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Explore the evolving world of design with Cameron Craig and Keith as they tackle the challenges of complex, monolithic products and the critical role of human-centered design. Each episode dives into topics like organizational change, the future of design in tech, and the emerging influence of agents on user experience. Perfect for designers, strategists, and leaders, this podcast offers insights on adaptability, communication, and the strategic thinking needed to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Cameron Craig (00:01.198)
Thank you.
Keith (00:02.056)
Cameron, how's it going,
Cameron Craig (00:04.448)
Well, after a hefty reboot of my system and, a bunch of additions to my system, here we are.
Keith (00:12.99)
Yeah, it's working. It's good. It's a little bit of a
Cameron Craig (00:15.234)
Yeah, I'm almost a similar size to you now. Like I figured out how to get my camera to be like roughly. So I don't look like oddly. We look like we're talking to each other versus, you know,
Keith (00:21.448)
Yeah.
Keith (00:25.862)
Yeah, it's good. The eyes are on the kind of the same line. And it, you know, like I said, it takes a minute to kind of get all the the gremlins worked out and make it look consistent.
Cameron Craig (00:35.342)
Well, I'm not saying we've got rid of my gremlins, but you know, at least we have some consistency and things sound not terrible. So that's good.
Keith (00:38.312)
There's less though.
Keith (00:44.254)
Yeah, I mean, think they looked and sounded decent before. there's, I mean, it's not it doesn't sound like you're in, you know, your parents fucking basement with echo and stuff. You know what I mean? It's like, there are different levels of these things. But
Cameron Craig (00:53.207)
Thank
Cameron Craig (00:59.264)
Yeah, yeah, well it's getting better at least, so.
Keith (01:01.724)
Yeah. So what today is what end of July, we've been kind of getting on like a two week ish Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:10.126)
Yeah, it's summertime. So we're working slow. We're working slow. I mean, not that we're not working normal jobs, but like our not day job, we're working slow.
Keith (01:18.851)
Yeah, and this is a weird time in the grand scheme of things too.
Yeah, so we've been talking about using this as a vehicle for designers to understand, to kind of like adapt to the business world, to kind of stay ahead with AI. And I think through the conversations, we've seen that it's not just designers, but it's also like, doesn't matter kind of what industry you're in, like everything is kind of disrupted at this point. And I think a lot of people are kind of
hoping to go back to the old way at some point. I think we're gonna see even bigger push for that over this fall because of like all the outer planet like retrogrades or whatever. But yeah.
Cameron Craig (02:06.242)
I mean, do think we're going to be successful in, going back to the old ways? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Cause I was going to, that would have been an interesting debate between us. Cause like, I'm like, there's no way we're going back. The systems are in place to like take us somewhere completely different.
Keith (02:10.363)
no, this is no, this is.
Keith (02:17.566)
I don't... I'm...
Keith (02:21.786)
No, I Not at all. It's I think this is going to be because we're talking before a little bit about like, trying to do this for designers. And then the more we talked, it's just like, designers don't want to evolve and change. And I think, yeah.
Cameron Craig (02:36.608)
Yeah, sadly, sadly, you know, I agree with you. It's, it's been rough. So, but anyway, finish your thought. Cause like you were going somewhere.
Keith (02:45.086)
Yeah, no, yeah. So I we could talk about that for like another hour. And we start thinking about, okay, we kind of were beating a dead horse at this point, where it's like, okay, we've, we're saying a lot of the same, or finding a lot of the same themes. And those themes are also like universal with, it's going to be developers, and it's going to be it's not just design, it's going to be a fundamental re architecture across the board, it's not gonna happen overnight, but it's going to be slow, and then all at once. And I think where we landed from last week was
Cameron Craig (03:03.82)
It's everybody.
Cameron Craig (03:10.306)
Yeah.
Keith (03:15.42)
jumping off with the idea of like systems thinking this week, which you know, kind of this is a whole this could be its whole own podcast in and of itself, because it's about you're dealing with complexity and feedback loops and kind of how parts fit to the whole. But I think this is kind of a good foray for today to kind of jump off, just to kind of talk a little bit about that, how we think about that, how we use that to assess situations, because again, it's like, you know, we're
We went through design, we're fundamentally business people too. And we think, you you have to find a way to make things work. And that's what business is all about. Not like fun, you know, greed, where you're just trying to like extract every little penny out of something. But how do you create value and improve like the quality of life for people as much as possible? So yeah, that's what I'm thinking. What do you think?
Cameron Craig (04:04.748)
Yeah. I love that because I think, and again, this is not like that we're somehow saying we're abandoning the practice in the field of design. think you and I have both gotten to where we are both in our careers, but also in the way in which we think, because we think like designers and we're trained like designers, which I do, no matter what, I fundamentally believe that that is in business, a leg up because of a few things, right. And getting into systems thinking like,
We are trained to think in systems and you know, there's part of that that is, your personality and kind of how you're wired, but a lot of it also in the context of business or the educational environment, you do need some fundamentals there and design school teaches you those things. think the other thing outside of the systems thinking is we're programmed to tell stories and we're programmed to develop.
deliverables or visuals or whatever that help break down incredibly complex concepts out of systems and get people in business to sort of understand them in a different way and then deal with them. But to the point where you were headed, which is where we should kind of start diving in, and there's a lot of depth here, is actually we're at this critical moment where a lot of the known
I don't even want to call them systems, but the known rule sets by which we do things are being shaken up, right? And, the outcome of all that shaking is undetermined. And I think that's frustrating and scary for a lot of people. Like they're like, geez, it ever going to stop? Are we ever not going to be, you know, shaking the edge sketch? And right now,
You know, the answer to that is no, probably not because the evolution of what we're trying to build technologically is also not stable. So as a human being trying to work in this environment, you know, one of the things that I think I'm coming to is you have to rely on the core systems that you are working in, right? Like human to machine, machine output to machine output, machine output to humans. And
Cameron Craig (06:28.276)
you know, getting caught up in the interface design at this point as the Etch A Sketch is still being shaken is impossible. Like
Keith (06:37.81)
you're limiting your thinking to the little turning knobs and then shaking like that's it. You have like three dimensions of input effectively.
Cameron Craig (06:43.712)
Right. the world around us and a lot of the experts in the technology, right? So forget about the computer interface, right? Think the core models, the core infrastructure that is developing these things. They're doing the same thing that everybody else is doing, which is they're turning to the machine itself and saying, well, what else can you do? Or how else could we do this? And the machine's coming back and it's like, well, we could think about these things.
And when that's the dynamic that you're working in, trying to keep up with where the technology is going is impossible. And even the scientists who are working in that space, right? Both in terms of like machine learning, pattern recognition and pattern development, and ultimately, you know, in the field of data science, like are all saying the same thing, trying to keep up with the changes in the technology.
is going to get exponentially more difficult. know, like to bring that into a more tangible example, everybody was super excited about MCPs a month ago, two months ago. you know, like the, these, these little servers that do, you know, the connection between multiple data sets, multiple agents, multiple. Yeah. Right. It's just an interchange.
Keith (07:52.189)
Yep.
Keith (08:00.946)
Your computer and the AI, yeah.
Cameron Craig (08:06.134)
And do you need one in whatever you're doing? If you're working in AI, you absolutely need one in that, right? Like even the work that I'm working in, you know, we debated that for a while. It's like, there's, there's many ways. And it's like, this is a foundational item and now it's been done. So just integrate it. Like you don't need to innovate there. You don't need to reinvent it. Yeah. It's a heat exchanger for data. It's like a router, right? It's like, you know, I understand what you have. Here's what I have. Let's connect it, you know, and then
Keith (08:22.172)
It's a heat exchanger for data.
Yeah, there you go.
Cameron Craig (08:34.09)
let the machine kind of figure out what that integration is. So there's not a lot of like innovation or invention that's needed there. And that concept is a really hard thing to get designers to understand, developers to understand, and business people to understand, because it's like, you don't need to innovate in each of these spaces. Like it's almost like when we develop the internet, you know, IP addresses
were not a given in the beginning and then they became a given and then on top of the IP address became, the abstraction of things which got us to the worldwide web, right? Like in...
Keith (09:13.636)
dynamic, is it static, is it DHC, yeah exactly.
Cameron Craig (09:16.884)
But all of those things, I mean, again, we're in that space again, we are. I read this fascinating article about how everything on the internet is now beta again, because you can't, you can't necessarily rely on the previous knowledge systems that were in place to deliver knowledge the way that they did before, including things like Google, right? Like now everything is going through a large language model to understand what you're actually asking.
