak from Tim I joined Cooper in 2012 just after Tim had left and you know

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Tim was out kind of breaking ground in terms of how does design work with software development more more

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closely to achieve those outcomes and Cooper was facing I think you know in the years following Tim's

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departure you know facing the same kind of uh challenges in terms of what how do we get the world

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to uh you know to build the things that we want and you know by remaining independent as a small

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consultancy Cooper you know had some limitations I think you know we didn't have a big uh engineering team

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that we could direct um in the same way that pivotal has kind of put those two ingredients together

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and um and it led to um I think just eventually I was saying look we have to find the right um

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sort of place to live where we can achieve real outcomes and so um you know in 2017 I guess it was

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uh so almost two years ago um you know we we made the decision to to to fold Cooper into a larger

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organization that had some of those some of those capabilities where we could you know actually

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achieve the impact at scale that we had all dreamed about for you know for decades um you know a lot of

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in-house teams have been built you know at the at the big tech companies I mean even the small ones that

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that that uh you know that have sort of maybe beat the consultancies to that to that reality and um

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so joining a bigger company I made a lot of sense so that's really the evolution actually is that

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these small independent design only shops it turns out that's not enough it can't be uh just design it

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has to be designed plus other things and so I think one one pathway was Tim's toward you know the

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pivotal model and um and and then Cooper kind of evolved maybe in the same fashion a little bit

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later so we kind of realized and learned that lesson uh in the same in the same way right and so that

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larger organization being Wipro um and so now you feel like you've got an opportunity to

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affect outcomes in a way that maybe it's an independent company a smaller consultancy you

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weren't able to do uh so that makes perfect sense so so I want to get into uh I mean I want to

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definitely want to dive into some of the the important um not just challenges but it's just important

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parts of the discipline of design but I'm going to show my night uh night I'm going to show the fact

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that I don't know a ton about this topic by asking the following question is for our audience could

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you kind of just help us understand the role of designers on you know balanced teams so we hear a

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lot about well balanced team is made up of software developers um project product managers uh designers

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help us help us understand the role specifically that designers play uh in that process on that team

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yeah I'll start I'll talk a little bit about uh how we typically see teams work at pivotal

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is uh you know designers play a a pretty bridge role right between uh end users the product strategy

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and implementation so as designers we end up leading a lot of user research and doing a lot of uh synthesis

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and understanding of like all the inputs and really facilitating conversations with that balance team

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on you know what are the things we're hearing what does that mean uh as far as how we ought to

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interpret what we're hearing in terms of how to shape the product to react to that and then how do we uh

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when we're actually at the point of implementation right we also have that friction of okay well this

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thing that we thought was going to be the right way whether it's because we're getting feedback from

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uh early iterations of the application that things should change or because we run into some technical

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technical constraints where we need to see something change in the design itself uh and designers really

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play that play that bridge between those roles i think is a good way to think about it yeah

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i like the way you're talking about um design and facilitation because you know design is almost

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certainly about it's also about crafts for sure like creating things but so much of the designer's job in this

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context of you know product technology design is is facilitating the conversation but not just being

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a good you know person to stand up in front of a room and kind of get everyone excited

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because i think there's a lot of design theater that happens in that in that realm um which maybe isn't so

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productive uh but in fact actually arming everybody with the right tools to make good decisions so one

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way i like to think about design is you know product managers uh definitely have this sense of of

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accountability and ownership and i think rightly so in terms of ultimately the business has to achieve

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something right and that's their their kind of uh their their purview and their mandate um but but as a

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design team as a designer inside of a team you know we want to help both developers and product managers

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have the right information the right tools to make to make good decisions and sometimes that means

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you know being relatively prescriptive and saying here's a here's a solution this is the right

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solution based on x y and z and sometimes that means you know we're hearing lots of things from the

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market you know maybe we're hearing it from product management maybe we're hearing it from development

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uh you know through user feedback and we we synthesize that and say here's what this means here's how we

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interpret that so just as tim was saying you know kind of part of it is interpreting and helping to

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translate um it's not just facilitating a meeting or facilitating ideation it's really about

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helping everybody have good decision making tools yeah you know if you think about

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in it's in an abstract level design is really about taking in a whole bunch of inputs understanding like

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reading a situation reading context and then distilling that down into something that is consumable

