Podcasts about communicating design

Dan Brown is the co-founder of UX design studio EightShapes. He's also the author of Communicating Design, Designing Together, and Practical Design Discovery. In this conversation, we focus on Dan's Information Architecture Lenses, a set of cards that help designers interrogate IA decisions. If you're enjoying the show, please rate or review it in Apple's Podcasts directory: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-informed-life/id1450117117?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200 Show notes Dan Brown Dan Brown on LinkedIn @brownorama on Twitter @ialenses on Twitter EightShapes EightShapes's YouTube channel Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown Designing Together: The collaboration and conflict management handbook for creative professionals by Dan Brown Practical Design Discovery by Dan Brown Information Architecture Lenses: Perspectives on Structure by Dan Brown Information Architecture Lenses card deck A Lens A Day YouTube series A Lens A Day podcast Tree testing Card sorting Oblique Strategies I Ching Nathan Curtis James Melzer Karen McGrane The Information Architecture Conference Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the transcript Jorge: Dan, welcome to the show. Dan: Jorge, it's fantastic to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Jorge: It's such a pleasure to have you here. I believe that you are one of the very first people I ever met in person in the information architecture community. And I am not going to reveal the year because that's going to peg us as old, but, I've known you for a long time, Dan. Dan: It has been a long time and I love it! It never occurred to me that I would end up in a field where there would be a community and that community would be strong enough where I would have relationships with folks for decades. Do you know what I mean? Like to me, that is one of these unsung parts of the world that we find ourselves in. I don't know if that's still true. Like, I don't know if you become a UX designer today if you'd still feel that same sense of community, but for me it was... it's been one of these aspects of being in this world that I have come to appreciate more and more with each passing year. Jorge: Hear, hear! It's been a true privilege to be part of this community. And to... like you're saying to have these very long-standing relationships with people who have a real commitment and passion to the discipline. And I certainly place you in that category. Now, it's clear from what we're saying here that we know each other, but some folks tuning in might not know who you are. How do you go about introducing yourself? About Dan Dan: Yeah, that's... it depends on who I'm talking to, but in the field, I will say that I run a small web design and user experience design company. It's kind of a boutique shop, based in the DC area. Most of my professional career has been in the Washington DC area and I specialize in information architecture but also the discovery process, as part of the design, and I like thinking about... let's call it, sort of the dirty underbelly of the design process. So how do we work together effectively and how do we improve our collaboration and how do we embrace the mindsets that are essential for creativity and collaboration. Jorge: You have written three books on the dirty underbelly, in part. And, you also share a first and last name with another writer, which might be problematic for folks searching for your books, which is an IA problem. Dan: Yeah. It's... you know what? As long as they eventually find me, I'm okay with that. Actually, my hope is that people go searching for that other Dan Brown, and they discover me. So, you know, it works both ways, honestly. IA Lenses Jorge: That's great. Well, I'm going to include links to your books in the show notes, but the books aren't what bring us together today. Rather, I wanted to talk with you about your Information Architecture Lenses, which started.... why, I think I first encountered them as a Medium post? Dan: Yes. Jorge: But then they manifested as a set of cards, and I'm holding the deck in my hands right now. And they've gone on to take on other forms, and I was hoping that you would tell us about the cards and the forms they've taken and where they come from and everything about it. Dan: Yeah, yeah. I think I unveiled them at the IA conference in 2018, I want to say, and I honestly don't remember what city it was in. But I gave a talk on the lenses, and really what it was a talk about was typical information architecture problems and the lack of tooling that we information architects have, in doing our work. We've got tools that help us test IA, like tree testing. We've got tools that help us do some investigation, like card sorting. And everyone will talk about how they use spreadsheets to think about categorization. But I think the complexity and the abstractness of the spaces in which we work, make it difficult for us to really meaningfully have tools to help us do the work. And one of the things that I realized while I do IA work, is that I ask myself a lot of questions. And so I will ask sort of, "what if" questions. Like, what if we create a new piece of content, where does it fit? Or I'll ask myself how might questions like, “How might someone who's new to this product navigate through it, or be introduced to it?” I'll ask questions about how do we balance the needs of users with the needs of the business. So, I realized that I have all of these questions, and so I just started writing them down. And as I've said before, I just couldn't stop. Like I just... I thought I'd maybe have a dozen, and I kept writing. And I realized that even though some of these questions are overlapping, they each provide a unique perspective or a meaningful, distinct perspective. And it comes from my instinct to try and understand how I do what I do, and how other people do what they do. My hypothesis is that we all... information architects, you know, people think in a systems sort of way. Even designers look at something and ask ourselves questions about it. But we don't always know... can't always say it out loud or don't know exactly what question we're asking. But that's sort of the mechanism. And so, I started writing down and then elaborating on them and then giving them names, and that turned into this set of lenses with the cards, which turned into a talk, which turned into an interview, series, which I completed over the summer. Jorge: And the interview series manifests in two ways, right? There's a set of videos on YouTube and now there's a podcast, yes? Dan: Yeah. Basically, I recorded it... and this is purely an old dog refusing to learn new tricks. Like I figured out a couple of years ago, how to post videos to YouTube. I could record an interview session via Zoom and I can post it to YouTube. I learned that through some other hobbies that I have outside the business. And I was like, okay, "well I can just do this." And then I realized that I could just grab the audio from those videos, and I found an easy way to post it as a podcast, and so this is... it's literally like to me, the content is what's important. To me, kind of hearing from 50 different people about information architecture, is what's important. So finding easy ways to get it out there, was my priority. Jorge: Well, that's great. And I want to circle back to this idea of the lenses as tools. And you mentioned that in information architecture we have certain tools that we... or what we think of as tools, right? You talked about spreadsheets and tree jack tests and card sorts. In just those three there's kind of practical tools. Like, a spreadsheet is an app, right? Like a tangible thing that you can... well, tangible as far as a digital artifact goes, but something that you can open and examine, much in the way that you can pick up a hammer to do stuff. And, a card sort is more of a practice, but that is also kind of tool-like. But the lenses I see not in that realm, but more as kind of conceptual tools, right? Is that the intent there? Lenses as conceptual tools Dan: Yeah, I guess each of those is used at a different part of the process. So to your point, some of them are more like methods that we apply in certain moments. And I felt like there were no tools; there was no conceptual tooling to help us think through the complexities of the structures that we're designing. We could visualize them, yes. We could try and lay them out as best we could in a diagramming program. But really the word I've been using is interrogating them. Like really, really doing the work of a creative person, which is to sort of look at something that we built and ask ourselves, “Is this good?” You know, for art, we have the language of aesthetics. For IA, what do we have? And this was, I guess, my swipe at that, right? It's sort of my attempt to give us that. Jorge: And folks who might not have seen the lenses might be wondering how these things manifest. And I'll give an example. I pulled out one of the cards from the deck here just randomly, and it is titled, "Comprehensiveness." Dan: Yep. Jorge: And it says, "the navigation should encompass the entire domain, especially if users come with pre-existing expectations about the domain. If it doesn't, it should be clear what is excluded." And then it lists a series of questions that you can ask yourself to assess the comprehensiveness of the structure that you're working with, right? Dan: Right. Jorge: And there's 51 of them currently, yes? Dan: Yeah, 51 cards. 