the ux matto show

Fewer Rectangles, Please

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 18 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

Patrick Feger, a seasoned product designer, shares insights from his extensive experience in both startups and larger companies. He discusses the importance of stakeholder management, the intersection of business strategy and design, and the evolving nature of design practices. Patrick also reflects on the challenges faced during interviews and the need for designers to adopt a more research-oriented mindset. The conversation concludes with personal reflections on career aspirations and the importance of understanding the user experience.

Takeaways
Patrick has 14-15 years of experience in product design.
He has worked in both startups and larger companies.
Managing stakeholders is crucial in both environments.
Understanding business strategy enhances design effectiveness.
Constraints in business can guide design activities.
Designers should think like researchers and PMs.
Gotcha interview questions can be frustrating for designers.
Design systems can sometimes hinder creativity.
It's important for designers to advocate for user needs.
Personal health and nutrition are important to Patrick.

Chapters
00:00 Semi-cold Open?
00:16 Introducing Patrick and His Background
03:31 Similarities Between Startups and Larger Companies
22:38 The Evolving Role of Designers in the Age of AI
29:49 Interview questions that really grind Patrick's gears.
37:35 Asking Thoughtful Questions in Interviews
41:45 What's one thing that you would change about your profession?
44:28 What's one thing you wish more people cared about?
45:32 What accomplishment are you most proud of that you didn't get paid to do?
46:52 No salsa, mild salsa, or spicy salsa?
48:47 What's your favorite place on earth?
49:24 What do wish you'd done differently?
50:11 What would you do for a living if you left what you're doing now?
50:40 What do you hope to not be carrying anymore?

Also, hi. Hi. How have you been? Hey, save it for the show. So Patrick, who the hell are you? Well, I'm Patrick. I'm a product designer and one for about 14 15 years now. And most of my career worked in early face startups. Some of those were venture backed, some were totally bootstrapped, some scaled, some did it, some are sold. And then I eventually moved on to work at more medium size to larger companies, because I wanted to understand, you know, what that was like working at scale. And that's me. The fastest introduction ever. Too much? Too little? No, it's more it's more like it's either too little or you know yourself really well, and everyone else is just like, well, I don't okay. Yeah, yeah, like, if I were if I was introducing myself, I'd be like, I don't know, I make things good, debatable, but yeah, yeah, I still I still don't know how to talk about this stuff. I could take another take a little bit more detailed one. You ready? Yeah, all right. Let's do it. Oh, fuck. So Patrick, who the hell are you? Well, Matthew, I'm Patrick, I'm a product designer. This should again. All right, take two here. Well, I'm a product designer. I've been working, mostly worked in early phase startups for most of my 20s. A lot of ed tech startups, some SAS startups, business intelligence. From that experience in business intelligence, I tend to really try to lean on connecting what I'm doing as a product designer with the actual business strategy and the various levers that are kind of in place there. Beyond that, I also work at a larger kind of medium, larger enterprise company on their search engine, and as well as their kind of discovery and navigation behaviors. Not to be named. Yeah, should it be named? I mean, what it's not like anybody's going to watch this stuff anyway. It's literally high single digits subscribing right now. So yeah, it's a we're off to a good start. I guess like one of the things that have always two things from from your introduction, I can form a sentence still the comparison between the startup land and the midsize company. Not the differences, but what do you find is, is the same no matter what size you you end up or that you've you've worked in. I think it's one of the big things that comes to mind is managing stakeholders. I got a startup. You're going to have pretty much direct contact, you know, with the product leader, probably the CEO, any subject matter experts at the company for the problem space. So especially if it's ed tech, maybe someone who specializes in a certain subject area in higher ed or subject area and technology. In there, you get direct access. There's not a lot of in between, between you and the stakeholders. But as far as at a bigger company, it's the same thing, but you have to realize the different layers of people and some of their how they're being influenced in the company. But, you know, at a high level, it's still about managing those relationships and creating alignment and all that can stuff. Do you find this is a terrible interview question, because it's a close question. But do you find it easier, harder to manage that with more direct access or less direct access? Yeah, each have their trade offs. I think with direct access in a startup, where there's not, you know, tons of layers between you and the leadership. It's