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Conversations with designers, founders, and builders behind some of the best work
Andy Allen Not Boring Software Design.txt
English (US)
00:00:00.040 — 00:01:17.910 · Speaker 1
Andy Allen is a designer that I really admire because of his ability to stay calm in the face of noise and produce something novel. But at one point, he disappeared into the startup world. He co-founded a company, raised $45 million, did hardware software, had a decent exit, and then he walked away from all of it.
Now he runs his own product company. Not boring software, fully bootstrapped, no investors. It's a tiny team making apps that feel like nothing else on your phone, a calculator that feels like a game, a weather app that has a Lego skin, and a camera app that took three years to ship and has become their biggest launch yet.
I wanted to talk to Andy because he's doing something that I don't think most designers even know is an option. He's not trying to scale. He's not trying to exit. He's just trying to create software with a point of view where you can see the creator in the work. We get into why he thinks speed is overrated for the kind of work he's trying to do this idea of design is differentiation.
And this metaphor that he keeps coming back to the kid in the cockpit. You don't know what all the buttons do, but you're not intimidated. You just want to twist the dial and see what happens.
00:01:19.070 — 00:01:30.270 · Speaker 1
In an industry overstimulated by AI and noise. I hope you'll find this conversation as grounding as I did. This is state of play. Let's get into it.
00:01:37.430 — 00:01:42.870 · Speaker 1
And I'll just kick this off right away, dude. Like, how's the how's the launch on on the camera app.
00:01:42.870 — 00:02:27.060 · Speaker 2
And it's been great. Yeah. I mean, it's been our best launch yet. Honestly. Really? Uh, yeah. So. Which is exciting. And, you know, for me, it's the first creative tool I've made since, uh, paper, which was, you know, 13 years ago now that we launched it. So it's nice to just make get back into making tools for creative people.
And, you know, I mean, weather app is great and calculator app is great, but you don't see much of it, right? Those are kind of like private tools. This creative tool is great because I get to see what people make from it. And sometimes that's the most rewarding part, right? It's just seeing other people make some amazing things that you never could have done.
00:02:27.100 — 00:02:41.500 · Speaker 1
It's just so fun opening up anything that you launch, because I'm always like, I get to kind of sit back and I've come to expect out of not boring tools in software that I'm going to have a fun onboarding experience. And it is it's a it's a blast.
00:02:41.500 — 00:02:50.900 · Speaker 2
And that's, uh, I'm glad you expect that. And it's like it's both kind of terrifying because now it's like, I feel like each app we have to kind of up our game a little bit.
00:02:50.940 — 00:03:01.460 · Speaker 1
It has to be kind of a thing where you're like, oh, we've set the bar. We've set the expectation. This one, if I recall, has been in the works for some time. Is that true?
00:03:01.660 — 00:03:35.260 · Speaker 2
That's true. Yeah, it's been in the works for about three years and just kind of off and on. You know, it wasn't it wasn't three solid years. But we started it about three years ago, explored it a bit. I've always loved the idea of making a camera. You know, it's one of those iPhone one home screen type of apps.
So it's just core to something that people use every day, that we ourselves use every day. And we knew it was something we wanted to do, but it just took a long time to to like, find the essence of it and figure out what we were going to add to it. That was unique.
00:03:35.300 — 00:04:03.970 · Speaker 1
I'm in the process of learning from a lot of people like you, and people who really value making something heavy, chasing the bar of quality. I'm also up against speed. Three years for me is not a feasible timeline right now, and I'm curious to hear from you. How do you think about speed when you're in the pursuit of something is as wonderful feeling as is not boring.
00:04:04.010 — 00:06:23.270 · Speaker 2
You know, I worked in a kind of typical tech startup, VC funded tech startup world for most of most of my career. And at Big Tech, where speed is kind of everything. You know, speed is like it is really your advantage. You know, when your small speed is your advantage. It's like the most important thing. Oftentimes.
Right. It's like it doesn't matter if you get it right. It's how fast you move right and how quickly you can push it out there and learn from it and iterate on it. I think that's that like is well geared towards a specific kind of design and a kind of business. Right? That's about trying to be a first mover and capture, you know, some like significant portion of an audience and design that's really meant to like to make some new technology accessible.
