This can't be episode 23. If someone wants to catch up on all our episodes and they listen to 1 a day, it would take them over 3 weeks. Yeah. Not so respectable output, isn't it?
Well, I think our email address has been a source of entertainment for us.
Well, yeah. So I'm But but it's not fulfilling any of its traditional roles.
Well, I'm not too upset about that, to be honest.
I did fix it, by the way. You can now email Ian and Ash at what a lot of things dot com. I assume you got my test message.
I did. I did. So it does work. And I see that Neil stood commented on the he already deconstructed the new email address
Yes. He did.
Into what did he say? An an Iowan grandmother's name. Let's have a quick look.
This is the kind of silence, by the way, that benefits from editing.
Yeah. So I love the new IA NANDASH email address because Iowan grandmothers need all the support they can get for their running efforts. There you go. So I replied personally to Neil and said, I knew I could rely on him to be on the team. Technolog, he, yours.
I failed to see the connection between his Iowan grandmother racing and, and Technolog. Yeah. Yours. I did my best to write it in the show notes for the last episode. Oh, actually, I'm sorry. The last but one episode, because we're in our sort of time machine.
In the time machine again.
So I'm gonna just ask you what your thing is.
So my thing, Ian?
No. No. No. No. No. I have to ask you in such a way that when you answer, it sounds like you're answering me, asking you rather than answering me, telling you I'm going to ask you, which doesn't work at all.
Okay. Right. Go.
So, Ash. What? I mean, yeah. Exactly. I I'm I'm caught up in the Monty Python That is creep. …bridge guardian.
So that is creeping
in. It's
really Yeah. It really is. Yes. It's it's like appearing in over the last few episodes, it's just gradually starting to increase in in appearances.
What is your name? What is your thing? Damn you, multi python.
Yeah. It just it's it's it's it's kind of a worm, isn't it? It gets into the episodes, and then it's very hard to remove.
Yes. Not
that it has to be removed, I guess.
A Monty Pythonectomy.
Yeah.
No. We will not remove remove it. Not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy.
Well And
then we can finish with a rousing rendition of always look on the bright side of life.
So shall I I'm gonna launch into my thing.
So, Ash, tell us what is your thing?
So my thing is entitled, Figma is an antibody for collaboration between designers and development teams.
Rather than just a Figma of my imagination.
Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose we should do a bit of what is Figma, shouldn't we, first?
Yeah. Because we totally didn't do any what is Ilkley Live No.
No. I didn't know what
that was. 2 episodes ago.
So everybody, do your own research on what Ilkley Live is.
Or was at that time.
So what is Figma? So I'm I'm quoting here from the official Figma site. Figma is a web based design tool that allows users to create, share, and test designs for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products. It is a popular tool for designers, product managers, writers, and developers.
You see, I read that, and I thought that was what you were saying about it.
No. No. I decided to just just go with the site.
Fair enough.
No. So here are some things you can do with Figma. Design websites, app interfaces. You can prototype, you can collaborate, share templates, designs, widgets, and you can gather feedback. So explore ideas and get feedback from others. That sounds great, doesn't it?
Why would you want to share templates, designs, and widgets with millions of users? It just seems a bit impractical. Well What if they all said thank you? I mean, can you imagine?
I don't think you want to, but basically but basically Figma are gonna collect that and then share it with millions of users around the globe, especially if you're on the free version.
It's not me that's sharing it. It's it's them.
Yeah. So with their new AI, of course, offering
No. Surely surely no AI offering has, it's everywhere, isn't it?
Just surely no AI offering just scrapes an incredible amount of data that people are putting into this tool and then uses it as a product to sell to other people.
That that would never happen.
That would never happen.
Especially not under the branded umbrella of AI.
Yep. So that's what Figma is, or at least what the Figma marketing site says.
Yeah. And I've used it a little bit and really liked it. Okay. Not not for massive stuff, really, but just for small things.
The massiveness is one of the things that I will come on to. So why is this interesting to me? I hear you ask, Ian.
I I didn't ask, but by all means, let's pretend I did.
So I'm not anti figma. I actually quite like it as a tool itself.
Sorry. But anti figma sounds like a person.
This is my anti figma.
Yeah. Yeah.
My uncle Adobe Illustrator is somewhere else.
Yeah. You've just you've just said you're not auntie Figma. I personally am not
auntie Figma.
Might be. Sorry.
That's okay.
I'll get my coat. Actually, no way. I'm just gonna stay here and listen to what else you
have to do. I'll just leave. I think it's actually an extremely rich platform just for designing applications. But I think the problem is that the richer it becomes, the worse the collaboration gets and the further you get from the right thing to actually build because you just end up with more and more designs and more and more ideas with less idea about what the right thing is to build.
So hang on a second. So how does that happen? So I'm imagining that when a company comes along and says, let's do a design using Figma, they they do a design and then they show it to people. So what what happens that causes what you're describing after that? What happens after that that causes it?
So you choose Figma as the thing you want to use.
Mhmm.
And then you go from having this this really nice, well featured tool that you want to use to help your designers and developers collaborate. But then suddenly you've reached critical mass in terms of designs and ideas, and then no one knows where to start or what to build. So so how do we get there? Is that what you're asking?
Yeah. I mean, I suppose what it sounds like is there are lots of design options for a thing. But if someone decides on 1, doesn't that Yeah. Finish the problem? Yeah. But people don't.
So this is based on experience at the last place that I worked in.
That used Figma.
That used Figma. Yeah. So we ended up with masses of designs, but never like a discernible starting point for those designs. So we would get introduced to a feature that would be a massive Figma workspace of designs, flows, because they're really easy to put together in Figma. Ah.
And you can copy and paste, and you can do all these terrible things that mean you just end up with masses and masses of designs. And then what happens is you put them into put them in front of a development team, and the development team looks at it and goes, well, it's like years worth of work here. How on earth are we gonna do this?
Is is that because they're looking at end state designs for something where what they really need to be building is is is a smaller start asset?