tough to sometimes influence how they're thinking about a problem, or even the solution that they have in mind. And part of that is it's somewhat justified, because founders and leaders in that space, you know, they've usually lived and breathed a certain problem space long before you're brought on board. But other times, it's not justified, right? And you need to, you know, poke at some of those assumptions that they're making. But that can be a little bit more contentious, like direct contentious, and tough to manage, whereas in a larger organization, it's it's kind of all about understanding what their priorities are, what their incentives are, and understanding the different layers who's related to who and all that stuff, really kind of thinking about what is their actual stake in the game? Are they just trying to ship something because they have to meet their OKRs, or they, or are you able to get them to slow down and think more holistically? And if they need to slow down, who else do you need to talk to? Do you need to talk to their boss to let them know what's going on? And how do you do that in a way that's not not to throw them under the bus, right? It's more to, hey, we need to slow this down so we can actually deliver something better. And there's a lot of assumptions we need to kind of unpack. Yeah, it feels like the what stake does somebody have in in a decision be made or a thing getting done? And this is a dust statement. But you know, the more people you add to the mix, the more spread out the stake becomes. Yeah. And and I think, you know, it it probably reaches a point where generally speaking, nobody has a stake. Yep. They might have that little like you mentioned, meet an OKRs so they can get a meets expectation in their annual review or whatever. But beyond that, you know, compare that to the CEO CTO of a startup, huge stake in the decisions that they're trying to make and also potentially less flexible in the direction they want to go. Yeah. And it's and the other hand, you get people who are maybe more flexible and that flexibility leads to decision loops. Yeah, where no one really wants to make a decision. Yeah, it's almost like grounding on the word stakeholder and stake. In larger organizations, forget what the actual stake is, right? Because there's so many other processes incentives in place. And if they're not really, really well designed, then that point to what's best for our user or customer, then a lock gets lost in translation. Yeah, it's I was talking with this about this with a couple of the other people who I've interviewed with the show so far and, you know, stakeholder management alignment is a common common theme that I think continues to be a like for me, I know exactly what to do to manage stakeholders, alignment, all that stuff, getting it done. It's just like, do we did we all want to go the same direction? At the same time, would that be good? Right. Like you talk to people on the individual level, you like sometimes they even ask that or a form of that question specifically. And the answer is always, yeah, yeah, we want to align. But then you get people in a group and it's all the sudden. Yep. Maybe we could hold off for making that decision. Right. Because we haven't talked to this person who has nothing to do with what's going on. Right. And that's kind of the that's tough, especially when it's a real top down organization, where initiatives are like, partly solutioned. It's hard to get product managers and product designers that have been, you know, trained to ask why to do something to actually go do it, or do or frankly, to do any activity that is in service of moving the needle in that direction for the initiative. And what do I mean by that? That's like, if we all disagree with it, great with the direction, but we need to define the parts that we disagree with. What are the assumptions we disagree with? And we need to define those and frame those in a way where we can actually test those. And then surface that data to leadership. And I think that last part is where a lot of PMs and designers are falling short. You know, they kind of get disgruntled and they shove their shoulders and say, Oh, we're being told to do something. But they don't know how to go about maybe making their argument against it. Right, they just think they're powerless in the situation. And I think really what's going on is leadership is asking them, Hey, can you investigate this? That's really how you should take every top down directive. Then ultimately, like if you do all the investigation correctly, give them the data. And all the data is pointing to not doing the thing and they still want to do it. That's a whole other story. But yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned in your introduction about focusing on that business side, you know, I guess that's something that I don't hear as often, although, you know, maybe some people and maybe this is an assumption on my part, but some people phrases as strategy. And I don't know that necessarily those two are interchangeable, right? Business and strategy. Maybe they are. In some respects, but like, to me, having that understanding of the business side of things has always been something that has interested me more and therefore, because it interests me, it's more important