EP10. Enterprise Design Sprints at scale with Caryn Gallis. Director of Experience Design, Culture & Training at Prudential Financial.

Welcome back to UserFlows Podcast on July 20, my name is Thomas Morrell and I'll be your host. This is a show where we talk UX Design and Careers. I interview other designers about their journey into the field of User Experience Design and how they've thrived in their roles. Share some tips and information you can use to advance your own career in the field.

Today, I'm speaking with a past colleague, friend, and all-around amazing person. Caryn Gallis is a Director of Experience Design specializing in Culture & Training. Caryn is also a professor of design at Keen University in New Jersey. I first met Caryn in my first week working at Prudential Financial. A big project I was hired for hadn't kicked off yet, but Caryn and UserFlows podcast guest Brian Evans from episode #2 were working on putting together a training deck for the team at Prudential on how to Facilitate Design Sprints.

They presented me with the idea of creating a fake project in order to use as the training material source. It was a really fun project and ultimately an amazing way for me to be introduced to Design Sprints. An activity I use often in my own design process now.

For those of you who don't know, Design Sprints are a fantastic 3 - 5 day design workshop meant to take a companies ideas from zero to prototype within a very short timeframe. They are highly collaborative, fast-paced and are a great way of getting ideas in front of your audience without spending months or years building the wrong product first. They were started by ex-Google Ventures member Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz. They made their findings into a fantastic book. “Design Sprints, How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days”. For all the hype around design sprints, at least from my perspective, the hype is well deserved.

Since helping Brian and Caryn create the training material for sprinting at Prudential. I was fortunate enough to go through their training program and facilitate six design sprints while at Prudential. All were hugely beneficial to the projects I was working on and a transformational moment in my own career. Having tools like this to help your team navigate through or break up continuous cycles of non-decision are a fantastic way to help your team push past where so many others get stuck.

Caryn is an integrative thinker who thrives on solving the big picture while remaining focused on relevant details through every stage of the assignment. She seeks to understand the user's needs while keeping the business goals in alignment.

Caryn and I discuss her career and transition from designing children's toys to UX design. What are design sprints? When to use a design sprint and possibly more importantly when not to use a design sprint. She'll take us through her process of selling Design Sprints in a large enterprise organization and how she went from a comment in an interview to scaling design sprint training to well over 500 members of her organization.

She shares some great tips around keeping a Design Sprint best practices wiki. Connecting with the decider of your sprint beforehand in order to ground them in their role. She also shares some great tips and advice for new designers looking to get into the field.

If you are new to the show or if you haven't already. Please subscribe to User Flows wherever you listen to Podcasts. Share this show or any of the others with your audience, friends, family, or anyone you know who's interested in a career in the field.

Thank you so much for listening or reading :) and I hope you enjoy the show.

TM

Show Highlights

Intro - 0:15

Scaling Design Sprints - 1:43

What are Design Sprints - 8:43

The right time and wrong time to run a Design Sprint - 13:36

Selling and Scaling Sprints in an Enterprise - 16:36

Advice for new designers - 28:10

Show transcript:

Thomas  0:13 

Welcome back to the UserFlows podcast everybody today I'm joined by Caryn Gallis an old colleague and friend, and really excited for her to share her story, and we're going to talk about design sprints, teaching UX design, and a lot of other stuff and her new role, so welcome Caryn, and if you don't mind maybe tell us a little bit about yourself that we might not learn on your LinkedIn profile.

Caryn  0:37 

Yeah. So actually you're I think one of your former interview people, I also have a background in industrial design. And I designed children's toys for a while, which led me to, which was my gateway drug to UX. And from that, I worked in consulting for a while, and a lot of different companies, a lot of different industries all over New Jersey New York area. And then from that, I really got more into financial services, and was, I made my way over to Prudential about five years ago. Okay, well, yeah, and it was actually in that first interview with my boss Jonathan Sibley, that I mentioned Hey have you done design sprints, this is what they are really want to do them. And I was hired and about a month or two later we were in our first design sprint and sticky notes everywhere in this tiny little room and it was just, it was really magical really really awesome that we got in there at that time and got in designs for it's happening. Right on.