Yeah. So basically, what used to happen was we would get introduced to these masses and masses of high fidelity designs that look like mobile apps. I'll come on to a little bit about why that's a why that's a bit of a bad thing as well. And then we would then have to reverse engineer them as the technology team to find somewhere to start that fit that fit in with, like, how we were going to build it.
So that feels a bit like there's a way that it could be used that actually would work well. Yeah. But people but there's no friction to people just going nuts and
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you can look incredibly productive as a designer and come up with loads and loads of ideas and loads of flows based on those ideas because you're just copying and pasting them around and then using the, the AI features to generate more and more.
Oh, the AI features.
Yep. And then when you when you bring in the development team to have a look at them, they're already looking they're already very, very highly featured with no discernible starting point. So I think what happens is that Figma gives you the temptation to run off and do loads of designs. And try and think of loads and loads of things rather than just looking at one journey. Building it out.
Introducing it to the development team, and then working on it from there. So I think it stops you from thinking what is the simple starting point and leads you down the more complex path because it's such a rich and featured tool to do that. So
what's needed then is is some good level of discipline in using it. Yeah. So I suppose what what I'm imagining, it's like a lean problem. So the bottleneck is the development team, and so a big pile of work piles up in front of that bottleneck Yep. Generated by designers who are not bottlenecked.
Yeah. Yeah. Because they could just generate new journeys and new ideas sort of ad infinitum.
So is is this where we, come up with the what a lot of things weigh? How to use Figma without demoralizing, destroying, and otherwise depressing Yeah. Your development team. And the answer is, of course, the designer has to be in the team. That's the first answer.
Yeah. I think so. I think so. I think fig Figma designs have always been a bit dangerous to me because they look done. Yes. Which is a dangerous state to be in because if you put a product person in front of a page full of Figma designs, which cover all the flows that they've thought of, then it looks like it's done. It's like, well, we just need to turn that, and I've I've I have I have heard that.
Just We just need to
get it into the air. Exactly. We just need to get that into the app because it looks like the the application itself. And I think that's quite intoxicating, power to have.
I I really like, I I saw I went through a long period of doing PowerPoint slides that had a lot of hand Yeah. Drawn stuff in them. Because PowerPoint slides when they're well done like that appear to be. This is the these are the tablets of PowerPointness that I have come down the mountain with. This is the answer. It's obviously complete. There's obviously no further room for debate about whatever it is.
Yeah.
And I found that by doing scrawly pictures and putting them in there with bad handwriting, my iPad and Apple Pencil was very helpful in making it quite easy and frictionless for me to to do that. But that did give convey a much greater sense of I need your help with this rather than Yeah. This is it.
Yeah. This is the reality.
And and These
are the ten commandments.
I also like Excalidraw Right. For that same have you used Excalidraw at all?
No. It's the name is, does it does it come out of a lake?
There's no no watery individual distributing.
That's a shame. I don't want it then. I
don't know why it's called that. And I do agree it's a kind of funny name. Yep. But it one of the things it does is it's like a quite simple web based diagram tool. Yeah.
And it's open source as well. So you can do things like if you're using, Obsidian, which is a note taking thing, like, that you can just get a plug in and embed Excalidraw drawings easily in your in your document, that that kind of stuff. But one of the things is that it has different modes, and what the and the mode that's the default mode makes everything look like a sketch.
Right.
So that's gonna draw a a rectangle, and it's definitely a rectangle, but it's not colored in. It's got like, a hatch line pattern Yeah. To make it look colored in, but it isn't really. And it looks wobbly, and, and and you can actually make it look there's settings of wobbliness, so you can make it look really wobbly or a bit less wobbly. Yeah. But that again lets you do quite nice diagrams, but with that feeling of informality about them.
Yeah. Yeah. Because I think because of, Figma's, like, fidelity of what it produces over time, in the example I'm talking about, they started to replace low fidelity prototypes ideas. Yeah. If the ideas weren't part of the designs, then they weren't ideas. Examples, We didn't you didn't do that anymore. Didn't do, say, user stories or link them to personas or anything like that. You know, like, kind of the good the good stuff of
When you actually think about, is this solving a real problem that somebody has?
Yeah. Absolutely. So all that got replaced by this gigantic Figma file, which then became the the the the place where you go to look at what needs to be built. And there was no other avenue. And you know who else thinks that they're complete and done as well? Developers.
So they
Because there's there there's so many journeys in there that they're like, there can be no other journeys. And as a tester, you go, well, what happens if the user bails out midway through the process? What do we do? And they're like, well, that's not in the Figma file, is it?
Yeah. The And
I might
designers quite clear that the user never bails out.
Yeah. Exactly. The user always completes their journeys, don't they? But then you've got this this barrier, another barrier, yet another barrier pop up. Because as a tester, you'd know that there's lots of within the requirements and around the requirements, there's lots of hidden requirements.
Because what happens if, you know, you have a slow Internet connection or what happens if the user bails halfway through the journey? But that wasn't in the Figma file. Therefore, it needed to be then put into the Figma file before we could begin to handle it. And then that became another ticket in Jira, and then it never got done.
So what's the what this seems like there's a lot of feedback loops that Yeah. Are missing in this this way of working.
Yeah. Yeah. It just became a bit of a a gravitational anomaly. Everything got sucked down towards the towards Figma rather than thinking about, you know, other ways of expressing what the user needs are.
But Figma lets you do low fidelity prototypes, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. But once you've got high fidelity pro screens already in their designs, you're not gonna use them or you're gonna use them less or you're not might not even think to use them. So it's like, well, I can just copy the existing designs and then make them tinker with them as I need to.
So what would this look like if it was working as it should?
So you would start with a lower fidelity prototype, maybe go with a couple of the key journeys, talk to your development team about it, and then start to build out from there. But you would put thought into, like, what the starting point is, but not not just from a design point of view, but from, like, the whole system. Because there's technical constraints and where you can start from as well, isn't it?
So is that like another dimension? So, effectively, you've got in your Figma file, you've got here are all these user journeys, and here are the designs Yep. That participate in in them. Are we also saying, actually, we need a temporal access there. So here is version 1 Yeah. Yeah. Of the user journeys and then version 2 of them.
