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
Charmaine Wyland Customer Journey Fixes That Actually Stick
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Welcome And What Charmaine Does
SPEAKER_01Lovely people, today we have the amazing Charmin Wyland. Did I pronounce your name right?
SPEAKER_04That's correct.
SPEAKER_01Mike Days. Okay, well, that's a miracle straight away, so that's awesome. Um Charmeen, thank you so much for coming on and wanting to have this conversation. Uh, I'm sure a lot of people are going to be wanting, number one, to listen in and will be taking away uh a fantastic, a fantastic rather um set of observations, not just about you, but things that can potentially help them.
SPEAKER_04Great. Well, thank you very much for having me on and uh giving me the opportunity to to rabbit on about various topics with you.
SPEAKER_01So no no look, thank you. So do you want to just introduce yourself, please, to start off with and tell everyone, um, especially my avid listener in RunCorn, um, who are you and what is it that you do?
SPEAKER_04Yes, so I am Charmaine Wyland. Uh I am currently a consultant that works uh what I would consider customer journey optimization. Uh, but even beyond that, it's a little bit of product design, it's a little bit of service designs, a little bit of CX. Basically, what I tried to do is work with companies to look at their full customer engagement and see where are the bits and pieces that uh probably need to be fixed, whether it's what the customer sees or what's happening internally on the backside. Does everybody know who owns what part of the process that the customer is interacting with? Uh, or to define the opportunities that might be uh may have been missed uh in the nuance of the research. So a bit of research, a bit of an you know, research analysis, uh really kind of talking with customers, not just about how they interact with that brand, but also within the ecosystem of their competitors, but also in the ecosystem and the routines of their life. So how does your brand fit into how they go about their day? And what are ways that you can either be stickier for them or more engaging for them, or just a preference for them, uh, amongst everything else? So that's kind of what I do.
SPEAKER_01That's huge.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But it's really fun.
SPEAKER_01That is no, no, no, no. I mean, um, a lot of senior practitioners uh kind of do that. But I think you have a particular provenance, shall we say. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_04In terms of background and that sort
A Career Built Across Disciplines
SPEAKER_04of thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So um I think in terms of like my professional background, I've done a little bit of everything uh in regards to kind of design and research. Uh probably leaning mostly on design, but um basically started off my career in e-learning, uh, and that was a combination of, you know, design, animation, audio video production, things along those lines. So kind of releasing, and actually even implementation. So it was a combination of, okay, let's think of what it is we're trying to do, a little bit of strategy, a little bit of uh discovery, a little bit of concepting, doing the execution, doing the delivery, and working with clients all the way through. Um, that was for the very first couple of years of my career. Uh from there, uh I, because I, as you had you and I discussed offline, I'm of a particular vintage at that point. Uh I moved back to the uh the Bay Area, uh San Francisco Bay Area, and worked in the whole.com boom for a few e-commerce platforms. So that was at the very beginning of hey, you can actually sell stuff online. And but, you know, at a time of a huge amounts of speculation and nobody really knowing where this is going. And I'm like, wow, this this all seems very familiar.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04So it was in it was like the early days of kind of proper UX and and product design as as it were. But um it was also because most of those role, those design rules were a bit generalized, was also working in a bit of marketing and branding and all that. Um so once things like the bubble popped, um, dot com bubble popped, I went into art direction for advertising. Uh, and that was really great because it was working with a bunch of different media, obviously, but it really put the focus on kind of engaging humans and customers. And, you know, it not everything was from a logical point of view, it was also from an emotional point of view. So, you know, a lot about how do you stand out in the space, but also how do you create a brand, how do you reinforce a brand, how do you look at not just short term, but also longevity engagement with a brand, um, which is really, really helpful. Uh, so I worked in uh art direction for a few different name agencies like Publicists and McKinney and uh Sapient and our Racerfish as it was called back in the day. Uh and huge and you know, both in terms of either perm or or contract. And then uh around about 2011 uh was when I started into product design working at hotels.com, which is part of Bix Media. So that really kind of got me into really thinking about the mechanics of how to engage somebody and um and also looking at the larger ecosystem of how to keep them engaged. So the benefit that I brought with me to that role was that branding piece, but also that trying to marry the traffic generation with the conversion and then the return. So bit of like working with marketing and merchandising, branding, all that sort of stuff, obviously working within product and conversion rates, but then also working with loyalty and CRM. Uh, so really looking at those customer journeys. And then because I became a bit of a rebrand specialist for a few companies, including hotels.com, just to eat, uh, racing post and and a few others, um, really looking at how you can use rebrands as an opportunity to almost do that service design CX piece, because you have to touch everything. So let's look at everything and see if we can do some analysis um along the way uh in terms of things that feed into roadmaps or things that just, you know, uh roll into like these are tickets that need to be dealt with right now because you guys are losing people for no good reason. Because it's just this has never been a priority and it's just something. It's like it's low-hanging fruit, and for some reason it keeps getting missed. So that kind of takes to where I am now. Um I'm now just trying to really lean into that kind of comprehensive look. So it's it's looking at how some how companies are branding themselves, positioning themselves, and then looking at that journey from that first sort of, okay, this is the first time they see your logo, to okay, they've gone through the purchase and they're getting your newsletters and don't give a crap. How do you keep them coming back and either re-purchasing purchasing or resubscribing or upselling? So yeah, that's kind of you know, maybe a bit long-winded, but you get the idea of where I've come from and and and how I've gotten to this place of kind of a larger perspective on how to engage with country customers for the long term, not just for the next quarter.
SPEAKER_01That's again, it's huge. I mean, that isn't just about longevity, that's about having um the wherewithal to actually deliver right and deliver consistently. Um because irrespective of where the market is today, it has always been so incredibly competitive. Um you know, digital kicked off way back when, and then everything had a digital prefix. Uh and then design kind of got a spotlight for a little while, and it was everything that had UX in front of it, and then everyone got a little bit more sophisticated, and then they started talking about UI and UX, which was completely wrong because you know that C did the wrong mental model, but you know, everyone just jumped into interfaces before understanding the experiences first. Um But you you bring an awful lot to your proposition, right?
SPEAKER_04Um just saying I'm old, what's what's up with that?
