S1:E15:P2
[00:00:00] Todd Libby: Welcome to the Front End Nerdery Podcast. A podcast about front end development and design. I'm your host, Todd Libby. And today we are wrapping up our second half of our conversation here with Joe. Joe, how are you today?
[00:00:19] Joe: I'm good. Apparently, I'm here because I can't shut up. For better or worse.
[00:00:24] Todd: Which is fine. Cause it makes for a great podcast. Come on now.
[00:00:30] Joe: Yeah, yeah damnit. Exactly. Have at it.
[00:00:34] Todd: Yeah. So, let's jump right back into it. Shall we?
[00:00:37] Joe: Yeah
[00:00:37] Todd: You know, we were talking about, you know, difficult clients and, and resilience and, and toxicity, adversity, all that, what I wanted to ask. And then, now that we have plenty of time today to ask is, so.
And maybe you can explain this, better than I can ask the question. Hopefully you'll be able to understand the question. And the question is there are quote [Todd uses finger quotes] experts out there. And usually I see these experts, with their Udemy courses. So, they're, you know, they're always constantly, you know, hey, if I get 10,000 followers, then I'll release a PDF of my book for 15.99.
[00:01:28] Joe: Sure, Sure
[00:01:28] Todd: how can people, I guess, differentiate between. I'm gonna say it anyways, the snake oil salesman and
[00:01:40] Joe: Yeah, yeah
[00:01:40] Todd: people that are on the
[00:01:41] Joe: Yeah
[00:01:41] Todd: up and up?
[00:01:42] Joe: I, I'll tell you the truth. That's tough. It's tough for a number of reasons. The first reason it's tough is because those marketing tactics, are a are what you learn quickly. If you're going to put yourself out there and sell courses or sell platform or sell books or sell whatever those marketing tactics are absolutely necessary.
So, your, your number one goal is to get people paying attention to what you do, right? So, the tactics, unfortunately, don't change much.
[00:02:16] Todd: Okay.
[00:02:16] Joe: From person to person, right? Between snake oil salesman between people who genuinely give a shit, whether you learn anything or not.
[00:02:23] Todd: Right.
[00:02:23] Joe: And whether you can apply that stuff, you know, to your work, you know, what's the difference, the differences in the proof, the differences is in what happens when you give that a shot, right?
And you say, okay, fine. Give me your free PDF or, or give me I'll, I'll pony up the 15 bucks for your course or whatever it is the proof is whether you can actually take that stuff and apply it to what you're doing and, and, and do something with it. Now I'll get back to this in a second. The other, the other thing is I also think there's a difference in the way that you ask.
[00:03:02] Todd: Okay.
[00:03:02] Joe: I mean, I know everybody who knows me knows that I market myself. Right.
[00:03:05] Todd: Yes.
[00:03:05] Joe: I use social media to do that. I use email to do that. I use all sorts of things to do that. What I try, like hell not to do, is, is ever put out an empty pitch to just say, hey, go buy this thing. Even in like my promotional emails, like our mantra here, and, and Ellie taught me this, okay, this is her, her wisdom.
She taught me as a long time ago. If anytime you're going to ask somebody for something right. For their time, for their attention, for their money, for whatever you have to sort of prove in to say, here's why it's worth your while. Here's what you're going to get. So, every, like if I send a promotional email, I'm trying to spend 70% of that teaching you right.
And giving you something that you can take away and think, all right, the next time I do this, I'm going to try that approach. Right. And see how it goes. So, I have no problem asking for the sale. That's a necessary evil.
[00:04:00] Todd: Yep.
[00:04:00] Joe: But I think you need to do it in a way where you give more than you ask.
[00:04:05] Todd: Right.
[00:04:08] Joe: And across social media, it's the same kind of thing.
I spend a lot of time, commenting on things or answering people's emails or questions or direct messages, and things like that simply because it's what I believe. Right. First of all, I mean, if, if you're in a position, where you're fortunate, which I most certainly absolutely am, unquestionably, then I think it, it's on you to give back.
Right. I've always been that way. I was brought up that way. and I think it's the most important thing. You can do a lot of people out of their way when I was coming up. especially when I was young and didn't know what the hell I was doing. A lot of people went out of their way to give me their time and their, and their tutelage, and their right guidance, attention, whatever it is.
So, I feel a real responsibility to give that back because this is the only way anyone succeeds.
[00:04:51] Todd: Right.
[00:04:52] Joe: Right. We all have to help each other. That's how this works.
[00:04:54] Todd: Yeah.
[00:04:54] Joe: In general, it's the only way any of us get better. Nobody does it by themselves. No matter what any of these experts would have you believe there's no such thing.
Okay. There's always someone or something or some, you know, additional force helping you get to where you go. So back to, you know, the courses and things like that. I think that if you're going to put a product out and this is the hard part, all right, but this is the hardest part to me about product creation of any kind, right.
Courses, books, podcasts.
[00:05:31] Todd: Yeah.
[00:05:33] Joe: Every single time you do it, there has to be something that's useful. That's actionable. That's practical that someone can take and try and go fuck that worked. Right. I mean, did that really, that really worked. This is awesome. that component has got to be there and that is not easy.
All right. I could spout UX principles and ideas, and sort of, you know, hot takes on things all day long. Not all that is, is going to be actionable or useful. And in this profession is littered. Unfortunately like every profession I think in the age of the internet is littered with people who were sort of talking the talk, but their content and their courses and their bootcamps and their, whatever.
Doesn't walk the walk. It doesn't get anybody anywhere. People try and it falls flat on its face, right? Because corporate politics inside a company is like, yeah, whatever. That's,
[00:06:30] Todd: Yeah.
[00:06:30] Joe: that's a wonderfully lined out process. That diagram looks fantastic. Never going to fucking fly here ever.
[00:06:40] Todd: Right, right.
[00:06:40] Joe: You know what I mean?
[00:06:42] Todd: Yeah.
[00:06:42] Joe: It's like the arguments about agile and iterative development, which I'm a fan of all those things. In theory. However, if you've got one department in a company that is working in an agile fashion or an iterate fashion, and the rest of the fucking company works in a waterfall, slowed down 80 levels of approval kind of way.
It doesn't matter.
[00:07:04] Todd: Right.
[00:07:06] Joe: You know, you've got to adapt what you're doing to deal with reality. And that's again, to try and answer your question. My approach has always been, I try like hell to deal. In reality. I try to just tell the truth. I try to stay away from mysticism or empty promises or, anything of the, like, if you ever hear me say this is going to radically change the way you do.
It's because I've legitimately seen it radically changed the way people do things, not just once over and over and over and over and over again over time.
[00:07:37] Todd: Right, right, yeah.
[00:07:37] Joe: So, yeah, I think that's, but to your point, I think that's tough to tell
[00:07:44] Todd: Yeah.
[00:07:44] Joe: at first blush my, my warning sign to everybody, I think would be if I had to name it and I'm sorry, I'm giving you a really long winded answer would have to be watch out for people who ask for more than they’re given.
[00:08:00] Todd: Yeah.
[00:08:00] Joe: Right? Because that's usually a sign that there isn't much back there. Right. There isn’t a much substance behind that, that surface, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
[00:08:09] Todd: Right, yeah. That's, you know that’s pretty much what you can say about most of the stuff that you see. Well, I see, anyways on Twitter, like, you know, I see a lot of it with not only UX, but with development and design and, even accessibility, stuff.
[00:08:31] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, again, again, you, I feel like this is the way I judge things, right? If somebody is telling me that, that this is the right way to do this, or this is an idea you should consider, I kinda need to have some proof, right. Then I need to have a piece of it. I need to have enough of the theory or the principles or the thinking or the whatever to allow me to go.
Huh? There might be really something in that
[00:08:58] Todd: Yeah.
[00:08:58] Joe: but you gotta give me some substance. Right. I can't make that determination without substance. And I like a lot of people like you, I think too our I'm very skeptical
[00:09:08] Todd: Yes.
[00:09:08] Joe: of everything that I hear. But if you give me a piece of it, right. If you reveal a little bit, give it a little way for free, so to speak.
well now you got me right now. I'm going to, I'm going to invest the time or the money, to check this out. Cause I think there's something there.
[00:09:23] Todd: Yeah. So that was my approach with talking about the substance. That was my approach with when, before I think it was. And I think I talked about this last time we spoke, when I was looking for a possible transition into UX, which I kind of, well, I've kind of always done UX considering accessibility.