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right and and on one level designers do that with the user needs and the product

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but the thing that this this facilitation is really doing that at the level of of the team and

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organizationally playing that same role right of like there's all these inputs there's all these

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factors going into things and and the designer's toolkit includes tools and techniques and approaches

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and frames of mind to help distill that and make sense of it and simplify it in a way that the

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the whole team can understand and get behind and move forward

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interesting so i mean in my ignorance i think design okay i think of you guys are making some

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of the decisions around what am i going to see on the screen when i'm using an application on my phone

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but it's a lot more than just design uh it's just it's a lot more than just what i see

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on my screen at least what goes into it it sounds like so it almost sounds like you have to play the role of

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well maybe therapist isn't the right word but i was gonna say group therapy um but but tell me it

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sounds like it could be a really chaotic process because you've got as you mentioned all the

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different inputs you're getting um you're talking to users you're talking to the business side you're

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talking to the developers i imagine developers say things like well that's a great idea but we can't

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technically make that work or whatever so talk about you know so what are some of those tools what are

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some of those techniques you use to get the conversation going uh to facilitate the conversation and then

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probably the hardest part taking everything you've learned and distilling that down into a design

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yeah i mean synthesis i like to talk about um this is this process of synthesizing taking lots of

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information and distilling it down into something consumable uh the way tim was describing that i think

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and the tools vary quite a bit across this discipline um it kind of depends on the on the situation but but for

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sure i think at its core it's about um you know uh restating things in a way that's sort of

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understandable so a lot of times you'll hear you know the voice of the user there's lots of

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uh phrase phrases used in the industry about hearing from the customer looks and it's really tempting to

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act on that in a kind of reactive or defensive way let's fix whatever it is someone someone claims is

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wrong and it's it's uh so one of the kind of i guess fundamental tools of design is simply asking

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you know what's what's motivating this this feedback to begin with rather than reacting to the feedback

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on its face um so a classic example of this is um uh you know i i used to work for a product company back in the day um

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and we were building tools tools for institutional financial managers and uh we'd hear a lot of them

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asking us to uh to put a button on the screen that said download to excel and of course this was

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actually a pretty easy thing for us to do we could just put the button there and say download to excel

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and uh and it would be great and they would all be happy presumably um but our ceo was was was pretty

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clever and he said let's not ever do that let's not ever put the button on the screen that lets them

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download to excel instead let's use that as a way of asking them what are they going to do with that in

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excel and then we learn something more fundamental about what they what their goals are and what

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they're trying to achieve so if we can help i think one of the biggest the most important tools that we

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have as designers is to restate things to restate desires and motivations as as goals coming from users as as more

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fundamental goals than simply uh some kind of task like download to excel which is uh you know

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you know a perfectly legitimate sort of feature request let's call it um but it masks a whole

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bunch of interesting and useful knowledge that we can gain and so helping to ask those kinds of why

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questions i think is one uh really important tool for synthesis because it takes a lot of you know feedback

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that might be coming from a big group of a cloud of users out there and helps to find you know what are

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the insightful kind of driving factors underneath it all um so things like that where we and it doesn't

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have to be black magic or dark art or anything it's very a lot of it's very simple you know let's let's

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cluster ideas into related categories and let's let's try to sort of boil things up a little bit so that we can

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start to think at a high level about um you know what really matters here and try to to move the pieces

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around and prioritize ultimately we have to decide you know not just not just how does something work

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but what should we build in the first place and that's you know that's that's kind of uh you know

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that's the more expensive question let's say um where if you get that one wrong um you know you've

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you've wasted a lot of time and effort so uh so i that's that's my perspective on kind of synthesis

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i always say it's the hard part you know going out and doing the research asking questions is is

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relatively easy you can you can train people to have a good conversation but making sense of it all is

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actually pretty difficult so helping the team do that well is really a really key part of our job i think

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yeah i i back that up a thousand percent um i think another synthesis tool uh that we go back to again

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and again is visualizations right and when i say that i don't necessarily mean something beautiful

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graphically right that most of the time i don't mean that at all what i mean is is actually getting down

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physically somewhere whether it's on a you know real whiteboard or virtual whiteboard or document

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of some sort whatever it is some um map some visualization of whatever the issue is we're