SPEAKER_01No, I mean I'm just kidding. Nah. It's it's it's important though, right? Um and I'm not taking anything away from the new folks, right? Uh, who maybe have just come out of school or um have finally, finally managed to, you know, maybe go independent after uh trying to be mentored and maybe they've got their first couple of gigs from an agency and stuff like that. Um it's hard. What we do is hard. Um and it's incredibly competitive. Incredibly competitive. Uh and I think having folks like you and Tom Wilson and Bob Powell and the billion and one other names around um is just Yeah, and I'm I'm completely biased here. It's just a gift. It is just a gift. And now we got this new sorry, what are you what are you using?
SPEAKER_04No,
Why UX Titles Stay Muddled
SPEAKER_04no, no. I was gonna say it's like in it's it's I think that's one thing where, you know, it's often taken for granted how how much diversity of thought and experience exists in our discipline, partially because this is this is something I was chatting with somebody about earlier this week, is compared to coming out of advertising where you have quite a bit of I don't want to say hierarchy, but at least there used to be uh a combination of hierarchy of hierarchy, but also but like discipline expertise and all that sort of stuff, like separated out, um which we don't have as much of in a formalized way within kind of the UX sphere, partially because everybody's roles keep changing names, all that sort of stuff. But like, you know, when I was working agency side, it's like, okay, well, you know, especially when I moved here to the UK, uh, there's something of like, oh, you have the art directors. They're the ones who think of the big ideas and they may sketch stuff out and all that sort of stuff. Some of them may design their own stuff. Most of the time they're just they're they're coming up with things to hand over to a designer to sit there and actually, okay, now you bring this to life because that's what you do, and you're the crafter and all this sort of stuff. And, you know, you sit there and kind of deal with, you know, really kind of refining the visual output and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then you had the artworkers, and the artworkers were the ones who are either doing the retouch, you know, the the kind of nuts and bolts retouching or the resizing of things and all that sort of stuff. But once again, it's like that's your wheelhouse. Like you know how to take all this stuff and fit it all into the sizes that we need, or how to like size down the files so that I can actually run on the internet and blah, blah, blah. Um, and then you also have, you know, depending on what medium, you also have producers and all the rest of it, animators, you know, visual, uh, you know, motion artists and all that sort of stuff. So everything's very kind of separated out. But you kind of knew what everybody did, and everybody respected that their discipline may be, regardless of hierarchy, maybe different higher hierarchy in terms of influence or whatever. But everything was very specific of like, this is your specialty, and everybody respects that specialty. Um and I think it's it's interesting in terms of like within the UX space, uh, UX service design, experience design, all that sort of stuff. There's all these titles, but so many of them are a bit muddled in terms of what people handle. And so it's interesting in terms of like you have these people who have these really expansive experiences and that sort of thing. And quite frankly, like I sat there, I'm like, I don't know what to call myself in a nice, neat little package, partially because everybody's titles change all the time. But it's like, how do you how do you encapsulate all of those different different disciplines? And I think sometimes we learn that from necessity into an industry that can never agree on what a title is.
SPEAKER_01This is like, you know, one of the reasons, you know, I I I keep seeing it saying it rather repeatedly, like, who needs another podcast? But uh this is another reason why um a vehicle like this is so important. Because I don't think organizations, irrespective of scale, I don't think they really understand um the value that a commonal garden designer, if you like, actually brings. Um they might have a perception that okay, you you're just gonna come here and make things look pretty. Um but and that's fine. There's nothing bad about, you know, someone who specializes in visual design. Um but then there are so many elements to visual design. Uh and then if you look at and again, this is another thing I harp on about, uh the power of having conversations with people, right? Just talk. Just talk, right? You will get to know that um Charmaine has incredible experience um and fantastic longevity uh in multiple markets, in multiple geographies, uh and that scar tissue is it's uh vital. It doesn't matter if you're in a startup ecosystem, in a mid-size, in a you know, megacorp, because the experience that senior practitioners bring, I mean, just cut through the noise, you know, but how do how do we communicate that to uh either a bunch of suits or a bunch of fledgling kind of stand-up uh folk who are just interested in delivery? Um the amount of money uh from an operational perspective that we save um organizations is incredible. And I actually went out of my way to calculate that, right, when I was at the last megacorp. Um and it was stunning. Like in every single year we were saving the ecosystem ten million ten million right um minimum. Internal processes, introducing design ops, all of that kind of stuff. Um but anyway, that aside, so so what what have we got right now? We've got you, um serious, serious, heavyweight uh in the industry, um well respected, uh done shitloads, uh, and all over the place. How did you get into this line of work though? Because what I found is a lot of folks, yeah, it's not kind of like a very uh linear path. No one, you know, hardly is, I'm going to go to design school, uh, and then I'm gonna, you know, get a mentor, and then I'm gonna get a job, and la. What what what's your story?
SPEAKER_04I
From Pre Vet To Design
SPEAKER_04wish I I wish I'd been that focused at a young age.
SPEAKER_01You and a million others, I tell you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_01Me included.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, so so yeah, my background's a bit, a bit weird. Uh so there's a few things. I'll talk about my education, where that landed me, but then I'll probably go into just how I was raised and all that sort of stuff. Sure. So basically, when I went to to uni and that sort of thing, I had actually signed up to be pre-vetinary. So um art had already always been part of my life. It was one of my hobbies. I'd sketched and all that sort of stuff, and I always did well in like art classes at school and that sort of thing. But like caring for animals and all that sort of stuff. I kind of grew up in a house with a menagerie, and then later on, like uh we moved out to the country. So, because my mom was keen to have horses on just horses on like a plot of land somewhere. Um that yeah, yeah, as we do. Not not in a we got a lot to burn, but more of she was like, I don't care if we have just a shack for the horses, we're gonna have one. I was like, all right, fine. Um more of a fire farm situation than than a posh table uh situation. Uh anyways, um so caring for animals was kind of one of my big things. Um and also when I was in high school in particular, I got really into kind of community involvement and um kind of civics and all that sort of stuff. So I was doing a lot of like student government sort of things. So I actually started off university, an American university. It's a four-year program. You know, a lot of universities you don't have to cla declare until your second or third year, depending on the major. So you have a full year to just kind of they encourage you to do a little bit of everything just to make sure this is the major you want to do, uh, which is great because I went in with a dual major of um pre-veter in political science. And uh, because I was like, yep, well, one of these things will shake out. Uh and then I took uh a whole lot of like upper division chemistry and which will come into play later. Uh and uh I did a few poli sci classes, but uh the intention was to pick up pick up more of them in later years. And then uh basically after about like three quarters, I just sat there and I was like, uh yeah, it's just suddenly occurred to me that like if I become a vet, I'm gonna probably spend a third of my time putting animals down, and that's gonna kill me. So I was like, I I knew myself well enough to be like uh, yeah, that's gonna depress, that's gonna depress me. Um at least that's where I was at 18 years old. So uh 18, 19 years old. So uh at that point in time, I uh the following year I transitioned into to art. Um now, luckily at the time, the school that I was going to had a really well-known design program. It was like considered one of the best in the state, Washington state. Uh so I lucked out. So I was like, okay, great, go into art and then go into this design program that's really w really well regarded, a lot of great people going coming out of there. So that's kind of where I that's like kind of a long version of kind of where I went from my education. Still quite a jump though, right?