I was looking for like a, like a bootcamp or a course I could take and, you know, with substance and it was, I found one, I won't name who it was not to say it wasn't good. I never, I never finished. I should have finished. I could probably still finish. but there's one that was out there, and it was good. very hands-on with the, with the person, that puts out the content very, you know, as, as far as I see well-known, well-respected in the, in the community, and then I found yours, your course, which I was going to take, never did.
For whatever reason.
[00:10:28] Joe: Not enough time man
[00:10:28] Todd: I know I'm still thinking about doing it though. I, I really am
[00:10:33] Joe: Yeah
[00:10:33] Todd: but. And it's just, I need to have that, you know, I do, I do some research and I need to have that feeling like, okay, this is the person I am going to learn something from. So that leads me into my next question, which is who are those people that we can find, whether they have a course or not, or whether they have a little mini bootcamp or not, who do we look for in UX that we can follow and learn from and know that we're getting
[00:11:07] Joe: Yeah
[00:11:07] Todd: I guess, for lack of a better term, some sense of, of leadership, I guess, or some sense of guidance, guidance would be even better.
[00:11:18] Joe: Yeah. And I think, I mean, there are a lot of those folks, right. And, and, and certain people obviously come to mind, like, you know, Lisa, obviously.
[00:11:31] Todd: Right
[00:11:31] Joe: Comes to mind.
[00:11:32] Todd: Yes
[00:11:32] Joe: she is because, and, and you can tell me, you can like, here's a person not to sort of, cause she gets uncomfortable with people talking about her, but just, just sort of go with, you know, Lisa Angela for a second, with one thing that she does.
All right. When she tweets loud and clear, it's a, it's a very honest, no agenda kind of take, right.
[00:11:55] Todd: Yeah
[00:11:55] Joe: Here's what I see. Here's what is here's what we really need to think about. Here are the questions that we should be asking that we're not, in a way that genuinely makes you stop and think, right. That genuinely makes you think.
Yeah. You know, these are questions nobody's asking. So, but the thing about her takes is that they are uniquely her.
[00:12:17] Todd: Yeah
[00:12:18] Joe: You know what I mean?
[00:12:18] Todd: Yep
[00:12:19] Joe: You sort of feel her personality coming through those words. It's not, it's not, hey, I'm here to like push this agenda because I really want you to do something.
[00:12:27] Todd: Right
[00:12:27] Joe: and there are a lot of folks like that. You know what I mean? I, I think, you know, Nick is that way. My friend Vincent Brathwaite is that way. Alba is that way, you know, Vivienne is that way. I'm trying to think of, of, names, just sort of usual suspects and whatever I'm put on the spot. I have a hard time, but again, all these folks for better or worse, right?
Whether you agree with every take or not is irrelevant, what's important is that all these folks are putting themselves forward and, and sort of giving of their, their knowledge, their time, their experience in a way that really has no other agenda. Then to try and elevate what it is that we're all doing.
And I think you sense that,
[00:13:10] Todd: Yeah
[00:13:10] Joe: right? And so, to me, that's what you're looking for. When you hear somebody start yakking in a, in a loud voice publicly, it's a question of whether it sounds like a human or not, right? Whether it sounds like a person who legitimately has something to say, because they care deeply about something.
Like my thing is always people ask me what I do. It's like, well, I feel like I tell the truth in a loud voice. Right. And, and, and that truth is, is sort of the, it's the critical element then it's, it's hard to quantify or hard to describe you just sort of feel it when it's there. You know what I mean?
When you look at some of these folks and you look at their follower counts, that's not an accident.
[00:13:54] Todd: Right
[00:13:54] Joe: It's because they're constantly putting out stuff. That that hits you here really and makes you think, yeah, you know, I never considered that. I mean, I think I've learned more because I spent more time on social media in the last two years than I have in my entire life, I've learned more in the last 24 months about a lot of different areas and I've questioned a lot of my own assumptions, long-held beliefs.
and it's all because of folks like that, right.
[00:14:23] Todd: Yeah
[00:14:23] Joe: Who are just leading, I think, leading with their hearts first leading with their care for other human beings first.
[00:14:30] Todd: Yeah. And, and I can tell personally from my point of view, when I, you know, have a dialogue with these people, such as yourself, such as Nick, you know, at points in time where. Like on the Clubhouse chats that you were having,
[00:14:50] Joe: yeah, yeah, yeah
[00:14:50] Todd: I'm getting value from that. I'm learning something I have questioned, and it's being answered and I'm getting value from that.
[00:14:58] Joe: yeah
[00:14:58] Todd: And that, that community, which kind of reassures me that, okay, these are the people that I'm going to follow them on Twitter. I'm going to, you know, whatever they got going online and check their personal sites or whatever, you know, and, and learn from them. It's not, you know,
[00:15:19] Joe: That’s how I feel about, about events to be honest with you.
And, and I've been invited to do certain things like, hey, well, you know, would you like to take an hour and do this for a conference or for an event or for something just a, just a, could be a, a, a student group, right. That reaches out whenever I do these things, I want them to be Q and A's,
[00:15:35] Todd: Right
[00:15:35] Joe: as much as possible simply because man, I, I would much rather do that then come in with a topic and an agenda and say like, here's the, the, the thing I want to talk about. I think I, I, I'd almost always much rather flip that on its head and say to people, look, whatever, churning around in your head and your heart right now, just ask me. Okay. Or, or, or ask these, these other sharp people, right.
Who are, sort of up here with me and in the case of clubhouse, I just think that's a better use of everyone's time and it's the kind of thing I don't do often enough and don't have time to do often enough lately, but I really, really desperately want to get back to it because I think that's, there's just a ton of value there.
All right. There are a lot of questions. If I've learned anything, there are a lot of questions that UX-ers and designers and developers and all sorts of folks tangentially involved in product design have, and they're not being answered. By and large by the, by the sort of one-sided broadcast-y type stuff that goes out there.
cause of it was these, these, you know, these, these clamoring questions wouldn't be there.
[00:16:45] Todd: Right
[00:16:45] Joe: So, I just appreciate that format. wildly. And it's also what I love about Twitter is that there's this constant, valuable conversations. There's noise too.
[00:16:54] Todd: Yeah
[00:16:54] Joe: Like everything else. I mean, that's, that's okay. There's going to be some,
[00:16:57] Todd: Yeah
[00:16:57] Joe: I have days and weeks where something pisses me off and I can't let it go. And my, my threads are a little more finger pointy than I want them to be. That's going to happen. Right.
[00:17:11] Todd: Yeah
[00:17:11] Joe: You just have to have to roll with it. But I think you have to constantly come back to center. Right? What is this about? for me, it's about giving people hope. It's about giving them belief. It's about telling them look no matter what it is that you're dealing with right now, you can move through this.
You can elevate yourself, you can learn, you can get to the next level, whatever it is, you don't have to feel stopped. You don't have to feel stuck. And, and remembering that is, is what keeps me going. And like I said, I think a lot of people share that kind of sentiment.
[00:17:42] Todd: Yeah, definitely. So now I’m gonna turn this to something that I care deeply about and that's accessibility and how accessibility and UX tie in together. What, in your opinion, how do they tie in together?
[00:18:04] Joe: I think it's really simple. Okay. not that I've been an outspoken advocate of accessibility. I have not, but that's another thing, another area where like this last.
Last several, my last six months, I would say, especially as a wake-up call and any number of ways for me, because here's how I, here's where the connection is to me. Your job as a, as a user experience professional, as a designer, as a developer, for, as somebody who puts things out into the world for other people, your primary job is to care about other human beings, period.
All right. And if you care about other human beings, then you should also most definitely care whether things are available to them, right? Whether the same level of opportunity and ability to move themselves up in, in whatever way, shape or form that is, is available to them, right. That is accessible, that everyone has the same shot, that things are truly inclusive.
That they're equitable. That they're respectful, that they're kind. All right, that that's a core requirement of this job. and, and what a lot of that those conversations have done for me, is it recentered why I'm doing what I do in the first place and, and what I want it to be next year, for example, from a content standpoint and topics standpoint is going to look very different for me.
The two books I'm writing right now are in that sort of same vein, I’m, I'm kind of done with everything else, on every possible level. This job is about caring about other people and, sort of not willing to talk about anything else at this point
[00:19:52] Todd: OK
[00:19:52] Joe: if that makes any sense.