Yeah. So that's essentially what what what, like what I'm gonna say I, because that's basically what I had to do. I had to wade through them all Oh, no. And tear them apart and pick out the bits where we could actually start and get some feedback, which seemed a bit weird to me. So I was, as part of the development team, I'm interested in getting the feedback.
But the way that the work was introduced using Figma as its container was did not lend itself to that. And that meant that we spent like maybe a couple of months from being introduced to designs to actually starting because they need to go through this whole process of of reverse engineering the designs rather than working together to come up with those simple starting points.
But it it is just it's about team dynamics, isn't it? It's it's having so presumably, the product person is coming up with here's a feature that I want Yeah. In it. The designer's going off and doing that, but there's the feedback loop is only back to the product person, not forward Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. To the rest of the team. And actually, if you include the designer in the in your, multidisciplinary team, and then the whole team is basically saying only design things that we're going to build immediately. Don't design 28 versions.
Yeah. Exactly.
That seems like the way to go.
Yeah. So ironically, in our Jira backlog, we try to keep it as lean as possible and just not have, like, tons of stories littered around that we would never work on. Yeah. But then that, like, waste, if you like, just went somewhere else. It went into Figma and in the in the form of designs.
And then that's where everything that would never get built went to live. It was a very strange process. So we we had a nice clean Jira backlog, but we had this other store of where all the things that would never get built went to live.
But the the only problem with that is that as developers, you could see it Yeah. As a as the team. What you actually want is an ideas file somewhere with the designer has on their own or with the product person. But there is a separate file that is the delivery designs.
Yeah.
Because, actually, as developers, you don't care if people are going off and having ideas necessarily. What you but you need something that you can build.
Yeah. Yeah. And that has the the way to get started in it rather than it just being a massive designs.
So so that way to get started, what do you think that looks like?
So I think what we arrived at in the end sorry. What I arrived at in the end, was like a stripped down version. I went and took out everything that was, well, let's say where you could where you could vary the journey. So if there was an edit capability for something, I was
like,
not yet. If there was a, you know, 2 choices you could make at this point, one choice.
Right.
You just go through the journey, and that's it. So basically, I stripped out lots of the extraneous
Branches.
Branches and then said, right. This is what we're gonna build first. So which didn't seem all that hard to me, although I got lots of pushback while I was doing it. So, well, we need that. So I'm like, yeah. But I'm not saying
We're never doing it.
Saying let's not do it now. Yeah. Because, well, quite frankly, it's not that important. But
It also goes against the idea of an MVP, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
So including things which you may learn you don't need to build.
Yeah. So, yeah, like I said, it's not a a an anti Figma. Acknowledging my anti Figma. It's how we use
these anti Figma.
It's how we use these tools and what they give us as a team and how they warp, how how teams collaborate together, which I found which is why I was really interested in what in what this was doing, and especially, like, trying to keep a nice, lean Jira backlog and then watching all the waste squirt out somewhere else. And I was like, oh my god. What's happening here?
Yeah. And I guess there's a lesson there about keeping that I'm gonna say sort of more blue sky future vision. I mean, product people have to have a vision for where they want to end up because otherwise, you you can't start without that. But you have to, first of all, have a light touch on that. It needs to be, you know, it's the strong opinions loosely held thing.
Yeah. But also, if you expose all that to everybody all the time, it's it's kind of distracting. Yeah. There's there's a right amount of information, isn't there? Because what you don't equally, you don't want to find out that, oh, well, we were planning to for this feature to turn into this other thing.
And, oh, well, if I'd known that, I would have built it completely differently. Yeah. You you can't you're not trying to completely conceal the this direction, but it's it's recognizing the the need that people will have to actually do something concrete to begin with.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's I think the net result of the journey that we went on was when we actually got to the point where we could build it, we did it fairly fast. Yeah. But it just took so long to get there because there was a deluge of designs because of the way we were using the tool.
And then spending the time that you had to spend deconstructing Yeah. Them to an extent and making them into, okay, version naught point 1, off you go.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's there's a few other things at play as well where, I think in my experience of tech, people struggle to break things down in general into something that's simple, but not so simple that it's rubbish. You know? I think that's something that people have struggled with a lot.
And I actually think that I can I can do that kind of work? I can take a problem and break it down into into simpler into simpler iterations, which is a skill that served me well. But I find that I have to use it a lot because many of the ideas and solutions that are presented to me, I'm like, well, okay. But that's gonna take a long, long time, and we're gonna get no feedback. So, well, how about we do this?
But then I have to go on the journey of changing everyone's minds, which is a long journey, which is that that's what takes the time. Because if we would have just said, how long will it take to implement all the designs for this? What you know, that was in Figma for a given feature, and we said 2 years, then that would have not been acceptable. It would have been like, we need to do it faster than that. Yeah.
Well, I know we do, but you need to know this information, and we're gonna have to go through the process of deconstructing and reverse engineering these designs to build something that we can actually deliver.
Yeah. And and it's kind of that that's it, isn't it? It's limiting the designs to what's gonna be delivered in a piece or, you know, in a sprint or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think the world is bad at. And tools like Figma. It's not Figma's fault, obviously, but they can become they can encourage and become containers for some pretty ropey behavior to delivery of designs and collaboration between designers and development teams.
Yeah. But, you know, I suppose it's like a lot I mean, people can do things with Git that make you weep weep. I think it's a feature of many power of the more powerful tools that we have that they give you much more than the required quantity of rope to hang yourself. They they give you the rope to hang everybody, and you have to be disciplined about, you know, how you use that.
Yeah. Because I think that one of the challenges with tools of, like, the class of Figma is, is coming up with a, like, ways of working around them. So you just figure it's gonna handle it for you, but it it doesn't, does it? Like, with with Git, you need ways of working. Yes. That's why you have different strategies for using it. Yes. So if you just try to if you just let the use of it just happen organically, all kinds of crazy stuff would happen. Right?