Keith (09:25.822)
100 % is being reinvented.
Cameron Craig (09:42.892)
And the responses are coming back from a different large language model to say, look, well, here's what I understand. So everything's in beta at this point. So it's like, people are going to drive themselves crazy trying to understand that. And from a systems perspective, it's like one recognize the things that are in churn, but it doesn't mean that you need to go through the churn to
You know, recognize the things that you can control and the areas where you have expertise and apply the expertise to the problem. you're ha you have to think more broadly, like the problem that you're trying to solve is no longer like, what's the best interface to put on top of an AI. It's like, do interfaces matter at this point? Right.
Keith (10:25.15)
Right. Where is the value going to be? OK, so this is awesome. So let's take one step back for a second. So I got a bunch of books on systems. This is one of the best ones. It's called Thinking in Systems from Daniella H. Meadows. Think I'm saying it right? This is like really easy to go through. There's a couple blanket ideas. I think we should just kind of define about systems from this book that I think is really easy.
Cameron Craig (10:33.814)
Mm-hmm. What's that?
Cameron Craig (10:40.322)
That's cool. I need to that.
Keith (10:54.398)
Okay, so a system, a system is basically a set of interconnected elements that are organized to achieve a purpose. So you have all these different pieces, it can be a network, it can be a company, you you increase revenue, and you keep your expenses consistent. You know, you have more cash coming in less things being taken out. That's how you get profit, right? Very high level. It's like a things are connected. And there's a purpose. So when you say system is it's connected pieces and purpose.
Cameron Craig (11:23.982)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (11:24.434)
The second idea is this idea about stocks and flows where, you know, like with cash, you have more cash and then there's less flow or more. And that's what I call it cash flow. So it's like how much you're holding versus what is the rate of change of a thing within, you know, this connected system or this connected elements and on a purpose. and then with every system, the third part is about this idea of feedback loops where, you do one thing, you make a change and then there's feedback. Like the output comes back to the input in some way, you know, like,
you feed little kids sugar before they go to bed, the blood sugar is gonna go up and they're gonna run around like maniacs until 5am and you're go nuts. So it's feedback loops. these things are very simple to think about once you kind of see them. So that's, I think you and I are the way we see the world is just fundamentally through this lens of systems and networks because it's not
Cameron Craig (12:06.272)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (12:20.808)
when you're kind of I it's about creative thinking or seeing things differently or just just being wired differently. But when you're kind of looking at when you see things, even if it's a little bit of an anomaly that other people don't see, then the way that things have been done don't work for you to make to make sense and meaning of the world. And that is a huge thing that's breaking down right now that the ways we've been told that things are happening are not going to happen are not going to work in the future. But yeah, let me
Cameron Craig (12:36.686)
Hmm.
Keith (12:49.886)
pause there because it's like a lot of information in one shot. Again, this will have to make some visuals for this later to kind of come back to. But it's like there's interconnected parts. There's a purpose. You have stocks, you have flows, and then there's a feedback loop that changes that from the output that changes the input. And if you can, you know, pay attention to those things, that's you can kind of start thinking in systems. And it can even be as simple as like, you you're filling up a bathtub, it gets too hot because you put too much hot water in, you got to turn the hot off, put the cold on a little bit to kind of get this equilibrium.
You have a stock of water, you have a flow of hot and cold, and then you get to this kind of equilibrium point. And that's, I think that's the simplest way to kind of like break it down for people.
Cameron Craig (13:27.724)
Yeah, that makes sense. So is, is it also safe to say like maybe a slightly different take on that? Like the stocks and flows of things are maybe the.
Inputs or the, the aspects that your unit of work works against, right? Cause like to your example with the bathtub, the unit of work is you moving the dials or the knobs to basically change like, I need more cold water. Cause it's too hot. Water would be the stock that you're playing with and a sub division of that would be hot and cold. Is that a reasonable? Yeah.
Keith (14:01.63)
Yeah, sure. Yeah. And that that's one way of looking at it. Like there's is the bathroom super cold because the heat doesn't work? You know, or is it super hot? Because it's a summer day and you actually want to make it colder than hotter. And then the cold water is actually dirty because the city's got, you know, garbage water supply. So these are they're different kind of feedback loops, right? Whether it's temperature, whether it's quality water.
Cameron Craig (14:22.061)
Right.
Keith (14:28.498)
They can be you can look at these things in a lot of different ways. But it's there's no one way to kind of do it. But the way you're talking about like the stock of water and the flow is kind of like the rate how much you put in that that would be the flow and you can apply this to business and anything.
Cameron Craig (14:41.932)
Yeah. Yeah. I liked what you just said too, about, know, all these environmental factors also coming in, right. Which could be anything like you can go as big as you want with the system. Right. Like, as I was thinking about that, it's like, you're in New York, I'm in California, the temperature differential on a summer day like matters. It's, it's probably hotter in New York right now than it is in California. And you know, you could go to the macro world around us and like, why is that the case? Right. Like 20 years ago, that might've not been the case. Like it.
Keith (15:01.233)
Yeah.
Keith (15:11.304)
Yep.
Cameron Craig (15:11.342)
probably would have been hotter in California than it was in New York. But at the end of the day, there's only certainly back to the core problem, right? Like, and this is what I'm saying. Your core problem is I need to get into the bath. I need the water to not burn me. I also need the water to not be so cold that it's unpleasant for me to get in the bath. And you have a very simple, like you have a simple set of things that you can manipulate, even though there are all of these huge and complex factors around you.
And taking in the factors around you is important, but reminding yourself of like, at the end of the day, the core task is X. And oftentimes you get back to the very simple things. You're like, okay, well, to manipulate and complete this task, my inputs and outputs are actually quite simple, right? And if I stay focused on those things, I'm going to achieve the result that I want to achieve. And I might in, in the curiosity and learning end of things, I might actually
Keith (15:49.01)
Task at hand.
Cameron Craig (16:11.392)
discovered that there are different ways of achieving the task and there may be a simpler way of achieving that task in time, right? Like,
Keith (16:20.07)
or using the MCP example, right? It's like, we have to innovate. It's like, you don't have to make a new faucet and a new water treatment system just because your neighbor bought this new Tesla, whatever BS thing that's like filtering water 10 times, you know, with taking the lead out or whatever. It's like that that's letting another kind of boundary layer feedback into what you're doing. But it's it's it's almost like the shiny object syndrome where it's like, how do you know which task at hand is the right thing to focus on? And maybe that is where kind of the design
industry went wrong because back to an earlier point where you're like, we're telling stories and we're like effectively delivering artifacts. The mechanism to deliver the artifacts is what defined the value because what you sold is an agency which was like wireframes and flows and like decks or whatever. And it was that old mentality that couldn't change and adapt that kind of thing kept us in that, in the old way.
Cameron Craig (17:12.878)
Well, mean, let again, breaking that system down, you know, not that we're going to just keep doing this, but like.
Keith (17:19.196)
No, I think it's helpful because systems thinking is hard for people to get. like just, just do it, just flow.
Cameron Craig (17:23.214)
Like, we're lazy. We're lazy in the design industry. We were very lazy. Like, we landed in a space. I'm going to say 25 years ago, because prior to that, from like 95 to 2000, it was the Wild West. And, you know, everything in this century, we got in at a time and we were graduating designers at a time where
Keith (17:37.926)
Yeah, 2K. Yeah, yeah. Pre-tech boom.
Cameron Craig (17:51.754)
they could quickly go to work on a problem space that was vast, was valuable, and we got paid to do it, right?
Keith (18:03.198)
They were the OG systems thinkers because they had tools to operate laterally rather than the old way.
Cameron Craig (18:08.066)
And we were the only ones again, thinking about this HCI problem. Now the problem is like, instead of trying to figure out where the technology could take us, we all got really lazy and we're just like gilding interfaces for web delivery. Right. And, you know, not, not to bring the industrial revolution between the eight, you know, the 1800s and the 1900s, but it's a little bit like that, the Henry Ford problem. It's like, instead of.
Making a car. were all like faster horses, right? Like we all thought flash was cool in the late 1990s in the early 2000s. And it represented a very rich interface, but it's funny that like that rich interface went away and we went back to like HTML and JavaScript and Java as a way of delivering that interaction. we peeled back a lot of that high fidelity interaction and high fidelity experience. And we're like,
Latency sucks and proprietary systems suck and we can do, we can get 80 % of the way there in a much simpler way that uses less bandwidth and has people waiting less. Right.
