Hello and welcome to another episode of the AIGA Design
Podcast, the official podcast of AIGA, the professional
association for design. I'm Lee Sean Huang, Co Executive
Director of Learning and Programs here at AIGA, and on
this season of the show we have been exploring the intersection
of design and performance. Hello everyone, I'm Julia de
Napello, Design Competitions and Event Manager at AIGA.
And our guest this episode is Kevin Flores.
He's a product and design leader, founder and coach based
in San Jose, CA. He's worked with a variety of
companies, including LinkedIn, 23andMe and Verizon.
And he's also the author of this book that I have here, The
Design Career Handbook, Everything you need to know to
get a job and be successful. So today we're going to learn
more about Kevin, his career journey and also talk about his
new book. All right, Kevin, welcome to the
show. Hi there everyone.
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's so great to have you
here. So let's just jump into things.
Tell us about yourself. This sounds like a job
interview, but it's not. Give us a highlights reel of
your career journey and creative lineage so far, your career path
to spend a lot of different things.
So yeah, what are some of how did you get here today?
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Yeah, I have an elevator pitch. I always start with saying that
I've done a bit of everything from running an agency to
working with early stage startups and in house at a few
big corporations as you said, like Verizon 23, me and
LinkedIn. Yeah, I studied industrial
design and I moved to Silicon Valley after graduating.
I was fortunate to start a company with friends early in my
career. We had a successful run up
untilthe.com crash and we landed some VC funding and pivoted into
software, which was great, although it turned out to be too
far removed from creative work. So I started freelancing and
consulting. I work with a number of startups
including one I Co founded and A2 for a celebrity.
And yeah, then in in startup plan, I felt like I was on a
repeat loop for a while and I had that grass is always greener
feeling. I saw friends and former
colleagues climbing corporate ladders and having more
responsibility leading teams more formally and obviously
working on, you know, higher visibility projects.
So I went in house and worked at those few companies.
I definitely learned a lot about broad longer term strategy and
working with teams, big teams, courting efforts, but honestly
that that my responsibility was narrower and everything was much
slower than I had experienced before, which of course was
expected. So yeah, I always advise
designers to try it both if they can.
You know, it always depends on where they are in their career
stage or life stage or especially, you know,
recognizing how they best learn. Yeah, so on this point and the
spectrum maybe between different kinds of design teams, whether
it's like in house in a large corporate environment or a
scrappy startup or agency kind of context.
You might have maybe fast but sometimes a little chaotic in a
startup or agency environment and then maybe slow, but also
you learn a lot about managing relationships and and stuff like
that in a corporate environment. Is there like a sequence?
I mean, I, I think your advice is to try both or figure out
where you you are, but is there any advice that you give about
like where to start or how to figure out that balance of
somebody's thinking through their career as a designer?
Sure. I mean, I talk about it with
people I've mentor all the time and especially if they're
already working and they maybe have a year or two or a couple
years behind them. But honestly, it's, it's so
personal. So like there's some people that
I really, really push and go, you really need to go jump over
to startups and, and just try it out because you know, they're go
getters. They, they, they want to learn
faster. They want to really, they just
be in the weeds with lots of different things and there's
other people that, you know, they really need to learn at a
little bit more reserve pace or they need to be surrounded by
people at different levels, in which case, you know, work in a
large company may be a better fit for them.
So it's, it's very, very personal.
That's why I mentioned, you know, helping people recognize
how they best learn and, and where they are in their their
career stage when they might get nudged one way or the other.
Awesome. Very cool.
Kevin, you've you've described that you had a big break as
joining the deep dive project for the artist.
Will, I am where you you initially were hired for a
specific task and then ended up having to step up to a
leadership role. So for designers early in their
career listening to this podcast, what are ways that you
suggest and you recommend for them to demonstrate initiative
and show more of their work, even if in the beginning of the
their work is very narrow defined?
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
That that particular project was an interesting one, like what I
consider like my mid career was sort of like a not really a
pivot, but just a new direction. But but yeah, you hit the nail
on the head. I mean, I think today, like
design is like so segmented now, but even if your role is like
narrowly defined, I, I really advise designers not to
voluntarily box themselves in on what they can do or to set
limitations on, you know, developing their own skills.
You know, I, I think I, I was very fortunate that there were
just way fewer designers. Like 1015 plus years ago, we
were all just designers. We did a little bit of
everything. We didn't have so many
qualifying prefixes, but today, you know, of course, designers
have to focus on what they're responsible for.
But I, what I really, really advise all the time is just to
be a strong partner with product managers, engineers, marketers,
researchers, basically everybody and understanding what their
responsibilities are and collaborate as much as you can
on areas that they lead. You know, that can mean like
understanding, you know, better understanding business goals and
target metrics, or you know, when the design is like
technically easy or challenging to implement.
And of course, like really understanding research insights
and which ones might be the most influential.
That's literally like, you know, core to what you know, air
quotes are participating in strategy.
I know everyone throws around that phrase so much, but in
reality at his court means like contributing to product specs
and research and marketing plans and, and getting into those
conversations. So actively giving your thoughts
and your opinions and just speaking up and, and
participating. And one other area that I always
mentioned designers, especially if they've been working for a
little bit that they should try to participate in more is
prioritizing and sequencing projects because it's a lot of
times it's dictated. But when you start to
participate, your voice starts to be heard in these different
areas and larger areas of responsibility.