Right. So if you're working in AI tools or you know anything else that's kind of like right on the cutting edge right now, speed is very critical. We're doing something a little bit different. You know, we joke that our roadmap is the iPhone one home screen. And so we're like redoing apps from, you know, almost 20 years ago now.
And so speed isn't really as much of an issue. And it's really nice because it aligns well with the type of design that I like to do, which is a more differentiation type of design. So it's like the design that we're familiar seeing in, you know, the automotive industry or fashion and other fields like this where design is used to help, like differentiate a product.
Uh, not necessarily to, to like make some new technology more accessible or scale. Um, and so, you know, for us, it's like, you know, how do we how do we just, like, make the best experience and the most like interesting thing that we can. And that just takes a lot of time, honestly. And there's really not a shortcut for it.
You know, you like to think that you can just hire up, you know, 3 or 4 more people, uh, and like, expand your team. Uh, you know, we stayed very small because we just found that, like, we can't really do better work necessarily by scaling.
00:06:23.270 — 00:06:28.950 · Speaker 1
You're completely no funding. Uh, totally bootstrapped. Right? Yep.
00:06:28.950 — 00:07:25.180 · Speaker 2
Fully, fully bootstrapped. And, um, for those reasons, you know, um. Well, one, I'm not sure anyone would I'm not sure who would want to invest in this kind of business, because we're not really aiming for a big exit. Uh, so it's not like the most investable business to start with, but also like, it just takes those pressures off.
Like, we don't have pressure to scale. Uh, we don't have the timing pressure. And, you know, I went through that. I, I, I co-founded a company. We raised $45 million and did hardware. We did software and, you know, had a decent exit and all that. And that's that's a path, you know. But, uh, I think this what we do and what we're trying to do is a valid path as well.
And I wish this sort of path would have gotten a little bit more attention. Honestly, I didn't really know it was an option.
00:07:25.180 — 00:07:53.580 · Speaker 1
I feel like I'm going through a second chapter of my career after 15 years. I'm on chapter two after 15 years here of starting to come to similar realizations, and speed is a hard thing to throw away. That's all I've come to know. It's what I've known. It's. It's how I've learned to operate. And I'm curious to hear from you.
What is kind of the pecking order of priorities for you in this way of work? Is it is. Is that how you think about it? Is it like quality?
00:07:53.580 — 00:08:05.500 · Speaker 2
And then there's kind of a moment where you get sick of it. You know, like you're totally sick of your project. And I usually think that's about the time that you're kind of done with it. Like, it's about time to push it out. Right.
00:08:06.700 — 00:08:50.740 · Speaker 2
Uh, and so we definitely reach that point where we're like, you're not like, it's not like wowing me anymore. Uh, but when I show it to others, they would have a reaction. And so I think that's that's a good moment. And that's when I start to switch into, like, marketing mode. And I start thinking about how I tell the story about it, and that I, I find myself kind of like reconnecting with the project in a different way as an outsider.
And I kind of, like, fall in love with it in a again, uh, and kind of rekindle some of that, like initial excitement. You know, you start to think about the naming, the branding, uh, you know, the iconography, like how you're going to describe this thing to people.
00:08:50.820 — 00:09:16.690 · Speaker 1
Take me through the process that you use. I know when we spoke once before, you had some physical prototypes and you had different ways of kind of exploring to where this was going to go. Um, you know, if we zoom in on some ideas when this camera app was first started, when do you move on from kind of a static sort of idea to an actual implementation of, of those static elements.
00:09:16.970 — 00:09:19.370 · Speaker 2
You know, the design tools are
00:09:21.290 — 00:09:25.530 · Speaker 2
you know, I love I love all the design tools. You know, Figma sketch.
00:09:26.610 — 00:10:51.040 · Speaker 2
Um, to me there's sketches. You know, there's sketchbooks, right? So the work I create there, I, I'm not very precious with it. I treat it like a sketchbook. Like I just quickly throw stuff down. If you looked at my figma documents, they're not very organized. I don't have much of a design system set up in it.
