Product Design Defined with Drew Hard

[00:00:00] diane: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Creatives Ignite. I am excited, really excited. One reason, um, we’re starting a series off that’s all about product design and I’ve always felt like an idiot where product design is concerned because I didn’t really know what it was. And I, I was for sure I didn’t, if I didn’t know what it was, I for sure wasn’t one of these.

[00:00:23] And I think we’re gonna debunk. There’s a lot of different, um, there’s a lot of different, um, [00:00:30] definitions. And the other reason is ’cause I get to kick off this series with one of my design babies. And so, uh, drew Hard was one of my students a long time ago. He learned from a lot of other people and he’s, he’s gonna tell us about his career path.

[00:00:46] ’cause he was just a regular graphic designer. That’s what I taught him to be, was a regular graphic designer. Right. And, um, I, and we are featuring two of our. We, me and the chicken are [00:01:00] featuring two of our alumni in this series, and I love that. So Drew, you’re in dc Um, I’m super excited to see you. Last time I saw you had more hair, but I like bald people, so, um, I’m good.

[00:01:13] Um, but you are in DC and you are a product designer. 

[00:01:18] Drew Hard: I’m, 

[00:01:18] diane: okay. So you started in Mississippi, I believe, right? 

[00:01:22] Drew Hard: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So 

[00:01:23] diane: give them a little bit of your background. Um, and, because I think one thing I’m [00:01:30] trying to kind of do is debunk what product design is, and we are gonna hear a lot of different people, um, define it differently.

[00:01:38] Mm-Hmm. And I’m excited to see, but sometimes if you didn’t ever think of yourself as a product designer, maybe you see some of the things that Drew does or some of the things that Rex does, or Sophie and Harrison do or Richard does. All these people. And you’re like, oh, I, I’ve done some of that too. Or then maybe you could look [00:02:00] for other jobs.

[00:02:00] If you’re looking for postings, you might be like, oh, I’m, I’m gonna read this product designer. Mm-hmm. Job opening because maybe I don’t know what it is. Or maybe I used to not know. And now Drew’s a product designer and I do a lot of the same thing Drew’s doing, so. Alright. Drew, you’d be surprised. Yeah.

[00:02:20] Okay. So give us your background. Sure. Your career stuff. 

[00:02:25] Drew Hard: So I was one of the lucky bunches that, uh, graduated in 2009 right at the recession. [00:02:30] And I did what every good millennial does. I moved back in with my parents because I wasn’t able to find a job right away. And, uh, through a series of circumstances, I ended up working at a print shop in d Ville, Mississippi, just a little small mom and pop print shop that did a lot of work for the casinos.

[00:02:47] Um, and so it was a great job because I got to learn about a lot about, um, just colors and papers and all that sort of stuff and working with other people’s files and fixing [00:03:00] other people’s files, which gave me a lot of insight onto like what else was coming out, uh, at the time. And from there I actually got a job at Red Square, which is now called Good Giant, I believe.

[00:03:13] Um, and the reason, one of the reasons why I was able to get that job is I actually did have an internship while I was, uh, in undergrad at South. For about a summer. And then, um, the second reason why I was able to get hired was just through the [00:03:30] connections I made, but also they were, they had just won a big casino client.

[00:03:34] So I have a lot of casino background work, uh, where I was hired on as a big tranche of people to come in and work on the brand new big casino client that was based outta Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I was there for about two and a half years. Um, working my way up from a production artist was my official title.

[00:03:54] And so what that meant is I did not make a lot of key art or anything like that. And usually a key art was handed out to [00:04:00] me and then I took that and, uh, propagated it out to the different formats, whether that be a billboard or a poster or what have you. Anything and everything I was in charge of or not in charge of, but I was one of the people working on a lot of that materials.

[00:04:16] I. And then I, uh, eventually, you know, was there long enough that I kind of bumped myself up a little bit. I think my title was like junior, uh, junior art director. I believe it was [00:04:30] not really a gen art director position, but, um, from there I was able to co-opt a shift up to Knoxville, Tennessee into a very similar, um, advertising studio called, uh, the Tous Group.

[00:04:42] I believe it’s now just called Tous. Um, very similar. Uh, it was literally a father son operation up there, just like Red Square was with, uh, rich. And um, got to work on bigger clients, got to do things for like McDonald’s. We had a McDonald Regional, uh. [00:05:00] Account there. Daimler trucks, Michelin tires, stuff like that.

[00:05:06] But traditional 

[00:05:06] diane: ad advertising. Yeah. Maybe there maybe was some, maybe social media or online web ads maybe. But you’re, you’re still working, um, in that incorrect and a lot of people were Yeah. Mainly doing print. There wasn’t so much. 

[00:05:22] Drew Hard: Right, right. Yeah. This, this was a time where like, uh, if any, I did, you know, talk to the web guys while I was up at Tous [00:05:30] and, uh, they were still using Photoshop to do their layouts for their stuff or even Illustrator in some cases.

[00:05:36] But it was at Tous where I did kind of make a shift more towards digital and because I’ve just getting to know people being social with, uh, those around me. Just being interested in what everybody else was doing in their lives. Um, was able to help out with a bit more things such as working on, um, Michelin tires.

[00:05:57] There was an initiative that came through where they wanted [00:06:00] to launch some new app and I got to work on the website and, um, got experience in there and that experience cascaded into more experience for doing the Moon Pie website and stuff like that. So just so being 

[00:06:16] diane: willing to work and try different things.

[00:06:18] Yeah. You are a learner, so you love to learn and you would be, you’re just easy to get along with. You were just asking questions. Yeah. And trying to be a good, um, colleague, [00:06:30] right. Yeah. Helping out when always cut 

[00:06:31] Drew Hard: my ears to the ground and just, you know, just listening, you know, not eavesdropping, but listening to like what others are doing and being like, Hey, you know, I’ve got a quick moment.

[00:06:39] I, I’d love to see what you’re working on and, and give some feed like. If they wanted it, give feedback, but also ask like, Hey, you know, I can, I can make a little graphic for you if you need it over there. Like, that would be kind of cool. Uh, stuff like that. And, um, from there I was able to, uh, I started [00:07:00] getting tired because it was still advertising and I just, um, a lot of the clients that I’ve been working on, as y’all heard, was working on casinos, did not like working on casinos because they’re casinos.

[00:07:11] And then same thing at the Thomas group, they started to, um, court like cigarette companies and stuff like that. And I was like, well, you know, kind of tired of the environment and uh, kind of tired of the clientele that we’re working on. I, I’m, I’m ready for the next thing. And so by pure happenstance, I [00:07:30] had act actually applied to this job up here in DC uh, at EverFi.

[00:07:37] And I literally, me my happenstance because I think I was just. Looking easy apply on LinkedIn to everything that was coming across as like, oh, you know, it’s fine. You know, as long as, as long as I can talk to somebody, then I can probably navigate, uh, uh, an interview and, and work my way through it. And just like a, I got very [00:08:00] lucky because, um, EverFi was an environment where it was a company that had been, I think operational for about three, four years, uh, before they started bringing in internal teams.

[00:08:12] Originally it was just started by three guys that, uh, used vendor work to build their product base and had been building their product base for a number of years, but got to that point where they, they couldn’t sustain it anymore. And so they hired the woman who eventually was, would be my [00:08:30] boss to be their in-house creative director.

[00:08:32] And she had a very similar background to me, like no product design background at all. The reason why she got in is because her former boss got hired on as head of product. And so, uh, I got like just a bit of luck coming into a team that had very similar backgrounds and we discussed things and it was one of the reasons why I felt confident making the jump is because she had such a [00:09:00] similar background to me when she explained like what she needed for the products and what she needed from me, she was able to couch it in those terms of a graphic designer of just like, Hey, I, you know, I’ll need these types of graphics and some layouts and stuff like that.

