Andy Polaine: Hi and welcome to Power of 10. A podcast about

design operating at many levels zooming out from thoughtful

detail through to organisational transformation, and onto changes

in society and the world. My name is Andy Polaine. I'm a

service design and innovation consultant, design leadership

coach, educator and writer.

My guest today is Jason Mesut, who many of you may know from

ifda conferences and especially his writing on shaping design.

Jason helps people and organisations navigate their

uncertain futures and has spent over 20 years working within UX

Design and Innovation consulting worlds. He works closely with

people in organisations to consider and combine multiple

perspectives to challenge their own. With these rich

perspectives, he helps people find positive opportunities and

clear paths forward, where they're developing new products

or services. building teams are finding new direction for their

careers. He runs his own coaching, design and innovation

consultancy resonant works as a design partner at a group of

humans, a network of global creative leaders, and he co

hosts monthly events for IXDA. London. Jason, welcome to Power

of 10.

Jason Mesut: Thanks so much for having me, Andy.

Andy Polaine: So the first time we met was interaction 2011 in

in Colorado, in Boulder, Colorado. And I think I'd given

a talk or we'd been doing a thing around design to the power

of 10. Or this idea, I think both running the student

competition then and this quite a lot about, you know, climate

change, and all those kinds of things and sustainability, that

the projects were looking at. And we met I think was a party

or something afterwards. And you said something to me, but I'll

make the do the polite version of it, which was fixing climate

change or global financial crisis is not your effing job,

as in designers, and I then started to use it in a in this

talk about design to the power of 10, about looking at the

scaling up and connectedness of everything as a slide and I

followed it by this question of whose job is it? Because I think

on there, those original slides, David Cameron, who was then the

Prime Minister of the UK, he had his a whole kind of, I guess

it's called big government, and it wasn't called Big Government

was called government, you know, trying to get people kind of

involved in government and society. Society. That's right.

Yes. Yeah, there was that kind of aspect of it. And I remember

Stefan Sagmeister, saying to me, you know, it's not, I don't have

any particular responsibilities as a designer, but I do have a

responsibility as a human being for these things. So whose job

is it?

Jason Mesut: Well, I guess what my short answer, and it's funny,

you brought that up? I can't actually remember saying it. But

it might, it is a sort of thing. I would say. I've said back

then, I think it depends on if it was briefed to you, as a

designer, I guess that's the tension around whether it's

your, your role as a human to be aware of these things. And to do

something about it is somewhat separate to your role as a

designer to I always considered designers answering a brief. And

that's me from a kind of professional services

perspective, looking at a designer. And often, that is not

the brief there might be that might be the wider context to a

brief. But I think too often, maybe in terms of the student

challenges is like going well, no one's going to ask a student,

or we're kind of a very junior designer to kind of solve that

problem. Because it's, you know, it's a huge systemic challenge.

And they're going to talk about one particular part of it. But

even now, days, when people are really focusing on climate or

more meaningful things, it's really hard, because that's such

such a huge space. So what's your specific angle on it? And I

think probably the root of my concern around it at the time,

if I'm reflecting back to that conference was the balance of

sort of designer hubris, where, you know, designers felt like

they could affect that very, very large change, and do it

within a short period of time. I think that that was the problem.

And I was probably talking to you about service design, and

where there was a lot of aspiration to change these

really, really big things, whether it's from an airport

with hunger or whatever. Yeah, and just going not yet. There's

not going to be a project you're gonna do in three months. It's

gonna take you a decade.

Andy Polaine: No, no, no, this is true. You know, and there's

definitely, you know, we wrote at the end of our book, actually

about this, there is definitely opportunities because I think,

you know, fundamental, I'm gonna defend services. I'm briefly

here. But the fundamental to service design is a systems way

of looking at things. And I think back then, particularly

those UX conferences, you know, I kept hearing UX is say, UX is

everything and I bet you're but I'm only seeing websites and

apps. When you present your stuff at conferences. We made

use of Jason Bruce showed a kind of smart a building that was a

kind of amazing display built on the side of it. But otherwise,

it was very sort of individual touch point focused and didn't

really connect with everything else. And I think we've come

there is the has, and still is that kind of hubris, and you

know, and some of it is I think a you know, a career pathway

thing. We're going to talk about data that you know, when you

first start most a lot of people get into design, you know,

because they see it things and they think, why is that done

this way when it could be done that way? This seems to be, you

know, this could be done better, I could make people's lives

better. That seems to be a fundamental driver of why, you

know, a lot of people get into design. And I do see it, you

know, I see it in my service design students still now have,

I want to tackle this big thing. And I, you know, it's just so

well, now that the designers are here, everything's going to be

much better. And I guess that's why your comment? You've been

provocative at the time. But your comment really kind of

resonated me because I think it is a useful question. But I

think then the follow up of whose is it is also an important

one. And then the question becomes how does design sort of

how can design facilitate that differently perhaps, to other

forms of running projects and things like that? Do you think

that's fair? Or yeah, no,

Jason Mesut: I totally think it's fair. And I do love service

design for trying to bring that that wider, systemic perspective

in. But I do think that way, I guess the the early days of

service design, emergence and popularity growing, that there

felt like a lot of naivety around that, I think there was

and probably still is, yeah, but I think people have realised

more recently, and I just remember the only service design

conference I went to, and Joel Bailey was talking about kind of

grit. And, you know, the, the actual effort required to do

some of these things, was quite considerable, like and took a

lot of time. And there's a lot of organisational change and

facilitation and support, and you're having to interact with

many different parts of the business, in order to kind of do

this great customer experience across all these channels.

