Podcasts about eightshapes

Chris Strahl sits with Nathan Curtis as he explores the delicate balance between reusing existing components and creating customized solutions in UI design. They unpack the complexities of design systems, touching on everything from color selection to ensuring functional and aesthetic harmony, providing insights on principled design choices in a world where reuse and customization are equally important.View the transcript of this episode here.Check out our upcoming events here.GuestNathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown near Washington, DC in 2006. He's passionate about information architecture, user experience design, and front end development, and leads and consults with design systems teams to chart a strategic path and optimize operations. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs about design systems regularly, and speaks at events worldwide.HostChris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

In this episode, the inimitable Dan Brown, Principal and Co-Founder at EightShapes, joins us for a chat and a drink about the world of Information Architecture. Dan talks about how the IA domain has evolved over the years, and how his company has evolved with it. In the process, we discuss what is needed to make good ideas come to life now that the skills and tools required to build well-constructed products have converged so much over the years. We also discuss the ways that designing projects has changed, from titles and casting, to documentation, and everything in between. Enjoy! Drinks: Leinenkugel Summer Shandy, Devil's Backbone Lime Margerita, High Quality H2O Links: EightShapes, LLC: https://eightshapes.com Books Designing Together: https://tinyurl.com/WBUDanBrown1 Communicating Design: https://tinyurl.com/WBUDanBrown2 Practical Design Discovery: https://abookapart.com/products/practical-design-discovery Cards Surviving Design Projects: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/surviving-design-projects-v2 IA Lenses: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/information-architecture-lenses Podcast A Lens A Day: https://open.spotify.com/show/2saemBQZKAzRGuDhO9y8Hi?si=37500f0ea9e049e9 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/whatbubblesup/message

Dan Brown Dan Brown has focused his design work on information architecture for the past 25 years. Along the way, he has written three books, designed a design game, and created one of the the most-used tools in the profession, the Information Architecture Lenses card deck. Dan is very thoughtful about the practice of IA and has a lot to say about how the field has evolved. We talked about: his information architecture work at EightShapes his recent podcast interview series covering his Information Architecture Lenses project and insights he had as he talked with his guests his discovery that even apparently solitary elements of IA practice always involve collaboration with other people the evolution of information architecture practice and thinking over the past 25 years and the increasing clarity around systematic thinking the relationship between information architecture and content strategy his appreciation gained in the study of physical architecture of the constraints that physical space has as a metaphor for IA work how IAs could benefit from using different metaphors - city parks instead of functional buildings, or something besides family trees ideas around his next deck of IA cards, which will be more about how we make design decisions the shift of IA practice from a "bridge" practice to a "hub" practice the movement of IA practice into the UX field the parallels between role-playing games and collaborative storytelling and UX design work Dan's bio Dan, one of the co-founders of EightShapes, specializes in information architecture, user research, and product discovery. He has worked with clients large and small to tackle complex information architecture problems. He is the author of three books on user experience. He also designed the game Surviving Design Projects and created the essential tool for IA, The Deck of Information Architecture Lenses. Connect with Dan online Twitter Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P82WCFQ0j2w Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 114. The practice of information architecture has evolved a lot over the past 25 years. We use different metaphors now to talk about our work, and the field has largely been incorporated into UX design. Dan Brown has looked at these changes from a number of different perspectives, most notably as the author of the "Information Architecture Lenses" card deck, a tool that has helped innumerable practitioners improve their view of their IA work. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 114 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Dan Brown. Dan is the principal and founder at Eightshapes, an agency that he founded and runs. Dan, welcome to the show. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you do there at Eightshapes. Dan: Sure, Larry. Thanks for having me on the show. I co-founded Eightshapes in 2006 with Nathan Curtis. He and I started it as a boutique UX design firm. And to this day, that's what we're doing. We do a lot of work for clients of all sizes, helping them think through complex information architecture problems. Nathan, of course, is focusing a lot on design systems these days. So that's what we're doing here at Eightshapes. Larry: Yeah. Design systems are everywhere. We have to have a whole other conversation about that. But what I wanted to talk to you about today is really focus on your core competency, which is information architecture. I always have, in fact, I have it right here, I'm holding it up for the folks who are watching the video, your information architecture lenses. I refer to them every IA project I do. They're- Dan: That makes me so happy. Larry: Yeah. Dan: That brings me so much joy. Larry: Well, and what brings me even more joy is that you just did this series of intervi...