[00:09:15] But you know, what I really need is I need somebody that can distill information and, and take complex, um, complex ideas and distill them down into little things. And what I was able to do was talk [00:09:30] about like, well, with my advertising background, that’s really all you’re doing is you are trying to sell people on something.

[00:09:37] So you’re taking the idea, which is the product, and you’re trying to distill it down into an action for somebody else to do. And that’s all product design really is, is you’re trying to just get somebody to click that button to do that thing over there. And it’s very similar. Um, and 

[00:09:53] diane: it’s some of the skills you had from the other jobs, the print, the printer, um, the printer.

[00:09:58] Drew Hard: Yep. 

[00:09:59] diane: It’s [00:10:00] the, your attention to detail, but also your, uh, ’cause you and I have talked the, it’s your ability to kinda look at the whole picture, the bigger picture. So, because you’d done ad campaigns, you think about the whole campaign, not just one little, one ad you know, you’re thinking, yeah. You’re thinking about things, how, how it’s gonna work, how people, it is driving an action.

[00:10:23] So, mm-hmm. In this, in product design, uh, of what you are gonna be doing, um. So I, I [00:10:30] think that there’s some, there’s some hope for people who are like, yeah, oh, maybe, maybe I could do this then. So, 

[00:10:36] Drew Hard: yeah. Absolutely. 

[00:10:37] diane: So you had a really good environment where people could talk to you in a way that you made you understand, ’cause they were using similar terms from regular, traditional print graphic design.

[00:10:49] Mm-Hmm. Um, but it was also, was there any audience or user because at some point of things that I’ve hear people say [00:11:00] product design Mm-Hmm. Like I said earlier, it felt like it was industrial design or it was like user experience or is it Mm-Hmm. User interface and yes, and yes and yes maybe, right? Yes.

[00:11:11] Drew Hard: Right. 

[00:11:12] diane: But I think, I think it can be convoluted and you’ll Yeah. Maybe see product designer and you really have to read the description of the job to know Yeah. What they’re wanting, right? 

[00:11:24] Drew Hard: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Definitely. You’ll, you’ll see. One, one of the best things to [00:11:30] do is when you’re looking at a job, look at the company that is looking to hire you and look at what they do.

[00:11:37] Because FinTech is very different from, EdTech is very different from, you know, you name, um, but be because just the, the driving force is very different. You know, the, the, it all boils down to money and, and how they, they make that money. But, you know, when I was at EverFi, uh, it was, [00:12:00] you know, I was, their, their business model was such that the people that I produced materials for the product itself were not the people that were paying us.

[00:12:10] They, their model was very much, they would go to banks and say like, Hey, we have this product that can teach your, your clients about all these different things about financial education. You buy it and we’ll onboard people. And we were kind of a one stop shop. Fast company for, for that kind of [00:12:30] thing. And you know, that cascaded out to similar fields where we had an entire KK 12, uh, curriculum where it was the same thing.

[00:12:39] We didn’t go to the schools to sell it to ’em. We went to the banks and we were like, Hey, you have all this community reinvestment act money that you need to spend. We have the product ready made you just give us the money and we’ll make sure it gets distributed out to the schools. And so, um, yeah, so the audience, audience has changed [00:13:00] drastically.

[00:13:00] Where, um, you know, where. I’m working with at EverFi, I was working with learners all the time, and so, uh, you know, we, we would have really busy periods leaving out of summer and into summer for different reasons. Uh, and that was very different from when I was working at Claire, which I came after EverFi, which was a, uh, FinTech company that, what does that mean?

[00:13:24] diane: FinTech? I, um, feel like, so, so 

[00:13:26] Drew Hard: financial tech. Oh, oh. So it was, it was a, it was [00:13:30] a, not a bank, it is a banking application and there’s a very legal distinction in there, uh, where, so yeah, go 

[00:13:39] diane: ahead. I was gonna ask a question. So at these, so at EverFi, what kind of things were you making? So this is again, we are like getting into the nitty gritty.

[00:13:48] Yeah. You know me, I know you, I wanna, I want, I want you to tell us the truth, drew. So, yeah, like were you doing sales decks or pitch decks, or you were doing emails, or what kind of things were you designing? [00:14:00] 

[00:14:00] Drew Hard: So when, actually when I first started, what I was designing was, uh, they had a product offering called at Work, which was, uh, designed to be a series of mini courses that you could go and, uh, log into via, you know, your if Web browser.

[00:14:18] Web browser or something. Yeah, yeah. Your web browser. So if, if, if your bank had bought our product, they would offer it to you and you could go in and, and learn all these different things. And, uh, each [00:14:30] it, it was a series of lessons in this one product that taught you anything from like very simple things like what is a savings account all the way up to like, what is a PMI, uh, in relation to a mortgage and all that fun stuff.

[00:14:45] Or like how an HSA can actually be a savings account when you’re Yeah. Like a regular savings account once you reach a certain age, that sort of thing. And, um. And so literally, I, you know, I did not work on the, the [00:15:00] platform itself. I worked on the literal products. So usually the way that would work is, uh, there would be a SME that I would work with.

[00:15:07] A SME is an acronym for subject matter expert. Uh, they’re the ones that hold all the keys with, with all the information of like what needs to be done and what learning objectives needed to be met. And I also worked with a writer who would be kind of like the go-between, between a SME who’s very technical writer to a copywriter, which is kind of [00:15:30] more like person that takes all that technical information and puts it into language that, 

[00:15:35] diane: you know, a normal person could understand.

[00:15:37] Yeah. A 

[00:15:37] Drew Hard: normal person’s could understand and also not be bored to tears by. Um, and then my job was then to take that and make it a visually enjoyable experience. And also, uh. An interactive experience that made sense. And so, um, you know, a lot of things that I would have to [00:16:00] design and think about was, okay, how, how best can I show the, uh, accrual of, uh, interest in a savings account if you were to leave it for so long?

[00:16:11] And so designing these little interactions to, to show to hand off to a user for them to play with and see that visualization happen, uh, was like a big part of it. 

[00:16:24] diane: Were you really financially savvy in, [00:16:30] not like, absolutely not, but like did you know about how finances worked? Right. I so yeah. Sometimes no, because that wasn’t know less because then you’re like, I’m confused.

[00:16:40] I don’t know where you, I right you, it’s right. There’s. Sometimes I feel like maybe people wouldn’t apply for jobs because they’re like, well, I don’t know anything about financial. Hmm. But maybe that’s a benefit, right? 

[00:16:54] Drew Hard: Yeah. Well, yeah, because, uh, yeah, there was, there was actually quite a few times where, [00:17:00] uh, I would be working with a SME or the copywriter and just be like, Hey, uh, what you gave me for this page is a little hard to understand.

[00:17:07] What if we change the language a little bit here, or we add a little bit here? Because then we can reference this piece of information that, you know, we talked about a couple pages earlier, but we need to re-reference it now, because now it’s really relevant. Stuff like that. Um, and even creating graphics afraid to like.

[00:17:26] And creating the graphics to, to [00:17:30] kind of help illustrate that was was a lot. Um, so 

[00:17:33] diane: do you think as, so because you weren’t a product designer before, do you think that there was, that, um, in-between place where you, maybe you weren’t as confident to say, Hey, I’m confused, or were you like, that was typical for you as a designer?

[00:17:47] Like, you know, if I’m confused about what my plumber client is telling my people to do in this thing, I’m like, you already had that confidence coming in. Say, Hey, this is confusing for a [00:18:00] normal 

[00:18:00] Drew Hard: viewer. Right. I, uh, one thing I, I learned and that I still stand by today is like, don’t pretend like I know anything.

[00:18:10] Always, uh, ask questions early and often and, and it’s okay like to not know everything because it’s not your job to know everything. Yeah. I mean, it’s your job to know how to. Produce the materials and lay things out that, uh, in a coherent way for [00:18:30] users and, and know that maybe, you know, you shouldn’t have decimal pixels in your layouts.