Thomas  1:41 

And so I think the last time we spoke, we had just kind of been kicked out of the offices. Yeah, we were now fully remote. I hear a big congratulations is in order, you have a whole new role. Yes, kind of based off of, you know that what the work you started with design sprints that credential right

Caryn  2:00 

yeah exactly so that first Sprints really showed the power of Sprints. And I kind of did a little bit of a roadshow of like hey this is what we did this is how we did it design sprints come work here. This is why timeboxing the decider real outcomes testing, putting in front of users really things that we just hadn't done with that area at that time I was just in group insurance. So it was you know your workplace benefits, really, really just group insurance I don't think we've merged into workplace solutions so not even the retirement side of that yet. And really focused on, on, on getting people, you know, on their disability and tracking and choosing their benefits and things like that. And that really that roadshow led to creating Hey more people want to do design sprints okay I can help you I can run them and that's like, oh wait, there's not enough of me. We need more trainers. So I created a design sprint training program, which I think was your first job, like you had started and not and you weren't really doing very much the first week and we were like, Hey, you want to help create some assets, which was really fun. So pro foodie was you Yeah, which the irony of that is that would have still worked in the pandemic of like having a food service app or now, like, probably be better than cafeterias. And so that led to 2019, and I did one to two training sessions a month, including one with Evan in Ireland so we went over there. November right before the world shutdown. And we, in that year I trained about 500 people throughout the company. So a lot of people, a lot of people using sprints in different ways. Teaching people when not to use sprints, which is just as important as when to use sprints. I never sugarcoat that it's a magical pill, it's it's a tool in the toolbox you don't use a hammer for a screwdriver, so really teaching people wanted to know how to do it. We did some with some BRGs, which are diversity groups that have been really impactful. Those are really great design sprints. And so creating that design sprint program. My last design sprint was March 5 2020 to a packed house of like some senior leaders even. And, which was great to get that last one was really impactful. We made a lot of connections with different areas and different people. But that was our last one in person so then when we became remote. I had to create a way to pivot and how do we how do we run design sprints, how do we train people, how do we how do we do this. And so, Miro and mural, are really great tools, I mostly use Miro. There are some really great templates in there for that, and then to train new people. I created a design sprint training program we have a tool called degreed, which is basically like, people can create curated content, called Pathways. And so I created a my own pathway. And it's nice because when you do in person training, you're the one giving it over and it's just me talking or whoever's facilitating with me. With this I can have lots of different content coming in lots of different videos I can have audio, I can cater to different types of learners. So it's like I'm walking along, people with that program, and ended the program, we do an in person virtual mini design sprints so people get to experience the design sprint. But it's much smaller, and then hopefully they can then conduct one on their own. It's also nice, doing it virtually have a lot more metrics than doing it in person. I can see how long people take, I can see what people like I can see what people don't like I can do a survey at the end of every unit I did surveys so I was able to adjust and keep going forward, but you don't really have that in person so there are benefits of being a person, there's a benefit to being digital. Same with running design Sprint's remotely now. You don't have to worry about assets you don't have to worry about all those drawings up on the roll, everybody has access to it in this digital format. It doesn't matter where you're located. We can work asynchronously, we can work synchronously we can work collaboratively it allows for a lot more. So what we'll do, and when we get back from the office. I don't know, we'll have to see, only time will tell. With that,

Thomas  6:47 

that's very cool and I think I did my last design sprint credential, right around that time, I think in April last year, and that was the first remote one, and that was interesting we used envision freehand. Oh, it was great because we were going to use Miro, but like at the last minute we realized we couldn't get access to everybody, so it's like a kind of scramble.

Caryn  7:10 

This is that's actually something that think thankfully Evan. You ready interviewed Evan, he got, he solved that problem for us so we're able to now we're able to do this a lot quicker and figuring out how to, you know, work faster, get people trained up, we're actually creating like a best practices way of making sure people use Miro, and I like we like live in the mirror I use it for everything now. Canvas is just so fun.

Thomas  7:40 

Yeah, no I love them and I think it almost. It makes it a little bit easier I think and less intimidating for a lot of people, because they can just, they get how to draw a box and a line on there. But, standing up in front of everybody in a room and drawing our whiteboard can be a little bit intimidating for some, especially those who don't do that every day. Yeah. A lot of the developers and you know QA folks and business folks so the digital whiteboards are fantastic.