Andy Polaine: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things I

try and teach my students, especially these days is, you

know, if you're going to be frustrated by the fact that

there's a lot of resistance to what you're trying to do. It's

like being a firefighter complaining that you get burned

and smell of smoke in the evenings. It's just part of that

job. And I think part of the craft, if you like of service

design is, is less to do with, you know, blueprints and journey

maps and all that stuff, then it is much more with the blend of

organisational change and design, I guess, and how you,

you know, make that or not make that happen, but enable it to

happen. I've probably become a little bit, you know, I

definitely have become less and less naive, but I kind of think

probably is less less kind of evangelistic about that. Because

as we see, you know, it is everyone's problem, the thing

that I always wanted to try and get across with this idea of

connectedness. And I think, yeah, I used to find it really

hard to find examples or analogies of this. But COVID has

been this amazing thing to show how the smallest connected to

the big everything from you know, social distancing, and

what that means in terms of stuff you can't do anymore.

right the way through to global supply chains and all that

stuff. And yeah, I mean, it's not a thing that design tackles

on its own. And we were talking actually before because at that

conference, Bruce Sterling gave this a brilliant talk, you can

still find it online, just sort of really gave I kind of felt

like he gave a brilliant dressing down of design hubris

in the in the audience, because he, he kind of set up this, he

sort of pulled the rug from under people's feet, because he

talked about kind of all this amazing design stuff and things

and he's described himself as an AR victory condition and then

talked about this old lady, I think trying to kind of operate

a force at the tap in a in a hotel, in this highly designed

thing, just had no idea what's going on and sort of pulled the

rug from underneath this. Did you have any other takeaways

from his talk?

Jason Mesut: Mostly about? Henry Dreyfus surrounds kind of

designers. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that one, I just know that. It

was just a round, kind of like, if you run the course of, I

don't know, really kind of designing and controlling

everything. You could take it that far. But maybe that was the

wrong takeaway. I do remember it being an amazing tool. It was

amazing. There were amazing talks. But it had me that

particular conference had had me really engaged and really

curious, but also really, really frustrated at the same time,

partly because of what you were saying is like you're talking

about all this great stuff. And then you're talking about

screens and interfaces. And turns out some of those screens

interfaces did ultimately have an impact on some bigger things.

But I think interaction design and the ICA community, we

struggled with what is interaction design in this

context. And sometimes it's been kind of played out into a wider

systemic context and service design. And sometimes, often

rarely these days actually talking about user interface

design of various sorts.

Andy Polaine: Yeah, I mean, I, before we get on to the shaping

design stuff, actually, I think, you know, we were talking about

you've been involved in interaction design and UX for 20

years of AI. You know, now we're in this umbrella term and world

of product design, which is this kind of the big catch all and

you know, obviously the hot thing as well, at the moment,

fueling rather overheated market, I would say in in jobs

and salaries at the moment. But you know, I remember a few years

before that 2011 interaction conference, there was one of the

information architecture conferences about you know, what

is information architecture and everyone, there was a

competition to make a video or something I think of of what

information architects do, you know, and then there's

interactions, and then there's UX and so on. Plus, there's

obviously things like, you know, research, design, research, UX

research underneath and so on. What's your view on where things

are out as if we're going to be sort of two old guys sitting on

a porch kind of complaining about the kids on our lawn? And

we might as well just do it more explicitly. So what's your view

on where things are at?

Jason Mesut: Oh, it's, it's still messy. It's messier than

ever. There's just more factions, it's more confusing.

And this probably does play into the whole shaping design thing,

I think, a lot of ways and why I wanted to create the book

because the titles are becoming ever inflated or tried to be

collapsed and dismissive of the past. So that said, the product

that I wanted, let's take that one came up again, the other

day, I studied industrial design that I had that was doing

alongside product design courses, most of the people who

graduated with my course, and went into making physical

products would call themselves a product designer, sometimes an

industrial designer. So just the term itself, product design was,

was really dismissive of this whole industry, and a lot of

industrial science got really pissed off of it. That's one

thing. I on the other hand, I liked it from the point of view

of it, trying to be a partner to product management, and to kind

of do more strategic stuff, because the UX thing was getting

too confused with just doing interactions and digital

interactions, and not necessarily considering the

business. So maybe more legitimacy to kind of be

considering that product thing made some sense. But in reality,

most product designers seem to be more from a user interface

designers just jumping over UX to do call themselves product

designers. So they miss a lot of the rigour and certainly

Information Architecture just got lost in all of that. They

got it faded away, there's still people talking about it a bit,

but they're clinging on content strategies, much more popular,

probably more similar to a than anything. And so I think it's

just got really confusing. So what I tell people is going yes,

this title of what you call yourself into action, designing

product designer, service designer, whatever, shouldn't

matter as much as actually the practices and skills that sit

underneath that title, because that's where the real

differentiation lies in who you are versus someone else.