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talking about if it's a system it's like how things how how workflow actually flows through people for a

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past or how um a set of features relate to one another in in the in the overall flow of your application

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things like that right and what a tool that designers can often you will often use is to create this

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artifact this visualization of a system of a concept that um on its own is very clarifying when you're coming

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up with it but its real power is in making everyone else who's got this loosely formed mental model

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themselves of what that system might be to all look at the same version of it and be able to say yes

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that's what i think it is too or oh i didn't realize you did that or no there's no way that's actually how

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it works because my model says this right and so it's getting everyone to have the same conversation

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around the same thing it's like a real synthesis superpower that's yeah that's great so the idea

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that you've you've got to get something on paper metaphorically before you in order you've got to

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ground it in some kind of reality uh otherwise you could just be having this really wide-ranging

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conversation with everybody having you know ideas and they all may all be great but um how do you

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center that conversation around something real so that makes a lot of sense yeah i mean a lot of design

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artifacts are exactly that they're all just sort of variations on the theme right it's whether it's

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a persona or a journey map or whatever it is blueprint or something these are all simply what you're

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describing which is taking all that data or information or ideas and encapsulating somehow and and not as a finished

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thing but as a as a tool to elicit reaction or to elicit conversation at least we're all talking about

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the same thing that's a really great way of putting it right and of course you know this i'm sure this

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this process happens when you're developing you know a brand new uh application or piece or piece of

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software but of course iteration is is a big part of software develop modern software development so how

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do you approach this on an ongoing basis how do you have these conversations in a way that that in

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other words you probably don't have the time to have these big grand conversations all the time

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you've kind of got you've got to iterate quickly over time how do you actually practically listen to

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into effect i guess is my question well i i think i i'd love to hear tim's take on this uh you know on

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sort of on the ground so to speak at pivotal but i think you know from from my perspective at least um

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uh you know it's a mistake to think that uh these kinds of visualizations are all are all grand right

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and i think a lot of people maybe think about maybe one misconception about design is that that it always

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has to be so grand right it always has to be back to first principles and we have to like you know build

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everything from scratch you know all the way um but as you're pointing out i think it's important to

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to remember that you know things are iterative and software exists and we have to make it better

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sometimes we can't just throw it all away every time so you know one of the things we use a lot

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for this kind of iterative uh conversation is um just simple stories and narratives so you know if you

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if you know if if you can tell a story about somebody you know you can use a persona or you

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can use some other kind of tool like that but but if you can if you can tell a convincing story about

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somebody uh succeeding or using a system in some particular way and then tell another story about

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them using it in a different way you can iterate without having to worry too much about screens and

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buttons and have a good conversation about what what's the experience we want them to have we want them to

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have this really great experience that does acts differently and we're going to talk about it as

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a story and doing that is a very cheap way of um of keeping the conversation grounded on you know actual

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things so you get away from conversations like well they might want to do this so they might want to do

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that that's a lot of they might want to is a is a i think a red flag as the start of a sentence

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right uh we want to tell actual stories and narratives and then we can throw them away because they're cheap

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right we can change the words um without having to redraw lots of screens so i think one important

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synthesis tool um for iterative product design and product development is is narrative it's not

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necessarily even using screen designs it's actually just sort of uh storytelling um and that can take

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lots of forms of course you could you know you could sketch things or you could you could you could just

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simply use a written sort of step-by-step kind of narrative or uh you know even kind of a storyboard

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or something like that

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yeah absolutely um i think we also we take it in a a little different lens or actually maybe it's

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coming back to something you said around it not being jeff you said about but it not being grand and

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just being like a normal everyday thing to do things like this um you know i see it pivotal all the time

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and not just designers at all by any means you know an engineering pair going up to a whiteboard and

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sketching a data schema or sketching the uh the flow through uh you know a set of classes in their in

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their code um or a product manager talking about um the particular like feature set and where what's

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going to flow and what release and why things go together right just like giving giving uh giving

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form to things that are in your head right and i think and i think that as designers at pivotal we play

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a big role in kind of championing that concept and that process um and and yeah it's by no means just

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the designer thing um but i think that there's a lot there's a lot to that just that aspect of

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getting things out or and having it uh there to the to have a common conversation around um and then

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in terms of the you know i think there is there are times you're right you can't always