than everyone should care. But I'm wondering if like, your the attention you've put on that in your career, how has that made you a better designer and maybe also how has it hindered? Yeah, progress for you. Yeah, I think like, initially, in my career, it probably hindered me a bit in that I was always trying to kind of fit that square peg in a round hole as elegantly as possible. So what's the experience or interface that could support this business strategy? And then I think later in my career, it, it more felt like business initiatives were kind of the constraints you can put around your activities. So constraints can always be tested, right? Are these even the right constraints? But they help focus some of your activities. Like if you're going to actively pursue pushing back against the business strategy, well, now that's a whole other different set of design activities. That's, you know, asking, does the user even want an experience that looks like something that was just out of the box for this business strategy? And in that way, you're kind of testing the constraints of it. The other way is the other thing it does is it frames some of your activity around finding that overlap between user what users want and what the business wants. So it's about, you know, taking any knowledge you've built up of what, you know, from all your user testing or discovery research, and pulling on certain strings there to figure out what what might fit into this area, this overlap. And all are both are worthwhile activities to push back against the constraint, but also work within the constraint. Because I think both are going to reveal a lot of answers. I think about this sometimes, and I really wonder the extent to which the profession would be different. The solutions that tech companies make would be different. If some of the design activities we do that relate to strategy and the business side of things were done before guesses were made. Yeah. And I know that that's an idealistic imaginary place to live. But having having been in it a couple of times, it's just so so much easier to get buy in when everybody has seen what it took to get to a decision to build something versus that top down approach of being handed a solution. Yeah. We're handed a desired outcome, I should say. Well, that's the, that's the ideal, right? That's like, how we, you know, preferably a company is doing its buyer and market research. And then as well as its user research and behavioral research, and those things are kind of in lockstep with each other and testing things early. And say that's, that's the ideal for sure. Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is design does not fit into agile development. Though there are some design activities that do, but I think most of the design activities that are impactful can run similar to an agile sprint. If you decide to structure it that way. But really, just don't, don't fit. And yet we keep trying to make it fit. Yep. I agree with that. And it doesn't. Yeah, it's a nice framework, at least to sort of scope our activities and have ever really understand what we're up to. But then it just creates siloing and fracturing unless someone or a team that actually has the power. You know, is, is being effective at some of those cross cutting collaborations and setting holistic journeys and all those things. It's like you have to, you can operate in agile, but then alongside it, you have to do all of your other separate work to drive more holistic design work. Yeah. So I wonder, like, what have you changed in how you approach the work now that you're at where you're at, particularly around getting teams, getting groups, departments, companies, however, whatever level you want to work at, but getting them to care more about uncovering what the strategy should be. Like, how does that, how does that process work for you now? Like, what is your approach to it? Yeah. I feel like it's always changing. Now it's like, you know, looking back on some of the old big things that I worked on, I almost wish I had done even more detailed stakeholder mapping. So like, you know, I've done it, but do it in a way where I'm actively researching what are their priorities, what are their incentives? Because that's going to reveal a lot to me. It's going to tell me, do I need to talk to their manager as well to help the manager see why design needs involved here, what the timeline might be, all those things. I think that's the biggest thing. It's like, it's more just doing more of the same stuff, but really, in a more nuanced way in understanding how the things you uncover will actually help you negotiate with stakeholders. But if you've like found to be like, particularly within the design world, like people who have designer as a title or even researcher in that area, like helping them get from a I don't feel like what I'm about to say is really digging on design systems, you know, not but a design systems approach to solving things versus the messier ambiguous. Let's see what's out there approach like, how have you seen like, where you're at now, where you've been at before, like, particularly when you're working with the team of designers, how their transition from that has worked and hasn't worked. Yeah, I think the biggest thing I see is designers not thinking