Caryn 8:07 

Yeah, they always have the best ideas though, you know when they when you get a pencil in their hand, they it's just, you know, really empowering.

Thomas  8:16 

Yeah and that's why getting everybody in the room I always find the sales people. Yeah, like all the time with the clients and customers. They're always the best people to have in the room, love that. Yeah,

Caryn  8:28 

when we redesigned the employer facing HR manager for our employer protocol. Now we call it. Benefits site, something I can't remember what we ended up calling it, but we had a cross collaborative team where we had sales people and they were so impactful for that. It was just amazing.

Thomas  8:50 

Oh very cool so this might be a little bit over the heads of some. So yeah, back to the basics and just talk you know what our design sprints. Yeah, How do you use them, and yeah,

Caryn  9:02 

I think I have my book somewhere here. No, I think it's still, we just closed our office in Roseland, so I brought home all my design sprint books and all my other design books. It's still packed up. So design sprints, it's a formula. It was created by Jake Knapp, who is a former Google venture a Googler, and he went into all these different companies and saw that they all had the same problems they had challenges of getting people in the same room, Getting alignments, making decisions quickly. Not circling around getting things in front of people. And so his formula it's a methodology, originally was five days we kind of do between three and four days depending on the size of the project, and the problem area really where you go through the whole design thinking process in a very time-boxed manner. Each section builds upon the next section, and everybody who is impactful is in the room so you only have six to eight people with a decider who makes it, and you have a facilitator to they're keeping you on board, they're the conductor of that train to make sure they get to the destination and the destination is at the end of the week you have a testable solution to put in front of real users. And for this, it could be something that's, you know, digital, and a product, it could be a brochure, it could be an email campaign. It could be a strategy, it really could be anything as long as you have a user and something to test and then you put that in front of people. And I really think that's the end we've had some design sprints where I and there's also this concept of like winners and maybe laters. Or maybe they weren't winners of design sprints, but like you still learn but unless you get in front of somebody, you're not getting true learning, you really need to end the design sprint with getting a testable solution of some sort. And again, it could be a lot of different ways and He even talks in the book about, you know, maybe it's a service, and you could have a roll call, and test it out. There are different ways if it's a physical product you could physically mock it up, which is funny because with industrial design we never really did anything like that because this probably didn't exist when I was doing industrial design, but that's a great idea of like starting the week with a problem and ending with a solution.

Thomas Morrell  11:26 

Yeah, no, I love that. And so, to a young designer who's just getting started. What would be the importance of learning how to facilitate something like a design sprint to them.

Caryn  11:37 

Yeah, so I actually teach a Keen University, Like an intro to web class, and I really emphasize with them like beginning leadership skills, being able to talk in front of a group of people being able to lead them expressing your ideas, whether you're on a team on a design sprint as a designer or as a facilitator, because you could play either role hopefully not both. And that was learning, you can't do both. You need to be able to express yourself, have been able to stand up and talk before, before my school shut down and we were in person, I always made sure that people gave presentations and we're able to express our ideas. It's very important, no matter what your role is. I think also that idea of your ideas is not always right, you know, and you really need to experiment and try again and collaborate and show people your design. I like that, your first idea is not always your best idea. Typically, the better design sprints or when you do one sprint and then do a follow-up sprint to improve on it, the chances of you like knocking out of the park, the first time or like slim. There's always going to be something that you can improve always

Thomas 13:02 

nice. Yeah, that's I think one of the best things for me. And the biggest impact that learning how to facilitate design sprints has had on me is that I don't only have to use the skills during the design sprint. I bring them into my every day so if we're sitting around we're going back and forth around in circles on a problem. I'll bring in some of the exercises from the design. Like Crazy Eights or the sketching solutions, and just help move things along, and I think it's helped me and my team, you know, kind of get to solutions quicker. Yeah, which is extremely helpful. So, you had mentioned something in the beginning, when you're talking about the best, and the wrong times to run a design sprint.

Yeah, tell us a bit about when's a great time to run one when's maybe not the right time.