51 lenses. Yep. Jorge: You use the phrase, "interrogating them," which I loved. It makes me think of something like the... Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. He did them with someone else; Peter Schmidt, I think, is the name of the artist that he worked with. It sounds almost oracular, like the I Ching or something like that. Dan: Yes. Using the Lenses Jorge: So, what I'm getting by that is that the intent of the deck is when faced with some kind of... let's call it "architectural conundrum," you consult the cards. Is that the idea? Dan: Yeah, I think there are at least two ways I conceive of using these things. One is sort of the way I had to do a lot of my work early in my career, which is, I was not encountering a lot of folks who were good at systems thinking. And so I developed these questions so I could have a dialogue with someone, i.e., myself, about the work. I would design a structure and I would then serve the role of a critique person rather than a design person and try and critique it. So, the intent is to give you that voice — to give you the voice of another designer who might look at this thing and ask these kinds of questions, because you're too close to it to ask them yourself. Another mode of using these is to facilitate a conversation, which is not something that I had intended or really thought about when I designed them, but as I get feedback from folks, they are indicating that they bring these cards to meetings so that they can put them out on the table, and have people zero in on maybe what their chief concerns are. Or challenge people to ask questions about the structure. So, it ends up being a tool for facilitating conversations that are otherwise maybe difficult to facilitate or unstructured or hard for folks because they don't have the range of experience that they need to facilitate these conversations. Jorge: Well that's really fascinating. I'm really intrigued by this notion that the lenses are a catalyst for conversation either between groups of people, or in groups of people, or with yourself. I find that really fascinating. And the way that I imagine that would play out... I mean, I've used them myself, but not in a group setting. And in a group setting, I would imagine that you would want to be able to gravitate to the lens that is most appropriate to the issue under discussion, yeah? Dan: Yeah. I mean I think so. The other thing that I've heard is that people will use it to highlight issues with the team that they feel like the team is not adequately paying attention to. So, I did try and include... you know, there's a lens of ethics in there, and there's a lens of who benefits. And these are difficult conversations for folks to have when they look at their structures of their designing and are really trying to ask themselves, am I really designing this for the users, the actual consumers of this content? Or am I designing this with some other bias in mind? I'm working with an organization right now. I have the opportunity to provide some IA coaching which has really just been very gratifying for me, but it's really interesting to see them struggle with getting out of their own heads, getting out of their own space, and design a structure that will be meaningful to the actual end-users — to use an antiquated term — of this system. And even just in our first few conversations, just by virtue of explaining the system to me, just that process of explaining it, they have been able to see their navigation in a new way and understand how they need to bring new perspectives to the table. Jorge: So, it's kind of a framework for the articulation of things that might otherwise go unspoken. Dan: Yes. Well said. IA Lenses video series Jorge: That's awesome. Well, speaking of making things spoken, let's talk about the first video series and now podcast. You've interviewed different practitioners and released a video, one on each lens. Dan: Yes. Jorge: And, the range of practitioners is both wide and deep. And I'm hoping that you'll tell us a bit more about the video series, how that came about. And more importantly, I'm curious to know how your understanding of the lenses themselves has perhaps shifted or evolved, after hearing them reflected from other people. Dan: Oh, yeah. I wish I had a better origin story for the video series. I was wrapping up a project in the late spring and I saw in front of me that I would have a gap in time. I just, I didn't have a project to fill it, and I was thinking, "that's fine. I've just rolled off this really big project." I have a business partner at EightShapes, Nathan, and he and I frequently give each other permission to take some time to think about our practice or think about our portion of the business or what have you. He was very encouraging of me to not necessarily worry about filling my plate with billable work, but just think more deeply about... At that moment, I was really interested in thinking more about IA and the IA practice, and the phrase "a lens a day," popped into my head. And I pitched it to my colleagues at EightShapes and they asked me a lot of really, really, really good questions. And I'm a middle-aged man and did not heed any of their wisdom. And instead said, "you know, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to see what happens." So I was about to go off on my summer vacation, and what I did was I kind of put together a pitch, an email that I sent to folks, and a Google Form... I think it was a Google Form or a Calendly or something, to sign up, and I had recorded a pilot episode. So, the first episode I recorded with my old friend James Melzer, also at EightShapes. And the point was just to see like, could I get a 20-minute conversation out of a lens? And it was not really a good test because James and I can talk for 20 minutes about anything. But it was still enough for me to feel like this could be a thing. And then the Calendly signups started rolling in and I was like, "Oh, I think I need to do this now!" And I would record sometimes ten episodes a week because they were quick little half-hour conversations. And I would change my shirt each time, to maintain the illusion that I was recording a lens a day. And then a couple of weeks after that, I just started posting them. And it was incredibly gratifying. It was just fantastic to talk to so many different people. I mean, I got to talk to folks like you, Jorge. You know, old friends, people that we've known for a while that we don't always get to dig in and talk shop. Like, really talk about the work that we do. One of the last interviews I did was with Karen McGrane and that was just so great. You know, we've... again like two ships passing in the night, we've seen each other at conferences year after year. See each other on various Slack groups, but here to just sit down and talk about the work was awesome. But then I also contacted folks who I barely knew, and just had been following on Twitter, and seen Tweet about information architecture stuff. Folks who were relatively new to the field, and relative meaning three to four to five years into their career, as opposed to twenty-five years in. And for me, it became an opportunity to do the thing that I get to do at the IA Conference, which is meet new people in a very controlled, safe environment. And have a very specific agenda for that conversation. And that was great. It was really... it was really great. You asked me if I now see these lenses in a new way, and I think it's really hard for me to think about that at the individual lens level. I do feel like a lot of my feelings about the world of information architecture were validated. And maybe that is not a good objective for a podcast, but maybe it's what I need at this moment. But one of the things that people talked