DHABA
Inspired by the punjabi roadside resting place, DHABA is a podcast that invites pause, perspective, and peppered wisdom. Each episode brings together cooks, caretakers, bridge-builders and makers whose craft speaks louder than credentials. DHABA is a resting place for restless minds, where experience is the spice and conversation the fuel.
DHABA
Robert Powell "Grand Poohbah of UX"
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What happens when a 40-year design veteran takes you behind the curtain of corporate design culture? Robert Powell, the self-styled "Grand Poobah of UX" and former design analytics leader at Shell, delivers a masterclass in authentic design leadership that cuts through the noise of typical design discussions.
Powell's journey from creating early gaming software on 16-bit computers to building theatrical props for Doctor Who represents the multidisciplinary foundation that makes exceptional designers. But it's his candid assessment of corporate design culture that proves most valuable. After joining Shell as a "secret shopper" to evaluate their design practices, Powell helped build what he describes as a dream environment – not a department but a genuine community where designers were empowered to push back, teach, and deliver meaningful work.
The dismantling of this successful design culture by accountants provides a sobering lesson about organizational priorities. Yet Powell remains optimistic about what good design looks like and how it can be rebuilt. His perspective on artificial intelligence is similarly nuanced – seeing enormous potential when AI removes mental heavy lifting for designers, but warning against using it "not as a tool, but as a replacement to human beings to maintain the status quo." As he aptly notes, "If your definition of success is doing exactly the same, just cheaper, that translates to failing cheaper."
Perhaps most valuably, Powell challenges the industry's obsession with tools and sector experience over fundamental design thinking abilities. "Design is not aesthetics," he asserts. "Design is the process that delivers a solution." This principle applies whether designing for Mandalorians, Victorian lamps, or digital experiences – understanding the user's needs transcends specific tools or sectors.
Ready to rethink your approach to design leadership? Listen now to gain insights from someone who's survived and thrived through four decades of design evolution.
DHABA
Brewed slowly. served warmly. crafted with care
Introduction and Recovery
Speaker 1and everything goes dim, like some people, I know, but not on this, call good cat, yay, awesome. So, mr Robert Powell, how are you, sir? You know the answer to that? I do, but do you want to share the answer?
Speaker 2yeah sure, a few weeks ago, about a month and a half, there had a serious accident. Ended up being straight into hospital with dislocated shoulder. The ballpark there actually ended up there. So that was a definite dislocation Torn muscles, ripped tendons, nerve damage, the whole lot. However, hand is working, I can. However, hand is working, I can work a mouse, I can work a cable. Life is good, probably still a bit of a pain, but that will come in time I I wouldn't do any driving.
Speaker 1I I probably wouldn't do much walking either, but you know that's just me, um, but you are on the mend. Yes, excellent, all right, so for the sake of this, I mean, obviously I call you bob. What do you prefer, robert, mr pal, sir, or do I refer to you as the grand poobah? The grand poobah was a title.
Speaker 2It's not my actual name, but yes, um, the grand poobah thing was obviously there, just because titles are such a nonsense. They are. So I was quite delighted to say when somebody who won't be mentioned because I have too much respect for you said you can name your own job title.
Speaker 1Al Noble.
Speaker 2Yes, and of course I went for grand poobah of UX, he did. Grand poobah of UX, he did.
Speaker 1Grand Poobah of UX.
Speaker 2I have to tell you, when I put that title up on my profile, I must have had the best part of about 300 direct messages going. That's the dream role. That's what we want. Everybody got the message that, yeah, when it comes to design, the titles mean nothing it's, it's hilarious, absolutely hilarious.
The Grand Poobah of UX
Speaker 1So I mean, for those who don't know, and if you haven't realized already, bob and I have known of each other, um, for quite some time. Um, yeah, I think it was Barclays where I first walked into one of your splendid caves, I think with the brilliant design manager at the time, charlie Francis. I'll praise his name and his thriving career, because I walked out of that interview thinking I'm dead. I'm so dead Because that was a grilling and then some. I wasn't used to that, but no, and that's how we first got acquainted, I guess. But before we get into that, do you want to tell for all of the folks who, perhaps unwittingly, well, for all of the folks who perhaps unwittingly, living under some kind of massive stone rock mountain, who aren't aware of who you are and what you've done and how you started, would you just want to give us a quick overview as to yeah, all of that Quick overview how to summarize 40 odd years in a couple of seconds.