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have the time uh or is nor nor is it always the right time to go big and create this grand

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uh framework for everything right and when you pick up you know when you're out there actually

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shipping software every day you know there's times when you will pick up something that uh

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has never had that done for it initially right so you're like well let's try to do some of this to

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make sense of what we think is here right and so that's one way you do it or or we'll do things

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like we have a couple of uh very high level models of interaction and relationship that we use inside

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people r&d to help ground the way that we approach uh the user experience for our various interfaces and

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products and products and you know that goes there's an effort that was probably a year ago that got us

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the the foundation we use today and over the course of the next over the last year and the next year

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probably um we learned things from being actively developing and working with customers that oh that that

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thing that we assumed in our model is a little bit different or oh and this new thing that didn't

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wasn't really a factor when we started this model now is coming to play and so you know the model kind

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of ages and gets lots of virtual stickies put on it as you as it evolves and then at some point it comes

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time to say hey let's reef let's you know let's essentially refactor our uh our baseline view of

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the world and let's undertake another larger effort to kind of reset uh or recalibrate you know what our

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baseline is and so yeah you're always dealing with with kind of levels of decay and those things

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uh but what's nice and this i think comes back to the idea of stories if you're telling stories around

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those things um that you can manage that decay because your stories can can um evolve away from

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some of the early things you've done and that's okay because you know you told that story nine months

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ago and you you shift that and you learn for it now you're telling a new story right i like that yeah

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i like that concept of stories that i think that makes makes a lot of sense intuitively uh and people

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i see that as a great way to for people to kind of rock a new idea when you're counting it in the

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language of a story versus uh more technical terms so i you know a lot of our listeners are developers

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i'd love to hear about you know what are some of the biggest how about this what are some of the

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biggest misconceptions developers have about designers and working with designers um and what are some of

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the challenges you've faced working with developers and how do you how do you navigate some of those

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i think developers are they're very creative people and they're very uh you know curious and they're

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very um they have a deep uh desire to know that the work they're doing means something right and so

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they you know i i think they often um i think i think we're we're very much cousins designers and

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developers in a lot of ways because i think a lot of businesses consider um engineering services and

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design services as kind of a pair of hands or a kind of a service that is provided to a larger um

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kind of vision and yet we're populated by all these people who really care a lot about

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what the solution is and how it works and is it the best solution possible and you know um i i almost

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never hear developers say that's not possible that's not you know technically feasible is i know we talk

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about that a lot but they have a really expansive um vision of kind of what's possible in the world

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because software is really very you know it's almost limitless in some ways um and i like that

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about working with developers i think um maybe where the the challenge comes around um designers really

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needing to uh to to be attuned to kind of how developers see the world right they uh they want

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to make sure they're not wasting effort right um and designers don't quite think about wasted effort

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in the same way i think so there's there's a lesson that designers need to learn about

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how to um to help developers see that what they're doing is efficient and also what they're doing

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is meaningful right because i think developers want to see uh the impact they're having they

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want to know why we made a decision so a really important thing that designers can do as they

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work with developers is to to help developers understand the the motivation or the the thinking behind

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design decisions let's say so that they can kind of feel on board and a part of the process because

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often they have a lot of great thinking and a lot of uh i think fresh perspective that designers maybe

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hadn't taken into account yet so um being good listeners there too and having that kind of

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partnership you know be a collaborative one as opposed to a a telling versus receiving one if that makes

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sense um i don't know how i don't know if i'm describing anything that i wholeheartedly agree i think that um

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something that you said there around the idea that uh in a lot of ways it is the designer's

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responsibility to understand how to work in a developer's world more so than it is like

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here's what developers need to know about designers so that we can be happy together right

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so you're putting the burden on you on you absolutely yeah absolutely i think i do agree probably 90 percent

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on on the designers of the world to understand the realities of development in order to um play well

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in in that environment where you're actually shipping software um some of the things that uh you know

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that can help from a developer's perspective is uh is to assume good intentions i guess right this is such a

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broad grand thing to say about about your colleagues right but um and of course it places a burden on

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everyone to have good intentions because you don't want people assuming you have good um but yeah to

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that to that point of like you know when there's friction because a designer wants something a certain

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way and that is clashing with some development reality or whatever um that it's not because the