SPEAKER_01I mean, one minute, animals, big empathy, veterinarian, and then okay. Art. Do you think that was because you were doing sketching and just the joy of creating pen, paper, whatever medium it was, from such a young age?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, for sure. I mean, um, you know, even in terms of design, it was interesting with that because um by the time it started the program, and definitely by the last year of it, uh it I think when thing things really started to get ahead with computers, I had my head was like, I really want to get into computer animation. I wanted to get into animation generally, but computer animation would be like, great, really want to do that. So part of the reason I got into the design program is like, great, I'm gonna try to do computer animation. And the the the absurd dream was like not not absurd, the big honky dream was like, oh, then I can move home and I can go work for industrial light and magic and be like George Lucas' next rising star. That didn't happen, but you know, it was a nice dream.
SPEAKER_01Not a bad ambition to have. Come on.
SPEAKER_04No, no. But it was interesting because the design program we we had, they didn't they didn't have a digital design program. Like uh it was early enough. Like, you know, it was kind of kicking around and that sort of thing. And there was a professor who kind of played with it from a very artistic point of view, but definitely wasn't there in any way, shape, or form to be like, hey, this is how you can make it in the commercial world. So basically there was about six of us, um, all in the same major role in the same year, uh, who just took over a computer lab, a specialist computer lab, and just said, okay, each of us are going to do slightly different disciplines in this new media of digital design. And so I worked in 3D animation, another guy worked on like the early days of Flash, another guy worked on like, remember back in the day with macromedia. So you had like all these people kind of doing these things. And we were all cross-pollinating and teaching each other. And, you know, basically my last year was a whole bunch of independent study with, you know, yes, we had a professor kind of looking us over and making sure that, you know, what we were producing wasn't complete garbage. Yeah, that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but even, you know, go on. Go, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04But it but it was great because it was really communal. We we all learned from each other, and it actually set the foundations for the design, the digital design department that exists there now. So it was kind of the the kickoff for that. So um, so yeah, it was it was great to sit there and have that as an opportunity to push yourself completely self-motivated and just, you know, this is what I want to do. So this is where I'm gonna go. Uh and then yeah, that was that was university. And then um I randomly got a post-educational work permit because I really wanted to travel and moved to Ireland. I moved to Ireland with like having never gone outside of the country before.
SPEAKER_01So the first stamp on your passport was yay, the emerald isle.
SPEAKER_04I know, it's just like, oh, okay, never never been outside of the well, I mean, we crossed over into Canada because the place was on the the university was around the border, but that doesn't really count when you're only a barely 20 miles in.
SPEAKER_01Well but that's quite quite a transition. And you know uh that kind of brings me in in a in in a nice way, I guess, to you know, your focus right now. Because you've done a lot and um seen a lot and like I keep yapping on about to anyone who listens, I mean the accumulation of scar tissue is incredibly important. Um but helping folks, I think that's uh something that you've clearly wanted to do. Um not just animals, right? Yeah. Uh so that so that's great. So we've got this now really ambiguous arena I think that everyone finds ourselves in. But once again there's a new technology paradigm, right? Ape
AI Hype Cycles And Human Impact
SPEAKER_01computing and then the World Wide Web and then the internet and then channel shift and then everybody's got to have a website and then okay new technology being introduced um yeah you mentioned Macromedia Flash and uh the increase in the engagement that consumers wanted um and I think platforms like Flash were really really great.
SPEAKER_04The hardware had to catch up right until until I until basically I always killed it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah yeah yeah agreed agreed totally agreed um and now we've got this thing called artificial intelligence right uh for me there there are so many similarities with um a new introduction of a new tech right what what what what's your perspective on that?
SPEAKER_04Okay this is when I'm gonna sound really freaking old uh so I grew up in it's all guys I'm gonna I'm gonna sound very experienced um so I grew up in Silicon Valley uh uh like you know and and when I say Silicon Valley like you know old school Silicon Valley which is more South Bay. Uh so I grew up in basically San Jose uh for the majority of my my uh pre-18 life and um you know everybody in my family was involved in tech one way or another. So I've got three engineers in my family of different flavors and uh you know my mom was a technical writer who is just basically like hi you get to talk to the engineers and take uh everything that they're trying to to do and and make it readable for normal people. So my goodness Yeah but um you know my my dad was an electronical uh electronic elect electrical engineer and he sorry let me uh completely stumble stumble over my words uh and he you know started off his career kind of building computers and that sort of thing mostly an emphasis on integrated circuits and semiconductors and all that sort of stuff um like we had the classic thing of like my earliest rememories of my dad is he and his buddies out in the garage after work nearly every workday putting together computers and you know scopes and all the rest of it and lots of soldering. So you know it's a class classic sort of thing. I bet you can still remember the smell of solder yeah totally and uh you'd never forget no not at all and you know in in terms of that you know everybody that they knew and quite a few of my friends' dads when I were uh moms and dads when I was growing up were all working for these massive hardware or you know aerospace companies that sort of thing you know um from you know my dad worked for the Stanford Research Institute uh to like AMD you know AMD and Sony and Phillips and all the rest of it. Um and then uh you know my brother went down a assembler thing as well he was a mechanical thermal packaging engineer which is just a way of kind of saying hey make sure that all those circuits don't blow up in your phone and then my sister was uh Aeroastro engineering she came out of MIT and um launched satellites for the first four years of her career. Yeah yeah and then uh you know my friend's dads were like one of them worked at Lockheed another one worked um this is later on uh when I was at college one of them worked at Los Alamos another one was in charge of the very large array you know it's just like these are people who spend and another one worked for the Stanford Linear Accelerator.