a lot about was curiosity and how that plays such an important role in their work and their process, in their identity as an information architect. And that was really gratifying to hear how important just questioning the world was to folks. But also finding joy in... which is what I take curiosity to be, is sort of finding joy in uncovering and learning. Jorge: Finding joy in finding out. Dan: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm not sure I can point to any specific lens on say, "Oh, I got a ton of new insights about this lens in particular." What was cool was no one looked at a lens and was like, "I have nothing to say about this." Or if they did, like a couple of people did say that, and then when we got into it and I had a million things to say about it. So, there was also some validation that these lenses as a framework were useful and provocative in the way that I had hoped they would be. Jorge: Part of what I see as the value of the series is that it gives these lenses wider exposure. And I'm wondering what kind of reaction you've had from folks, perhaps folks who might not be as aware about information architecture. Have you heard about anyone who's discovered this through the series? Dan: No. That would be ideal, right? If I were to outline what my objectives were, And, I mean the dirty little secret is, the idea for "A Lens A Day" popped into my head, and then I backed into these objectives. And if you listen to the conversations, you'll hear that the lens plays really just a... kind of a narrative role in sort of propelling the conversation. I don't force anyone to talk about things that they don't want to talk about — I hope! And I don't sort of force us to come back to the lens if, you know, the conversation goes in a different way. It's really just an excuse. It was literally just an excuse to talk to fifty-one different people and maybe dig a little deeper on information architecture. So, that was my goal was to talk to as many folks as I could, and maybe create some momentum around deep thinking around information architecture. I don't know if I was successful in that goal. There's interest. People are subscribing. People are listening. I get some nice comments and feedback on it. At the end of the day, it was maybe as much for the interview subjects as it was for the listeners, right? It was as much for them to give them a place to talk about the work that they do. I'm happy to use whatever cache and platform I have to provide that. That is important to me, to lift up other voices. One of the things that occurred to me way after the fact was that this is a snapshot. It's almost a time capsule of where the state of information architecture is in 2021. And I understood the... or I imbued — I don't know if I understood, but I certainly imbued the work and the series with a sense of importance, because I recognized that even if it doesn't create any momentum, what it is doing is capturing where we are right now with the practice of information architecture. And to me, in some ways that was almost more important or at least equally important to thinking of this as a vehicle for promoting IA or promoting myself or promoting the lenses. Jorge: Would you be willing to share with us your impressions of what that snapshot looks like? Dan: Yeah, and I do want to do a deep dive and look through things. I did try and capture some themes as I was recording the interviews. So, as I said, curiosity is one of the big ones. I think there are two things that stand out to me and that is — and again, the sample that I was working with was you could say biased because it was just people who said yes to some random guy emailing them — but two things stand out to me, one very positive and one very concerning. The positive one is that people see this work is highly collaborative. I think I was forged in the fires of being a sole practitioner of IA. And one of the things that was very clear when I first moved to Washington and started practicing IA here is how desperate we all were for collaborators. And what I'm hearing today is that is largely changed. I would ask people like... I did ask people about their collaboration practices, right? So I was sort of biasing the conversation in that direction and then about halfway through, I was like, "okay, well, let me change up my first question." and let me... instead of asking about how do you draw people into the process? Let me ask, "What does it look like when you're just sitting in thinking deeply about IA?" And this is not a knock on my guests, but none of them could answer that question because they would all say, "Well, I'll usually go and talk to someone." And I'm thinking to myself, that is literally not what I'm asking, but it is very telling, right? That when they're doing IA work, their instinct is to draw other people into that process. Even though I can say for certain that a lot of... you know, that there's still a good portion of my IA process that involves just sitting and staring at a spreadsheet and building connections in my head. So, that was one thing that I really appreciated: that there's an acknowledgment that this is complicated work and that it needs to be collaborative. I think the other thing that occurred to me is that the fears that I have about the lack of emphasis or the lack of resources that are being given to IA are still very much true. I interviewed very few people who called themselves an information architect; they were either UX practitioners who did IA, or they were content strategists. Which was by design, right? I wanted a wide swath, but it became very clear to me that IA is still something that a few people do and draw other people into that process, but there's not as much dedication to it in the organizations that probably really need it. when I've come to realize... actually, maybe this is one of the things that I realized through this interview series, is that information architecture is yes, in part, interrogating your structures, answering these kinds of questions. But sometimes the answers are framed in terms of trade-offs, and that by doing one thing in the navigation, we're not doing another thing, right? Or creating content types in one... you know, following one scheme, are deliberately choosing not to do it in another way. And so my next project, the next tool that I'm thinking about for information architects, is understanding what those trade-offs are. And I mean, like everything in my life, I'm conceiving of it as a deck of cards where, you can sort of make provocative choices of, you know, if you're thinking about how to structure the items in your menu, one choice that you can make is that all the items have the same weight and another choice that you can make is that some items are weighted more heavily in that menu right? That's a trade-off that you would make. And so, I'm really, really curious about identifying the range of tradeoffs that we make when we're designing a structure. So, that's one direction that I think this has provoked me to go in, and another direction that it's provoked me to go and hopefully I can do this — find the stamina to do this — is to keep up the series and keep interviewing people. It will not necessarily focus on specific lenses, because I think I've done that. But I do like the idea of having people help us understand the lens through which they see the practice of information architecture. So I will... my intent is to pick up on that theme and keep going with it, but using the lens metaphor to turn our attention to the practice of IA itself. Closing Jorge: I'm sure that folks are going to want to find out more and keep up with all the work that you're doing. Where can folks follow up with you? Dan: For better, for worse, I'm still enmeshed in Twitter. And so I think my handle on Twitter is @brownorama and I tweet a lot of work-related stuff, but also hobby-related stuff. The IA Lenses have their own Twitter account. It's @IAlenses. And that may be better if you just want pure IA content in your timeline. Yeah. And EightShapes has a YouTube channel. I don't know how to tell you where to find it, but EightShapes... you can see the interviews on EightShapes' YouTube channel, or you can look @IAlenses' Twitter to see links to the podcasts as well. Jorge: And I will include links to all of those, including the YouTube channel, in the notes. Dan: Thanks. Jorge: Well, fantastic. Dan, it's been such a pleasure having you here. Thank you for sharing with us. Dan: Jorge, I love chatting with you. I just wish we could find more excuses to do this throughout the year. Jorge: Well, let's do that. Let's make sure to do it again. Dan: Cool.