Caryn  13:47 

Ah, let's start with not the right time. So not the right time if you don't have a decider. I definitely ran a few sprints where the decider had a proxy and the decider didn't actually see II wasn't decided should have been there, and it was just the flop and it's just such a, You're getting people in a room for a week, that's a lot of valuable time that's a lot of team morale that's why these are great tools for building a culture for getting teams to work together. But when a decider on the room and like says, I don't like any of these concepts like that's, that was terrible, that's not a great experience for anybody. So the decider has to be in the room otherwise standard design sprint. And sometimes teams will run a design sprint if the project is way too big, maybe you should break it down, it should be like multiple design sprints with products way too small and maybe it should be a different type of session, it could be a working session, it could be. There are other tools in the toolbox, there's something called Design Studio which is like a rapper drawing exercise, there's the lightning decision Jam, which is another agent smart workshopping tool. That's another book that I think I have in a box behind me. Yes. So knowing when to use that tool is really appropriate. And then if you have like 15 people. Okay, so it's again, maybe it's a different type of workshop but it's not a design sprint called call it use it when it's appropriate. So a good time to start a design sprint. If you're stuck like you were talking before like you're just spinning your, your wheels for the project. Maybe it's like hey, maybe we should pause, see if this is a design sprint, see if that's a new wave invigorating different ideas. if you're just kicking a project off. That's a great time to do a design sprint. Those are my, my best two times of like, this are not working. Let's do a design sprint or like this is a brand new project let's kick it off with a design sprint.

Thomas  15:50 

And so most of the design Sprint's that you do, do you kind of have a specific problem that you're trying to solve, or is a little more open-ended, where you're kind of looking to find the right problem to tackle.

Caryn  16:04 

If you're looking to find the right problems to tackle I would probably do a lightning decision jam because that'll give you a better breath and those are also shorter. Those are like under two hours and can involve more people to screen time for that exploratory work. The lightning decision jam the recommendation could be Hey, now we have an idea for a design sprint. Let's choose those, you know 16 People, and pick a week and just do it.

Thomas 16:29 

You mentioned something really interesting, which was the aspect of time, and how long these can take. And so, two businesses like a five-day Design Sprint and getting, you know, seven to eight, you know high-level people in the room, especially when you talk about the deciders. And those folks that become really expensive. How do you go about selling the idea of design sprints if it's a new idea in your organization?

Caryn 17:01 

Right. Um, have you ever looked at the cost of bad design? Yeah, no is but it's true. You can take months and months and months to go back and forth and this and that. But when you have that decider in the room, especially if you coach the decider and like, this is what you're going to need to do and they have clear expectations of their role, which is very important I would meet with deciders like a week or two, and tell them hey you're going to be asked to make decisions, you're going to be time-boxed, this is what, this is what's expected of you. You can move very quickly, very, very quickly, and it will take months and months of people being like 10% on a project or 20% like, get into room jam on it and get in front of customers you're gonna know what to do next. It really makes a big difference.

Thomas  17:53 

Yeah, fantastic. And so now you've done one design sprint. You've proven to everybody that this is awesome. Could you maybe talk a little bit about how the full process you kind of took to scale design sprints at Prudential because I know it was kind of like a snowball effect like yeah one, you showed it around, and we started doing more, and everybody got interested. Yeah, yeah,

Caryn  18:16 

if you're not clear what it was, it was like a snowball grassroots, I really had great leadership, who encouraged it. A lot of it was the timing was right, you know, maybe I wasn't, I wasn't in the customer office which was where previously more of the design was happening I was in like a separate group which is funny because now we're all together. So I didn't have as much money. It was just a little bit easier for me to kind of get in front of people, I guess. And then we just started scaling up, just, just having that proof that it worked really helped to get going, and then realizing I can't do it myself and creating that training program that you and Brian helped me with to get that going, really made a big difference. We also created a design sprint wiki, so it was a place to house all the documents, so people didn't have to recreate the wheel. I had an email template I have an agenda template like they have all the assets they need, they can just download it. Get going, like, people didn't even need to take the course I could coach them to, it could read the book. There's so much content now that there weren't five years ago like YouTube is a plethora of videos that you can watch and learn, and that just didn't exist.