Keith (19:09.0)
Yup, Ajax.
Keith (19:20.722)
And was in Steve Jobs, not putting flash on the iPhones was a huge business driver that basically was like a death knell to that whole thing.
Cameron Craig (19:30.03)
Yeah. Like honestly, Keith, you know, this is a funny thing about that particular technology. And then we can leave that technology because half the people probably on that are technologically savvy. You're like flash. What the hell's that? Like, um, you know, one of the things about the internet that drove a lot of early innovation, honestly, was the porn industry, right? Like a lot of things ended up getting developed to make porn more accessible.
Keith (19:42.182)
It's dating both of us.
Keith (19:57.53)
Yeah, mean, weapons and sex, it's like the lizard brain. Yeah, the lizard brain kicking back in.
Cameron Craig (20:03.042)
Like flash is the one technology that porn couldn't save. Remember like when it left the mainstream, but you still like needed flash like, or, you know, that, was still a delivery mechanism for video content, right?
Keith (20:17.694)
Well, it was like a virus thing that you could get because you were basically downloading some exploit on your machine and you were like, what the hell is this thing? it was like, have a format, we have to delete my computer again.
Cameron Craig (20:24.152)
Yeah.
Yep. Yep. So even, even porn couldn't save flash, which is actually kind of funny. but you know, like back to the humans, it's one of those things where, where the design world.
Keith (20:29.085)
Security.
Cameron Craig (20:42.786)
had a responsibility to start thinking about different HCI 15 years ago, right? Like we had that opportunity with the phone. was like, okay, you now have a high fidelity portable interface that goes everywhere with you. And what did we do? We made like candy crush.
And social media.
Keith (21:01.96)
Simple, yeah, simple things, man, yeah.
Keith (21:07.586)
it's, it's great. mean, I was talking to somebody else about this about like, is all human interaction just basically, like molecules of information exchange between people, like, oh, the weather is good. The weather is bad. I ate this thing. How was it? I was like, it gets kind of meta and it kind of melts. mean, it melts your brain sometimes too. But I think
Now, because we're there's so much power, like physical power, like, you know, electricity power, there's so much bandwidth, there's so much compute available, that it's the reason that future is so hard to seize because the change is compounding on multiple levels. At the same time, it's like the cellular level like the muscular level.
Like the physical body, the environment, the state, like it's everywhere all at the same time as it's going through this transformation. It's never really happened before in our recorded history, which is kind of like amazing, but also kind of terrifying at the same time.
Cameron Craig (22:09.494)
Yeah, agreed. mean, I think that's the thing. It's like to your point, this is not a design problem. Necessarily, I think designers
Keith (22:20.52)
Like a classic designers. Yeah, like HCI.
Cameron Craig (22:23.478)
Yeah. Designers, think, you know, and again, on one end, Keith and I were talking about this before we started recording and there's something in me that feels inherently bad about sort of shifting away from, we're going to teach designers to think differently. Like we're going to teach everybody to think differently and we're going to use a bunch of design techniques to do it. But honestly, like
You know, and maybe this is like catharsis in some way or trying, you know, to have some sort of a cathartic. But my last two weeks of dealing with design problems and design talent in some way. Has been so utterly frustrating to get people to understand and think about this problem differently. That. You know, we're making a choice to kind of broaden our aperture, because, know, I think all.
All boats rise, right? Like it's not to say like somehow designers are going to get a hose in this. I do believe the designers as a role and those that think in design and systems will benefit in the coming years. I really firmly believe that. But I think that this problem space is really not just about design. It's about business. It's about thinking about how
Business is done in an environment that is rapidly changing around the technology right now. But I mean, I think, you know, and you've brought this up along the line, like the world is changing. Like forget about the technology. The world is absolutely changing right now at a rate of speed that I think is on. I mean, certainly unprecedented in our lifetime, but maybe, maybe in human history, I don't know. Right.
Keith (24:07.71)
100 % x, the rate of change is exponential. And part of that byproduct is that everybody's a designer now. Because if you can have code to do to make an app to do with something at home, that's going to help you know what going to water your plants or I don't know, doing solar studies on where to build a house or something something simple, then anybody can make it now and design is one of those four food groups. mean, we talked a lot about like,
Design, business, hacking and cycles. know, because a cycle doesn't have to be like astrology, whatever it can be like the business cycle where it's like, you know, economies rise, they fall, you know, something's innovative, it becomes a monolith over time. Understanding those kinds of tides in a way that you need some literacy in all of these pieces together in order to kind of see where things are going to come and understand how to kind of adapt and react. And the challenge is that like
Cameron Craig (24:44.632)
Yeah.
Keith (25:05.501)
a lot of what we do and base our life on, at least in America is like, what do do for a job? And it's like, okay, cool. have this, you know, I'm a designer, I'm an engineer, whatever. And especially the hiring environment now is it's not only are you like, can you do the job? It's like, are you going to be like de-risking their decision and not, you know, make them potentially get fired for a bad decision? And what happens is you go back to the old way. What do we think is going to, you know, another friend of mine is dealing with this right now. And, you know, systems thinking,
And like an MBA or whatever, it's like, they're not, they're not like checklists of things that to immediately show value. And I think it's almost like you have to kind of, you have to just learn to use it and do it. And even the way that you find work and I don't know, it's, I was kind of getting on a rant for a second, but it's agreeing in a way that everything is changing. And we may even change this topic and theme again, too, but you know, we're not going to stop talking about design, but it's important, but it's not.
the focus of what this is about because I think we're seeing patterns and I think other people that are going to be listening to this are going to see similar patterns. may not know what it means, but they're going to be like, yeah, something's going on. I don't know how to put my finger on it, but are there more people like us that are out there that are also seeing and sensing the kind of same thing?
Cameron Craig (26:21.846)
Yeah. I mean, and I think that the thing that we landed on, which does come out of design thinking is this idea of systems thinking, right? as we talked about before this, like designers are, are trained to think that way. And I think if we can give everybody tools to think about those things, one, hopefully we start making.
And not like you and I are altruistically going to be solving the world's problems. But like one of the things that like outside of design thinking and business thinking, those that think in systems, see things in a different way. they're like, like back to your analogy about filling the tub, right? It's like, can drive yourself nuts thinking about all of the existential threats to existence in your life. And, and, and, you know, I'm not going to deny that I spend some of my time thinking about those things, but at the end of the day, like,
There's a logic and reality to a lot of things that oftentimes people they miss. They simply miss that. And if more people like thought in systems and looked at like, like what's going on over here and what's going on over here and how does it affect this other problem versus like kind of from the bottom up, like I have this problem and it does these things. You get a better solution, right? Like, and if you don't think in systems, one at a very tactical level,
Keith (27:23.496)
the obvious.
Cameron Craig (27:45.75)
You probably are missing the bigger picture. And when you miss the bigger picture, you oftentimes are in a place where a number of things that can happen. You. You lose money, you lose opportunity, you lose the ability to advance in some way, and you lose the ability to like actually be the expert in some ways. Like if you bring bring it back to self, right? Like and so some of these things simply by retraining your brain to be curious.
Keith (28:09.307)
Yep.
Cameron Craig (28:15.692)
And to look at those patterns and to understand them and then to figure out like, okay, how do I engineer or design my solutions with that bigger picture in mind? You know, you do the heavy lifting upfront in the thinking in the, in some ways that I'm going to call it philosophizing or, know, coming up with your philosophies around it. But if you have those things as your core tenants, before you go in and try and solve a tactical problem, your solution is always better.
Keith (28:45.214)
So this is a really good segue to loop back into thinking and systems from the Nella Meadows where she talked about mental models and the role of mental models. And she defines a mental model more or less as the assumptions, beliefs and perceptions through which we interpret systems and define the problem. And the issue is that we don't revise flawed or outdated mental models, which it's essential for improving your thinking and your understanding of like decision making.
because we kind of get stuck in this old pattern that we just hold on to because I think it's like a control thing or a human thing. But, you know, that's one of the things that teach you in design, like in HCI is like, if you see a doorknob, how do you know that you're supposed to twist it a certain way? Or you go to walk into an office, how do you know to push it rather than pull it based on what the shape of the thing is? You know, maybe they put sensors around and you're like, what the hell, you know, it's too Star Trek, we have no frame of reference. But how do you adapt? How do you learn? Like that's, you know, systems thinking.
in a way.