[00:18:36] They should be whole pixels because that’s not the other person’s job to know that you, you’re a part of a team and it’s okay if they, if you don’t feel like you’ve been given all the information. I barely, regularly was like, would pull people to the side and just say like, Hey, I, I don’t know what, what you mean by this man.

[00:18:56] But in a way that’s 

[00:18:57] diane: good because then you’re gonna be helping that customer [00:19:00] that also doesn’t know. Right. And so it’s a benefit. I always feel like we should be raising our hands more and saying, I don’t understand. Yeah. And I think sometimes when, um, people are starting in a new career or they’re pivoting to something, 

[00:19:14] Drew Hard: it’s hard.

[00:19:14] It’s, yeah. 

[00:19:15] diane: You feel like I should, I know you feel like you need to 

[00:19:17] Drew Hard: come in and be a value add immediately when you know. It’s not always the case. You just, you gotta be comfortable with not knowing and not being the, the hotshot all the time. [00:19:30] Right. It’s, you know, you like, because, because by not knowing and by asking questions there would o oftentimes yeah.

[00:19:39] I would be able to raise an idea of like, oh, what you just said there. That makes a lot of sense to me. But what if we just like tweak it a little bit because then I think it might add a little bit more and, you know, being, being open to offering my opinion, but also important not to be married to your opinion as [00:20:00] well in, in so far that like when you get shot down or somebody tells you like, no, that’s just not how it’s gonna be this time.

[00:20:07] Okay. All right. Let’s move on to the next page and, and work on that you, that you already 

[00:20:10] diane: learned that, I mean, you were easy, you took critique well in school. So sometimes people don’t do that, and I don’t know if you remember anybody, but sometimes people, but you were always, you were ready to learn, but sometimes people do have a problem.

[00:20:24] Um Mm-Hmm. Their idea didn’t get forward and they’re gonna get all upset, but, Mm-Hmm. I think that [00:20:30] that’s something you had either al uh, a good product designer has already learned. We, a good graphic designer knows we’re not gonna get our way all the time, right? 

[00:20:39] Drew Hard: Yeah. And, and that’s something that I’ve had to relay to a few of coworkers over the years.

[00:20:45] Actually, I, when at EverFi, I, I got to a point where I did have a couple direct reports and one of the people I had was a more traditional graphic designer who was still operating in, uh. She, she worked in the product department with us, but she was definitely [00:21:00] more of a visual graphic design person because she, her main job was, you know, prepping files and um, cutting out images, producing illustrations and stuff like that.

[00:21:10] And yeah, there would be times where critique would be hard because, you know, she would feel like, uh, it was a reflection of herself on that. And, you know, we came to an agreement that like, you know, this is just work, you know, that we’re just getting paid for this. It’s good to have pride in what you do, but, [00:21:30] you know, she, she had, uh, art that she would do at home.

[00:21:33] I was like, that’s where you, that’s where you, you should be like most comfortable with. And here at work, everybody just has to let it go and just work with what they’ve got because you’re not always gonna have. Your your greatest thing that you want. Sometimes it’s gonna be that little corporate looking guy that everybody doesn’t like, but you know, it gets the job done.

[00:21:56] The client wants it, right? Yeah. The client wants it. Yeah. And so we, we [00:22:00] just have to work with it and, and once you let go of it, then you can figure out like, where can I put my joy back in? You know? Mm-Hmm. There were lots of little times where I would be working on things and I wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t necessarily like the, the material that I was working on, but then I would find instances that I would be like, Hey, you know what would be really fun if I did like this?

[00:22:21] Or something like that. Mm-Hmm. And, and talking to my creative director on whether or not that would be okay and appropriate and, you know, just finding my own [00:22:30] instances of fun, you know? Yeah. Which would translate for the user as well, you know? 

[00:22:33] diane: Yeah. So then, so from EverFi, which it was small, um, you were maybe the second or third mm-Hmm.

[00:22:42] I think you had told me there were two Yeah. Kind of design people that came in at the same time as you, and you were under one. Correct. Yeah. Creative. So it was still a small company, um, but it grew. And then, and you were there for a few years and then you went to Claire. 

[00:22:57] Drew Hard: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So, uh, [00:23:00] left EverFi and went to Claire.

[00:23:03] Much different environment. Um, unfortunately there were some, uh, some moves that the higher ups did that weren’t very conducive to a cohesive product department. But, you know, uh, that’s actually where I met another former USA alum, Jesse McNee, who is incredible and, uh, had a lot of fun working with her and learning a lot from her as well, because she, I.

[00:23:28] Uh, she entered [00:23:30] the product space a lot earlier than I did, and so she had, um, more, uh, direct knowledge with that sort of stuff. And so getting to learn from her, uh, was fantastic. But the user base there was a whole lot different because, uh, like I said, at EverFi, you know, it was mostly dealing with schools and um, just adults on their own time doing things.

[00:23:52] Whereas Claire being a banking app, you’re always on all the time. You know, there, even though the, [00:24:00] uh, place would shut down on the holidays and stuff like that, somebody was still still working and still doing stuff. And so there were times where I would get messaged on a weekend or during a holiday being like, Hey, you know, there’s some kind of mix up happening here.

[00:24:17] Can you produce a quick screen for the developers to fix it? Or something like that. Yeah. Um, just very different user base, very different client base. There because your client is, well, [00:24:30] they were a bit weird too because it wasn’t a pure bank. It was another one of those things where, uh, because Claire’s thing was they provided on-demand pay for, for users free of charge.

[00:24:42] And so it was really helpful for teachers, uh, because there are some counties around the United States where teachers only get paid once a month and me, yeah, that’s extremely hard to do. Whereas Claire, if, if Dan were to, uh, bank with [00:25:00] Claire when she clocked out at the end of the day, she could have access to up to 50% of what she made that day, uh, up, up to a certain point for the month, and then all that would come out at the end of the month and all that.

[00:25:12] So, uh, but. As, as a result, a lot of what I did was, um, you know, one working on flows and graphics that made it very clear to users, like, so explain what 

[00:25:24] diane: a flow is just in case somebody is totally new. 

[00:25:27] Drew Hard: Right? So what would that be? [00:25:30] Yeah, so a flow is so, you know, within design, uh, you know, if you’re working on a poster, that’s your poster, it’s done and you move it on.

[00:25:39] A flow would be more like, um, thinking about like a campaign. How does that poster relate to that banner ad over there and how can we connect them together rather than just visually? And so a flow in product design is quite literally, uh, usually stems [00:26:00] from uh, what’s called a user story. And a user story is usually instructed in a way, quite literally, like, I, I would like to be able to check my savings account.

[00:26:12] In a, in a way that’s easy. That’s, that’s an example of a user story. Very, it’s first person because it’s supposed to be coming from a user and it’s supposed to be illustrating a problem that needs to be solved. And so then a flow to solve that would go from, you know, point of entry, from, from logging [00:26:30] into the app all the way to the end.

[00:26:32] Result of them clearly being able to reach their savings account, be able to add a glance, know what is in their savings account, maybe what debits are pending, stuff like that. So, uh, end to end, uh, or, um, usually they would call it sometimes wire framing. Mm-Hmm. Is another way of putting it. But wire framing usually can really denote like, kind of like the more bare bones, uh, thing where you’re just like [00:27:00] scribbling on paper, uh, trying to just get a point across.

[00:27:03] Usually wire framing’s more for like a new idea. Mm-Hmm. That’s being had. And you’re in the very early stages, whereas flows are. They’ll finalize things that you can then hand off to a developer who will understand like, okay, I see what’s happening here. I now need to, uh, work on this, um, in these parts and pieces to, to make this happen.

