Andy Polaine: Hi and welcome to Power of 10. A podcast about
design operating at many levels zooming out from thoughtful
detail through to organisational transformation, and onto changes
in society and the world. My name is Andy Polaine. I'm a
service design and innovation consultant, design leadership
coach, educator and writer.
My guest today is Jason Mesut, who many of you may know from
ifda conferences and especially his writing on shaping design.
Jason helps people and organisations navigate their
uncertain futures and has spent over 20 years working within UX
Design and Innovation consulting worlds. He works closely with
people in organisations to consider and combine multiple
perspectives to challenge their own. With these rich
perspectives, he helps people find positive opportunities and
clear paths forward, where they're developing new products
or services. building teams are finding new direction for their
careers. He runs his own coaching, design and innovation
consultancy resonant works as a design partner at a group of
humans, a network of global creative leaders, and he co
hosts monthly events for IXDA. London. Jason, welcome to Power
of 10.
Jason Mesut: Thanks so much for having me, Andy.
Andy Polaine: So the first time we met was interaction 2011 in
in Colorado, in Boulder, Colorado. And I think I'd given
a talk or we'd been doing a thing around design to the power
of 10. Or this idea, I think both running the student
competition then and this quite a lot about, you know, climate
change, and all those kinds of things and sustainability, that
the projects were looking at. And we met I think was a party
or something afterwards. And you said something to me, but I'll
make the do the polite version of it, which was fixing climate
change or global financial crisis is not your effing job,
as in designers, and I then started to use it in a in this
talk about design to the power of 10, about looking at the
scaling up and connectedness of everything as a slide and I
followed it by this question of whose job is it? Because I think
on there, those original slides, David Cameron, who was then the
Prime Minister of the UK, he had his a whole kind of, I guess
it's called big government, and it wasn't called Big Government
was called government, you know, trying to get people kind of
involved in government and society. Society. That's right.
Yes. Yeah, there was that kind of aspect of it. And I remember
Stefan Sagmeister, saying to me, you know, it's not, I don't have
any particular responsibilities as a designer, but I do have a
responsibility as a human being for these things. So whose job
is it?
Jason Mesut: Well, I guess what my short answer, and it's funny,
you brought that up? I can't actually remember saying it. But
it might, it is a sort of thing. I would say. I've said back
then, I think it depends on if it was briefed to you, as a
designer, I guess that's the tension around whether it's
your, your role as a human to be aware of these things. And to do
something about it is somewhat separate to your role as a
designer to I always considered designers answering a brief. And
that's me from a kind of professional services
perspective, looking at a designer. And often, that is not
the brief there might be that might be the wider context to a
brief. But I think too often, maybe in terms of the student
challenges is like going well, no one's going to ask a student,
or we're kind of a very junior designer to kind of solve that
problem. Because it's, you know, it's a huge systemic challenge.
And they're going to talk about one particular part of it. But
even now, days, when people are really focusing on climate or
more meaningful things, it's really hard, because that's such
such a huge space. So what's your specific angle on it? And I
think probably the root of my concern around it at the time,
if I'm reflecting back to that conference was the balance of
sort of designer hubris, where, you know, designers felt like
they could affect that very, very large change, and do it
within a short period of time. I think that that was the problem.
And I was probably talking to you about service design, and
where there was a lot of aspiration to change these
really, really big things, whether it's from an airport
with hunger or whatever. Yeah, and just going not yet. There's
not going to be a project you're gonna do in three months. It's
gonna take you a decade.
Andy Polaine: No, no, no, this is true. You know, and there's
definitely, you know, we wrote at the end of our book, actually
about this, there is definitely opportunities because I think,
you know, fundamental, I'm gonna defend services. I'm briefly
here. But the fundamental to service design is a systems way
of looking at things. And I think back then, particularly
those UX conferences, you know, I kept hearing UX is say, UX is
everything and I bet you're but I'm only seeing websites and
apps. When you present your stuff at conferences. We made
use of Jason Bruce showed a kind of smart a building that was a
kind of amazing display built on the side of it. But otherwise,
it was very sort of individual touch point focused and didn't
really connect with everything else. And I think we've come
there is the has, and still is that kind of hubris, and you
know, and some of it is I think a you know, a career pathway
thing. We're going to talk about data that you know, when you
first start most a lot of people get into design, you know,
because they see it things and they think, why is that done
this way when it could be done that way? This seems to be, you
know, this could be done better, I could make people's lives
better. That seems to be a fundamental driver of why, you
know, a lot of people get into design. And I do see it, you
know, I see it in my service design students still now have,
I want to tackle this big thing. And I, you know, it's just so
well, now that the designers are here, everything's going to be
much better. And I guess that's why your comment? You've been
provocative at the time. But your comment really kind of
resonated me because I think it is a useful question. But I
think then the follow up of whose is it is also an important
one. And then the question becomes how does design sort of
how can design facilitate that differently perhaps, to other
forms of running projects and things like that? Do you think
that's fair? Or yeah, no,
Jason Mesut: I totally think it's fair. And I do love service
design for trying to bring that that wider, systemic perspective
in. But I do think that way, I guess the the early days of
service design, emergence and popularity growing, that there
felt like a lot of naivety around that, I think there was
and probably still is, yeah, but I think people have realised
more recently, and I just remember the only service design
conference I went to, and Joel Bailey was talking about kind of
grit. And, you know, the, the actual effort required to do
some of these things, was quite considerable, like and took a
lot of time. And there's a lot of organisational change and
facilitation and support, and you're having to interact with
many different parts of the business, in order to kind of do
this great customer experience across all these channels.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things I
try and teach my students, especially these days is, you
know, if you're going to be frustrated by the fact that
there's a lot of resistance to what you're trying to do. It's
like being a firefighter complaining that you get burned
and smell of smoke in the evenings. It's just part of that
job. And I think part of the craft, if you like of service
design is, is less to do with, you know, blueprints and journey
maps and all that stuff, then it is much more with the blend of
organisational change and design, I guess, and how you,
you know, make that or not make that happen, but enable it to
happen. I've probably become a little bit, you know, I
definitely have become less and less naive, but I kind of think
probably is less less kind of evangelistic about that. Because
as we see, you know, it is everyone's problem, the thing
that I always wanted to try and get across with this idea of
connectedness. And I think, yeah, I used to find it really
hard to find examples or analogies of this. But COVID has
been this amazing thing to show how the smallest connected to
the big everything from you know, social distancing, and
what that means in terms of stuff you can't do anymore.