Thomas 19:39 

Right on, and that's, that's kind of how it worked for me was, I read the book, when you and Brian introduced me to design sprints on that project, we're kind of creating a training guide. And then I got to go through the training with you, which was awesome. And then, I think about my first design sprint. My boss at the time had offered to co-facilitate it. And she was very used to doing this. So she offered that and that was really the perfect introduction for me. Yeah, so I didn't have the kind of full weight of it on my shoulders, and I had somebody to learn from and watch and grow. But it was a fantastic experience for me and I loved it. I'm bringing it to the company I'm at now we just had our first remote Design Sprint and huge success. I feel like the one problem I run into is, now that we've done a design sprint we've kind of identified 1000 Other things we want to tackle. And so, I guess, a lightning decision jam idea

Caryn  20:43 

backlog, but yeah. Yeah, but there's really a whole community of design sprinters I've really haven't been able to reach out to other people and other companies and kind of create connections I know I think Google does like a design sprint conference. It's ever. I think at one point it was invitation-only, then I think it was last time was on when I was on maternity leave, like, I've watched some of the recordings from it but it's definitely like becoming like more of a community even, you know, outside of your individual companies and there are more people to like learn from and, and read articles and watch videos and things like that. Yeah.

Thomas  21:22 

Oh, fantastic. So tell us a little bit about, you know your teaching job now okay that's really exciting. How did that come about and

Caryn  21:33 

that actually I was put in touch with Kane through a mutual friend who used to teach there. He was at Prudential for a bit and then. This is why you always, if I have advice for any kind of student it's, keep your network, always be in touch with people, you know, the design world is not huge, and it's just, you need to be able to bounce ideas off of friends or have ideas bounce stuff for you it's good to like give feedback and get feedback. And so this one friend i He was at Prudential forbid I helped him get a job somewhere else he referred me to Kane for teaching like, it's just, you know, you know, good karma comes around goes around the kind of put me in touch with them and that's kind of where I've, I've been so I teach one night a week, which is great for, you know, balancing Prudential I always learn things from the students that I can bring back to, you know my day job and there have been times where my day job has had students apply, I just had a student email me today about applying for jobs, that's great that hopefully, I can help recruit some really good talent to bring it back into our organization. And when the world shut down it turned to a remote class, which with tools like. We use a lot of Google Classroom and all the Google tools, and being able to make comments and people's things, and they also envision is free for students. So we use that. And then I've, I've introduced the students to usertesting.com that house has a university program, and my students are able to do remote tests usability testing on there, which is awesome to be able to expose them to not just usability testing but like this is an actual tool that you might use in your future job so like I really wanted them to have exposure to that. So, and then they also do in-person testings so things like that today. I really treat them like, hey you're working for a client, this is what they want and they write their own design brief and they do their research and they do wireframes, they go through the whole design process. Some students you know have complicated times and they, their portfolio. The end presentation is really a piece for their portfolio. And they can really tell the story of how they went from concept to finished products. I'd love to teach design sprints in there it's just not possible in the short amount of time.

Thomas  24:11 

Yeah, yeah. Are those students working towards a four-year degree?

Caryn  24:19 

Yeah. Some of there's not a true UX degree. Some of them are graphic design students, some of them are advertising students, but they're all in the Michael Graves school design.

Thomas  24:35 

Okay, great, great and I feel like learning, the whole design thinking process is great for any designer, no matter what kind of field you're going into. Even if it's advertising or those things I think it just makes you a better all-around designer. I feel that's one of the things I missed I started out as a graphic designer. The only thing that really mattered to me most of the time was, what I felt about this design. You know what it means to the people we're going to be using it interacting with it, those things. So, yeah, I'm glad you're getting to do that's, that’s really exciting. You feel like teaching has changed your own career?

Caryn  25:14 

Absolutely. So my, my role now where I bring culture and training to our experienced design team really looking, looking for themes that are happening I'm you know I'm all my always reading I'm always listening to podcasts like yours and, and many others that I can bring to either work or school or to both. Seeing how the workplace is changing, just physically, like being remote or not remote we'll have, we'll have to see how that goes. Yeah, no, definitely, they, they pair well together, and I definitely learned a lot. I learned just as much as the students each semester. Each semester I update the way I teach the way I do homework, the way I would the way I do everything which is, it's been really great for me to learn and constantly learn from the students.