Speaker 2I am terrible at self-promotion, you know this, you told me off for it yourself. Summarized 40 odd years in a couple of seconds. I am terrible at self-promotion. If you know this, you've told me off for it yourself. So let me just say I am old school HCD.
Speaker 2I was UX before the great God Don Norman actually qualified what the definition of UX was. Worked before the web on wonderful things called multimedia, started off working in gaming and software, all for 16-bit computers. Web came along, started working as consultancy, taking the graphic stuff into um software. I had. My client to fame from that time was I created the first lights of london internet and worked with so many banks it's just unreal. And from there moved on to education, which I just love, and because you know, when it comes down to user testing and user research, there is nothing like a classroom full of 13 year olds to tell you are your products looks while your design sucks, why you suck when your parents, why your design sucks, why you suck, why your parents suck, why the world sucks and why pictures suck. And yeah, you get definite feedback without any sort of I need to be polite and diplomatic. That doesn't work.
Speaker 1An orgy of feedback.
Speaker 2Crikey From there joined up with a few friends into consultancy, which just exploded, and literally I was working well around the world so many different countries, so many different organizations top of my head and South America, south Africa, africa, plenty of places in Eastern Europe, europe itself, malaysia, quite a lot in Southern Asia, in fact. And yeah, when I came back there, I started working with individual companies. I was working with NatWest, then was recruited to go to St Gobert and help them set up their first UK digital user experience, which was just a joy. Eventually ended up at Shell, where I was leader for design analytics, which is exactly what we used to do in the old days of ux, which is what happens when you put system data and user data together, you actually get data that can be actionable. So that was my role at um show. Yeah, so that was me in a nutshell crikey.
Speaker 1Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. So we, as I said before I, I stumbled into charlie francis's shiny cave I think it was floor 23 or 24 barclays and, like I said, I had no, no desire at all to get into retail banking or anything like that.
Speaker 2I think it was um no designer goes into this industry to go. I really want to work for a bank no, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1No, I'd done trading applications before then, um, but I hadn't done the whole retail uh, business, corporate, all of that, um. And I think it was the brilliant hugo uh recruiter who has threatened me with doing an episode of this as well, but it hasn't happened yet. He's. He's a very, very busy man and he kind of cajoled me into number one, going for the interview and then, um, by some fluke, landing the gig. And I still remember where we sat and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think it was probably just two days before we not only were ripping the bejesus out of one another, but also every single other person who we laid eyes on or who we could hear, because there was one person in particular. You could hear her before she arrived. She would jingle because of the amount of gold and other ornaments that she had festooned about herself. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 2I'd just like to caveat that it wasn't everyone. We saw the design team themselves. We gave gentle ribbons to, but that was part and parcel of the design team you say gentle, some of the digital experts.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, um. One of my favorite favorite memories ever is a senior stakeholder sitting into one of your meetings and he kept interrupting and kept saying no, we don't want to do that, we don't. And literally within 10 minutes you've gone. Okay, we need to stop this. You can leave me. And the look on his face was but, but, but, no, you're not offering anything here. Leave. This does not progress until you leave. We will let you know what the decision is. And you just sat there until he actually left and just people were around. You were going. Oh yeah, this one's going to make a difference. Set the standard. We were all doing it. Within a month, stakeholders who thought they were complete product owners would know.
Speaker 1I was polite. I was professional, but I was also polite, yes, which is not something I've ever mastered.
Speaker 1That's another story and maybe we'll get into that. So I mean it's up to you. I mean this preamble we had yesterday, the other day, because I've been trying to get this done for quite a while. Um, either it's my fault, or you're busy falling off of ladders, or you know something else has happened. Um, but besides, I think, um, bob powell the designer, you've got some incredible side hustles. He says you like a good side hustle, everyone likes a good side hustle.
