Podcasts about superfriendly

Jessie Boulard Episode 033: December 28, 2024 Jessie Boulard is an award-winning illustrator applying her skills to social issues. We will talk about passion projects plus art education and more. About Jessie Boulard: Jessie is a Canadian non-status Indigenous Mixed-Blood of the Anishinaabe First Nation Freelance Illustrator who received her Honours Bachelor of Applied Arts in Illustration from Sheridan College. She is known for her strong line work and love of textures. Believing that art is more than just a form of expression, Jessie uses her skills to convey important issues as well as personal growth. Jessie is currently living in Southern Ontario, Freelancing and building Lux Arts; A Nomadic Community Art Studio for all ages. Jessie previously worked at Niagara College for 8 years teaching Illustration in the Graphic Design program. Currently Jessie's passions have moved her towards exploring the symbiotic relationship humans and nature share. She is working on a series of pieces depicting this relationship and looking forward to showcasing her work. Clients include Penguin Random House Canada, Tundra Book Group, eOne Entertainment, TBDoc Productions Inc., CRAVE, CANADALAND, LTBB of Odawa Indians, Superfriendly, The Writers' Union of Canada, Hour Detroit, CBC News, THIS Magazine, Studio M, Walmart, Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan, Inc., The Walrus, CONTINUE MEDIA Inc., Canadian Geographic, Boathouse Brands In 2022, Jessie won The One Award (San Diego): Silver Medal for Social Impact for Anishinaabe Cooking Resources Initiative Jessie Boulard's Links: Website: https://www.jessieboulard.com Echo Chernik Links: Website: https://www.EchoChernik.com Illustration: https://www.echo-x.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/echoxartist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/echochernik Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/echochernik Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/echox/created

On this episode of Low-Key Legends Dan Mall shares his journey as an entrepreneur and the challenges he faced in building and closing his agency, SuperFriendly. He emphasizes the importance of culture, margin, and taking care of people in building a successful business. Dan discusses the factors that led him to shut down his agency after 10 years, including the desire to spend more time with his family, the lack of a clear goal for the agency, and the changing industry landscape. We dive deep into the importance of mindset and the skills needed for success in the design industry. Dan shares a contrarian view that not everyone should be paid for their work, especially if the work is not valuable. He believes that compensation should be tied to the value of the work being done. He also emphasizes the importance of learning and teaching as forms of compensation. Britt and Dan discuss the challenges of running a freelancer-based business and the need for transparency and empathy in the industry. Find Dan on Social: → Dan's Site → Design Systems University → Newsletter → Twitter → Linkedin

There's a reason why we've been talking about design systems for a number of years now—it's the key to collaboration at scale. Few people get that more than Dan Mall who has helped the world's most recognizable brands create design practices that are truly sustainable and successful. We spoke to Dan about his new book, Design That Scales, which dives into how to create, manage, and sustain a successful design system. And he shares where the people involved in a design system fit and how they can best collaborate.  In case you missed it, Dan also joined us for an AMA recently. He's a wealth of knowledge. Find the full show notes, transcript, and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/dan-mall Bio Dan Mall is a husband, dad, teacher, creative director, designer, founder, and entrepreneur from Philly. He shares as much as he can to create better opportunities for those who wouldn't have them otherwise. Most recently, he ran design system consultancy SuperFriendly for over a decade. Now he's trying to share as much of what he's learned to help designers get the respect they deserve. Currently creating Design System University. [more via Dan's website]. *** Premium Episodes on Design Better This is a premium episode on Design Better (learn more in the announcement here). We'll be releasing two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show.  Upgrade to paid *** Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show: Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds

In a world where organizations constantly strive for efficiency and innovation, Design Systems have emerged as essential tools. They are pivotal in delivering greater value to users while simultaneously enhancing team productivity and satisfaction.Yet, these systems often stumble. Many companies face challenges in implementing and maintaining effective Design Systems.In our latest episode, Alen and Tom delve into these challenges with Dan Mall, a leading authority on Design Systems and the author of the new book "Design that Scales." Dan also runs Design System University, creating, collecting, and curating curriculum, content, and community to help enterprise teams design at scale.Previously, Dan ran design system consultancy SuperFriendly for over a decade. We discuss his experience running a successful distributed agency and his reflections on what he'd do differently a year after wrapping up this business.Our conversation also ventures into critical areas for design freelancers and agencies: pricing strategies and the evolving landscape of design subscription models. Drawing from his expertise and his book Pricing Design, Dan offers clarity on these often misunderstood topics.So join us as we uncover the intricacies of successfully implementing and gaining buy-in for Design Systems. Discover how to measure their impact meaningfully, and learn from Dan's extensive experience in running a distributed agency and navigating the complex world of design pricing.

Dan is a husband, dad, teacher, creative director, designer, founder, and entrepreneur from Philadelphia. During the start of his career, Dan found himself amongst the people at the forefront of the web standards movement. In our conversation we talked about his career, the people who influenced him, the various eras of his design firm SuperFriendly, and his personal mission to create better opportunities for those who wouldn't have them otherwise.

In this episode of the podcast I got the chance to sit down and talk to author, speaker, Creative Director and CEO of SuperFriendly, Dan Mall. We talk about design systems, making them accessible, SuperFriendly and building a company, achieving goals, and much more! Intro/Outro music graciously given permission to use called, "Settle In" by Homer Gaines. Sound editing by Chris Enns of Lemon Productions. Transcripts can be found at: https://toddl.dev/podcast/transcripts/mall/ Show Notes https://danmall.me/ - Dan's personal Sit https://twitter.com/danmall - Dan on Twitter https://superfriendly.com/ - Super Friendly https://abookapart.com/products/pricing-design - Pricing Design on A Book Apart --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/frontendnerdery/support

Dan has been a creative director, designer, and developer since 1998. He has taught design systems and collaboration at public conferences, private client engagements, as higher education instruction, and on many podcasts and videos. Dan's superpower is getting people excited, even when there's challenging work ahead. Dan met his wife Emily when they were both in 5th grade. Together, they raise daughters Siddalee and Charlotte, yorkshire terrier Max, and mini sheepadoodle Matilda just outside Philadelphia, PA. IS YOUR TEAM LOOKING FOR DESIGN SYTEMS COACHING?Hire SuperFriendly and experience digital transformation through design systems coaching and practice - https://superfriendly.com/ CONNECT WITH DAN MALLTwitter - https://twitter.com/danmallLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danmall/Website - https://danmall.me/CONNECT WITH MELinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayneil Twitter - https://twitter.com/jayneildalal 