[00:19:54] Todd: Yep, yeah. So would you say that. And this might be me just soft balling this question in to you.
[00:20:05] Joe: Yeah, yeah
[00:20:05] Todd: Would you say that if something is accessible, it offers a great user experience and if something is inaccessible, it offers an awful user experience?
[00:20:19] Joe: I think that's accurate.
[00:20:21] Todd: OK
[00:20:21] Joe: I think that's completely accurate. and I want to say, I want to say this again because I think it's important. Okay. there was one instance in particular in the last it happened within the last 18 months. I want to say, I think, and that was with, Alba and I'm not going to try to pronounce her last name because I always butchered Alba V. You know what I'm talking about?
[00:20:39] Todd: Yes
[00:20:40] Joe: Okay. Where she said something publicly. And I reacted to it in a way where I didn't really get what was being said. And she was kind enough to direct message me and say, look, sort of set me straight. Right? You need to open your mind a little bit and think about this aspect and this aspect and this, that. And I read down the list and I went, holy fuck, all this stuff that made perfect sense in the light of day at this point, but that I had sort of never fully thought about to the depth that it deserves and sort of been blind to in a lot of ways.
That was a real wake up moment for me. So, to answer your question, yeah, it's impossible for something to be truly good design or truly appropriate design or truly appropriate UX, truly valuable, useful, relevant UX. If it doesn't include, or if it it's more to the point, if it excludes
[00:21:47] Todd: Right
[00:21:47] Joe: a certain percentage of people from even participating in the first place and man, we're like, we're lost.
All right. We're really, really lost if we're allowing this to happen. so yeah, I, I, I agree with that. I think that's kind of the, the driver of the conversation going forward. You cannot pretend to, to want to help human beings and say, except for these people,
[00:22:12] Todd: Right, yes
[00:22:15] Joe: You know, you can't, you can't.
[00:22:19] Todd: Yeah. So, I guess the next question is, you know, if it's bad, you know, if the user experience is bad or, you know, that's gonna affect the accessibility of whatever website, app, what, and whatnot.
If the user has a bad experience with one of those, a site interface, whatever, how important is giving feedback to, let's say a website that sells, you know, I dunno jackets for instance. Okay.
[00:22:59] Joe: Sure, sure.
[00:23:00] Todd: how important is giving them feedback on that experience? And, I say this because we've seen the lately, the accessibility overlays, which are an awful user experience, never mind the fact totally inaccessible.
I've given some feedback to a few sites where I've always gotten well, we'll have our web team look at it.
[00:23:33] Joe: Which is the most you're going to get in most cases.
[00:23:37] Todd: Right. Although I did see one site actually take off the overlay, which was great. You know, I'm not looking for a way to go you know [pats his own back], way to go.
[00:23:53] Joe: No, but that's, what's necessary. Okay.
[00:23:56] Todd: Yeah
[00:23:56] Joe: That's what's necessary. They may, you may get a response as well we'll forward it to our web team, but in a lot of cases, that's exactly what happens. And that's the only way that message moves up the chain. You have to start somewhere. Okay. So not saying anything, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, I respond to, I respond to emails in my inbox all the time with, with that kind of thing.
Like the company will, will promote something and I'll reply back and say, well, did you realize that when I hit this link and I go here, here are all the problems I have. And I don't have any problems with, with vision or, you know, using my hands or any of these things. But here's the parts that were difficult for me.
Imagine what this is like for someone who doesn't have those same faculties, or exclusion in, in some cases, things that are either purposely or, or inadvertently exclusionary to people of certain races. Okay. I've, I've seen plenty of that as well.
[00:24:55] Todd: Yes, yeah
[00:25:00] Joe: I think that I think that you have to. You should, you absolutely should offer that feedback.
I mean, whatever mechanism is available to you, I think that in some cases you should make a public spectacle out of it as well. Right? When necessary
The, the thing here, here's the problem. I don't know. I don't even know if that's the right way to start this. Like, let's take, let's just take accessibility overlays, for example, from someone who's been inside corporate organizations of various shapes and sizes and just about every industry, I know exactly why that became a thing, right?
It became a thing because nobody inside that building has the time or the budget approval or whatever the hell it is. Right. Any layer of, of political nonsense. That, that is, it shit. There are a lot of things that are critical to people's lives that are nice to have. Right with just getting the service right and getting it out there and, and getting it sort of performing at, at 90% consistency every day.
So, things like good design, good UX, accessibility are way the fuck on the bottom of the list.
[00:26:13] Todd: Yeah
[00:26:13] Joe: So, when someone says, hey, you know, all those complaints we've been getting about accessibility, here's a solution for $9.95 a month. We can do this or whatever the hell it is. I don't even know what those things cost, but it's a checkbox on someone's list and they go fine do it like who gives a shit?
I don't even like that. Money's not even worth thinking about, just spend it, do it.
[00:26:32] Todd: Yeah
[00:26:32] Joe: That's exactly what that is. Nobody has the time or the wherewithal or the focus or the impetus or the motivation. To dig deeper into it and say, well, actually in some cases, this is causing a lot more harm than good until people start bitching about it. Right.
[00:26:51] Todd: Yeah
[00:26:51] Joe: Which puts them back where they were before. Like, oh shit, we thought this was going to solve this problem. Why is it not going away? Companies generally, of any kind will not make a move until the outcry becomes so great and so widespread and so negative in a lot of ways that they have to do something about it.
All right. That's been my experience, my entire career, good design and good UX is the same battle until there's a moment where it hurts them right. In, in, in some way. And that could be personally right. A department head, a manager, right. Causes them to lose some of their political clout and their bosses are on riding their asses.
Like how dare you let this bullshit spread on my watch, like do something about it.
[00:27:36] Todd: Yeah
[00:27:36] Joe: So, it's not even necessarily having the best of intent. It's just, someone's neck is now, you know, sort of under the guillotine and they're going, fuck, what are we going to do about this? but companies have to feel it in some way and that's just because they're so frigging huge.
It takes a long time for an organization to really feel the consequence of any negative action. It literally takes, it takes a while from the social media outcry to the six departments that has to go through before it gets to somebody who is even remotely empowered to do something about it.
[00:28:12] Todd: Yeah
[00:28:12] Joe: It takes time
[00:28:14] Todd: Yeah
[00:28:14] Joe: right? It's a sustained effort. So, the good thing that's happening right now across my social media channels at, at least, is that everybody's having a piece of this conversation. That's what has to happen. It can't suddenly stop. It Can't, you know, sort of fade out. It has to keep going and the intensity has to be there.
Right? And you have to sort of keep your foot on the gas in order to make real meaningful change happen. And then of course the other side benefit of all that is that there are people on teams. And I know this because I counsel them. Who to my way of, of correct thinking, take it upon themselves to say, all right, we've got eight hours in a day.
What can we do to just bake this stuff in? And the work we're doing anyway.
[00:29:06] Todd: Yeah
[00:29:06] Joe: Right. Don't ask anybody's permission. Just do it. That's my thing. It's been my thing for a long time.
[00:29:12] Todd: Yeah
[00:29:12] Joe: Right. If people my, the thing I hate most Todd is when people look at me and say, well, they won't let me, I hate that phrase.
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it because it's bullshit.
[00:29:24] Todd: Yeah
[00:29:24] Joe: No one has to let you do anything. You got X amount of time over the target, especially if you're the person who's in there mucking with code. Okay.
[00:29:35] Todd: Yeah
[00:29:36] Joe: You got an opportunity every day to do something differently without anybody's permission. And these things are so small and so insignificant that no, one's going to see them anyway.
It's just going to be better for the person on the receiving end.
[00:29:48] Todd: Yes. And I'm glad you said that too, because that's something that I gave a talk about recently is, you know, accessibility. Well, the company wants to wait, the company wants to hold off. They want to do this, just do it.
[00:30:05] Joe: Exactly right, exactly right.
[00:30:08] Todd: Just do it. And more likely than not 99% of the time, it won't be seen.
[00:30:16] Joe: Right, right. I, I'm going to get, I'll give you a great example. There are lots of things that Jared Spool and I disagree on, but, but that said, he, and I both did a conference recently, the UX Hustle Conference, which is one of the best, best, best investments. I think anyone can make with their time for those who are listening, it's called UX Hustle Conference, Amanda Worthington and Sophia Prater run it. It's tremendous. but this last time around he, during his talk, he said, look, does anybody, does anybody ask whether we're going to do QA on a product?