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/

We sat down with Dan Brown to talk about the joy and pain of facilitation, issues with various types of maps, and why designers have to get comfortable talking to people. Dan is a titan of Information Architecture, co-founder of EightShapes, and the author of several useful books and tools for doing better design work. Apologies to Boston. ----more----  EPISODE LINKS Dan Brown EightShapes Twitter Medium   Dan’s cards Information Architecture Lenses Twitter Medium   Dan’s book Practical Design Discovery   California Three States Initiative ballotpedia.org   #unicorn Vans They're real   IA Summit iasummit.org   Jared Spool Wikipedia Center Centre Medium    

Resilient Cores, YouTube Marketing, Transitional Eating, and More in the Process Hacker News for this week. For all the links, check out the show notes at: http://www.hacktheprocess.com/process-hacker-news-for-june-5-2018-resilient-cores-youtube-marketing-transitional-eating-and-more/ Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your weekly roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This week we’ve got resilient cores, YouTube marketing, transitional eating, and more. Enjoy! Awards Awesome news from Adam Siddiq! His book, Shackled, was announced as a finalist in the biography section of the 2018 International Book Awards. Events There’s still time to register for Agile and Scrum: Dramatically Improving Software Delivery led by Ron Lichty in San Francisco on June 9. Media The Life Through Transitions Podcast by Jon de Waal just recently launched, and the latest guest, dietitian Diane Summers explains our relationship with food and the body during transition. For the last few weeks Mike Massy has been releasing free weekly lyrics videos for some of his recent songs, such as Al Ennou, letting you sing along with the original Arabic or read translations in English as the song plays. Check out the trailer for Kate Swoboda’s new book, The Courage Habit. She was also interviewed for the Intangibles podcast, where she talks about more than her business and her book. Tara Hunt dishes out some secrets on how to build a great YouTube marketing strategy in an interview by Valene Jouany of Smarp. The Truly Social Podcast, hosted by Tara and Carlos Pacheco, also delivers its second episode, which tackles the topic of why the agency model is broken. Jeremy Ryan Slate guests on Nicole Holland‘s podcast, the Business Building Rockstars Show, to speak about podcast guesting, community, and more. Hear a poem from Pace Smith as she and Kyeli explore the topic of the paradigm glue and why people get angry at you for existing. The Man Up with Millar Experience Podcast features JuVan Langford having a conversation with Millar Montgomery about fatherhood and masculinity. Writing Business can cause stress, so find out what business skills can help boost your social life and your work in this blog entry by Frank Strona Recommended Resources The Enterprise UX conference is coming up June 13th through the 15th in San Francisco, and you’ll find Nathan Curtis of UX design agency EightShapes, who was referenced by Jina Anne among the line-up of workshop presenters. Learn to unleash your potential with Lewis Howes, a coach and speaker whom Malek Banoun and Paula Jenkins follow. Lewis is bringing you his Summit of Greatness from October 4th to 6th in Columbus, Ohio. Andrew Nance suggested following Rick Hanson, who recently published a new book called Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.

As an organization and its products expand, so do the complexities of making sure that that there’s a consistent user experience. How do you accomplish that across multiple teams and locations? Lou talks with Nathan Curtis of EightShapes about his workshop at Enterprise UX 2018, Scalable Design Systems, and how having a design framework bridges the gap between teams and creates a cohesive customer experience. Follow Nathan Curtis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nathanacurtis

Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your weekly roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This week we’ve got billionaires, soft fronts, wild hearts, and a meaningless, uncaring universe. Enjoy! Courses If you want to center your business around love and inspiration, sign up for The Heart of Money, a course created by Mark Silver which starts on February 28. Events A free online summit hosted by Tom Morkes called the $100K Launch School begins February 19th and runs until the 24th. Two of our other past Hack the Process guests, Brennan Dunn and Ryan Waggoner, along with myself, are among the featured speakers. As a speaker at Relationships and the Health-Promoting Power of Connection Across the Lifespan, Rhonda Magee will be discussing the value of compassionate, inclusive communication. This event will be held at UCLA from March 16 to 18. Are you wondering what role managers play in Agile teams? On February 28, Ron Lichty will be speaking about that to the Beyond Agile group at Impact Hub in Seattle. Programs Looking for funding for your tech projects related to diversity and inclusion? Ashe Dryden and her team at Fund Club would love to give you a hand. Apply now! Media Rich Mironov was interviewed on InfoQ’s Engineering Culture podcast about product development trends. Entrepreneur Naveen Jain guests on The Inner Changemaker Podcast with Jay Wong to explain what’s involved in becoming a billionaire. Anxiety and depression are ongoing life issues Pace Smith and Kyeli have to deal with. In the latest podcast episode of The Dervish and the Mermaid, they share how some recent medication changes help them not care whether the universe is a meaningless, uncaring void. Writing Process Street, founded by Vinay Patankar was featured on INC.com as one of four tools to run your company remotely. LeadFuze led by Justin McGill recently published a new article showing some copywriting principles to test out in sales and email campaigns. Recommended Resources In Brene Brown’s most recent interview on the On Being Podcast, she emphasizes the importance of having a strong back, soft front and a wild heart. Brene was referenced by two of our past guests, Kate Swoboda and Heather Chauvin. Living Compassion has opened registration for two workshops, Conscious Compassionate Action and Parenting with the Mentor. Cheri Huber, admired by Kate Swoboda and referenced during Mike Massy’s episode of Hack the Process, is a mindfulness teacher and the founder of Living Compassion. Nathan Curtis, founder of user experince design firm EightShapes and a recommendation made by Hack the Process guest Jina Anne, explains Design system intermediaries in his latest blog post. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.