right the way through to global supply chains and all that
stuff. And yeah, I mean, it's not a thing that design tackles
on its own. And we were talking actually before because at that
conference, Bruce Sterling gave this a brilliant talk, you can
still find it online, just sort of really gave I kind of felt
like he gave a brilliant dressing down of design hubris
in the in the audience, because he, he kind of set up this, he
sort of pulled the rug from under people's feet, because he
talked about kind of all this amazing design stuff and things
and he's described himself as an AR victory condition and then
talked about this old lady, I think trying to kind of operate
a force at the tap in a in a hotel, in this highly designed
thing, just had no idea what's going on and sort of pulled the
rug from underneath this. Did you have any other takeaways
from his talk?
Jason Mesut: Mostly about? Henry Dreyfus surrounds kind of
designers. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that one, I just know that. It
was just a round, kind of like, if you run the course of, I
don't know, really kind of designing and controlling
everything. You could take it that far. But maybe that was the
wrong takeaway. I do remember it being an amazing tool. It was
amazing. There were amazing talks. But it had me that
particular conference had had me really engaged and really
curious, but also really, really frustrated at the same time,
partly because of what you were saying is like you're talking
about all this great stuff. And then you're talking about
screens and interfaces. And turns out some of those screens
interfaces did ultimately have an impact on some bigger things.
But I think interaction design and the ICA community, we
struggled with what is interaction design in this
context. And sometimes it's been kind of played out into a wider
systemic context and service design. And sometimes, often
rarely these days actually talking about user interface
design of various sorts.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, I mean, I, before we get on to the shaping
design stuff, actually, I think, you know, we were talking about
you've been involved in interaction design and UX for 20
years of AI. You know, now we're in this umbrella term and world
of product design, which is this kind of the big catch all and
you know, obviously the hot thing as well, at the moment,
fueling rather overheated market, I would say in in jobs
and salaries at the moment. But you know, I remember a few years
before that 2011 interaction conference, there was one of the
information architecture conferences about you know, what
is information architecture and everyone, there was a
competition to make a video or something I think of of what
information architects do, you know, and then there's
interactions, and then there's UX and so on. Plus, there's
obviously things like, you know, research, design, research, UX
research underneath and so on. What's your view on where things
are out as if we're going to be sort of two old guys sitting on
a porch kind of complaining about the kids on our lawn? And
we might as well just do it more explicitly. So what's your view
on where things are at?
Jason Mesut: Oh, it's, it's still messy. It's messier than
ever. There's just more factions, it's more confusing.
And this probably does play into the whole shaping design thing,
I think, a lot of ways and why I wanted to create the book
because the titles are becoming ever inflated or tried to be
collapsed and dismissive of the past. So that said, the product
that I wanted, let's take that one came up again, the other
day, I studied industrial design that I had that was doing
alongside product design courses, most of the people who
graduated with my course, and went into making physical
products would call themselves a product designer, sometimes an
industrial designer. So just the term itself, product design was,
was really dismissive of this whole industry, and a lot of
industrial science got really pissed off of it. That's one
thing. I on the other hand, I liked it from the point of view
of it, trying to be a partner to product management, and to kind
of do more strategic stuff, because the UX thing was getting
too confused with just doing interactions and digital
interactions, and not necessarily considering the
business. So maybe more legitimacy to kind of be
considering that product thing made some sense. But in reality,
most product designers seem to be more from a user interface
designers just jumping over UX to do call themselves product
designers. So they miss a lot of the rigour and certainly
Information Architecture just got lost in all of that. They
got it faded away, there's still people talking about it a bit,
but they're clinging on content strategies, much more popular,
probably more similar to a than anything. And so I think it's
just got really confusing. So what I tell people is going yes,
this title of what you call yourself into action, designing
product designer, service designer, whatever, shouldn't
matter as much as actually the practices and skills that sit
underneath that title, because that's where the real
differentiation lies in who you are versus someone else.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, that leads us nicely on to shaping design,
I think. So, you know, a lot of people might well know, you
actually, from the writing you've done on on medium, you've
got kind of a couple of different categories. But one is
shaping design we've got we've put up there a lot of things
around self reflection tools, and looking at yourself and
things you've, you've run these in workshops and stuff. A lot of
people I know and especially as it's true of me, right, kind of
to scratch their own itch or right in order to put their own
thoughts in some kind of order. What was the genesis of all of
this for you?