[00:27:24] diane: And at this point in this was when you and I talked the other day, you were talking about [00:27:30] how, well, when we first started, we were using Photoshop or Illustrator Mm-Hmm. To do some of these flows. And now, uh, and then Sketch came around and then Figma And So Figma so that you, 

[00:27:44] Drew Hard: and, and not InDesign, xd, Adobe Xd.

[00:27:47] Oh yeah. Adobe D. Yeah. 

[00:27:49] diane: Yeah. So, but you’ve had to continually learn new platforms. Mm-Hmm. And, but to create flows or to create these, these, um, [00:28:00] user stories, you would create them in those different platforms. In mediums. Yeah. It’s easier to Mm-Hmm. Hand it off to the developer at that point. 

[00:28:10] Drew Hard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:11] So Photoshop back in the day, you know, Photoshop is still, is like the, the grouping and layering is, can you get ornery whenever you’re trying to do bigger things? And then Illustrator was better, but very similar. Uh, where, you know, you had all your art boards and I think at a point Photoshop also had art [00:28:30] boards, which was handy, but Illustrator was a bit more freeform, being able to put things in the, in the margins of, uh, the art boards.

[00:28:39] But, um, yeah, sketch was a big game changer because mainly the reason why Sketch was a big game changer was less to do with, um, being able to lay things out. It was more to do with the fact that you could set up a file, a dedicated file that was called your theme. And so that file would have all of the [00:29:00] information for like.

[00:29:01] All of the colors that you need to use, all of the fonts that you need to use, what a standard button should look like. What 

[00:29:08] diane: that is like in Figma is just so easy. You don’t have to keep redrawing it. You’re like, just block this. So, so it made the, for you efficiency Yeah. It was so much easier for you to create those flows, right?

[00:29:23] Drew Hard: Yeah. And, and especially because like we, we started with Sketch at EverFi and at, at the time at EverFi, anytime a [00:29:30] new product would come along, uh, the sales department would always affix the word new to it. So new theme. New theme, new theme. And so we were constantly having to produce new themes and Sketch made that a lot easier.

[00:29:42] But where Figma took that one step further was that Figma was a purely collaborative environment, whereas Sketch, uh, it was all file-based. And so if somebody was in a file, even if it was on the cloud right, and somebody else tried to jump in. It could [00:30:00] potentially mess things up on like who’s saves, inherited what and all that.

[00:30:04] Whereas Figma, what you see is up there on all times. It’s constantly saving. It’s purely on the cloud. Everybody can get in there and, and it gave you better controls for the theming as well because you could have multiple theme files. You could have like, um, you know, a company theme file that has all of the company branding.

[00:30:25] And then you could have a product line theme file that has theming [00:30:30] for that specific product. And so on and so forth. It just made things, or even seasonal much is good. Like 

[00:30:35] diane: if, if you were working on a brand that had seasonal colors, you could just Oh yeah. Bring in those new seasonal colors for Yeah.

[00:30:42] And you could just say, apply it to these things. ’cause these and it just, and things, and that is essentially true. So much easier, right? Yeah. 

[00:30:48] Drew Hard: It, yeah, because of ever, I think it was about a year or two years ago, they introduced variables and variable theming made things a whole lot easier where you could, you could literally have a [00:31:00] separate theme variable that was all of, like you said, like all of like the fall colors or something like that.

[00:31:07] And you could take an entire flow and with one click switch that themeing right then and there and all the variables would change accordingly as, as necessary. And it’s just, it’s incredible stuff. And they’re always improving it too, which is, it’s, it’s, you’re just always having to learn new things, but.

[00:31:28] Stigma does it in a way that [00:31:30] is just very intuitive and helpful and, uh, there’s just so many resources out there to learn, you know, and 

[00:31:36] diane: it was, it was a really good tool for working as that in-between, um, for the developers so you can create things really easy for them to be able to also use. Mm-Hmm.

[00:31:48] You’re taking the writer or you’re taking the right sme s you taught me new words. Yeah. Yeah. So, so those things, and then you’re able to, um, put them in there and then give it [00:32:00] to the developer. And then they also have things that they can work with, which I think is great. Exactly. But it’s not ad for Figma, but way to go Figma.

[00:32:07] Drew Hard: Actually, I will say one place where visual designers do actually have a leg up is, um, I see a disturbing trend of people doing everything in Figma, including like illustration. And now nowadays there’s actually plugins that give you some Photoshop like capabilities within Figma. And you know, and that’s fine.

[00:32:28] It is just [00:32:30] when it’s not always clear for developers where they’re supposed to get assets from, you can run into issues. Because I’ve definitely had instances where, uh, I would be, uh, going through a, uh, a product that had just been finished and I was doing QA on it, quality assurance on it, just going through page by page, making sure everything clicks correctly, everything looks good.

[00:32:54] I would notice that images would have little ratio markers in them. I was like, wait, that’s, that shouldn’t be [00:33:00] there. That’s how I have it set up in Figma. But the actual files that I produced and handed off don’t have that on there. What gives come to find out, the developers that were doing that had come from a different shop where it was, they worked with the designers where everything in Figma was the final piece.

[00:33:20] And so it was incumbent on the developers to then export their own assets out of Figma, which is easy. But um, at that point in time, we just weren’t doing [00:33:30] that. We were producing them separately because we just, we, we went through a lot of, uh, stock art at the time, at EverFi. And so, uh, handing that off to them was just a lot easier because we had, we had the resources to color correct in batch, you know, for them rather than having to do it all in Figma, 

[00:33:50] diane: but it’s just, uh, standard operating procedures for EverFi and they may be different Mm-Hmm.

[00:33:54] For a different one, but you do have to have that conversation with your developer. Okay. So going back [00:34:00] to, um, so then Claire, then what. 

[00:34:03] Drew Hard: So from Claire, I then went to Ryzen team, which is a bit more of an EdTech company, uh, very similar to EverFi, where uh, it’s all just, you know, um, the materials are, uh, things like team building exercises and stuff like that.

[00:34:20] But the big difference is where EverFi was very much individually based, even for the, um, the corporate pieces that we made. [00:34:30] Rising team was more collaborative based. And so we had that extra layer of, um, sync syncing between say, Diane’s browser and my browser, which was one of the big things that I worked on was having that capability because when I first started, um, everybody in the Zoom call had to click at the same time moving to the next page.

[00:34:51] And that got arduous at times. But um, but yeah, that product was, uh, very different because we had no [00:35:00] ses, we had no copywriters. So, uh, there were a often a lot of times where I was having to do writing, uh, myself, which I’m not effective at, and, uh, often had to do a little bit of research myself as well on some of the things that we were doing because it was, you know, um, the product, the, the product idea at Rising Team was that, uh, you know, if a team at a company may be having some interpersonal issues, they might bring in an [00:35:30] outside consultant to hold a workshop with that team or something to, to do some team building exercises.

[00:35:36] And what Rising Team specializes in is making the team lead or the, the lead person at a temporary expert and facilitator to be able to do what an external person would do, but just in their own time in, uh, with their own team. And so the ranges of the product went anywhere from like 30 minutes to two hours.[00:36:00] 

[00:36:00] Which was, you know, when I came in, I told them like, that’s really long, you know, nobody, nobody in the corporate world has a two of hour meeting that they can just be okay with once a month doing. Like, that’s a lot to ask of people. Uh, but yeah, it was, like I said, it was just very different, um, problems to solve.

[00:36:19] Like I said, the, the synchronicity between, uh, between the team lead and the, and the other users was a big thing that we worked on. Um, and [00:36:30] solving that, we took a lot of work with the developers because, uh, it wasn’t like we were doing that at the, on, at the onset. We had a huge backlog of products that were needing us to go through piece by piece and seeing like, okay.

[00:36:47] Does giving the team lead the ability to move everybody here make sense? Or do we need to have this be a pause for, do we need to add extra language here to alert people as to what’s gonna happen here? Mm-Hmm. [00:37:00] Uh, and uh, especially because there were often a lot of activities where you did have to do them on your own, and there would be multiple pages well within that.