Cameron Craig (29:43.746)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and again, you're using the perception of what's going on around you to solve the problem of the door opening, right?
Keith (29:51.994)
Yeah, and, and there's like, it could be a whole other subsystem of control that could be like a long standing belief system, whether it's like political or religious, or, you know, you're 13, and you think the world's gonna end if something happens in, you know, in junior high school versus you don't know that, you know, you're, you're not going to care about that in like 10 years, but that's your whole world, your whole, you know, that that's as far as you've expanded in life up to that point of your like, understanding of how things work. So
Cameron Craig (30:19.715)
Yeah.
Keith (30:21.182)
Yeah, it's, it's really interesting. And then the the other kind of behavior is this idea of linearity and non linearity, which I think is a good quick next thing to get into. like linear is like, you know, I add $100 a month to my bank account, you know, it goes up by like $1,000, like almost at the end of the year, versus if I, you know, I buy a crypto or something, and it goes up 1000 X, it's a nonlinear relationship where the impact of a decision
Cameron Craig (30:31.618)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (30:50.18)
or an input is not consistent or almost equal to what the input is. So it's like an asymmetry of input and output. And that's really hard to see. I kind of think you have to be wired for this or you kind of, some people are really good at math and can do it. But you know, we're linear creatures, we're evolutionary. We're not revolutionary in the sense where we're used to having hundreds of years of change happen in like a decade, right? And
Cameron Craig (31:16.182)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Keith (31:19.676)
I think what we've been good at is understanding these leverage points that are either low leverage or high leverage. And the high leverage is understanding or having an intuition of, I'm going to make one small change and the impact is going to be massive versus you could have a lot of work that's not going to move the needle very much. And that's hard to change and show people because it's back to the business thing about MCPs. It's like, okay, this is important as a core component. It should get folded into kind of like the foundation.
but it shouldn't be the thing that which were defined. It's like, do you need to do a custom IDE that's got AI built into it if seven other companies are doing it right now? is that, you know, is it? Yeah. It's like what, why it's, it's free stuff at this point.
Cameron Craig (31:58.359)
No.
Cameron Craig (32:02.926)
Well, it's funny too, because I think it's weird because I think like you and I are working through this as we're, sitting here recording this and that's fine. but I'm also kind of trying to come back to eat our own dog food. Right. So as we define the system that we're working in and we're trying to shift, right? We have humans interacting with other humans. We have ideas like
We've always had that premise that innovation and ideation is the currency that we're dealing in. Right. And, to maximize the throughput and output and impact of those things, we're trying to manipulate the human systems, the organizational systems, and now like, because it's such a focus, the technological systems that come into this. that's one thing is you were talking that I'm like trying to remind myself of like,
You know, we started talking about this idea of analyzing the organization that you work in and determining what type of organization it is, right? Because that, like back to your, do you mix the water to make sure the bath is right? Like all of these things come into play. And in some ways, like we need to remember that like we're trying to like our problem space is we want innovation to happen wherever anybody's listening to this, because that's what we're about, right? Like we're like, you can't
You can't keep gilding the same design. You can't keep gilding the same business idea, product, you know, on and on and on, right? Like this is how you stagnate. And this is how ultimately companies go to die or ideas go to die or civilizations go to die. and, you know, our whole thing is how do you have a leg up as a designer or as a business person or as a strategist?
as a chief of staff, whatever, that gets your idea across the finish line so the innovation can happen. And that's one thing I think we do need to hang on to that because at the end of the day,
Cameron Craig (34:17.622)
we are evolving humans in these systems that we want innovation to thrive, right? And like I said, as you were talking about this, I'm just like...
you know, my brain always tries to cut away from the complexity, right? And the technology is a complexity right now that if somebody were to put me on a panel and say, like, where do think the technology is going? I'd probably have to be pretty silent. Like I have my ideas and I have some things that I'm observing. But the change happens almost.
daily. like the last thing that you just said, you know, about like, okay, well, do you, do you go and redevelop a technology? No, you don't. But in some ways, like stepping away from the technology and back to the human systems involved, like that's one of those things where again, in my day job, I'm dealing with that exact problem. It's like, well, we don't know if we should adopt that technology. It's like, why not? It's like, well, it might not do exactly what we need. It's like, right.
But it's a commodity and we own innovation. We don't own a tech. I mean, we do own a tech platform, but like how we, how, how we get to where we're going is not only the tech platform, it's owning innovation. And if we can get to a greater state of innovation and a greater state of throughput. So the idea can come through by adopting somebody else's MCP, we should do it. And the hilarious thing.
Keith (35:31.934)
episode three.
Keith (35:51.646)
100%.
Cameron Craig (35:52.694)
The player is thinking the researcher who works for the technology leader on this team that I'm working on found an MCP for the core system that our system is built on that somebody outside of our company built. Uh-huh. And I'm like, adopt it. Like we don't, we don't like.
Keith (36:10.182)
Open APIs.
Keith (36:15.614)
The system works.
Cameron Craig (36:18.734)
Somebody valued the core system so much, the core design system so much that they built an MCP to consume and display the design system with all of its rules, with all of its like everything. And we were going to go and build that because it's a necessary component for what we're building. And she found this and was like, somebody already built it. like, then get them to adopt it. She's like, oh, I'm on it. Right. And she's talking to all the technology people. They're like, yeah, we don't need to build that. It was like, amazing.
Keith (36:31.198)
It's awesome.
Cameron Craig (36:48.502)
Save so much work. know, it was simply by, there was a moment where everybody's like, I don't know. And I'm like, this is ego. This is nothing but ego, right? Like we need to do this. Like we need to do this. like, guys, this is low level. And like, thankfully they were like, yes, it's, it's absolutely low level. And if it works, we should just adopt it. I'm like, great. So, you know, no matter of like less than eight hours,
Keith (36:59.774)
100 % or China stay employed. Yeah
Cameron Craig (37:17.846)
We went from no knowledge to a debate about should we, shouldn't we, and you know, any of the, should we should not was not rooted in any logic. was rooted in, I need to protect this or I need to, like you said, stay employed. like, you're not employed to build a technology platform. You're employed to innovate. You know, it's a fascinating human, human dynamic there, right?
Keith (37:38.942)
Yeah, so
Cameron Craig (37:44.28)
Like they're fighting themselves in that moment. was like, this is.
Keith (37:47.602)
because it's self preservation. mean, think about what we're genetically programmed as humans to survive. Like money is effectively survival points. So it makes sense because that that's the kind of like theater that you're operating in. I mean, one of the first big unlocks for me in design school, because I was in special effects in sound design, I didn't start in interactive, it was just kind of like, it was always there. But it was how do you use the tech? How do make the technology transparent?
Because coming from sound, you had these mixing boards and then the graphics, we didn't have 4K 20 years ago. So you have to set a bunch of stuff up in After Effects, let it write. It just took too long to do. It wasn't instantaneous like an instrument. And it was like, how do you make the studio respond like an instrument? So it was instantaneous. You had faster feedback loop, faster reactions. So kind of exactly what you're talking about right now, but on a human scale. from the business side, so you keep using the systems analogies,
It's you're using you. get to save all these resources that can go somewhere else rather than putting all this time, attention and people and talent into making them CP that it's like someone already made the thing for us. Just like roll it out and put it through QA and security, whatever and go on to the next thing.
Cameron Craig (38:59.438)
Yeah. Yeah. But you know that, like you said, survival at times when you, when you're looking at even that is a system like reminding yourself of like how to survive. Right? Like it's
Cameron Craig (39:19.554)
It was a dicey moment, right? Because I realize I'm talking to mid-career developers and mid-career product people who survival, like to your point is based on activity points in some way of delivering stuff. And I'm trying to remind them. You know, and again, like I loved where we started with this, with the metaphor of the filling of the tub, right? Like I'm trying to take them out of.
Keith (39:38.672)
in the lines.
Cameron Craig (39:48.494)
You've got hot and cold, right? Like I'm trying to say like, remind yourself that the bathtub that you're filling, you know, is in this environment and actually filling the tub is a task. Like you're going to have to do that, but you need to be in a place where you can fill the tub reliably over and over again, because at the end of the day, you're not getting paid to fill the tub. You're getting paid to basically, you know,
Fill the tub as fast as you can, as many times a day as you can. Right. Like it's the innovation part of it. And it's like, if you can figure out a way of filling the tub to the exact right temperature on demand, like that's what you need to be doing.