You know what I mean? Like a product before launch goes through a QA process testing process.
[00:31:05] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:05] Joe: Does anyone ever ask whether we're going to do that or not, or ask if it's okay to do that? No. It's a part of development period. Everything goes through Q, QA while code gets frozen and then once it passes, it launches.
That's a given. So why the hell do we ask anyone? Whether we can do UX stuff or whether we can do this part, you know what I mean?
[00:31:29] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:29] Joe: This is how it is.
[00:31:32] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:32] Joe: You hired me to do this job. Here's how it's done deal.
[00:31:36] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:37] Joe: Seriously,
[00:31:37] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:38] Joe: I mean, that's what I believe
[00:31:39] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:39] Joe: it's really about every team I've ever worked with. I will tell you, in the last 20 plus years, as long as I've been consulting out of the three decades of my career, I can't count the number of times.
I've said to a room of people, stop waiting for someone to give you permission to do this. Just do it
[00:31:56] Todd: Yeah
[00:31:56] Joe: Stop. Cause it’s not coming first of all. And second of all, in, in the time that you've spent arguing about it and trying to sell it and trying to create another pitch or another meeting or another whatever, to try and convince people to do something, they should fucking be doing anything anyway.
Just do it.
[00:32:17] Todd: Yeah, yeah, yeah
[00:32:20] Joe: Oh yeah. Right there with you.
[00:32:23] Todd: So, let me ask you this. Do you think a company that again, yeah. We'll give it to the web team, but you don't see any results. You don't hear anything. I mean, more times than often you probably won't hear anything back, but do you think that a company that just, I guess tosses the feedback off the side or just says, you know, what, the, whatever do you think they're worth dealing with in the future?
Do you think they're worth, I guess, you know, going back and saying, oh, well they, they fix that or, you know, you think they're worth dealing with in the future?
[00:33:04] Joe: It's a big question. I think there, there are a lot of parts of that. I think that if anytime you can avoid doing business with somebody that whose principles you don't agree with, you should do so.
[00:33:14] Todd: Right, right, yeah
[00:33:15] Joe: You know what I mean? I, I, I vote with my dollars all the time. as I learned things about organizations, at the same time there are tradeoffs and some of those tradeoffs are difficult, right? It, it's hard to give up certain things when they function and are benefiting people, in a certain way.
So, you're constantly weighing the pros and cons of, okay, is this the right thing? I'm still on Facebook. For example, I still have two private groups on Facebook reason because running and managing those groups, there are a couple of reasons is infinitely more cost-effective than any other possible way I could do it.
Because of all the built-in tools on a platform
[00:34:01] Todd: Yeah
[00:34:01] Joe: That's the first part. And I'm just not talking money, talking time as well, time investment. There's a lot there that, that runs in a way that requires a lot less of, of my time. And then of course the money we'd have to pay if we were paying somebody. the other part is X amount of people are there.
And X amount of people are, are interfacing with me and with other people in any number of ways. And I'd lose all that. If I poured it over somewhere else, the third part of it is for a pure business perspective. I have a lot of people who are my built-in audience, my paying audience. Quite frankly, I got to weigh the cost of that as well.
Now I have real problems with Facebook, real problems, like everybody does.
[00:34:49] Todd: Yes
[00:34:49] Joe: but I'm not at the point where I can just kiss it goodbye. I can't, it would be suicide for me in any number of ways.
[00:34:55] Todd: Right
[00:34:55] Joe: Right. That's an unfortunate reality. It's not one that I like. it is still reality. So eventually I think we'll find our way out of this into something better.
[00:35:04] Todd: Yeah
[00:35:04] Joe: Right now, not possible, you know, lots of folks hate Amazon with good reason. as well in particular for what it's doing for local businesses, I'm, I'm a mom and pop business kind of person always have been.
[00:35:14] Todd: Yep, yep
[00:35:14] Joe: And I, that's where I go wherever possible. Here's the unfortunate reality what's starting to happen now, if you need something and it's a, it's a, it's a, an important something like, for instance, I need to fix because I still do this kind of stuff occasionally, I need to fix, my hot water heater or my furnace or my something going on in my house.
It used to be, you could walk into a hardware store, any hardware store and find some of these parts. None of this is rocket science, right? The, the parts on these systems, didn't suddenly magically appear.
They've been the same for 30 years, but nobody carries them. If you go into even a Home Depot or a Lowe's, they don't stock common parts in a lot of cases anymore. So, what are you going to do? I'm going to go to Amazon. Cause I know they fucking have it
[00:36:08] Todd: Yeah, yeah
[00:36:08] Joe: Right. And I got to solve this problem if I want my water to keep running.
[00:36:12] Todd: Right. Yeah.
[00:36:14] Joe: I can't tell you how many instances there have been like that. And it frustrates the hell out of me, you know? the times we've had to go into stores, it's like, you really want to be able to, to, to purchase this here and it's just, it doesn't exist.
[00:36:30] Todd: Yeah.
[00:36:31] Joe: And I understand why it doesn't exist because it costs that store money to keep that inventory.
It's hard. It's a constant balancing act. I could never run a retail store in a million years ever
[00:36:41] Todd: Yeah, yeah
[00:36:41] Joe: because the trade-off and the constant agony of do we take the risk of, of having this stuff sit there and not sell, or don't we, I, that would sink my ship in, in 10 seconds.
[00:36:54] Todd: Yeah.
[00:36:54] Joe: That's stress. So, I get it. But to your point, I, my answer stands, you know, whenever possible, whenever you can do so without hurting yourself in some meaningful way.
Yeah, you absolutely should vote with your wallet. You know
[00:37:10] Todd: Yeah.
[00:37:10] Joe: There are certain airlines that won't fly anymore. Period. I don't care what happens. I don't care if it's the only flight I, it's not happening.
[00:37:19] Todd: Yeah.
[00:37:19] Joe: All right. Because of their practices, their ethical practices in particular
[00:37:23] Todd: Yeah.
[00:37:23] Joe: I'm just not, it's not happening ever again. As long as I live.
[00:37:28] Todd: Yep. So that's that reminds me of, I just recently walked into a Barnes and Noble bookstore, and I was like, I haven't been in a bookstore in
[00:37:39] Joe: Right
[00:37:39] Todd: I don't know how many years.
[00:37:40] Joe: Right
[00:37:41] Todd: Because the stuff I'm trying to find, I can't, but it's on Amazon. And I was like, all right, I want to go physically into a bookstore because for me anyways, I can't do the digital books. I need that tactile. I need the pages in my hand. I need the book
[00:38:09] Joe: Sure
[00:38:09] Todd: in my hand
[00:38:10] Joe: Sure, I love books and records too.
[00:38:10] Todd: and
[00:38:11] Joe: the same thing.
[00:38:13] Todd: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Vinyl, you know, I'm glad so glad
[00:38:19] Joe: It’s part of the experience. Yeah. Part of the experience.
[00:38:21] Todd: So glad it's come back.
[00:38:25] Joe: Yeah
[00:38:25] Todd: I was like, okay. I'm hoping I find this book that I was looking for. I found it. I, so glad I went in there, you know?
[00:38:36] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good feeling, right? I mean, it's just a, it's, it's a better, it's a better feeling.
[00:38:45] Todd: Yeah, yeah. It's like in that, a, along the same lines too, you know, we don't see as many malls as we used to because of Amazon. They were, and I, in my opinion are the, the killer of the mall, you know.
[00:39:02] Joe: Certainly
[00:39:02] Todd: and it's, I mean, where I am now in, in the Phoenix area, there are a few malls and I've been in one and I granted that time of that this pandemic we're in, I was reminded why I didn't need to be in a mall at this time.
[00:39:23] Joe: Yeah right
[00:39:23] Todd: So, but at the same time, I was like, it was like reliving that experience of how this, you know, going to the food court, you know, going around shopping and looking at stuff and everything. So, yeah.
[00:39:37] Joe: And you see what's happening there as well. Right? If you notice most shopping centers or malls, there used to be, there used to be, you'd have a mix of big box stores, right? And franchises
[00:39:52] Todd: Yep
[00:39:52] Joe: and smaller, independent local shops who were renting space and the local mall or local shopping, et cetera.
And what's happening is those local places are disappearing.