So we actually had this idea around using the camera capture, uh, control button. That's like on the new iPhones. This is how far the idea has changed because we didn't end up using that at all. But like we had this idea of using that here, I'll have to show you. So, you know, the I don't know if you know how much you know, like vintage cameras this the whole the camera.
It's like a super cheap. Everything's made out of plastic. Like even the lens is plastic. Uh, so very affordable. And yet it shoots medium format film, which is like a super high end, uh, film. Right? And, uh, but the great thing about it is, like, it's completely manual. You know, you just, like, wind the top here, and then you hit this button, the shutter button to take a photo.
So the idea was like, oh, that's kind of like a fun gesture, right? Just like the old instant cameras, right? You wind snap. So we had this idea of like, using the camera control button on top here. There's my sticker, by the way. Uh,
00:10:52.320 — 00:13:09.340 · Speaker 2
uh, to, like, wind it and then, like, snap a photo, that sort of thing. We're like, oh, that might be like a fun little experiment to play with. So we said, all right, let's give ourselves a couple weeks and just see if we can prototype that. By prototype, I mean actually build it like build a a working app with it.
Um, and, you know, I work with my partner on this who's, who's in engineering, marvel in a graphics, uh, just genius. And, uh, we built that in a couple of weeks. Played around with it, and we're like, uh, it's sort of something here, but you know what? Like, maybe we'll just add a little bit more to it. So we just keep adding to it and adding to it, and eventually it gets very bloated.
And then we're like, you know, we don't really need that whole, like, the whole, like, winding thing is fun. But you know, after the first couple uses of it, it starts to feel kind of cumbersome. So we eventually, like threw out the whole like initial idea that started it. We found that, okay, well, let's just like, how do we just strip all this other technology away and use the core image, the raw image that's captured?
And and then we started to lean into doing other things like applying, you know, this sort this, uh, what's, what are called Luts. Right. Lookup tables, which I'm sure you're familiar with. More feel more like familiar in the the cinematography world. Um, but now starting to branch out into the photography world because you can basically go from, like, you know, snapping a photo, like raw images in your camera and apply these styles on top of them and have these amazing looking photos in the end, and you don't have to like, you know, import your raw images in the Lightroom and and like, apply these presets and things like that.
So we just we started to see some of these like technology pieces becoming available and started to weave those into the camera app and just started to feel like, hey, there's something here. So yeah, again, like started way over here with like this instant camera idea and then ended up way over here with like, what's much more like a pro level camera.
00:13:09.380 — 00:13:55.330 · Speaker 1
How do you, especially today where there's just so much hype around AI and, you know, augmenting products with AI? And how do you make it more intelligent or the new version, not boring. Selection of products have been largely things like the calculator and the weather app. Now the camera app, things that have existed now for a while, and you are reinventing those things, but you're not giving in to the the hype.
You're not prioritizing, you know, an AI augmented version of these things. How do you how do you kind of pick and choose how you reinvent these established products? And what's been the decision behind kind of not buying into the AI hype to bring that in?
00:13:55.370 — 00:15:44.840 · Speaker 2
The niche that we've, like, carved out for ourselves isn't really in that realm. It's more in like, how do we create? We're very, like unabashedly just trying to innovate on the interface and just trying to make more, you know, engaging, more interesting, more tactile, more game like interfaces. Right.
And so almost anything else that we start to add can almost start to like, get in the way of that message a little bit. And like you said, we're trying to reinvent calculator. I'm sure somebody can reinvent like an AI first calculator. Um, but then you're sort of like fundamentally having to rethink a calculator in a very different way.
Right? And in many ways, we find that there's just enough there for us to reinvent, just working from an existing like understanding of what an app could be or what a camera can be. We are intentionally trying to innovate on design as differentiation and not design as a way of, you know, explaining or making a new technology more approachable.
Right. Which I think is it's a very valid form. But to me, that's that's been like 99% of software design. And I'm very interested in like, well, what does design is differentiation looks like. Because the truth is we're all going to be living with more and more software, right? It's going to continually surround us.
And, uh, you know, we have to find ways of making even the kind of mundane stuff, you know, like checking the weather every morning. We have to find ways of making that, uh, richer and something that, you know, something that we want to, like, be a regular part of our lives.