SPEAKER_01It's just you know growing up in in you know you're kind of mid-late teens surrounded by just insanely talented human doing incredible things.
SPEAKER_04But it's it's the to get back to your point in terms of like looking at the technology, these were these were people whose jobs were to sit there and think about the future of tech. Yeah yeah you know and like that was their job and not just for commercial imperative you know so many of them were deeply gee deeply geeky on their off time of just like hey let's build a robot because that'd be cool. Like my dad would, you know, when Furbies came out he just sat there and like deconstructed one of those because he was so fascinated by how's this work? What's the unit artificial intelligence on this? Deconstructing Furby my God okay I know yeah well no I mean he went into robotics and artificial intelligence towards the back end of his career. So it you know and he'd always been obsessed you know sci-fi nerd and all that um so the reason I I give all that preface which sounds a bit long-winded is uh you know it's just growing up in that atmosphere of like, okay, we're trying to look into the future we're trying to see what we can do. Most things, not all of them, were coming from the intention of this will be better for humanity, uh, you know, and we won't find ways of you know uh helping out humanity and all that sort of stuff. Uh and oftentimes anything that turned away from humanity were I hate to say were we're people outside of that cast who most of them weren't from Silicon Valley. So it was just like oh yeah this great technology we're gonna make money off of it but now we don't care about the actual humans behind it. So it's a weird sort of dichotomy in terms of you're encountering a lot of that now. And I think you know in terms of to go back to your question with you know the different phases of technology and the adoption and the disruption and that sort of thing everything starts off with like a positive sort of like oh wow this is really cool. Think about the possibilities and that sort of thing. And then somebody comes in with a profit imperative and it's just sort of like yeah but we're gonna do it this way and people all that sort of stuff. Yeah but so it's it's it's this thing of like trying, you know, and it's always disruptive on some level. So whether it's how people take in information or if it's changing people's jobs and all that sort of stuff. Think about when the PC was like introduced and that sort of thing like how many people lost their jobs just because like oh wow this computing power works much faster than that person on the calculator. You know, all that sort of stuff. It's a sort of thing of like we're at that crux right now in terms of AI being one of these you know uh technologies with huge potential both to benefit and to disrupt and we're kind of going through that same cycle again of the optimist versus the realist versus the people who just don't give a fuck. Yeah, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01For sure. And I I I think it's it's quite normal, right? Um where you've got new toys to play with uh everyone's just kind of well okay that looks good that's shiny then let's play with that and then you're always gonna have a quotient of people um like us uh to varying degrees who are kind of okay new toy shiny let's break it what else can it do? Right? Trying to find its limitations and you know all of that kind of good stuff. Um but what I think folks like yourself and and and I mean I've gone off on a complete governance tangent which I'm loving by the way um but where does the human fit into all of this right? And that's part ethics, that's part longevity, that's part usefulness um because nobody wants to spend time, money, effort in developing you know, X and then nobody no hm that might have been a good idea once upon a time, you know, six, nine months ago and X millions down the drain because then you finally realize okay there's not really a need for this. And I think that's the phase where artificial intelligence is and and you know a genetic now is as well. I'm finding a lot of organizations who I speak with um they're just trying to figure it out as well.
SPEAKER_04Well I think it's you know to to kind of like with all of that correct uh I would say also kind of bringing it back to to what I was probably trying to say before is is along with the governance is people need to recognize the cycle. There's the hype cycle and then there's either a plateau or there's a a complete rupture. And then there's sort of a then there's sort of like a crash and then a rebuild and then it's like okay. That's kind of what happened with the dot com. Everybody was just sort of like right this will do all the things it's like yeah the humans to your point hadn't caught up with the ambitions of the people of what they were trying to do with the internet at that point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I think a lot we're gonna see a lot of the same with AI, especially agenic AI and that sort of thing of there's going to be some hype. I think I don't know whether or not we'll get a full rupture, but I think there'll definitely be a check to be like great you you have all these d ideas and all this sort of stuff but you've forgotten that the humans haven't caught up with this or they don't want to that sort of thing. So it's a combination of like you know all of that. And then with this because it's it's kind of like introducing the the internet on steroids in terms of impact. It's like okay great let's take the impact of introducing you know the internet and then and Google for you know Google was such a a leap forward compared to Netscape. It's like okay great this is take all of that and times it by at least 10,000. This is where we're getting with AI. I think it's the sort of thing of of realizing the impact on multiple levels. Once again the positive there's some great positive stuff coming out of that like if people learn how to harness it properly and that sort of thing think of all the amazing things we can do. You know you and I've you and I have discussed this before like the thing I'm most positive about with AI is like please, please please go through all the data that will help us fix this world. Like go through all the data at the CDC about like infection rates and how to stop it and all that sort of stuff and the best way to go is go through all the environmental data to sit there and think about like how can we reduce the impact of of coral bleaching or you know the the rising temperature of our oceans and all that sort of stuff like please like go and find the trends and see, you know, go through all the data of like, oh here's where things are repairing and and that just needs to be like taken to scale and all that sort of stuff. It's like please please please do that.
SPEAKER_01These are the conversations yeah where senior design folk like us it's our first it's the first thing that we want to talk about, right? Once we've got once we've got everyone in the room and we're kind of like yeah this is super exciting and the opportunity is amazing. And then we start talking about data. And then that kind of it flips everyone's head they kind of go hang on. But you're supposed to be creative. You're carrying this moniker of being a senior designer and why are you talking to me about data and data cleansing and data integrity and then access and then security implications and then governance on top of that. And it's just kind of like yeah because all of that shit is important right we we can't do the cool stuff unless those guide rails those those kind of like protocols are in place because you don't want to be pissing money down on a train right once you've uh kind of formulated what you believe is the best thing since sliced bread and then to be hit with yeah lawsuits, legal um risk and compliance implications and then sanctions and then everything else and that's on top of lovely beautiful things like accessibility standards because you know artificial intelligence much like what the internet provided everyone with is it's not just about form factor. It's a a far more holistic experience. Right now we're using you know keyboards and maybe voice if you know you've got the bandwidth to in your domestic setup or wherever to kind of manage that. But I I I can see that changing with with a Gentic um an awful lot of these kind of steps uh tasks that need to be done in between these discrete set word again databases um you know uh and and how do you figure all of that out by putting the human hello again at the center of everything because like it or not we are still the consumers we are still the ones who are going to be paying yeah we're gonna be the ones who are who are paying or just interacting with this thing however they're trying to make their money so whether it's on you know views or or actually handing over money directly.