Jason Mesut: Probably around sort of 2005, I joined a company
called oyster partners, which you may remember from this
London digital design days, and it kind of became fanfare, but
and eventually I'll be it just has one of these big machines
grows, grows. And we had a fairly large user experience
team. And it grew larger with more information architects that
came from the firm hub side. And a couple of things happened. One
was a few people went to an Adaptive Path conference in
Amsterdam and came back with this framework that either Jesse
James Garrett Peter no holds, or someone had created that had
these four kind of quadrants. And my colleague and friend
Warren Hodges started kind of like, you know, using shapes to
kind of draw people over overlaying this. And I was like,
Oh, that's interesting. So I started using that. And that
became what what some people call blob mapping or amoeba
mapping. But then also, I was a UPA before UX pa event. And
someone was talking about like, Who do we who are inspired by
who do we look up to in our industry. And at the time,
coming from more of a designer background, there was really
only sort of people like Jacob Nielsen, and those people were
not really Designer Friendly, a lot of my colleagues kind of
found it really annoying, not necessarily positive, and very
restrictive in his approach. And as a designer, he wasn't very
inspiring to me. So I thought, Well, who do I look up to? And I
found it really difficult. So I did some investigation research
and into, you know, what makes a good user experience person and
I created a poster basically around that. And a lot of the
the attributes were the kind of softer side to things and team
working sides of things. And aspects of strong backbone and
creative mindsets, attention to detail, all sorts of things.
They weren't really about the specific craft and practices
that the the Adaptive Path portrait had. And anyway, I just
kind of started using both those tools actually, in interviews
with my team and, and started to develop more and more frameworks
over the years just to kind of help to kind of understand
people either in an interview situation, or when they were
kind of looking at their career development. And I kind of kept
it internally a lot. And I occasionally put some of these
frameworks in presentations and people always sort of grabbed
towards them. And I guess what happened was a recruitment
consultancy got in touch and said we'd want to do an updated
version of this and have these new categories in it. And I
worked with them a little bit. And we created a tool called the
UX spectrum. So online little tool you can do things on. And
it just reignited my interest in IT. And I thought, Oh, I could
do some of these workshops publicly and start to explore
this more, and got some good responses and, and then decided,
I would write a medium article a day around the different tools
and force myself to do that, and push it out there and got lots
of really interesting feedback and hearing stories about people
using it. So I was like, Okay, I need to do something with this
and make it more navigable, more easy to process because it's,
like, badly structured, badly written.
Andy Polaine: And so that's where you're at, at the moment
how far I've I mean, obviously seen the work in progress as you
are at the moment, how far away? Are they you not put a date on
it? I don't know. You tell me. What you put into it,
Jason Mesut: yeah, true. I want to release it this year, they'll
probably be a beater in the next two, three months. So hopefully,
it's the end of q1, q2, but I have a lot of tools, ready,
refine, I've got an introduction, I'm working
through recipes, which are just a way to navigate people to the
different tools based on different circumstances. And
then there'll be some copy edited. And, you know,
Andy Polaine: there's a lot of a lot of sweeping up the parts I
was finding, in the end of a book, it really kind of
surprised me how long that took, actually, there's bits. But you
know, a medium article a day is not to be sniffed at either,
actually. That is impressive.
Jason Mesut: Yeah, it's hard work
Andy Polaine: Yeah, that is hard work. Useful, though, to kind of
set yourself that habit, because it, it probably there are times
when you've probably thought I have no idea what I'm gonna
write about, and something came up, you know, eating it, too,
you've got I mean, the recipes lead to or there's a whole bunch
of templates you've got, I mean, it's, there's a lot of them,
they're really great, I can really imagine using them in my
coaching with design leaders, but also, you know, recommending
the people, I coach using them with their teams. And we sort of
talked about this a little bit the other day, we know a lot of
them around kind of self reflection, and are more of a
sort of a qualitative estimation, if you like, or self
estimation of where you are. And I, what I talked about before,
is I've seen things where, you know, there's been some survey
that you fill in, and there's all this stuff, and then you get
the results back. And it says something that, you know, you
score, certainly in the 73rd percentile of self actualization
stuff. And I kind of seen those reports and think why now, what
does that even mean? That is a kind of, how would you rank self
actualization at all, really, and, you know, and put those
things in numbers and the numbers I think, give us sort of
our apologise to anyone out there who really loves these
things. But I must have experienced this as they can
give a bit of a pseudo sort of rigour to them, and sense that
these things are defined a definite not always changing.
And I really liked the fact that you heard us these things, which
are much more, what's the kind of shape of me, he's sort of
more important than my three points above my, you know, my
pier or something? Is that sort of coming from your sense of
instinct about the stuff? Or is these things emerged in
workshops? I got the feeling like a couple of these things,
were things you fairly quickly initially did work, try this
out, you know, how did those things develop?