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designer's stubborn and just wants something cool and pretty it's because the designer sees that there's a

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a user value and therefore a business value to doing it that way and uh that then it's on the designer to

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like you said mate to bring to bring some of that down right because i think you're you're very true

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that uh there's there are few developers that i've ever met who just want to code and don't care that

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if what they do matters right and they want to be able to make sure they're doing the right thing too

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and that they're they're making that if having an effect with the work they do absolutely so your

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your objectives are aligned uh yeah if you're both going into it with good faith uh it sounds like

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you know you can be effective um but you mentioned something that kind of caught my ear that that uh

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if i'm hopefully i'll repeat it correctly that developers kind of think about the way they use

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their time and efficiency a little different than than designers what did you what did you mean by that

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well i guess i i think we have different i i think the two disciplines have different concepts of time

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um software is so often i think it's evolved in this way where where software development it is it gets

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boiled a lot down to chunks of time or units of of effort um and that that's true of you know agile

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methodologies and other and other you know non-agile things where lots of software planning happens where we try to

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plan things out in units and and so i think developers have sort of trained themselves to think in terms

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of effort and and and uh being as efficient as possible um in terms of it could be time or it could

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be you know keystrokes or whatever it is um they they actually they think a lot about that i i believe

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at least in my experience um working with development teams and whereas designers um uh

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i mean i you know they're they're sort of there there's this different concept of time i think

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designers really need time uh to to to kind of immerse and you know and like get it all sort of loaded in

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and feel like we're sort of swimming in in in information and i think uh or marinating i guess

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is the right word because it really is kind of time time needed to to get it all in internalized

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and it's a different kind of uh um incremental process it's not it's not it's not quite so bite-sized

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or it's not so it's not so easy to divide it up into tiny chunks it's the consistency of output

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right developers are striving to be a little lumpy and see of output and design just doesn't work that

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way yeah absolutely it's maybe one of the fundamental reasons why agile has been so it's been so difficult

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actually to sort of merge design and agile over the over the past decade or it's been you know a

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challenge right because because the two kind of mental models at the time are a little bit different

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um well that's interesting we've tried to invent ways of making it mesh a little better yeah well

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that's that's a good segue into you know take us into the to the extent you can the evolution of

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design so you know you mentioned being a bit of a challenge to kind of mesh agile with

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design methodologies that you're i guess were more traditional um talk about kind of where where you

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were as a as a discipline 10 years ago and and how that's changed with with agile i mean we've touched

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about the iter process and a lot of the um a lot of the practices you use but but maybe kind of

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walk us through a little bit the evolution uh and how it's evolved over time yeah i i can talk about it

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from uh from mostly pivotal's point of view but just my experience in the agile community from

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2009 or 8 or so uh till now you know in in early days design was really not a part of of a lot of agile

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process and and pivotal's situation in particular as a extreme programming based agile shop um

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exp kind of just assumes that good inputs have happened somewhere upstream and that

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they have that said this has resulted in a prioritized backlog of things to build

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and um originally that the the the good inputs typically came from product management in some

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way or shape or form right um and sometimes those inputs were pretty ill-defined just like here's a feature we

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need or a problem that you know we have to not have um and other times they were pretty well specified and

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and clarified so that there was real uh you know good well-formed stories to deliver on

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and when design came into that equation the first place that they ended up getting put was okay well

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let's get them let's see where they fit in this delivery backlog right and designers ended up being

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pulled along with the development flow right like this development story is ready like what's the design

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like i don't know that this is where this country this time crunch comes in right like well we had a

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story that needed to get built and like prior to a user experience person being on the team

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they maybe the developer would have just coded it up with and just like thrown buttons on the screen i

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don't mean that just literally but like they would have done the best that they could to to put the

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interface out that got the job done right and some you know some developers some teams um were very

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successful that way had the design sense or whatever else to to create good products that way and a lot

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a lot did and you end up with a lot of pretty clunky software right and the first place designers ended up

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was in the like in between this the directive having come from product management of like this is what

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we need to do and the developers saying okay great we're going to build that and like there we are in

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the middle getting crunched and so uh at pivotal what we really tried to do what we really have done and

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focused on doing is moving the designer upstream right to a place uh closer to where and you know

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i in no way want to call this waterfall but closer to the traditional model where well first you figure