Keith (40:32.67)
or could be recycling the water so you're not using new water but adding that in in a clean, healthy way. That's like the next order of evolution of value to put the expensive like this gets into like Roik. Yeah, I mean, this is good because we're going back and we're catching this. It's like, and this is what kills every business is like, how do you reinvest the profit or the capital back into the business to create new innovation? And this is what this is like the escape velocity problem where it's, so hard to do because negotiating human consensus is not
Cameron Craig (40:40.385)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (40:44.034)
Better metaphor, Keith, way better metaphor.
Cameron Craig (40:54.86)
Yeah.
Keith (41:02.192)
a linear black and white issue. It's like people have how to say this, I forget what the manager said, but it's like every every person you manage has like three or four problems that you have to deal with as a manager. So it's not just like one person and one problem. It's like there's all these things that you have to figure out because someone could be in a bad mood or unproductive because something's happening at home or someone's sick or whatever, you know. So it's enough that that impacts the the kind of chaos of how things get done.
But yeah, I don't know, man. It's, it's crazy. Sometimes it to me, it's like, it's, amazing that anything happens and you see some of these companies how dysfunctional they are. And I'm like, man, this is impressive that things still like the trains even run at all, like in New York, you know, like you see these, these videos of like green swamp water from the storm dripping into the New York subway. And I'm like, it's disgusting. But yeah.
Cameron Craig (41:45.197)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (41:53.206)
Yeah. mean, you know, like I think.
The other thing that I've, I've also like checking my own ego. And I don't mean that like from a, I approach things egotistically, but, but reminding myself that my frame of reference is not everybody else's frame of reference. And so when I'm saying like mid-career developers and, and, and product people, I don't mean that in a disingenuous way. I mean that in a, I have to remind myself to think like they do.
Before I open my mouth, before I give a direction or before I'm like, no, you just need to do X, right? Like that that's critical because again, you're not going to bring people along. And you know, at the end of the day, like they have the advantage of like we've said in the past, like numeric superiority, there's way more of them than there are of me. And you know, by at times checking
myself and putting myself in their shoes and identifying with their problems and understanding what, like you just said, right? Like what, what is, what is survival and the activity points that line up for survival need to be like thought through? Yeah. need to be motivating them against things that they understand and are motivated by. And that as a leader is a really hard thing to do because my brain does not work the way their brains work and their brains do not work.
Keith (43:04.84)
motivation.
Cameron Craig (43:21.09)
the way that my brain works. And so part of this system and making the system operate with efficiency and at scale is stepping outside of oneself and basically saying like, okay, let's think about this in a completely different way. Like I also, the other thing that I struggle with in this, which on one end makes me a fantastic systems thinker, but in a lot of ways,
the realities of certain things that are happening at scale in the details, if you will, are not apparent to me is the fact that I'm a dyslexic, right? And so my brain, as I'm finding, speaking with other dyslexics and, you know, joining some, I don't know whether they call them therapy groups or industry leadership groups, but you know, what I'm beginning to realize is dyslexia as a learning,
D- difference does wire you for a different way of thinking. And, and, you know, the thing that I think most dyslexics have in common is there's a pattern recognition that happens in near real time. But in addition to the pattern recognition, there's ability to shear away a lot of the detail and just get down to the core problem. Like it's X connected to Y, which output is Z. Right. And I have to remind myself.
That most people don't think that way. There's a lot of detail that they can't sheer out and those details, you know, again, like when, when you are going down that system's thinking route that you brought up, like they can't dismiss the detail to get back to the filling of the tub. They're like, well, okay. So, you know, there's a distance problem here with how far the hot water needs to travel. And I might not want to waste a bunch of hot or cold water. want to, you know, fill the tub with
the maximum like amount of efficiency and the least amount of waste. Like those problems become details that need to be solved. And my brain doesn't do that well. And so I have to remind myself, like, you know, when you're, when you're talking to people that, do hold that detail, that detail is important. It may not be important to me and it may not be even detail that I, my feeble brain can hold, but you have to let that.
Cameron Craig (45:46.9)
cycle cycle through, then remind people like, yes, I get that that's important. And, know, I ha I have to run my brain cycle against that new data, which is like, you know, the distance problem of where the hot water is coming from. Right. And then say like, okay, get it. And waste is important. So let's change our process to do these things. And that cycle within that cycle for both humans, me and the human on the other side is a difficult thing. Cause they're like, why are you so
Keith (46:09.342)
Ahem.
Cameron Craig (46:17.644)
You know, and I'm like, why can't you see the bigger picture? And they're just like, cause you're an idiot.
Keith (46:18.106)
yeah.
Keith (46:23.152)
It, one of the biggest lessons I took one HCI class at SCAD with John Coco. He was a hard teacher, but he was a great teacher. And he's like, the user is not like me. And like, I'm like, if I learned one thing and like, don't forget, like you said, like the, and this happens a lot in design where it's like, I like it this way. It should be this way. It's like, you're not the customer. You're not the main user. like, it's not. It's designed for cat lovers, not fucking dog and horse lovers. Like, you know, different people. the other thing too is.
Cameron Craig (46:48.482)
Right. Right.
Keith (46:54.366)
learning how to like facilitate consensus is like a whole other art. So like when I worked on Estee Lauder's website, I could tell like, they wanted to do a filter. And you have to you have to filter like, you know, 80 different colors of foundation, because it's like you've all these different skin tones, it's a hard problem information design about like how you you know, is it like by color or by whatever it doesn't, you know, you want to like be sensitive to these things. But what we had to do is I had to let everybody in the room speak.
And I was like one of two guys and I wasn't into hair and makeup, but it was like a China business problem because of the money was coming from. So it was like interesting and a cultural thing. So I did everybody kind of go and kind of put their two cents in. And then I was like, OK. Someone was like, when I go buy nail polish, I'm like, how do you how do you find it? Like, I look at like the finish and I look at the color. I'm like, there's your filter. Finish color. And they were like, but because they were heard and they got to put, know, everybody else got to kind of like share in that understanding.
Then we can move forward. Before that, was like, you know, I wasn't listening. wasn't giving enough space to kind of allow these things to happen. And, you know, I think with design, a lot of the design groups and like corporations, it's a lot of like, it's important to understand how you feel, but it can be almost too touchy feely with like, that it's a fine line to know where to kind of demarcate that, that boundary of like,
know, somebody's been there for 30 years, that's a stock of lot of experience or a lot of seniority that you can't ignore. Are they're going to step on that, you know, relative to like, the flow of how fast you can make decisions. So I mean, I don't know, there's a lot of it's hard to do. There's a lot of pieces here. But you know, I'm just trying to bring bring back some of what you were saying to like the systems thinking piece.
Cameron Craig (48:40.332)
Yeah. I mean, like, I think one thing that, you know, where I think I was headed with that in general is like, as we look at the system that we're trying to drive innovation in, what I don't want us to lose sight on and in some ways what we, you know, we were excited about this concept of, of changing the way in which design is perceived. But I think at the, at the end of the day, the bigger picture really is
Like the human beings in the system are the important factor, right? Like you and I are not talking to a machine. We're not training a machine. We're training humans. And like, I think that's the other thing too, from the world of work and with AI, everybody's like, the AI is going to replace me. And it's like, well, the AI may replace certain tasks that you do. And to your point around survival and activity points,
If you don't have a game plan and you haven't thought through what the possibilities of what you're going to do after some of the tasks that you did for activity points to get paid are removed, then you're going to have a problem. also, I mean, I think that the thing is, and again, I'm going to say this, which it's not based on.
any knowledge other than my observation or any expertise other than my observation. But we are in this massive space where I believe the people that are funding AI have thought about it very one dimensionally. They're thinking about cost reduction. They're not thinking about human potential capitalization and development. They're thinking about like, how do I juice my stock through this very expensive
And again, the other part of this equation that we haven't quite figured out is how expensive is this technology to run to make decisions? Humans may actually be cheaper, right? Like, I mean, it's kind of stupid Keith, but like, like both those things, I think we're, we're not yet in a place where at scale, like we've processed this, but, but two things.
Keith (50:42.174)
Imagine that.