like researchers or PMs, it's more just, I have been given this problem space, I need to just create some mockups and see what works. But I think there's a lot more that can be done there with designers to make them think like researchers like every mock up you create is actually a hypothesis, etc. And framing your designs that way helps everyone else plug into it. But also getting designers to think more like a PM is yes, that research stuff, you know, depending on how your organization works. But it also, I would say helps designers think more about risks, how much of this feature are we going to design and release? So what's the first release versus, you know, what do we actually want to get to? I'm thinking more iteratively like that is usually helpful. Yeah, it's, I've found it to be, I know I've written about this before, but it's, it always seems like a missed opportunity when I talk with or work with designers that don't have that that interest in exploring those spaces, like PM and researchers were thinking like that. And again, like, as I've said before, I also understand sometimes people are at a point in their career where they just want to make some rectangles. Yeah. Because he doesn't like rectangles, that's what I'm saying. I mean, I think what they're doing is they're that's where we get into me thinking about titles and where they've gone. Like, I feel like, you know, before there was the term UX UI designer, and then in a lot of agencies, they still have like a dedicated UI designer, you know, that gets certain things that have already occurred in the design process handed off to them. That's fine. But I think it's going to hinder their career. They're not going to really be that full spectrum product designer, because there's a lot baked into that title, I think. The other thing is, I totally just blanked on what we were talking about, sorry. That's okay. It's like about the, I mean, and maybe we don't need to talk about it. But to make and I hope, what was it? Hell if I know. We were talking about how, you know, potentially limiting a career it is, if you aren't investing or at least interested in thinking like a piano researcher. Right. And then the other thing is like, you know, if we look at a new technology that came along AI, that's only going to continue to grow, there's going to be more types of AI. When things are really data heavy, I feel like designers, their job is always to kind of default to the behavior and start thinking like scientists and think, you know, about creating the hypotheses and bridging that gap between the data and the user. And so I think if you're pigeonholing yourself as a UI designer, really just focusing on the visuals, the interaction, you know, you might find yourself with less job opportunities in the future. I don't want to scare anyone. But I feel like that's kind of the direction we're moving in. And I think for a while, we're going to be in the space of like taking AI and layering it on top of our existing tooling just to have a human in the loop that can work more at scale. Right. So if you're like a sales, like an SDR or a BDR, there's already some pretty scary and really good startups out there that are creating products that can write the emails for you, identify leads, you know, send up follow emails and create that whole funnel. Increasingly, people's jobs are going to be more about controlling giving or designers jobs are going to be more about giving those types of people or users controls to work at scale. So I don't think interfaces are totally going away or anything like that, especially not anytime soon. But I think it's going to benefit designers if they are able to start thinking a bit more about, you know, research, framing hypotheses, focusing on the behavior and being that bridge in between users and the data. Yeah. You were saying that I was thinking, especially at companies that have a really robust design system, that can be just put together for whatever you need. Yep. And it's done. Like, at what if you're at a company that doesn't have that, there's probably a little bit more runway or longevity wise for for being there as a screen interface element designer. Right. But the more robust these things get, the more commoditized your time becomes and you can just be replaced. Right. And then that gets us into a whole other topic of our design systems, you know, hurting designers ability to do visual and interaction design. Because some design systems are so good, or at least internally, people perceive them as so good. And then no one questions them. Right. They, they just take the different elements, the components, they put them in place, but they never consider the larger context. What's the user trying to do here? And thinking about how some of these components need to be refined or even just rethought completely. And I'm seeing a lot of that too, where it's people take the design system at face value, and they just assume that it's working. It's great. Let's not contribute to it, that kind of thing. Yeah, I thought that was the whole part of the design system. So forget it, right? You're saying you're saying it's like a living thing that needs to be managed and governed over time. What? That doesn't make sense like on Twitter. I think I saw a tweet the other day, someone was like, tweeting at the design community, trying to seek advice, saying, should I create a design system before I've worked on in the problem space, you know, creating solutions? Or should I do it after and let things evolve? And I was like, Holy cow, that's, that's a question that exists right? Of course, it's the latter, right? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, to be fair, like anytime that I start off a new website, or even like a deck or something like that, pick your fun color. I mean, forget the context, right? Like, figure out what it's going to look like. That never gets me in trouble. That's so funny. When it's my own stuff, I can do it. Yeah, it's so funny, though, it is like, it's still some of the things you learn, you know, in school as a graphic designer are still very applicable to how you think of like design systems and building things at scale, right? Because you don't, yeah, you don't pick, you know, the, the form before you understand the function, you know, it's like, like you're saying, you don't pick your, I mean, it's fun to pick your fonts and font sizes up front. But then you find out on page 10 of your slide deck as you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This needs to be a five point font to fit all this stuff on here. Okay. Yeah, and I get it because part of the and I know the reason that I do this is because a lot of times it's, it's the easiest thing to control that makes me feel like I'm making progress. Yeah, that's a big thing. That kind of relates. And that relates back to our earlier discussion about, um, you know, designers trying to influence stakeholders and creating alignment. Everyone wants to just look like they're making progress. And the only way to look like that is to do very tangible things like create mockups or even build and ship something. So that's a crazy behavior. That's really tough to take him back. Yeah, it is. And it's the, again, it comes down to fear, right? I'm afraid someone's going to see that I'm not, see what I'm doing and think it's not work. Yeah. Whereas it is work to go and talk to a subject matter expert or a customer or the CEO and say, what's going on? What are you trying to do? Yeah. Explain this again. I don't understand. Um, I guess what I'm saying is sometimes meetings are okay. Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes. It's not on Friday. Damn it. We're recording on Friday. Is that what this is? Sure. It's meeting now. Yes, it is a meeting. It has it, it has an agenda. It has attendees. I had a calendar invite. It's a real meeting. Terrible. Okay. So one of the things when we were talking before we started talking today that you brought up was, and I think the segue here is, is like designers' careers and how they progress. Yep. But part of that progression is, you know, looking for new jobs and, and finding, you know, opportunities for more experience. And you had mentioned about, I think you put it, any of your questions that really grind my gears. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like it's the most popular, critical, and gotcha question designers get asked is, you know, tell me about a time you disagreed with an approach or something like that. Um, and I think the question is even more specific than that, that I'm trying to reference, but it's essentially like, I had to give an example of a time where, you know, design was brought in in the 11th hour, and I actually slowed things down and say, and connected it to a business goal and said, hey, we actually have to do x, y, and z, because it's connected to this business goal. Here's why it's connected to the actual design. Let's slow this down. It actually worked. But then in the interview, they asked me, you know, what would you have done if nobody listened to you? And I said, well, you know, I probably would have gotten the stakeholders together and made sure we are all aligned on what the business goals were, etc. And then ask if, you know, it would be okay if we raise this question to their leaders, right? You know, collectively. So I'm not just like going around them, but we're kind of a united front. And then the interview artist asked me, well, what if you couldn't do that? What if no one at the company wanted to do the right thing? And to that, I kind of like, I know what they're expecting. They're expecting me to be this grandstander of design and stand on a soapbox and say, we will not ship this thing, etc. But it's totally unrealistic. And I think like the most realistic thing you can do in that situation is think iteratively. So think about where do we need to get see? Well, what's the smallest thing we can ship right now because we're on this tight deadline that sets us in that direction? And outline that for everyone. And I think that's the thing to do. And I gave that answer. They said, they said, so you would do do no harm. I was like, I guess, but really what I'm doing is I'm prioritizing the user here. Because if I throw my arms up and kind of grandstand and say, we're not shipping this, they're just going to go around me. And they're going to ship something that is crazier. And so it's really in service of the user. And I think that's the best way to handle that situation. Because realistically, the other stakeholders are going to just come up