Andy Polaine: Yeah, that leads us nicely on to shaping design,

I think. So, you know, a lot of people might well know, you

actually, from the writing you've done on on medium, you've

got kind of a couple of different categories. But one is

shaping design we've got we've put up there a lot of things

around self reflection tools, and looking at yourself and

things you've, you've run these in workshops and stuff. A lot of

people I know and especially as it's true of me, right, kind of

to scratch their own itch or right in order to put their own

thoughts in some kind of order. What was the genesis of all of

this for you?

Jason Mesut: Probably around sort of 2005, I joined a company

called oyster partners, which you may remember from this

London digital design days, and it kind of became fanfare, but

and eventually I'll be it just has one of these big machines

grows, grows. And we had a fairly large user experience

team. And it grew larger with more information architects that

came from the firm hub side. And a couple of things happened. One

was a few people went to an Adaptive Path conference in

Amsterdam and came back with this framework that either Jesse

James Garrett Peter no holds, or someone had created that had

these four kind of quadrants. And my colleague and friend

Warren Hodges started kind of like, you know, using shapes to

kind of draw people over overlaying this. And I was like,

Oh, that's interesting. So I started using that. And that

became what what some people call blob mapping or amoeba

mapping. But then also, I was a UPA before UX pa event. And

someone was talking about like, Who do we who are inspired by

who do we look up to in our industry. And at the time,

coming from more of a designer background, there was really

only sort of people like Jacob Nielsen, and those people were

not really Designer Friendly, a lot of my colleagues kind of

found it really annoying, not necessarily positive, and very

restrictive in his approach. And as a designer, he wasn't very

inspiring to me. So I thought, Well, who do I look up to? And I

found it really difficult. So I did some investigation research

and into, you know, what makes a good user experience person and

I created a poster basically around that. And a lot of the

the attributes were the kind of softer side to things and team

working sides of things. And aspects of strong backbone and

creative mindsets, attention to detail, all sorts of things.

They weren't really about the specific craft and practices

that the the Adaptive Path portrait had. And anyway, I just

kind of started using both those tools actually, in interviews

with my team and, and started to develop more and more frameworks

over the years just to kind of help to kind of understand

people either in an interview situation, or when they were

kind of looking at their career development. And I kind of kept

it internally a lot. And I occasionally put some of these

frameworks in presentations and people always sort of grabbed

towards them. And I guess what happened was a recruitment

consultancy got in touch and said we'd want to do an updated

version of this and have these new categories in it. And I

worked with them a little bit. And we created a tool called the

UX spectrum. So online little tool you can do things on. And

it just reignited my interest in IT. And I thought, Oh, I could

do some of these workshops publicly and start to explore

this more, and got some good responses and, and then decided,

I would write a medium article a day around the different tools

and force myself to do that, and push it out there and got lots

of really interesting feedback and hearing stories about people

using it. So I was like, Okay, I need to do something with this

and make it more navigable, more easy to process because it's,

like, badly structured, badly written.

Andy Polaine: And so that's where you're at, at the moment

how far I've I mean, obviously seen the work in progress as you

are at the moment, how far away? Are they you not put a date on

it? I don't know. You tell me. What you put into it,

Jason Mesut: yeah, true. I want to release it this year, they'll

probably be a beater in the next two, three months. So hopefully,

it's the end of q1, q2, but I have a lot of tools, ready,

refine, I've got an introduction, I'm working

through recipes, which are just a way to navigate people to the

different tools based on different circumstances. And

then there'll be some copy edited. And, you know,

Andy Polaine: there's a lot of a lot of sweeping up the parts I

was finding, in the end of a book, it really kind of

surprised me how long that took, actually, there's bits. But you

know, a medium article a day is not to be sniffed at either,

actually. That is impressive.

Jason Mesut: Yeah, it's hard work

Andy Polaine: Yeah, that is hard work. Useful, though, to kind of

set yourself that habit, because it, it probably there are times

when you've probably thought I have no idea what I'm gonna

write about, and something came up, you know, eating it, too,

you've got I mean, the recipes lead to or there's a whole bunch

of templates you've got, I mean, it's, there's a lot of them,

they're really great, I can really imagine using them in my

coaching with design leaders, but also, you know, recommending

the people, I coach using them with their teams. And we sort of

talked about this a little bit the other day, we know a lot of

them around kind of self reflection, and are more of a

sort of a qualitative estimation, if you like, or self

estimation of where you are. And I, what I talked about before,

is I've seen things where, you know, there's been some survey

that you fill in, and there's all this stuff, and then you get

the results back. And it says something that, you know, you

score, certainly in the 73rd percentile of self actualization

stuff. And I kind of seen those reports and think why now, what

does that even mean? That is a kind of, how would you rank self

actualization at all, really, and, you know, and put those

things in numbers and the numbers I think, give us sort of

our apologise to anyone out there who really loves these

things. But I must have experienced this as they can

give a bit of a pseudo sort of rigour to them, and sense that

these things are defined a definite not always changing.