The Creative Director Dan Mall joins the show to talk about his career path and the moments that led him to start SuperFriendly, his own agency that is all about design systems. Dan shares his ethos and explains why he considers himself as an intentional person. We explore some of the key moments within the foundation of SuperFriendly and we talk about the practices that companies value the most when it comes to working with agencies. Listen and discover what design agencies and Hollywood movies have in common! Jump straight into: (01:33) - Introducing Dan Mall: A family man and professional leader who believes that everyone is creative. (06:52) - Icebreaker questions: A day in Dan's life, his latest obsession and why people describe him as intentional. (13:52) -  “People value design”: Dan's background, influences and events that got him into design. (19:35) - What is SuperFriendly? Get to know Dan's agency model and why it's similar to Hollywood. (22:48) - A decade in the business: Exploring some of the key moments within the foundation of SuperFriendly. (31:54) - “Narrow positioning draws more clients”: What is SuperFriendly's main focus in 2022? (36:19) - A centralized-package-managed-version-controlled-software-product: The evolution of SuperFriendly's concept for design systems throughout the years. (43:01) - Try to help people: What is Dan looking forward to in the following years? When is his next book being published?   Episode Resources: Connect with Dan through https://www.linkedin.com/in/danmall/ (LinkedIn) and https://twitter.com/danmall?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor (Twitter) https://danmall.me/ (Dan Mall | Homepage) https://superfriendly.com/ (SuperFriendly) https://daneden.me/blog/2021/thinking-is-work (Thinking is Work - Dan Eden) https://articles.uie.com/design_rendering_intent/ (Design is the Rendering of Intent - Jared M. Spool)

Season 5 is right around the corner. Our featured guests include Jasmine Orange, Dan Mall, Timothy Bardlavens, Catt Small, and Chris Thoms. The new season kicks off on Tuesday, April 26th with new episodes released every other week. Jump straight into: (00:00) - Introduction (01:26) - Figma Config (02:18) -  The Technically Speaking Product Design Glossary (02:48) - Jasmine Orange, designer at EY talks about why moving fast and breaking things isn't always a good idea. (04:27) - Dan Mall, founder of design systems agency, SuperFriendly discusses his design ethos and how he believes that everyone is a creator. (06:05) - Catt Small, Staff Designer at Asana discusses the importance of senior IC's and the importance in organizations and as a career trajectory. (08:10) - Timothy Bardlavens discusses his definition of chaotic good and how he applies that to his work at Meta. (09:35) - Chris Thoms shares how he got in touch with the children and communities that he's designing for and how that is now a part of his purpose at NWEA Figma Config https://config.figma.com/events/figma-config-2022/talks/f933d6145e7f?type=item (Register) The Technically Speaking Product Design Glossary: 118 Terms You Need To Know https://airtable.com/shrwyDAxHBUNcXnM0 (Download) Follow Technically Speaking on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcwBLFBbMX6lMXV6l20SFzw (YouTube), https://www.instagram.com/technicallyspeakinghw (Instagram), https://www.linkedin.com/company/technicallyspeakinghw (LinkedIn).

Dan Mall, Creative director and advisor, founder and director of both SuperFriendly and Arcade and design systems extraordinaire talks to us about the collaboration between designers and engineers to hot potatoing between design and development and the shift that is needed in design to better focus on people. DanMall.meDan on TwitterSuperFriendlyArcadeStand By Me, Ben E. KingThe Count of Monte Cristo , Alexandre DumasDesignOps Island Discs is brought to you by zeroheight, the design system documentation platform. You can jump in at any point and create your first styleguide for free. Until next time, bon voyage...

You may remember Dan Mall as the co-founder of the Businessology Show, but these days he's at the helm of SuperFriendly, a one-of-a-kind creative model that is comprised solely of contractors. Now, most people may sweat at this Hollywood-inspired idea, but Dan is here to break down how he injects healthy rhythms into this unique structure while maintaining an incredibly high level of work quality. It's truly a great listen for all business leaders!

When you think of a design agency you might imagine a large, bustling office, with an open floor plan, teaming with creative people. And most of the time, reality would meet your expectations. But not all of the time. Because that's not what Philadelphia based agency, Superfriendly, is. It's not even close. Superfriendly is a distributed design collaborative. Which means their team members reside all over the world. Like specialized creative agents, they are tapped to collaborate on projects that maximize both their skill and their personal experience. Our guest in this episode—Dan Mall—is the founder and sole employee of Superfriendly. Dan shares how and why he structured his agency the way he did and why having the right people in the room is how you win. You will also hear how Dan reverse engineered his entire career. From entry level designer to agency strategist and the double-edged sword of youthful arrogance. But the most compelling part of this conversation is how Dan and Chris discuss pricing. You're probably familiar with the various pricing models. Like hourly, value-based, cost plus, etc. But have you ever thought about the ethics involved in each? Some may think value-based pricing is unethical. Others might argue that charging hourly is. Who's right? And what's the most important part of the equation? We'll let you decide, but we suggest you listen to this episode first. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Dan Mall, CEO and Founder of SuperFriendly, joins us for a far-reaching conversation about building prolific design teams, how to create a British Coffee House innovation culture, why rewarding the ‘worst' ideas can beget the best ideas, and how stealing and remixing Gordon Ramsey's scrambled egg recipe is the secret to getting good at anything. Enjoy everyone! Drinks: Coca-Cola Classic, Whalers Rhode Island American Pale Ale, Victory Brewing Company Summer Love Golden Ale Links: www.superfriendly.co --- 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

In today’s episode, I speak with Dan Mall. Dan is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He’s the founder and CEO of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that helps in-house teams make better digital products with design systems. Dan is the author of Pricing Design, and co-founder of Arcade, a fun way to manage design tokens for enterprise teams. Enthralled by his role as husband and dad, he also finds joy writing about design and other issues on Twitter and on his industry-recognized site, danmall.me.  We dive into the difference between boundaries and psychological safety, why these practices should matter to every designer, the connection between risk and creativity, tactical ways to inspire a culture of learning, as well as how to contribute and challenge the status quo for better collaboration and impact.

We dive into one of the most powerful and popular decks in Pioneer - Jeskai Lukka Yorion Sharknado Fires Control! Or whatever it's called! The Break Down: The latest Pioneer SQ The Dive Down: TapouT The Dive Down, continued: Agents of Snap Concessions Become a citizen of The Dive Down Nation!: http://www.patreon.com/thedivedown Now get 15% off your first 3 months of ManaTraders! https://www.manatraders.com/?medium=thedivedown and use code "thedivedown" Timestamps: 2:35 - Housekeeping 6:25 - The Break Down begins - the Pioneer Super Qualifier 6:50 - PSQ Top 32 Meta 16:44 - PSQ Top 8 18:17 - Interesting Decks 27:27 - The Dive Down Begins - Yorion Superfriends! 30:30 - What is tapout control? 35:40 - Fires of Invention and tapout control 43:26 - The gameplan of Yorion Superfriends 53:01 - Enabling Lukka 56:40 - The yorion advantage 1:09:50 - Closing out games 1:12:30 - The supporting elements 1:18:51 - Getting the most out of Fires 1:32:55 - Sideboarding and matchups 1:47:30 - Some thoughts on the deck 1:50:20 - Closing out Links from this week's episode: Tapout Control / PV's Playhouse / Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa: https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/pvs-playhouse-control/ The Pioneer SQ: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/pioneer-super-qualifier-2020-05-23 Jeskai Superfriends: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/wur-20302994-c1b8-4ede-a1ad-81e213d4b28a#paper More Superfriends: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3047732#paper Our opening music is Nowhere - You Never Knew, and our closing music is Space Blood - Goro? Is That Your Christian Name? email us: thedivedown@gmail.com (mailto:thedivedown@gmail.com) twitter: https://twitter.com/thedivedown

…on climbing some mountains. Dan Mall is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He’s also the founder and director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that brings exquisite creative direction and design to the world’s most important and interesting organizations. Dan joins the show for a conversation about why he still loves Flash, giving yourself permission to stop reading a book, and letting smart people do what they do best.