Yeah, you're giving so much great advice right now.
I want to dig deeper into your point of view as a leader, as a
coach. You've used this term player,
coach, player dash, coach before and often for a designer, you
know, you become maybe you start out, most of us start out as
makers, right, who are doing things.
We're hands on, we're craftspeople.
We might become a leader, maybe a coach, but there is some
letting go of that day-to-day. So, you know, what are some of
these significant shifts and mindsets that designers should
think about as they're moving up into management and becoming
leaders? And yeah, how do you deal with
that identity shift and that task shift?
Sure, sure. First of all, I'm not even a
sporty person and I did not, I definitely did not invent the
the term player coach. But but I will say it's, it's
funny because we're in a we're in a weird place right now,
right? I mean, we're seeing job
descriptions for design managers where they're really presenting
high expectations for hands on work.
So it is sort of having a a little bit of a backward slide.
And I don't say that in a positive or negative, completely
positive or negative way. I certainly don't have a problem
with, you know, design leaders being hands on.
But it does represent a bit of a shift for, you know, towards
like these flat back to flatter organizations.
And one negative thing that can happen is just reducing that
strategic participation and ownership in other areas, kind
of like boxing us in, right? But you know, all that being
said, it it is tough not being as close to the making.
But really, if you want to manage, you really you have to
scale yourself and your impact. And the only way you do that is
like load balancing your time and your attention elsewhere.
And that's in all the obvious places, right?
It's in the people management, not just with the, you know,
people you may manage directly, but you know, in forming and
influencing stakeholders or collaborating closely with cross
functional partners and peers at the same time that you are
guiding designers that you do support or manage.
Another thing I'll say is that when you get to that management
stage, you have to trust your instinct a whole lot more
because you're often at that, you know, that front of the
ambiguity where strategies and planning are a lot more fuzzy.
And you know, one other thing I'll say about the whole
transitioning to management thing is that although there may
be ceilings on responsibility and income, it has been somewhat
normalized that you don't have to go in management, you know,
as the only route to growth and advancement.
You know, you can be a high level designer like some people
are calling it, a super senior or super IC and still have a lot
of influence at companies, which I think is great because not
everyone is interested in or frankly cut out to manage and
that's perfectly OK. Yeah.
You know, this conversation has me thinking about how designers,
we as designers can like reframe and have a more expansive
definition of design because I feel like that sort of sense of,
you know, giving U the hands on stuff and the sort of related
identity shift can be hard to navigate.
But I'm reminded of this Eames quote and this definition of
design. I think it was Charles, or maybe
it was Charles and Ray Eames who talked about design as a plan
for arranging elements in such a way to best accomplish a
particular purpose, right. And so that could be elements on
a page layout, but elements could also be like the design of
your team, right? And how do you staff people?
How do you, you know, figure out roles and, and things like that?
So there are different ways of thinking about, but maybe in
different canvases or different arenas that designers are are
working in. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, that's a whole practice, although you'll be seen it
expand and now it's contracting again, the whole you know, area
of like design operations where people you know, want to be
close to design and making, but they also are very interested in
organizational design and and that's a cool place to be as
well. Very cool.
Yeah. So Speaking of some of the
devices that you're giving to designers out there, you
mentioned that you had a chance earlier in your career to work
at Verizon. And you have already said at
some point that a project that you were involved with with it's
a Gold 90 project was a product that failed even though it
received a lot of investment. And so how does this project,
how did it teach you about how to like for projects that didn't
go to your portfolio, for instance?
So what, what are the lessons that it it taught you on this
type of projects that don't really see the light or have a
very short life? And how do you advise the
designers to approach this not so successful experiences?
Yeah, yeah. First of all, yeah, Go 90 was a
huge video platform, consumer video product that not a lot of
people saw. But I will say that, you know, I
had a great run at Verizon and I was part of an innovation team.
Air quotes here again, we know what innovation teams has so
many connotations, but you know, so our team was loosely
associated with that particular project.
That being said, you know, the take away is really to build
upon your knowledge and skills with every single project.
Because after a while, you know, I know it's, it's it's very
difficult when you're early in career and you, you've only had
a handful of projects, but you know, rapidly by the time you're
like getting, you know, approaching mid career and
beyond, you're going to have hundreds of projects under your
belt. And then they're not all going
to be the best projects. They're not always going to be
successful. But you know, you just have to
learn from every single one and take something positive.
You know, some teams do post mortems and discuss whether a
project is successful or not. But it's especially in larger
companies, they're often performative.
I say because, you know, it lets people vent and be heard.
But you know, but they really aren't, they really are most
valuable when you actually go over a project and document what
did go well and what didn't so that you can leverage that for
next time. You know, and even if you don't
do that wherever you're working, you should still do that for
yourself. And but you know, it, it's, it
is, it's very cliche to say, but often the case that projects
that don't will don't do well, they fail for the most obvious
reasons. Like, you know, you know, they
had faulty business assumptions. Like every startup in history
provides the perfect hockey stick growth chart for adoption
or revenue or, you know, something closer to design is
like insights from user research or prototype were ignored.
So you just know it's not going to go well or the worst case
scenario is like no one wanted what was built.
I mean, the classic solution looking for a problem scenario.
But you know, as a designer, you just have to call those out and
do your best to steer projects in a direction that had more
solid validation or better supported assumptions.
And even if those projects you know don't turn out great and
don't make into your portfolio, you still have to like you still
have opportunity to learn from every project.