[00:40:06] Todd: Yep
[00:40:06] Joe: They're disappearing because they can't afford the ridiculous lease payments
[00:40:11] Todd: Yeah
[00:40:11] Joe: and they're not making enough money. They're not making enough profit. My wife and I were, we went out to dinner the other night and we stopped in a store to return a shirt that she had bought me.
And this happened to be a chain. Okay. that she bought me out and when she was in California, but we called the store and they said, well, you can bring it back to any one which turns out isn't true. This local store in, in, national Harbor, near DC, these stores are locally owned. They're independently owned.
So, the owner buys the store and it's not like typical franchise thing. It's like, it's their store. They live and die by this store. Right. They make their own decisions. And, and this woman, she told us, she's like, this is the busiest, this is supposed to be the busiest day of the week. We've had three people in here all day.
This is seven o'clock at night. And she's like, it's been this. Practically since the pandemic started, she's like to be honest with you, I don't know what we're going to do
[00:41:09] Todd: Yeah
[00:41:09] Joe: cause they're underwater completely upside down, completely underwater. And it's heartbreaking.
[00:41:16] Todd: Yeah
[00:41:16] Joe: You know, I mean, to be honest with you, like, we, I like, I, we bought something just because I felt like I want to, you know
[00:41:27] Todd: Yeah
[00:41:27] Joe: just to help this woman feel a little bit better
[00:41:29] Todd: Yeah
[00:41:29] Joe: Her and her son, working behind the counter and that's, that's where we are
[00:41:37] Todd: Yeah
[00:41:37] Joe: you know? So, I don't know where I'm going with that. It's just that, there are all these trade-offs right. It's a series of tradeoffs. And again, I, I, I think the only way companies learn their lesson, the only way organizations start doing something different is when people say, you know what, can't go there with you anymore.
[00:42:00] Todd: Yeah, yeah. That reminded me actually of. So, I worked for a small game store while I lived in California. And then that game store got bought out by a bigger, brand national, and that was a few years of that and then a big corporation, bought that store and, you know, all the chains and it was they’re chains. and suddenly everything changed.
It went from a small game store, you know, you see all this, you know, RPGs and all these miniatures and all this stuff. And then it went to certain board games, you know, a certain, you know, it was funny too, because it, it just seemed like it turned into from a hobby-ist game store to a KB toys, you know.
[00:42:59] Joe: To, to here's what's, what's popular and here's what we want to sell you
[00:43:04] Todd: Exactly
[00:43:04] Joe: Not what, not what you want to buy. It's here's what we want to sell you.
[00:43:08] Todd: Exactly. And that feeling of the three people all day, that actually it wasn't three people. There was a little more, but that was the same thing
[00:43:20] Joe: Yeah
[00:43:20] Todd: Where it was just tips number. Now, back then, no, there was no pandemic, but the people that you would normally see in the, in the store weren't there anymore. Because it had changed so drastically.
[00:43:36] Joe: Sure.
[00:43:37] Todd: And, and
[00:43:37] Joe: And there's probably an entire connection that's lost as well, because you know
[00:43:41] Todd: Yes
[00:43:41] Joe: you could go in there and you could talk to people, and they would recommend things. You could have conversations. and it was a, it was a social experience. It was a human experience as well as just a transaction.
The transaction was the least important part.
[00:43:54] Todd: Yes, yeah
[00:43:55] Joe: Right. You went back for the, for the other stuff, record stores are exactly like that.
[00:43:59] Todd: Yeah
[00:44:00] Joe: You know, that was exactly the reason to go to the record store. Right. To talk to the, the, the folks that work there just to have to shoot the shit, you know, and they'd say, oh, hey, this is coming out next month you've got to check this out. or we got an advance of this, listen to this and they put it on. Right. And you said, I mean, I would spend hours in record stores for that reason. And I never not once that I ever go to the record store and not buy something, whether I could afford it or not.
That's, that's part of the equation. Right. And that's part of the, the humanness of, of shopping of, of I dunno, everything that we do. And that's the part that is missing in all the electronically mediated pieces of, of, you know, what we all do.
[00:44:54] Todd: Yeah
[00:44:54] Joe: I just built a, a small table for my wife, for her, her birthday. And I was looking for a specialty lumber.
I was looking for rough live edge, big slabs, right. That I could cut and shape and do things with. And there are places online that sell it. Okay. But it's like, and there are hundreds of places online to sell it. I mean, go to Etsy right now and do a search for live edge wood it’s like,
[00:45:20] Todd: Yeah
[00:45:21] Joe: but I, I looked low and high for local lumberyards that carried it. And sure enough, I found one 20 minutes from me, and this place was amazing. I went in there and they were unbelievably helpful. They're pulling stuff down. It's like warehouse, they're pulling stuff down off of high shelves. And guys like, you should take a look at this. This sounds like what you're. So, I was in there for an hour and a half, and it turns out, I mean, what I wound up building was, was beautiful, but it would not have been right.
There's no way this would have happened. Had I not walked in there and it not been that level of human interaction
[00:45:58] Todd: Right
[00:45:58] Joe: right. User experience, customer experience
[00:46:02] Todd: Yep, yeah
[00:46:02] Joe: that human part, which is the core component of, of how you do this stuff. So
[00:46:09] Todd: Yeah
[00:46:09] Joe: to maybe try and bring this all back around, I mean, that's the part of accessibility and diversity and inclusion and all these things.
That's the part that is lacking. And I think to some degree in my heart of hearts, I, I really sort of feel like maybe that's the part that can be brought back right. Where everyone gets to participate in a way that's more connected. You know what I mean? That that's more, conversational, that's more human in some way. I don't know if I'm making any sense.
[00:46:37] Todd: Oh yeah. To me you are, to me, to me you are
[00:46:43] Joe: all the matters, all that matters cause it's your show.
[00:46:47] Todd: Well, you know, nobody listens to this. It doesn't make sense. They can email me and
[00:46:56] Joe: Yeah, what the fuck was Joe talking about?
[00:46:57] Todd: I'll forward it to, I’ll forward it to afford it to the web department
[00:47:03] Joe: duly noted.
[00:47:04] Todd: So, I have a couple more questions before I get to the final three,
[00:47:08] Joe: Yeah
[00:47:08] Todd: Clubhouse chats. Are you still doing the Clubhouse chats?
[00:47:12] Joe: I'm not, and I haven't
[00:47:13] Todd: OK
[00:47:13] Joe: haven't had the time to be honest with you is, is, is the biggest reason. I checked it out and I would, I would honestly like to know from people, whether Clubhouse is still something that, that people are using, because I miss it.
All right. I really enjoy doing it. There was something about voice only that really, appealed to me now, what was a bummer there? Cause we were just talking about accessibility, what was a bummer, is the degree to which they were excluding people. I don't even know if that's the case anymore. I would hope that they've rectified those things.
[00:47:41] Todd: Yeah
[00:47:41] Joe: But I have no idea. I've seen Twitter spaces. Haven't tried it yet. like I said, my enemy right now is time, but the thing I miss about Clubhouse is the humanity of it.
[00:47:51] Todd: Yeah
[00:47:51] Joe: For lack of a better word
[00:47:52] Todd: Yeah
[00:47:52] Joe: maybe it was timing, right? Because it's pandemic, we're all isolated in our houses. There was something really intimate for lack of a better word, about voice conversation
[00:48:05] Todd: Yeah
[00:48:05] Joe: more so than video, more so than seeing the person on the screen. I don't know why I just felt that way. And, and, and all those sessions were great. Even the ones I did just myself, they were inspiring, you know, I mean, I felt I walked away from every one of those sessions feeling really good and positive.
[00:48:21] Todd: Yeah
[00:48:21] Joe: So, I don't know. I, I'd be curious to see if, if people are still there and still have interests in doing it again. And, for anyone who's listening, let me know. Maybe I'll, I'll find a way to carve out time and pick it up again.
[00:48:36] Todd: For me, it felt like being on the phone and by that, I mean, being on, not on a smartphone. I meant a phone, phone.
[00:48:46] Joe: Yeah. Good point.
[00:48:47] Todd: It brought me back to the days when
[00:48:49] Joe: Good point
[00:48:50] Todd: You were on a landline, and you could walk maybe 10 feet before you were repelled back by the cord.
[00:48:59] Joe: Yeah, yeah by the cord
[00:48:59] Todd: Exactly, that was the part that I always, always loved about doing those.
[00:49:04] Joe: You're right about that. I never thought about that. You're right. You're right. Because as you're talking, I'm sitting here going, okay. I didn't really hate talking on the phone until I had a smartphone.