Design Career and Side Hustles
Speaker 2Yeah so, um, one of my main side hustles is um theatrical props. Um, for those. I do them for the cosplay community, for local theaters or and brand groups for independent filmmakers. Even had a couple of my prop show up on Doctor who, which was very rewarding. Yeah, so that one is fun. At the moment I'm building a Knights Templar suit of armor out of EVA foam and that's coming together really well.
Speaker 1I mean okay, because I've seen you shared pictures of them and I'm still flabbergasted. I think it was an iteration of Boba Fett.
Speaker 2Yeah, high Republic Mandalorian.
Speaker 1That one. Wow, just absolutely wow. So if we get hold of them, I'll definitely put them up so folks can have a peruse. But it's something that's very, very common, very common, I think, with folks who are brilliant at quote, unquote design, and it's a an observation that thomas wilson made. We all have other stuff that we are really, really passionate about, whether it's writing, whether it's making cosplay costumes or props, etc. Um, which is what you're doing. Or you know, playing the triangle, which is what I do in my cave here, um, but everyone who's just bloody good at it, um, has other stuff as well. I think that's anyone's hoping for an interview question. So what else do you do besides design? And if you see that candidate's eyes light up, I think that's a pretty good sign that that person is going to be amazing. What do you think?
Speaker 2I think it's true. I think designers as a whole, virtual designers anyway we spend so much of our time designing for other people, people, people do pay us money. Thank you very much. I'll take the money. What I'll do with the money is I will actually design something for myself, something that I actually want. That could be in my case art supplies, paint, landscapes, robonsai I create theatrical parts Anything and anything. I do it because I enjoy it. It's not like being at a, say, a garden. If you're a professional gardener, the last thing you want to do when you get home is do your own bloody garden. I can imagine If you're a designer. When you get home, the first thing you want to do is do something that you weren't allowed to do at work, something that actually stretches your creative chops.
Speaker 1But it's definitely a multivariant. I think that's why the best of us are parallel processors as opposed to serial processors. Yeah, kind of crazy, crazy, crazy. It's another thing that you do which I'd forgotten about, and you just mentioned Bonsai. How long have you been doing that? About 30 years, Good God. See, that's probably why you're slightly more patient than I am, Slightly.
Speaker 2I don't know. I do have a tendency to go out to the trees and go Whoa Well, yes, no, not there.
Speaker 1So I mean you've done just in terms of design, then you know you've done in just in terms of design, then you know you, you, you've, you've covered everything. I don't think there's anything that you don't actually go and own. Would that be fair, or or not at all? I mean you have your preferences. I'm sure you've got your preferences right in terms of discipline and there are obvious things.
Speaker 2Nobody designs. You get me to be a fashion designer. It's not going to go.
Speaker 1I don't know, was it couture? They're pretty way out there. I can see a few people wearing some of your lampshades. Maybe.
Speaker 2Everything I do is based on knowledge I have accumulated because I want it. Stuff that didn't interest me, like I have no interest in architecture, apart from the facades, like bedding structures and all that. No, no, no, that's fine. Only that's the people who were doing that.
Speaker 1Not a fan of Zaha Hadid, then I am. Everything that comes out of that place is just beautiful, achingly beautiful. Fair dues, crikey. This is because you've done so much and you've been doing it for such a long time. It's actually quite difficult to focus on one thing, because I'm, at the same time, conscious that I'm going to dive really, really deep into something, because you don't have any shallow pools. You just don't right. Um, but you've mentioned shell already, so do you want to talk us through about why did you want to go to an energy company with such a bad press?
Speaker 2and, yeah, just leave it at that I have never run away from a big challenge. I'm always run towards the big challenge. What's the point of being a designer if you're going to just?
Speaker 1get on.