Awesome. Yeah, Yeah.
I really like your approach that we still should keep documented
in this reflective process of what we are doing, not
necessarily what the company is also doing like how we are
learning as we go. That's that's great.
So we also want to learn from you what what is inspiring you
right now? Is there any specific topic or
habit habit that you've engaged with that you want to share with
us? Yeah, I'll go.
I'll go. I'll share.
Like a left field. Well, there's another sports
analogy, a left field response to this question.
I won't say anything about AI, but but two days ago we saw the
first images of the universe taken by the largest digital
camera ever. I don't know if you saw that.
And you know, we've seen now these colorful nebula that are
thousands of light years from Earth.
And this observatory in Chile is about, is, is expected to
discover like 20 billion new galaxies over the next decade.
So, and even though we can create these, you know, computer
generated images like those photos, these are millions of
real stars and planets and galaxies out there.
So it's kind of awe inspiring. And, and, and Lee, Sean, like a
connection to what you said earlier.
It reminded me of the short film Powers of 10.
Yeah, which in which everybody can find on YouTube.
I definitely recommend it. It was released in 1977.
We'll post it in the show notes. Yeah, for sure.
It's so funny because this is the second time this has come up
in a matter of weeks. And so it's definitely prompted
me to go back and take a look at it.
You know it. It's this very short film,
technically impressive for the time.
Starts with a couple people having a picnic in Chicago, then
zooms way out to the greater universe, then way back into an
atomic scale. But the connection here is that
it was written and directed by the design power couple of
Charles and Ray Eames. So yeah, I always tell designers
that they can find so much inspiration in the work that's
come before us. You know, that's another little
tiny topic that we touch upon in our book.
Very cool and related to with the topic of inspiration.
We usually ask this in the end of our episodes, but we're
trying to make some things here. So what is something?
So it could be a book, a movie, an exhibition, a piece of media
that you would like to recommend to our listeners.
Besides this, the YouTube video, The Power of 10.
Yeah. Yeah, so it's this is such a
tough question for me because I'm notorious for recommending
books. So we actually have a pretty
good book list on our own books website page and including this
one which I've recently revisited.
It's called Orbiting the Giant Hairball I.
Haven't heard of that one. Well.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot of fun.
It's by a, a, a guy named Gordon Mackenzie.
He was, he worked at Hallmark Cards for like 30 years where he
had a self invented job title of creative paradox.
So I actually got this book years ago at a design leadership
event and I just kind of popped into my bookshelf and a few
months later I grabbed it before going on a camping trip, which I
I didn't know how inspiring it was going to be to consume out
in nature, especially because there was no cell coverage.
So there was no screens for days, which was great.
And I say consume because this is like a piece of art.
I mean, the whole book is, you know, it has poetry, it has
scribbly drawings, it has bookmarks here.
It has all kinds of, you know, different kind of types of art
and photography and colleges. And that's all surrounding
Gordon's, you know, anecdotes about work and, you know, he he
essentially talks about tapping into the collective creativity
and pushing off the the stifling forces of corporate
environments, which he refers to as the giant hairball.
Definitely recommend it. Very cool.
Thanks. I'll have.
To check that out as well. Yeah, thank you for sure.
And again, like all things, we'll post this in the show
notes for folks, but let's talk about your book now, Kevin.
So lift it up again for folks who are listening to the audio
only version, you can check this out on our YouTube channel.
But Kevin's book is called Design the Design Career
Handbook. So you've positioned it as in
quote, indispensable road map to a fulfilling career.
You wrote it with your partner and co-author Janine Flores to
help designers get a job and to be successful.
You acknowledge that there's a challenging job market right
now. It's a book that came out this
year. So you're well aware of the
context and even talked about it as like the worst time to come
up with a book of this kind. So can you tell us about your
motivation as why you wrote a book like this, certainly at
this time in the job market and yeah, how does this fill gaps or
maybe update advice given the difficult job market that
designers are facing right now? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah. As a quick background, Janine
and I worked together for more than half our careers so and
when I went to lead in house team, she started teaching
design. So we've both been managers and
mentors for, you know, all of our careers.
And then she added educator to her list.
Yeah, we basically, we saw an opportunity to compile our best
advice or practical advice from decades of working in all these
different environments, as we talked about already.
And, you know, we think it's a balance.
It's balance between reinforcing advice to designers here over
and over, as well as providing tips that, you know, they may
not have heard yet. So we definitely have opinions
on soft skills and and how to do things on the job and how it's a
little bit different than school, but you know, it's.
I think we say this too, we say this all the time, you know,
when I talk to people, I'm sure there's actual words in the book
that as much as we say that design has always been a
competitive field, yes, it is more challenging now, but but it
is a, it's a, it's a worthy and a valuable field as well.
So we just encourage people that if, if they really are
interested in, in being creative and in all the ways that that
means it's such a loaded term, but, and they really do want to
make a difference in the world and, and, and, and learn lots of
different skills. It is a great career to be in.
So, you know, we still pursue people or we still, we still
tell people to pursue it, like not to be dissuaded by what's
going on today. Yeah, Julie and I, Julie and I
gave a talk actually to some high school students in New York
City last week. They were doing a summer program
up at Columbia University and they invited AIGA to come talk
to them. And one of the things that we
talked about is that looking at the statistics alone, this is
based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics from the US federal
government, that graphic design narrowly defined is in decline
or it's not growing as quickly as a job type compared to even
though like the average coverage of jobs across the country.