Dan Brown dives into the world of creative and collaborative mindsets, the importance of self-reflection in UX, and why we shouldn't be too rigid in our design process. Highlights include: - Which battles need to be fought in design and which don't? - Why do we need to develop better Information Architecture skills? - Do we rely too much on established design processes? - What does it mean to be assertive in a positive way? - Can you admit that you don't know and still be seen as an expert? ====== Who is Dan Brown? Dan is the Co-Founder and Principal of EightShapes, a user experience consultancy based in the Washington DC area, whose clients have included large enterprises like Capital One, 3M, and Sprint, as well as tech giants such as Google, eBay and Cisco. Dan is the creator of “Surviving Design Projects”, a game that helps teams to improve their conflict management skills, as well as the incredibly useful “Information Architecture Lenses”, a deck of cards that helps designers to interrogate their IA in different ways.  He is also the author of three books (1) Communicating Design (2) Designing Together, and (3) Practical Design Discovery, all of which are widely considered to be essential reading for UX designers looking to communicate, collaborate and practice design more effectively. ====== Find Dan here: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danmbrown/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brownorama/ Website: https://eightshapes.com/ Medium: https://medium.com/@brownorama ====== Liked what you heard and want to hear more? Subscribe and support the show by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). Follow us on our other social channels for more great Brave UX content! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TheSpaceInBetween/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-space-in-between/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespaceinbetw__n/  ====== Hosted by Brendan Jarvis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanjarvis/ Website: https://thespaceinbetween.co.nz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brendanjarvis/