00:15:44.840 — 00:16:27.750 · Speaker 1
And so one of the ways that you have done that is to really lean in, as you called it, kind of the the game like in game feel of different elements of the products and, um, haptics, uh, sound effects, lots of motion. It's very it's a pleasure to see all of that just starting up. One of your products are there aside from just recalling some of the the nostalgia of games that we've played, are there active ways that you're looking for metaphors to bring game feel into your products?
What are your sources of inspiration? Essentially, when you're thinking about the camera app and the ways to use it outside of the analog things that you were describing?
00:16:27.750 — 00:16:38.910 · Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, our biggest sources of inspiration are, is, is gaming, for sure. And sometimes that is like nostalgic games, but sometimes that's modern games too.
00:16:39.990 — 00:18:35.980 · Speaker 2
Um, and so, I mean, that's, that's probably like the core inspiration, like the customized screen in the camera app. I mean, that's like customizing your character or something, right? In any game. Games are very complex, right? They're much I would say many games are much more complex than a lot of software applications are, right?
Like you can spend hundreds of hours playing a video game to fully understand it, to understand all the moves, all the, you know, weapons, all the different enemies, all the like enemies moves, you know, like, think about how much you have to learn when you're playing a video game. And it's it's an immense amount that you have to take in there.
Very complex. Right. And yet, like, you can start just using it, right. Like you can just hand the controller to a five year old and they can start playing it right away and having fun. Right. And that's like one of the just utterly like, magical aspects of game design that I think is, like, wildly underappreciated in the product design world.
The right mindset is like the metaphor I kept using is like, we want you to feel like you're a kid in a cockpit, you know, like the cockpit of an airplane, and you don't know what all these buttons do, but like, you're not intimidated. Like you just want to twist that dial, you know, you want to like, you know, press that button and just see what happens, right?
And you learn fast through doing that. Right. And I think that's something that a lot of our software doesn't do. Right. Because we're, you know, we're aiming for simplicity. And in a lot of times that means we cut out things like that. You know, these, these richer sort of experiences that might come about, but you just have to kind of spend a little bit more time learning it.
00:18:36.020 — 00:18:42.020 · Speaker 1
How much of your process for creating them is like the kid in the cockpit?
00:18:42.060 — 00:19:33.010 · Speaker 2
I love to use different mediums when I design, so I love to get off of the computer actually. And so I will sketch a lot. You know, I have a sketchbook. I, I draw a lot of things out actually, because we work in 3D like the best, the fastest way to mock up anything 3D is still like sketch it, right? Like, you know, if you want to mock up an interface, sometimes it's actually faster to do that in something like Figma than to draw it out by hand.
But for a lot of three things 3D things, it's still faster to just sketch it by hand. And then I, uh, I've gotten a lot more into 3D printing. And so I've been 3D printing, a lot of interfaces. That was very important with the camera app. You know, I have a lot of I think I showed it is right.
00:19:35.250 — 00:20:48.870 · Speaker 2
You know, here's like a 3D printed version of the camera app. Right. And it was just to like, you know, to hold it, you know, and kind of like feel the, the texture of the controls and and feel the placement and feel the ergonomics of it. And I just find that sort of thing is very useful in terms of understanding, like how does this thing feel and read as a, as a form?
You know, we did a Lego skin for our weather app, and I literally just built that in Lego. I was like, just building the weather app in Lego was a ton of fun. Um, so I try and do stuff like that. And then, you know, of course I'm, I'm, I'm doing a lot in 3D programs and we're experimenting a lot. We're doing some animation testing and blender, uh, we're throwing things into Xcode and doing some things there.
So it's just a lot of like, you know, pulling together different elements, uh, to, to try and bring something to life and see if there's something there. I think the key thing, too, is like with play with your work is not being too precious with anything And being willing to just say, hey, yeah, you know, let's just try this.
00:20:48.910 — 00:20:59.550 · Speaker 1
Do you have a sort of creative recovery stack? Like a set of tools or practices that kind of help you reset and just start playing with a new idea?