But what we were trying to paint is like there's a fuller
picture. There's other design fields that
do not fall under that category. These government categories
actually are a little outdated and do not take into account
some newer design fields. And then also that like, even if
someone is interested in graphic design, that graphic
communication is more needed than ever, right, especially in
this social media age. And that there's other roles
that maybe are not graphic designer that are still that
somebody with a graphic design background could really add
value in and have a fulfilling career in.
So that's also something we've been talking about like, you
know, to the to the young people who are just embarking on their
careers and choosing what to study.
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.
And I actually have some of those same slides and
presentations I give to students as well.
And you know, it, it's worth noting that, you know, not to
sound negative or disparaging to anybody that got into this
field. I'd say even pre pandemic, you
know, there's a lot of people that may have got into the field
for the wrong reasons. It just, it looked like a
lucrative career. It looked like, you know, I can
just be creative. And some of them really didn't
understand what design is. You know, we talked about this
also in the book that, you know, there's a, there's a subtle line
as well as a Venn diagram between art and design.
And, you know, you still are creative in it as a designer,
but it's so different depending on the different type of, you
know, specific area that you go into.
And, and you know, it's not necessarily better or worse, but
it's just different. And also the fact that, you
know, especially in technology and it's, you know, I'm, I'm
obviously that's the place that I've spent most of my career,
you know, there was just over hiring and not just the
designers, but of engineers and product people and marketing
people. So we're really, you know,
those, those, those, those stats are really just showing, you
know, a little bit of a leveling out that's happening or a course
correction. You know, it doesn't make it fun
for anybody that's job hunting. But you know, that's sort of the
reality. That's why I say like, if you
are passionate about it, to use a pretty cheesy word, but you
know, to kind of stick with it because designers aren't going
to continue to be needed. Totally.
Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Julia.
Yeah. And the other thing that we also
discussed with them because they were some of them were uncertain
of like what choices they might have for minor and major.
And I think something that also came up in the conversation that
is very much in line with what you said is the importance of
them also knowing more about business and marketing skills
because if they end up becoming a manager at some point, this is
so needed and not at that time is not really covered in in
design additional program. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. I, I, I won't go on too long
about that, but I, I certainly talk about that all the time,
especially when it comes to designers leveling up.
On one hand, we do have to acknowledge like design is very
expansive, expectations are very expansive.
The skills required, you know, there's so much confusion
because of the fact there's so many different types of job
titles. Like what do you, what can you
actually do? But you know, once you start to
kind of get a handle on what you're good at, what you like to
do, that's when you need to kind of branch out and understand
some of these other, other areas of responsibility and
participate because they, you know, you need to participate in
all those as you move up the ranks quite a bit.
And, and it is a surprise for some people for sure.
I think that's the perfect segue to this follow up question about
what you've called day-to-day or soft skills that aren't
necessarily taught in design schools.
Other curricula are changing, but I went to school a long time
ago. You know, there's this point
even on the sort of technical side of design, right, that
tools change all the time. I don't even remember how many
versions of the Adobe products that I've, you know, used over
the decades, right? But they're constantly now
pushing updates and things like that.
So there's always that stuff to learn.
There's the AI stuff that we can talk about later.
But then there's also these like human skills, soft skills.
We've alluded to it earlier in this conversation without
dealing with say, like office politics or managing clients and
managing up, you know, all of these things I think fall under
this big umbrella and you deal with that in your book as well.
So can you speak to that? Yeah, yeah, one sentence on
tools, as I tell designers all the time, as I'm sure many of
you do, and some of your guests, like don't define yourself by
the tools you use. You know, I also, I have a slide
where there's like literally 100 different software types.
I'm like, yeah, I was proficient or consider my expert at all of
these. Like not even 110th of them
still exist today. That's not the point.
So yeah, for sure. But yeah, the soft skills, you
know, it's not so much that they're not encountered in
school like design programs do you know, of course they include
collaboration and group projects and communication and
presentation. But there is more context really
needed about doing it on the job.
And, you know, this, this maybe we'll talk about it later.
But this gets into the whole, you know, I'm just going to say
this word. It's it's it, it implies a
little bit more of a negative connotation that I mean it to.
But this fetishization with design process, like we have to
follow the process and when we get too rigid and all of these
things, that's when, you know, we grow a lot slower and people
don't want to work with us because we're we don't exhibit
as much flexibility and ability to kind of navigate in the
moment. So yeah, communicating and doing
things on the job are a lot more fluid and you have to like right
size, you know, how you interact with people and how do you
communicate with people. And you know, like, for example,
when you're presenting work that you do the stage that you're at,
if you're early stage, kind of scrap your design and you're
meeting with your design partners, you know, you can be
very loose and and very open. But when you're presenting with
stakeholders, you want to get to the point you want to get to
like, you know, the farther along work, not get too bogged
down in the back story of how you got there.
So there's there's you know, there's quite an art to that and
it takes practice. One other thing that I will say
about, you know, in sort of the soft skills area that's really
not talked about enough, especially at the student level,
is that basic time management is so important when you're a
working designer, right? I mean, when you're a working
designer, you're on the hook to deliver things on a schedule and
also you're also trying to or expected to constantly level up.
So, you know, effectively, effectively managing your time.