And does. Yeah. And, yeah. This is exactly the same. Yeah. So it needs to be part of, the word pipeline is probably a bit overused Yeah. And has some specific meanings in terms of git and stuff. But if you had a a quite clear, you know, it it needs to be very clear what the journey of work is through the team. Yep. And that I think is is where where you need that that stuff. Yeah. It needs to be clear that what is the designer doing
Yep.
In their role in the team. I mean, they may be doing things like helping the product owner visualise the future. Yeah. But that's not the same thing as their role in the team delivering.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I put down a couple of things that I would do with Figma.
So I was What a lot of things way.
Well so,
the way of things.
The general sort of principle is design as a team, but just in time. So like you said about fitting it into a sprint or having that, you know, the simple starting point that everyone can get on board with without feeling overwhelmed. Yes. So create the like the key journey in Figma and let the whole team work out the rest. So all the strange hidden requirements, all the error handling states for that particular journey and try and build that and find that meaningful thing to build.
And then I think you may make a good point about having like because you can have different workspaces in there, so you can put your more fanciful ideas.
Fanciful. The plans for the future vision.
Yeah. Exactly. You can put them in one place, and then you can put, you know, you might have come up with a more detailed set of designs for a given feature, but you don't have to show them all straight away and ask how long it's gonna take. So try and allow that sort of natural collaboration and feedback to let the designs emerge a bit more Yeah. Which still allows you to use the power of Figma, I think, as a tool.
Yeah. I think I I also sort of would add to that something about using insisting on the use of low fidelity designs Yeah. Especially for that vision stuff. You know, I mean, the thing is that sometimes you might have to sell things to investors or you might have to do a very high fidelity version of something that is a long way off. But in general, we should use the the fidelity should only go to full fidelity at that point of we're building we're about to build it.
Yeah. And keeping things low fidelity earlier in the in that process, I think, is probably a good discipline. Yeah. Because it it focuses on what it's doing and how it works, not what does it look like.
Yeah. Yeah. So and then then I don't I think you've got less chance of freezing your development team in place while they desperately try and figure out how they're gonna do the build the things that you want from the designs. Yeah. And then I would also say, don't don't discount all the forms of specification if you like, user stories, personas, whatever it is, and stick with the designs because you know that you can build them quickly as in the designs themselves.
You can copy and paste within the design tool, Figma in this case, in order to have lots of designs very early. There's other ways to express, like, what the journey should be.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's that thing about sending a message about the maturity of the designs. Yeah. I'd I really like paper prototyping, actually Yeah. Where you just draw the different screens on a bit of paper and walk a user through it because that immediately you they they know that's a very early Yeah. Yeah. Thing. And the more polished it looks, the more the less they feel.
Yeah. I think because it looks so polished in Figma, I think what I got from the developers was that they felt like it couldn't change Yeah. Which is really sad, isn't it?
Well, you're basically if you're switching off a bunch of people's creativity
Yeah.
About it, then you that's got to be a loss, isn't it? I mean, you know, you need to have alternatives and options and think about, you know, decide stuff. But you don't want to I I think it's a mistake to do anything that communicates that that communicates to people we don't want your input. Yep. I mean, eventually, you decide on something. But Yeah. Yeah. Before that.
So that was my thing.
That was a very good meaty
A meaty thing. Meaty thing. Yeah. So what are we
gonna have an interlude about?
Oh, I don't know. I didn't think of an interlude. It's hard to think of an interlude on the,
On the fly.
On the fly.
Maybe you could have an interlude that's about thinking of interludes and the process by which we do it.
Well, you kind of hope that an interlude will just come along, don't you?
One does not simply walk into an interlude.
Well, yeah. Exactly. But then if you wish for an interlude.
You watched anything good on telly recently?
No. No. I watch YouTube rather than I watch Yes. Short form video rather than not too short, not TikTok short. Let's be clear about this.
Are you going to now admit to your your guilty TikTok account?
No. I don't have a TikTok account. I'm too scared. But yeah. So what have I watched on on YouTube? I seem to watch a lot of videos about urban areas without cars and how to achieve that. Well, not entirely without, but with a lot less.
So in Ilkley, we are in a couple of weeks time or a couple of weeks ago, having a our annual car free festival.
Cool.
Where, The Grove, which is a kind of the main it's the it's not really the main shopping street, is it, in Ilkley? It's it's the there's Brook Street, which goes downhill and has boots and
Yeah.
Gregs on it. And then there's the Grove key services. Which goes along the top and has Betty's and, posh shoe shops on it.
Yeah. But
it's very nice. You know, the Grove has the bandstand and other features of Ilkley. So closing its cars for the day and trying to imagine what it would be like for there to be no cars there is always an interesting Yeah. An interesting experiment.
Yeah. So the the upshot of most of these videos is you reduce the amount of traffic. Everyone complains, but then they end up really liking it because they can spend time there without fear of death.
You see, I would love to see the grove permanently pedestrianized. Yeah. But it causes various traffic problems that would need to then be solved. So, for example, either it would all the traffic that currently goes up and down and by the way, for a narrow road with lots of parking, there's lots of cars that go up it and feel like they have to put their foot down to get to the end before somebody comes the other way.
Yeah. It it kind of encourages all the wrong behaviors, doesn't it?
It's really quite frustrating trying to cross it as a pedestrian. But what happens to all those cars is that they either go on the roads, the residential roads to the south, or they go to the trunk road, the a 65 to the north, where they then get stuck at in traffic jams. And so guess which one they pick if you close the grove? There's also a small matter of there are some flats where the only way to the parking is through the garage. So I think that there's always a chorus of disapproval from some quarters when you when you sort of talk about this.
And we do have now a militant motoring pressure group in Ilkley called called by the road
safety action group. Yes.
They're taking action against road safety.
What do we want? Death. When do we want it? As soon as possible. Yeah. As fast as possible.
Well, let's not forget pollution. It's like death and pollution. Yeah. I think they would argue that, they want appropriate levels of risk management on our roads, and they're very unhappy because of 20 mile an hour limit that the town sort of voted for in the independent neighborhood plan. And there there's a whole political situation.
The people are still writing indignant letters to the local paper about, the £20 an hour zone, and particularly the speed bumps, which apparently just leaves big bits of their Range Rovers lying around the Well the road as they fall off under the strain of going over a speed bump.