Jason Mesut: I mean, I think most of them were sort of just
quickly try things out and little bit of iteration. I
didn't labour them, because I sometimes kind of, you know,
being pretty self deprecation and all that, like I kind of
talked about them being in imperfect visual frameworks,
right. And that's partly because often people would want to kind
of go would disagree with the categories ago, but you haven't
got this in there, or like, that's a different level of
abstraction and go, you know, what, don't worry about that for
a moment, just kind of play with it. And just and you can develop
your own after playing with it. And on the other hand, I did
really want to kind of focus on that quality of experience. I
think there's a few things there. One is the biggest
contention I often get, especially within groups is, you
know, how do I make this comparable across multiple
people, and I go, you're focusing on the wrong problem
there. But actually, it's harder to do unless you define firstly,
the categories, and then define clear rubrics to do that. And
that's a big project. So what I'm suggesting is take these
allow people to self reflect from their own perspectives. And
that's valuable insights in itself. If someone scores
themselves really high on a category, and someone sources
themselves really low on the same category. That in itself is
another data point in terms of humility or self awareness. And
I find that really valuable. So typically, like when doing the
blog mapping, this is one of the more famous ones. You know, I
used to do this in interviews, and I draw my shape just to
illustrate how to do it really quickly draw this like this. And
then someone would draw their shape and they would sometimes
draw a really tiny one, and they would be like really experienced
really good from what I've seen in their portfolio. whereas
others who might do really, really large ones, and they were
typically very junior, and then you say, well, that's
interesting. You know, it's a kind of Dunning Kruger effect
type thing. But it's another data point. But um, the other
side of this, which I, which is why I don't like to digitise
them too much, is because the actual act of drawing the shape
is, is you're you're inputting and getting the output at the
same time. And so that has a different level of connection
with you reflecting than writing it down separately in a form.
Some of those forms for those surveys are really painful, I
find, yes, agree four or five done to the house is going to
take ages, this is more instant, right? And you get a feeling of
it and go, Oh, that felt weird. Oh, I can adjust that. And so I
think you have a different dialogue with it. And then any
nuance that you have around why you made those markings you
could capture separately or discuss with someone. And often
though, you know, a lot of the other tools don't really enable
you to capture that nuanced stuff.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, yeah, I think so you've you've written
actually, that, you know, these things are better done
physically than digitally, digitally. I mean, now we're, of
course, we're in a remote,
Jason Mesut: it's more spatially like. So. What do I mean by
that? Because I have, I've got some templates I've put into
procreate on my iPad. And it's similar experience, right? But
when you when you draw it in like PowerPoint, I've had to
make PowerPoint template versions you kind of do in the
notes and moving them around and pulling and pulling in, it's a
bit different to just draw in a shape,
Andy Polaine: Brian, because it's the sort of free, it's the
cut through this, obviously, people can't see this, but
you've been making this kind of drawing arc, site sign with your
hand, that connection to the physical act of moving your hand
around is the important bit. Yeah, have you done any of these
where you know, someone has done their self reflection of
themselves, and then someone else who knows them, or works
with them does renew their version of that person. So you
can kind of compare what other people how other people perceive
you to yourself?
Jason Mesut: Yeah, and I think that's an interesting thing to
do. If that's when I did the creating the perfect experience
architect poster, I actually, I would do one self reflection,
one reflection from a peer within your discipline, one
reflection from a project manager, one reflection from a
client. And the idea is that you would then sort of, you know,
triangulate, and then it's an interesting discussion to be had
there. Because some people will observe your behaviour and your
actual and compare against other people they've worked with. And,
and then you can kind of do it based on everything that you
know about yourself, which might be more extensive, but less
comparable,
Andy Polaine: even when it's one of the things I get to do like
kind of lightweight 360 feedback when I start a coaching with
people and one of them is really internal self reflection thing.
But the other one is that and the thing that's constantly
fascinates me, because it comes up not all the time, but often
enough to be a thing, which is often the thing that people
think is their greatest weakness is what other people think their
greatest strength in, in this feedback and I, I kind of really
fascinated by this idea of the My wife's a union soccer
analyst, and Jung had this idea, this concept of the shadow. And
it wasn't always kind of bad stuff. But this, this idea that
any skill you have something you're quite good at has a kind
of shadow side when it over indexes. So some you know,
classically someone who's quite orderly and kind of has this
back together. And organised can be really, really pedantic when
they get stressed. And it usually comes out in in stress
times. And it's fascinating to see how that maps together.
That's why I was asking, because I think that would be kind of
really interesting thing to see those overlap.