with something and ship it, connecting this back to our earlier discussion about behaviors and wanting to feel like you're making progress. So and doing something tangible. That's what they're going to do. So I've always felt like, well, why don't I just at least outline the vision and ship the smallest thing that sets us in the right direction? So at least we're taking a step in the right direction. But yeah, I've those gotcha questions. Can we stop asking them? Yeah, it'd be great. Yeah, because obviously, I mean, your answer is fine. The real right answer is, of course, to quit on the spot. Yeah, exactly. Or grandstand and say, we will not ship this. But yeah, you know, they're going to they're just going to go around you. No, it's going to listen to you. They're just going to go around you, make a bigger mess. Right. Yeah, I mean, even if you're the VP of design or even SVP of design. Right. Chief design officer, they still might not listen to you. Exactly. Because in some companies, that's how design fits in culturally. Yeah, I, some of these questions. And I get it. It's like, we want to come up with this hypothetical or maybe if you have a real example where you're under a lot of stress and we want to see what you do. And it's like, they're always, the assumption is always, you're completely on your own. Right. Right. And I'm thinking, you know, maybe someone's interviewing at a company that has a design group in it already. Like, you're not going to be on your own in that stuff. Right. Or to have to deal with that stuff. But even and so it's, yeah, go ahead. But even then, it's like, I think they're expecting you to, um, you know, you could say you'll go to your design leadership and get them involved. But then that just tells them when things get tough, you go to mommy and daddy, right? It's like, right. You can't win. But people who think that are wrong. Right. The right thing to do is to get as many people as possible aligned toward helping the user. And use that momentum, that pressure, that social pressure to block or, um, redirect the energy that's trying to get out the door that is potentially harmful to the user. Yep. And so it's, it's like, I get you, I get some of these questions and, you know, and I've had the experience where one of the sea level people said we just don't care about design. And I'm like, I can't do anything with that. Like, as a, as a mid-level designer at the time, I'm not going to spend years building up social capital within a company enough to get a company to start caring about design, especially when the company is already 20, 25 years old. Yep. It is, for me, the right decision to say, I'm going to help as much as I can, but I'm going to go find another job. Because why would I give my energy to someone who truly doesn't give a shit versus people who just aren't thinking in those terms yet? Like, I make a distinction there, but I run, I don't know if I'm lucky or if it's normal or if I'm unlucky. I just run into a lot of the, we literally don't give a shit. And, you know, those interview questions, I've gotten them to, and it's like, what do you do? Right. And to me, it was like, you know, hearing their response to my answer, I was like, oh, I just found out a lot about how you think about how that should operate and a little bit about your organization. So it was interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's part of the interview processes that you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. So that's good to find this stuff out. What would, what's a better question to ask? What do you think? I think it's, it's more, it might be more about the follow-ups. I think it's an okay question to ask, but the follow-up questions are really indicative sometimes of them wanting you to be some superhero, right? You know, like, those follow-ups that I got about, every answer I gave was perfectly fine, but it wasn't good enough. And they wanted to keep creating hypotheticals. And I was like, okay, well, I don't know that this, it's realistic still. But the expectation, I could tell what they're trying to, the answer they're looking for. And I'm like, I'm just not going to give it because it's not realistic. Yeah, and I'm, yeah, I'm not that kind of employee. Well, I guess I am a little bit, I've been known to grandstands before. It's happened once or twice. But I mean, it's, you know, and what happened in those scenarios then, is the thing, did they go around you and ship something that was pretty janky? Yeah, ultimately the user loss, the customer loss, right? Exactly. But, you know, then it goes out and they spend $50 million trying to build this new service and they don't, they don't listen to me, but they listen to, I think it was McKinsey. They went out and hired McKinsey instead of me. McKinsey was doing some other things for them too. But, McKinsey was like, oh, yeah, it's great. It's great. Everyone's gonna love it. Yeah, it's amazing. And no one wanted it. And I was like, told you, but does the, the CEO, doesn't take a hit for it, you know? Yeah. It's just like, well, this didn't work out because of this flaw. All right, moving on. And I just, I don't know how, how to do it in such a way that, that it really, that you can't do anything but harm reduction while you're on your way out. Right. So, tough one. Yeah, I mean, it just, I think it really just depends on how much the other people really want to improve things. I really care about the customer. I care about the user. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's been small things where there's just been like, stuff on the screen that got, that was in, that was like placeholder imagery for in the mockups that got built into what went out with the app. Yeah. And I was like, we need to remove that. And the team was like, no, no, we'll leave it in. Because, you know, we don't have a reason to take it out. Right. And like, but it's dumb. Right. And that goes back to it. It's like, that goes, they wanted to leave it in because they wanted to show progress, right? They wanted to ship something tangible. They forgot what the actual stake was. Yes. There it is. Full circle. Yes. And if you've been doing the drinking game during this episode, you should have taken a drink last day. There you go. All right. So, I guess what we're saying is we don't know what to do other than try and help and hope for the best. See or no? See. Okay, good. Solved it again, Patrick. Solved it again. Beat the internet. All right. So I'm asking people questions. I'm calling it my seven plus or minus two questions. Because it makes me laugh. And the first question is, can be what we just talked about or something else, but what's one thing that you would change about your profession? Whoa, that's tough. I don't want to say something super cheesy in mainstream to say, oh, just give us a more of a seat at the table so that these scenarios we're talking about don't happen. But that comes with a certain amount of responsibility that I think a lot of people don't know that they're asking for. And they say, give us a seat at the table. But some way to better respond to those incidences that we were just talking about, we have to stop this thing from leaving the station or whatever it is. I think that's a big one for sure. Yeah. I feel like potentially from an interviewing perspective, I guess it depends on what the rapport is you have with the person who's interviewing you, but is to come back with a question instead of an answer. It's like, tell me about a time that it's happened in your company, and what happened there. What are your expectations of somebody? Not to get around answering, but I kind of, like I said, you're interviewing them as much as they do, but really push it back on them and say, in the nice way of, what's the purpose of your question? What do you really want to know? Maybe you can offer a tidbit up first of a story and then say, I'll tell you about this briefly, but I also want to know about why you're asking that question. So you don't come off as combative, so you exchange some information, principle of reciprocity, whatever it is, but just take the politician away of just answer the question you want to answer versus the one you're asked. Try it out, people. Just try it out. All right, next question. What's one thing you wish more people cared about? And no constraint about what this relates to. So it doesn't have to be design-related? Oh man, that's an easy one for me. It can be, but that's an easy one for me. Food and nutrition and the stuff that's in our food, that's a big one for me. Like stuff in our food of stuff that shouldn't be or? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like basically boycott the the middle isles of the grocery store and shop on the perimeters. So there's instances of, in some countries, some of the things we put in our food is totally banned. They recognize it as not fit for human consumption. Sure is tasty though. Thanks to that added sugar. Next up, what accomplishment are you most proud of that you didn't get paid to do? Oh wow. Oh, that is tough. Is it tough because you're always about the money? I hear that's me too. Exactly. Let's see. What accomplishment am I most proud of to involve money? Well, since my mind's already there, you know, with the first question, being able to not necessarily cure, but, you know, drastically improve some of my health conditions, which is, you know, watching what you eat and reading labels, but also, you know, doing your research about, you know, where's this piece of beef coming from that I'm eating, you know, all that kind of stuff. It has a huge impact. It takes a while to have that impact because everyone's, you know, just looking for the quick fix, but if you're actually disciplined and you do it, it pays off. So I think just having a discipline to carry all that through and do all the research, and that was a big accomplishment for me. Cool. All right. Next one, most important, so I'm putting it in the middle. And it's food related. There we go. So here we go. No salsa, mild salsa, or spicy salsa. Oh, man. I'm going to go mild salsa. The old me would have gone spicy salsa. There's nothing wrong with spicy salsa. It just doesn't agree with me anymore, but, yeah, I love the taste, but I'm going to have to go mild salsa. Make your own or, um, been a while since I made salsa. So probably not make my own. Just read the label. Guest, guest number three on the show is a, is a make your own salsa. So, no, I'm asking, like, yes. I don't know. All right. So lessons learned from earlier. Matthew, why are you asking me that