In this episode: ➡️ How do we communicate our design decisions? ➡️ Communicating design decisions to various stakeholders (business, design team, development team, etc). ➡️ Aspects of communicating design decisions. ➡️ Most common design communication formats/ceremonies. ➡️ TOP 6 main takeaways. ——

In this episode of Architecture, Design & Photography we sit down with Jessica Mann-Amato, principal and shareholder at Mancini's New York office. We speak with Jessica about Mancini's state-of-the-art Design Lab where clients can interact with designs while in a virtual reality environment. Jessica Mann-Amato, IIDA, is a natural design leader. With over 20 years of client-focused design experience, she oversees workplace strategy, space planning, and interior design for Mancini's New York office as a principal and shareholder. She works diligently to bring her colleagues and clients together to achieve a shared vision, infused with a creative edge, that meets—and exceeds—expectations.Jessica utilizes Mancini's cutting-edge technology to further the design process and bring each client's vision to life. She uses the company's state-of-the-art Design Lab to lead clients through proprietary 360 Design Sessions which immerse them in their future spaces and allow for a truly collaborative and interactive design process, which Jessica has always promoted with her clients. More from Jessica Mann-Amato: Website: https://www.manciniduffy.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-mann-amato-a7106a7/ More from us: Website: http://www.trentbell.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/trentbellphotography/ 

Communicating design isn't easy, but it is necessary. A designer needs to be T-shaped, an idea popularised by IDEO's CEO Tim Brown. Listen to this new installment of Phase Podcast Talks (our last one for a while) with host Gianmarco, and if you like it help spread the word about it by sharing the episode on social media.

Andy welcomes Valerie Gernhauser back to The Next Level. Valerie is the Owner, Planner, and Designer with Sapphire Events working worldwide out of New Orleans. Listen as they discuss Matthew Myhrum's definition of what he does and the events Valerie has worked on with Matthew, plus much more.   Matthew is the Founder of Matthew Myhrum Event Visualization, where they provide concept renderings, design drawings, and production design services for event professionals. Matthew shares that they essentially communicate design not only for his clients who are event planners and designers but also to be able to sell their concepts to their clients more effectively and help them with their design process in telling a story.   Listen, as Valerie shares that for her, design isn't just decor; it involves constant innovation, and hiring Matthew allows her to show her clients exactly what the design will look like. Valerie tells a story of a wedding she worked on with Matthew to create a 360-degree presentation with a virtual reality headset and the reaction she got from her clients.   Valerie discusses the small nuances and details that Matthew puts in his presentation and how these elevate the level of reality for the client. Valerie also speaks about the importance of lighting and how it can be manipulated in Matthew's presentation to create the look that will be achieved with her design. Valerie believes that in time Matthew will figure out how to add taste and smell to his presentations to elevate the client's experience.   Have you heard about the brand new show on The Wedding Biz Network, Stop and Smell the Roses with Preston Bailey? Listen as Preston shares the secrets, tools, and technologies behind his extraordinary ability to create a theatrical environment out of any space. Also, don’t forget about Sean Low’s podcast The Business of Being Creative, where Sean discusses the power of being niched, pricing strategies, metrics of success, and so much more. You can find both shows on The Wedding Biz Network.   SUPPORTING THE WEDDING BIZ Become a patron and support Andy and the show: For as little as $6 per month, or $0.75 per episode, are you willing to support the industry insights Andy brings on his podcast? If you are so inspired: contribute.  Show Highlights: [00:56] Welcome back to the show, Valerie! [02:44] Valerie speaks about how Matthew defines what it is he does. [04:30] Valerie shares that design isn’t just decor for her, and it involves constant innovation. [05:25] What percentage of time do you hire someone like Matthew? [06:32] Valerie discusses how she works and how she does nothing unless she is under contract. [08:54] Valerie shares about working with Matthew using a VR headset so the client can visualize the experience. [11:54] Valerie discusses setting up the presentation for the clients. [14:03] Valerie speaks about the things you can design to set the ambiance and how lighting is an integral part. [15:31] Andy shares the details that can be put in these interactive presentations. [16:33] Valerie talks about how Matthew nails the little nuances that elevate the level of reality in his visual presentations. [17:31] Thank you so much for helping today! This Week's Guest Co-Host, Valerie Gernhauser - Owner, Planner, Designer with Sapphire Events Sapphire Events Valerie Gernhauser Episode 19 on The Wedding Biz @sapphireeventsweddings Facebook  @sapphireevents Instagram | Pinterest   Find Matthew: Matthew Myhrum Event Visualization Unreal Engine @matthew.myhrum Facebook @mmyhrum Instagram | Twitter  Follow The Wedding Biz on Social:  The Wedding Biz The Wedding Biz on Instagram: @theweddingbiz The Wedding Biz on Facebook: @theweddingbiz   Title Sponsor: This episode is sponsored by Kushner Entertainment  www.KushnerEntertainment.com