Speaker 2So, yeah, when I'd seen what you're doing, heard what you were doing through the great flight for setting up the X-Day, and when you came along and said take a look at this, okay. So I had the wonderful, wonderful opportunity of being secret shopper, of actually going into Shell and seeing how it didn't operate. I'm not going to say operate it because it didn't, I just saw how it didn't operate. I could wander into meetings and when people said, do you? I said, oh sorry, I'm new here, I just got the meeting in. Yeah, ok, yeah, fine. So I could actually just sit back, turn the camera off and just observe how all the people were interacting and, more especially, how they were interacting with design within the show and, without putting any too fine a point on it, they were really really bad at it, which was really really astounding, because when you actually looked at design within Shell, it was a dream. It was a dream because it wasn't a department, it wasn't set up to be a facility for Shell to move into. It was a design community operating within shell. It sat underneath the it umbrella. But architect yep, we'll go and use those guys. Communications we'll go and use those guys. Um, oh, accessibility. Oh, my god, we've got Meyer over here who knows more than anybody in the entire world or used her.
Speaker 2And we had illustrators, we had UI designers, we had CX, ux service design, and it was like there are literally agencies out there, high-flying, big-name agencies, that cannot call on this talent. And everybody, everybody was just like I don't want to leave. Why would I want to leave? It's not a question about money, because God knows Shell does not pay the rest of the money. It does not. It's not about the work, because most of the work is given to you, as here's your solution make it look pretty. It was the fact that the leadership team within EXD, especially yourself, actually gave people permission to push back against, that actually gave designers the power to design, to actually say no, but not just no, full stop. It was no, and so you gave designers the chance to actually not just design but to teach about design. And then you would put them all together just get them talking. And that sort of atmosphere, that sort of camaraderie, I've never come across before and.
Speaker 2I don't ever come across again, and the fact that you did that by design yourself one of these days. I should turn this around and interview you instead.
Speaker 1There's a threat.
Speaker 2Well, honestly, when I came to the end and I could illustrate to yourselves and to the higher ups that they were paying lip service to Agile, that they were paying lip service to design thinking, that they were paying lip service to production, that they were paying lip service to interaction design, lip service to service design, and that could actually show them not just why it was failing, where it was failing and who was failing. And because we had set up this system where the people who didn't want to listen wouldn't listen, but the ones who did. That made a huge difference. Because I was the secret shopper, I was the outsider, I wasn't part of edged it, not then. And then, when I'd actually presented all of that, he turned around and said so do you feel about joining? What do I find? It was just as simple as that. It wasn't even a thought. It was just like what do I sign?
Speaker 2And for two years, you, I and the other members of the design leadership team, we fought tough and nail at what we got. It's just astounding. Every chance I get now where I talk about design as a culture, design as a part of business, of operations, that is the model I know. So the fact that we got there. You've done it for five years. I've been there for two, and then the entire thing was scrapped by accountants.
Speaker 2Yeah, if the rumors are true, they are now starting to understand what they have lost. But yeah, we lost what the design team lost. That was profaned, but every single person who left the XD now has a new benchmark. This is what good looks like. This is what works. This is what good looks like. This is what works. This is what's effective. And it goes beyond designing what's on screen. It goes beyond customer journeys, wireframes and all of those good things. It actually goes to the way of thinking and approaching design as a commercial concept. So, yeah, there was no way I was going to miss that up and, even though still searching for my next position, that's the kind of position I'm looking for and if I can't find it, that's the source of position I will build yep, it wasn't easy um duty was easy.
Shell Experience and Design Culture
Speaker 1It definitely didn't happen by random. I mean, I'm not. I mean you've got 10 years on me, um, and that 10 years is significant. There's an awful lot of bias in our sector in in, I think, particularly in the creative sectors. Um, if you hit mid-40s or thereabouts, then, yeah, goodbye, even if you have got an interesting haircut and, um, that additional knowledge, expertise that folks like yourself can draw upon, um, because that is priceless.