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out what you're going to build and then you go build it right now in an agile world that's that's done in

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tiny little chunks as opposed to the entire software product right so what we typically do at pivotal is

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we have two different work streams that one that feeds the other and that actually the feedback

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from output of that feeds back into the original so dual track agile is the industry term where

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essentially uh product management and design will work primarily out of a uh work stream it may be a

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formal backlog and pivotal tracker it might be something less formal like a kanban board in trello

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it might be something less formal than that like a list and a sauna of things that they know they

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need to be working on right um and the goal there is the discovery work and the and the definition of

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what we should what the problems are we need to solve and then what should we be building right

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and the end result of that is that developer user stories get created in the in the development

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tracker right so the delivery the discovery track says this is what we should be building and the delivery

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track is this is how we're going to build it right and now pm design and engineering are all involved in

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that delivery track as well because like i said you don't have a fully spec'd you know waterfall based

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here is what you're building it's this is the need we've identified this is the way we're going to

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approach solving for it um and so that then designers then get to uh and and that discovery backlog is less

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um it's less regimented i guess right it's it's looser it doesn't have that same you don't typically have

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that same um estimation process of getting a velocity down and understanding right like you're forcing

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function as your is your delivery track like this is how fast the team can build software and though

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so that factors in to how what time you spend above it right and you can buffer some of that time ahead

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and beyond so really keeping them uh tiered like that has has helped us to make design a healthier part

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of the process it's not perfect but it's certainly come a long way from early yeah that's interesting

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i think you know at lipro digital and design it we've we don't call it the same thing but it's a

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similar concept where we kind of put we try to put the quote-unquote production design or the

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sort of close to the metal design on some rails right so that there's some kind of framework or

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some sort of foundation that they have to to go with and some sort of you know modules or standards

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or some sort of tools that they can use to to solve those those problems so there's some kind of

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definitional work that happens call it sprint zero or whatever you want to call it and then it then

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then design obviously gets involved in that delivery also so yeah it is it is a very similar similar

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model and i think you know there there's as far as the evolution goes i mean we're you know i think

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we're just starting to get to this mature place with with design and agile happening together

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um more harmoniously and you see a lot of like let's do it where let's do a staggered thing where

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design you know happens one sprint in advance or something along those lines and i think that even

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kind of misses the point a little bit too but and so that's why these more sophisticated kind of uh dual

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track models i think will end up being um being the right way forward yeah yeah there's something that

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that uh you sort of touched on there around this idea of modules and and frameworks right like so

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um the biggest thing happening in the design world right now is design systems and front-end frameworks

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yeah um and that's exactly just to to allow for that kind of thing right where you don't have to have

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designers as uh gates in the process for everything that has to go into the product right you figure out

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what is the toolkit that that implementers can use to do things like when you need a new table with three

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buttons on it and uh uh you know that results in this widgety workflow like great there's there are there

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are concepts for that um it's really interesting in that it brings me back to uh my time at cooper when

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uh a major part of the work that we did in the uh in the third phase the final third of our engagements

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was develop this system that was very robust and flexible and could grow to accommodate uh changes

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over time to your application right um and but of course we we you know back in 2006 um we did that

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in some you know whatever it was adobe frame maker or some kind of awful thing and and it was a document

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that we delivered to our customer to our clients to the development teams that they could then use as the

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tool kit to build it and now you know we went through this dark time i think in agile and design where

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we stopped doing the former of coming up with a good holistic system but we hadn't yet developed the

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latter which is develop as we go a living robust system right and that's where we're headed right now

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is organizations having that kind of uh that toolkit that framework that set of modules

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where designers can work at the level of you know here's the workflow here's the here's the problem

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here's the feature here's the the way we're going to approach this and then the details of implementation

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of that you know the pixel perfectness uh isn't something that is bespoke anymore you can actually just

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say well use that component of course right yeah yeah design systems are interesting it is definitely a new

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frontier it's um it's also a bit i don't know it's a bit of a bit of like the wild west new frontier as

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well as there's some dark things happening out there and some dangers uh that we're just beginning to learn

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about um you know like where if a design system is there then anything that uses the design system is

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the correct solution uh kind of thinking or or or being sort of beholden to the system as if it's you know as

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as if it's um a design system in itself is somehow it somehow delivers business value