00:20:59.630 — 00:21:23.070 · Speaker 2
Not really. I mean, I think it's just, uh, I think it's just a mindset of just being. Well, I will say that, like, if you can just mentally, like a lot of stuff is just in our heads. You know what I mean? Like, if you can just mentally carve out, like, just say, look, I'm gonna spend the next four hours on this idea.
00:21:24.190 — 00:22:22.510 · Speaker 2
That's it. You know, like, if it doesn't work, that's fine. Like, I think so many things live in our heads as ideas. Uh, they could be something great. Or we think they could be, like, a bigger. You know, we just sort of, like, spin a lot of times on what it could be. Um, and we just don't carve out the time to explore that idea.
If you just carve out an hour or something, right? Like just spend an hour, like you can get a lot done in one hour. Like you can get something mocked up. I guarantee you can all like you can almost like, validate the first step of almost any idea in an hour, right? If you just commit to it and it could be a Figma prototype, it could be sketching it out on paper.
It could be, you know, making it in Lego. Sure. Why not? Right. Like, you can validate a lot. And if you just take that first step to doing that, that tells you so much, that usually tells you like 80% of what you need to know.
00:22:22.950 — 00:22:48.700 · Speaker 1
But you said not boring, isn't trying to be a unicorn. And you've turned this into a real, uh, sustainable business for yourself. What was kind of the impetus of leaving the VC backed or startup or speed heavy work of design to kind of take your first swing into this philosophy. And when did you start to realize, oh, this might actually work?
00:22:49.220 — 00:22:58.660 · Speaker 2
You know, I like so as I mentioned, I went through the like, VC funded startup. I think the lesson that I learned from that
00:22:59.780 — 00:25:18.600 · Speaker 2
was really that the business that we had created was a valid business, but it was not a VC unicorn business. And the sort of like tragic thing, even though we, you know, we had a decent exit with it. Uh, it wasn't like a unicorn exit, right. But it was it like if you had told me that this is how it was going to end up from the beginning, I'd be like, that's great, sign me up.
I want to take that ride. I think the reality is like it just wasn't a VC business. It was a great like smaller business. And I think the sad thing too, is that like, we could have done like quite well individually If we had kept it something of a smaller bootstrap kind of business. And I think it was, I'm not sure I could have come.
I'm not sure I could be in this place that I am today with not boring. If I hadn't gone through that because there wasn't really anybody talking about this path as a possibility for building a software business, right? And I think it just I had to go through that, uh, to, to see that that was a possible outcome.
These were just experiments. Uh, we made a weather app, a timer and a calculator. And that was just like seeing if you could build an app, like a game. And what would that look and feel like? People were like, hey, maybe you should put this out there. So. Okay. Sure. I guess, uh, we'll we'll put it out there.
And really, we didn't know until that moment that we that we hit publish. You know, I just thought, like, maybe, okay, maybe, like a few people that follow me might find it interesting and like, maybe, you know, maybe some people will, like, point to it as like this obscure example of, uh, like 3D use of design and something like that.
Um, but really, that first day that we launched it, suddenly we had a massive excitement and interest, and I think it just maybe touched on, you know, something, something kind of in the air, you know, certain malaise with, with software today and people just wanting to see something different.
00:25:18.640 — 00:25:25.680 · Speaker 1
What is your definition of enough as, as sort of a company, as a maker, even as a dad?
00:25:25.720 — 00:26:33.750 · Speaker 2
It's very, uh, it's very modest. It's like, how do we just, you know, make enough to support our families? That's to me, that's enough. And I, I, I enjoy that, you know, I think, uh, I think, you know, like a lot of people who make, uh, indie apps, a lot of them could be making a lot more money. Working for big tech, you know, and they've chosen oftentimes to to to work the way that they do because because of the work itself.
Right. They want to do a certain kind of work. They want to see a certain kind of work out there in the world. And we definitely fall into that camp. And I think, you know, you make certain sacrifices, uh, to be able to do that. And so but I think that's, uh, you know, it's the same sacrifices that, that a lot of creative people make.
You know, filmmakers make it, uh, writers make it, um, they, they see value, creative value and cultural value in the work itself.
00:26:33.790 — 00:26:40.230 · Speaker 1
Are there any outcomes that were unexpected, any sort of unexpected impacts that you've realized through this?