Well, there's there's plenty of material attached to a Range Rover. It can stand to lose a little bit, I think.
Yes. I'm a bit I'm a bit biased about that. But, you know so closing the grove is actually an emotive Yeah. Emotive topic, but it is a pleasure to just walk down the middle of it. Yeah. And have all those nice things going on around. So if you live in Ilkley, I encourage you to go back in time 2 weeks and go to the car free festival. Or maybe if you just wait around for about 50 more weeks, it will come round again. But, yes, this could be the car free interlude.
Car free interlude. So, you know, send your complaints to Ian and Ash at what a lot of things dot com.
Yes. Or technology eos at what a lot of things dot com.
You said that wrong.
No. I didn't. I definitely didn't say it wrong. There's no such thing as ye yours nor should there be.
What about technologues?
Nope. They they they can continue to not exist as well as far as I'm concerned. Especially not as an adjective relating to e yours.
E yours, you mean?
E yours. Sorry.
So I also ran the Yorkshireman Trail Marathon on Sunday in a town called Haworth
Oh.
Which is in Bronte Country. Many people may know of Bronte Country.
It's where the various Bronte sisters
Yeah. So
lived and had their being.
So it was 26.2 miles and over a 1000 meters of climbing. Oh. So it was quite painful, but weirdly fun. So I had a good time.
You're just high on endorphins that come from the the pain.
You know what I really, really like about running or walking on moors or just general wilder places.
Mhmm.
So in Haworth and surrounds, there's lots of, like, sort of hydro engineering. There's lots of channels and reservoirs and funny looking bridges and devices for moving water around. And it's just like, this place is so cool. This is like having an adventure just by going up there and running. It's like it's like being a kid again. It's amazing. And I think it's just like the the power of, like, the the wilder places. Like I said, it just feels like having an adventure.
Well, it's discovery and Yeah. All those kind of lovely things. Yeah.
Which sometimes you you get a lot. You get a different kind of discovery in urban areas, but it just doesn't feel quite the same when you're in a wilder place. It feels a bit more like being a kid again. Yeah. So that's what I really enjoyed about the race, even though it hurt me a great deal.
Yeah. Well, you did do you did train up hills, didn't you?
Yes. Not enough, apparently. You went
to Haworth, and you run up some of its hills.
Yeah. Yeah.
But not enough?
Not enough. I don't think well, it's probably never enough. But it was still it was still a lot of fun.
Well, congratulations. Thank you. Have you got a little
medal? No. There was no medal. No medal, no t shirt.
This is very dare they.
Well, the latest wheeze within a lot of the races that you can sign up for is that you pay extra for medals and t shirts now rather than just getting them. Well But I understand that partially as well.
Yeah. I mean, there's a sort of thing about consumption, isn't there? And do you need stuff really?
Yeah.
But it is nice to be recognized when you've done something that's hard. Yeah. And there's no question that running a 1000 meters of elevation gain is hard.
Yeah. But then I've got loads of running t shirt. So
Do you wear any of them?
Yes.
Oh, there you go then.
Yeah. But I just end up having to throw some out. But I do that anyway because
Do you have a t shirt width limit?
Yeah. I have a bit of a rotation. There's there's winter ones and then there's summer ones.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. So
The winter ones are not really being t shirts after all.
Yeah. It's not like
Jumpers. Jumpers, really, pretty much. Fair enough.
Right. Shall we, should we move on to another thing?
Well, if we must.
Well, if you want to have 2 things.
We we declare this interlude closed. Do declare this But
if you wanna have 2 things, you're gonna have to do another thing here.
Alright then. I I do want to have 2 things. Okay. Cool. Otherwise
What a lot of things.
Exactly. Exactly.
See, I don't understand why you resist having one thing because it would basically mean you could make that joke in every episode, and I won't be able to do anything about it.
But as it is, Ash, I make the joke in every single episode. That's
true, actually.
And in the end, I edit the episode. So,
So the joke remains in.
The joke remains in.
So what is your thing and what a lot of thing will always be in every episode? Because you'll make sure that you keep them in.
Get used to it. I'm just saying that to our singular listener. Alright.
Okay. Yeah. Well, for me as well, the alternative is is for me to do the editing, and I'm not gonna do that.
Yes. Yes. It's a good division of labor that we have.
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Place to the strand.
Yes. Yes. That's an ambiguous thing to say at best. But, anyway, yes, it does.
It does. So, Ian, please tell me everything.
Yes. Please release me from this endless conversation about metadata and tell me This is
exactly what Mark said not to do.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Sorry.
It's okay.
He also said he would be listening. So I feel like I have to apologize to to to to to to actually for going on about the mechanics of the podcast instead of the content of it. So my thing. So in the last episode, which actually is the last episode rather than before last Mechanics?
In in an episode.
In that episode, I had a thing of personal productivity.
Yep.
And I thought I would have a bit of a a mini theme to my things.
I didn't
realize you were doing that. Well, we we we weren't until I just thought of it just now. So my thing then is productivity, which sounds quite similar, doesn't it? It does. It does. But actually, I'm thinking about the kind of productivity that is being referred to by people on the radio who say British productivity is the lowest in the developed world.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're always being beaten up for that.
We are. Yes. Yeah.
And Lazy, feckless. We are. Reckless.
I mean, as a country, obviously, not not Ash and I, we are industrious and productive.
Yeah. Absolutely.
As reflected in in our conversation about personal productivity. Yeah. But as a nation are often being berated by our Okay. I'm not gonna call them our betters because half of them aren't. My are worser. Right? By people that our productivity is low. And, of course, we all hear this all the time and well, okay. Those who's foolish enough to listen to the radio or watch television here quite often. And it sort of occurred to me that I wasn't all that 100% clear on what does that mean.
Sure. And, actually, what then would we have to do to to have better productivity like they do in America and Germany and France and other places where they seem to have a lot better quality of life that that we do. Mhmm. So the definition of productivity is basically GDP, so gross domestic product, the turnover in cat in in money of the nation Yep. Divided by the number of workers.