385
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:22,160
um over and above you know the the benefits you're describing like efficiency and so on

386
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:28,400
so there's there's like over reliance on design systems and and uh and thinking that if you have

387
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:34,000
a design system then all is well and you know no no need for more designers so that that sort of

388
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:38,800
those pitfalls aside i do think it's a it's a an improvement in the industry and something that

389
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:45,040
again we'll learn it's it's still it needs maturing and you know people are still learning how to do

390
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:51,120
it um and a lot of our colleagues are at that frontier and and you know kind of experimenting with new

391
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:58,400
models and i'll be curious to see you know how design systems end up as you know part of design

392
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:04,560
systems are interesting they're not just a an artifact you know some code samples right and some design

393
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:09,680
modules it's actually an organizational problem to implement a good design system right you have

394
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:17,280
to get people to adopt it you have to get people to feel like it's worth updating and you know maintaining

395
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:22,400
and so it it it actually brings in all these other interesting kind of organizational challenges that

396
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:28,960
um you know that we haven't that we hadn't thought about before um and uh so yeah it's it's definitely

397
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:35,920
an evolving uh an evolving part of the discipline yeah it definitely sounds like an industry or discipline

398
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:40,480
kind of in flux and as a as a designer you have to it sounds like you really have to be able to adapt

399
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:45,840
quickly and and be thoughtful about the tools and techniques you're using and not just kind of accept

400
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,840
okay this is this is the standard way because there is no standard way you're still kind of developing it

401
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,840
um which again kind of leads my my next question we only have a little bit of time left but i am

402
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:58,240
curious about you talked a little bit about your backgrounds earlier but let's go back even further

403
00:43:58,240 --> 00:44:02,800
like what what got you interested in in design and what is the back what does the background of a designer

404
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:07,280
look like what what's the how do you get into this field is it you're more of a creative type

405
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:13,760
are you more of a technical type how do you end up in design it's i think the answer is new now it used

406
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:19,840
to be different right for tim and i probably it's different than the new generation um just just coming

407
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:24,960
into the field now because you know when we were starting this wasn't even a profession really it was

408
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:32,880
it was uh or it was in my case it was a nascent one so um you know i think new designers are are coming

409
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:39,280
into this with a little bit better set of tools that you know frankly you know some of which were

410
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:46,560
developed at cooper back in the day and uh and across the industry of course um um but yeah our

411
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:51,040
our backgrounds are probably different than you'll see in a new in a new designer out there today

412
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:58,240
um tim what what is your early background i don't even know i'm i'm yeah i mean like like like most

413
00:44:58,240 --> 00:45:08,720
folks of my uh vintage of of in-user experience design um liberal arts major right um i i actually

414
00:45:08,720 --> 00:45:15,040
started uh in the industry by teaching myself html and getting a job as a front-end developer

415
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:24,480
and as i got into the business of building websites i was immediately curious about like

416
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:29,600
well why are we building it this way like who's going to use it what's it for that's really what

417
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:36,080
they need right and i was gravitated towards the the few people in my agency at the time uh whose job

418
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:43,360
it was to understand that right and and so um i ended up coming into the into the discipline just through

419
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:53,440
uh internship and and guidance sort of colleagues mostly right um and you still see that right uh you

420
00:45:53,440 --> 00:46:01,600
definitely what's what's what's very true is that you know these days there are a number of really good

421
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:09,840
programs in uh collegiate and you know post graduate level courses or or you know um

422
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:18,960
programs for user experience design for an intersection of design and business is a really fascinating one

423
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:27,920
right um i know of a few programs in that vein and you still see people come from adjacent disciplines

424
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:36,480
within tech right developers who think enough about you know why they're doing what they're doing that

425
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:42,160
they realize that becomes more interesting to them than actually implementing what they're doing so they

426
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:50,240
move that way um product managers who gravitate more towards the user side than the business and market

427
00:46:50,240 --> 00:46:55,280
analysis side you know things and they realize oh i actually care about that aspect of it more

428
00:46:55,840 --> 00:47:04,480
um people from uh testing or education places like that where where you're really focused on

429
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:11,920
on understanding someone's needs and then doing something to meet them right i mean that's that's really what

430
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:21,360
this job does yeah i yeah i have a similar i guess well i went to a small liberal arts school in