00:26:40.270 — 00:26:43.350 · Speaker 2
Uh, it's all been very unexpected. Honestly,
00:26:44.390 — 00:27:04.349 · Speaker 2
you know, you have a hope that, like you might, that there might be something there with anything you put out. Right. You have a hope that there's something there. I think the thing that. Yeah, the larger hope and I'm not sure that we've even achieved it yet, is that maybe there's a path here that others can follow.
You know, that others can take the same
00:27:05.550 — 00:28:43.490 · Speaker 2
sort of approach to not our perspective or on like, you know, mixing game and everyday utility. Like it could be anything. But this idea that you can as a designer, have a strong point of view that you articulate through software that you put out into the world and that we, you know, other people can see you, the creator, in the work that you put out and that you can build a viable business around that, that supports that, that keeps you going, that keeps that like self funds the creative energy, you know, and keeps that going, because I think that is a very critical part to it.
Uh, and so, yeah, I mean, that's again, I'm not sure we've achieved it yet, but that's that would be like maybe the ultimate goal is that maybe we've helped, like lay a little bit of the groundwork or like, you know, some of the things that I've been describing about things that that like the industry just leads you in one direction to think that this is the path towards success, right?
This is the path that you get on. If you have an idea, you know, you do XYZ to get it funded and then grow it. And then here's the outcome. I've just seen so many people go through that and end up miserable. You know, like whether or not they were successful or not, there were people who didn't succeed and now they have to wind down a company.
And that's really painful. There are even people who did succeed, and they succeeded for the wrong thing, you know, like they are now stuck managing this large team around something that they don't have a whole lot of passion about.
00:28:43.530 — 00:29:10.490 · Speaker 1
The unintended consequence of being a beacon, I think is very real, and I found it really interesting that you asked the other day online for the names of people of contributors, not necessarily a manager or a, you know, a CEO, but for people with their hands on who were just really focusing on really good work.
Inga Hampton, by the way, one of those names I'd recommend. She does some incredible stuff with the trackpad. Yeah, she she doesn't like to work at the desk. She does.
00:29:10.930 — 00:29:12.170 · Speaker 2
I saw her config.
00:29:12.210 — 00:29:18.850 · Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Pretty incredible. Um. And I'm curious. What what what were you looking for? What was the reason for that question?
00:29:19.170 — 00:32:10.870 · Speaker 2
Well, I'm working on a project, actually, that's still very early phases, but, you know, I teach, uh, design at, uh, I have taught a course in the past at the University of Washington here in Seattle. And then I, I do guest lectures mostly now, But the number one question I would get from students is just, you know, and most of these are students who never, you know, design their, you know, undergraduates who've never designed software in their life.
This is their first introduction to it. Their question is just what is good design, good software design look like? You know, I don't know, like I sort of assume that people would just have an intuition for it because we grow up around it. Right? And, uh, but it's just like it's it shouldn't surprise me. It's just like typography.
It's everywhere. But you don't notice it until you start learning about it and start really digging in, and then suddenly it's everywhere. Right now, you see every, like, kerning mistake and every, every like, you know, every like detail of, of type design. And it's the same way with software and the challenges that we just don't have a whole lot of great things to point at at the moment.
And there's sort of the stuff that, uh, a lot of bigger companies have put out there, and they put a lot of marketing message behind it. Right. And they and, uh, that's that tends to sort of dominate how a lot of people see, uh, software design today. So, you know, when if we're to look at a another creative field like fashion, you know, you have like these amazing fashion designers who work at, uh, you know, the like, sort of top end fashion studios.
They do fashion shows, uh, of like very experimental work. And then that work kind of like slowly trickles down to, like the next tier and then the next tier. Right. And then eventually, you know, it's like it's it's a shirt at Walmart. Right. That sort of thing. It's the whole like, Devil Wears Prada speech, right, by Meryl Streep's character.
Right. It's that kind of thing. And that's how it happens in a lot of creative industries. Um, the weird thing about and what happens in those industry is, you know, you have publications and people and students of fashion they admire, you know, the great fashion designers, you know, Alexander McQueen and and Virgil Abloh and folks like that.