[00:49:16] Todd: Yeah, yes, yeah.
[00:49:18] Joe: That's the truth.
[00:49:19] Todd: Yeah, yeah. The other part too, was it was like the party line that we used to have on those phones.
[00:49:26] Joe: Yeah, those of us of a certain age know, know how that was too.
[00:49:31] Todd: Yes, yep. So, as far as the accessibility piece with Clubhouse. I don't know if that had been, has been rectified and out, I'm going to look into that actually this has piqued my curiosity. I, I didn't see, I have my account still, but it was, and I can't remember, I think it was something to do with transcribing of the chats that they had a problem somebody transcribe the chats and they ended up, suspending this user. And there was
[00:50:05] Joe: I saw that
[00:50:05] Todd: a big to do about that. And it was like, you know
[00:50:08] Joe: For what reason?
[00:50:10] Todd: Yeah. You know, trying
[00:50:11] Joe: Makes no sense
[00:50:11] Todd: to make those things accessible, trying to make things accessible. And there’s
[00:50:14] Joe: Makes no sense it's only to their benefit, right. People are gonna read the transcript and go, wow, it's a great conversation. I need to go check this out.
[00:50:21] Todd: Yeah
[00:50:21] Joe: That’s how dumb they are.
[00:50:22] Todd: Exactly. always willing to give second chance because I think maybe they realized, and I believe that user was unsuspended.
[00:50:31] Joe: I hope so.
[00:50:33] Todd: So, but yeah. we'll put that, we'll put that question out there, on the, on the podcast, Twitter account and see.
[00:50:39] Joe: Yeah, do that. I'm curious to see, to see what people think if they're still hanging out there and maybe, I'll just find time to do it. I mean, the other thing I noticed the last time I checked out the interface is that there's a lot of garbage in a feed. My God. Is there a lot of garbage in the feed.
[00:50:54] Todd: Yes, there is. Yes.
[00:50:56] Joe: It's like, it's like a daily talk show. Jerry Springer kind of shit. Like
[00:51:03] Todd: Yeah
[00:51:03] Joe: what is this?
[00:51:04] Todd: Yes
[00:51:04] Joe: And I supposedly have a curated feed, right? Where you tell it what topics you're interested in. But so, I don't know that that could be part of it too, but I am really curious to see if people still find value and if it was worth doing again.
[00:51:15] Todd: Yeah. And I think another piece of that too, is Twitter spaces has taken a little chunk out of that because a lot I see, never mind the fact that I don't particularly care to see that interface on the, the mobile app, but that's just personal preference, but I see a lot of Twitter spaces now with the people that, you know, I follow, they follow me.
I've never done one. I had one scheduled, but I ended up, I couldn't do it. I wanted to do to give it a try, but I guess there was something with the accessibility of that, which again, something else I gotta look into, but, yeah, it, it just re your Clubhouse chats just reminded me of the old days of being on the phone and having those party line chats. And
[00:52:09] Joe: Agreed
[00:52:11] Todd: You can't hang up on a smartphone, like you could, with one of those old
[00:52:15] Joe: it's different
[00:52:15] Todd: It’s very different
[00:52:16] Joe: You don’t get that, that satisfaction of like,
[00:52:22] Todd: Exactly
[00:52:22] Joe: Hard plastic against hard plastic like
[00:52:24] Todd: Exactly
[00:52:24] Joe: satisfying crunch, you know?
[00:52:29] Todd: So, the last question I had before I get into the, the big three
[00:52:36] Joe: Yeah
[00:52:36] Todd: is a, your courses, a course courses on give good UX.
[00:52:43] Joe: Yeah. Anything about them in particular or just in general?
[00:52:47] Todd: How does somebody, you know, get there? And what do you have to offer?
[00:52:53] Joe: Sure. The, the URL is learn.givegoodux.com. and what I am trying to do, I mean, where we started with this right, two years ago, it's been in beta for two years. And basically, what that means is I opened it at a beta price.
Okay. And, and then the pandemic hit. And it was like, wow, like, holy shit. A lot of us, myself included saw a lot of our livelihood go away in one fell swoop. So, it was like at the same time, there's all these people trying to ramp up their skills. So, I said, well, screw it. You know, we'll, we'll keep the prices where they are as long as we can.
So initially it was, I'm going to take everything that I've done, right? Every book that I've written, every course that I've done at Udemy and everywhere else, presentations I gave to clients, right. Private stuff talks that I've given, conferences that weren't available publicly. I'm gonna take everything I got and put it in one place across any number of different topics related to doing this work UX and product design.
and then I'm going to put out new content piece of new content every month. It could be a new book, could be a new training video, could be a new section of a course like Ellie and I have the Business of UX course, which is basically, you know, for anyone who's ever thought about going into business for themselves.
It's absolutely everything that we've learned over the last 20 years. which as you may imagine, comes from making a lot of mistakes. So hopefully maybe some people can sidestep that stuff, but the goal of UX 365 in general, as it grows. Okay. And as it has grown is I want to spend more time talking about the, the stuff that I feel like nobody talks about, right.
[00:54:32] Todd: Yeah
[00:54:32] Joe: Nobody necessarily needs another course on. You know, here's the process of creating prototypes, right? Or here's how you, you ideate design or here's how you like process that that's been done. It's out there. I've done it myself. I don't think that's the core of what's needed. I think the core of what's needed is how to deal with difficult situations, how to deal with difficult people, how to advance your career in an era where no one is willing to give you or your portfolio the time of day.
Right? How do I deal with these ridiculous design challenges and these hoops that I'm supposed to jump through? how do I, how do I keep going right after, after so many instances of, of sort of getting knocked down in a number of ways, right? That happens professionally. It happens personally. hell, just, just learning how to work with teams with stakeholders, with executives and somehow work users into that equation, I think is a massive, massive undertaking for most people in those places.
And I don't think that gets talked about enough. The answer to the question, how do I do this? What do I do like to me, it's I, I, I want to create a series of missing manuals, essentially
[00:55:49] Todd: Right
[00:55:49] Joe: right here are the parts of doing this work every day that nobody talks about the political messiness, the personal messiness, the need to be resilient, right?
The ability to work through toxic situations, difficult conversations, right. what to do, right? How to find your own strength, how to write, how, how to, how to take your power back in any number of ways. That's the stuff that I'm trying to spend a lot more time doing. And when it comes to traditional UX stuff, like if I'm talking about.
Okay. How do you run a UX audit for a product I'm trying to do it in a way that I think is uniquely mine, because I've seen a lot of those tried and true recipes and processes and things fall flat on their faces when they're attempted inside again, inside an organization, because the way this stuff works on paper and the way it works out there in the real world, so to speak are two completely different things.
And the older I get, the less tolerance I have for any of that, I think that people get a lot of bad advice in any number of areas, for things that just simply will not work and will only cause you more heartache and I'm kinda tired of it. Right? So, that's kind of my gig at, at UX 365. It's, it's trying to touch all these topics in a way that, in which no one else is talking about them.
You know, Nick and Lisa both said to me last week, as a matter of fact, in relation to do I have a conversation about something else. And they both mentioned the portfolio course. For example, my portfolio course, is more about here's how you need to be presenting yourself to the people who are going to be looking at it.
And here's what they're thinking, right? This is not another recipe for here's how your portfolio should look. Here's how your case studies should look. Here's that? No, here's what you need to say, because here's what you're up against. Here's the reality of what, of what people need to see from you in order to get the next level.
And if you do not meet these, these checkpoints, it doesn't matter how great your portfolio looks. Okay. So, stuff like that, I guess, is what I'm getting to. Again, I want things that, that people can use and try and put to use. Just so that they have better lives. Okay. More success, more upward trajectory in their careers.
And a lot of that is dealing with, unfortunately, what we typically refer to as soft skills. They're not soft skills, they're hard skills. They're the hardest, most critical pieces of anything you're ever going to do. And they are typically what will hold you back, but nobody is teaching anybody how to deal with this shit.
So, I said, well, why not me?
[00:58:36] Todd: No
[00:58:36] Joe: That's a really long answer to a simple question.
[00:58:38] Todd: That's great to know. So now, we're getting down on time. So, I'll ask the three questions. I normally ask my guests, at the end of the, the episode here. what about the web these days excites you and keeps you excited and what you?