Okay.
Its economic output per worker is productivity, and, apparently, our economic output per worker is a bit dismal. Oh. So straightaway, that's a really narrow
Yeah.
Definition that doesn't take account of all manner of things. Like, what about unpaid work?
Which you you're an expert.
Take me off. Expert to that. Probably, craft scales productivity is low as a result of the unpaid work that I do, which actually, I suppose I'm therefore not doing my bit for the economy.
You're a downward drag on productivity.
I'm a I'm a I'm a drag. But there's lots of unpaid work. So what about unpaid carers?
Yeah. Yeah.
Going to a more serious Mhmm. Version of
Which is which is vital work.
Well, it is. And if if it wasn't done
Yeah.
It would be very bad.
Yeah. Yeah. I seem to remember reading or hearing something about if we had to pay people for all the unpaid caring work that they did, like, it would bankrupt the country, like, many, many times over.
Yeah. I'm not surprised about that. In fact, having to pay for the care caring of people that we do pay for Yeah. Is having that effect Yeah. Already.
Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, that's that's definitely, like, a a crucial point.
But there's also stuff like actually, if you want to increase productivity so, obviously, taking account of unpaid work would would reduce it or does reduce it. But you could say, well, that's increased productivity by flogging the workers and making them work for longer hours. Yeah. In theory, you would think, oh, well, their economic output would be greater, and they would contribute more to GDP.
It's a good theory.
But Just from the maths of GDP per worker Yeah. If you get more out of workers, if you get more GDP out of them, then and then divide you're dividing that by the number of workers. So immediately, that would make the number higher.
Yeah.
But also making workers more valuable. Investment is a concept that has a big bearing on this. So I thought it's useful to sort of think about this and and figure out what does it actually mean, But you do immediately go down to multiple rabbit holes.
Yeah. Sure.
What was your impression of it before we started having this this conversation?
I mean, whenever I hear someone on the, let's say, radio or television, wherever it is, saying that productivity is low, I find it quite offensive as a measure because I figure that it's it's a bit like I say, it's too narrow and it's it doesn't take into account the truly valuable things that you might do, which don't necessarily add to economic output or not directly anyway. So if you take, I don't know, organizing the leads testing atelier. I
was thinking of that very thing when you were talking, actually.
So that that has cost me money, let's say. Yeah. And everyone who's ever been involved in organizing it has put, like, their time, effort, energy into putting on a great conference for no money. But that in this measure Well Yeah. So that, by these measures, is not a contributor to productivity.
And that's utter rubbish, to be brutally honest, because I think it's a massive contributor to productivity, but it's just, like, indirect and hard to measure. So and then I think about all the blogs that I've written, all the articles, talks, all these things I've been paid for some of them. Yes. But not all of them. Some of them have paid me very well in exposure. Thank you very much.
Well, that's well known currency.
So, you know, maybe we should have a national exposure measure. So I do find the whole debate around it a little bit, patronizing and offensive, to be honest, because it just doesn't take into account a lot of the things that, I don't know, that are truly valuable in life.
But the other side of it, I suppose, is that when you're thinking about if you look at a particular company, you can kind of measure the turnover per employee. Yeah. Sure. People people do. And it was always companies like meta or, you know, digital service companies could have these really high numbers for turnover per employee because they're raking in all these money but based on relatively few people's work.
Yeah. And that would make them very productive. But I'm not sure I was going with that with that
one. Alright.
But it feels to me that when you zoom in on particular companies or particular things, it's easy to look at something. So, say, the lead's testing at Telia. What a great example. You zoom into that and just say, well, I'm just gonna look at the productivity of that as an enterprise, for example, or or organization or whatever. That that's obviously rubbish.
It's the the productivity is negative because, actually, you're putting in money and getting nothing Yeah. Out. You've got minus so much money per person.
Yeah.
But if you zoom out and look at the big measure of productivity, if you're making x number of workers more effective
Yeah.
Let's say you make them half a percent more effective, then I guess the cumulative impact on productivity could potentially be quite quite good.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But it's hard to measure, isn't it?
It is hard to measure. Yeah. But I think these national things at the national level of national productivity is hard to measure, but I feel like investment in making people more effective and thus enabling them to have a higher economic output actually makes a lot of sense and spending money on infrastructure projects and stuff like that. That's all thing that governments would like to do, but apparently, they are constantly wrestling with the presence of, alleged astronomical objects in the budgets in the form of black holes.
Another gravitational anomaly.
Yes. In the, in the budget. Yeah. That really sucks.
Yeah.
Sorry.
So I I read there's a productivity dotac.uksite, which had an article. What explains the UK's productivity problem? So I went and had a look at that and thought, well, how does this relate to, like, my experience of productivity? So they talked about investment in either better machinery, better kit, and then investing in people as well. And I thought, well and then about how how productivity is it will shock you that in Britain, productivity is very unequal between sectors and between companies.
Some some companies are very productive, but that doesn't translate to other companies as well. So there's no sharing going on. So they kinda came up with 3 things. So the first one was, like, been better investment in kit and training. And I thought, how does that apply to, like, my experience?
So, like, some companies have good training budgets in tech which are easy to access, and they encourage you to go and use them. Yep. Some companies obviously have very, very difficult to access training budgets. Yep. Or they, and you need to be politically savvy within the organization in order to access it, know that it exists, and then know how to unlock it, which I've done.
I've been in both paths before. Yeah. So I found that really, really interesting to say, well, how do different companies, how do they approach releasing sort of funds for training? And then also you've got like you remember, like, when you you might have gone to work for a company and they gave you like an old laptop?
Yes.
And it so I remember I got one from the test people and it had a clicky fan. And then I went onto the onto a client site and the fan was just, like and then someone from the client said, we're glad to have you. But if that continues, we're gonna be a lot less glad to have you around. So so slightly off the wall example, but it is like, I was given old kit.
But it's quite easy to make a business case to say I wasted an hour and a half because I couldn't be on a client site. Yeah. Or I wasted whatever and and then and then suddenly, they're giving you the right kit to begin with.
Exactly. But things like that come I've found them hard to do in a lot of companies. It's just like, just give me the right kit for the job. Whereas I think more certainly technology companies are better at that now. Yeah.
But I think that plays into, like, the other point where it's like the inequality in productivity. So the from this Productivity Institute link, the UK is generally regarded as innovative, and it's 4th in the Global Innovation Index. But it's only a small number of sectors and companies
Yeah.
That are responsible for that productivity. So which probably a lot of the, you know, the more higher tech companies probably are part of that productive area because you get good kit, you get access to training, and, you know, you can you can become more productive when these companies actually invest in you. But that is not like the the case throughout the country. So I found that really interesting as well. So those practices aren't shared broadly throughout throughout companies.
Yeah. Yeah. To to increase productivity, work harder, not smarter.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I guess that comes to, like, one of the other things as well with the you. You are generally told to work harder, aren't you? Yeah. So the the last startup I was at, I was told that basically the difference between the startup living and dying was you need to work harder. And I was like, that's utter rubbish.
Were you stealing a living, actually?
Yeah. Basically.
That's what you were doing.
I was like, that is utter rubbish. And I always worry when people say that to me because that means that you're fresh out of ideas. You know? Yeah. I can't think of anything, and I'm fresh out of ideas.
So and then the last point was the things that generate productivity are all centralized in the UK. So education, innovation, transport, planning, regional development, ironically enough, are all held in Whitehall. Yes. So the things that could actually stimulate productivity, they're all centrally held and they they're they're not devolved out to the regions that need them. So if you have, like, regional inequality in productivity, then that's all the the keys to unlock all that are all held centrally.
And let's let's be honest, they're not that interested in unlocking it. Yeah. So it was a really interesting link. And, obviously, we'll include it in the show notes, but it kind of broke down, like, why the UK is and some of the barriers to productivity that we have.
So that's the the Productivity Institute.
Yeah. Yeah.
I did, when I saw your link, I was quite kind of, productivity dotac.uk. This is gonna be very very on on on the nose.
I found that, like, a good breakdown of, like, everything that of, like, national productivity in the state in the UK anyway.
Well, that's I mean, I think that's that's really useful. And for me, it's trying to it's trying to know just what it means and Yeah. And be able to evaluate the things that governments do Yeah. And and politicians.
Yeah. But I do think there's definitely, like, a a reaction to whenever the low productivity story comes. It's like, well, you need to work harder. Everybody needs to work harder and longer. Yes. But, unfortunately, that's rarely the answer. But it is the answer which probably, politically, you you're more tempted to to broadcast because it appeals to a wide range of people. Because everybody thinks that they work really hard, don't they? Yes. Or they think that the generation after them yeah.
Exactly. But the reality is is that there was within any generation, there's always been hardworking people, people who work less, people who are not interested in work, people who are extremely career driven. It's just people.
Yeah. Yeah. Not
generations. So, you know, the productivity wasn't any better with the last generation as it's not anywhere with this generation. So maybe there's something else going on.
It's a mystery.
Yeah. And then things that annoy me about work culture as well. So presenteeism
Oh, yes.
Which we can find very nicely in the debate around whether or not you go into the office now post post pandemic, which is I think anyone who works in tech will probably have an opinion on this. But here we go. So the productivity in a tech role from working from home is off the scales compared to what you get if you're in an office every day. I'm not saying there's no room to go into an office to collaborate with people, but, for focused work, then it's difficult to measure the 2. So the the project that I was working on during the pandemic was a Brexit project, which would have never been delivered on time had we been in the office because the office had there was room for think it was room for 60 people, in the office.
Sixty desks, but there was a 120 people trying to work in there. So on any given day. So if you didn't get there at 6 AM, then you never got a desk. So and if someone tells tries to tell me that that's a more productive environment.
No. No. I mean, if you get there at 6 AM, then you're working very long hours. Yeah. That'll be very productive. Yeah. That's true. Actually, I didn't
think of that.
In fact, you could argue the limit desk limitations could be a could be a a spur of productivity, forcing people to compete for work for this
space. Mhmm.
Now, I mean, the presenteeism thing is quite true, and I think the assumption that people aren't working when you can't see them is what leads to employee monitoring software, and we all know about that.
Mhmm. Petroleum.
I thought, no. I'm gonna I was gonna say that. I thought, no. I can't deny Ash the pleasure of
of I totally enjoy it.
Casting his, his his his one spell.
It's a good spell. For spreading misery.
Yes. I'm making sure we're measuring the misery. Otherwise, we won't know how productive people are.
So the other bit that I found quite interesting as well was the existence of what's called the Protestant work ethic.
Oh, yes. We know about that.
Yes. So it's an idea coined by Max Max Weber in 1905, which came from being productive as a means of salvation. So and it's kind of ingrained into us, like, the need to work and work harder and longer. So there's a there's a there was a good Guardian article about it, which, talks about there's a quote. So I like this quote. So when it comes to accumulating profit, what could be more perfect than hard work, self denial, plus the threat of eternal damnation for the lazy?
Well
Then when Europe got too comfortable, the Puritans left for America to work even harder and self deny more vigorously, culminating triumphantly in the corporate culture that brought you the Furby, aerosol cheese, and Crocs.
Mhmm. Aerosol cheese.
So And
I almost had to press buttons on my, on my console just then.
So that strange, sort of thread that has persisted throughout the centuries around around, like, what Indeed. Work work being some kind of purifying force in your life. And if you're not being productive, then your soul will go to hell for eternal damnation.
It's almost as if that was in someone's interest for that to be commonly believed.
Yes. Indeed.
Also, it makes me think of Jacob Rees Mogg, which is, who's a politician. Yeah. Although, I'm not sure why because he's a Catholic.
Yeah. But I
think he buys into the Protestant work ethic. Possibly the only aspect of Protestantism that he does buy into.
Yeah. So I see that you asked Claude about UK's low productivity.
Yes. It talks about the productivity puzzle, which is, the term that's apparently been coined for trying to figure out the mystery of the UK poor productivity. Then a couple of interesting bits came out of that. One of the big ones was, about having a service oriented economy, which we do Yeah. And how much more concrete productivity is in a manufacturing context and how it becomes a bit vague.