Governance Data And Experience Architecture
SPEAKER_04I think to your point this is kind of goes back to the beginning of what we were talking about in terms of titles. I think this is where where we really run into issues in our industry with with everything having a design or creative title associated with it. So many people who don't understand the full breadth of what user experience is or design, all that sort of stuff is just assume like, hey, you're moving pixels around, you know, and it's like or you're you're very tactical and that sort of thing. And this is kind of where I go back to like looking at the agency model and and being like we need to sort of adopt this sort of stuff because you know if I had my druthers and people really understood it and it didn't have a different different common connotation for probably older people like ourselves is like I would probably call myself an experience architect. That's what I call myself. It's like I'm looking at the architecture of all the experience and that includes everything that affects it.
SPEAKER_00That used to be a name compliance that used to be once upon a time.
SPEAKER_04And it's the sort of thing of I think we need to start separating out within our industry like those sorts of activities because right now we're trying to do it by seniority. But I'm like okay yeah but tell me what a senior product designer does and that sort of thing. I'm like it really depends on the company.
SPEAKER_01We got hijacked dude we just got absolutely hijacked we drank our own bloody Kool-Aid for way too long and then some Pillar somewhere decided okay let's democratize um everything to do with design and we're just gonna call it design um which was good for about 30 seconds until you know anybody or everyone kind of thought that they could do it and then again then you get into the political conversations of well yeah who is a leader? Who isn't a leader? Right? Why are hiring managers so shit? Why are they bringing the wrong people in? Why are they uh having conversations around product strategy? Because well because they're in charge of your design ecosystem in your organization. Yeah but they it turns out that they were either promoted because they were in the right place at the right time or you know pick a reason.
SPEAKER_04And they kind of became a catch all.
SPEAKER_01Yes you know exactly exactly and then the frustration kind of built up but then and I'm super grateful for it that we have these new cycles new tech comes in and then organizations are looking for quote unquote leaders um maybe well okay how do we figure this out? And I think we're entering that phase now of okay we really need to understand how to figure this out. Because we've gotten rid of a whole bunch of senior talent because we don't need them because anyone can look after a bunch of designers or the AI will do it. And I think we're just about entering a phase where some organizations not all organizations are beginning to think okay we're kind of screwed up we've got these new toys and we've done a proof of concept and yeah it kind of worked in our greenhouse but it's not working in our garden.
SPEAKER_04Maybe or or or even beyond that it worked in our competitors' greenhouse but it's not working in our garden.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely right I think I think there's a lot more of that going on like oh well our competitor that's us obviously going to work for us it's like same themes exactly the same themes right you I can remember going for like casual conversations in whatever coffee shop or bar with some hiring manager in the car yeah what I ask what do you want to do I I need our product to look like we we need to do what Apple's doing. And you just kind of go so many of those conversations like back in the early 2010s and I'm just sitting there I'm like yeah but you sell tires but this thing is coming full circle and and I'm beginning to see it which is great. And organizations thankfully are beginning to realize that yeah not everyone can actually look after a bunch of designers.
SPEAKER_04Because this is also this is also cyclical. You and I have been through so many of these cycles it's like anytime there's a bit of like economic contraction and this is what I always tell like the people I mentor and that sort of thing it's like economic uh contractions one of two things will happen. Either they will hire a whole bunch of generalists or like hold on to their generalists because then they could do a little bit of everything that sort of thing or they will be hyper specific about like we just need somebody who does this one thing because all the the the risk the uh tolerance just goes out out the window. So it's like they're gonna go with the cheapest people who can do the most things and hopefully not lose their minds that sort of thing. And and then you know they if you don't fit into to that category or an unknown quantity it gets tough during economic like those those economic contractions. But then after every contraction there's there's growth again and at that point in time it's like oh okay that's when they start hiring the strategists, the specialists job titles because you guys have sort of abused this one into the ground.
SPEAKER_01Like you know get a little bit more specific. So
Design Winter And The Return To Humans
SPEAKER_01I mean number one, I mean give us your thoughts on this right um design is not dead right it's just gonna evolve again uh we're gonna have new toys it's wintering uh that's what I would say it's wintering.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04So like hibernating is that is that okay yeah it's kind of like it's it's contracted a bit everybody's kind of collecting their thoughts and trying to figure out what to do next. So it's not dead. It's just it's it's keeping just enough there to kind of like in that sort of wait and see, okay, now where do we go with this that's gonna be productive. So it's just in that sort of I would say that low hum churn of like we're still getting stuff out but we're not gonna go anywhere because we don't know what that direction is yet. We're idling taking over choose a metaphor you're like yeah awesome um what's gonna happen next year reckoning what's gonna happen next um well I think more anything else is is we're gonna have a rebalancing of a lot of things I think both in terms of what's going on with the corporate world but also what's going on with the human world. Ha ha um because you know there's plenty of people who are getting into the backlash of AI especially you know if you read X number of articles and that sort of thing they're saying Gen Gen Z Gen Z is um not really keen on AI and are, you know, the first to call it out and that sort of thing. And also I think you know we're I know it seems like it's quite a few years on that sort of thing, but I think a lot of people don't realize the impact that lockdown had on so many people.
SPEAKER_01Oh my God, that's such a good point.