[00:37:09] And so how do we catch everybody at the end, you know, to, to make sure that when they’re done, everybody’s in the right spot so that then the team lead can move on, and how do we alert the team lead that everybody’s ready? Stuff like that. 

[00:37:23] diane: That’s very different 

[00:37:24] Drew Hard: change. 

[00:37:24] diane: Yeah. That, but that’s, but it’s interesting and it’s just thinking about all the different [00:37:30] parts that we may take for granted in our user experience of a product or, Mm-Hmm.

[00:37:35] Even when we’re going through a course or we’re learning, like, how do you find your savings account? Right? Like somebody had to really think about, oh. I, I have, I shouldn’t be hunting for where to push to find this thing. Yeah. Okay. So when you’re looking for jobs, um, what type of experience do you need to have to be able to apply for a job that is product [00:38:00] design?

[00:38:00] A product design position? 

[00:38:03] Drew Hard: I think ultimately probably the most important would be having experience with a program like Figma. Figma is currently the gold standard and honestly, like if, if you can get in and work with that and be a, then be comfortable with working with themes and symbols and components and all that sort of stuff, that is the hands down the most important thing because [00:38:30] you know, visually, you know your colors, you know your fonts, right?

[00:38:33] You know, spacing and what looks right, what does not look right. Um, just being able to build. The pages themselves is probably definitely the most important part, especially for coming in as a junior person. Because What, oh, go ahead. 

[00:38:52] diane: What about I don’t wanna, because 

[00:38:55] Drew Hard: what? Be because you’re junior, you’re, you, you know, you’re usually not gonna have [00:39:00] to be solving all of these other problems.

[00:39:02] You know, that’s experience that will come as you continue to work on these things. Um, really just, you know, like when I was a production artist at ever, right? Uh, uh, red Square, I knew Photoshop, I knew Illustrator, and I knew all these other things, but I was not, uh, like our other, like lead designers who had the, the vision and drive to like, make some of the key art and come up with the campaigns and stuff like that.

[00:39:28] That is something that I [00:39:30] learned from working on them and seeing what they were doing and being like, oh, okay, that makes sense. I could, I could do something like that. Um, but having that base of just knowing the software was really what is able to get me in the door. 

[00:39:43] diane: So what if you were somebody more at your level?

[00:39:46] They don’t really wanna come in as a entry level. Mm-Hmm. But they’re, um, they’ve been out, they’ve been working, they’ve been a professional, and maybe it’s a pivot point. Maybe they already know Figma, but what’s important, like a soft skill that they would need [00:40:00] to know? Because we, you and I talked about, it’s a lot of thinking, it’s a lot of solving, like, um, because those things I think are also important.

[00:40:09] Yes, it’s good to know the program, but at some point you aren’t maybe doing all the production. You’re guiding, you’re seeing where the holes are and you’re pointing people to, um, to fix those things. So what would be like an important. Part of what your job is, [00:40:30] um, as a product designer. Mm-Hmm. That would be something you would wanna communicate in a, in an interview.

[00:40:36] Drew Hard: Yeah. That’s a really good question. Um, I’m 

[00:40:39] diane: sorry I didn’t write that down in our questions. 

[00:40:41] Drew Hard: No, it’s fine. No, it’s fine. I, I would say, I mean, you kind of touched on it right there, that interpersonal, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, called something different in product world and it’s leaving me right now, empathy, but it’s, uh, empathy, no, like, uh, like, um, not empathy, although empathy always helps.

[00:40:58] I, I will stand by [00:41:00] that. But, um, interdepartmental, uh, work, so, you know, being able to talk about like. How you’ve maybe taken a campaign start to finish, you know, working with, uh, if there was a digital component of it, working with the developers on and getting that done and being able to show that you are able to communicate your vision and your work in a way that, like a print shop can pick it up and know what needs to be done.

[00:41:27] Or like I said, like a, if you’re working [00:41:30] with a development vendor, you know, for say like a digital portion of a campaign that you’ve worked on, just being able to talk about how, uh, you, you are able to ask things along and, and make sure that everybody has what they need and be able to ask the question of like, does everybody have what they need?

[00:41:49] And if they don’t come to me and I can work with you on that, you know, uh, the relationships are a big part of it. Uh, I would say just [00:42:00] because you, I. It’s, it’s so much different from freelance where, you know, you’re hired as a single person to do all these things. When you’re a part of a product team, it’s definitely a more arms than you know what to do with because you know you’re not supposed to do all that stuff.

[00:42:21] I think the only time you are considered to be that type of person is it, uh, the keywords are like full stack. Mm-Hmm. Uh, and usually that’s in [00:42:30] terms of like a developer, they’re usually refer to as full stack and, um, those are people that, you know, yes, they can code, but they also can lay things out. They can also design things and they know a better too about color to where, you know, it’s not gonna be gray boxes and white Yeah.

[00:42:48] You know, white backgrounds and black text everywhere. It’ll actually have, uh, some interest to it. So, so one, 

[00:42:55] diane: yeah. So one thing I asked you the other day, and I want to ask you this here, uh, [00:43:00] like. You’ve done things that were smaller teams, and then some of them have grown. So you have bigger companies, you’ve worked for smaller, you’ve done some remote, fully remote jobs, you’ve done some where you’re going in the office.

[00:43:14] Um, you know, sometimes we can get a bad taste in our mouth from one experience, but I, you know, I think it may make you, so you’re like, oh, I don’t ever wanna, I mean, I never wanna do covid again. Never, ever, nobody wants, wants to do that, [00:43:30] but, 

[00:43:30] Drew Hard: right. 

[00:43:30] diane: Um, but there are, um, maybe some portions of things that we were doing then that have stuck around.

[00:43:38] A lot of people now can work remote. Mm-Hmm. Um, when you’re thinking about startups Mm-Hmm. And some of the, maybe all these companies haven’t. Um, maybe they didn’t have a SME or they didn’t like some of those kind of red flags that now, you know, but when you were going in, you didn’t really always [00:44:00] know Mm-Hmm.

[00:44:00] The things to look out for, because I asked you, I was like, well, does this meet? Would you, hi, would you go for another startup or would you Mm-Hmm. Do you wanna work for somebody who’s more established? Yeah. Um, and you had a great answer so you can tell them your answer. Yeah. 

[00:44:17] Drew Hard: Yeah. So, um, working for startups, so EverFi, you know, was a startup, but, uh, it was, it was a case where, uh, they, they knew what they needed going into it.

[00:44:28] You know, it may not have been a [00:44:30] product department made by product people, but, uh, they, they understood like, okay, graphic people do this product, people do that, developers do this, and we need writers and stuff like that. Other startups are a lot scrappier, uh, and a lot smaller. And what I’ve found having done now some smaller startups that are a bit scrappier, is that, um, when they produce these, these listing for these positions, you know, it’s [00:45:00] understood that like, yeah, you’re gonna have to wear a lot of hats.

[00:45:02] Everybody understands that with, uh, startups, but where they may not fully understand is like what they actually doomed. And so, uh, what I’ve learned in, uh, doing some smaller startups and what I will carry with me going forward is regaining my comfortability with not knowing And mm-hmm. Being able to call out things of just like, Hey, I [00:45:30] know I’ve got this ticket to do this thing.

[00:45:32] Uh, but while I was reviewing it and thinking about it. I realized that, you know, X, y, and Z might be considerations that I’m not as familiar with. I can do the research to figure that out, but I’m just gonna be upfront that these are not my areas of expertise, you know? And that being upfront about, uh, not, not just running off and doing it is, is the main, is the main thing because, uh, [00:46:00] I don’t, I don’t remember where I’ve heard this, but it’s a saying that says hard work is only rewarded with more work.