Jason Mesut: I think that's really super interesting in
terms of we were talking last week around the different
personas and personalities you might have, depending on how
you're showing up. So say something like Myers Briggs,
which I know you a lot of people as well have concerns with, but
it's like, you know, when you answer some of those
questionnaires and different surveys, you know, I have to
kind of look at it from a particular context. Yeah. Oh,
showing up and, you know, I, and this goes back to authentic
leadership and, you know, phrases like that, but because I
don't think I'd be a very good leader if I was authentically
me, because I am constantly divergent, lateral, you know,
maybe mode very much emergent and flowing and, and I had to
kind of impose a lot of structure and extraversion into
my my personality and stuff, what I felt like I had to, in
order to be successful, and now I'm just kind of caught between
those two things quite a lot. And I think it's super
interesting cuz I was chatting to someone else, you know,
recently about being diagnosed with ADHD and he was naturally
kind of imposing lots of interesting structure in order
on his work and made him really efficient. Everyone thought he
was like a productivity machine almost. And actually is because
he was working on that area that he wasn't feeling confident in.
And I was like, God so much like me. I was just like, yeah, so I
didn't realise it was in is related to yoga and shadows and
stuff as well. That's super interesting.
Andy Polaine: Well, you know, I think that you might be is based
on this union unit personality types as well on sort of
extraversion, introversion and then thinking feeling sensation
and the other one, which I have no intuition. But there's a
richness and depth in there that I think can get overlooked. One
of the things I guess I see sometimes when people go through
those very sort of structured, whatever it is, surveys and
assessments, is this sort of self identification thing where
people go, Well, I'm, uh, you know, I'm this kind of person,
or I'm this kind of personality type, and therefore, that's why
x y Zed. Sometimes it can be useful for people, I think,
where it explains why people struggle with something's
working in court to have Inferior function, which isn't
like, bad, it's just that this is the your weak spot, right? So
my sort of Inferior function might be extra, as a British
person extroverted feeling, I'm not someone who kind of emotes
very strongly, you know, which can mean that aren't, you know,
when it's going things are going well, that can mean I'm quite
stable in sort of difficult situations. On the other hand,
it also can mean that I'm sort of monotone in my emotional
responses, which isn't so great sometimes in a relationship, you
know, and so they will have, you know, you can be moved around
those things, you know, to say, Well, I am a, you know, en,
whatever, I can't remember the Myers Briggs thing, and that's
me. And therefore, that defines me who I am, feels back to
front. And also ignores this idea of, you know, of growth
that you you can change and mindsets that you change
regarding, depending on the context you're in.
Jason Mesut: I think the change aspect is really interesting.
But then, I think, in defence of it, to some extent, I think
these are all just different sort of frameworks and lenses to
look at yourself. And this is why I have so many different
tools, because some tools will expose different differences to
people than others. And I think like liking certain strategy
workers, you know, lots of different frameworks, I might
apply to a problem to see the gaps in the strengths in
different ways. My thing is around actually having diversity
and a range of different tools to throw on the problem and
yourself, because the nuances might be very different. And the
median and the Myers Briggs things give you some a
framework, the problem, I think, is if you just limit yourself to
one, when that one doesn't really help and serve you as
well, it might for some, it might for others. But I do think
that what it does is, you know, as we pattern match the world
like, you know, rather than deal with the infinite nuances and
differences between us by having some shared frames of reference,
it does help a little bit. For some people, I just think that
if you try to kind of like exhaustively cover humanity and
everyone's differences with those, you're obviously going to
be caught out.
Andy Polaine: Well, yeah, I mean, it's also the thing that
the map is not the territory, right. So yeah, I think that
there's a thing you said before, that reminded me, I've just
finished up a set of training that I've been doing for a
client and in service design and things and one of the things
that came up in the discussion at the end, which I was really
pleased to hear was these tools like blueprinting. And the few
other things we were doing have helped us think around things of
fire off kind of difference of neurons than we would normally
have. And this idea that the discussion you're having in
front of doing those things in, you know, I'm saying in front of
it as if those were on a wall or on a mural now or a mirror, you
know, those discussions you're having whilst you're making
those things with each other, or kind of the work, right, they're
more important than the actual artefact themselves. And I think
it sounds like what you're saying with these tools that the
act of reflection that you're going through, whilst you're
filling in the tool is sort of more important than the final
shape of the map.
Jason Mesut: Absolutely. And that's the thing where people
get get, get it wrong with my stuff. And I certainly would, in
terms of, you know, my new experiences as a coach as well,
where it's all about the discussion around it and
exploring that side. All the tools are a sort of an initial
prop or stimulus, right and an artefact that you like you say,
like a boundary object or whatever that brings people
together, and has that shared view? Well, on a plate, you can
say object, here's a thing. What does that mean for us and, and
it just easy to talk around as humans, I think and like in you
know, in terms of research, you know, even when doing generative
research, I always find it useful to put a prop inside find
someone who might be hard, it might be a prototype, it might
be a picture, but it's going to provoke different things and
stimulate a different reaction. Like in a similar way to, you
know, a strength scope or strength finder or whatever
those tools are going to give or even like a tarot card, maybe
even as well, you're going to have your own associations and
leap off in different ways and what that might mean to you.
It's just prodding and poking. And so I think that it does
help, like a good question might help
Andy Polaine: you just give me an idea for design tarot cards.
Jason Mesut: Well, yeah, maybe speak to Tutti around that. Some
other ones recently, which was around the tarot cards of tech
Andy Polaine: Tarot cards of tech. Oh, there are some? Okay.