Thomas  26:06 

Fantastic. So you mentioned that about culture and training so I guess your official role is Director experience design culture and training, those are lots of lasting words strung together.

Caryn  26:19 

Yes. So our wider team is experienced design, And then my role is culture and training so with the cultural aspect. We've been leading coffee chats to really Bond's people together. I don't think people understand just how much knowing who you're working with helps create emotional safety psychological safety. With the ability to collaborate, communicate, you really need to be able to know who you're working with and those higher bonded teams have better outputs. And so with that, we're doing a lot of different monthly happy hours, lots of little interactions with people. And then with the training side, I've worked in creating, I'm right now I'm creating another pathway for onboarding training. I've worked with we're scaling up agile, so teaching designers, agile teaching agile teams, how to work with designers, so two sides of the same coin. Coaching different people continuing with the design sprint training program, a pairing people when they come to me, hey I'm, I'm needing to learn this finding bodies for them to work with. Anything that's needed in that regard, which is great and it's it says a lot about Prudential that they're really putting a lot of emphasis on design and our customer obsession and really growing that skill set, which maybe you start started to see the inklings of and it's really coming to fruition now which is nice. It's really been, it's been a great journey.

Thomas  27:49 

Yeah, that's fantastic and no and I did see a lot of that, I met a lot of fantastic people. That's why I've had a lot of people from Prudential on this show is because there's a lot of really interesting perspectives and backgrounds, and just really all-around great people so that's fantastic. So any advice for a designer who's, you know, looking to either get started in the field or, you know, transfer from some other field to the field of UX design. Yeah, how would you go about that do you recommend the four-year degree that boots camp. Anything in particular.

Caryn  28:28 

Yeah, so it depends where you're coming from, what your background is with my background and design. I actually did a general assembly course but mostly because I thought that I was going to become a developer at one point, so I was in a Developer course and I was like no I like people, and I went into the UX one, and I actually got a job before the course even finish so you know it helps solidify that my four-year design background, taught me a lot of what I needed to become a UX designer, maybe called things slightly different or had different ways of approaching but it was really the corpus the same. So that one, so it depends on what your background is, which direction you want to go. It really depends. So I wouldn't necessarily say that boot camps are bad, and I wouldn't say that a four year degree is bad, it depends on where you're coming from and what you need, what skill sets, you need to, to learn and improve no matter what you need to get some experience, whether that's like, hey my local pizza store needs their website redone, volunteer to do that. Your cousin needs something done volunteer to do at a certain point you need to stop volunteering and start charging, I don't say that you should work for free forever, but you do need to create a portfolio and however, you need to create that portfolio. People need to be able to see your work. I, when I'm looking at portfolios for people that we're hiring, I want to see your thought process, I don't want to see that razzle-dazzle picture at the end. And that's how I teach to is like, I want to see your thought process, how did you get through this and it's okay if you get lost and okay if you fail, how did you recover from that. How did you learn from that? How did you move forward from that? And that's the story and that's what we want to see in our designers and in our students and learning. So definitely working on your portfolio is key. But if that doesn't have it in a silo, reach out to designers I love when people connect with me on LinkedIn. Now there's this new thing, ADP lists, I think it started out of the pandemic. They're amazing. That's unbelievable. they're doing such great work. People should continue to get on that. I wish that had been around when I was a young designer. I wish that would have been amazing, but I did it for myself I reached out to people on LinkedIn. When you're a junior designer, when you're a student, people are very willing to talk to you and be curious about what they do, ask questions, always have questions ready for them, how did you get to where you're going. How did you do that, what pathway, did you make, is there anyone you can connect me with, that's a great question. So definitely reach out to people to continue your network. Be gracious thing people, I've helped people, you know to get jobs and people love that. It feels good. I want people to get jobs and people want to be to get good talent so it works, it works for everybody. So definitely continue to build your network, build your portfolio, and you're not alone like you should definitely be reaching out talking to people and it's hard. It's hard when you're applying for those jobs as a junior designer, I totally get that, and I hope that other more senior designers don't forget that journey. And don't forget that and they reach back and pull shooting your people with them because it's super.