And I really liked the fact that you heard us these things, which

are much more, what's the kind of shape of me, he's sort of

more important than my three points above my, you know, my

pier or something? Is that sort of coming from your sense of

instinct about the stuff? Or is these things emerged in

workshops? I got the feeling like a couple of these things,

were things you fairly quickly initially did work, try this

out, you know, how did those things develop?

Jason Mesut: I mean, I think most of them were sort of just

quickly try things out and little bit of iteration. I

didn't labour them, because I sometimes kind of, you know,

being pretty self deprecation and all that, like I kind of

talked about them being in imperfect visual frameworks,

right. And that's partly because often people would want to kind

of go would disagree with the categories ago, but you haven't

got this in there, or like, that's a different level of

abstraction and go, you know, what, don't worry about that for

a moment, just kind of play with it. And just and you can develop

your own after playing with it. And on the other hand, I did

really want to kind of focus on that quality of experience. I

think there's a few things there. One is the biggest

contention I often get, especially within groups is, you

know, how do I make this comparable across multiple

people, and I go, you're focusing on the wrong problem

there. But actually, it's harder to do unless you define firstly,

the categories, and then define clear rubrics to do that. And

that's a big project. So what I'm suggesting is take these

allow people to self reflect from their own perspectives. And

that's valuable insights in itself. If someone scores

themselves really high on a category, and someone sources

themselves really low on the same category. That in itself is

another data point in terms of humility or self awareness. And

I find that really valuable. So typically, like when doing the

blog mapping, this is one of the more famous ones. You know, I

used to do this in interviews, and I draw my shape just to

illustrate how to do it really quickly draw this like this. And

then someone would draw their shape and they would sometimes

draw a really tiny one, and they would be like really experienced

really good from what I've seen in their portfolio. whereas

others who might do really, really large ones, and they were

typically very junior, and then you say, well, that's

interesting. You know, it's a kind of Dunning Kruger effect

type thing. But it's another data point. But um, the other

side of this, which I, which is why I don't like to digitise

them too much, is because the actual act of drawing the shape

is, is you're you're inputting and getting the output at the

same time. And so that has a different level of connection

with you reflecting than writing it down separately in a form.

Some of those forms for those surveys are really painful, I

find, yes, agree four or five done to the house is going to

take ages, this is more instant, right? And you get a feeling of

it and go, Oh, that felt weird. Oh, I can adjust that. And so I

think you have a different dialogue with it. And then any

nuance that you have around why you made those markings you

could capture separately or discuss with someone. And often

though, you know, a lot of the other tools don't really enable

you to capture that nuanced stuff.

Andy Polaine: Yeah, yeah, I think so you've you've written

actually, that, you know, these things are better done

physically than digitally, digitally. I mean, now we're, of

course, we're in a remote,

Jason Mesut: it's more spatially like. So. What do I mean by

that? Because I have, I've got some templates I've put into

procreate on my iPad. And it's similar experience, right? But

when you when you draw it in like PowerPoint, I've had to

make PowerPoint template versions you kind of do in the

notes and moving them around and pulling and pulling in, it's a

bit different to just draw in a shape,

Andy Polaine: Brian, because it's the sort of free, it's the

cut through this, obviously, people can't see this, but

you've been making this kind of drawing arc, site sign with your

hand, that connection to the physical act of moving your hand

around is the important bit. Yeah, have you done any of these

where you know, someone has done their self reflection of

themselves, and then someone else who knows them, or works

with them does renew their version of that person. So you

can kind of compare what other people how other people perceive

you to yourself?

Jason Mesut: Yeah, and I think that's an interesting thing to

do. If that's when I did the creating the perfect experience

architect poster, I actually, I would do one self reflection,

one reflection from a peer within your discipline, one

reflection from a project manager, one reflection from a

client. And the idea is that you would then sort of, you know,

triangulate, and then it's an interesting discussion to be had

there. Because some people will observe your behaviour and your

actual and compare against other people they've worked with. And,

and then you can kind of do it based on everything that you

know about yourself, which might be more extensive, but less

comparable,

Andy Polaine: even when it's one of the things I get to do like

kind of lightweight 360 feedback when I start a coaching with

people and one of them is really internal self reflection thing.

But the other one is that and the thing that's constantly

fascinates me, because it comes up not all the time, but often

enough to be a thing, which is often the thing that people

think is their greatest weakness is what other people think their

greatest strength in, in this feedback and I, I kind of really

fascinated by this idea of the My wife's a union soccer

analyst, and Jung had this idea, this concept of the shadow. And

it wasn't always kind of bad stuff. But this, this idea that

any skill you have something you're quite good at has a kind

of shadow side when it over indexes. So some you know,

classically someone who's quite orderly and kind of has this

back together. And organised can be really, really pedantic when

they get stressed. And it usually comes out in in stress

times. And it's fascinating to see how that maps together.

That's why I was asking, because I think that would be kind of

really interesting thing to see those overlap.