"Design is about making things either work properly or better and to bring purpose and direction to chaos." Listen as Andy and his guest Matthew Myhrum discuss his company, what they do, and how he got interested in creative visualization. Matthew also speaks about his background in set and video design for theater and working with Preston Bailey, plus much more on this episode of The Wedding Biz.   Matthew is the Founder of Matthew Myhrum Event Visualization, where they provide concept renderings, design drawings, and production design services for event professionals. Matthew shares that they essentially communicate design not only for his clients who are event planners and designers but also to be able to sell their concepts to their clients more effectively and help them with their design process in telling a story.   Listen, as Matthew, his process from the first meeting with the designer to the actual event, and the benefit designers get from hiring him to do renderings of the events. Matthew believes that everyone should have the ability to take risks creatively, but it's important to have a way to test that risk properly.   Matthew shares how the technology behind video games allows him to show the same detail, pick and choose backgrounds, add people, and change the lighting on his presentations to understand better what the event will look like. Technology is changing, and Matthew believes that he has to use all the tools available to stay competitive and keep his business growing.   Do you need some tips on handling stress during this crazy year? Andy has put together a list of the top ten tips for dealing with stress, which he has compiled from interviews with icons of the wedding and event industry. If you would like a copy, go to www.theweddingbiz.com/toptips.   Have you heard about the brand new show on The Wedding Biz Network, Stop and Smell the Roses with Preston Bailey? Listen as Preston shares the secrets, tools, and technologies behind his extraordinary ability to create a theatrical environment out of any space. You will also discover more about the man behind the magic as Preston reveals how his focus on personal growth has been the root of his professional success. You will have the opportunity for him to answer your questions along the way, plus Preston will invite to the show many of the star celebrities he has worked with in the past. Check out The Wedding Biz Network for Preston's new show and Sean Low's show, The Business of Being Creative. See you there.   SUPPORTING THE WEDDING BIZ Become a patron and support Andy and the show: If you are so inspired: contribute.  Show Highlights: [02:06] Welcome to the show, Matthew! [02:20] Matthew describes what he does in the most abstract of terms. [04:14] Matthew discusses training as a set designer and video designer for theater. [06:42] Matthew speaks about working with Preston Bailey and what he learned. [08:25] "Design is the point at which order and chaos sit down and have a cup of coffee."  [11:19] Matthew believes that there needs to be as many people as possible with the intent to figure out how something can be different and better. [12:15] Matthew describes his process from the first meeting with a designer to the final product. [14:01] When it comes down to logistics, Matthew is there asking for all the puzzle pieces so he can assemble them. [17:30] Matthew shares the designer's benefit for him to show them what their idea looks like. [21:03] Matthew believes that everyone should be able to take creative risks, but you should also have a way to test that creative risk properly. [22:22] What kind of immersive element can you show with your renderings? [25:20] Matthew discusses how lighting can create a moment of magic during an event. [27:58] Matthew shares about the virtual concerts, virtual and extended reality worlds Fortnite has created. [30:50] Matthew speaks about the Unreal Engine by the creators of Fortnite. [32:20] Matthew explains how this technology is helping him when he presents to clients. [35:29] Being able, in a rendering, to switch things around in the space is much more visually intuitive. [39:48] Matthew talks about how the things that are possible in a video game are now possible to do with presentations. [42:33] Matthew believes that technology is always changing, and it's necessary to know how to use these tools to stay competitive. [44:25] Always think more about the experience you want to create, not about how you go about getting it.  [45:19] Thank you for being on the show! RESOURCES   Find Matthew: Matthew Myhrum Event Visualization Unreal Engine @matthew.myhrum Facebook @mmyhrum Instagram | Twitter    Videos Madison Venue Walkthrough Unreal Engine Interactive Event Walkthrough   Follow The Wedding Biz on Social:  The Wedding Biz The Wedding Biz on Instagram: @theweddingbiz The Wedding Biz on Facebook: @theweddingbiz   The Wedding Biz Network The Music Makers   Support The Wedding Biz by clicking here.    Title Sponsor: This episode is sponsored by Kushner Entertainment  www.KushnerEntertainment.com   Mentioned: Preston Bailey Episode 66 on The Wedding Biz Preston Bailey Episode 88 on The Wedding Biz Preston Bailey Episode 265 on The Wedding Biz Preston Bailey Episode 321 on The Wedding Biz Sean Low Episode 41 on The Wedding Biz Sean Low Episode 248 on The Wedding Biz