[00:46:07] And so if you train others that you know, they can throw whatever at you, and you’re just gonna go and do it and figure it out and not complain because you feel like it’s maybe not your place to call out, that you weren’t given all the information, then they’re just gonna continue to do that for you, to you.

[00:46:26] And, uh, you’re just gonna burn yourself out because [00:46:30] now you’re doing the job of maybe two, three other people that should be a part of your team. You know, a person, like a scrum master that’s helping you manage your products and your time. A writer that’s helping you not have to worry about the writing, so you can just focus on, on the flow and the graphics or a SME that’s gonna be there to tell you like, Hey, legally you can’t say that because Right.

[00:46:53] That’s not okay. You know, and, and just, and by [00:47:00] having that comfortability, you know, it’s not saying like, oh, I’m absolutely never gonna do this. I’m not gonna do this. But by raising your hand and being like, Hey, you know, I, I can do this and I will do this, but I just wanna identify that, you know, there’s more consideration here than what you gave me.

[00:47:21] And that, uh, there will come a time that if this is the route that we need to go, if these types of things are gonna continue to come up, it would [00:47:30] be. A good consideration that we hire somebody to fill X, Y, Z role because I cannot continue to do this at my level. If 

[00:47:39] diane: they’re, if they’re asking you to write Mm-Hmm.

[00:47:41] Right. Or come. Right, right. Or do something that is 

[00:47:44] Drew Hard: Right. 

[00:47:44] diane: You can do some, but 

[00:47:46] Drew Hard: right 

[00:47:46] diane: there, it, it would be better for them. You would have less, less revisions, or it would be, you know, a good writer or good copywriter would 

[00:47:55] Drew Hard: Yeah. 

[00:47:56] diane: It’s gonna help them in the end to do that. 

[00:47:58] Drew Hard: Exactly. And, you know, and [00:48:00] these days with ai there, it’s a little bit of a pitfall because like, I’ve definitely run into it where people will tell me like, oh, well, you know, just use AI to, to fill in the blanks.

[00:48:08] I’m like, okay, but like people are paid to do this. This is a job that humans should be doing you and it’s for 

[00:48:15] diane: a reason. Right. Because ai, it’s for a reason. Yeah. Leading some things out there. It, yeah. It’s not the end all, be all solution. 

[00:48:22] Drew Hard: Right. It’s, yeah, it’s really not, you still need that human touch because otherwise it feels like it came from ai.[00:48:30] 

[00:48:30] Mm-Hmm. 

[00:48:30] diane: Okay. So if you were, um, so, so some of these other jobs that if maybe it was a scrappy team Mm-Hmm. If you were interviewing and they were like, we don’t have a blank, you would be like, red flag. What would be some of those things? 

[00:48:47] Drew Hard: Yeah. I actually was looking at a job, uh, posting a while back where it, it was one of those jobs where, you know, the red flags for me is like, anytime they talk about ninjas or [00:49:00] unicorns and stuff like that, I’m just like, okay, here we go.

[00:49:02] You know, or like, we’re a family, things like that. But the thing that really struck out, you’re like, I’ve got a family. 

[00:49:08] diane: I don’t need another family. 

[00:49:10] Drew Hard: Right. Yeah. And the thing that really struck out to me was like, the you’ll never section I, they formatted in a, in a weird way, but like in the You’ll Never section.

[00:49:19] It said it was things like, you’ll never work with jerks, you’ll never be a jerk. And then, but one of them was, you’ll never work with product managers because we don’t have any. And [00:49:30] I sat there and I fared at that for a moment. It’s like, what? I don’t really know what that means because a product manager is a very important person because they’re the ones that are gonna help you to produce those user stories and not just produce the user stories of like, what’s necessary, but like be able to help hold all the other extra puzzle pieces of like, you know, maybe a different initiative that the development team is working on that may not [00:50:00] be directly related to product right then and there, but it will be in the future.

[00:50:04] And so how can we prep ahead of time? Uh, and so seeing stuff like that and asking questions like that, like what kind of, you know, team setup do you have at your company is very helpful to know, like. How much extra work am I gonna need, need to do, and am I comfortable with doing that extra work here? You know?

[00:50:26] Right, right. And, and also, you know, monetarily being able to [00:50:30] identify that like, Hey, I am not a product manager, but if I’m going to be doing the work of a product manager in addition to my product work, I that’s worth something. Yeah. Yeah. That’s worth something because that’s an entire other career, you know?

[00:50:46] Right. That people do and are very effective at. And so, you know, I will need some, some monetary compensation there to ensure that I am able to do my best. 

[00:50:56] diane: Right, right. Okay. So, um, are there [00:51:00] any questions that you try to ask if you’re interviewing, so that you, that would give somebody else that is listening Mm-Hmm.

[00:51:10] Um, like, ask this? Or, or, and it could be just a general, you know, but like. Maybe it has to do with remote or how, um, yeah. Things come in or whatever. What would you ask? Yeah. But 

[00:51:24] Drew Hard: I, a couple good ones. Um, one would be like, what has the change [00:51:30] leadership has implemented, uh, recently that has come from team feedback?

[00:51:36] Mm-Hmm. Uh, is a, is a good one because then it lets you know how, um, receptive leadership is to the woes of the team because you don’t want to join a team that’s just gonna be left in the dark and constantly wondering when you’re gonna get help or something like that. Um, it’s, that’s a useful one. Uh, another one is kind of a bit of a, kind of, a bit of a [00:52:00] social engineering question, which is, uh, something to the effect of, if I was, uh, if I was working today, how would you use me on the team?

[00:52:10] And so that way your shifting. Their viewpoint of view as a candidate and into you as an employee. And so it just kind of helps to shift their brain a little bit towards like, well, how would I use this person? Oh, that’s a great 

[00:52:28] diane: idea 

[00:52:29] Drew Hard: of, of [00:52:30] what I’ve seen, of what they’ve shown me. Like how could I use them on this team or that team?

[00:52:35] It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to hire you in that moment, but you know, it gets them thinking of like, you know what, seeing like the little bits of animation work that he’s done, you know, maybe we can work that in here for some user delight. Um. And then I, there was a third one that I had, but I, I’m drawing a blank on.

[00:52:55] It’s 

[00:52:55] diane: okay. It’s okay. So we had talked about, so as you have gone [00:53:00] up in, we’re in the lightning round. As you’ve gone up in, uh, as a product designer, you’ve spent more years in it. What is overseeing a product? It’s not you being product manager, I don’t think. Mm-Hmm. It’s overseeing a product. What does that look like?

[00:53:15] What does a typical day look like? If you were, if that was what you were doing? 

[00:53:21] Drew Hard: Yeah, I guess, uh, it, it really depends on the company, but, uh, at what would be your 

[00:53:26] diane: favorite way to be? Yeah. If you, if you could [00:53:30] do, because I know some companies it’s very different, but if you were managing it, what would you, what would you want it to be like?

[00:53:39] Drew Hard: Um, well, so my preferred mode of operation is working on products where I. Uh, each product is its own contained piece that gets shipped out. So something like an EverFi or like rising team where each lesson was an individual product or, uh, each lesson was a part of a larger product that was gonna get [00:54:00] shipped out later.

[00:54:00] And so overseeing it would usually come in the form of like, you know, uh, I was very lucky enough to work with like a scrum master. And so like every week we would have what was called a standup. And a standup is just a quick 15 minute. Everybody talks about like, this is what I have on my, on my docket for the week.

[00:54:20] And, uh, the, this is where I’m at with those, these are the concerns I might have. And, uh, usually from a standup you can generally see like, okay, [00:54:30] maybe there’s some problem areas. I need to go out and reach out to these people. Um. You know, checking in with the developers, uh, because depending on the environment you work on, you work with, there are two modes of operation.