431
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:27,440
minnesota and it's funny you mentioned liberal arts because um and i guess more broadly social sciences and

432
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:33,360
humanities and so on um we definitely hire for that at design it that's a really great you know people

433
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:40,080
from the education world or from you know uh who studied literature or you know or really kind of human

434
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:49,200
centered you know uh uh fields of thought really um can be trained i guess to use to reach you know to

435
00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:55,440
refocus that lens on technology in a way that is really kind of rich and and adds a lot to the teams that

436
00:47:55,440 --> 00:48:00,720
we build um i have a colleague andrew coptiel who likes to say that design is the liberal arts of

437
00:48:00,720 --> 00:48:06,800
tech and it's true it's you know it's like there's a kind of um a storytelling part a piece of it that's really

438
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:17,200
important um to to people who do design um and and yeah we definitely try to find pockets of of untapped

439
00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:23,360
potential in those other in those other areas psychology is a really uh fruitful um area for

440
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:28,320
for designers and and and all the other you know sort of uh human-centered disciplines like that

441
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:36,000
well as a as a fellow liberal arts major i'm i'm glad to hear that that uh that industry is open to

442
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:43,680
open to us um fantastic so we're just about out of time uh i did want to just touch on uh of course

443
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:48,160
the partnership between pivotal and and wipro digital uh it's a fairly young partnership just

444
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:52,560
kind of getting started uh although we did uh pivotal was lucky enough to just win the digital

445
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:57,760
transformation partner of the year award from from wipro uh was i was down in florida for your uh

446
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:04,560
leadership event and was pleasantly surprised to uh to win the award that was um but as we as we

447
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:09,120
kind of start to grow the partnership what's your um how do you see the impact of of our two

448
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:11,600
organizations working together on our joint customers

449
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:23,920
i know from my from my perspective pivotal's goal is really to uh influence and change the way that

450
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:28,880
world builds software right and that's not something that we can do on our own with our

451
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:36,080
1500 people or however big we are right so um i know this goes comes all the way from rob me right

452
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:44,320
like the idea of of just opening our toolkit and opening our approach and saying like we think that

453
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:51,920
this is a great way to work uh we want other people to be able to take part in this as well so i think

454
00:49:51,920 --> 00:50:03,600
having a partner like wipro digital to be able to um help to just bring more people that approach

455
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:14,000
is a big one for me yeah and i think you know wipro is if if nothing else it is just an organization

456
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:23,680
that has an insatiable desire to learn and grow and and to expand in its in its own kind of uh knowledge

457
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:30,400
and you know uh in its own sort of internal passions and wipro digital was set up only a few i think a

458
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:38,480
handful of years ago to try to focus that on you know digital transformation and technology specifically

459
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:45,680
and so pivotal i think is really just going to be a i think it's going to bring a whole bunch

460
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,920
of new learning and sophistication and other sorts of tools like we're going to learn so much from

461
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:54,560
pivotal and i think that's that's really one of the big benefits um about working together is that

462
00:50:54,560 --> 00:51:01,120
we get to sort of we can contribute scale and and uh there's some really deep expertise inside of

463
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:06,480
wipro and wipro digital and that by working together we're going to improve you know both companies

464
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:10,960
it'll be a mutual benefit so i'm really excited to see that i mean part of what was exciting to join

465
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:16,800
wipro in the first place from cooper was again that kind of going from a very small to a very

466
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:23,680
large organization we have a chance to yeah have a bigger impact on our clients um at a much bigger

467
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:29,840
scale and so you know that the projects that we're involved in already are are you know vastly vastly

468
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:35,760
larger and and more impactful and more interesting in in my view uh so hopefully with pivotal that can

469
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:41,520
continue to grow absolutely i'm excited to see where this goes uh and i would love to have you guys

470
00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:45,600
come back on let's say six months a year let's let's see how it's uh progressed and maybe we can

471
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:50,240
talk about some customers and uh some of the great outcomes being so guys thank you so much this has

472
00:51:50,240 --> 00:51:54,560
been really educational for me uh coming into this not knowing a ton about design i really appreciate

473
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:59,120
it i think our listeners are going to really appreciate it too uh so thanks again for joining thank you

474
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:09,760
thanks for having us thanks jess