Yeah. There's, often multiple outcomes of services, some of which are easier than others to measure. For example, if a doctor sees a lot of patients, were they productive versus if a doctor makes the aggregate health of of their patients
Yeah.
Has a greater increase in in the patient's health, is that better productivity? And, obviously, only one of those is easy to measure, so I guess that's the one that gets measured.
Yeah. Yeah. So we don't think the productivity puzzle has anything to do with the fact that most companies, the dividend, the shareholder dividend in the next 3 months is the general horizon. Yeah. But then again, that's true in other countries as well, isn't it? Yes. So maybe it's it's it's always more complicated than that, isn't it?
Yeah. I mean, when I was asking Claude about it, I was also wondering about how AI will improve productivity Mhmm. By firing workers and reducing the number of workers while sustaining the economic output. So I imagine AI is gonna make our productivity soar, but at the same time as
because there'll be less workers.
At the same time as everyone's life is going down the drain.
Yeah. Yeah. Which I
suppose just goes to show what a lousy measure is.
Yeah. Yeah. I think some countries have tried to measure in different ways, haven't they?
I I think so. Yes. It's interesting how countries with better qualities of life can have greater productivity as well. Yeah. And I think that's another disrespector of of that as a measure.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, also, it's better to do more with less, but maybe not at the expense of people.
Yeah. So maybe you can measure in a different way, I guess.
Well, there are some interesting ideas in Wikipedia about that. They had a thing called GPI. GPI? Just gonna find it. GPI. So one of the these things is a thing called GPI, which is genuine progress indicator.
I like that.
Which is supposed to replace or supplement GDP. So the g d r GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation in a shocking development only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation's economy. So it incorporates environmental and social factors. I'm I'm a bit worried about what the GPI of the UK will be.
Based on the UK's working culture, how much genuine progress do we make?
No. It's okay. It's also the Global Peace Index.
Oh, okay.
I'm not I'm not able to find out what the UK's GPI is in an InstaGoogle.
InstaGoogle.
Which actually is, is is a misnomer because I actually use the search engine Kagi, k a g I, which I pay a bit for, but as a result, never see an ad. Or one of Google celebrated, Gemini summaries of the search results, which you you hear bad things about from time to time. So I guess that's a bit of a big, vague, rambling thing, but I thought it's quite interesting. Yeah. And I guess now I will have slightly greater knowledge about what they mean when they start complaining about how our productivity is low.
And I can say, yes, but what about our genuine progress index? And then they can be bamboozled. They normally can't hear me because I'm normally shouting at the television or something, but, you know, maybe. I guess that's my thing.
Nice thing. You say lots of very, very deep issues there.
Yes. But not meaty. We we we no longer gonna say that about our things. No.
It's truly a monumental thing. It truly is. I say that genuinely. Yes. That's a genuine progress indicator.
Yes. So what's the what a lot of things genuine progress indicator?
How how monumental the thing is?
Yes. And, how many people listen to us. But we're already talking to one of you. But the good thing is it's you and not any of the others.
Don't comment.
Ash is getting the look on his face that that appears when we start having these temporal distortion events.
Within my brain?
Yes. So that was 2 things.
2 things.
And now we can talk about whatever we talk about when we're finishing. It's not an interlude.
It's not an interlude. It's an outro.
An outro. An interlude and an outro. That does sound like they might be the opposite to each other because inter begins within.
So how'd you get in touch, Ian?
Well, I just send you a message on signal.
How might someone who who has listened get in touch with us?
Oh. Oh, I see. Sorry. I didn't realize that's what you're asking. Yep. They could email us via our email address, which is [email protected]. Yep. And they could join our flourishing LinkedIn group.
Yep. If
you're not in our LinkedIn group, then you're missing out on some hot takes from Ash about what was in the episode. We always have the show notes, and then we have the Ash summary of the show notes, which is always fascinating to me. So if you're missing out on that, really, there's no need to. You can you can join the What I Love Things LinkedIn group, and we'd love to have you.
We would.
And sometimes we even have little conversations in it. I'm saying we've solved any major world issues, but we do sometimes have little chats with people, don't we?
We do. We do. We will respond.
We will. Sometimes accidentally as well, a lot of things or is ourselves.
As well. Yeah.
We we it's a bit of a baffling user
experience, to be honest.
Are there any other ways that people could get in touch with us? I can't think of any. No. They could lie in white and ambush us in the street as we're walking past. I've never been asked for an autograph yet, but, you know, that's the first time for everything.
When, I was on my way to a conference in Poland, and someone asked me on the train if I was Ash Winter. And I was like
Did you say who's asking?
No. I said, yes. I am.
Are you the Ash Winter?
And they said they, they subscribe to my blog and follow me on Twitter as it was then.
I'm waiting for a very important further thing that they do. They listen to your podcast.
This was free podcast.
Oh, was it? Wow. That must have been like a decade. Yeah. We're coming up to the 5th anniversary of our first episode. Yeah. In fact, it's probably already gone past due to the time distortion factor. Has it? No. It won't. As this comes out, it's evidently going to be our 5th anniversary of our first episode. And while we couldn't cannot say that, we are indeed up to the a 100 and 25th episode that you might expect from that From that duration. We are we are climbing.
We're trucking along nicely.
We are. We're we're showing consistency. Showing consistency.
Which is more important than deadlines.
The high quality.
And high quality.
It's it's more important than anything
It is.
If you if you're making a podcast. Okay. Super. Well, thank you for listening.
Thanks, everyone.
No.
I wanna say thanks, everyone, and goodbye.
No. No. He's not allowed to thank everyone. He's he's tried to press the button on my console. I'm the only tin pot despot.
I'm being oppressed.
Help. Help. Or or the other version of it, which occasionally happens. Help. Help. I'm being impressed. I'm being impressed.
Come and see the violence that's inherent in the system.
Inherent system. Yeah. System. Yes. The ruthless oppression of the podcast hardware.
Press the button.