Cameron Craig (50:53.59)
I do think that that reckoning will come where we will decide how expensive this technology is. Like we need to experiment and develop right now. And right now people are throwing money at the core technology because you don't know and you can't, you gotta be first and you can't know those things until you do them and invest in them. Right. Like, and you and I were very big when we worked at Macy's on blockchain, not crypto, but blockchain, right? We're like, blockchain solves a bunch of problems.
Keith (51:05.854)
They gotta be first.
Cameron Craig (51:23.062)
that exists right now in very human systems that the machine could help keep people more honest. could track data in ways that we didn't expect. And at the end of the day, I still don't know whether or not blockchain would have done anything. We experimented and people largely got to the point where they're like,
It does a lot of things really well, like the complexity and cost and whatever to implement it, to do all the things that we like dream that it would do probably isn't worth it at this stage, right?
Keith (51:57.63)
because the underlying issues didn't get fixed. That's the issue, it was the foundational stuff. It was the lack of changing your mental model to update with new information to adapt to the future because you have no resilience.
Cameron Craig (52:00.408)
Correct.
Cameron Craig (52:10.51)
And I'm worried about that with AI. think AI is in a different space. It's like, it's more pervasive and the opportunity to change the world is probably more apparent to people. And again, I think that was manipulated by things like open AI deciding to like release a chat bot agent to the consuming masses to get everybody okay with it. Right. And getting, getting everybody okay with it is also the way that you get a bunch of people to invest in it. Like they're like, I love.
Keith (52:13.118)
100%.
Keith (52:30.664)
VATS has been with ya.
Cameron Craig (52:38.028)
the fact that I can go to chat GPD and it solves a bunch of problems for me. But, you know, we haven't, we haven't fleshed out the supply side of it, right? Like how expensive is the supply? And on the other end, we have not gotten to the place where yet we're thinking about the potential and the potential is really where the money is going to be made. Right now we're in
We just need to fund this technology and to fund this technology, we're going to employ less human beings so that we can like take the money from all those salaries and plow it into systems development. But that, that will end. will, because everybody's going to get to the point where they're like, okay, we've rung as much efficiency out of this. And the companies that I'm a little bit worried about are where like that quarter over quarter mentality. And, know, like you and I've seen this in.
the retail space specifically, but also in other industries that we were in where you can't put down the crack pipe at that point. You're just like, Nope, got to take another hit because the quarter's about to end and I need to show these investors that we're still saving money. Right. and I'm really worried about that. And a lot of these core fan companies and a lot of like these core technology companies, and even some of the companies that are like rapid adopters of this, whether it be like the financial industry or the real estate industry.
Keith (53:47.955)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (54:02.616)
that are all like, it's just less human beings working. And that's how like, we're, know, juicing the model. Like that, that is a very short term way of thinking about this problem. And it is going to lead, I think for a lot of companies to demise and consolidation. And those that are like at, the forefront of like, yes, we saved money, but also we're innovating.
those are going to be your clear winners. you know, if the fan companies are all folks, cause if you read any of the financial press that's attached to them, it's like, you know, it's going to lead to less human beings on our payroll. It's like, that's a really weird thing to say at a time when you don't know how many human beings you actually need. And you don't have a clear plan in place for what you're going to do to be innovative. Everything's a cost saving mechanism.
Keith (54:54.962)
Okay, agree on so many points. The blockchain thing with Macy's, it would have if the foundation was fixed, they could have leveraged that as a marketing thing to create market better market cap as well because they're doing something innovative. What's happening with AI and big tech right now is the inverse. Because when something is zero marginal cost,
in business, meaning the cost of a copy is free as you scale, right, versus making more cups or computers or whatever the cost scales linearly, you have the ability to say, this is dangerous for the world. You need to let us control it, but we're going to help you regulate it or co-regulate it with us. And all of sudden you're developing regulatory capture as all these big tech companies are racing towards like a new super monolith.
because they're all eventually they're all kind of doing the same thing. Like they have different data and different weights and different models slightly. But it's basically all the same shit, just a different pseudo brand. know, some some are better. Some models are better for some things. Some are better. Some are worse for others. But they're all trying to buy the best talent. They're all trying to like find whatever kind of data they can to go into it. And yeah, I agree where it's like at some point it's like we talked I think you talked two episodes ago about if there are no designers left.
And the code is doing the design. some point, they're going to have to rehire designers back again because code doesn't design. It's like you need to be thinking about systems in a different way than just, you know, that those AI models, even if it's just code running as the design agent is still going to be thinking about the way you used to design, not the way design has evolved and is moving with new inputs, unless you're very forward thinking, which, you know, again, it's hard to do how much is a cost, you know, what is the resource you're taking from?
Cameron Craig (56:41.622)
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And I mean, I think that the one other thing too, that I worry about, which is, you know, about the humans in the system is the fact that we are not yet, we're not focused on the fact that this is supposed to make the lives of human beings better. We're feeding the system and we're like, well, the system's going to do X, Y, and Z. But it's like, if the system's doing X, Y, and Z, the computer's not paying the electrical bill.
humans are paying the electrical bill. Like the unit of work still at the end of the day converts to something that a human being is benefiting from and is converting their unit of work into capital that they are spending. And they're converting their unit of work into a unit of work that they're benefiting from. And that's the thing that I was just like,
Keith (57:33.95)
I was thinking about this last night with like universal basic income where it's like, if nobody's employed, then all of a sudden the governments have to create so much more value to support all the humans. And it's like, what are the first things they're going to fall is the economic, the old economic and governmental institutions because they, they moved the slowest, which is good in some ways, because you don't want the laws to change where you're like, what the hell's going on. But there's a fragility that's inherent.
when the environment around you is quicksand and it's just evolving and the cycles are getting faster, like there's, doesn't, the math doesn't make sense after a certain point to do that.
Cameron Craig (58:07.54)
No, it doesn't. I mean, and that's the thing. It's like, that's why the human side of this, and again, maybe that was my point. And, you sort of corralled me to this point is like, the humans in the system are the thing that we're trying to make sure are represented, and that are also the focus and that we're giving a human being in this rapidly changing environment as many tools as possible to manipulate this to their advantage.
Keith (58:23.902)
100%.
Keith (58:38.29)
Yeah, I mean, we talked about like calling it human in the loop, but that that's just got commoditized with like AI stuff about, when did they make decisions? And it's, it's important, but it's, it's, it wasn't the right, like the humans are the focus. Like how do you improve your length of quality of life for everybody? Because there's a way to do it when the capability is getting easier to access because the code is effectively your spoken language at that point.
Cameron Craig (59:03.828)
Yeah. Or English or whatever language you use, whatever human language you speak is now the highest level coding language. Like you can look at it either way, but that's the thing. I think, you know, and again, since this topic or our topic or theme to today is all about systems thinking.
Keith (59:08.998)
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (59:23.56)
What I, at the top most level of all this I see is missing is that systems thinking that brings the human being back into it. Like we're very focused on infrastructure right now. We're very focused on compute cycles and building out hardware that is going to enable all of this stuff. I'm, and that isn't me saying we don't need to do that or, or me not understanding where in the sort of
hype slash innovation cycle we are or where we are in the productionalization of this technology. get it. And I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do. What I'm saying is like leadership in these areas really needs to be thinking further out and about what it is that we're actually trying to do with all of that capability, because you're going to get to an end of that runway. And it's like, okay, you have the fastest, most pervasive computer. But if there's no human beings around that can access it or
use it because they've been removed from this equation, you have a problem.
Keith (01:00:29.138)
Yeah, it's like in design, was like, computers are going to replace us all in 20 years ago. And it's like, it's just another tool and it will replace some things, but at the same time, it's going to afford, it's still a person. mean, maybe the next event horizon is like the, the, the cybernetic synthesis of like, you know, biology and technology together. But even then, I guess it's like,
Cameron Craig (01:00:35.246)
Yeah.
Keith (01:00:58.524)
I don't know, this gets really meta and existential. But I feel like a part of these themes are like seeing the force from the trees or like thinking longer term. And most of these companies right now, it's like, it's like they're thinking faster than quarter to quarter, or they're trying to think shorter term than quarter to corner. And at some point, it's like, this is gonna blow up like metaphorically and like literally very soon. And I think
that stress point is going to be this fall, because it's people are going to want to try and go back to how things were even more so now. And it's just going to be very clear, this is about tying up the loose ends and getting ready for this new future. And I think what you if you focus on the humans and the people and like a person actually being who they really are, and the most fundamental kind of resident state, I think that's the dominant strategy.
moving forward because this tech is just going to amplify who you are, what you know, how you act, what you say, whatever, how you think, then if you're just parroting what everybody else is saying, that just accelerates the wall faster. And it's like certain demise.