SPEAKER_04You know, in terms of we all retreated to screens and being in our homes and having connections being a bit more detached because everybody was just scared out of their minds. Or or you know just scared, uncertain, you know, in some cases depressed you know just grappling with you know just trying to survive. People are in survival mode for much longer than lockdown actually lasted. Because you know you know this and that sort of thing. It's like you know even after lockdown was li lifted quite a few people just didn't really go out because they were just gotten used to staying in like Netflix and chill and all that sort of stuff. I'm just gonna be my little home and but I think in terms of what's going on with AI, especially in terms of AI's impact on the media and I extend that to social and all that sort of stuff is, you know, now there's so much AI generated content that people don't people don't know what to trust anymore. Is this real? Is this just a machine manipulating me? That sort of thing. Which is I think causing a lot of people to sort of want to detach from their phones a bit and um start to actually deal with humans out in the wild, you know, that sort of thing. I'm seeing a lot more of like you know people I know who are in the music industry or festival industry. It's like, okay, yeah, it was really dire in this thing, but actually in the at least the smaller venues that are not stupidly expensive, they're seeing a bit of an uptick of like people actually wanting to like interact with each other. Um it's not in the same way as it was before. The younger generations don't drink as much. So you're not getting as much in the way of I guess pub action, but you're seeing other things kind of going on like saddle discos or, you know, out in the parks or, you know, things along those lines. So I'm starting to see more and more of that. And that really encourages me because I'm like, okay, people are re-re-engaging with community. So I think in terms of what's next with AI, I think there is going to be a crucial point. It may be a bubble burst, maybe rupture rupture. I'm not sure, but I think it's coming a combination of people going like, okay, we see where you guys want to take this. We don't want to be, we don't want our information, we don't want our likenesses, we don't want all, you know, all this sort of stuff just used and abused by every company using some sort of AI related technology. We want more of that human connection. We don't want to go back to the dark ages. We know AI is is useful in particular ways. Can we really look at how we engage with this? And to your point, I think even if it's not formalized, I think the market is going to demand at least a certain layer of governance of what's tolerable and what's not. And that gives me hope because that means that like, okay, humans are actually hopefully starting to interact with humans again and we're social species. So it's a sort of thing of like we're social species. We're meant to actually interact with each other.
SPEAKER_01We just are right um Rome is alive and well and there's always going to be a Rome which means there's always going to be a mob and for Rome to survive yeah mob is going to have to be understood, vacated, call it what you want it's people who are going to be driving what is successful and before what is successful what is actually needed. And who who who are the ones and this is contentious because I've spoken with other senior folks about the same thing that I'm going to just quickly jump into now.
SPEAKER_00Who are you going to call? Who's going to figure this out?
SPEAKER_01Yeah I mean there there's an awful lot of really cool people out there um who will let go right uh but who do this with their eyes shut right um and they just do that that's that's like that's just the reality of it. And so like you said it's all a big cycle la la la la la What are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_04I think it's it's gonna be interesting because we work in an industry if you work in tech specifically where youth is always held up as here's all the fresh ideas. People have been around a while like you and I've worked in companies where it's like you rarely saw anybody over 50 unless they were owned the company you know or they you know saw I mean barely you know unless it was like some big multi-corporate and at which point you'd probably see a lot more lot a lot more older people. But if it's like a you know a mid-le uh startup or mid-level enterprise company, you rarely saw people over 50. And of course a lot of people have amnesia about that and so now that they're 50 they're like oh my God, I can't run a job. I'm like yeah you wouldn't have hired yourself when you were coming up the ranks. So what do you expect? Um so there's a bit of that. So I think I think it's the sort of thing in terms of who they turn to it depends on what it is, what lessons they've actually learned and what lessons they actually want to bring forward. So whether or not we're all going to get rehired like us old folks who have like been around a while and that sort of thing, who are really experienced and that sort of thing will we be hired back into our old roles with a permanent status I'm not super confident about that, but um I think it's the sort of thing of where they're going to turn to is definitely people with experience and not necessarily in tech. It'll extend beyond that it could be philosophers. It could be you know people in kind of more of those areas of just sort of like okay we haven't dealt you know people who haven't specifically looked at how the sausage was being made but saw from the outside of like here's the impact of the sausage you made I think it's a a combination of people who've been in the industry a while and have all that experience working with people outside of it and who are focused on the impact, philosophers, sociologists, you know, all that sort of stuff if a company is smart, they're bringing those people in, if anything to consult and to have as like you know emeritus people in or you know they the these people are on tap to sit there and say, okay, have you thought about this big picture thing and all that sort of stuff. So you know in a sense for a better way of putting it it's like I think fractional is going to blow up for people with a lot of experience. Once again tech industry yeah once again tech industry in particular holds up youth. So we just never really know the optimist in me is saying well the companies who actually have smart people helming them versus robber barons that sort of thing will know that like, hey, you know, we need to get some experience in here to look at this to look at how to survive this cycle somebody who's been through it you know at least a couple times before.
Fix The Foundations Before AI
SPEAKER_01And it's not going to be cheap. Let's call that out right um the longer organizations leave this um realization yeah the more expensive it's going to be for them because they're spending more time churning in some kind of weird masochistic okay try this try this try this try this okay none of this shit's working what the hell are we doing wrong? What I'm finding in my own consultancy practice already is that folks aren't getting their houses in order and they are just decorating their houses with AI. Right? You can't it's it's it's I can't say this strongly enough. Stop trying to decorate your house with AI unless you have sorted your house out what are the foundation what is it your reason what's your reason for being um how many rooms do you have wh what do you actually do? Um and and how do these rooms interconnect with one another? Right? Should they interconnect with one another? How are your utilities working out for you? Right? Um which is again going back to data and then connectivity and you know all of that kind of good stuff and security and everything that we've already gone over um which you can be incredibly creative with. And and that's what we do because there's not a single organization out there that has the same tech stack that has the same infrastructure that has the same dependencies.
SPEAKER_04Everyone everyone despite the best efforts of AWS and you know anybody else pick one everyone's got their own little variances it's all of that. I'd even take it a step further and be like I think with all of this you know people are going through also the hyper um optimization cycles that sort of thing. You're hyper optimizing and you're siloing your product even further and the experience is going to become more disjointed partially because you don't have governance to sit there and figure out how you're gonna retire these things if they don't work but then you also don't have any governance to figure out how it's all going to work together. So I think it's that bit exactly I mean oh my geez man that's like people never think about like people never think about like the cost that yeah that you you have for not sunsetting shit that doesn't work like oh my God do you realize how much how much this is confusing the user and they're not actually doing the thing that you want to do because you got this thing here distracting them that they don't want to interact with like and and that works at so many levels as well it's you know it's crazy you know and and like it or not that's why Kodak screwed up well I was going to say even beyond that like uh to that point you the thing I was uh gonna say on top of that is companies need to get back uh back to really thinking about like what business are you in?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04In the case of Kodak, Kodak thought they were in the film business instead of the photography business. Blockbus Blockbuster thought they were in the DVD, you know, videotape business versus the people just wanting to watch stuff at home business. You know, that's why they gave up on Netflix. It's stuff like that. So it's like people need to remember what kind of business they're they're in. Like I was just out of leaving do this week at a uh for a colleague I worked with a while ago and it's with a business where it's like you know they've sort of been struggling for a while. They've been limping along and they've actually at their core have a really great product especially for people who are diehard fans of that kind of product. But they're distracting themselves with like all this other stuff where it's like, but your users like they may interact with that, but that's not what they come to you for. What business are you in? Like what is the reason for beer because if you're sitting there doing all these other things, guess what? Any site can sit there and do those other things. Oh you got an affiliate program guess what any site can do an affiliate program. Oh you've got games like anybody can add games to their site that sort of thing like none of this has to do with like what is your core business?