Jason Mesut: I think that's really super interesting in

terms of we were talking last week around the different

personas and personalities you might have, depending on how

you're showing up. So say something like Myers Briggs,

which I know you a lot of people as well have concerns with, but

it's like, you know, when you answer some of those

questionnaires and different surveys, you know, I have to

kind of look at it from a particular context. Yeah. Oh,

showing up and, you know, I, and this goes back to authentic

leadership and, you know, phrases like that, but because I

don't think I'd be a very good leader if I was authentically

me, because I am constantly divergent, lateral, you know,

maybe mode very much emergent and flowing and, and I had to

kind of impose a lot of structure and extraversion into

my my personality and stuff, what I felt like I had to, in

order to be successful, and now I'm just kind of caught between

those two things quite a lot. And I think it's super

interesting cuz I was chatting to someone else, you know,

recently about being diagnosed with ADHD and he was naturally

kind of imposing lots of interesting structure in order

on his work and made him really efficient. Everyone thought he

was like a productivity machine almost. And actually is because

he was working on that area that he wasn't feeling confident in.

And I was like, God so much like me. I was just like, yeah, so I

didn't realise it was in is related to yoga and shadows and

stuff as well. That's super interesting.

Andy Polaine: Well, you know, I think that you might be is based

on this union unit personality types as well on sort of

extraversion, introversion and then thinking feeling sensation

and the other one, which I have no intuition. But there's a

richness and depth in there that I think can get overlooked. One

of the things I guess I see sometimes when people go through

those very sort of structured, whatever it is, surveys and

assessments, is this sort of self identification thing where

people go, Well, I'm, uh, you know, I'm this kind of person,

or I'm this kind of personality type, and therefore, that's why

x y Zed. Sometimes it can be useful for people, I think,

where it explains why people struggle with something's

working in court to have Inferior function, which isn't

like, bad, it's just that this is the your weak spot, right? So

my sort of Inferior function might be extra, as a British

person extroverted feeling, I'm not someone who kind of emotes

very strongly, you know, which can mean that aren't, you know,

when it's going things are going well, that can mean I'm quite

stable in sort of difficult situations. On the other hand,

it also can mean that I'm sort of monotone in my emotional

responses, which isn't so great sometimes in a relationship, you

know, and so they will have, you know, you can be moved around

those things, you know, to say, Well, I am a, you know, en,

whatever, I can't remember the Myers Briggs thing, and that's

me. And therefore, that defines me who I am, feels back to

front. And also ignores this idea of, you know, of growth

that you you can change and mindsets that you change

regarding, depending on the context you're in.

Jason Mesut: I think the change aspect is really interesting.

But then, I think, in defence of it, to some extent, I think

these are all just different sort of frameworks and lenses to

look at yourself. And this is why I have so many different

tools, because some tools will expose different differences to

people than others. And I think like liking certain strategy

workers, you know, lots of different frameworks, I might

apply to a problem to see the gaps in the strengths in

different ways. My thing is around actually having diversity

and a range of different tools to throw on the problem and

yourself, because the nuances might be very different. And the

median and the Myers Briggs things give you some a

framework, the problem, I think, is if you just limit yourself to

one, when that one doesn't really help and serve you as

well, it might for some, it might for others. But I do think

that what it does is, you know, as we pattern match the world

like, you know, rather than deal with the infinite nuances and

differences between us by having some shared frames of reference,

it does help a little bit. For some people, I just think that

if you try to kind of like exhaustively cover humanity and

everyone's differences with those, you're obviously going to

be caught out.

Andy Polaine: Well, yeah, I mean, it's also the thing that

the map is not the territory, right. So yeah, I think that

there's a thing you said before, that reminded me, I've just

finished up a set of training that I've been doing for a

client and in service design and things and one of the things

that came up in the discussion at the end, which I was really

pleased to hear was these tools like blueprinting. And the few

other things we were doing have helped us think around things of

fire off kind of difference of neurons than we would normally

have. And this idea that the discussion you're having in

front of doing those things in, you know, I'm saying in front of

it as if those were on a wall or on a mural now or a mirror, you

know, those discussions you're having whilst you're making

those things with each other, or kind of the work, right, they're

more important than the actual artefact themselves. And I think

it sounds like what you're saying with these tools that the

act of reflection that you're going through, whilst you're

filling in the tool is sort of more important than the final

shape of the map.

Jason Mesut: Absolutely. And that's the thing where people

get get, get it wrong with my stuff. And I certainly would, in

terms of, you know, my new experiences as a coach as well,

where it's all about the discussion around it and

exploring that side. All the tools are a sort of an initial

prop or stimulus, right and an artefact that you like you say,

like a boundary object or whatever that brings people

together, and has that shared view? Well, on a plate, you can

say object, here's a thing. What does that mean for us and, and

it just easy to talk around as humans, I think and like in you

know, in terms of research, you know, even when doing generative

research, I always find it useful to put a prop inside find

someone who might be hard, it might be a prototype, it might

be a picture, but it's going to provoke different things and

stimulate a different reaction. Like in a similar way to, you

know, a strength scope or strength finder or whatever

those tools are going to give or even like a tarot card, maybe

even as well, you're going to have your own associations and

leap off in different ways and what that might mean to you.

It's just prodding and poking. And so I think that it does

help, like a good question might help

Andy Polaine: you just give me an idea for design tarot cards.

Jason Mesut: Well, yeah, maybe speak to Tutti around that. Some

other ones recently, which was around the tarot cards of tech

Andy Polaine: Tarot cards of tech. Oh, there are some? Okay.