Dan Mall is the Founder & CEO of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that helps in-house teams make better digital products with design systems. Having worked with clients like United Airlines, Harvard Business School, athenahealth, Capital One, Apple, dotdash, Google, Reader's Digest, The New York Times,  ExxonMobil, and more, Dan has a passion for playing matchmaker between surprising art direction and intuitive interaction design and building teams that are finely tuned to the solutions clients are looking for. In this episode, we talk about Dan’s design roots in Philly, how working with Jeffrey Zeldman shaped his career, fostering trust as a design director, his inclusive approach to building teams, and so much more.

Dan Mall is the Founder & CEO of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that helps in-house teams make better digital products with design systems. Having worked with clients like United Airlines, Harvard Business School, athenahealth, Capital One, Apple, dotdash, Google, Reader's Digest, The New York Times,  ExxonMobil, and more, Dan has a passion for playing matchmaker between surprising art direction and intuitive interaction design and building teams that are finely tuned to the solutions clients are looking for. In this episode, we talk about Dan’s design roots in Philly, how working with Jeffrey Zeldman shaped his career, fostering trust as a design director, his inclusive approach to building teams, and so much more.

On this episode of the Businessology Show, Jason Blumer reconnects with co-creater, Dan Mall! Dan is also the founder and director of SuperFriendly, which is a teaching agency. Meaning they help in-house design teams create systems to make a better design product. Dan gives Jason details on how this type of agency runs and the benefits of being a teaching agency.

Dan Mall calls in from the East coast to chat with Chris about design systems and their role in enterprise organizations. How does this affect the teams that work on them? The guys also discuss what digital products actually are in relation to design systems. How to create a "one ring to rule them all" type of system and does that even exits? They continue to dive into agile, designers' roles, how teams are finding they're wasting time, and much more.Dan MallCreative Director, Advisor, CEO and Founder of SuperFriendlyDan Mall is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He's the founder and CEO of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that helps in-house teams make better digital products with design systems. Dan is an enthralled husband & dad, author of Pricing Design, and co-founder of SuperBooked, a service that helps you find work with a little help from your friends. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and on his industry-recognized site, danmall.me.You can find Dan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The story of how SuperFriendly helped The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. A conversation between VP of Digital Marketing Mamie Peers and SuperFriendly founder Dan Mall. Read the transcript at https://superfriendlydesign.systems/helped/cosmopolitan-las-vegas/