SPEAKER_01Because if you don't understand that you're not going to be able to get anywhere close to personalization and or relevance totally totally or or even beyond relevance is it's it's distinction.
SPEAKER_04Like how are you distinguishing yourself in your market? That sort of thing I could take travel sites as a as an example. It's like you know when I was when I was working at hotels.com we just constantly got barrage of like just copybooking copy booking and it's like first of all they've got four times the inventory and four times the staff and they can now for all these things much cheaper than we can because they've got four times the inventory and four times the staff and all that sort of stuff. So it's the sort of thing of like how are you how are you distinguishing yourselves? Because you can't compete with that. If you're just chasing that you're just you're at best you'll only ever be number two. So it's the sort of thing of like what business are you in? How are you distinguishing yourself from everybody else who's trying to do that business.
Standing Out In A Crowded Market
SPEAKER_01And this this goes not just from I guess a product organization perspective but rewinding back to a practitioner right what distinguishes a practitioner from you know because it it is still an incredibly competitive market more so now than ever, right? Because there's somebody it's just a glut of incredibly talented people who've who've been let go and it's all about all right well what are you what are you doing to make yourself stand out right where's your value add um because that's what's going to get you number one noticed and uh your credibility currency if this is the perfect time to figure out what your DNA is, I think. Right? What do you stand for? What's your personal brand? What are your ethics? What are you because otherwise you're just gonna get like yeah like a male order designer like and I think there are a lot of organizations who want that and they'll be perfectly fine. If you're doing common or garden whatever okay AI I'll do that for you or you might want to just have some touch ups done and it's easier to get somebody in who you know whatever. But for folks who just want to create who want to design who want to work with like minded people who want the challenge you know what? I don't want to be a plumber Godfather of AI thank you very much. It's not for me right um and according to whomever I'm I'm not too shabby at my day job uh and I think there's an opportunity there for you know the grads who are coming into quote unquote design um the mid-level practitioners the senior practitioners the the older more experienced ones right like us um find your space find your space I say well I think it's a combination of find your space but also realize the as we say the cycles of the market so it's it's wonderful to say like well me and my hype palace I just only want to work on these kinds of clients and this kind of design and work with these kinds of people I'm like yeah none of those guys are hiring and none of those people exist in the company so we're like at a certain point you have to recognize where it is in the cycle and it's like okay are you willing to sit there and take either let's say it's a it's a more tactical job or it's a lower paid job or it's a different title than you're used to and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_04Are you are you in love with design enough to kind of you know wade through that. Suck it up because that's what yeah or or is it the sort of thing of you know there's some people including myself at times where it's like I'm all about the problem solving and and that end of it and I like to do the design. I really love getting my my meat hooks into that and all that sort of stuff. But you know some of the jobs that are on offer I'm just sitting there I'm like that would kill my soul because it's either it doesn't align with what my values are uh or or it doesn't align with like how I know I can best work and having to sit there and work in the way that they're asking is just sort of like, oh my God, I would I would rather go flip burgers. All that sort of stuff. It's like you have to be very you have to be very like it's great to to really always try to go for what you want to do and how you want to do it and recognize the cycle because it may be the cycle is nothing near that that you will find remotely gratifying or edifying exists right now in this market at this particular point. So come up with a back up backup plan. Because it's like you know if you go into something else for a year or two because you're just sort of like I I I can't I can't gel with working in this kind of company because I know they don't have any ethics, you know, and that sort of thing go do that other thing. When the growth company, you know growth comes back around, just have your side projects if you really love design you really love about everything with UX and all this do your side projects always have something cooking in the background and then come back to the industry and say, hey you know what it was a rough market. I had to go do this for a while. Now I'm back you guys are growing I can offer this this and this here's how it's applicable to you. Um you know once again it's easier to say when you're a senior than necessarily when you're you know a grad and that sort of thing. But even when you're a grad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Excuse me. Um I mean practically okay we're we're we're longer in the tooth right and we perhaps can be a little bit more selective. Um but it wasn't that long ago where uh yeah you gotta eat you gotta pay the mortgage you you've got people who are dependent on you you know um and animals and you know whoever else and you know la la la la la um and that's incredibly important and it's very very important that everyone needs to be cognizant of that. I I guess it's a case of yeah have you have your personal vision your personal mission you know what do you stand for and you need to curate that regardless. But whatever your situation you're in, right, you know, and it needs paying damn okay all right yeah yeah do do what you need to do.
SPEAKER_04But you know once again if if what your values are what your morals are and that sort of thing doesn't gel with where the industry is right now, go do something else and come back.
SPEAKER_01That's it.
Moving Countries Visas And Career Gaps
SPEAKER_04Okay we uh yeah we've just hit the the hour mark right so I mean how is it first of all anything in particular that we haven't covered that you really wanted to share uh well actually in terms of you were talking about grads and all the rest of it I was uh chatting with somebody even just right before this podcast who's in that I think one of the things I can bring is just the fact that I've uh switched careers and switched markets so many times. Um so I can maybe speak to that a little bit. So full transparency it's so I started my professional career in Dublin, Ireland, came back to San Francisco for a few years during that the whole dot com thing went to Seattle then went to North Carolina then went to New York City and then came to London um you know was able to get a highly uh skilled uh migrant visa all that sort of stuff um so I've done a lot of moving around dealing with different markets and that sort of thing and I would get asked all the time like well how do you navigate that and all that sort of stuff I can't speak to visas it just depends on the country at the time. So all I can say is if you can get your hands on a visa where you are not tied to a company, do it. Like that sort of thing. Because you'll just have a little bit more stability and then you won't have to tolerate putting up at a crappy job that treats like treats you poorly because I did have that happen once. That sort of thing. You know, it gives you more flexibility hopefully something you can freelance it if that's an option, do it. But you know if if your main thing is I just want to get to a particular country for XYZ reasons, do what you got to do. What I would say is if you're going into a new market and you don't have a sponsorship lined up but you do have a a proper work visa and you're trying to figure out to break out in the market, um, you know, the biggest hurdle you'll run into is not knowing the market, not designing for the market, not knowing the users in that market or not knowing that sector how it operates in that particular country, that sort of thing. So my recommendation is to try to freelance if you can. And if that means you have to take a lower position or more junior kind of take on things or something that's maybe not quite what you think you're really awesome with for the first six to twelve months, assuming you're gonna stay there long term, that's the best way to kind of get your head around like this is how this country works. Buy yourself Yeah, buy yourself time get to know the audience all that sort of stuff most people's career can can handle uh you know a couple a few years of of setback that sort of thing or a few years of hey you're just going and trying something else and coming back. Um you know I think some people get so locked in like I can only be progressing upwards. That's the only way to go. And that works for some people like if you're a stability freak, fine do it. And that works for some sectors. So like I think of like banking or energy they always want people who are just like that's all they've ever done. You know, that sort of thing. But I would say uh if as long as you're able to be open-minded you're just a sponge at any age of like here's the new thing or I'm gonna learn how this works or this is a new kind of culture I got to you know get used to or or figure out how to operate in that's the biggest thing is the adaptability being nimble, being adaptable being open um but also not losing what you can bring to the table. So even if you're in that more junior position and fine you may have operated in a different country or a slightly different field discipline.
SPEAKER_01If I can add to bring that in this is normal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because as we've talked about already that there we there are these massive cycles and there are these you know smaller cycles within cycles but downtime is normal. No one's no one is going to be drinking champagne and eating cake all of the time.
SPEAKER_04Nobody well and also in in some cases not always but sometimes when I when I've been hiring people and I see a CV where it's like they've either been at a company like they've only been at two companies and they've been in the uh industry for 25 years I'm like okay so you know how to work there and maybe over there. Like do you know how to work in any other sector in any other company with any other different types of people? Like I, you know, and and you know I think the thing that I find really frustrating and maybe this is just more of a thing in the US than it is in the UK, I'm not quite sure, is people panicking about having gaps in their resume. And I'm just sort of like okay you know what anybody who thinks less of you, especially if you work in tech or broadcast or um uh advertising uh thinks that you're somehow some loose canon because you've got maybe six months to a year gap somewhere. Fuck 'em like seriously, like all of those industries are so unstable. Like they're gonna layoffs will happen just because somebody, you know, some founder decided like, okay, fine. I I'm not gonna take responsibility for my decision. So all y'all have to go to make up our whatever.
SPEAKER_01Whatever it happens to be. Your life is your life, okay?
SPEAKER_04Your life is yeah.
SPEAKER_01You maybe have taken some time out, right? For whatever reason. It's nobody's business, by the way.
SPEAKER_04Nobody's business. And honestly, if you sit there and take a career break after twenty years of working and somebody that like calls you on the carpet for that for you because you took six months to just have a sanity break, come on.
SPEAKER_01Like is that the space, you know, that that you want to be occupying, right? Um again, look, this has been a fantastic conversation.
Where To Find Charmaine
SPEAKER_01Um covered so much territory. Um just just thank you. Right?
SPEAKER_04Thank you for having me. It's been great, always great to chat with you.
SPEAKER_01How can folks how can they get in touch with you?
SPEAKER_04Right. So uh always somebody with a few different projects going on at one particular time. Uh you can always find me on LinkedIn, uh Charmainwyland.charmain with a C and Wyland with a WY. Uh but I also have a few other things that I um have cooking in the background, quite literally. So uh I authored a cookbook last year, and I'm currently working on kind of a concept and business concept behind it, and that sort of thing. So the cookbook is uh all about pairing sweet treats with cocktails. So if you want a different way to kind of relax on an afternoon or have just a nice night in with your friends or your family and that sort of thing, you know, really good when it when it's coming into summer and you just want an alternative to just slapping up some cheese and crackers, that sort of thing. Um it's called cakes, uh cookies and cocktails. Uh if you look it up and and cakes, cookies and cucks, cocktails.
SPEAKER_01Cookies and cocktails. Where where can folks get that?
SPEAKER_04So they can get it on lulu.com, uh, which is a self-publishing site. Uh or if you just look up that title with my name, which should come up in um Google and you'll find a link. Uh, you can also go to all the evil bakery uh.com, which is uh the name of the the business offshoot for the cookbook. So there's links to the cookbook on there as well. And it's called All the Evil Bakery because you know what? I'm all about like, you know what? I realize everybody's got certain things that they're trying to avoid and all that sort of stuff, but I'm like, you know what? I really want to concentrate on flavor and texture. So the good stuff.
SPEAKER_01This is where the good stuff's at.
SPEAKER_04I know. So it's got, yeah, it's got all the sugar, it's got all the butter, it's got all the things. There are some, there may be some recipes that you can maybe adjust to deal with a gluten allergy or or a vegan preference, but that's not the that's not what I'm I'm after, at least at the moment. So um, so yeah, you can go to all the evil bakery and uh check that out as well. And then finally, I am also working on yet another um project, which is actually most more closely aligned to the conversations we've been having, uh, which is a substack and it's called Specious Spaces. Uh and really what it's about is me pontificating about the connection that um public art, public spaces, architecture, et cetera, have on our sense of community and ultimately our politics in the end. So it's trying to make the links of things that seem seeming seemingly mundane actually can tell you exactly what a community values and also the level of community health.
SPEAKER_01What's what's sense of what's a handle there?
SPEAKER_04Uh so it's specious spaces.
SPEAKER_01Specious spaces.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Okay.
SPEAKER_04So I'll couple articles in, but yeah, but it's uh yeah, put put in the links because yeah. Uh it's uh Absolutely. I'm all for an alliteration, but I realize that not everybody uh can can recognize that when I'm speaking.
SPEAKER_01You you have been amazing. Um it's it's such a just a joy just to spend time to speak with you. Um and and you've always and the little time that I've I've tried uh to get to know you a little bit. Um incredibly generous, not just with your time, but with everything that you share. Thank you. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_04And thank you, Joel, for having me on. It's always great to chat with you, and and thank you again for your generosity as well, and and indulging me in my my weird tangents and pontifications.
SPEAKER_01It's the only way to be.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.