Designing good experiences is hard, but what about bringing your designs to life? This topic has always been my biggest professional frustration. Today our guest is James Stone, an independent design systems engineering consultant. You'll learn how design systems can help alleviate the pain, and how to speed up the development process using frameworks, templates, starter projects, and living (coded) style guides. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. Show Notes Design Systems Accelerator — James's new project Zurb Foundation, Bootstrap — popular front-end frameworks Zurb's Youtube Channel Zurb's Starter Projects Lightning Design System — a design system by Salesforce Nathan Curtis (writing for EightShapes) — recommended reading on design systems James's website CSS Box Model Course, Living (Coded) Styleguide in 60-minutes — James's training products Get your special discount on some of James's products Take the free Design Systems Crash Course Follow James on Twitter: @JAMESSTONEco Today's Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Zencastr. It's the easiest way to record your podcasts in studio quality, free from any Skype glitches or artifacts — like we do here at UI Breakfast. Simply send a link to your guests, and they will be recorded in separate tracks straight from their browser! To check it out, go to zencastr.com and use your promocode UIBREAKFAST to get 20% off your first three months. Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

This podcast features Dan Brown, Co-founder of Eightshapes and author of several key design books, and his Presentation, “Curiosity, Skepticism, Humility: Achieving the Right Mindset for Design Discovery in Teams” from the design leadership conference Prototypes, Process & Play on August 11th, 2017. [Prototypes, Process & Play][1] presentation podcasts are sponsored by [Balsamiq][2] - with Balsamiq Mockups, anyone can design great software.

Dan Brown inspires us to get great at asking questions because 'the question' is one of our most invincible resources. He reminds us to maintain a spirit of collaboration with the the team members we’re struggling with since they care as much about the project as we do. He encourages us to always peer beneath the surface at the underlying structure of whatever we’re working on. He also motivates us to never settle. Secret Identity (7:47) Origin Story (9:29) Biggest Failure (20:23) Awkward Testing Story (23:27) Design Superpower (28:04) Design Kryptonite (30:52) UX Superhero Name (33:50) Fights for Users (36:08) Habit of Success (40:54) Invincible Resource (43:27) Recommended Book (51:23) Practical Design Discovery (53:40) Overcoming Team Tension (57:00) Best Advice (69:04) Contact Info (71:48) Check out the detailed show notes and Eli Jorgensen’s astonishing superhero artwork at userdefenders.com/042 This episode is brought to you by Adobe, makers of XD. Try it free at userdefenders.com/xd Get your FREE audiobook from Audible at userdefenders.com/freebook. No commitment. Cancel in 30 days, and you won't be charged. The book is still yours to keep.

Nathan Curtis co-founded EightShapes in 2006 and is passionate about interaction design, information architecture, and front-end development. He specializes in design systems consulting for teams large and small, regularly writing about and speaking at events worldwide. Co-hosting this week is Micah Godbolt, Senior Design Developer at Microsoft.

Nathan Curtis co-founded EightShapes in 2006 and is passionate about interaction design, information architecture, and front-end development. He specializes in design systems consulting for teams large and small, regularly writing about and speaking at events worldwide. Co-hosting this week is Micah Godbolt, Senior Design Developer at Microsoft.

Nathan Curtis co-founded EightShapes in 2006 and is passionate about interaction design, information architecture, and front-end development. He specializes in design systems consulting for teams large and small, regularly writing about and speaking at events worldwide. Co-hosting this week is Micah Godbolt, Senior Design Developer at Microsoft.

Dan Brown is co-founder of EightShapes, a UX design discovery shop that serves clients in healthcare, education, not-for-profit and high-tech. He's recently written a book called, Practical Design Discovery, published by A Book Apart.

Dan Brown is co-founder of EightShapes, a UX design discovery shop that serves clients in healthcare, education, not-for-profit and high-tech. He’s recently written a book called, *Practical Design Discovery,* published by A Book Apart.

Dan Brown is co-founder of EightShapes, a UX design discovery shop that serves clients in healthcare, education, not-for-profit and high-tech. He’s recently written a book called, Practical Design Discovery, published by A Book Apart.

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?

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

Collaboration and conflict exist in every design project. Dan Brown, a founder and principal (along with Nathan Curtis) at EightShapes, talks about why conflict is important in design and reveals how to direct passion in a positive way. Check out his book: www.designingtogetherbook.com & go to www.eightshapes.com.

Prototyping is an effective way to communicate design ideas. Static PDFs, PSDs, and wireframes can help get your point across but aren’t dynamic. Usually, any necessary changes are logged away as to-dos. They’re then taken back, fixed, and presented again. Nathan Curtis and the team at EightShapes are prototyping with HTML and CSS more in their design process. They find that employing these techniques leads to greater efficiency.

Nathan discusses how the team at EightShapes brought their modular philosophy to creating rich interactive prototypes using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. He explains how, through modular thinking, they were able to write scripts that chunked aspects of their designs to repurpose and reuse across multiple pages.

Prototypes help, be they paper, wireframes or PDFs, to exhibit a design idea. They allow you to communicate your idea visually and test aspects of the design. As effective as they are, they have their limitations. Nathan Curtis of EightShapes uses HTML prototypes in his team’s design process. Using HTML, they test functionality and interactions in ways that are impossible while using static PDFs.