My guest today is Kevin M. Hoffman. Kevin is a designer, manager, and author who has led teams of designers both inside and outside of large organizations. In the last few years, he's turned his attention to designing better meetings. In this episode, we talk about how he's using information to engage with prospects and clients so they can design meetings that add value to their lives. Photo credit: Michelle Milla Listen to the full conversation https://theinformeddotlife.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/the-informed-life-episode-5-kevin-m-hoffman.mp3   Show notes Kevin M. Hoffman Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers, and Everyone by Kevin M. Hoffman Dan Mall SuperFriendly Super Friends Karen McGrane Google Docs GitHub Dropbox Box Schoolhouse Rock: I'm Just a Bill Bear Note Markdown Google Keep Read the full transcript Jorge: Today on the show, we have Kevin Hoffman. Welcome Kevin! Kevin: Hi, how are you? Jorge: I'm doing alright. Kevin: Good. Jorge: I've known Kevin for a long time, but the folks listening to the show might not know you — so why don't you tell us about yourself Kevin? Kevin: Sure. My name is Kevin M. Hoffman. I go by Kevin M., just because at this point I think there's four or five Kevin Hoffmans in the in the various platforms: email, Twitter… Anytime I speak at a conference, there are two Kevin Hoffmans that always get my replies and there's another Kevin Hoffman that gets a lot of my emails. One time I applied for a bank account and the bank started emailing him right after I left. And I did not want to do business with that take anymore because they didn't write my email address down correctly. So I go by Kevin M. and what I do… These days what I'm doing is taking about two decades plus of experience working in a variety of contexts, but always on a design capacity. So I've worked in nonprofits and in the public sector, I've worked in agencies, I've run companies, you know design consulting agencies. I started a product. And I spent the last couple of years working in a large company — in a Fortune 100 company — and I try to take all of that, and I think about specifically this one piece of everyone's work experience which is meetings. So everybody has meetings. All of our processes — kind of a unit of measure in processes meetings — you know, if you're a designer, and you're part of you've been part of an agile transformation, or you're undergoing that or you're planning one — a big part of that is renaming meetings and following kind of a rigid recipe of meetings. And what I do is take all this experience I've had and things I learned from other people about making meetings do a job that you want them to do, and create ways for people to assess and measure meetings are doing a job for them. And if not, get rid of them. And if they are doing a job help them continue to grow and flourish. I wrote a book and published it last year about this topic. And these days what I'm doing is just talking to different kinds of clients and doing workshops and helping them develop their own meeting health indexes. Kind of a sense of how well the meetings are serving the employees of their companies. Jorge: That's fascinating. I'm hearing you describe this and thinking about how much our trajectories mirror each other. Kevin: Yes. Jorge: Like you, I was recently at a company and as of last year, I left that company, and I'm also independent. And I also have a book that came out, and I'm in the process of transitioning from working as part of a team to working on my own and being kind of more responsible for things like procuring clients and getting things done. Kevin: Yep. Jorge: And I'm wondering what that experience is like for you and what role information plays in that process. Kevin: Yeah. I think the first time I was independent was about seven or eight years ago. And I was really lucky in that I had a couple of former colleagues from working at agencies that had already gone this route of going independent and then building teams of contractors to undertake design projects. And one of them — a guy named Dan Mall — he had already started working this way, and he's worked this way for quite a long time. He has an agency called SuperFriendly. It's named after the SuperFriends, the show from — gosh, I want to say the 80s — I think it's the 80s — where all the DC Super Heroes would come together and the concept… Jorge: Is that the one with the power twins? Kevin: Yeah, where one takes the form of a bucket of water and the other one always takes the form of something else. Jorge: Right. Kevin: But it seems like a bucket of water is always… And they had a monkey, for some reason. I remember that. But anyway, Dan brought me into this world of SuperFriends, which is people who for whatever reason find themselves relatively senior — experienced in their craft, whatever part of the design process their craft is, whether it's discovery and strategy or UI design or front end development or back-end development, whatever it is. And because certain people just like working together, that's no reason that they have to necessarily form a traditional company. They can just work together when there are problems to solve together. And after spending a couple of years working with Dan and other people who worked in that way — in that context — I decided to just try it out and and learn how to really initiate a conversation with someone in any context where you learn about the problem that you might be able to help them solve and then move that conversation through into some sort of formal agreement. You know, the reason I brought up when I first started, is I remember early on a colleague of mine who I have deep respect and love for — a woman named Karen McGrane — she referred an RFP to me. Like there was an RFP for a website for a bank. A small bank — I can't remember the name of the bank — and it was the first time I had ever written a proposal and I remember thinking to myself: I'm going to write this proposal. And I'm going to write the best proposal I can write right now.” Because I'd been writing proposals for a while in agencies… And I'm going to assume I'm not going to get this work, but this is going to become like this… What's the word I'm looking for? I don't want to say “cornerstone” but like this go-to document that as I write other proposals, I'll just pull from this master proposal that I wrote. Jorge: Like a template? Kevin: Like a template, but it's almost more like… I think of it this way, one of the things that I do over my career, a piece of information that I keep, is success stories or portfolio work stories where I came into a situation, I performed certain actions, and I observed certain outcomes. And trying to tell those kinds of stories at different levels of zoom, at different scale… I try to collect those. And I have a Keynote document that has like maybe between 10 and 15 stories in it that are some of the best stories I've collected over the years, but anytime I send that to a prospective client to say “this is what I do,” I might just pick a subset of those stories. But I had to make the master portfolio document at first, you know, and that was that master proposal thing that I made. Jorge: Sorry. I'm just very curious about this. Kevin: No, interrupt me at will… Jorge: So it sounds like if… Kevin: … somebody has to. Jorge: [Chuckle] It sounds like it's a like a kit of parts or like a LEGO box of sorts where you can build customized or bespoke portfolio pieces or portfolio documents based on what you get the sense is most interesting to the prospect. Is that right? Kevin: Yeah. One of the things that I've learned in my work is that I think as a designer. I have a desire for the process to be clear and articulated. And in this case, we could be talking about the process of a prospective client or just a person you meet, a colleague you meet in some context. Their journey from being that to being either a regular client or at least a client that you actually help solve some problems and work with. And I think what I found is it's better for me to think about having good collections and not worrying about the process. So I'll give you an example of what I mean. This idea of the master proposal… I have proposals for workshops. You know, I do workshops at conferences; I do between two and four year these days, and I do corporate workshops. But anyway, I'm in the process of booking workshops. I have some master proposals for generally the kinds of content that I teach, the kind of exercises that I help my clients run, and the kind of outcomes that they can expect. But I don't give that to anyone and I'm fortunate enough that I get some inquiries. I get a nice trickle of inquiries via my website or via conferences I've spoken at. People follow up when their budgets are good, whatever. I always follow up that first inquiry. However, it comes in with a 30-minute conversation. Because in that conversation I want to learn for myself if I believe that the tools that I teach and the methods and the way that I look at this problem… I want to believe that it has the capacity to solve a specific problem that that person is having. And it could be as specific as — and these are two examples from recent conversations –it could be as specific as, “we're about to invest a large sum of money in an agile transformation at a big company, and we want to make sure people can run our daily stand-ups well or know how to facilitate a retrospective.” And it could be as general as, “one of my goals for 2019, for my team, you know, I'm a VP of design and manage between 20 and 50 designers, one of my goals is for us to set an example for what a better meeting is in this organization. I feel like our designers aren't as present as they could be or they're not leading the meetings that we could be having.” So it could just be like, “we just want it to be better.” And in either case, the proposal that I write has to speak to the problem is they understand it. So it's taking that big uber-proposal and then finding out how do they describe their problem, and then identifying the methods and language in my portfolio of success stories or in my existing work that fits that problem, the way they've described it. And then I go through a process where I actually create a Google Doc — ideally a Google Doc, but some sort of cloud based collaborative document — where I say, “Okay. Here's what I heard. Here's what I think I would do. You know, this is a rough estimate of the cost. But first, tell me if this will help you evangelize this in your organization.” And I'll give them a week to comment on it, to rewrite it, whatever they want to do. And the really interesting thing about that part of the process that I've learned lately is that I've had experiences where I've said things that I believe to be true — not necessarily for their company, but just universally true — like I believe that people think they're better at meetings than they are. Right? I believe that people think of meetings as things that can be done relatively easily, and if we have to have one we have it and we get through it. And I also have the belief that most companies don't make heavy investments in improving meetings in the organization as a serious ongoing effort of organizational change. A prospective client came to me recently. I had some language to that effect about how this isn't a common investment, and it turns out it had recently been a big investment they had made, and what they had tried wasn't working. And had I not known that, had I not had that step in the process for them to tell me, “Oh, this language is reminding us of the fact that we've already spent money on this and it didn't work,” and re-tailor the language to say, “this is why this might work where your previous efforts didn't work.” I might have alienated some person signing the check somewhere. Jorge: I want to read back what I'm hearing you say with regards to the proposal, and I want to circle back afterward to the actual process of keeping track of these conversations. But for the moment, let's stay with this proposal. It sounds like there are two parts to this. One is having the “kit of parts” that allows you to assemble a proposal for a prospect, and the other is placing those parts in a sort of sandbox — in this case, Google Docs — that allows you to collaboratively create the final thing with the prospect. Is that a fair reading? Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the interesting things that I've observed in working in design and process is this idea of working in the open, you know. I've been on a couple of teams where they've put into their contracts with their clients that they mandate an open process either they blog the process as it happens, or they mandate an open design process meaning the process as it happens in real time is documented. These days, GitHub and obviously cloud-based things like Dropbox and Box are good for that. But via the web, there's an evolving project story. I feel like it fundamentally… maybe not explicitly, but at a deep level implicitly, requires trust for both parties. And if I do that at the proposal stage — if I say, “Look, we're going to work in the open… In the open as far as you and I are concerned. So I'm going to give you a document. Anyone in your organization can read it and change it, and I'm going to be reading it and changing it as well. You know, responding to your comments — not agreeing with everything you say — but just you know, helping get helping us get to know you.” The benefit of that is it gives me a sense and it gives them a sense of what it's like to work together. So if at any point I or they feel like, “Oh, the way our dialogue is going… We're not speaking the same language, or there aren't really problems here that I think I'm going to be able to help you solve,” or whatever it might be. It's a lower cost way of getting there. And fewer meetings, because all of this comes out of anything from a 15 to 30-minute initial conversation. Jorge: That's such an important insight. Right? The idea that these documents are not just… They don't just exist for their own sake, but they're also a dry run for the process of working together. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: I'm curious when you say “working in the open”… That sounds very enticing to me, this notion of showing your work and co-creation is something that… something that I've aspired to in my work. I have not always been successful at it. And part of the reason I haven't been as successful in some cases as I would have liked to is that I have found that the openness… So if you open something up, if you open a collaboration process up to just anybody, you might get a lot of voices that are not invested in the outcome in some ways and it could derail the conversation, right? If everyone does not have the same outcomes in mind or if you're not working together towards the same outcomes. In the case of the proposal, it sounds like you're working with a very specific group of people, but does this ever extend to a larger group within the organization? Or do you keep it to your prospect and perhaps a select few others? Kevin: In my experience, for this specific process what I found over the years is that if I keep it to a smaller group and allow that group to advocate for the value they see in working with me and working together, it all also gives me a little bit of information about what their position or a capability of creating consensus is within their organization. I mean if I'm cynical, there's always a process of finding “where am I having a conversation with someone who actually is a signer on a budget?” You know somebody who is actually making a decision about a particular budget. So it's always a good sign… And I generally ask pretty early in the process, “do you have a specific budget that you're thinking about for investing in this problem?” Because I have relatively predictable rates within a range, but if you have a specific budget that you're thinking about I know what it takes for me to do the work, I can write a proposal pulling from those LEGO pieces that is more tailored to a specific budget if I have to. I don't often find that's the case now, but earlier when I was doing really large scale projects with teams of upwards of 9 or 10 people that I would hire, that was more often the case where I would have to be creative within usually six-figure budgets. I would say more often than not like a budget between 100k and 500k and try to really solve a problem within a constraint that somebody really had. But now if I'm talking to somebody early on as an individual consultant — I don't build teams to do the work that I do at this point — and they say something like, “oh, we have to pause the conversation because the person who would make the decision about the budget is on vacation,” that tells me who else I need to bring into the document conversation. And I would say so far in my new consulting practice — my relatively nascent practice — I would say more than half the time I'm speaking to somebody in a position who's managing a budget. But when I'm not it's usually somebody who's really motivated by the problem and has a connection. I haven't had an experience where somebody's playing like, “I really want to talk to you and invite you to come help my organization with this thing, but I don't have any connection with any budget and I can't pay you.” You know, that hasn't happened yet. Jorge: Yeah, but those folks are likely to not even initiate the conversation right? Kevin: Sure. Jorge: They're not going to have a project. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: I love this idea of the Google Document as a sort of… I don't know if it's fair to call it a catalyst for this conversation to happen that surfaces all this information about the team. The team for you and you for them, right? So it's a way to get to know each other and see if the fit is right. I'm wondering what other tools you use as part of this process. In particular, it sounds like you have multiple conversations going sometimes. You talked about speaking at conferences and having folks who have read your book and reach out. How do you keep track of all these different conversations so that you know where things are at? Kevin: So I generally… If we think of the journey of a sales lead, things generally start either via my website kevinmhoffman.com, where it says on the site pretty plainly, “if you'd like me to come to a workshop for your organization contact me,” and my email's right there. Or I do a workshop at a conference, somebody who's representing an organization has that experience. I explicitly say I customize this workshop if I do it for your organization, and they reach out to me within anywhere from a week to two a couple of months. Depends on where people are in their various budget cycles, and if their budget… If they're at the beginning of a budget and they have a lot of flexibility, or they're at the end of a budget cycle and they're trying to spend down or whatever it may be. So anytime I think about a journey — and I know earlier I said designers like to have this clean process — the metaphor that comes to mind is this: we're talking about SuperFriends earlier. There was also this cartoon thing called School House Rock and the one that I remember and I imagine a lot of people who know what Schoolhouse Rock is remember is, is one about a bill. “I'm Just a Bill sitting here on Capitol Hill,” and how that bill goes on a journey to become a law. So, the first thing I do to keep track of my potential clients is I try to keep a list. It's messy but I try to keep a list in a couple of different places. So I have a big white board in my office. There is the mega list for the week that I'm constantly erasing and rewriting. And as a lead becomes viable… So here's an example of a viable lead, I do a workshop with at a conference, somebody comes up to me and personally says, “I really enjoyed that. I would be curious about having you do this at my company. What do I do?” I say, “well, let's set up some time to talk.” They reach out to me. We actually have a conversation. In that conversation, I'll make a commitment to getting them a proposal pretty rapidly, usually within anywhere from 24 to 48 hours. And that proposal is just that thing that I pull you know different parts of what I've done for other people. I pull in what I think feels right. So the whiteboard list, that's one place that stuff lives. Now let's say I'm in the mode of meeting people at a conference. And if I do a workshop at a conference, I might meet all the attendees in my workshop, but I also might do something like a book signing or I might just meet people at lunch or you know over coffee at a break or whatever. I keep a running list of action items in a very messy way across a couple of different platforms. I really like Bear note. There are two things about Bear note that I like. One, I like that it's kind of a cloud of notes. You can have no taxonomy of how you structure and organize content, but it's very easy — like Google — to find things. So the interface of Bear note is basically a search field, and if you type into the search field and nothing comes up, it turns actually into a title field. So I can actually click on a button and start a note with that title. Jorge: Bear note is an app, right? Kevin: Yeah. It's an app. It's a macOS app but it syncs via iCloud. And I just constantly make these notes. If I'm in a meeting I transcribe my meeting notes in there; I focus on action items. They have a nice little to-do list. They use Markdown to create checkboxes. And ​if you're comfortable writing in Markdown — which is a way of adding formatting to text — if you're comfortable with that, Bear note does a good job of rendering it in a nice way. So I have Bear note syncing on my phone. I meet somebody from a company like IBM, they're like,” hey, we might want to have you. Come do a lunch and learn at some point.” I'll quickly add that to the stream of Bear note that that lives in my life. Occasionally, I might add it to use something like Google Keep. I've bounced back and forth between Google Keep and Apple's Notes app for lists, but usually, those are more like grocery lists and doctor things and personal things. Most of my professional life lives in this stream of Bear notes that I had. When I was at Capital One, I basically installed Bear note on my locked down Capital One system on day one, found out that they didn't allow iCloud synching because of regulations around large banks and had to decide, “okay, where am I going to take most of my notes and carry that device with me at all times?” So that's how I keep track of what conversations I had with whom. Then they make their way onto the whiteboard when they become viable. Once they're on the whiteboard, they become Google Docs. And I'm looking at: okay, what are the recent Google Docs that I've been editing in, watching for comments to come in, or edits to come in from prospective clients and respond you them in real-time? So those become very high priority pieces of content for me. When a proposal is in an active state or a live state. And then the next thing I do is basically establish follow-up steps. So I'm going to reach out to you by this date with these questions. You had said, “okay, the next step is when so-and-so gets back from vacation. We're going to share this with the Executive Vice President. Get approval on this budget.” So that's the next step in the bill becoming a law is getting it passed that approval step. Then… Jorge: Do you do you somehow mark the next steps on the whiteboard? How do you keep track of that? Kevin: The whiteboard is really only the next thing I have to do for the person. So the whiteboard is usually like, “write proposal – client name.” And if the proposal is in a live state, it would be like “get signed work agreement” or “send standard working agreement over” or whatever. The legalese stuff is always… I've found that that's usually pretty boilerplate, but there's always something that goes back and forth in that process of, you know… Something about intellectual property or something about work for hire or there's some aspect of it. In some projects that I was talking about where we've worked in the open, that's become an issue where if I'm doing a large-scale team size project and we say, “oh, we want to blog this process for your community. As we finish things, we're going to put up posts and link people to the design work.” You know, some people have concerns about that being something their competitors would get a leg up on them from. And I have opinions about that. But you know, that's not what this is about. Jorge: This is fantastic Kevin. I'm so excited; I think I'm going to start a whiteboard of my own like the one that you're describing because what I heard you say — and the thing that excites me about it is that it sounds like you have this process where you initiate a conversation in physical space with a person, right? You're talking at a conference or in a workshop, and you follow up… Or the next step is moving a record of that conversation to this digital space with Bear notes. And then you follow up with those folks and eventually if they make it to the next stage, they move out of digital space again onto a physical space, to this whiteboard. And then from there, they move to another digital space, which is Google Docs. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: It's like the process goes in and out of your digital domains as it moves, like the bill going through Congress. Kevin: Uh-huh. Jorge: Fascinating. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: T his is fabulous and it's been really insightful. Where can folks go to follow up with you and find out more? Kevin: Sure. So Kevin M. Hoffman is the fastest way to get a hold of me. Kevin M. as in Michael Hoffman dot com. Kevin W. Hoffman is not me on Twitter. Kevin Huffman on Twitter is not me. Kevin M. Hoffman on Twitter is me. My book is obviously out… It's been almost been out for… It's coming up on a year. And you can always get a hold of me through the publisher, Rosenfeld Media. The book's called “Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers, and Everyone.” So the idea is that… The title comes from this idea that we think of meetings as either being the domain of people who are leading the meetings — usually managers — but there's this idea that we're all citizens of meetings. And there's different ways, if I'm somebody who is responsible for making the thing, that there's ways to be a citizen of a meeting, to participate. If I'm responsible for running the there are there's ways to do it, but it's thinking about all angles: how do you make them work? Jorge: It's basic literacy for anyone who has to collaborate with anyone else, basically. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: It's fantastic that you've written this book. And congratulations, because it's been well received. Kevin: Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's the thing I wanted. Like I wanted to have this book when I graduated from graduate school and I went into the workforce. First, it was in public libraries and colleges. I was in these meetings, I didn't know what they were for and how they connected to our mission and what my role was… And I just wish I had… I wished I'd had a manual of how to connect to this stream of information that's happening in our work. So that's why I wrote it. So hopefully there's a version of me that won't have to deal with what I had to deal with. Jorge: Well and so many more of us will also be able to benefit from your teachings on this subject. And on that note, I want to thank you for your time today. Because we will also benefit from what you've told us today. Kevin: That's how we all figure it out. Right? We all share the ideas and hopefully, somebody avoids some mistakes. Jorge: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Kevin.

Lots of people think product design is just about buttons, images, features, and workflow, but there’s a whole lot more. Next up I talk to Dan Mall about how building a culture of design helps companies build better products.Dan Mall is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He’s the founder and executive director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that gives clients direction. Dan is an enthralled husband & dad, author of Pricing Design, and co-founder of SuperBooked, a service that helps you find work with a little help from your friends. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and on his industry-recognized site, danmall.me. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The story of how SuperFriendly helped the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. A conversation between Digital Initiative director Dave Homa and SuperFriendly founder Dan Mall. Read the transcript at superfriend.ly/helped/harvard-business-school-digital-initiative/

The story of how SuperFriendly helped Philly.com. A conversation between Philadelphia Media Network digital operations managing editor Eric Ulken and SuperFriendly founder Dan Mall. Read the transcript at http://superfriend.ly/helped/phillycom/

The story of how SuperFriendly helped build ALPS, a design system for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. A conversation between Assistant Communication Director Brent Hardinge and SuperFriendly founder Dan Mall. Read the transcript at http://superfriend.ly/helped/seventh-day-adventist-church/

The story of how SuperFriendly helped to reimagine of Smashing Magazine. A conversation between Smashing Magazine founder Vitaly Friedman and SuperFriendly founder Dan Mall. Read the transcript at http://superfriend.ly/helped/smashing-magazine/

Creative director, advisor, designer, developer, author (Pricing Design), speaker, mentor, musician, and entrepreneur (SuperFriendly, SuperBooked) Dan Mall is Jeffrey Zeldman's guest. Running a studio, pitching, value pricing, the apprentice program, “Make Grunt do it,” how to start a startup, “the most exciting design systems are boring,” walking away from big pitches, launching a service to help you find work. Links for this episode:A Book Apart, Pricing Design“How to Scope Work,” an article by Dan MallSuperBookedDan Mall (@danmall) | TwitterBrought to you by: Squarespace (Visit Squarespace.com to get a free trial and use the offer code BIGWEBSHOW for 10% off your first purchase).

Creative director, advisor, designer, developer, author (Pricing Design), speaker, mentor, musician, and entrepreneur (SuperFriendly, SuperBooked) Dan Mall is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Running a studio, pitching, value pricing, the apprentice program, “Make Grunt do it,” how to start a startup, “the most exciting design systems are boring,” walking away from big pitches, launching a service to help you find work.

As a creative leader who's worked with everyone from Apple to ESPN, Dan shares his biggest leadership lessons on servant leadership and how to ensure teams work well together. Claire: Hi everyone. I'm Claire Lew and I'm the CEO of Know Your Company. Today, I've got a good friend of mine with me that I'm so excited to… Read the full article

According to Heraclitus, the only thing that remains constant is change. The internet itself has evolved exponentially over a relatively short amount of time. Few relics from the early days of the web remain, and those that have, have been forced to change. Adam McClean is the SVP of Product at Dotdash. Dotdash was once About.com. The very same About.com that has been around for 21 years. Adam and his team were increasingly aware that the landscape around them was changing, and that they needed to evolve. They made the switch to a new brand, Dotdash, and a new process, to keep up with technological and market changes. Dan Mall, who runs SuperFriendly out of Philadelphia, joins the podcast to share his views on the evolution of dotDash’s process in support of their new brand. Dan will also be teaching one of the daylong workshops at UI22 this November 13-15 in Boston, MA. He’ll show how to develop workflows for the multi-device world we live in.

Our guest today is Dan Mall and he is a creative director and founder of SuperFriendly, and also the co-founder of a new service called SuperBooked. Listen to him as he talks about his origin story, how he started his companies, and maybe talk a little bit about super heroes and cooking. So, stick around! Twitter Website SuperFriendly SuperBooked Big Spaceship Dan’s Calendar Unsubscribe book Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ftf

Dan Mall returns! Dan is the director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative, and author of a new book about the approaches professionals can take to valuing their project rates called Pricing Design, which published by A Book Apart.

Dan Mall returns! Dan is the director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative, and author of a new book about the approaches professionals can take to valuing their project rates called _Pricing Design_, which published by A Book Apart.

Dan Mall returns! Dan is the director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative, and author of a new book about the approaches professionals can take to valuing their project rates called Pricing Design, which published by A Book Apart.

Dan Mall lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is the CEO of Superfriendly, a design collaborative that seeks to connect talented and passionate people with design and development projects all around the globe. Since 2012, he and his company have worked with companies like: Google, Apple New York Times, Carnegie Mellon, About.com, Oreilly, TechCrunch, Entertainment Weekly and many more to produce delightful products and user experiences. Before Superfriendly, Dan was at Big Spaceship, Happy Cog and a Technical Editor at A List Apart. Dan is dedicated to elevating our industry and training designers. Right now, Dan is pushing the needle in the way large organizations connect with their users and their devices. From Insurance transparency to understandable and usable weather data to diminishing the barrier to a new career, Superfriendly and Dan Mall are working to widen the perspective of what design means to real people and how real people can impact the future of design. "I think that my mission, at least when it comes to work, is connecting people to opportunities, they wouldn’t have had otherwise. I feel like that’s the thing I’m good at and that’s the thing I can do for people and so that’s kind of what’s been on my mind lately." Dan has a unique perspective on the design community and the industry as a whole and has made it his personal mission to make a difference to improve: diversity in technology, mentorship career transitions and the overall training and building of design team to name a few. As a personal belief, Dan created the Superfriendly Academy to create an apprenticeship program that helps people in the process of making a career transition. He works to not only provide the opportunity for someone to gain a new career skill but the professionalism that goes along with that skill for that person to greatly succeed. On this episode we discuss: The concept and success of a non-traditional design collaborative, Superfriendly. Superbooked and how this product could help him and users like you maintain your professional network. The idea of the human connection and that working together is a good way to get to know each other better. How finding the right project for the right person can produce great results. The lack of diversity in the tech industry. The Superfriendly Academy and their apprenticeship program. The differences between and apprenticeship and an internship. Career transitions and the value of mentorship. The success story of Greg the apprentice. Follow Dan here: @danmall www.superfriend.ly Visit the Funsize website Subscribe to The Funsize Digest Check out Funsize on Instagram

The O’Reilly Design Podcast: Pricing design, charting your learning path, and working with friends.In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with Dan Mall, founder and director of Superfriendly. We talk about what skills designers should learn, pricing your work, and why getting to know yourself is just as important to becoming a great designer as learning the craft.Here are some highlights from our conversation: Working with friends I have a fairly non-traditional company, the design collaborative that I run. It's called SuperFriendly, and I'm the only full-time employee, but oftentimes the projects we do have multiple people on them. The business model is called the Hollywood Model if anybody wants to research it. Of course, I brand it and I call it the ‘Super Friend Model.’ Basically what that means is that for every project that SuperFriendly does, I bring together a team of people to work on those projects. Some of those are contractors, some of those are other shops, maybe design shops, or research shops. Sometimes it's moonlighters, you know—people who have full-time jobs who want to do something at night and on weekends. Depending on the project, as long as they're the right people, I try to make it work with wherever they're from or whatever they're also currently doing. It's kind of the way that Hollywood makes movies—a movie studio doesn't employ directors, or actors, but they bring those people together and they make a film together for a year. They all kind of go their separate ways after that. Designers should know how to... There's this debate that breaks out—on Twitter, or Facebook, or wherever designers are talking—every couple of months about whether designers should code, and people vehemently argue for both sides of this. I'm in the camp that says designers should “blank”—insert anything there, and the answer is probably yes because it's just to say, should you be getting better as a human and learning more things? Absolutely. There's no pain if you don't. If you don't learn to code, and you're a designer, that's okay, but I want to try to make the argument for why those things are actually beneficial to you as a designer. Some people see that as not part of a designer's job, but I see that as very much a part of a designer's job. That actually helps you, it helps your teams, it helps the products that you're building. The talk [I’ll give at the O’Reilly Design Conference in March] is really about how to manage this: should designers learn code, and then should they learn business, and then should they learn sales? Should they be strategists, should they learn Ruby on Rails, should they learn about the back end? The answer is yes if you can. If you can do that, absolutely, but how do you prioritize that stuff? In the talk, I'm going to be sharing some stories about stuff that I've learned along the way of doing projects as part of SuperFriendly teams, and how I've seen other people handle that. How do designers who code work differently than designers who don't code? Can both of them be equally as effective? I'm going to try to make a case for how coding, specifically, can help a designer's skill set, and how that could actually help influence a product, and product direction, and move even faster and more efficiently without losing quality. A lot of the talk is going to be centered around ways to prioritize this. Should you learn X code first, or should you learn HTML, or should you learn strategy, or should you learn Lean UX? How does that fit in—people are saying Agile is going to help, and people are saying Lean is going to help. How does all of that stuff fit in? Ideally, my goal for this talk is to help designers make sense of all these terms that are floating out there, and if they’re willing to learn, where they should start. Hopefully, I'll be able to shed some light on that. The value is not the craft learning. There are so many ways you can learn craft. There are all these great things that can let you learn how to code Ruby on Rails, or how to design, or learn flat design, or whatever. I think the tougher thing, the one that everybody experiences, and experiences in a different way, is that there's always some issue beneath that. For some people, it's self confidence, for some people, it's time management, for some people, it's feeling like a professional, for some people, it's imposter syndrome. Those are really the things that we work on. That's the thing that takes nine months to conquer or to work through. Learning a programming language, you can do that in 12 weeks. That's why there's all these boot camps out there that are fairly successful. It's really becoming a professional. Pricing design I wrote a book, Pricing Design, and the basic premise of the book is that people pay for things they really want. Not an unobvious concept, but sometimes we forget that when we're pricing in business. We think it needs to be so ‘businessy’—I’ve got to plug a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet that does some fancy multiplication, and add some padding and accounts for this percentage, and subtract this thing, and then the discount thing, and then the magic number that gets output from the other side is a good qualified price. The truth is, it actually couldn't be further from the truth. As you described, pricing is emotional. We buy things because we want them. We buy things because we like them. We buy things that are logical and illogical. That's how people's minds work. Whether or not you're buying on behalf of a business or you're selling on behalf of a business, it's still people selling to people and people buying from people at the end of the day. There's a lot about pricing psychology. There's a lot about the way people think about money and value that I think we don't take advantage of as designers and developers and business owners. That's the basic premise of the book—just try to understand what you're selling and what your client wants to buy. I'll take web design as an example. A lot of web design agencies and shops and freelancers think they're selling websites. No one ever is selling a website. No one buys a website. Nobody wants to buy a website. They buy the thing that the website will do for them. The website is the thing that will let me sell this cool jewelry that I make. If I didn't have a website, I couldn't sell my jewelry effectively.

The O’Reilly Design Podcast: Pricing design, charting your learning path, and working with friends.In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with Dan Mall, founder and director of Superfriendly. We talk about what skills designers should learn, pricing your work, and why getting to know yourself is just as important to becoming a great designer as learning the craft.Here are some highlights from our conversation: Working with friends I have a fairly non-traditional company, the design collaborative that I run. It's called SuperFriendly, and I'm the only full-time employee, but oftentimes the projects we do have multiple people on them. The business model is called the Hollywood Model if anybody wants to research it. Of course, I brand it and I call it the ‘Super Friend Model.’ Basically what that means is that for every project that SuperFriendly does, I bring together a team of people to work on those projects. Some of those are contractors, some of those are other shops, maybe design shops, or research shops. Sometimes it's moonlighters, you know—people who have full-time jobs who want to do something at night and on weekends. Depending on the project, as long as they're the right people, I try to make it work with wherever they're from or whatever they're also currently doing. It's kind of the way that Hollywood makes movies—a movie studio doesn't employ directors, or actors, but they bring those people together and they make a film together for a year. They all kind of go their separate ways after that. Designers should know how to... There's this debate that breaks out—on Twitter, or Facebook, or wherever designers are talking—every couple of months about whether designers should code, and people vehemently argue for both sides of this. I'm in the camp that says designers should “blank”—insert anything there, and the answer is probably yes because it's just to say, should you be getting better as a human and learning more things? Absolutely. There's no pain if you don't. If you don't learn to code, and you're a designer, that's okay, but I want to try to make the argument for why those things are actually beneficial to you as a designer. Some people see that as not part of a designer's job, but I see that as very much a part of a designer's job. That actually helps you, it helps your teams, it helps the products that you're building. The talk [I’ll give at the O’Reilly Design Conference in March] is really about how to manage this: should designers learn code, and then should they learn business, and then should they learn sales? Should they be strategists, should they learn Ruby on Rails, should they learn about the back end? The answer is yes if you can. If you can do that, absolutely, but how do you prioritize that stuff? In the talk, I'm going to be sharing some stories about stuff that I've learned along the way of doing projects as part of SuperFriendly teams, and how I've seen other people handle that. How do designers who code work differently than designers who don't code? Can both of them be equally as effective? I'm going to try to make a case for how coding, specifically, can help a designer's skill set, and how that could actually help influence a product, and product direction, and move even faster and more efficiently without losing quality. A lot of the talk is going to be centered around ways to prioritize this. Should you learn X code first, or should you learn HTML, or should you learn strategy, or should you learn Lean UX? How does that fit in—people are saying Agile is going to help, and people are saying Lean is going to help. How does all of that stuff fit in? Ideally, my goal for this talk is to help designers make sense of all these terms that are floating out there, and if they’re willing to learn, where they should start. Hopefully, I'll be able to shed some light on that. The value is not the craft learning. There are so many ways you can learn craft. There are all these great things that can let you learn how to code Ruby on Rails, or how to design, or learn flat design, or whatever. I think the tougher thing, the one that everybody experiences, and experiences in a different way, is that there's always some issue beneath that. For some people, it's self confidence, for some people, it's time management, for some people, it's feeling like a professional, for some people, it's imposter syndrome. Those are really the things that we work on. That's the thing that takes nine months to conquer or to work through. Learning a programming language, you can do that in 12 weeks. That's why there's all these boot camps out there that are fairly successful. It's really becoming a professional. Pricing design I wrote a book, Pricing Design, and the basic premise of the book is that people pay for things they really want. Not an unobvious concept, but sometimes we forget that when we're pricing in business. We think it needs to be so ‘businessy’—I’ve got to plug a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet that does some fancy multiplication, and add some padding and accounts for this percentage, and subtract this thing, and then the discount thing, and then the magic number that gets output from the other side is a good qualified price. The truth is, it actually couldn't be further from the truth. As you described, pricing is emotional. We buy things because we want them. We buy things because we like them. We buy things that are logical and illogical. That's how people's minds work. Whether or not you're buying on behalf of a business or you're selling on behalf of a business, it's still people selling to people and people buying from people at the end of the day. There's a lot about pricing psychology. There's a lot about the way people think about money and value that I think we don't take advantage of as designers and developers and business owners. That's the basic premise of the book—just try to understand what you're selling and what your client wants to buy. I'll take web design as an example. A lot of web design agencies and shops and freelancers think they're selling websites. No one ever is selling a website. No one buys a website. Nobody wants to buy a website. They buy the thing that the website will do for them. The website is the thing that will let me sell this cool jewelry that I make. If I didn't have a website, I couldn't sell my jewelry effectively.

Dan Mall inspires us to get really good at what we do by constantly practicing it. He reminds us of the importance of work/life balance and setting the right priorities. He also reminds us that there’s a big difference between being a leader and being a boss, and how great leaders are always looking for […]

A week later than planned (sorry,) on this week’s Unfinished Business, I’m joined by returning special guest, designer Dan Edwards. And because you wait all day and then two Dans come along at once, joining us is creative director, founder and director of the SuperFriendly agency in Philadelphia, Daniel (the Dan) Mall.

Dan Mall founder and design director at SuperFriendly joins Gary Rozanc to discuss the ever changing role of interactive designers from simply designing visuals to not only needing to understanding an organization’s goals, but help identify new goals beyond visual design and sell the clients on that vision. The conversation also goes into details on the approach of traditional four-year university level graphic design education vs. apprenticeships, and the necessary skills, from software to business, that students will need to be industry ready.

Dan Mall is an award-winning designer from Philadelphia and Founder of SuperFriendly.

Dan is an award-winning designer from Philadelphia, an enthralled husband and dad. He's the founder & Design Director at SuperFriendly, co-founder of Typedia, and co-host of The Businessology Show – a podcast about the business of design and the design of business. Dan was formerly the Design Director at Big Spaceship, Interactive Director at Happy Cog, and a technical editor for A List Apart. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and danielmall.com.

Dan is an award-winning designer from Philadelphia, an enthralled husband and dad. He’s the founder & Design Director at SuperFriendly, co-founder of Typedia, and co-host of The Businessology Show – a podcast about the business of design and the design of business. Dan was formerly the Design Director at Big Spaceship, Interactive Director at Happy Cog, and a technical editor for A List Apart. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and danielmall.com.

Dan is an award-winning designer from Philadelphia, an enthralled husband and dad. He’s the founder & Design Director at SuperFriendly, co-founder of Typedia, and co-host of The Businessology Show – a podcast about the business of design and the design of business. Dan was formerly the Design Director at Big Spaceship, Interactive Director at Happy Cog, and a technical editor for A List Apart. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and danielmall.com.