Right. The weird thing about software design is it's inverted, right? Our students are admiring the Walmarts and the targets right after things have been trickled down. And they don't know who the Virgil Abloh is, are out there.
00:32:10.950 — 00:32:33.230 · Speaker 1
And there's a lot of really great folks out there doing it. And what you're describing, I think, is, is a layer of taste that goes beyond just kind of the status quo. And I think that's hard to develop until you start really digging in. How do you define taste? How do you how do you tell them, you know, taste is this word that's just getting used all over the place right now, but how?
You know, what do you think about it?
00:32:33.230 — 00:33:45.850 · Speaker 2
I just think, um, a lot of people have it in them. They have some unique perspective. They just haven't had the opportunity at a lot of places that they work to really nurture that or to help that come out or to help to express it in different ways. I mean, you talk with anyone at, you know, a big tech company, any of the designers there.
I guarantee you they all have ideas for like these side projects that they love to do, or some like some niche thing that they love to like spend some time on and they just don't have the time to explore it or like the kind of financial structures to support it a lot of times. And so, you know, I think, I think if if we can solve some of those, then then we can hopefully live in this world where people can exercise their taste and we actually get this, this like, you know, economy full of like very differing tastes out there as we do in, in like fashion and product design in like monitor stands.
I mean, there's so many different monitor stands. Like it's silly that that is like more expressive than like basic software that we use regularly.
00:33:45.850 — 00:34:44.639 · Speaker 1
I'm trying to learn from people like you. I'm trying to break a lot of bad habits and trying to figure out chapter two of what I want out of the world, and, um, medias and storytelling is something I'm very interested in, but I'm very still learning a lot about it, and I have a lot of internal struggle with what to put out there and how to talk about things.
What I do know is I want to I want to show I have a number go up and I have eyeballs, and it's like, what do you do with that? Well, you start a marketing funnel or it's like, no, no, no, no, what's meaningful. And and so showcasing really great people, telling stories from people who don't have the time to tell their own story is something that I've really started to lean into.
But then how? And I just want to ask you, what would what do you think is missing from the storytelling of of creatives and, and the kind of quality of things like what what would you like to see out there that's not out there right now?
00:34:45.440 — 00:36:50.990 · Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, some of that ties in with with what I'm trying to uncover. I think it's it's uncovering the people who I, who I think are truly, like, influencing, um, the direction of, of this field. And, you know, I mean, I think people don't even like we're gonna hopefully in like, 10 or 15, I don't know how long, 20 years.
We'll look back on this as being like, wow, you know, like this. That was like early Bauhaus days, you know, where, like, people didn't understand what design software design even was. Right? Like. And yet today it's so impactful, you know, so I think I think the like it's already super impactful. But like the average person doesn't really understand just how impactful it is on culture and on their individual lives.
Right. Um, I think that will come over time. But I think in many ways, yeah, it's just very early days and it's like figuring out who are the people to champion and and like how to help elevate that voice because there's such a strong, you know, in some ways you have to act maybe as a foil to, to like what the kind of status quo is on, uh, you know, for like, conferences.
I mean, you go to conferences and like, you know, like this is not to put these people down, like, but like, I don't want to hear from another design manager at Instagram, you know, like, and there are a lot of people who've gotten a lot of airway and a lot of airtime, I should say, um, for simply like being a good manager, you know, and that's like, that's fine.
That's a great like it's needed. Um, but it's not like the thing that's pushing the field forward. And I'm always looking for those people who are, you know, hands in the clay. They're working on it. They're working hard. They're they're actually shaping the future.
00:36:51.030 — 00:37:34.270 · Speaker 1
Andy said he's most inspired by the people who have their hands in the clay, who are shaping the future. And that's what not boring is. It's proof that there is another path. You don't have to raise money. You don't have to scale. You don't have to ship fast and break things. You can just make something beautiful, something with a point of view where you can feel you in the work.
I think a lot of designers are going to hear this and think, I didn't know that was an option, and Andy didn't either, not for a while, but it is, and his work speaks for itself. If you haven't tried a not boring app, you should go download it. I think you'll understand in about three seconds. I'll see you in the next one.