Jason Mesut: Yeah, that's like, I think it was it was from
artefact studio. So I think they did it. They had it. They I
think they shared it at one of the maybe in Seattle interaction
conference. Since, yeah, I haven't looked at it a while,
but found it because I was doing a Tarot session the other day
with someone.
Andy Polaine: But I think there's a thing there also, that
is quite interesting. I think it's always interesting from a
leadership position in, particularly in terms of a
culture of feedback, which is having a third thing I was
having an artefact is really crucial. I think John Kolko
talks about this, and so does someone whose name I've
forgotten for a second. But this idea of, we're not going to have
a discussion about your work unless there's an artefact, then
talk to turns it from being a kind of face to face
confrontation about this is all about you to a let's look at
this third thing side by side together and have a conversation
about what this means is a really nice way of working with
people and giving feedback, particularly if there's a power
structure already sort of embedded in, you know, as
you're, I'm your boss, or whatever. And then you can have
a conversation about what was your intention here. And then
what I'm not really getting that from this is not like you've
been you've done this wrong, but given your intention. It's, it's
not quite working, let's have a look at it. It's and I think
there's things something around those kinds of objects as well,
that you're talking about, we have the third thing engenders a
different kind of conversation. My experience has been this also
been true of, you know, managing stakeholders and all that kind
of stuff.
Jason Mesut: I think so that makes a lot of sense. Actually,
I love that that notion is that thing. I think it because it's
somewhat neutralise it, it takes a little bit more of the emotion
out of it to some extent. My friend Andrea Mineola, talks
about that, when doing feedback, this notion of a shared plate,
and you're presenting information and you're going to
presenting it looking at it on the plate necessarily, not in
us, not in me, it's between us. And I like that notion of that
third thing where it's on the plate, it's just like, it's
there. This is a representation, articulate, it's got all and
it'd be great if you had yours and we can look at them together
and depersonalised them a little bit, even though it's a
representation of you. It's not something that can't change or
whatever. But when it's in you, it just gets wrapped up in all
of these other things, these other emotions and self talk and
all that.
Andy Polaine: I think it's an underappreciated, I know, it's
gonna, I'm gonna sort of make it sound like designers are
snowflakes, which you actually use that metaphor, but in, in
the sense of everyone's unique, but you know, I think it's
underestimated the the act of kind of every day of birthing
something, if you like, or pulling something out of
yourself that even if it is to a brief, there is still a thing
of, I've made a thing, and I'm exposing it to you for critique
or to be kicked to pieces. And that's quite hard, that sort of
resilience to that. I was gonna say, a thick skin, but I don't
think it's quite so much that I think it's much more of a, you
know, there's this famous haiku mythology that the Haiku masters
when they wrote what they thought was their best Haiku,
they would put it in a bottle and throw it in the ocean or
something. So no, in order to practice non attachment, there's
I think it's more around that. So yes, I've made the thing and
I've put it out there in a while, but it's not a piece of
me. That takes some time, I think.
Jason Mesut: Yes, God, I mean, there's a lot of a lot around
that, I think, you know, certainly for the points of view
of critique and able to, you know, depersonalise, your own
attachment to it. And I think and I believe and, you know, I
want all those kinds of phrases versus it is here, it's what
it's based on. But I have, I have a tension with that one,
because in some parts I see designer as a kind of neutral
facilitator and all those sorts of things and gathering up the
inputs and whatever. But also, I strongly believe in the power of
designers own ego and passion interest, kind of helping an
experience kind of putting themselves in it not so much
like as, as in art, but I do think it's important, because
you're not going to take two or three different designers and
give them the same problem, you're going to end up with the
same solution. I do think there is always a little bit of them
in it. It just may be that they have to try to find ways to de
personalise it so they can kind of take on the feedback and and
go you know what, that is an interesting perspective, and not
take it as a personal attack. But I think the part of the
problem and what's happened in design more recently, and
certainly user experience and maybe digital product design is
we've depersonalised and devalued the human designer in
the process. So I get it, it can be dangerous and emotionally
attachment is risky for kind of, you know, actually getting the
feedback. But I also think it's a powerful thing that we've
we're losing a little bit.
Andy Polaine: I think so. So I mean, I talked about this in a
talk once about this balance of ego and humility that you need
to have and that could because you do need to be able to box
things through do you need to be able to stand up for something
different. And there's a certain amount of ego in that because
you you need to create a kind of push it forward. And not all ego
is bad. If you have none. It's awful, actually, you know, and
as a child develops, part of the thing of them developing their
ego is a really crucial part. And if they don't, it causes
lots of problems other than to have a kind of strong sense of
self. It causes lots of problems later on. But at the same time,
the humility to you know, on the basis of new feedback, evidence,
whatever it is to You'd be able to kind of step back and
understand why this isn't, this isn't all about me. And this
isn't just what I say goes, you know, and you and I have been
through that era of, I guess it's the 90s, mostly and some of
the early noughties of the star designer, you know, which seems
to have gone away.