Speaker 1What I learned in agency land primarily is okay, don't argue with the client, find a way to influence the client so you can find some common ground. So you need to understand your ecosystem, understand what's right about it, definitely understand what's wrong about it. And then, yeah, try and figure out a way. Now, the reason, after four or five years or whatever, it was where I got to the point of we talk about design maturity model, and that's when I thought I need someone to come and invalidate this, because before I move to the next level of maturity, I'd better make sure that what I'm doing has got some, it's got some legs. I kind of knew. But you get sucked into the ecosystems as well.
Speaker 1You get too close, yeah and having second perspective having the absolute luxury of being able to bring you in and say, okay, show me where this is broken, show me where I've screwed this right up, but if there's a couple of places that seem like they're doing okay, then yeah, and you basically did that very, very quickly. That was pivotal. That was absolutely pivotal because then this leadership team that you, rather, my leadership team that you have already referred to, the cracks within that were also starting to appear, because you get good people, passionate people, they want to do good work, they want to succeed, but you don't want them making the same mistakes that you yourself and other people who are at the same level of seniority as you have made. And that's a difficult skill, which I'm still trying to perfect. And so those cracks began to appear, but we muddled through. It was okay. Introdu, introducing design ops was awesome. That for me, besides you coming in and saying, yeah, it looks like it's okay, yeah, a bit well here's the weaknesses communications is where things aren't connecting when they should.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was great, but then you did actually need the design ops to go on top of it. Yes, actually say okay, now we recognize the problem, this is the process. We are going to have to fix it. Yep, and that's what design ops did.
Speaker 1With bells on.
Speaker 2Yeah, let's give him a shout out. He deserves it. Loriano was just magnificent at that.
Speaker 1No, he was Definitely, but we had to have you know failed before then, which we did um, and then I mean so, for example, I just need a couple of dashboards. Thank you very much. Six months, seven months, eight months nothing, absolutely nothing coming out of my lt for crying out loud, and he turns up less than two weeks. There you go. Here's the first couple of iterations, and it was such a relief because then we could socialize those metrics. And why I wanted yourself to look after analytics is usually what I found is when folks are building up capabilities, they start with the analytics. You genuinely couldn't do that at Shell, because the roles weren't in place, the structure wasn't in place, the methodology wasn't there, the governance wasn't there. Governance certainly wasn't. What are you measuring?
Speaker 2Yeah, and why are you measuring?
Speaker 1it yeah.
Speaker 2What led you to that decision? Let's be honest you came to that decision because you set the metrics on what would be easiest to achieve so that you could get your bonus at the end of the year.
Speaker 1Yep, absolutely.
Speaker 2I bet you actually own the bonus by actually delivering what needs to be done.
Speaker 1The land of corporates.
Speaker 2Very much so.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So one of my real book bears is every now and then somebody will come up and say how do you actually show the right design? Good God, we have got tons of KPIs that will do that.
Speaker 1All for now, though.
Speaker 2Well, you said that. But, like I said, everybody who, okay, forget the spines, everybody they threw out like rubbish knows what good looks like, I may not have come across it to that sort of level. So when you look at it as what we did for Shell for those five years you were there, the two years I was there, we improved their design capability. That they didn't want it. In the end that's down to them. What we did, more than that, was actually empower a whole new generation of designers to understand what design is. And it's not just the pictures on screen. The heavy lifting is in the mental mode. It's okay. So how do we get from there to there? And before you've even put them to paper, stuck it on a board, a pixel on a screen. The heavier lifting you've done mentally to actually decide what you actually want to present to them is your thing right? That is huge.
Speaker 2And the fact that they knew they could do that but still have support from leaders, from peers themselves, was an eye opener for most of them, and the fact that each and every single designer, top of the day, wanted to help people who weren't as experienced as them spoke volumes. As they spoke volumes when it was announced that I was leaving. It's the only time I have actually had my own team members crying because they knew the changes were coming and there was nothing they could do about it. Yes, some of it was losing such a wonderful, beautiful manager as myself, but some of it, quite rationally, was where are the gains from this?