Jason Mesut: Yeah, that's like, I think it was it was from

artefact studio. So I think they did it. They had it. They I

think they shared it at one of the maybe in Seattle interaction

conference. Since, yeah, I haven't looked at it a while,

but found it because I was doing a Tarot session the other day

with someone.

Andy Polaine: But I think there's a thing there also, that

is quite interesting. I think it's always interesting from a

leadership position in, particularly in terms of a

culture of feedback, which is having a third thing I was

having an artefact is really crucial. I think John Kolko

talks about this, and so does someone whose name I've

forgotten for a second. But this idea of, we're not going to have

a discussion about your work unless there's an artefact, then

talk to turns it from being a kind of face to face

confrontation about this is all about you to a let's look at

this third thing side by side together and have a conversation

about what this means is a really nice way of working with

people and giving feedback, particularly if there's a power

structure already sort of embedded in, you know, as

you're, I'm your boss, or whatever. And then you can have

a conversation about what was your intention here. And then

what I'm not really getting that from this is not like you've

been you've done this wrong, but given your intention. It's, it's

not quite working, let's have a look at it. It's and I think

there's things something around those kinds of objects as well,

that you're talking about, we have the third thing engenders a

different kind of conversation. My experience has been this also

been true of, you know, managing stakeholders and all that kind

of stuff.

Jason Mesut: I think so that makes a lot of sense. Actually,

I love that that notion is that thing. I think it because it's

somewhat neutralise it, it takes a little bit more of the emotion

out of it to some extent. My friend Andrea Mineola, talks

about that, when doing feedback, this notion of a shared plate,

and you're presenting information and you're going to

presenting it looking at it on the plate necessarily, not in

us, not in me, it's between us. And I like that notion of that

third thing where it's on the plate, it's just like, it's

there. This is a representation, articulate, it's got all and

it'd be great if you had yours and we can look at them together

and depersonalised them a little bit, even though it's a

representation of you. It's not something that can't change or

whatever. But when it's in you, it just gets wrapped up in all

of these other things, these other emotions and self talk and

all that.

Andy Polaine: I think it's an underappreciated, I know, it's

gonna, I'm gonna sort of make it sound like designers are

snowflakes, which you actually use that metaphor, but in, in

the sense of everyone's unique, but you know, I think it's

underestimated the the act of kind of every day of birthing

something, if you like, or pulling something out of

yourself that even if it is to a brief, there is still a thing

of, I've made a thing, and I'm exposing it to you for critique

or to be kicked to pieces. And that's quite hard, that sort of

resilience to that. I was gonna say, a thick skin, but I don't

think it's quite so much that I think it's much more of a, you

know, there's this famous haiku mythology that the Haiku masters

when they wrote what they thought was their best Haiku,

they would put it in a bottle and throw it in the ocean or

something. So no, in order to practice non attachment, there's

I think it's more around that. So yes, I've made the thing and

I've put it out there in a while, but it's not a piece of

me. That takes some time, I think.

Jason Mesut: Yes, God, I mean, there's a lot of a lot around

that, I think, you know, certainly for the points of view

of critique and able to, you know, depersonalise, your own

attachment to it. And I think and I believe and, you know, I

want all those kinds of phrases versus it is here, it's what

it's based on. But I have, I have a tension with that one,

because in some parts I see designer as a kind of neutral

facilitator and all those sorts of things and gathering up the

inputs and whatever. But also, I strongly believe in the power of

designers own ego and passion interest, kind of helping an

experience kind of putting themselves in it not so much

like as, as in art, but I do think it's important, because

you're not going to take two or three different designers and

give them the same problem, you're going to end up with the

same solution. I do think there is always a little bit of them

in it. It just may be that they have to try to find ways to de

personalise it so they can kind of take on the feedback and and

go you know what, that is an interesting perspective, and not

take it as a personal attack. But I think the part of the

problem and what's happened in design more recently, and

certainly user experience and maybe digital product design is

we've depersonalised and devalued the human designer in

the process. So I get it, it can be dangerous and emotionally

attachment is risky for kind of, you know, actually getting the

feedback. But I also think it's a powerful thing that we've

we're losing a little bit.

Andy Polaine: I think so. So I mean, I talked about this in a

talk once about this balance of ego and humility that you need

to have and that could because you do need to be able to box

things through do you need to be able to stand up for something

different. And there's a certain amount of ego in that because

you you need to create a kind of push it forward. And not all ego

is bad. If you have none. It's awful, actually, you know, and

as a child develops, part of the thing of them developing their

ego is a really crucial part. And if they don't, it causes

lots of problems other than to have a kind of strong sense of

self. It causes lots of problems later on. But at the same time,

the humility to you know, on the basis of new feedback, evidence,

whatever it is to You'd be able to kind of step back and

understand why this isn't, this isn't all about me. And this

isn't just what I say goes, you know, and you and I have been

through that era of, I guess it's the 90s, mostly and some of

the early noughties of the star designer, you know, which seems

to have gone away.