Jason Mesut: Yeah, I missed it. I missed I missed parts of it,
because because like, you know, back to the doing that poster
was like, there wasn't anyone in this industry really easily to
look up to, I believe up to industrial designers or graphic
designers. If you go to a kind of industrial design or
furniture design conference, it's all about the work less
about the theory, it's interesting, but like, you know,
it's a big show, but it's very impressive. But yeah, you know,
I think we just need to kind of get that back in balance, I once
did a really a talk, it was a bit it wasn't on one of my best,
but it was called ego versus empathy. It's a similar thing I
like I like ego versus humility, but it was just trying to put
those things intention saying, Look, you know, you need a
little bit of both and just consciously where you're going
to bring it in.
Andy Polaine: You know, you talked about soft skills in your
book, as well. And I saw a comment in there, because you've
asked a few people to comment on it, feeling a bit sort of
finding that term difficult. I do too, because I think soft
skills are the hardest, actually. And so I kind of I
struggle with the term, but obviously, it's a thing that
everyone knows what it means, you know, a lot of what we've
been talking about is also how do you approach design
leadership? And you've, you've talked about, you know, I've had
to do all these things, what does it mean for you?
Jason Mesut: I don't know, I think it's changed my perception
of it's changed. Like, I'm from one perspective, it was kind of
standing up at the front and this, you know, kind of
inspiring people and giving them the clarity and the vision. And
I think we've lost that over the recent years. But on the other
side, that there was an aspect of, you know, the people manager
side and kind of being more of a coach, right, and I recognise,
through going through coaches and trainers going, Oh, this
would have been a bit, this would have been useful for me as
a manager, and also is kind of a loose rein thing, you know, how
you can support and nurture and kind of get the best out of
others around you without, you know, just going this is the
way. So I don't know, I think that there's a need for a little
bit of both. And actually, you know, one of the tools I use a
leadership profile is very much around kind of where you lean
towards Are you the one kind of being the articulate advocate
selling, being out there in all the communities. Or often people
kind of sway more towards the people side of things, or the
specific practices and the structure. I'm a big fan of the
leading design, conference and winter, most of the early ones.
And it was a lot of kind of vulnerability and sharing,
because people were feeling lonely and you go into
leadership, elbows, go into independent consulting, you get
lonely because you can't interact with anyone at the same
level. But then there was a lack of actual, like, Vision work,
like actual strategic vision and clarity and possibility of the
future. So I don't know, I think there's there is a tension
there. Because, you know, some people go into that design
leadership and go, you know, what, I want to get back to
making stuff I love making stuff. Yeah. And I certainly
have that tension I do. I like the people I love the people
work, I love doing coaching, I love the mentoring, and I've
working with teams, but I also like, you know, helping craft
and create the future with people and be that more
visionary side. So it's an interesting tension, for me, at
least anyway.
Andy Polaine: I also think, you know, it's, there's no shame in
someone who takes that step into leadership, which does often
mean giving up actually doing their craft practising their
craft more or less, you know, a couple of years ago, and you
know, what, I really missed, this isn't for me, and stepping
back and I, you know, I was gonna say stepping down, then I
don't really want it to sound like that. Because it's my point
is just, I think it's fine. I think the most important thing
is for people to say, you know, this isn't really for me, I've
seen the opposite thing where people have realised, hey, you
know, I, the team and the company and the organisation and
the culture, those are my new materials. And what I'm
designing is that stuff now, and thrive. But I really do think
people have to find their own, you know, where they're where
they thrive in those things. Because there's nothing worse
than having a leader who kind of hates being a leader.
Jason Mesut: Yeah, I think that happens quite a lot. And you
know, some people have been asking me is like, going, I
don't know, if I'm ready for this. And, you know, to go into
these roles, I think, Well, that's good. It's good that you
are asking those questions and reflecting on that, but, but to
some extent, you won't necessarily know until you try.
So I ended up in it. And I got promoted. When I was, you know,
a craft delivery person. And I started to love it. I really
started to love it until the point when I just got sick of
hiring and sick of just doing that and sick of the team kind
of going Jason, you don't know what you're talking about. You
don't do the work anymore. And I was like and so, you know, and I
kind of went and I took a different part into what's when
I went to join plan and focus on product strategy and just go
deeper into the strategic side of things. But I do think that
actually, you might change your focus, right, and you build up
this repertoire and palette, it doesn't mean necessarily you
lose all that stuff in the past. I mean, you might find it hard
just kind of use figma again, or whatever the new tool is. But
um, you know, you might value some of the organisational side
of things, the processes there, you might value the people
management stuff, and you might try different things out for
different periods of your life. And that's okay. In our culture,
it seems at the moment that people want to pigeonhole you.
And you have to be one specific type of thing. It's very much a
kind of like a branded approach, you know, you are the only one
that does this. And, and I kind of push against that a little
bit. I think it's, it's, it's okay to have a few different
interests, they can all kind of coexist, and maybe some come
into the foreground more.
Andy Polaine: I think it's a you know, I think it's important
isn't illusion to think that you're just one of those things.