question? The real reason I'm asking is because I needed nine questions to get my seven plus or minus two. And also, it's a, when I'm, when I'm feeling a bit down, sometimes I will watch bits from the Craig Ferguson time on the, on the late late show on YouTube. And there's just one thing about salsa that just everyone loses it. And it's, it's basically like, I don't care for salsa, but when I do spicy and it just makes me laugh. So I put this in here as sort of a no match. There you go. My, uh, my go-to is watching bloopers of the office. There you go. For some good YouTube rabbit holes. So the next question is, what's your favorite place on earth? Whoa. Favorite place on earth. I would say just camping somewhere. That'd be awesome. It's been a very long time for me, but it just makes me feel happy thinking about it. But realistically, what, what is an actual place that's in my life that I regularly visit? I'm gonna go with, uh, Weigmas grocery store. It'd be a weirdo. There's no wrong answer to any of these. So relative to what first comes to mind when I ask you this, what do you wish you'd done differently? Oh, this isn't going to be good. I'm going to say, so I've always had an interest in like, uh, Kinesiology, is that how you say it? Like movement, human body, as well as physical therapy stuff. So if I could go back and do it all over again, I might do that. Um, but maybe someday I can find a product design job that kind of marries those two things hopefully. So if you're out there, any company, that's hiring for something like that. Higher profit. Which is funny because the next question, what would you do for a living if you left what you're doing now? There you go. That's what I did. You already answered it. But I think, yeah, the two, the two professions are technically similar when you boil it down. You're just trying to help people, right? It's just once a lot more hands-on face-to-face, the others through a rectangle. So I think I'd just like to remove the rectangle. Rectangle reduction system activate. Okay, so imagine, last question. Imagine it's a year from now. What do you hope to not be carrying any more? Carrying. Like, however you interpret that. Carrying. Let's go with, I've got some, uh, some cartilage damage in my knee. We're just slowly rehabbing. It takes years to rehab that because you can't, you know, anger the cartilage while you're strengthening it, which is damn near impossible. But I'd like that to be in a better spot so I can feel like I can do more sports or close to things like that. Like, I can golf, but that's about it right now. So that's a big one. I'd like to not carry around, I don't know how you would phrase that. It doesn't have to be elegant. Yeah, the weight of having to rehab it or get it to a point where it's more useful. So what sport would you introduce? That's tough. Um, I don't know, like, I'll never get back to playing soccer. That's gone because that's like way too demanding on it. Um, I think maybe something like pickleball or, I don't know, maybe tennis. I don't know if I could go that far because that's going to be pretty demanding as well on it. But something, something on that pickleball level. Yeah. Yeah. So soccer ruined your knees too? Uh, pretty much. It was that and weightlifting and being told it was tendonitis for years and then it wasn't walking off. Wasn't, wasn't tendonitis. So yeah. The way I phrased it is I had old man knees when I was 16 with it. Um, yeah, and they still are not, I'm not 16 anymore. So, uh, they still haven't really recovered. Did you play soccer? So, um, nice opposition. Uh, almost always some defense position. So it was, I played a lot when I was a kid and this probably hurt, probably part of the reason was because it was Alaska and, um, the season is very short there. So it was really intense and top off. But on top of that, you know, the sun's up all the time and so you can be playing ultimate at one of the morning and still see the disc pretty easily. Right. Um, riding your bike to them, throw all these things, like having it, my knees kicked multiple times, um, one time, but my knee goal post foot knee. Al. That'll happen. Um, yeah. So it's, just by the time I was in my mid teens, it was just maybe my knees were kind of done, so I had to stop playing. So what I got from that is you lived in Alaska? When? Uh, oh, you know, good 20, 20 some odd years. I think a total of about 23 years or so. Yeah, but I was born there. So I didn't know that. Which I still have a lot of ways. So, yeah. Yeah, summers were fun, winters, I've had enough snow. Yeah. So that's why I live in Oregon, I guess, because it doesn't really, when it does snow, it lasts for a week, usually maybe two and then it's done. So yeah, usually. Anyway, all right, man. Thank you. That's it? Yeah, amazing. Let's, let's stop talking. You know, I started using that, uh, in my meetings with people. I say, the let's stop talking. Yeah. Because I go, well, everyone knows, uh, you know, there hasn't been that much turnover. So people still know you and who you are. And I was just like, I'm gonna do what Matthew used to do. I'm gonna say let's stop talking. Go away. Yeah, just go away. Yeah, I sometimes meetings don't know how to end. So it's just like this has moved beyond my ability to pay attention. Please leave. Bye.