Jason Mesut: Yeah, I missed it. I missed I missed parts of it,

because because like, you know, back to the doing that poster

was like, there wasn't anyone in this industry really easily to

look up to, I believe up to industrial designers or graphic

designers. If you go to a kind of industrial design or

furniture design conference, it's all about the work less

about the theory, it's interesting, but like, you know,

it's a big show, but it's very impressive. But yeah, you know,

I think we just need to kind of get that back in balance, I once

did a really a talk, it was a bit it wasn't on one of my best,

but it was called ego versus empathy. It's a similar thing I

like I like ego versus humility, but it was just trying to put

those things intention saying, Look, you know, you need a

little bit of both and just consciously where you're going

to bring it in.

Andy Polaine: You know, you talked about soft skills in your

book, as well. And I saw a comment in there, because you've

asked a few people to comment on it, feeling a bit sort of

finding that term difficult. I do too, because I think soft

skills are the hardest, actually. And so I kind of I

struggle with the term, but obviously, it's a thing that

everyone knows what it means, you know, a lot of what we've

been talking about is also how do you approach design

leadership? And you've, you've talked about, you know, I've had

to do all these things, what does it mean for you?

Jason Mesut: I don't know, I think it's changed my perception

of it's changed. Like, I'm from one perspective, it was kind of

standing up at the front and this, you know, kind of

inspiring people and giving them the clarity and the vision. And

I think we've lost that over the recent years. But on the other

side, that there was an aspect of, you know, the people manager

side and kind of being more of a coach, right, and I recognise,

through going through coaches and trainers going, Oh, this

would have been a bit, this would have been useful for me as

a manager, and also is kind of a loose rein thing, you know, how

you can support and nurture and kind of get the best out of

others around you without, you know, just going this is the

way. So I don't know, I think that there's a need for a little

bit of both. And actually, you know, one of the tools I use a

leadership profile is very much around kind of where you lean

towards Are you the one kind of being the articulate advocate

selling, being out there in all the communities. Or often people

kind of sway more towards the people side of things, or the

specific practices and the structure. I'm a big fan of the

leading design, conference and winter, most of the early ones.

And it was a lot of kind of vulnerability and sharing,

because people were feeling lonely and you go into

leadership, elbows, go into independent consulting, you get

lonely because you can't interact with anyone at the same

level. But then there was a lack of actual, like, Vision work,

like actual strategic vision and clarity and possibility of the

future. So I don't know, I think there's there is a tension

there. Because, you know, some people go into that design

leadership and go, you know, what, I want to get back to

making stuff I love making stuff. Yeah. And I certainly

have that tension I do. I like the people I love the people

work, I love doing coaching, I love the mentoring, and I've

working with teams, but I also like, you know, helping craft

and create the future with people and be that more

visionary side. So it's an interesting tension, for me, at

least anyway.

Andy Polaine: I also think, you know, it's, there's no shame in

someone who takes that step into leadership, which does often

mean giving up actually doing their craft practising their

craft more or less, you know, a couple of years ago, and you

know, what, I really missed, this isn't for me, and stepping

back and I, you know, I was gonna say stepping down, then I

don't really want it to sound like that. Because it's my point

is just, I think it's fine. I think the most important thing

is for people to say, you know, this isn't really for me, I've

seen the opposite thing where people have realised, hey, you

know, I, the team and the company and the organisation and

the culture, those are my new materials. And what I'm

designing is that stuff now, and thrive. But I really do think

people have to find their own, you know, where they're where

they thrive in those things. Because there's nothing worse

than having a leader who kind of hates being a leader.

Jason Mesut: Yeah, I think that happens quite a lot. And you

know, some people have been asking me is like, going, I

don't know, if I'm ready for this. And, you know, to go into

these roles, I think, Well, that's good. It's good that you

are asking those questions and reflecting on that, but, but to

some extent, you won't necessarily know until you try.

So I ended up in it. And I got promoted. When I was, you know,

a craft delivery person. And I started to love it. I really

started to love it until the point when I just got sick of

hiring and sick of just doing that and sick of the team kind

of going Jason, you don't know what you're talking about. You

don't do the work anymore. And I was like and so, you know, and I

kind of went and I took a different part into what's when

I went to join plan and focus on product strategy and just go

deeper into the strategic side of things. But I do think that

actually, you might change your focus, right, and you build up

this repertoire and palette, it doesn't mean necessarily you

lose all that stuff in the past. I mean, you might find it hard

just kind of use figma again, or whatever the new tool is. But

um, you know, you might value some of the organisational side

of things, the processes there, you might value the people

management stuff, and you might try different things out for

different periods of your life. And that's okay. In our culture,

it seems at the moment that people want to pigeonhole you.

And you have to be one specific type of thing. It's very much a

kind of like a branded approach, you know, you are the only one

that does this. And, and I kind of push against that a little

bit. I think it's, it's, it's okay to have a few different

interests, they can all kind of coexist, and maybe some come

into the foreground more.

Andy Polaine: I think it's a you know, I think it's important

isn't illusion to think that you're just one of those things.