Speaker 2we can't see it, and the reason they couldn't see is because they knew what good was and to have from juniors, interns, freshers, all the way up to really senior designers still coming in and doing that, helping each other, both downwards, upwards, upwards, left and right, sharing experiences. It was amazing, it was quite telling at the time of leaving, how many people I just had brief contact with over my tenure there we're calling up and saying this is terrible, how is this happening? What's going on? You're still talking to the wrong person. Talk to your peers, talk to your bosses, because we haven't, we've only got so far. It's all going to go per se with everything that you've built. Yeah Well, guess what? We've actually had some people come to us and say we want design to fail, we want to go back to what it was five, six years ago when you just delivered what was told.
Speaker 1Well, great, that's what you've got. Yeah, happy days and good luck with that. It's not going to work. And it's not going to work with this new paradigm called artificial intelligence. Try doing that without design and um, yeah, but it's the same pattern, right? It's a conversation I've had with debbie levitt's, conversation I've had with thomas wil. It's a tool.
AI's Impact on Design
Speaker 2It's just another tool. We're actually getting from concept to end design as quickly as possible. It takes away all of the heavy lifting. The big problem for me with AI isn't actually the technology. It isn't that it's doing things that people normally do. It's the fact that so many places are using it not as a tool, but as a replacement to human beings to maintain the status quo. Where's the innovation? Where is your value? What is your definition of success? Because, if your definition of success, because if your definition of success is doing exactly the same, just cheaper, that translates to failing cheaper. Now those places that are taking AI are going to the designers and going okay, what we can do here now is get AI to actually sit to the parameters you want. So you tell AI what it is, instead of AI telling you what it is, and when you get to the point where okay, so no-transcript, and you actually design the output, so many places now are going AI's done it Goodbye designer.
Speaker 2And they get surprised when it breaks. No, it can't work like that. The potential for AI to get rid of so much of the mental heavy lifting and just leaving you to be creative, just letting designers purely design, it's just mind-blowing. Yeah, but when you and what do people do you think it's for? Yeah, turn me into a Simpsons character.
Speaker 1There's a couple of things to that right. I mean it's the age-old race to shiny which hasn't changed, and in part because of the ignorance that's still prevalent. I mean, you've been doing this for 40 years. I'm touching 30 years myself. It's kind of crazy that people still don't know the value that design brings, because it's not decoration, it's governance. Now put that in the context of Shell and other places as well.
Speaker 1We had this wonderful thing done by Rick Sesnius I always butcher his surname and he was brilliant. He was basically putting the frameworks in for IT governance and they had this thing called Software Engineering Management System, sems, and I said can I have a policy for that, for experience design? Yes, absolutely, I think you should, said Rick. And so we did. That became an incredibly powerful weapon, an influencing tool for folks who turn around and say I just need you to do X, y and Z. Yeah, but X, y and Z requires all of these tasks to be done by the right caliber of design practitioner. And here are examples of the artifacts that you're actually going to be receiving. And that empowered not just the capability, it empowered IT and the other side of that line. It empowered all of our lovely designers. That governance framework is critical Because right now it is absolutely the Wild West.
Speaker 1It's a race to shiny, it is anyone can do this. It is if I can type into a keyboard and get the right quote-unquote prompts. I mean there's courses for having knowing how to put prompts in there for crying out loud. I mean, bless them, someone's got to make a buck, yeah, and they are um, but that's okay. But if you're not considering human beings, what exactly and who exactly are you creating products and services for? Because we are creators, we are thinkers, we are makers, we are supporters, we are everything that makes us feel the way that we do, and that's good and bad, bad. And unless humans are in control of this wonderful thing called the ai, I don't see the point of it ai is not the danger if you have people using ai.
Speaker 2It's the danger if you've replaced all the people with ai. That doesn't need pain. How are those people going to pay for the products that the AI is producing? Self-fulfilling prophecy. You want AI to replace jobs Guess what Yours is next in the line. You want AI to be a tool for people to improve, designed to improve, processed to improve life in general. Great, Try people to use the AI problem.
Speaker 1Yeah, exciting times for sure. Definitely what's next for you, Because you could do anything you wanted to do, and that's an awesome position to be in.