And for me, I think that's what the great Brexit resignation or
reshuffle is of I've recently heard it is largely about, which
is when people suddenly hit pause, and we're either at home
not working, or at home working, and their personal life and
their work, life was blended together, it became much
clearer, I think a lot of people that are I'm actually all of
these things at once, and it's a thing I used to say about my
wife, you know, smartphones is it's, you know, about thinking
about customers and users and stuff is obviously, you know,
when I used to commute to an office along the way, I am a,
you know, I'm a husband, I'm a father, you know, I'm a social
media curator or something, you know, fitting something, writing
something putting out there, you know, I'm also doing my
professional work you multi, you switch personas, just by virtue
of the fact it's like an app, right, from one app to the next
I'm switching who I am and what I'm being and you've got all
these multiple sides to you. And they don't just go away, it's
not like you kind of, there's a sort of locker at the door when
you go into the office, and you put all of that stuff away. And
it's only a bit of you walks in. And in fact, people who do try
to do that after I think you see this, the consequences of it,
because there's a lot of acting out and pent up frustration and
anger and all sorts of things that doesn't get spoken about in
work that then causes grief for all sorts of people. I'm going
to spring this on you because I didn't tell you in advance,
which is the last question of power of 10 has named after that
famous spill of you know, the relative size of things in the
universe, which is the last question is which one's more
thing, and it could be something overlooked or underestimate, you
know, under rated, has a outsized effect on the world, or
would have if it was redesigned
Jason Mesut: text entry on a mobile device.
Andy Polaine: Explain that.
Jason Mesut: So as much as like smartphones, and touchscreen
technology is really powerful as enabled so much we can do these
things, to so many trips and kind of accidental is, I suppose
not just text entry, it's like hitting returned, send cricket
and our food probably causes a lot of pain, a lot of
misunderstanding. But you know, I don't want to be kind of all
classical and, you know, go back to the days of the Blackberry,
but it was a really efficient, useful device I could do about
typing and whatever. And we just deluded ourselves with the
touchscreen being better for for some of these things. So just a
very micro interaction perspective, it is getting
better, but it's still rubbish. It's still terrible and causes
me so much pain and so much frustration and embarrassment.
And many, many other people too. I mean, there's all sorts of
memes around it. So yeah, that's one thing that I think
Andy Polaine: Have you read... there's a website about
AutoCorrect. Oh, Daniel. There's lots of very rude ones. They're
very funny. Have you read the book, Creative Selection by Ken
Kocienda?
Jason Mesut: I have not.
Andy Polaine: So he's the guy who basically developed
autocorrect for Apple. And there's this whole story of how,
you know, the iPhone was all the prototypes and stuff were you
know, going pretty well, but the keyboards just, we've just
rubbish, no archetype anything. And so it was where they stopped
the all the teams working on anything else and said, Okay,
everyone's just going to work on keyboard for now. And there was
like this sort of creative selection that went on. The
thing that fascinated me about as he worked with this guy, the
new surname, much can't remember. But he worked with
this interaction designer, bass, somebody who did all the demos
in macro, what's now Adobe director. And, you know, he
worked out he had this sort of idea of, you know, why surely,
you know, roughly the letters next to each other if I bring in
the dictionary, and you can kind of guess which one it's most
likely to be. It's really, really fascinating, sort of
fascinating read of, for that sort of culture, Apple of the
art of the demo, right? is particular about not calling it
a prototype is that you have to make a thing that sort of works
as if it was the real thing. Yes. It's not a prototype. It's
a demo to show. And that's the thing that's sort of went up to
Steve Jobs to then decide if you had an idea about something. You
had to kind of build demo of it. And it's good. It's a good book.
Jason Mesut: I mean, it's amazing technology that was in
there and it's been continued to be developed a lot of this sort
of drift kind of tolerance and all those sorts of things but
but you know, in and it had to be possible for it to be
convincing as a you know, to get people off their, their handsets
and stuff, and just don't just suggesting that it still got a
long way to go. And yeah, still problematic and causes a lot of
pain in the world. I'm not saying people aren't working
tirelessly on it, it's important.
Andy Polaine: You're loving from an interaction point of view,
there's a lot of details there about, you know, the bit where
they recognise that, oh, hang on, but when you're typing your,
your thumb covers the letter, and so you can't tell whether or
not so we'll make it bigger. We'll make it zoom up, you know,
as you tell, all sorts of things, lots and lots of tiny
things. Which if you've ever had something malfunctioning on one
of those things, I had an app the other day and autocorrect
wasn't I don't know, it's like it built its own interface or
something. So autocorrect wasn't kicking in. Okay. And it was
just awful. I couldn't I couldn't tell you forget how
much you owe if it's a little bit wet or something. And yeah,
one of those things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the bigger problem,
too cold weather. You can tell it's designed by people of
colour. Jason, thank you so much for being my guest. Where can
people find you on the interwebs?
Jason Mesut: medium.com/jasonmesut and medium.com/shapingdesign for
you know, the Shaping Design Series catch me on LinkedIn? I'm
in the only Jason Mesut in the world I think so that's easy.
And sometimes on Twitter, but less so these days.
Andy Polaine: And it's spelled M E suit as it su it
Jason Mesut: No, no. I. So it's just a weird thing. M E S U T.
Andy Polaine: Right.
Jason Mesut: That's why everyone gets it wrong
Andy Polaine: I got it wrong in my notes as well. Thank you so
much for being my guest on Power of Ten.
Jason Mesut: Thank you.
Andy Polaine: As I'm sure you're aware, you've been listening to
power of 10. My name is Andy Polaine. You can find me at a
perlane on Twitter, or perlane.com, where you can find
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