And for me, I think that's what the great Brexit resignation or

reshuffle is of I've recently heard it is largely about, which

is when people suddenly hit pause, and we're either at home

not working, or at home working, and their personal life and

their work, life was blended together, it became much

clearer, I think a lot of people that are I'm actually all of

these things at once, and it's a thing I used to say about my

wife, you know, smartphones is it's, you know, about thinking

about customers and users and stuff is obviously, you know,

when I used to commute to an office along the way, I am a,

you know, I'm a husband, I'm a father, you know, I'm a social

media curator or something, you know, fitting something, writing

something putting out there, you know, I'm also doing my

professional work you multi, you switch personas, just by virtue

of the fact it's like an app, right, from one app to the next

I'm switching who I am and what I'm being and you've got all

these multiple sides to you. And they don't just go away, it's

not like you kind of, there's a sort of locker at the door when

you go into the office, and you put all of that stuff away. And

it's only a bit of you walks in. And in fact, people who do try

to do that after I think you see this, the consequences of it,

because there's a lot of acting out and pent up frustration and

anger and all sorts of things that doesn't get spoken about in

work that then causes grief for all sorts of people. I'm going

to spring this on you because I didn't tell you in advance,

which is the last question of power of 10 has named after that

famous spill of you know, the relative size of things in the

universe, which is the last question is which one's more

thing, and it could be something overlooked or underestimate, you

know, under rated, has a outsized effect on the world, or

would have if it was redesigned

Jason Mesut: text entry on a mobile device.

Andy Polaine: Explain that.

Jason Mesut: So as much as like smartphones, and touchscreen

technology is really powerful as enabled so much we can do these

things, to so many trips and kind of accidental is, I suppose

not just text entry, it's like hitting returned, send cricket

and our food probably causes a lot of pain, a lot of

misunderstanding. But you know, I don't want to be kind of all

classical and, you know, go back to the days of the Blackberry,

but it was a really efficient, useful device I could do about

typing and whatever. And we just deluded ourselves with the

touchscreen being better for for some of these things. So just a

very micro interaction perspective, it is getting

better, but it's still rubbish. It's still terrible and causes

me so much pain and so much frustration and embarrassment.

And many, many other people too. I mean, there's all sorts of

memes around it. So yeah, that's one thing that I think

Andy Polaine: Have you read... there's a website about

AutoCorrect. Oh, Daniel. There's lots of very rude ones. They're

very funny. Have you read the book, Creative Selection by Ken

Kocienda?

Jason Mesut: I have not.

Andy Polaine: So he's the guy who basically developed

autocorrect for Apple. And there's this whole story of how,

you know, the iPhone was all the prototypes and stuff were you

know, going pretty well, but the keyboards just, we've just

rubbish, no archetype anything. And so it was where they stopped

the all the teams working on anything else and said, Okay,

everyone's just going to work on keyboard for now. And there was

like this sort of creative selection that went on. The

thing that fascinated me about as he worked with this guy, the

new surname, much can't remember. But he worked with

this interaction designer, bass, somebody who did all the demos

in macro, what's now Adobe director. And, you know, he

worked out he had this sort of idea of, you know, why surely,

you know, roughly the letters next to each other if I bring in

the dictionary, and you can kind of guess which one it's most

likely to be. It's really, really fascinating, sort of

fascinating read of, for that sort of culture, Apple of the

art of the demo, right? is particular about not calling it

a prototype is that you have to make a thing that sort of works

as if it was the real thing. Yes. It's not a prototype. It's

a demo to show. And that's the thing that's sort of went up to

Steve Jobs to then decide if you had an idea about something. You

had to kind of build demo of it. And it's good. It's a good book.

Jason Mesut: I mean, it's amazing technology that was in

there and it's been continued to be developed a lot of this sort

of drift kind of tolerance and all those sorts of things but

but you know, in and it had to be possible for it to be

convincing as a you know, to get people off their, their handsets

and stuff, and just don't just suggesting that it still got a

long way to go. And yeah, still problematic and causes a lot of

pain in the world. I'm not saying people aren't working

tirelessly on it, it's important.

Andy Polaine: You're loving from an interaction point of view,

there's a lot of details there about, you know, the bit where

they recognise that, oh, hang on, but when you're typing your,

your thumb covers the letter, and so you can't tell whether or

not so we'll make it bigger. We'll make it zoom up, you know,

as you tell, all sorts of things, lots and lots of tiny

things. Which if you've ever had something malfunctioning on one

of those things, I had an app the other day and autocorrect

wasn't I don't know, it's like it built its own interface or

something. So autocorrect wasn't kicking in. Okay. And it was

just awful. I couldn't I couldn't tell you forget how

much you owe if it's a little bit wet or something. And yeah,

one of those things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the bigger problem,

too cold weather. You can tell it's designed by people of

colour. Jason, thank you so much for being my guest. Where can

people find you on the interwebs?

Jason Mesut: medium.com/jasonmesut and medium.com/shapingdesign for

you know, the Shaping Design Series catch me on LinkedIn? I'm

in the only Jason Mesut in the world I think so that's easy.

And sometimes on Twitter, but less so these days.

Andy Polaine: And it's spelled M E suit as it su it

Jason Mesut: No, no. I. So it's just a weird thing. M E S U T.

Andy Polaine: Right.

Jason Mesut: That's why everyone gets it wrong

Andy Polaine: I got it wrong in my notes as well. Thank you so

much for being my guest on Power of Ten.

Jason Mesut: Thank you.

Andy Polaine: As I'm sure you're aware, you've been listening to

power of 10. My name is Andy Polaine. You can find me at a

perlane on Twitter, or perlane.com, where you can find

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and see you next time.