Design Leadership Challenges
Speaker 2And a strange position. You said it yourself. I have done this for 40 years. I have nothing to actually prove to myself. Everything that I wanted to do I have sort of achieved with the exception of running a huge company to actually have design as design-led.
Speaker 2But, I don't have the monetary backing for that. So where I am now is I don't give a damn about the title, I don't give a damn about the company. What I care about is making a difference and, as we did in EXD, it's helping the next generation of designers achieve everything they can. I had some exceptional teachers and mentors when I was coming here. Now it's time to pay back. All I want to do, as long as my mortgage is paid and I am making a difference, that's all I want to do, simple things.
Speaker 1Yes, simple things. I'm pretty much of the same mindset, but one thing that is still bothering me is these roles that I see advertised and folks call me, contact me, send the carrier pigeon to me because that job description has made it so explicit that they would not entertain applications or they prefer applications for people who do have sector experience X, y and Z right. What's your take on that?
Speaker 2It's not just you need to have sector experience, you have to have experience of this particular system of design. You have to be able to know figment, know vision, to know frame, to know all of these different things. And if you haven't got that, I'm not even going to consider you Again. These are all just tools, just as design. If I'm designing for a Mandalorian, or if I am designing for a Victorian lamp, or I am designing for drug paraphernalia 1987, I'm still designing. I don't need to be the drug, I don't need to be a Victorian, I don't need to be a Mandalorian. I do need to know where I'm designing, designing. I don't need to be the rocket, I don't need to be a Victorian, I don't need to be a Mandalorian, I do need to know where I'm designing.
Speaker 2Yes that is all I need to do. And what I need to do on top of there is know who am I designing it for? What are their expectations? What is it they want? That's where the user research comes in, and I'm not going to be talking to any Victorians, but I do know experts in Victoriana who are going to be able to talk to me. I don't know any Mandalorians because they don't exist, but I know lots of people who know what they want from a Mandalorian Drug user. I'm not a drug user. I'm too freaking scared of needles. I've never been able to swallow tablets until recently, thank goodness, but that doesn't matter. The person who's doing the production knows what they want, and I need to understand that.
Speaker 2Now, if I make those things out of metal, wood, plastic, foam, whatever I'm making them out of, whether I'm doing it with a sharp knife, with a hammer, with a saw, I've got a whole multitude of different things. The fact that I can work across all of those comes down to the fact that I know how to design regardless of setting, and I know how to build regardless of tools. And when you've actually got this framework that says fit your bomb into this little box there, regardless of everything else you bring to the role, who's winning? Not the person who's actually going to be buying somebody who does this little much or this much. Again, the devaluing of design. It's the idea that design is, it's deliverable. It's the idea that design is there purely for aesthetics. If that was true, god help deaf people. They've never had anything designed.
Speaker 1Blind people.
Speaker 2they've never had anything designed in their life. It's, you know, God help engineering. Nothing under the bonnet of the car has ever been designed. She don't see it. No, design is not aesthetics. Design is the process that delivers a solution, and that solution can be anything, and your influences for that design come from so many different sectors, way outside of digital.
Speaker 2Yep, absolutely, and when I see those sorts of things, it's like, okay, can we have the conversation Instead of the tick box? Can we have the conversation Instead of you telling me what box I need to crawl into? Tell me what skills you actually need, Because guess what, if you don't know Framer, spend a week on YouTube, you'll be up to speed. Same with Figma. There are thousands and thousands. So are you actually employing somebody who knows how to work Framer or somebody who knows how to design? Are you employing somebody who can operate Figma with no idea why they are operating? Those conversations still drive me up the wall, but, conversely, those are also the sort of organizations I do want to work for, so that I can actually show them. This is what you're missing out on.
Speaker 1Yep Couldn't agree more, fella Could not agree more.
Speaker 2Same thing with AI. As I said earlier, AI is not being used to make companies better. It's being made to just maintain a status quo. No innovation. Just use this to stay where we are instead of use this to actually take us higher and higher and higher. Yep design. That's the problem. It's not ai. It's the problem. It's bad thinking. It's bad business practice. It's the idea that you know the cost of everything and the value of that.