[00:54:42] Waterfall is very similar to what you may work with in a traditional like design environment where, uh, ev one piece gets worked on, gets passed along, gets worked on, passed along, and on, on down you go. Whereas, uh, the other mode, [00:55:00] which, um, the term is completely lost me, but it’s, it’s cyclical where, uh, the, the developers, even though they don’t have necessarily your part of it, they’re already programming stuff and getting, you know, something going while you’re working on the design work.

[00:55:19] And then when you slot it into their workflow, they start working on it and you start to see problems of like, okay, now that this is happening, I need to take that piece back out and start working on [00:55:30] it and, and fix it. Uh, so that the developers agile. Agile. That’s the one. Thank you very much. Yeah, course I was, I was, I wouldn’t say iterative, but like, I was like, I know that’s normal.

[00:55:41] What’s scrum master mean? Okay, so Scrum, I, I’m pretty sure it’s an acronym. I don’t know, but it’s, it comes from it, it’s just a, a product management style. There’s a couple of them out there. Uh, but it’s one that I’m definitely most familiar with where, uh, [00:56:00] every, it’s not totally adversarial, like everybody is trying to like, fight each other, but, uh, your time is, is sacrosanct and you are very protective of your time.

[00:56:14] And so when, uh, new tasks come up, there will be a scrum planning where you’ll be part of a team and you’ll be like, all right, that, you know, that ticket right there that. Is asking a designer to do X, [00:56:30] Y, ZI know that’s gonna take at least eight hours for them to do. So a a day of solid work for that person doesn’t mean they’ll need to do it throughout the course of a day, but for a sprint, which in our case was a two week sprint, that eight hours, we then get slotted into the, we didn’t do 40 hour work weeks, uh, for our teams.

[00:56:51] It was more like 38 because we knew meetings would prop up. So Mm-hmm. In the, you know, 76 hours [00:57:00] for those two weeks, that eight hours will now take up that chunk and, and so on. And so Scrum is, uh, it very, it’s just a, a part of, uh, a, a a way of going about agile development that, uh, is kind of helpful because like, there are, there are things called like level of effort, you know, that’s where you’re saying like, okay, that’ll take eight hours, then it take 16 hours.

[00:57:23] There’s sizing for like the kind of more amorphous things like, uh, they do it by [00:57:30] T-shirt size in some cases. So like a medium T-shirt size will have overarching number of hours that then all of the pieces that go into making it need to make sure that they don’t exceed that. Mm-Hmm. And if they do, then either it needs to go up in size or the scope of what’s being asked for.

[00:57:51] That T-shirt needs to come down and, and, and paired down. And so it’s, it’s a very it [00:58:00] combative environment, but in a good way. Like it’s to your benefit because Yeah. They’re 

[00:58:04] diane: protecting you. 

[00:58:05] Drew Hard: Yeah. You’re protecting yourself because you’re saying like, that’s gonna take x number of hours, but also you’re protecting others because, you know, you don’t, it, you prevent scope creep and you, uh, you, you just keep everything honest.

[00:58:20] And it’s not to say that, you know. You won’t ever be able to go back and add in things that maybe had to get cut because it’s an agile experience. Uh, but [00:58:30] you know, it just really kind of depends on the place that you work on how, how much appetite they have to actually go back and, and make changes to products.

[00:58:38] diane: So what I’m gonna ask you too, outta order, um, yeah, or three more questions. One, what type of companies hire product designers? 

[00:58:49] Drew Hard: Ooh, a lot currently. Um, so more 

[00:58:51] diane: than what we would normally think, I think. Correct. Yeah. 

[00:58:54] Drew Hard: Yeah. I, I would say so. So anything that has an app component or a shop component [00:59:00] usually has some type of product designers.

[00:59:03] Uh, because, you know, bringing people into a shop and, and buying a thing requires you, you know, if they’re not using something like a regular old Shopify, like off the shelf, uh, experience, they need product designers and UX designers. To come in and help, you know, draw people into the required, uh, experience, which is [00:59:30] spend, spend money, buy a thing, or, you know, whether that’s a, a physical product or a digital product, like a subscription or anything like that.

[00:59:38] And any app again, uh, is another thing where if like, if they’re not using some pre-canned thing off the internet, if it’s more of a stoke, they, they need product designers for that. And then in some realms that maybe are, you know, less, uh, visual is, um, inventory management, uh, types of things like, so shipping [01:00:00] companies, stuff like that.

[01:00:00] They need, uh, product designers to ensure that, you know, um, I mean depends just the logistics sort of that go into, but yeah, just the logistics of, of like, you know, all of the data visualization of just like, you know. How much of a thing do we have here? Where is it, how, like when is it shipped to meant to go and all that sort of stuff is, uh, you know, falls into the realm of product design.

[01:00:27] It’s a lot less sexy because you know, [01:00:30] you’re not gonna be making fun graphics all the time for it. Right. But it’s, it’s good work. And, uh, the nice thing is it all kind of scales up and down. You can pretty regularly move between, you know, they, they prefer you to have experience and they’ll, they’ll say it a lot of times in job, uh, posting, but they’ll, they’ll prefer FinTech experience or EDD tech experience or inventory management experience.

[01:00:55] But that’s not to say that you’re can’t fart, 

[01:00:58] diane: right. 

[01:00:58] Drew Hard: Mentioned Yeah, because you [01:01:00] 

[01:01:00] diane: can cross that bridge. 

[01:01:01] Drew Hard: Yeah, you can cross that bridge and, you know, doesn’t mean you’ll always get the interview, but when you’re in the interview, usually when you’re doing a portfolio review of the work that you’ve done, you can explain like, you know.

[01:01:13] If you do your research ahead of time to, in, to see what their product is like, you can then draw the lines and lead them from like, Hey, I’ve done this for this company before. I know it’s not a direct analog, but the problem I was solving here is very similar, is similar to the type of [01:01:30] thing that you’re doing here.

[01:01:32] Yeah. Cool. So yeah, when it, when it’s not as visual, it’s a little bit more amorphous. You can, you can kind of talk about things in a different way of just like, it is really, but it’s 

[01:01:41] diane: the thinking that goes into it. Right. It’s the design 

[01:01:43] Drew Hard: thinking 

[01:01:43] diane: part of Yeah. User experience or the product and the attraction and the others.

[01:01:49] Just kind of the lipstick on the pig sometimes. 

[01:01:52] Drew Hard: Yeah. The lipstick on the pig. Yeah. The, the underwear on outside of the clothes. Right. 

[01:01:57] diane: That’s one of my analogies. Yep. I’m glad that [01:02:00] was helpful for you in your, one of our favorites. Okay. So one, you had talked to me about, um, this one product and I thought, oh, I’m gonna ask everybody this.

[01:02:11] So what has been your favorite? Favorite project and or proudest achievement thus far as a product designer? 

[01:02:19] Drew Hard: Uh, definitely my favorite was, uh, a product I worked on called Word Force. Uh, and that’s an acronym for World Orbiting Reading [01:02:30] Defense Force. And that was an idea I came up with, uh, where it was a, it was again, one of those things where I just had my ear open and I, you know, heard people a couple desks over talk about a thing.

[01:02:43] And I was like, that’s a cool initiative I’d like to be a part of. And just talking to people about it and kind like this, this was for kids, 

[01:02:50] diane: right? So it was like a a So 

[01:02:52] Drew Hard: it was, so what the product was or is, and it’s still live today, is, um, it’s an early literacy program for [01:03:00] pre-K up to, you know, first, second grade-ish, like very early literacy where, uh, the initial product was.

[01:03:08] Um, it’s supposed to be like a, a, a website for teachers to give kids to in their classroom to go, like, maybe they, uh, finished up something ahead of time and they need to work on their reading. Teacher can sit them down, they can play these games and learn, you know, uh, phonetical, uh, linguistic skills, you know, in, in reading [01:03:30] and, and pronunciation.