Dan Brown is a web designer who specializes in IA, design research, and leading teams. He's written three books: Practical Design Discovery (2017), Designing Together (2013), and Communicating Design (2011), and created a card game, Surviving Design Projects, to help designers practice conflict resolution. Dan and his business partner Nathan Curtis co-founded DC-based UX design firm EightShapes in 2006. What is discovery and why is it important to design? What's the difference between Discovery and UX Strategy? or Research? How can you sell Discovery to organizations and people who are afraid of it? How has design changed since you got started in the 1990s? Links for this episode:Dan Brown on TwitterEightShapes.comDan Brown on MediumGreenOnions.com/booksDan Brown - EightShapesGreenOnions.comBrought to you by: BlueApron (Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals FREE—with FREE SHIPPING—by going to BlueApron.com/bigwebshow. FreshBooks (To claim your month long unrestricted free trial, go to FreshBooks.com/bigwebshow and enter BIG WEB SHOW in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section). Wix (Just go to Wix.com and create your stunning website today.)

Dan Brown is a web designer who specializes in IA, design research, and leading teams. He's written three books: Practical Design Discovery (2017), Designing Together (2013), and Communicating Design (2011), and created a card game, Surviving Design Projects, to help designers practice conflict resolution. Dan and his business partner Nathan Curtis co-founded DC-based UX design firm EightShapes in 2006. What is discovery and why is it important to design? What’s the difference between Discovery and UX Strategy? or Research? How can you sell Discovery to organizations and people who are afraid of it? How has design changed since you got started in the 1990s?

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: The role of product management is encompassing more design and the need to integrate design capabilities into the product team. It is a topic that Latif Nanji is passionate about, along with designing products customers love. Latif is the CEO of Roadmunk, which creates road mapping software for the enterprise.  Roadmunk was built out of Latif’s frustration to create well-designed roadmaps quickly for stakeholders. Latif shares that product managers’ ever-changing roles now involve understanding and leveraging UX and UI. The challenge is how product managers properly align design principles into their work and what values product management needs to champion. In this interview you will learn a 5 element framework for communicating design in product management: empathy in product management and design,language of design,data around design,executive buy-in, anddesigning the MSP.

Listen to the Interview The role of product management is encompassing more design and the need to integrate design capabilities into the product team. It is a topic that Latif Nanji is passionate about, along with designing products customers love. Latif is the CEO of Roadmunk, which creates road mapping software for the enterprise.  Roadmunk […]

Listen to the Interview The role of product management is encompassing more design and the need to integrate design capabilities into the product team. It is a topic that Latif Nanji is passionate about, along with designing products customers love. Latif is the CEO of Roadmunk, which creates road mapping software for the enterprise.  Roadmunk […]

The O’Reilly Design Podcast: Mindsets, impostors, and self-awareness.In this week's Design Podcast episode, I sit down with Dan Brown, designer at Eightshapes and author of Designing Together and Communicating Design. Brown is speaking at OReilly's inaugural Design Conference, January 20-22, 2016, in San Francisco. We talk about managing fixed and growth mindsets, embracing impostor syndrome, and the most important skill for all designers (hint: it's not empathy).Here are a few highlights from our conversation: Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about the studies that she'd been doing over the years about attitude, and specifically her attitude toward challenge.The studies show that if someone has been called 'smart' all their lives, they are actually more reluctant to take on a challenge because they believe that if they fail at the challenge, they will sort of undermine their own self-identity. This is what she calls the 'fixed mindset,' the sort of inherent belief that I am who I am, and nothing that I do will change that. The converse, which she noticed in doing the studies, is a 'growth mindset.' These are people who embrace a challenge because they understand that that's part of the learning process, and maybe they'll get frustrated, but they won't shy away from it all together. When people ask me what's the most important skill to cultivate as a designer, I think it's self-awareness.We talk a lot about empathy. We talk a lot about putting yourself in the user's shoes or in your colleague's shoes. I think that's really important. I like working with designers who understand what's going to be hard for them because when they know that, they can ask for help — they're good at saying, 'You know what? Visual design is not my forte, so I'll take a crack at it, but I'm really going to need some help making sure I get it right,' or 'I know that front end development is not what you hired me to do, but I'd like to take a stab at it, and I know I'm going to need some mentoring in that area.' All those kinds of messages are enormously helpful for me as a lead, but also for the designer themselves to have an understanding of where they thrive and where the opportunities are for growth. Impostor syndrome is the idea that even someone like me, 20 years into my career, still thinks, 'What am I doing here? Why are people listening to me?' Even for someone who's now decades into a career, the notion that maybe I shouldn't be here persists. I realized that I just need to be okay with that because part of being a designer is constantly doubting yourself. It sort of comes with the territory. That's the advice that I wrote in that particular article — being a designer means looking at your work and going, 'This could be better; this could be better.' You're almost constantly saying that to yourself. I think the hard part for designers is to look at that not as an excuse to stop, but as an excuse to keep going. You can go too far in the other direction; you can get into the sort of analysis paralysis, where you're constantly churning on something because it's not perfect. I guess perfectionism and impostor syndrome are really two sides of the same coin. But there is a balance, I think, that designers seek, which is, 'I understand that I need to be skeptical of the work that I do because it's through that skepticism that I experienced discomfort and challenge myself to do better.' At the same time, they need to acknowledge that it's not just them, that everyone is sort of experiencing that because that's the nature of design. Subscribe to the O'Reilly Design Podcast: TuneIn, iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS

The O’Reilly Design Podcast: Mindsets, impostors, and self-awareness.In this week's Design Podcast episode, I sit down with Dan Brown, designer at Eightshapes and author of Designing Together and Communicating Design. Brown is speaking at OReilly's inaugural Design Conference, January 20-22, 2016, in San Francisco. We talk about managing fixed and growth mindsets, embracing impostor syndrome, and the most important skill for all designers (hint: it's not empathy).Here are a few highlights from our conversation: Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about the studies that she'd been doing over the years about attitude, and specifically her attitude toward challenge.The studies show that if someone has been called 'smart' all their lives, they are actually more reluctant to take on a challenge because they believe that if they fail at the challenge, they will sort of undermine their own self-identity. This is what she calls the 'fixed mindset,' the sort of inherent belief that I am who I am, and nothing that I do will change that. The converse, which she noticed in doing the studies, is a 'growth mindset.' These are people who embrace a challenge because they understand that that's part of the learning process, and maybe they'll get frustrated, but they won't shy away from it all together. When people ask me what's the most important skill to cultivate as a designer, I think it's self-awareness.We talk a lot about empathy. We talk a lot about putting yourself in the user's shoes or in your colleague's shoes. I think that's really important. I like working with designers who understand what's going to be hard for them because when they know that, they can ask for help — they're good at saying, 'You know what? Visual design is not my forte, so I'll take a crack at it, but I'm really going to need some help making sure I get it right,' or 'I know that front end development is not what you hired me to do, but I'd like to take a stab at it, and I know I'm going to need some mentoring in that area.' All those kinds of messages are enormously helpful for me as a lead, but also for the designer themselves to have an understanding of where they thrive and where the opportunities are for growth. Impostor syndrome is the idea that even someone like me, 20 years into my career, still thinks, 'What am I doing here? Why are people listening to me?' Even for someone who's now decades into a career, the notion that maybe I shouldn't be here persists. I realized that I just need to be okay with that because part of being a designer is constantly doubting yourself. It sort of comes with the territory. That's the advice that I wrote in that particular article — being a designer means looking at your work and going, 'This could be better; this could be better.' You're almost constantly saying that to yourself. I think the hard part for designers is to look at that not as an excuse to stop, but as an excuse to keep going. You can go too far in the other direction; you can get into the sort of analysis paralysis, where you're constantly churning on something because it's not perfect. I guess perfectionism and impostor syndrome are really two sides of the same coin. But there is a balance, I think, that designers seek, which is, 'I understand that I need to be skeptical of the work that I do because it's through that skepticism that I experienced discomfort and challenge myself to do better.' At the same time, they need to acknowledge that it's not just them, that everyone is sort of experiencing that because that's the nature of design. Subscribe to the O'Reilly Design Podcast: TuneIn, iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS

Topics Dani Nordin (@danigrrl) UX Designer - what do you do Work on Drupal.org Tips for getting started with UX Resources for UX What it’s like being a designer doing Drupal contrib Thoughts on D8 D4D Module of the week Fences - https://www.drupal.org/project/fences Fences is a an easy-to-use tool to specify an HTML element for each field. This element choice will propagate everywhere the field is used, such as teasers, RSS feeds and Views. You don't have to keep re-configuring the same HTML element over and over again every time you display the field. Resources  Bentley User Experience Center - http://www.bentley.edu/centers/user-experience-center Design 4 Drupal - http://www.design4drupal.org Meta issue on user profiles: https://www.drupal.org/node/2281763 TreeJack - http://www.optimalworkshop.com/treejack.htm Axure - http://www.axure.com/ Communicating Design - http://www.amazon.com/Communicating-Design-Developing-Documentation-Planning/dp/0321392353/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1409161283&sr=8-2&keywords=Communicating+Design Undercover User Experience Design (Voices That Matter) - http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Experience-Design-Voices-Matter/dp/0321719905 An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues - https://the-pastry-box-project.net/anne-gibson/2014-July-31#nav DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014 - https://amsterdam2014.drupal.org/node Hosts Stephen Cross - www.ParallaxInfoTech.com @stephencross Jason Pamental - www.hwdesignco.com @jpamental John Picozzi - www.oomphinc.com @johnpicozzi Nic Laflin - www.nLightened.net @nicxvan Dani Nordim - tzk-design.com @danigrrl