Speaker 1Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, with bells on Folks making decisions that, yeah, they have no business making decisions on. But that's the world that we live in, unfortunately.
Speaker 2It is yeah. So again, that's my big criteria for what I do. Next is can I make a difference? Can I deliver? Yeah, no problem. Can I make a difference? That's out of my hands, but yeah, the first person that turns around to me and says we don't have a huge amount of money, but we do want to get better and we do want to make a difference, can you help us?
Speaker 1I will sign on the bottom line yep, I mean, hopefully I'll find something and then I can drag you back in um, because that was a luxury, an absolute luxury, um, not having to butt heads with anybody else and just knowing that we putted heads, but we challenged each other. That's different. That's different, um, but in a good way, in a productive way, professionally, politely, um, I think george carling would be proud. Bless him. It's just amazing. That's cool, all right. So how long have we been yapping?
Speaker 2for hour, hour, and a half, about 20 minutes. Yeah, it's okay Is there anything you wanted to share? I mean, the only thing that I think we haven't touched on is the number of people who are in charge of design leadership who can neither design nor lead.
Speaker 1Oh, what a can of worms you are opening up, Mr Powell.
The Problem with Design Recruitment
Speaker 2Absolutely, and I will go and upset people even further by saying so much of this is actually our own damn fault. We were so eager to take any design job offered to us that we didn't care who was offering it. And when people benefited from our designs to further their own careers, that didn't help us, that helped them. So now there are a lot of people who are design leads who have themselves never designed anything or have been in control of people with design. They've never actually lived, certainly not by example, but they know how to play the corporate game. That's also a segment of the current business that is either going to collapse or turn everything over. We need to actually be certain that design is being taught, especially human centered design. I still remember in Shell where I asked a group of POs who the end user was.
Speaker 2There was one I turned around and said we are Not. One of them was actually going to use the damn product at the end, but they were the end user. There was another project where all of the personas, all of the user journeys were produced by system architects. Never sat in front of the user in their lives.
Speaker 1What they were doing was what they want the user to do rather than what does the user do that that's not unique to share? No, not by a long talk, no, I mean not surprisingly, it's something that you know. Lots of folks who I've spoken to on on this podcast have said um, the lack of authentic design, and I don't mean that in a woke, authentic way, but authentic in so much as designers need to be led by designers and those leadership positions. It's not just about you know whether you went to chelsea, led a team of five or six, you know. Do you have commercial acumen? How much scar tissue have you accumulated? Are you sweating buckets because you're in a room full of people who you know have no respect for you? Do you know how to win them over? Or walk out and pick and choose your battles or ask them to leave the room Right? All of that requires experience.
Speaker 1And even if you do have a role like that, how can you be mentoring and helping your direct reports, let alone their team practitioners, if you don't know the basics right? I mean, famously, I asked one of my direct reports. You have to learn at least one design tool. I don't care what it is. Illustrator Agjura, I don't care. Figma oh yeah, I'm using Figma. Okay, great, that's good. Just one, that's fine. Turned out that it was FigJam. And then this person was also mentoring allegedly. And you kind of think to yourself well, odd, it's just odd. So you have to get the foundations right. And these folks who are in design leadership positions, good luck to you If you're learning as you go along, good luck to you, but don't sit there and flaunt yourself off as the grand poobah of design.
Speaker 2That's where you're going.
Speaker 1But if you haven't walked that path and it is a very long path, it's a windy path, it's something that I think every single design leader has to be able to do it's the scar tissue that they have accumulated, it's the manner in which that they hold themselves, which is the most telling, the most telling the most telling.
Speaker 2Um, it's just, it's weird. We're in such a weird space. I liken it to somebody who knows how to drive a car telling formula one drivers how to actually drive a little knowledge is very dangerous, very, very dangerous.
Speaker 1Great Look, it's been awesome. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for being patient enough to do this, thank you.
Speaker 2Not a problem, anytime.