[00:58:57] Joe: That's easy. That's what we were talking about before. Right? It's, it's all these folks, as mostly Twitter, quite frankly, because I don't see this to this degree everywhere else. the number of voices who were absolutely standing up and saying, you know what, fuck all this old way of doing stuff.
[00:59:16] Todd: Yes
[00:59:17] Joe: Okay.
[00:59:18] Todd: Yep
[00:59:19] Joe: It's done so over. We're not accepting it anymore. We're not going to stop talking about it. We're not going to be quiet. there are a number of social movements. Okay. That, to me, that had the same power to sort of shine, a hard light on people who deserve to have a hard light shined on them. and have essentially moved them simultaneously moved some of those people out of the way and organizations out of the way.
And given a lot of people, a lot of power that they didn't know, they had. Personal power. I'm not talking about something, you lord over somebody else. I'm saying that the kind of power that says, you know what, I'm, I'm a person I am worthy of your respect. And in fact, I demand your respect and I'm unwilling to accept anything else.
I love that about where we are right now. I love it in, in every possible way. I think it's fantastic. And I think that's, again, that applies just to personal life that applies to UX and product design as well. The heightened sense of responsibility that I think designers and developers and UX folks increasingly have is one of the greatest gifts, that, that the web could have possibly ever given us.
[01:00:31] Todd: I agree if there were one thing about the web that you can change about, you know, the web we know today, what would that be?
[01:00:48] Joe: That's a really good question. because there are lots of things.
[01:00:51] Todd: Yes
[01:00:53] Joe: I mean, on the heels of that, the one thing that bothers me the most is, is the degree to which misinformation, harmful information can be spread so easily in a way that looks and feels and sounds often legitimate. I'm not talking about the crazy ass stuff that you see, and you go, okay, these people are out in left field or right field, maybe as it were, I'm talking about like legitimate sounding looking things.
Like there are all these studies now about virus and vaccines and look, everything should be questioned, right? Everything can be questioned. Even, you know, data from official sources, we all know how data can be manipulated. We all also know that with any news, no matter what side of the political spectrum it’s from, for example, they're all full of shit to me, all right.
Both sides are absolutely manipulating what they say and how they say it and how they present data and how they present statistics to serve their own ends. And those ends don't always have much to do with people, right? The truth is always somewhere in between. So, the degree to which everything is manipulated, it really bothers me and the degree to which they're, they’re taking advantage of a lot of people who don't have the time, to really dig into and qualify every source that they read, because think about how much effort that takes.
All right. To really qualify some scientific study that you read tomorrow. Right? Think about the effort it's really going to take to find out whether these people are lying to you or not. That's massive. Nobody has that kind of time. These people work in jobs, right. They're trying to pay their bills and trying to raise their kids.
They’re, they're stuck in traffic
[01:02:37] Todd: Yep
[01:02:37] Joe: Commuting back and forth. I mean, no one has that kind of time. So that to me is probably the most unfortunate thing it's, it’s like we said, in the industry of the web, one of the common phrases was the great thing about right now is that anyone can build a website. The terrible thing about right now is that anybody can build a website
[01:02:56] Todd: Yeah, yeah
[01:02:56] Joe: We're kind of still there. And, and when we're there sort of on a, on an exponential level.
[01:03:02] Todd: Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. And just a short sidebar, to the, to the misinformation. I don't know if you saw this. I, it's cause you know, we're friends on Facebook a couple of days ago. I saw this, I had to, I had to, I had to put it on my timeline. It, it's a picture of, a Tib, a Tibetan monk with two, men standing on each side
[01:03:26] Joe: I saw that I didn't read it though. I don't know what that, what that is
[01:03:28] Todd: So, it says a Tibetan monk has been discovered in the mountains of Nepal. He's considered the oldest person in the world at 201 years old among his things. They found a piece of paper that said, stop believing all the crap you read on Facebook.
[01:03:45] Joe: I saw that part. I thought for sure it was a joke.
[01:03:48] Todd: It is a joke.
[01:03:48] Joe: Right? Okay. Exactly.
[01:03:53] Todd: So
[01:03:53] Joe: Yeah, that’s awesome.
[01:03:53] Todd: It’s so easy, especially with now you have a, what did they call the, you know, you can put anybody's face in the video now. And I can’t remember what
[01:04:02] Joe: Oh God that scares the hell out of me.
[01:04:04] Todd: Yeah
[01:04:04] Joe: That shit scares the hell out of me. I'm telling you right now.
[01:04:07] Todd: Yeah
[01:04:08] Joe: And it sort of blows my mind that it's not talked about more. That's fucking dangerous.
[01:04:12] Todd: Yeah, and I can't remember what they call it now. I'm blanking on that. But yeah. That and how
[01:04:16] Joe: Like deep fakes? You know facial
[01:04:19] Todd: Yeah, deep fakes. Yes. Thank you.
[01:04:21] Joe: That's frightening to me.
[01:04:22] Todd: It’s so easy
[01:04:23] Joe: It's frightening to me that, that's allowed to exist
[01:04:25] Todd: Yeah
[01:04:25] Joe: seriously.
[01:04:27] Todd: Yeah, and the other thing too is how easy it is for you, me, anybody, you know, a five-year-old pretty much that can take a picture, make a meme out of it that, you know, for whatever reason
[01:04:50] Joe: It goes viral
[01:04:51] Todd: Yeah, it goes viral, and it has, you know, misinformation on it.
[01:04:58] Joe: Yeah.
[0:04:59] Todd: It’s so
[01:04:59] Joe: And that goes back to what we said before. It would be, it's very easy to do that. It's easy to be sensationalist if I really wanted to double my followers right now. Right. If I wanted to grow my base exponentially in a really ridiculously short period of time, there was all sorts of incendiary shit I could do.
[01:05:13] Todd: Yeah
[01:05:15] Joe: I just can't. I can't, I mean, I can't, I'm just unwilling right. To, to, to go there. It, it there's nothing about it. That feels good to me, but that's quite frankly, that's, that’s one of the biggest ways that, that people sort of up their game, you know.
[01:05:35] Todd: So, my last question is what is your favorite part of front end development, design, whatever that you really like the most that you nerd out over.
[01:05:50] Joe: There's two parts to that. I nerd, I've always nerded out over hard problems. I like really hard problems. I like, for instance, I love enterprise development. I love enterprise software. People look at me like I have three heads when I say that because they are, so they are such tangled webs of stuff, not just okay. The, the, the sort of overlooked, poorly treated tacked on fixes of, of like legacy code in general, right.
Older systems that have sort of been patched and patched and patched and patched and patched over the years. But the fact that they interface with six or eight or 10 other things who are in equally bad shape, all of which are now being asked to interface with more modern systems, that much better serve people's needs that are much more efficient from a technological standpoint, do a better job on a functional level.
It is, it is, it feels like a mountain of epic proportions to try and climb that hill. Like how in the fuck are we going to get there?
[01:07:00] Todd: Yeah
[01:07:00] Joe: There is so much wrong with this. How do we start? I love untangling that I love being the person in the room because everybody feels overwhelmed, and this is where it leads into second part of my answer.
Everybody's overwhelmed and they're being tasked to, to sort of reach this miraculous peak inside some ridiculous timeframe, right? Because people think it's possible to estimate a, a, a redesign project like that, where you're talking about actually rebuilding 70% of the thing. And they'll say, oh, by January of 2023, we're going to be here.
No, you're not, you're not, there's no way. There's no way. You could know that I don't care how much data you have at your disposal. There's no fucking way that you're gonna be able to tell me you're going to be here by this day, past the next six weeks. You don't know shit. All right. That's a fallacy, in my opinion.
And in my experience, it's fallacy. So, you got all these people who were overwhelmed and who are like Jesus what are we going to do here?
[01:08:01] Todd: Yeah
[01:08:01] Joe: And in most cases, here's what I find no matter what the makeup of the team is, these are almost always genuinely good people who care a great deal about this thing, serving people, right?
This thing being usable, it being better. To companies come to me for like, you know, with, with business needs and financial problems. Yes. That's always part of the equation. But when you get down to the team level, these are people who really care about whether or not this makes other people's lives easier or harder on, on a, on a, on, in, in, in a big way.
So, the other part that I love is getting to breakthroughs, not just for end users, but more so quite honestly, in recent years, especially breakthroughs for people in that team to get them to a point where they feel like all that, pushing that rock up the hill, where at least this particular rock is going to fucking stay there.
It's not going to roll back down on us. My job, essentially in those situations is to help them get to that point. And one of the ways we do that is by ruthlessly saying, what's worth doing, I know you've been mandated to do all this stuff. I'm an outside guy. I don't work here. I don't care. Right.
[01:09:22] Todd: Yeah
[01:09:22] Joe: What's really achievable here inside this timeframe that we're talking about this piece so fine.
Let's charge ahead. Let's get this piece nailed down to some reasonable certainty and then we'll go do the very next thing. But when we get to that point and we get the win and, and, and things that are fixed or better stay fixed, or stay better over a sustained period of time. I love that. And what I love most about it is the sense of empowerment and accomplishment that it gives those people that matters more to me than, than just about anything I do these days.
All right. Because it's easy to be disheartened in a situation like that. It's easy to feel like all your effort is going nowhere, right? There's no point to this work I'm doing
[01:10:08] Todd: Yeah
[01:10:08] Joe: not solving anything
[01:10:10] Todd: Yeah
[01:10:10] Joe: you can, and you are right. You have something to give, and you have a, a victory that can be in your sights. I, I, I hate the way it discourages people.
I hate the way it makes them feel about their jobs. I hate the way it makes them feel about their, their ability to contribute and succeed. I hate that. So, to me, like, that's my, my moment. I'm a warrior for the, for combating that, and this is how we do it.
[01:10:40] Todd: Awesome. Awesome way to close this out. So now, I didn't get to this part in the first half of our talk, but now that I am, I'd like to close out the podcast with my guests, letting the listeners know what they currently have going on and where people can find you online.
So, the stage is yours.
[01:11:00] Joe: All right. The easiest place to find me always is Twitter, because I spend way too much time there even thought I should be doing other things.
[01:11:08] Todd: Like we all do.
[01:11:08] Joe: @joenatoli. the biggest things happening right now. I'm working on several books, three actually, cause I'm stupid. the first is, is it's based on the business of UX course that my wife and I, created it's called the Business of UX.
But the book is probably going to be called the, like some of like the ultimate guide to starting and, and managing and succeeding in your own UX or design career. Right? If you want to work for yourself, this is the guy from the ground up, right from the minute you start asking yourself, I think I want to do this from the legal parts to the form of the business, to taxes, to accountants, to deal with clients, to promoting yourself, to contracts, to right.
[01:11:45] Todd: Yeah
[01:11:45] Joe: All of it. Everything we could possibly think of. So that is about, I'd say 80% complete at this point.
[01:11:52] Todd: Okay
[01:11:52] Joe: The next book is, on the topic of designing emotional resilience, which seems to be a thread as I said, in a lot of the things that I do. So, I decided it was high time that I started writing about that.
And one of the things I'm doing with this book is I'm interviewing people, practitioners, right? People in the industry who have, in some cases, have had spectacular failures, right. Things that would sink anybody's ship. I say, well, how'd you come back from that, that ability to get up again and again and again, and again, and again, no matter how hard or how often you've been knocked down from some truly difficult things to me as your superpower, especially as a designer or UX or developer.
Cause this is a hard business. It's hard and it's personally hard and any number of emotional ways. And I don't think we talk enough about that.
[01:12:36] Todd: Yeah
[01:12:36] Joe: So that's the second book on that topic, but essentially how to build your superpower and then use it once you got it. The third book, I'm co-writing with my friend Vincent Braithwaite, it's called Designing Difficult Conversations, which is what it sounds like.
Right. It's how to deal with adversity in the workplace, basically with, with things that are just, number one, maybe politically difficult or personally difficult, to things that are toxic to things that are abusive racist. right. There's no, we, we both kind of felt like, you know, nobody talks about this enough.
Number one, number two, there's sort of no guide for saying, what do I do? I'm in this situation? What the hell do I do? And he, and I both get people talk to us and ask us questions every month. Here's the situation I'm in. Here's this horrible thing that I'm dealing. What do I do? And we think that sucks.
All right. And, and, and that's putting it mildly. So, he came to me with this idea and, he had already started it and he said, you know, would you think about maybe getting involved? And I went, hell yes. Right. This conversation is something is close to my heart. So those three books, there are new courses coming out on, learn.givegoodux.com the UX 365 academy.
that's going to change in the coming year for what it's worth. I talked about beta pricing, right? And not to make this sound like a sales pitch, but I feel like I have to start saying this now so that it doesn't come as a shock to people like, wait, wait, what happened? We're going to have to raise prices in January.
That's, that's a given. All right. It's not something I really want to do. My accountant is looking at me square in the face and saying, look, you can't keep doing this this way.
[01:14:15] Todd: Right
[01:14:15] Joe: It's, it’s, it’s, I mean, it hasn't even broken even, and in the last two years and that's okay. I was okay with that. I knew for certain period of time; I was willing to do that.
But, but on the heels of that, one of the things I'm going to try to do with the academy as well in terms of what's coming up, as I want to do more events, quite frankly, right. Workshops, I, I'm not going to use the term boot camps, but to the tune of where you can, you can involve yourself for X amount of days and walk out of there with a real transferrable, actionable skills.
Right. And it's going to be along a lot of these topics that we're talking about. So, more events is what's coming next. I've, I've spoken at lots of events. I've participated in a lot, lots of events. And for the last year I've been thinking I should just do my own
[01:15:04] Todd: Yeah
[01:15:04] Joe: Right. For the things I, that I want to see. So that's all on tap provided I don't, pass out from exhaustion anytime soon.
[01:15:12] Todd: Well, I hope not.
[01:15:16] Joe: Yeah, whew. That doesn't mean that, it’s like if I have an idea for something, I was like, yeah, let's do that. If somebody else comes to me with an idea, hey, do you want it? Yes. The first word out of my mouth is yes.
[01:15:27] Todd: Yeah that's, that's, that’s the conversation in my brain and I have, oh, here's an idea. Let's do it.
[01:15:32] Joe: Yeah
[01:15:32] Todd: Absolutely.
[01:15:33] Joe: Yeah
[01:15:33] Todd: And then they keep piling up and piling up and piling up. Yeah.
[01:15:37] Joe: Yeah, that’s, this guy Don Bajema wrote a book of short stories it’s called My Reach Exceeds My Grasp. I've always loved that phrase
[01:15:46] Todd: That is a good one, yeah, that is a good one.
[01:15:48] Joe: That’s me.
[01:15:49] Todd: Yeah
[01:15:49] Joe: There's always, I have no ability to judge what I can actually pull off
[01:15:56] Todd: Yeah
[01:15:56] Joe: in any given time. There's just a desire and motivation and fire, like, yeah, let's do this. Let's find a way to do it.
[01:16:02] Todd: Same here yeah. Well, Joe, thank you for your time. You know, it's
[01:16:07] Joe: Thank you.
[01:16:07] Todd: great conversation.
[01:16:09] Joe: Yeah.
[01:16:09] Todd: You know, the first half this now and, you know, always a pleasure to, to speak with you and,
[01:16:15] Joe: Same.
[01:16:15] Todd: whether it be on the bird app or, or here. and I want to thank you for your time. It's been, it's been great. So, thank you very much.
[01:16:24] Joe: I appreciate that. I'm gonna give you a quick shout out as well, because, of, of the voices that we talked about, for example, you have people who are really adamantly trying to make all this work that we do better for people to make it more responsive to people's needs to make it, to make it more human, right.
To, to give a shit about other people.
[01:16:41] Todd: Yep
[01:16:41] Joe: you are definitely my friend at the forefront of that list, right? And you've been pushing this hard or as harder than most people. I know.
[01:16:49] Todd: Thank you. I appreciate that.
[01:16:51] Joe: May feel like a thankless task. I want you to know that it isn't, it matters. I see it a lot of people see it.
[01:16:57] Todd: Yep
[01:16:57] Joe: Alright so, it's like keep doing what you're doing as well.
[01:17:00] Todd: Yeah, definitely. Keep on keeping on.
[01:17:02] Joe: Yeah, man.
[01:17:05] Todd: All right, so thank you, Joe again, and thank you listeners for tuning into the Front End Nerdery Podcast. I'll be back next time with a new guest, new conversation about front end design, development and other topics, if you would please rate this podcast on your podcast, device of choice, like, subscribe and watch on the Front End Nerdery YouTube channel links to transcripts, and show notes are there.
I'm Todd Libby, and this has been the Front End Nerdery Podcast. Thanks. And we'll see you next time.