Cameron Craig (01:02:12.046)
I was looking behind me because much like you're bringing the book on systems thinking, which again, before we stop recording, if you can repeat the author and the title, I for one, I'm going to go and look that up and go get that. And then.
Keith (01:02:26.888)
Yep. Daniella Meadows. Thinking in systems. I think it was like, I don't know, 20 bucks or something. It's really easy to read. I mean, she even has, let me see. She has like faucet diagrams and stuff in here too.
Cameron Craig (01:02:44.884)
cool. Yeah, I got to get this back. got to, I will absolutely be ordering that when I wrap with you today.
Keith (01:02:45.896)
So it's like very easy. Yeah.
I mean, in hindsight, it's like a lot of stuff we've been talking about and thinking about. But you know, just seeing it crystallize, in a way. It just, it's very simple and easy to follow. Like it's not so complex. Like you read a lot of these AI books now. And it's like, you have to have linear algebra background. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:03:11.242)
Yeah, you're like, yeah. And I mean, a bunch of that stuff is, not necessarily important for you to take in as a.
Keith (01:03:20.144)
Yeah, no. So on that, and we end with this to go to the next thing, it's like, I think learning where the asymmetries in business are, and how artificial intelligence can help you gain like an exponential advantage in something, not necessarily learning what the latest model is, or how the model works. Like it's, you have to have some literacy, but it's not going to be the math part that's going to set you apart. It's going to be understanding.
how to use this tool in an unconventional way to create more impact and value for people, the humans, that I think will carry you through. And that's going to require systems thinking.
Cameron Craig (01:03:54.87)
Yeah, agreed. And I think that's one of the things that, you know.
Cameron Craig (01:04:02.732)
Like what you said it well earlier when we're in our discussion as we were talking about this, this is something that I think is a massive arc. will probably depart from it and come back to it and depart from it and come back to it. But it's probably something that we will remind ourselves and those that end up listening to this about in, in almost every episode that like, this is the core of what we're talking about because.
Keith (01:04:28.871)
I think so too, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:04:29.738)
It's so important and it's such a massive shift in both how you think, but also what it ends up yielding. and, you know, it can be used at every layer of this, this problem space or this opportunity space, right? Like you can use systems thinking when you are down tactically solving a problem, helps you come up with better solutions, but it also, the more you think about things in systems and sort of look at your world around you.
In that way, the more aware that you are of how things work. And when you are aware of how things work, you are more of a change agent outside of the tactical stuff. You become a change agent at this much higher level and a much more important problem or opportunity space.
Keith (01:05:18.11)
it definitely gets easier. The more you start thinking in this way, and you it's kind of like when, when I would do like life drawing in art school, it's like you start seeing the shading in trees, because you just like looking at it so much your brain just kind of like evolves and adapts to that. But where I think we got effective in what we did was that we started seeing how to apply this across multiple levels at the same time.
Cameron Craig (01:05:44.428)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (01:05:44.734)
So was like in a marketing department, in the tech department, could be in huge, know, HR, whatever we see things happening. It's almost like a chord in music versus a single note. And when you start kind of sharing that in the company, in society, whatever, then you can start finding those simple solutions that create massive leverage on the other end. And once you start getting that, you know, that it's easier to suspend the ego because you're not worried about
I can make this thing in Figma so cool and so fast. It's like, now you understand how to see asymmetries in the system and exploit them, but for good not to know, screw people over.
Cameron Craig (01:06:21.258)
Yeah, which is funny that you just said exactly like conceptually where I I wanted to go next, which was the last thought that I had in in my so like as you were talking about systems thinking like I was thinking about things that have influenced me and and this book by Jacob Bernowski, who wrote a book and did a multi part
Keith (01:06:31.89)
Say it again, reiterate it. What's your version?
Cameron Craig (01:06:49.964)
like docu series on the BBC in the seventies. This is a part of like my curriculum in college. and it comes from this book called the ascent of man. And it was one of those things that was such a profound learning experience. And in some ways as, as an adult, I've gone back and reread the book and I never really thought about it, but he is laying out systems thinking within a,
anthropological framework, right? Like systems thinking for humans, not, you know, technology or whatever, though he talks about the influence of these things on humans. But the quote actually comes from Oliver Cromwell, which, you know, he quotes in this book, and he's talking about World War Two, and basically turning human beings into numbers and turning those numbers into statistics that you then deal with, right? And you get bad outcomes from those things.
Keith (01:07:22.867)
Awesome.
Cameron Craig (01:07:45.208)
But the quote was, beseech you in the bowels of Christ think that it's possible that you may be mistaken. And, you know, as I was talking earlier about, you know, kind of humbly approaching things and trying to put myself in other people's shoes, like that quote was going through my head because I'm just like, this, definitely reminds me of, know, that, that chapter in the Ascent of Man, where he's talking about knowing things.
Knowledge right like we are taught to learn things we are taught to Internalize things and ultimately know them and even in this space of knowing things you always have to be in a place where you take yourself out of the knowing and say like as I observe these things or as I am a part of something I May actually be mistaken in the knowledge that I have or the things that are happening around me may actually change that and I can't just assume that my knowledge means the answer
Right. And, you know, it's like recognizing that you have that possibility of airing out and. You know, what are you going to do in those spaces? Right. Like you're going to check your ego and you're going to recognize that, you know, while your beliefs may be strong, things that are happening around you are going to need to adapt and you as the human being are going to need to adapt and change. If you don't do that, you're going to probably make worse mistakes. And I think that's like one of the things that I'm trying to.
You know, also bring back into the human systems of this is you have to be in a place where the curiosity drives and you have to challenge your beliefs. And, and I have like, it's hard. I have to do that all the time. just like, maybe I don't know. Maybe I don't know, you know, I want to know, but at the same time, like there's a strong possibility that I might not know. And that's like totally okay.
Keith (01:09:41.158)
And on that note of not knowing something we tried to do a lot at Macy's was to create an environment where especially a manager or an executive above us or multiple levels, help them not feel or look stupid for not knowing because they didn't have the knowledge to make the decision or the punishment for making a bad decision or a wrong quote wrong decision, you know, based on some financial thing or something. And that's hard to do too, but that's
the social, the benevolent social engineering of managing up for like a future episode. But yeah, I love that. That's a great quote. It's what you know may not be what is a real reflection of truth. And that truth can change with data and time, often drastically and quickly.
Cameron Craig (01:10:26.84)
Yeah. That book, oddly enough, I, I never, you know, the book was so old when I bought it at the college bookstore. one, you know, the value to turn it in was not much. two, wasn't going to turn it in any way. Cause it made such a profound impact on my life. But here's one funny story about that. like I used to, every job that I went to that book sat usually on the top of my monitor because
I think early on in my career, you you sit in a gray cube wall and you sit in a cube farm, which I did for 15 years. Um, it felt very dehumanizing. It felt very much like it was all the things that, know, we, we read about and joked about in the, the book, Jen X, right? It's like the veal fattening pen or whatever it was called. And, you know, I was like, I gotta do something that reminds me that I work in a system, but I'm a human.
with unique thoughts and unique beliefs and whatever. so that book was that reminder for me because it was, I read that book at a very profound time in my life in college where it was like, I was trying to figure out who I was both fundamentally as a human and an intellectual, also spiritually and everything else. and, you know, it was just like, this is, it's my anchor in some way, or if you've seen the movie, uh,
inception, it's my spinning top, right? Like I gotta remind myself that like this is reality, but my reality can be whatever it needs to be to make it okay for me. So fast forward a few years.
Keith (01:11:55.217)
Awesome.
Cameron Craig (01:12:09.08)
to when we were trying to internalize the concept of VR and alternate realities. The Pierce Brosnan film, The Lawnmower Man.
Keith (01:12:21.451)
my God.
Cameron Craig (01:12:22.87)
Okay. So, so check it out, right? He's a, he's a VR. He's bleeding edge on the VR space, right? Like, you know, back before fucking Oculus and Zuckerberg decided to commercialize that nonsense, you know, so like, VR was going to change the world. We were all going to be slapping these goggles on and like, nobody was going to be here, right? Like see the metaverse. in that movie,
He's doing some programming or whatever and he's talking to the computer and you know, it's like back and forth with the computer. But the assent of man was sitting on like beneath his monitor.