[01:03:32] Uh, you know, learning like beginning sounds, end sounds, stuff like that. But it was always meant to be in a classroom environment where a teacher can then supplement and, and help, you know, it was never meant to be its own thing. Solo uhhuh. Yeah. And, and so my, my big, one of my big achievements there was, uh.

[01:03:54] Just getting one, getting to work on it and launch it, but getting to work with, [01:04:00] uh, all the people on it because it was just such a different experience. Like super visual. The whole thing is a cartoon. And in fact, the, one of the designers that I got to work with, uh, because we were working with a vendor at the time, ’cause we didn’t have the capabilities to build this in-house, but, um, come to find out, had worked on a cartoon that I used to love on Cartoon Network called bla and we’re still good friends to this day.

[01:04:25] Uh, but getting to work with him and all of the visuals kind of came from [01:04:30] him and me working together to, to make it work together. And it was successful enough to where, uh, truist Bank actually gave us a million dollars to revamp it and not only just revamp it, but make an app, um, a companion app for it so that kids on an iPad at home could do it because.

[01:04:52] They, uh, they felt so strongly in the product that the million dollar injection was to then take it from an [01:05:00] in-school supplemental experience to now they want it to be something that teach, uh, parents can give to their kids and it gives them enough education on, on its own to, to take and run with it.

[01:05:13] And so that was an incredible experience because not only did it mean that we get to go back and fix a lot of the games that we worked on, because some of them were not, not good for children, adults had troubles with them. So working with that, but I actually got to fly [01:05:30] out to LA like three times to actually direct shoots where, you know, we had like a very Sesame Street style set up where we had these teachers that were like talking through and I had to like, storyboard out all these things of, of what they needed to be saying and doing.

[01:05:46] Then working with an animation studio to bring in the characters and have them interact with the people. It was just a really, really, really cool experience and, and getting to work with everybody on it was just incredible and 

[01:05:58] diane: that’s awesome. [01:06:00] 

[01:06:00] Drew Hard: I’ve been chasing that ever since. So 

[01:06:02] diane: it seems like that that’s like a, I can see a direct correlation where that advertising background comes in.

[01:06:08] Mm-Hmm. Because a lot of times you have to be not just a static designer, you have to have, um, the ability to start thinking in motion or thinking in a story, a longer story. And I think you’ve been able to do that. Super successful. Alright, so last question, drew, and then I’m gonna share how people can get in touch with you.

[01:06:26] Yeah. What is next for you? Do you have a big dream? So you kind of just mentioned that [01:06:30] you’re always chasing that, uh, word force. Yeah. Kind of type of project or a company. Mm-Hmm. Um, do you have a big dream of a company or type of project that you would like to work on? 

[01:06:41] Drew Hard: Um, you know, that’s definitely something I’m still figuring out.

[01:06:44] Uh, but definitely like want to get in back into ed tech personally. Mm. And it’s specifically like kids, ed tech I, um, was just looking at, because I have a 10-year-old and a five-year old, and so they’re in elementary [01:07:00] school right now, and I get to see a lot of the stuff that they interact with. And so I’ve been reaching out to companies like, uh, like, um, BrainPOP, you know, to work with them because like their product is really fun and good, but it’s one that, you know, could use a revamp.

[01:07:19] And, and I would love to be that person to come in and, and work on that with them. Uh, and actually come to find out that, uh, the company that owns the majority share of [01:07:30] Lego also owns BrainPOP. So I. In my mind, I’d be like, oh, it’d be kinda like I’m working with Lego. That’d be, yeah. You know, um, well you’ve been very 

[01:07:38] diane: clear on, you have, uh, ten five and now you’re about to have another.

[01:07:42] Right. 30. So you 30, you’re a five year, five year blocks. Five that, yep, 

[01:07:45] Drew Hard: yep, yep. Very regimented kid. Yes. And, and they, uh, my first born came about when I was 30, so, you know, very, very solid number system there. ’cause I’m gonna be 40 this year and he’s 10. He’s five. [01:08:00] That’s awesome. Yeah. No, just always, always looking for, I, I just want to do interesting things mostly.

[01:08:06] Uh, and I’m just thankfully in a position, you know, where, uh, I have enough experience under my belt and, and doing the things that, like, I can try to push for more of those types of things that are just more experiential and bigger rather than having to work on like, you know, should this button look or the logistics 

[01:08:27] diane: part on the shipping company.

[01:08:28] Right, right, 

[01:08:29] Drew Hard: right. [01:08:30] Yeah. 

[01:08:31] diane: Well Drew, exactly. Thank you so much. I want everybody to be able to, um, contact you or reach out and your website, your last name is hard, which I always thought was awesome ’cause your name was Drew Hard and I always thought, oh my gosh, you should push really hard and break, you know, penciled or something in interviews that would be so funny.

[01:08:52] But, um, so hard click. C-L-I-C-K just like normal. Yep. And, um, and then on LinkedIn, uh, [01:09:00] drew Hart. So you go to LinkedIn, D-R-E-W-H-A-R-D. So super easy. I can’t believe you got that easy LinkedIn. 

[01:09:09] Drew Hard: I was very early on that. Uh, yes. Not a lot of that way to go, but, 

[01:09:14] diane: but that’s the best way people can get in touch with you and if they have questions or they just, uh, wanna hire you for an ed tech job probably, right?

[01:09:23] Yeah, 

[01:09:23] Drew Hard: absolutely. Yeah. 

[01:09:24] diane: But I appreciate it. I love that you’ve done so well and that you have done [01:09:30] some really interesting things from this meager little, um, uh, I think we have a great school, but we have a, you know, small little mighty department. Right. Um, but that you’ve taken what we taught you and you’ve just gone and done so many great things and Mm-Hmm.

[01:09:46] I just, I love that. So I’m super proud of you and whenever you’re back in town, holler and I’ll take you to lunch. Yeah. 

[01:09:54] Drew Hard: Thanks for having me. It’s definitely, you know, reliving everything. It, it makes me realize like, oh, I [01:10:00] have done a lot. It’s kind of crazy, you know? ’cause when I just, I’m looking for stuff, I don’t really think about it in those terms.

[01:10:07] So it’s been really enjoy, enjoyable. 

[01:10:10] diane: Yeah. You don’t, we don’t realize how fast time goes. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But it’s also, it’s, it’s interesting to you to hear you say, you know, I mean, you’ve really worked in, uh, the financial sector, you’ve worked in the education and it’s like, okay, you’ve, you tried and then you find what you’re more, you more gravitate [01:10:30] towards.

[01:10:30] And I see that like you have a No, 

[01:10:31] Drew Hard: definitely, yeah. 

[01:10:32] diane: Um, that personality of, and you have great energy and so I totally see how that would be like. Um, an awesome place for you where they could use your soft skills. You also are very empathetic where you can think about the user and you wanna make it easier for them.

[01:10:49] So I think empathy is one of your, uh, superpowers. Right. But, but I think that, um, sometimes we don’t know what we would like or what we don’t like until we try Yeah. [01:11:00] In that. And so sometimes it’s good to take a position that is for somebody who’s thinking about it maybe. Mm-Hmm. The next position. Like when I asked you would you ever go to startups, you know?

[01:11:11] Yeah. If you had a bad experience with one, would you go Mm-Hmm. And you said, yes. You know, you know that they’re different and I think that’s great. So I will never eat mushroom skin. I mean, not that I’ve ate mushrooms, like for drugs. Not that kind of mushroom. I just don’t like mushrooms. I’ve tried them.

[01:11:26] Yeah. I don’t like the texture. Yeah. Um, anyway, that was a [01:11:30] random, weird. Thing. Anyway, but Drew, thank you everybody. Uh, check his website out hard, click and um, connect with him on LinkedIn at Drew Hard. All right. Yeah, absolutely. I’m thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you. And I’m gonna hit [01:12:00] stop.