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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.
Keith (00:00.45)
Alright.
Cameron Craig (00:00.592)
Alright, we're in. We're in. Yeah, so we were just lamenting our tech issues to even get to this point, which by the way, I can't hear anything through these headphones other than Keith, which is cool. mean, at least I can hear you.
Keith (00:10.999)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's something. But yeah, so we're saying when you bought it, it's like less than five, six months old. And it was probably during the the Mars, Venus and Mercury retrograde periods, which is like, the worst time for tech for things of value for anything of creativity. It's like everything just went to shit. So now it's like it worked for a second. And then it's like, good. Yeah. And you're you're on some old like core i5 or i7 like iMac. I had that going before I stopped but it's
Cameron Craig (00:32.632)
Yeah, none of it. Yeah. So.
Cameron Craig (00:40.77)
Yeah, I mean, happy to replace the computer. I got a camera so that don't look all washed out. I will look nice and New York tanned like you do. So I got all that going on. But then I'm out here using my six-month-old but very reliable audio stuff. And not a goddamn thing works. Like, nothing.
Keith (00:50.318)
Wait
Keith (01:04.416)
Yeah, it's so frustrating too because I thought we were just gonna like I mean with the test we did this past like two weeks just turned it on popped it in. Yeah, it was great
Cameron Craig (01:09.168)
Yeah, Wednesday. Like everything worked Wednesday. I didn't touch anything. I just hung the headphones on this stupid rack right here and like walked away. I haven't touched anything. Didn't even move the monitor, nothing. Just like sat down, put the headphones on, nothing worked. Yep, yep, no bueno.
Keith (01:25.326)
No good. The other thing I was thinking too, if when we publish this, we have to have like a name for the podcast. I already have the monolith.tv. I don't know if we want to make it like I've had it for like years. So I'm like, because it is kind of like the rant I was getting on on the last recording that we stopped because like it froze and it broke or whatever, was that the world corporations
Cameron Craig (01:38.48)
That's awesome.
Keith (01:55.266)
it's all the cycle of like centralization, where it's like top down large system that eventually become brittle. And then they decentralized like little guys come in like the incumbents kind of chip away and then just goes back and forth. And this is why you're seeing like crypto boom in the last like eight, 10 years, where you're seeing like smaller states get more power technology enables all that. So I don't know. This is kind of like a larger side rant kind of thing. But I'm down.
with it if you want because I have it but because it is kind of like we started getting more serious about putting this together internally you started hearing more about the model they're calling the thing the monolith hilarious too
Cameron Craig (02:35.053)
Well, so maybe we should totally get into that. But maybe let's rewind, because we're two minutes into the first episode of this podcast. And maybe break it down. Start with the purpose, and then start with who you are. Then we can talk about how we met.
Keith (02:58.197)
Okay. so the purpose, is there, there's a lot of change that's happening in the world and everyone's freaking out about AI and losing their jobs. And, know, at some point you've worked probably at a large company or dealt with the government and things don't change. And it's like, it's always been this way. so Cam and I have a unique origin story, but we met through Macy's.
And then we helped change them. This is a decade ago, over a decade ago. And the lessons that they sort of learned are repeating and rhyming again today. So this is basically for we're still like figuring it out. But Cam is a high level VP of UX or customer experience at AWS. I'm the chief of staff I was his pseudo chief of staff at Macy's I kind of like was consulting on a kind of
backdoored into that role. And I'm a chief of staff for an immigration attorney now. But the things we were saying to them then at Macy's, we're seeing now all over and it's accelerating. And a lot of people don't necessarily have like, they may not know how to see it, see the patterns or have the specific skill set to understand how to deal with complexity, where things emerge kind of seemingly out of nowhere, or it just gets so big and so kind of amorphous or like a blob, you don't know how to deal with it.
And that's what we're really good at. So I don't know if it's going to be just for Chief of Staff or if it's going to be for design leaders, but Cam and I are also very adamant or passionate. I don't like using that word, but like whatever, let's keep it simple about helping designers get into the boardroom because designers are being commoditized right now with chat GPT and you know, anybody can just kind of like spin up a Figma website or like a prototype or whatever, but
Real design is about understanding what the unmet needs are and how to solve that simply. But having design chops and thinking isn't sufficient. Like you have to understand enough about the technology, the business, culture, and the things you're seeing, the patterns that you see at corporations are actually the same patterns that are happening on a macro scale with governments, with economies, with the world. So that's a long winded, I guess, way.
Keith (05:25.357)
I don't know, how would you define kind what we're talking about? We want to do this.
Cameron Craig (05:30.595)
I mean, I think you stated it well. think that the problem space isn't about classically what is always described in a triad based product development organization of, you know, product technology and design being at the table. Like I think.
Thankfully for us, that's never been the problem. The problem for us has been how do you actually enable the business at large with the thinking that goes into being a designer, not necessarily the practice, right? Like it isn't about interface design. And I think that's the thing that even our own colleagues have had to get their head around, which is we're not talking about better and more efficient ways of doing the craft necessarily. What we're talking about is imparting
and I hate this term, but I can't come up with a better one, imparting design thinking and a way in which you're approaching business using that very human method of thinking about a problem from a design angle. And every human being goes through a design process, every human being goes through an engineering process, and ultimately every human being goes through a building process when they're doing anything. And for some reason, a giant
corporations have devalued the designing part of this equation, right? Like they've boiled it down to the role of design is to build interfaces. And we were talking about this in the pre-run for this. Like that's also partially on the design field, right? Like we have sat around and done the same thing and redesigned the same thing for 20 years. And the innovation in that space.
Keith (06:57.837)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (07:20.239)
probably stopped materially 10 years ago? Maybe longer, and we've kind of rested on that laurel in some way.
Keith (07:31.538)
I think part 100 % totally agree. think part of the reason that the design space kind of commoditized was it was cell phones. Everyone's getting cell phones all at the same time and they became commoditized where like, you know, everyone's got an iPhone, it's got 4k camera. mean, it's basically accessible around the world right now. Right? So when you do that, you're kind of leveling, you know, like in New York, they call like the
the subway like the great leveler because you have like billionaire CEOs or whatever and know, crackheads literally smoking weed on the train now because it's New York, it's like a zoo. But cell phones kind of did the same thing because now everyone's looking through the same kind of interface. And it was about apps. And I think 10 years ago, you know, when we started seeing this trend, UX was getting paid more than designers were, because UX had to deal with the engineers.
And the engineers thought, well, I'm building it. So I don't care what you're going to say. Like, I'm the one who's actually making this happen. The product people, the product managers who were like managing the budget, you'd start two weeks late and it's like, get some quick wins to try and feel like we're doing something. And then they're trying to manage everyone's hours. The designers who were like, you know, it's like their Sistine Chapel where they wanted to work to the very end, the very last minute before it got taken out of the hands and you had to like rip it out of their hands because they wanted to make it perfect. And then you as a UX person, you had to negotiate
on behalf of somebody who wasn't there, people who are actually using the product, and then put it all together and make it work such that everyone would move ahead towards a collective goal. And that got paid more. And then boot camps came, and everyone started getting into UX because they saw you could make more. And there was just a huge demand spike. And all of a sudden, things equalized after COVID because Big Tech over-hired, the Big Tech companies kind of follow each other. There was like...
some crazy amount of dollars that got printed into existence, which was like, I think almost half of all more is some crazy number that was got printed in existence. So it's, you know, inflation. And now we're kind of cooling all that back off. And it's like, the humans are the issue. It's not the human in the loop for just the AI to understand to make sure it's not going to like do something stupid. It's the humans in the actual larger complex like
Keith (09:52.12)
communication cooperation network loop of a company and making sure they all look towards the same thing and work towards the same thing. But people don't know how to like build the future because I have the skills for that.
Cameron Craig (10:04.795)
One, I mean, think that's yes, you're absolutely right. Like that that's the thing that you and I were observing 10, 12 years ago, maybe maybe without the clarity of that. Right. Like I think that thought pattern was still developing and we were seeing some things and we're like, this is really strange. And at the same time, we also. You know, developed some some interesting
Keith (10:18.85)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (10:33.143)
techniques for actually getting things done and for getting executives to understand the changes that we were seeing, but also to be proactive and not reactive. But it took a bunch of things, a bunch of technique, a bunch of thought, and a bunch of unconventional ways of doing both design but business thinking that got us to that. And I think
really what the first arc of knowledge that you and I talked about wanting to depart was digging into that and talking a little bit about what we did, how we did it, and the psychology of what it actually did and what success we saw from that. I think maybe the other thing by way of introduction to us, you were
Keith (11:03.863)
you
Cameron Craig (11:29.665)
working as a design consultant at Macy's, and I was the head of design there. And what I was realizing as I was taking on that job and kind of reshaping that org and thinking about not just getting the design org working well, but actually trying to figure out how design could change the way in which Macy's Digital worked, because we were in Macy's Digital versus the main company.
And you quickly did two things. You became my chief of staff.
And at the same time, you also kind of got me to think about things, visualize things, and break things down into communication that others could understand, right? And I think it was a very unconventional way of doing things. as the, and this isn't to say that you're not a business leader in your own right, but one of the reasons why
like the power dynamic worked and the like thinking worked.
was it was so unconventional what you were pitching at times that I'm like, I have to figure out how we make this work, right? And as a conventional business leader, your natural inclination is to do things that go with the grain. And some of the things that you recommended were very much go against the grain. And I think that's one of those things that we were also like,
Cameron Craig (13:11.811)
We have technique that we wanna talk about, right? Like here's how you use all of these different practices, the craft, you know, some business acumen that we wanna make sure that people understand. But I think that the other thing which we've been talking about, and again, we'll probably take feedback and refine our approach, right? Like this is not to say that we have all of the answers and we certainly as people, you know, if and when people...
Keith (13:12.973)
you
Keith (13:37.389)
It's a collaborative process.
Cameron Craig (13:38.66)
Yeah, if and when people start listening to this, we will take in feedback and maybe adapt our approach. But I think that the other thing that we both are passionate about is talking about the frame of mind and the mental model that you need to work with and also what your risk profile is. And some of those things are not necessarily business processes or even business technique. They are ways in which you can think about things in a different manner.
And I think for us, that's one of the things that we've always tried to balance is it's not just about the technique. It's about how you actually think about the problem space and then what tools you apply to solve problems.
Keith (14:21.677)
100 % super well said. So I think the dynamic between us worked really well. Because as like a consultant, I was allowed to say and do things that people who were in the inside were not allowed to do because they were going to be afraid of getting fired. And it's like, if I got cut, it was like, all right, it's just some, you know, variable expense on the line on some line item anyway, so no one cares. And then you gave me a lot of rope after we started, you know, building trust and talking to each other and kind of hanging out.
you know, being like, just spend some time on this cycle to kind of figure out how we do this. And as I kind of had an idea, you would figure out how to like shape it in such a way that not only would it be understood, but there was like a timing mechanism based on your boss or your boss's boss or what was happening given if it was like, are you on the yearly planning cycle where it's like Hunger Games and everyone's negotiating how to get funding from the CEO and they're going to contract funding or whatever, you know, there's there are those waves that you were
just understanding how the politics worked. I, so my background is special effects and sound design. like film school from the perspective of sound. So I was always thinking about things in terms of like narrative and story arc. when.
Cameron Craig (15:37.165)
Could you get over here and fix my goddamn audio interface?
Keith (15:39.854)
We're working that. That's the next episode. And when you did sound though, you had to be a really good troubleshooter, a really good diagnoser because when I went to film school, high def was just coming in. It was like the first arc of like digital going from analog. And if you didn't set the tape right to the high def format, and there was like 30 formats from Sony, the whole thing, you know, went to hell and you had to redo it. And it's like you're losing the labor of like multiple people. So it's like it's
costly. So I've always been kind of like half UX person like experience and half hacker. Because if I look at something like a user experiences on it sees like a usability flaw that needs to get fixed to, you know, enable some kind of goal. A hacker sees an exploit that you can like use to your advantage. And because the way I did UX through advertising was all these people that had to work together, I was always thinking about how you could make it work for everybody, not just one person into some
short-term goal. I, you know, I tried to kind of find a way to make these things work and I'm always connecting things. I mean the first op we did, I almost got fired because I was in New York and I was doing process flow for, we were doing these like in-store kiosks and it was like circa 2004 Delta tech where you couldn't even swipe it. You had to hit a button.
and then animated like the hyper card of like the early Apple days. you know, obviously some middle manager made a purchase decision to put the decision off, which happens. It's what, you know, that's what they do. And the new heads, the new suits were getting mad. It was taken so long because the dev was getting outsourced to some team in India that was 12 hours ahead or eight. You know, there were, it was really hard to deal with and, you know, they're, they're outsourced. So not the best technical talent there. They're good people, but they just, you know, it's cheap.
So as I was kind of illuminating the truth of what was going on, you know, people didn't want to hear that because they were like, no, we just need to kind of keep doing it and just like, don't rock the boat. And then it got to a point where you and I met and I kind of did a call with you and then you were like, get out of there. You brought me into California, which is awesome. And that was the first real onsite up where we sat down and I think you had, you were hitting a couple of Roblox internally where you were just like,
Keith (18:07.181)
You know, it's hard to do this where it can be psychologically and emotionally draining, especially when you have to spend so much time and you're just hitting wall after wall after wall. But I was psyched. So I came in and I was like, I think I was wearing a suit the first day. And I was on like my second quad shot of espresso on like, you know, going on to like number five, because I have a lot of energy. And as we just kind of started mapping everything out and just kind of like writing posts, it's in grouping things, we understood that
to understand anything, you had to look at everything. And your mandate from your boss's boss was figure out how dot com can be like innovative to get back in the game. Because with Macy's at that time, you know, big retail was driven by marketing and merchandising, because if the thing they had didn't sell, then their heads would roll. And that was kind of how the company started. Amazon came along and there is no shelf. So all of a sudden you have this skew versus Web ID.
which is like the technical and the old school and still at the physical and the digital tension. And you couldn't just do one or the other. The real unlock was to bring those together and put it in a physical space, which was like what Omnichannel should be. But none of these companies actually really do. And as we started seeing that, it was just like it was so clear how to fix things, because in a large company, you see there's duplication of effort. There's, you know, wasting money on certain things. But if you take somebody's purchase authority away,
Cameron Craig (19:21.167)
Ahem.
Keith (19:33.547)
all of sudden their head count shrinks and they're not going to let you do that. this kind of know, Cam and I started, you know, we kind of both have this systems thinking and kind of like hacker mentality and wanting to make things work for a lot of people because there's, you you see potential that, you know, that's, we kind of, that, was the kind of carrier wave that we resonated against. And I think it took off really well.
Cameron Craig (19:53.604)
Yeah. mean, I think Keith's outlining a bunch of different things that we'll get into in terms of the technique, right? And one other thing, again, that in this first episode, it's going to be messy because we're doing a lot of setup and we're going to jump around a little bit. But as we have thought through the different topics that we want to talk about, we will dive deep in each one of these. But maybe to get back to a little bit more about our background.
Keith (19:55.906)
Ahem.
Cameron Craig (20:22.959)
Like Keith I came out of a creative practice, but I also have you know degree in business which you do as well Which I think that is another thing that we will probably delve into right like we are not designers trying to figure out business we are business people who actually know how to design and communicate and It's a it's a nuance and it's a subtle nuance But it's actually a really meaningful nuance and it's not to say that you can do one and not the other or you have to do one You know
better than the other. It's a blend of things that comes together and it's actually a unique skill set that I think oftentimes designers forget that they have. But before I met Keith, I had about 20 years into design and all kinds of design. It's funny, I've done a presentation recently about the death of design. in the now 32 years that I've been doing design work,
Keith (20:55.117)
You need both.
Cameron Craig (21:19.651)
Design's been pronounced dead three times, right? Like desktop publishing was the first, so I'm that old. So I was doing print design, and then I was doing interaction design, but more in media. And those two practices have died. It took 20 years to kill them in some way. But largely, those practices are not done to the degree that they were. And a lot of the designers in those spaces have either left the design practice in general
or had to transition their skills. I became a industrial designer for a while and did interface on hard products when hard products were interesting and then eventually got into web and did about 20, almost 20 years before I got to Macy's in standard information architecture and actual web development interface design. And when Keith and I met, as he stated,
I was really blocked in a lot of ways. And what I realized was there is a, there's a conceptual opportunity for Macy's to take advantage of, but they don't understand it. They can't put words to it and they can't plan or strategize to make it happen. And what, what we'll get into
is a little bit about organizational behavior and organizational understanding because to get Macy's at large to understand the problem and the opportunity and ultimately to develop strategies and become interested in trying to solve the problem, we used a lot of storytelling. We used a lot of visual design and storyboarding that felt very much like we were creating a movie.
We also did a number of things that I think, which again, from the org behavior side, we will get into details there. But we tried really to understand what the motivations of the organization were at every level. And we then mapped a lot of that into an understanding that we could follow. And then we selected different members of the organization to do different jobs. And if you've read
Cameron Craig (23:42.208)
know, books like the 11 Faces of Innovation, and there's a bunch of other org behavior books about the different types of people, know, gatekeepers and megaphones and, you know, exec decision makers and people that are mock decision makers. You know, we really spent a lot of time kind of trying to understand the psychology of the organization, and then we appealed to it in very specific ways.
Keith (24:04.887)
you
Cameron Craig (24:11.129)
Maybe the last thing I wanted to say on this line is back to the unspoken but oftentimes referenced. The other thing that we probably should say in our first episode is something that you were always great about doing every time we presented this is these are our experiences and these are the things that we've done and we think there's something that is teachable, understandable, and learnable, but your mileage may vary.
Every situation is different, so you can't necessarily say one type of activity or one technique will work in every situation. But I've transitioned from Macy's to another retailer and then ultimately to a technology company. And I have to say that I've used those techniques in all three companies and they largely have worked.
One last thing I would say about Keith and I that probably needs to be said, especially in an upfront is our threshold for risk is high. Like we, we both approach things with a hacker's mentality and our objective, like to kind of put a frame around the Macy's experience was to hack Macy's. We wanted to get into the boardroom. We wanted to make a presentation, if not multiple presentations to the board, which we did. And that was really part of.
in some ways the gamifying of a lot of the things that we were doing because everything was a building block to like actually getting in and making a presentation. And the payload that we brought was this opportunity. So we actually did achieve the objective of getting an identified objective into the hands of the board of directors of Macy's, but it took a lot of social engineering and it took a lot of risk taking.
Keith (26:04.907)
Yeah. And it was, it wasn't social engineering in like a Machiavellian sense. It was, yeah, it was like, a benevolent counterinsurgency to try and make the thing not kill you in the process. And yeah. And most people probably don't know what that is. It's like a devil's advocate. Like if you're in the military, they build red teams to figure out, how is, how is the opponent going to try and take you out in any way possible?
Cameron Craig (26:12.611)
It was for the good of everybody.
Cameron Craig (26:21.997)
We red teamed it.
Keith (26:34.861)
And that's what we thought about. We were like, okay, you know, somebody's been here for 20 years. They're not going to want to share the data. They're not going to want to send us this. They're not going to want to have any kind of, you know, traffic pulled off of their part of the site to go on our test because if we get any traction, they're going to see us as a threat. And, you know, we would just kind of be like, okay, we didn't take it. It was hard. But after a while, you learn to kind of not take it personally. And you're just like, this is kind of what it is. And fundamentally, it gets back to
It's human nature. Like you can change the humans and you can replace them or whatever, but you can't change the human nature. And I think the way we use design was to creatively attack or address the human nature of dilemmas that you can't solve. You can only optimize. And that's what led to success. like success for us, it was, you know, we didn't, it's like you can win and still lose or lose and still win. And
We ended up leaving at a certain point, but the ideas that we left, they planted the seeds for Macy's and they put things in place. Like they hired a Google guy on the board and they never ever wanted to be thought of as a technology company at all. Even though it was very clear, the trajectory was heading into this way. And, you know, they just, you know, they move slowly because it's an old, they basically were a re with like a veneer of retail on top of it when you think about it. But I mean, you know, it's, it's tricky and
The reason I got an MBA after this was because it was clear that because I didn't have that, they're not going to take you so seriously because I had another group that was just doing the strategy stuff, even though it's like, it's all made up. It's all mark to market nonsense, you know, and like the compound annual growth rate was, it wasn't real, you know, and for us, we were like, this is what we're seeing. We literally had to videotape a checkout. This is a total episode that we'll get into. And then
make the board watch the tape to see how long it takes and that way like nobody could lie or like put off accountability. And it was you know very creative ways of putting this together to be like look this is what's really going on you know you what do you want us to do with it here are your options.
Cameron Craig (28:45.987)
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like Keith said, we'll get into a whole episode on this, but this was one of those fantastic and repeatable moments that I've repeated, which is when you are, you're doing the right thing and everything that they were doing was the right thing. They were, they were every department and every initiative and every product there was actually trying to do the right thing. And they were all trying to make the experience of, of, you know,
either working in a Macy's or shopping in a Macy's easier and better. They all wanted the same thing. They were all aligned to that same problem space. The problem was they were all operating independently. And what ended up happening was a giant cluster of things lumped onto the customer, right? And like that core problem is a problem that happens in every company. Like everybody's doing the right thing.
but they're in a silo and they're not seeing what the ultimate end point is of the activities that they're doing. And they think that they're taking advantage of an opportunity, but in reality, they're just working counter productively against the bigger picture. And oftentimes the simple answer is the one that everybody avoids. And I remember it because Keith's like, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna shoot this video. And again, we'll probably put a link into the video and the episode when we talk about it.
But he was like, I'm going to show the compounding effects of all of this good design work, all of this great product thinking, and all of these technological wonders that they think are going to make everything better. And the board kept getting reports of all of these different things. And they're like, the adoption of this program is 99 % and everybody loves it. It's like, well, that's not untrue, but
if you combine a bunch of these things that are actually like in collision with one another, you've made the overall like using of Macy's or shopping at Macy's to be completely untenable. And everyone's like, no, there's no way, there's no way. And so we got really creative about, mean, want like that, that, that one in particular maybe was one of the less gentle illustrations of the problem because like, I mean,
Keith (31:01.517)
We were we were like two steps shy of scorched earth at that point we're like fuck it
Cameron Craig (31:07.417)
Board members, like I was in California and I was watching this over a very like ancient video link and Keith was in the room and I could see like the CEO's head of operations, head of retail operations, head of merchandising, head of marketing, and of course head of digital.
Keith (31:28.589)
And the CEOs were changing too. Gannett hadn't taken power. There was like a transition period. So was like this weird Game of Thrones, great area of who, like I was seeing who was sitting where. I'm like, okay. Now I understand the boardroom politics based on like who's sitting next to Terry.
Cameron Craig (31:36.419)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (31:43.056)
But like all of the heads, like looking at the table at the end of this video and as the lights are coming back up, like everybody was quiet and everybody had their head down because they realized in that moment, like, my God, like what we've done is an absolute train wreck. And in that moment, there was no, but my program's doing great. There was like, we can't keep doing this, right?
Keith (31:58.317)
Oops.
Keith (32:11.169)
And they made changes like right away. Yeah. So a couple things on that. First, there, the reason we were able to do this checkout operation was because the POS system was coming to like an end of lifecycle purchase where they're have to make a huge purchase. That was probably the same 1980s BS. Really? my god. Okay, so
Cameron Craig (32:12.259)
and they made changes.
Cameron Craig (32:27.747)
guess what they're still using it hasn't changed they're still using it yeah they have not changed the system
Keith (32:36.279)
that we were like, okay, cool, this is going to be systemic because the underlying underpinning issue was like a data technology problem, where you had, you know, some really good engineers also seeing the same thing. And Cam and I saw, like, we were thinking exponentially, like, AI is going to come at some point, this is like 2015. Like, we have we have time, we have a decade before, you you pull the rate curves while kind of like exponential curves, like, we're not going to get that time back if we lose it right now, like you need to get on board and like see
And this is right when you started seeing people on the train in New York on their phone all the time. That's right at the point where iPhones are becoming ubiquitous or becoming cheap enough that you could buy a two or three year old model and still get to do the pictures and social media or whatever. was another S curve that was ramping into like kind of the next wave. And then the op it was that the tech was so old in the boardroom.
that I had to go troubleshoot the scaler because it was literally murky retrograde that day. And I'm like, this is going to get busted. And it was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, cause I look at cycles and stuff too. And it was like all of these things had to kind of come to bear. And there was a strategy group who was bolted on independent of us trying to think about all these things. They want to take our video and like, we'll edit it for you. And so cams getting all this, like it was, this is nuts, but these are the kinds of things you kind of have to kind of, you have to be a little bit like mad to deal with this.
But I think some people are going to like get value out of like mapping an org chart to understand who's going to help you and who's going to hurt you. You can do it in five minutes. If you understand how a company starts, the culture, the formation conditions tells you are they technology driven, are they marketing driven, are they design driven like Apple versus Meta. That's really important because it tells you who has the power. What do you have to do to get in that kind of like line? So those things are going to benefit on one offs but
The people who I think are really gonna get a lot out of this are the ones who kind of are the misfits who are also seeing the change. They know what's happening and they they feel like nobody's listening to them. Like you're not alone. And you brought this up last week where it's like, you this is probably going to be a space hopefully for those people too, because it is frustrating when you see and you want to try and do this and you got to spend so much time at work. And now with the disintegration of like
Keith (34:57.933)
I mean, meta didn't announce they're going to do massive layoffs this year, but they announced that they're going to like put like 20 or 30 % of people into like some replacement category or it was like, like they're going to do it. They're just like, you know, BSing the way around it. So.
Cameron Craig (35:12.013)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing. This is also the reason why we decided that this was the right time to do this podcast. Our industry and again, I think you're right, Keith, it's changing for everybody in this mix, right? The the you want to sit at the table. I mean, right now the table's getting flipped. So everybody sitting around that table.
like the top end of any of these corporations. And again, I'm lucky enough that I work somewhere that is building with AI and building for AI. And so I'm seeing things uniquely in ways, and unfortunately I can't talk about a lot of those things, but it doesn't really matter what's happening there. The trend of where it's going, I think we're seeing outside of the four walls of the places that we work.
And everybody that we're talking to is basically lining up and saying it's relatively the same where they are. And that triad, you will, replacement of all of the roles in that triad is very much on the minds of the top of these corporations. And one of the things, because monolith, and one of the things that we were really, we started talking about this about four weeks ago, is from our practice area,
Keith (36:22.438)
Because monolith
Cameron Craig (36:35.715)
We strongly believe that we actually will be in an advantageous position if we think about it the right way. And the hard skills that were valued for the last 20 years in this space, being able to get in and use the technology kind of at the iron level all the way up, right? With AI, you've replaced the higher level programming languages of Java and
JSON, et cetera, with English at this point. And designers and people that understand what it is that they want to build for a human and have the ability now to engage with a machine to actually build that, because they can describe those things well or they can design those things well, occupy a position of unique advantage. It's just unlocking that.
Keith (37:31.309)
Say more about we're designing for humans, we're not designing for other AIs and machines.
Cameron Craig (37:39.524)
There are a lot of people right now that believe that the human interface needs to virtually not exist. But that is ridiculous when every customer, every user is a human being. We do need to think about things. And there's a duality of design that goes on, especially when you're starting to design for AI, that you need to think about what is the human seeing and doing?
And what do I need to construct in terms of the information architecture to make sure that a machine can understand it and make sense of it? Because at the end of the day, at some point, there's going to be CamBot and KeithBot and DesignerBot and ProductBot. And you will send those people out to do your bidding in some way. And having a construct for that doesn't mean that interfaces go away. It doesn't mean that human beings are not still the primary user.
but your agent will do a number of things on behalf of you and service the information or the task or the completion of the task to you in ways that right now we design for the masses. We're like, hey, I need to show a window that says this operation is complete. But that might not be the thing that Keith wants. It might not be the thing that I want. It might not be the thing that you want, but we are like, we're like a one to many with every single interaction.
And in this new world, it's like a hyper-personalized world where the interface or the interaction that's coming back can come to you in anything. Maybe it's a voice in your ear that says, yes, Keith, the thing that you want to done is done. And by the way, your B &H order is going to be showing up tomorrow morning. And you're never going to have a visual interface for that if you don't want it. Or you may say, hang on a minute.
Before you go away, I'm gonna kind of need to see the receipt for that. It's like hang on a minute, you know, and like up comes some visualization of the receipt. Like, okay, great. I also kind of need to see the FedEx like slip that says like where it's coming. I want to make sure that all that's aligned, right? And it's not because you don't trust your agent, but humans need information in every different way that we take in information. And I spend a lot of time right now arguing with engineers saying,
Keith (39:32.383)
Ahem.
Cameron Craig (39:59.896)
We don't need an interface for that. It's like, that's completely not true. Like, you may not need an interface for that, but not everybody who's using our particular services is wanting to only operate in text or in a CLI or in an API or in some return from an API into a different API. Any of those things can and should be done, but they all need somebody to think it through.
And that's the piece that designers, I think, coming up are going to be uniquely positioned. It's like, we think about those different modes of operation. We think about the systems by which the interactions and the modes of operation sit. We're uniquely positioned in some way. And this is like another hypothesis that I will toss out and we will keep talking about. And again, as people become interested in this, I hope we get feedback.
But my hypothesis is that much like math is the universal language for most things of engineering and most things for computing, design is a universal language of HCI and the connection between the human being and the psychology and the machine, right? Like machines don't have a psychology, but machines do actually play to our psychology. And somebody has to design that because we are the interchange, designers are the interchange between the mechanization and the human.
Keith (41:26.633)
Yeah, and the designer is opening up to be accessible to everybody now. So the same way 10 years ago that your parents could Photoshop like a pig into, you know, some stupid family photo because it was cute. Now, it's like going digital 2.0 where all that design work and even the technical work to build these things that's not just going to have the interface, but it's going to eventually have compute infrastructure and just, you know, because it's just going to keep getting easier and easier. This is like, you know,
disruptive innovation from Clay Cushison. It's enabling access to people who didn't have access to these powerful tools before. And people use tech in ways we never intended. So it's fundamentally a human issue where it's about vision and value system and how we make kind of this new world. And it sounds kind of crazy. you know, we'll, we're going to talk probably more about some of these things. Because you know, you see these patterns, like even if you're gonna
Even if you go work at Palantir or work for SpaceX, there's people there who are building weapons and it's defense tech companies that, you know, they have real ethical and societal implications, but it's still a design issue too. So we think this is really important in general because, you know, whenever we went to design conferences or I did, it was always like, how do you build a better wireframe or what's the better tool? Like the future is not going to be Figma.
Like it'll be a tool that you use like Photoshop or, you know, Ableton live to make music or whatever. But it's it's not fundamentally it's it's it's how you're engineering the human experience what they feel like no, it's a better experience. Like no, it was fun. It was awesome. It was quick. Like, you know, I make a joke about TD Bank being like the spirit airlines of online banking because you can't even download a fucking spreadsheet from your stupid it's like they don't let you do it and then go in there and it's like you can only sell
like $500 a day kind of thing. it's like, this is this is 2025. You know, everything is digital, like, there needs to be more. And then they took like $10 billion from a cartel paid 20%. And it's like, Oh, sorry. And now you got a KYC if I want to take cash from a client, because they're immigrants. So they're, you know, they're trying to get naturalization. They're unbanked. And then you know, the bank is looking at me like I'm trying to smuggle people and I'm like, dude, I'm a I have this bank account too, like, you know, and it doesn't matter. So it's like, you know,
Cameron Craig (43:26.446)
Yeah.
Keith (43:51.104)
At some point it becomes kind of like insulting where it's like you feel like you're going to the DMV when it should feel the technology should make it feel more like first class or like higher quality like it actually solves your unmet needs simply and just makes you feel better about like being a human connecting connection.
Cameron Craig (44:04.751)
Yeah. So I mean, I think maybe to wrap up our intros, like, you know, we we intend to talk about a number of things and maybe I'll make the shortlist and Keith out to it. We're we're going to organize those things, I think, into the layers of thinking because we've spent some time kind of working that through. And there are some foundations that need to be thought about. And a lot of it is like
as a designer, your place in the organization and kind of what that looks like, how it's perceived, and ultimately where you want it to be. And maybe one of the things that I'll say and I'll just get it out of the way and then I'll never say it again, if your reason for being is interface design, you might as well just hang it up right now. Because the tools that will allow your partners, your product partner, your business partner, even your technological partner,
to do interface design, those tools exist. You've seen them. Those tools are getting better. And they're not getting better year over year. They're getting better like week over week. And soon, any common engineer will probably be able to do not just interface design, but interaction design at a level that is comparable to what you can do. So if that is your reason for being and gilding that particular lily,
you may want to start to think about a different profession because that is a commodity. And at this point, we've had 15 years of working that commodity. And now it's time for us to get active in solving actual business problems. So that's one thing we'll talk about. The other thing that we'll talk about is systems thinking. So again, all of the things that Keith and I have alluded to in this first episode about
thinking about your org, thinking about the space that you're in, thinking about the type of org that you're in, thinking about the business problem, and the alignment of all of the things that you need to become successful involves an array of systems thinking. You have to be able to see not just the piece that you're playing in, but how the pieces fit together in the system that you're working in. again, every
Cameron Craig (46:24.705)
organizations different, every system is different, but there are some building blocks that you can rely on. And we're going to try and highlight what those building blocks are so that you can identify them and then use them to your advantage. think maybe the last thing that I'll say, and then Keith, I'm sure you've got your shortlist as well, is the comms and kind of thinking about structuring your communication and how to make sure that your communication is not just powerful, but understandable.
Because again, this is like one of the things like when I was stuck, Keith unstuck me by basically saying, bro, you need to figure out how you don't melt these people's brains. Like you're moving at a thousand miles an hour and your brain works in a slightly different way. And like how you design and how you think about things works on a level that these people are not capable of understanding. You need to break your concepts down. And, you know, we visualized a lot of things because it's a universal language that most human beings can understand and resonate with.
Keith (47:17.773)
you
Cameron Craig (47:21.881)
But they have to see it to understand it. And sometimes explaining it or dataing people to death where they're like, but the data says, it just doesn't work. You have to show them what the problem is or what the opportunity is. And there's a lot of technique there that I think we will both get into the what, why, and how. Those are kind of my top level concepts that keep resonating for me, Keith, but I'm sure you've got others.
Keith (47:49.045)
Yeah.
So I think of these things in terms of like, like, of Staff is kind of like nebulous. It can mean a lot of different things for different people, depending on if it's like you work in politics or you work for like, you know, a CEO. I think of a Chief of Staff as kind of like a ghost CEO, you kind of have to know how to do a little bit of everything. And you're usually working solo, and you have to find a way to make things happen. And you have to do it non destructively, like you can't burn bridges otherwise.
you know, you're only good as your last reputation. And, you know, it takes a lifetime to build in 10 seconds to burn. So I'm probably going to be looking at some of these things that way. I think you're going to be giving a lot of advice as like a design leader with a ton of experience who's gone through multiple iterations of like, hardware, software, finance, like just, you know, it's almost like you grew up with cassette tapes to the CD player to like MP3, you it's you've gone through all these waves of transformation.
that there's a lot of value there, not just from the cycle that repeats, but also how you work with the humans to make it happen and not freak out about the fear. The other thing I think a lot about is basic security knowledge, basic hacking knowledge, not like, you you're to be some dude and a hoodie or girl, whatever, and a hoodie trying to like steal bank accounts. it's a way it's a mindset. It's a
you're driven by curiosity, wanting to make things work. And when you find something that like how you responsibly disclose something that could be not necessarily detrimental, but one VP or one, know, design, not design, like one leader might not want you to like, tell the CEO, you have to find a way to do that. And that gets with, you know, the how you show them the problem in a way. So the last thing is, you know,
Keith (49:46.638)
we see these patterns outside of just like large corporations and design and tech, we see it in society as a whole, I see it dealing with immigration every day. You know, that's a whole other monolith in and of itself. So, you know, we're gonna, this is kind of an experiment for the both of us, Cam and I, because we've seen the same thing repeat just past decade now. So we're going to try and keep it so that you get value out of like
learning kind of how we would teach design from the ground up for anybody could be a designer, because you literally have to teach a CEO how to be a designer in a mindset in order for him to understand the value of what you're doing. Not necessarily look and feel, but like how you think about the problem in a way that actually translates back to like business and culture and like, you know, human value. And then, you know, we have a lot of, like I said, we have a high tolerance for risk. So we're have a lot of colorful opinions on what's going on in the world.
Cameron Craig (50:43.448)
Yeah, for sure.
Keith (50:43.725)
But we'll do our best to kind of keep it focused. And if you have any feedback, we're always, you know, always open, we want to hear because we want to make sure it works for other people too. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about right now.
Cameron Craig (50:53.859)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. think that's, you know, maybe, maybe on the outro, you know, to Keith's point, I've been managing large scale design teams now for almost 18 years. And I think, I think we take a lot of lumps on a daily basis. I'm take, I, I'm transparently, I'm taking a lot of lumps this week specifically. I've had a bunch of really uncomfortable conversations with.
engineers, I've been told how useless my practice is, how the quality of my practice doesn't matter, on and on and on. But here's the thing, I believe in this practice. I believe in the power and the opportunity that being a designer actually offers. And that isn't just, you know, the rah rah like, hey, this is amazing. Like I'm a business person first.
I want to see the stock of the company that I work for go up. I want to see, you know, the dividends that are paid to the shareholders that own the stock of the company that I work for get larger. I want to see the budgets that are dedicated to whatever type of development or whatever type of product grow, not shrink. And that's been, you know, a formative and foundational part of how I approach design. But at the end of the day,
I think design is in a unique position at this point to actually take advantage of things that we've never been in the position to because we've always had the speed bump of technological development in front of us where it's like we think at the speed of innovation. We're taking those things in, like, we could totally do this. But then the reality of trying to do it becomes insurmountable because the technology is impossible for us to use and understand.
AI at this point is truly simplifying that. And the people with the good ideas who can think it through and actually systems think their way to a product are going to be the ones that have the most to gain in this environment. I don't just believe that. I think I'm seeing it. I'm seeing the quantifiable evidence to say that that's where the world is headed.
Keith (53:20.555)
Yeah, there is the technology is going to become the layer that dissolves into everything else. It's not going to become the means of differentiation in and of itself, if that makes sense. And a part of this too is like learning how to say the emperor has no clothes without saying that they have no clothes and like staying alive so you don't get shot in the process or
you're going to see bigger problems out in the world that you may just go build your own company after the fact, which is also valuable because you're just working at a layer like a circle outside of the corporate circle where it's either an industry or societal thing. So it's kind of fractal in a way. So, but yeah, I think I do think that design is a way of thinking. I think of it as like design and hacking because just data security, I mean,
physical security, it's just like, it's all awareness training, whether it's awareness of body awareness of self awareness of environment. But yeah, I think, I think that's a good, a good full circle kind of explanation of kind of where we're at, we're trying to hope to do with all this.
Cameron Craig (54:33.751)
Yeah, so I mean, maybe we will wrap episode one there. And I wanted to throw out a few things that we talked about that I would say as a list of things you could go and look at. So Keith and I mentioned the book Red Teaming by Misha Zenko. That's worth at least reading a synopsis or maybe getting your hands on it.
It's out of print, but it's still available places. It's also available as an audio book. I also mentioned the 10 Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelly. So he is one of the founders of IDEO, another really great book that helps you think about organizational behavior and in some ways the structure of organization. And obviously Keith and I have drawn some inspiration from that book and we'll talk about specifically how we've used that as a baseline.
I can't remember if there was another thing that you had brought up. Those were the two that I kind of made note of.
Keith (55:37.28)
Another good book was Team of Teams from Stanley McChrystal, General McChrystal. That's a really good systems thinking book where they're trying to figure out how to deal with insurgency on special operations level. So I mean, that's literally what Cam and I were looking at. It's like, if you could build a special ops design team that could do business and a little bit of security and kind of like benevolent social engineering. That's what I think we're like trying to figure out how to build. So the people who really resonate and be the ones who want to lead this.
Cameron Craig (55:39.961)
yeah. Yeah, that's a great book.
Keith (56:06.989)
But I still think that if you're a design leader, a chief of staff, a junior designer, you're still going to get a lot of value out of just understanding how to read the game, how to operate, and how to actually try and make a change that's positive for everybody.
Cameron Craig (56:21.731)
Yeah, for sure. So we'll keep calling out reference material that we reference to make sure that it's clear where we're drawing some of these inspirations. as we pull sight and things together, we'll develop a little bibliography of things that we have. And where we have specific concepts that came from those, we will try and remember to cite them as well so that you kind of know where they came from. Cool. That was a great intro.
Keith (56:46.637)
All right, awesome.
Cameron Craig (56:51.811)
I'm excited, I feel energized, I'm...
Keith (56:54.093)
Yeah, me too. I you know, candidly, we're probably gonna do like, this is like a little bit of therapy for Cam and I because this doesn't when you when you you work at an op for multiple years or a company, whether it's whoever it is, or whatever you're doing, like, it's really hard to maintain the endurance, especially when you don't know who you can trust that I've like career peers or
You you speak to your friends and they're like, what the hell you talking like monolith? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't understand. just, you know, they're like, what, you know, like the Knicks are playing tonight. Like, I don't care. What are you talking about? So, yeah, I think this is going to be great. This is, I feel energized to you. This is, it's been a little bit of a, a day dealing with all the technical gremlins, getting them working, but we'll just, we'll figure that out as time goes. I think it will just get ironed out. But, yeah, I'm excited, man. I'm, I'm, I'm really excited to see where this kind of goes. And hopefully we get like,
Cameron Craig (57:44.708)
Yeah.
Keith (57:48.139)
a lot of hopefully positive feedback too, but you you never know. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (57:50.414)
Yeah, I just hope it helps. That's like, I think you and I have we've been lucky in a lot of ways, but we've also taken our lumps. And, you know, I think being transparent where we've taken our lumps also means a lot to people that are taking their lumps. Right. It's like we're one of you, you know, like we've.
Keith (58:06.156)
Yeah.
made it. Yeah, we've learned a lot through being to the fire. It's like you learn from the mistakes and kind of the hard lessons that we've learned and you're going to receive a lot see a lot of these patterns repeat over time because if you're a large company, what made you innovative in the beginning is going to kill you in the end unless you can constantly change which is, you know, the innovators dilemma from Clay Christensen. He's, you know, that's another book but a lot of people in the valley talk about it but don't really address it.
properly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's a street's own episode. One day.
Cameron Craig (58:38.607)
Well, they also don't really understand it. anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny how many people cite that. I also will, in my little podcasting area, bring out this other great book. I can't remember the title of it, but I'll make sure I have it with me. But it breaks down 100 design concepts into their basis and application. And it has been one of the books that I have toted with me. And as somebody is telling me,
something crazy, usually out of the innovators dilemma, I'm like, no, that's not right. And it's like, here's a little simple graphic for you. And here's a brief explanation of the thing that you're actually saying. So.
Keith (59:20.875)
Is it the art of war illustrated? There's there was one that we started.
Cameron Craig (59:22.911)
No, no, no. That's another great book.
The Art of War Illustrated is the one that I was sending you all the things in text the other night. And you're just like, yeah. So yeah, there's another book, The Art of War Illustrated. It's a very, very fun book that I bought in a children's bookstore when my son was like three, which felt a little weird that I was in a children's bookstore and The Art of War Illustrated was there. But I bought it.
Keith (59:30.829)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I remember, yeah, okay.
Keith (59:49.527)
Dude, if you actually read the art of war, it actually preaches peace. doesn't preach war.
Cameron Craig (59:54.816)
And the Art of War Illustrated basically does the same thing. It's kind of like Venn diagrams that try and make your business world survivable, which I think is the main point.
Keith (01:00:08.395)
I kind of want to make an echo to that based on our experience where it's like a benevolent counterinsurgency manual to like survive and rebuild things because I thought deeply about going to work for the government doing these things. And I was like, yeah, that's potentially a very, now I say the very dark path, especially now where we're going with the cycles and everything. It's like, no, so, you know, but if you have the kind of mad science thinking, you can be very effective.
Cameron Craig (01:00:25.391)
That's not benevolent.
Cameron Craig (01:00:32.397)
Yep. Yep.
Keith (01:00:38.463)
and do very well and actually make a lot of good positive change. So hopefully we do that too. Yeah, that's the goal.
Cameron Craig (01:00:41.113)
Yeah, that's we're after. That's we're after. Yeah. All right. Let's call it, man. That was great. Yeah. Keith, excited. Can't wait to see where we go next. As always, thank you for just being you. It makes doing these things not just easy, but fun. And I know we've put planning into it, but things just roll simply, and I love that. So thank you.
Keith (01:00:47.095)
Kim, awesome first episode, super psyched.
Keith (01:01:09.389)
Yeah, dude, it's been ages since we've like, hung out and kind of worked in some kind of capacity together. And this is kind of like, we have some guardrails because of things we can't, I can't talk about customer data with like immigration, you can't talk about certain things with like, you know, but it's still the vibe is still there. And it's still, it's a lot of fun, man, because it's like, Oh, my God, you see this too? It's like, Oh, Jesus, okay, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:01:28.077)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean the prep that we do to get ready for these things and the prep we've been doing for the past three weeks has been cathartic humor in some ways. So that will probably come out in this as well. Like we will not always be like the talking heads, you know, doing this. So you'll have to bear with us and maybe, sorry, my partner recommended that Keith and I do this. So the other thing that Keith and I like
Keith (01:01:58.893)
You
Cameron Craig (01:01:59.213)
We have a rant, and we figure we should have the helpful teaching part of it that maybe is rant free. But we will probably put in the episode notes when we do the rant, and the rant will come at the end. And you can hang out for the rant, but you just need to know that you get what you get if you hang out for the rant.
Keith (01:02:20.949)
We'll try and put the rant at the end but we'll make sure that the lesson part comes earlier if you want to listen to but like a lot of It's like if the The lightning strikes you got to run with it. You got to go for it You can't you can't just like hold it all the time. Otherwise, it's like it's it's like a little It's like building a fire by rubbing sticks. You got to get the ember going and you got it You can't just like throw a bunch of gas on it. it's just it's too much
Cameron Craig (01:02:34.807)
You do. You do.
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:02:46.893)
Yeah, so we'll try and make sure that those things get put into the episode notes as well so that you know if you're showing up for a rant. All right.
Keith (01:02:56.119)
Gab, always a pleasure, man. This is great. I'm looking forward to the next one,
Cameron Craig (01:02:57.913)
Yeah, Keith. Yep, me too. Thanks, and we'll speak soon. See ya.
Keith (01:03:03.116)
Alright, thanks again. Later!