Keith (01:13:03.44)
No way. Really?
Cameron Craig (01:13:04.846)
I shit you not. I was like, this is like a really weird like, you know, the world is kind of like inverting in on itself is I'm like, holy fuck, he's got the incentive man on his desk.
Keith (01:13:17.534)
Oh my god, that's kind of a cool I love when some filmmakers do those nods of like what this is really about. It's kind of like the thing behind the thing. And this is 1999. I gotta watch this again 1992. What is on Amazon? Hang on.
Cameron Craig (01:13:27.298)
Yep. Yep.
Cameron Craig (01:13:34.274)
Yeah, you'll see it. It's a horrible movie, by the way. I do not, I do not endorse the movie in the least and the graphics are horrible and like everything about it is horrible, but like, just fast forward, like, I think the Ascent of Man shows up on his desk in the first hour. So you didn't have to watch past that. And like the first hour is not horrible. Although you're going to see some very like vector-based graphics that are supposed to represent, you know, reality inside the computer.
Keith (01:13:59.304)
I wonder if I can find a screenshot of it to kind of like put in the notes or something so people can send a C, but like, I love that the humanity part because again, like thinking about like work and consulting and like trying to proliferate ideas that at least we think have value with what we're doing. Fundamentally, like what we're doing is like the biggest challenge in question is going to be to define and redefine what it means to be human.
Cameron Craig (01:14:29.09)
Yep. Yep.
Keith (01:14:29.436)
and all of this. And that's what UX and HCI is really all about. It doesn't really matter about flash or figma or whatever the hell new IDE program comes out. It's what makes us unique and having I guess like the freedom to like honestly express yourself with you know, as long as you're not hurting somebody like in the most resonant way to kind of like, you know, have a shot at having a good life. I think that's what people are freaked out about with AI. So
Cameron Craig (01:14:54.552)
Yep, which it's a rational fear. Like I'm not going to tell anybody that they're having a rational fear, but you know, we just don't know where that outcome is going to be.
Keith (01:15:06.248)
We don't and, but people have more of a say now than they ever have because the capability is getting more accessible. And the amount of output you have from simple inputs is growing every day too. I think part of what we have hampered on as kind of a last key point is the inability to change your mind that it's going to be hard. You can't do it. It's got to always be like Figma or it's got to be like font. So it's like, no, none of that matters anymore. Like it's.
It's a smaller piece of a bigger puzzle and it's learning how to kind of like level up and constantly reinvent yourself. It's like, how do we know what we know and how do we update that model? It's all, yeah, they send them in all over again.
Cameron Craig (01:15:45.484)
Well, and it's systems thinking. Like I think that's what you and I have, have come back to time and time again. It's like, you know, designers have a leg up, right in that world. But at the end of the day, like back to the beginning of this particular episode, what we've realized is it isn't about making more people designers. It's about making more people systems thinkers. Right. And that that's what actually brings innovation. And that's what actually brings change is that
level of systems thinking. And so I like, were really smart to kind of pivot us there. Like that thinking when we were talking, you know, both today and, and at the end of the last episode that we recorded where you're like, I think it's something bigger than, than this. And, that got me thinking about it too. Where I was like, yeah, I think, I think Keith's right. It's not, it's not just about the design end of things. Like that is one it's one means to an end, but at the end of the day, like, as we went,
Keith (01:16:39.773)
It's a big piece.
Cameron Craig (01:16:44.47)
And peeled that back. It really is about systems thinking. And, know, I'm glad that you kind of brought that up and sort of said, think, I think it might be. Be bigger than design. And, you know, I think that's, that's where we're landing. Right. And so it gives us a different, a slightly different focus, but I think that focus is going to be much more applicable.
Keith (01:17:06.558)
Yeah, I mean, but you know, and thanks for having, I think we kind of both kind of got there at the same time, just through kind of different avenues, because it's like we started, we're still going to talk about the techniques and the tricks that we use, because again, it's a human system of all the things that, you know, that we're talking about, because it's not just the system is the idea of a system is so broad. But you know, we there's more opportunity, I think we're fundamentally
up cautiously optimistic about what the future holds. And it's like how you combine all these tips and tricks and ideas and techniques that we've kind of learned over the past multiple decades of combined experience to, to, you know, to create a better life for everybody. It's like, it's, it can be dire, but it's only dire if that's your experience that you don't change, or the input to that knowledge that you don't change on a daily basis. So, yeah, I don't know, again, we're, we're finding our way, man.
Cameron Craig (01:18:01.922)
Yeah, well said. Well said.
Keith (01:18:04.976)
I know we're on a little system here, we'll if we can evolve our thinking in the process.
Cameron Craig (01:18:08.43)
Yeah. Well, I'm glad to be going on this journey with you every single time I talk to you. Like I just also need you to know it's like such a personally enriching experience for me. And like, go away from these, these conversations and I think about the things that we talk about. And I think about the things that you have said, you know, here and there, when you're texting me, I know you've been, you've been really busy the past few weeks, but when you, you've been texting me, like those things help me think through stuff. So
I'm just really thankful for that. I'm thankful to have people in my life that, that provide that. So.
Keith (01:18:42.782)
same, man. it's, when the systems thinking thing is like, it's you can't just like slap that on resume, people put the hell systems thinking and it's like, it's, you just kind of like, like, you know, people are you got to look both ways in the streets, because all the fucking whatever astrology things happening, everyone's kind of like extra wonky that day. And it's like, oh, this is the feedback I got to like, be slow when I go to work today kind of thing. And yeah, I appreciate you too, man. Like, it's not every day you find people who kind of have a similar vision and value system and kind of
Cameron Craig (01:18:50.763)
Right.
Keith (01:19:12.69)
Talk about, see in this, is this kind of going on too? like, you know.
Cameron Craig (01:19:15.406)
Yeah, it helps make you feel less crazy, which is also helpful. So yeah.
Keith (01:19:18.214)
Yeah, it's getting harder and harder to do that every day to think what's going on. So
Cameron Craig (01:19:22.83)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think on that happy note, watch your six man and uh,
Keith (01:19:28.732)
I'm trying. It's been safer-ish. I don't know. Well, TBD, I don't know. It's New York. What are you going to do?
Cameron Craig (01:19:39.532)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got to go into San Francisco, the subgenie. And so I'm like, I'm watching my own six. So, you know, I mean, there's some zombies running around. It's.
Keith (01:19:45.702)
Is San Francisco getting crazier now too?
Keith (01:19:50.47)
Is Soma more dicey than it used to be?
Cameron Craig (01:19:55.086)
No, I mean, that's the thing. I think that's kind of overblown. Like those areas were always dicey. And I don't you know, I don't mean that in a degrading or like, oh, that's about me. Yeah, I mean, dude, I went to school. left here and went to school there in 1989. And you know, we joked in 1989 about the methadone nine, right? It's like the Munibus that takes you like down six three, where like everybody's like, zombie doubt and
Keith (01:20:02.578)
You gotta pay attention.
Cameron Craig (01:20:22.082)
They're still zombied out on 6th Street. It hasn't changed.
Keith (01:20:24.833)
God. It was like OG tenderloin area, essentially.
Cameron Craig (01:20:27.616)
It's OG Tenderloin and the OG Tenderloin, the core of the Tenderloin has not changed. It's the same, right? Like it had a very, very brief gentrification period. It didn't last. It was not going to last. And, and you know what? I'm all right with that. I don't want my towns being sanitized for my protection. want it's like, I want my town to be what it is. You know, it just needs to be what it is. Like that's, that's part of the human condition. Like we're not going to always solve the problems in an elegant way. Sometimes like.
Keith (01:20:48.253)
We might be going there, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:20:57.976)
You have to have disintegration to have reintegration and it's just how it is. Right. Like it wouldn't be built into our, our DNA and our mentality. Right. Like, like I, I was, I was off sugar and coffee for a really long time. And like the first cup of coffee and the first thing that I had was sugary. was like, God, I got to get more of this, you know, like our, our brains do it to us. It is, it is like, we're wired for that stuff, you know? So anyway.
Keith (01:21:17.79)
Yeah
Keith (01:21:21.606)
It's a dope mean fix, man. What are you gonna do?
Cameron Craig (01:21:27.918)
All right, man. I'll see you soon.
Keith (01:21:30.386)
Yeah man, yeah, always a pleasure dude. Take care, alright? Alright, later Cam.
Cameron Craig (01:21:32.822)
All right. You too, See ya.