It varies for everyone. So I tell people, you know, just
be aware of like what takes you longer to do and what things are
come easier to you so that you can actually more actively
schedule your time effectively. Yeah.
And also to the fact that many designers at some point their
careers become a freelancer. And so they also have to manage
and plan and manage their time. And I remember last year we in
the AIJA conference, we had one session that was specifically on
measuring the impact of design work.
And one of the topics that the the speaker brought was a lot on
time management. And it was like a very, yeah,
popular session. So it seems like designers
wanted to learn more on how to improve in that sense.
Yeah, I've, yeah, freelancing. That's, that's an absolute great
example cuz every hour extra you spend is your hourly rate just
dropped it or cut got cut in half in some cases.
So yeah, time management is super critical.
Yeah. So Kevin, you have throughout
your career reviewed many designer CVS, portfolios and
also interviewed many designers for your previous roles but also
for your book. Can you share anything specific
that has stuck out for you? Like what makes a designer stand
out in the crowd? Yeah, it, it's definitely harder
to stand out today. So, you know, I'd say imposter
syndrome, for example, was already hot topic among
designers forever. But, you know, I'd say it's like
10 times worse today because of the sheer amount of competition,
you know, for jobs to sort of raise that feeling, you know,
and I, I wish I could say that like every, you know, being just
being an excellent designer is qualification enough to get
hired. But but really, it's become more
and more important to stand out with a personal brand.
And you know, I'm not just talking about like a visual
style or flair or, or sharing that you like to go hiking, but
you know, just like design, we have to get to the the why
behind those aspects of yourself.
And you know, your personal brand has to really highlight
what's unique about you. So I tell people like you are
the thing that's unique. Like you, your great work will
be compared with somebody else's great work.
And then how do you differentiate or how do you
become memorable? And you know, when you have your
individual beliefs or your personal experience, and it's
clear that they influence how you carry yourself, how you
communicate and, and even in your work, your work decisions
like those are going to make you memorable when you interview
with companies and, and it they may actually be the
differentiating reason why somebody will say, like, I want
to have that person on my team. So you have to really think more
about that personal brand beyond the kind of surface for sure.
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, on that point, you know,
one way to stand out is maybe to have a point of view that maybe
goes against the grade or common science best practice.
I'm going to stir up some controversy here with this next
question. But what are some widely
accepted, like common science or best practice advice that is
given to job seekers, to designers in their careers that
you believe is actually flawed or maybe just outdated, you
know, something that doesn't really make sense anymore?
Yeah. What?
What is some conventional wisdom that you would like to argue
against? Sure.
I think I, I think I dropped a little bit of a hint earlier
mentioning design process and I'll kind of bundle with that
design thinking. Now, don't get me wrong, I
believe in everything that design thinking represents like
human centeredness and and in deep research and iterative
prototyping and all of that. And of course, I've adopted my
teams have used processes like the double diamond.
But I have a joke in in that presentation I mentioned that I
give students and it's basically that the first rule of design
process is you do not talk about design process.
For anybody, it's just like Fight Club.
There you go, that's a Fight Club reference to everybody.
But I started sharing that advice mostly in regards to like
day-to-day work, when I saw two things happening in the
industry. The 1st is that, you know, air
quotes here, everyone became a designer.
Of course they did, because we invited partners to collaborate
in design sprints and research and prototypes even before
Figma. And, you know, they saw that the
fun parts of the design process were easy.
And so everyone became confident in their design opinions without
participating in that. And you know, what's essentially
the deep design work? And the second was that, you
know, we as designers, we projected that what we do is so
important that others need to learn about it.
They, you know, we need to teach them.
Now. There's always going to be a
certain level of evangelism that we're responsible for.
But you know, as we were talking about earlier, like designers
don't quite reciprocate by learning more about business and
engineering complexity. So, you know, again, I remind
designers all the time that processes and frameworks are
meant to be references. They're not meant to be followed
as a rule book. They need to be modified and
adapted for specific situation, different projects,
opportunities and constraints. So not to be so, you know, dead
set and and siloed with, you know, following some rigid
process. I think that's a really great
point. You know, especially in terms of
like because there was a shortage of designers a few
years ago and these, you know, different boot camps and other
alternatives to traditional design school popped up.
And sometimes they would teach like very specific methods.
And, and this happens in traditional design schools as
well. So I'm not singling out boot
camps or anything like that, but there was definitely when you
have an accelerated track to learn design, it does serve as a
kind of training wheels version of the design process.
But I don't know, certainly in every agency context I've worked
in over the years, like nobody really had like a rigid process.
And we have, it's like now is on to the next stage, right?
Like sometimes we'd have like a set process that was really
meant for like project management and client
management. But in terms of the day-to-day
creative, like, you know, anything can, anything could
happen, right? For sure, yeah, like you said, I
mean, are there to be referenced like I'm sure I have the design
Sprint handbook behind me and I definitely have used some of
that exact five day design spread format.
I think I'd use it one time, but every other time was like
adapting for the specific project or resources or goal or
scope of a project. And yeah, my wife, obviously she
teaches design Janine and you know, she talks about the design
process. And I think I think one thing
that's good for earlier career designers or even students that
she describes it as, it's like, hey, it's there as a reference
to fall back on when you do sort of lose your way or get kind of
stuck. It's not meant to be like the
Stebyste way you do design. O The Design Career Handbook.
It's a big book, but it's also very readable, conversational in
terms of advice. But I always like to ask us of
creative people about their large projects.
Is there anything that ended up on the cutting room floor that
just didn't work out? Or maybe you just ran out of
time and you wish you could have included?
Or maybe it's the start of a future project.
Yeah. What's not in the book that you
wish were in the book, or that you might want to explore?
For sure, for sure. First of all, thanks for, you
know, commenting that. It's very readable.
There's definitely a lot of topics in there.
And I think we say right in the intro, there's a lot of topics
in here, but we get right to the point.
That's why we call it a handbook.
And we definitely aim for it to be like Evergreen, meaning, you
know, that hopefully won't be outdated very quickly.
But the first thing I'll say is like, despite writing it during
the hype and the crazy pace of AI development, we only
mentioned it briefly, but it really was, you know, not out of
disinterest and but more so to double down on our belief that
the advice that our most for areas that are in our control
will remain important and valid. So that's that's how we thought
about that. The second thing that didn't
make it in, which is what I call like Spicer stories that I
wanted to share, but they just didn't feel right for the
format. But I've got the writing bug, so
they're definitely part of what I'm ready working on now.
Awesome. Well, thank you for that preview
and teaser. A little hint.
Yeah. Hint, hint.
Yeah, we'll have. We'll have to have you back when
your nextbook drops. Cool.
So I wanted to transition now to a topic that a lot of people are
talking about, sometimes out of frustration, fear, sometimes eye
rolling, just people are just not into it.
And that is AI. So you've before we get to AI
actually, you've talked about blurring these boundaries of
product and design and nudging designers to consider other
roles, whether it's product management or other things like
that. So there are these other
critical skills that we've been talking about that are
transferable skills for designers.
So before we get into like, the specific stuff of AI, which even
by the time this episode dropped, something might have
happened, right? Because it's moving so fast.
Like, what are some of these, like, Evergreen skills that you
see that designers should really be cultivating regardless of the
tools? And then we'll get to the AI
questions. Yeah.
I won't go too deep, but you know, we, we touched upon it a
little bit, but it's, it's, it's, it's what we talked about
earlier, like especially understanding a bit more about
business and product management and strategy.
And you know, from a very high level, that really just means
like understanding the business model.
I mean, you're working in an environment that's like AB2B or
B2C or marketplace or, you know, even if it's a non profit,
there's still money being made and spent.
So you have to understand that. You have to understand how value
is captured. Is it again, is it monetary?
Is it data? Is it advertising?
You have to be attuned to goals and metrics.
You have to know all those three letter, four letter acronyms,
you know, OK, you know, OK, Rs, KPISROYDAU, you know, like all
of the acronyms. And, and most importantly
though, as I said, you have to get invested in the road map.
You have to understand and participate in strategy,
prioritization, planning, timelines and all of that.
It's also very helpful to, you know, work closely with, you
know, the the more hardcore builders like the coders, the
engineers, because there's a lot of respect that comes when you
know that something's very difficult to build, you know,
the complexity, but it also empowers you in, in the other
way when you hear back, oh, that's going to take 10 weeks,
Like, no, this is going to take you like 2 weeks, come on.
So it always just makes you a better partner when you, when
you understand the responsibilities of your
partners. And you know, I think you said
Julie Julia earlier about, you know, again, it's such a cliche
thing to say, but you have to know how connect, how to connect
your work, your design to the business or to the outcomes.
And the only way you do that is by understanding how it fits
into all that sets of responsibilities.
Yeah, that's very true. Let's dive into the AI questions
down that are on everybody's mind.
So you have expressed strong views on AI before, emphasizing
the need to be responsible. Responsible in integrating it
into our work flows and not just like using it a shortcut for
critical thinking or decision making.
So what kind of advice do you have for designers to
responsibly integrate AI into our processes?
Yeah, it's it is crazy, right? I mean, we can't get away from
this topic. It's, it's, it's ever present.
So many memes, good ones, bad ones, frustrating ones for sure.
I mean, the first thing I'll say is that when it comes to
responsible and ethical AI usage, everyone needs to
identify the criteria for their own red lines.
You know, a few that come to mind are it may be the amount of
AI you use. Like I think everyone needs to
Google AI environmental impact, you know, because for for one
reference that I just read recently is like there's a study
that has estimated AI will account for half the total data
power. Data center power usage by end
of this year. That's, that's crazy.
You know, the anecdotes of like 3 Mile Island being fired up to
power AI for a specific customer.
Another one is like, if you, you know, decide not to use AI tools
that were trained on copyrighted material without permission.
And you know, some of those are very, very known.
Of course, you have to, you know, own the decisions in, in
any process that uses AI. You know, that's, that's that,
you know, brings up another topic that comes up a lot, which
is this whole idea. And a lot of articles were came
out in the last handful of months, social media about taste
being essential in the age of AI.
But you know, the last thing I'll say is that I'm a
technologist at heart. So I'm torn.
I mean, I'm also playing with the tools, but I feel like a
curmudgeon when I cite studies about the concerns, whether they
be the ones that we just talked about.
But just the other day, there was an MIT brain scan study on
ChatGPT users that aligns with previous academic studies on,
you know, cognitive decline. So as designers and design
thinkers, it's, it is very, you know, alarming to me, you know,
that we have to find this balance.
So I do you know, all that being said, designers must experiment
with the tools to understand their capabilities, to figure
out what amount and where to fit them in our processes, and most
importantly, to actively participate in deciding how they
are used. Because if we don't participate,
they are being used by other people.
So we have to really be there as well.
Yeah, there's some great points. I mean, how are there some
examples that you can share of how you incorporate AI into your
work flows? I am on the lighter side like
you, I think you mentioned earlier, like I've been playing
with some of the tools. I definitely play with some of
the image generation tools early on.
I'm a little bit of a humble brag here.
I installed dab Stable Diffusion on my local machine, command
line and all that, but it was more out of not wanting to pay a
server somewhere to generate images to test them out.
And I've definitely, you know, experimented with Chachi PT and
notebook LM and I've been, I'm paying very close attention, but
admittedly, I haven't done any vibe coding directly myself yet.
And, you know, again, I'm very torn.
You know, I we came up with all kinds of experimental tools and
so I can't say you shouldn't do that or it's wrong.
But on the other hand, there are all these other concerns that
are just different today. So yeah, so I'm very, very torn
and more on the cautiously optimistic and poking around a
great number of tools. Totally, yeah, For me, it's like
the generative image stuff as it's like it was a novelty and
for a few hours I'd like played with it.
It's like, oh, look at what can I make right?
But it's still very much like there's a certain aesthetic and
you can tell for most of these things, although that's changing
quickly. And then I think it's more the
large language models that I use, like preparing for this
podcast, like feeding it previous interviews that you had
done and and things like that to maybe just like fill in some
spots where that I'm not able to like fully process and
synthesize information myself. But yeah, I'm still figuring it
out as well. Yeah, I I agree.
Some of those areas I think are very promising, although again,
they always have a flip side. So for example, even something
as innocuous as like meeting notes and action items, I think
that's pretty cool. You know, they can read
transcripts and and summarize things.
But once again, I think we have to remain the humans in the
process. I know in a similar way, an area
that it's being experimented a lot.
And I've talked to user researchers and how they're
using it to synthesize interviews, for example, is
they're they're excited about it because it definitely is
speeding up some things. But they're also like, but we
have to also double check everything and make sure we we
agree with some of the assumptions or some of the ways
that, you know, the synthesis has has surfaced the most
important takeaways, for example.
And I definitely talked to user researchers that are like,
please don't automate our process.
Yeah, but it's, but it's definitely being experimented
with for sure. Yeah, and those hallucinations
are real. I've talked about this before on
a previous episode of the show, but somebody like basically
somebody had like asked ChatGPT about some UX topic and it had
and ChatGPT like suggested her a book that I supposedly wrote but
I did not write. But it was like, I'm real.
The publisher was real, but the book was fake.
And so this person actually emailed the publisher and me
like she, she found us asking like, oh, when is the release
date of this book? And both of us were like, this
is not a real book, but yeah, so stuff like that happens too.
So you definitely have to check your real sources.
I'll give you a super quick I'll kind of steal an anecdote or
actually share an anecdote that Janine had recently.
So she has an assignment in her class for the students to
identify. So it's a very designer thing to
talk about here, you know, to identify Helvetica out in the
wild, like find an example of Helvetica.
And somebody had provided this sample, and Janine was like,
pretty certain it wasn't Helvetica.
And she uploaded it to ChatGPT and said, hey, what font is
this? And Chachi PT was insistent that
it was Helvetica. And Janine started talking with
Chachi PT saying, like, oh, but this counter looks different.
And this descender is not quite right.
And it was like, oh, you're right.
You're very observant. You're right.
That is not Helvetica. And it was kind of like, you
know, if she would have just accepted the first answer, it
was wrong. And it was very confident.
So yeah, hallucinations are real even in, you know, such a small
example. Inconsequential example.
I it's funny that you're saying this because a couple weeks back
I went to an event and we had neuroscientists and behavioral
scientists speaking also about AI.
And one of the things that I think it was a speaker from
Google, One of the things that she said was that the rationale
of these systems are built to please us as a user.
So the more critical we are when we're requesting something and
even re requesting like you mentioned that your partner did
is when you actually get more to a productive engagement, let's
say. So that made me think of how we
still need to have a lot of critical thinking when we're
engaging with these models because again, these things can
happen, right? That the the first answer is
very untrue or. Right.
Yeah, it's, it's very easy to get overconfident as well.
And I think that's the, that's the biggest thing that makes me
the most nervous is the fact that, you know, we hear this all
the time that AI is going to eliminate the repetitive work.
AI is going to allow us all to do higher level thinking or
higher level work. And, you know, I kind of
frankly, I laugh at that. I'm like, today, nobody's
working less hours than they did 10 years ago, 15 years ago,
We're probably all working more hours.
And, you know, that's just the time element of it.
But more importantly, This is why I get so nervous and and by
extension, Janine, because she's interacting with students every,
every year, is that that work is really necessary to build up
design knowledge and design sense and the ability to make
these decisions. And so if that works, being
automated, how are people supposed to get started in this
field? And how are they supposed to
build up their own sensibilities about good design and successful
design if they don't have that opportunity to get in what I
call like those reps, you know, because it takes, you know, like
I said, dozens to hundreds of projects before you're
comfortable, you know, having the ability to make decisions
with less information and, you know, trusting in your gut as
opposed to just believing everything that's generated is
going to be the best solution or the most ideal solution.
Yeah, that reminds me of the most recent episode of John
Oliver show Last Week Tonight, where he was talking about AI
slop and it featured a clip from like a an angry Pinterest user
who was complaining about all of the AI generated images on
Pinterest. But I think it goes back to that
too. It's like, OK, our feeds are
increasingly AI generated images.
Like even the things that were like inspired by in our mood
boards are like kind of, you know, sausage made out of
sausage kind of stuff rather than the primary things, right?
So I think that's another, yeah, just reminder to have to go out,
whether it's the books to museums, to other places that
are really like the source of things rather than the kind of
regurgitated, reimagined stuff, right.
Right, right. Absolutely.
I mean, yes, again, I'm sure it sounds, it sounds very similar.
Like we have to encourage early career designers to get out
there to pick up books, to go look at what magazines are still
out there. Thankfully, record albums are
coming back. So there's art that we used to
be inspired by before, but literally like museums and parks
and signage, we have to experience these things out
there because they're so they're just so important for us to
develop our opinions and our points of views, as you
mentioned earlier. It's yeah, it's, it's it reminds
me of, you know, this little spin off topic around AI that
was, really was and probably is going to remain popular for a
while, which is, you know, a lot of people saying like taste is
really, you know, it's required in this age of AI.
And, you know, for anybody that's ever worked in
entertainment, like I did for a while, like, you know, it used
to be this term called tastemaker.
And you know, the whole idea of having taste is on one hand, it
can be very opinionated and just people just have opinions and
what they say is cool, people believe is cool.
But I, I always compare taste and I wrote a little bit about
this on sub stack on sub stack that taste for designers is, is
really what we call like design sense.
And what does that mean? Like in practicality, it means
that, you know, we've developed a sensibility based on
understanding design foundations and what is good and what is bad
design, say good and bad, even though, you know, the more
proper words are successful and unsuccessful.
But but you all and hopefully all the designers out here know
that's a stand in for good and bad.
And you know, and this is this is also a very designerly thing
to say, but recognizing when like some rule is broken,
whether it's intentional or not intentional, right?
We always say that's a good mark of a designer as they know when
to break the rules or you know, they intentionally will break
the rules. But, you know, so designers have
these frameworks and these skills to recognize quality or
to judge quality and success. And that's what develops, you
know, a good eye for detail. And, you know, and the whole
human centered design kind of perspective means that we really
always keep the end users in mind, you know, the audience in
mind. And so we don't, you know, just
blindly accept, like I said, everything that's generated as
the best solution or ideal one. But as designers, we know to
keep digging deeper and like why this is a good decision or a
better decision because they're founded in some things that are
deeper rooted in US. Yeah.
And Speaking of that, Speaking of that, do you, do you have any
suggestion on how designers can continue cultivating their
design sense or taste in especially now in the era of AI?
Yeah, yeah, I think we've talked about it like 3 times, right?
It's like we designers have to get away from screens.
It's literally, you know, whether it's a small screen or
even the computer screen, like there's so much influence out
there and things that we can learn from, from the past.
You know, it's so funny when people see like a really cool
designer puts out this work. And you know, if, if you've
studied design, like 9 times out of 10, they were influenced by
some great artists in the past or some artistic movement, you
know, like, you know, deconstructivism or Art Deco or
whatever it may be. And you know, now all of a
sudden they're a rock star designer.
Well, they just did that little bit of homework.
They studied a few designers that came before, you know, like
a Neville Brody or, you know, David Carson, you know, it's
like, oh, this look at this cool new style by this artist.
And it's like, you know, I, I, hey, all the best artists and
designers steal from the past, you know, so it's not
necessarily a bad thing, but it's a weird thing to even say
that out loud because it's like, you know, I, I can hear the lash
back already. Well, how's that different than
AI? And it's like, well, it's
different because the point is you're, you're taking in these
influences and the point is not to copy, but to incorporate
them, to mash things together, to use them to help develop your
own style, which is ultimately what usually happens by all
those breakout design stars. It's not because they just
copied one thing. You know, I'll poke a I'll poke
a finger right now at like Johnny, I've like, you know,
especially given the open eye, open eye announcement recently,
like not only is he always been forthright that all of his most
of his Apple work, his design work at Apple was inspired by
Braun and by, you know, Dieter Rams.
So it's like, here's an example, like go, just do that.
Go study, you know, design that's come before go study art
that's come before movements and and get away from the screens
that are just, you know, flooded with AI slop as it as it is
being called, right. Totally.
So Kevin, thank you so much for joining us in this conversation
today. Kevin Flores, you've been
listening to him here. Watching him here is the
co-author of the Design Career Handbook.
You can get it online on his website.
We'll post links to everything. But just as a final call to
action for our listeners and our viewers, where can folks find
you and connect online? We'll post it in the show notes,
obviously, but folks love to hear it from you directly.
For sure, I, I'm, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so I always
tell people, please connect with me, you know, let me know how
you found me. And, but that's great.
I'd, I love to communicate with people there.
And of course, check out the books website.
There's a, there's a cool resource page with tons of links
that, you know, are pretty useful.
I I think that's design career handbook or design
careerbook.com. And I'll just just one closing
though, is I'll say reiterate. We said earlier, like the world
of work right now, including design is like we're in the
middle of such massive disruption.
But don't let that dissuade you. If you really are interested in
design and, and expressing and employing your creativity to
develop cool stuff out there. So just please stick with it and
and dig in. Again, Kevin, thank you all for
watching or listening and we'll see you next time.
Bye everyone. Thank you.