Thomas  31:54 

Absolutely and that's part of the reason why I started this podcast. And the reason why I started doing mentoring at Springboard.com. Now, for those exact reasons, but um, I feel like when it comes to building company culture to like hiring junior designers training them in the way that you work, and the way that you feel you know design should be done, is a great part of building culture I feel like it really becomes difficult to hire culture in a way where you're going and only hiring senior people, they can kind of get into a little bit of a trap where people are kind of stuck in their ways and not really willing to be part of that big team effort.

Caryn  32:33 

Yeah. No, it's true. We're going to a little plug hole. We don't have interns this year, but next year we hope to have interns, so

Thomas  32:41 

Oh, fantastic. I love that intern program and we had some great ones that came through when I was at Prudential. She had been one of them he will actually, he'll be on the show soon as well, because he's done some really interesting stuff, and I loved every time they came through, they always had the best questions, and, yeah, and I've talked to a few of them, and they're always so just intrigued by what we do and so ready to try anything and do anything and just you know to get their hands dirty. It's fantastic to see. But, so, where do you go for inspiration. Now, it's uh, yeah, yeah, you're not the designer, just getting started, you're kind of on that senior-level now so they where do you go, yeah inspired and learn more. I listened to a lot of podcasts, actually, and a wide range of topics IDEO has a great podcast. I like to listen to things outside of design to like Bernie Brown’s podcast, things like that, where it's like it verges on things that I'm dealing with, or talking about at work, but it's not from a designer, so I like either those like hardcore design topics or, or going for more the business or psychological aspects. So that's, that's one. And it's nice to be able to do that I can you know do I like playing with my kids folding laundry, whatever, and that's, and that's one thing I encourage you at work, or even with the students is, is continuous learning like you can be learning at any time and I love that there are so many different mediums that you can learn from now. I love looking on YouTube. AJ and smart I love their channel. So if you want to watch a video and Instagram. I know that's crazy, but I wanted to beat my students where they are. So I actually have a series of keep adding to it, Brian, I think I'm up to like 15 people of people you should follow on Instagram, or LinkedIn or, or Twitter, and, and following those designers and, and I definitely could do more of this, but being part of that conversation, you know you can jump in and join that conversation you can get involved if you want to, which is really nice. So those are probably my main ways. I read a lot of books. That's another way I get inspiration, and then just being with my team like really talking to them. We do surveys a lot, sharing our feedback, you know, being very goal orientated with that. Evan and I actually sat down today and, and went through our mid-year goals like, what have we done wow we've done a really lot. Oh, what do we have left to do, which is great because we're only halfway? Yeah. So yeah that's great, fantastic. And so what's next on the horizon for you. Oh, next we are in the middle of hopefully put making a proposal for an experienced design conference for the fall, which will be super exciting. We have some proposals out for speakers so hopefully, we'll make a conference, no clue what it's going to be, we're kind of running it as an experiment. I think it would be good. That's one thing that's a big thing on my horizon. And then, a lot of other training programs I'm going to be launching soon so that's been exciting.

Thomas  36:18 

And so where can people go to get in touch with you, or how should they get in touch with you.

Caryn  36:23 

Yeah, LinkedIn is always good. I'm pretty good about responding to messages. You can reach out to me on there that's usually a good place. I'm not active really anywhere else in the social media world follower. Which is fair. So yeah, LinkedIn is a great place.

Thomas  36:43 

No, that's perfect. Yeah, I'm the same way, just trying to get used to sharing on social media, I've been a follower for a long time but now trying to, you know, get my ideas out there and contribute a little bit it's difficult.

Caryn 36:56

Yeah, no, this podcast is great, and thank you for making an impact, I'm going to add you to my, to my slides. So, appreciate that.

Thomas 37:06

Thank you so much for coming on Caryn, it's great to catch up again. Really appreciate you being here, and I can't thank you enough.

Caryn

No problem, thank you so much.

Thomas

And that's the show, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in today, if you haven't already please subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. I'll be releasing a show about every other week or so, if you'd like to be a friend of the show, leaving a review and a comment on Apple would be very much appreciated, share a link to this show with your friends and anyone else who's interested in UX design, feel free to recommend topics you'd like to hear discussed here. And if you have any questions about design, design careers, or anything else for that matter, you can DM me on my Instagram @userflows.live. Now let's go create.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai