Ep#40: How Lessons from Design School Helped Me Drive Results in the Corporate World

In this episode, Dr. Dani shares her nontraditional career path from aspiring law student to graphic designer to leading corporate transformations. A two-time university dropout, Dani discovered design while on the path to law school, which led her to attend design school and hone her passion for designing solutions. She explains how the lessons from design school became the foundation for driving impactful results in the corporate world.

In this episode, you will
• discover how design principles can drive business outcomes 
• learn how embracing constraints leads to better problem-solving 
• understand why empathy and curiosity are key to unlocking solutions 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr Dani: Hey Peter! 

[00:00:00] Peter: Hello Dani, how are you? 

[00:00:02] Dr Dani: I'm good, how are you? 

[00:00:04] Peter: I'm very well, thank you, yes. And good to be here again. 

[00:00:07] Dr Dani: Yes. Another day of recording. What are we talking about today? 

[00:00:12] Peter: Today, Dani, we've got a bit of a different episode bringing to the surface this question of how lessons from design school can be applied to, did we say real life?

[00:00:25] Peter: Whoa.

[00:00:26] Peter: I 

[00:00:27] Dr Dani: think they're applicable to real life, definitely. But my expertise,, is more in how they're used in the corporate world. In the corporate world, 

[00:00:38] Peter: okay. How does, how lessons from design school can be used to good effect in the corporate world? So that's our conversation. And listen, it's slightly different if you've listened to a few episodes, you might have picked up on the fact that Dani did actually go to design school.

[00:00:52] Peter: So we're going to get a chance to hear about some of her story and some some lessons she learned and yeah we'll have a bit of a conversation about that.

[00:00:59] Dr Dani: [00:01:00] Yes. We are curiously experimenting on the podcast. 

[00:01:04] Peter: Yeah. At some point the tables will be turned and Dani will get to interview me about something.

[00:01:10] Peter: Yes. 

[00:01:10] Dr Dani: I've already started planning that one. So stay tuned listeners. 

[00:01:14] Peter: So Dani, welcome to the podcast, the the design thinker podcast. Great to have you here. And yeah I heard when I was doing research for this episode I find out that you went to a design school tell us a little bit about that.

[00:01:26] Dr Dani: Here's another fun fact for you. I am actually a two time university dropout. 

[00:01:33] Peter: Oh, wow. Okay. 

[00:01:35] Dr Dani: So to go from that to a PhD is a long journey. Which is why I always say, in life, you just never know what can happen. So what happened is, I left high school and I went directly into university as you do, and.

[00:01:53] Dr Dani: I was a bit lost. I knew that I wanted to go to law [00:02:00] school. That was my plan. You don't just go to law school, in the US, at least you go to a bachelor's program and then you apply to law school to get a law degree. So the normal education for that path,

[00:02:15] Dr Dani: business and people do history, none of which really interested me. And I was just hopping around and I've, I'm like, this is just such a waste of time. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I don't know how these things are going to get me to law school. And then do I even want to go to law school?

[00:02:33] Dr Dani: The questioning of life and anyway. dropped out twice and I didn't even understand or know that design school was a thing. I was actually into, so I was working this temp job and I met this other person and she was telling me what she was studying to do. And I'm like, that sounds really cool.

[00:02:56] Dr Dani: And she said you can go to any university and audit a class. Why don't you [00:03:00] come Audit our class and I did and I was just mesmerized design school was very hands on. It was smaller classes. It was, it wasn't the normal lecture format. It was really like you're doing something and this talking, this learning, this doing.

[00:03:20] Dr Dani: And I just this is the place for me. What do I have to do to go to design school? 

[00:03:24] Dr Dani: And because that was never my plan. I didn't have a portfolio. I can draw, but not definitely not a strong artist by any means. 

. 

[00:03:33] Dr Dani: So I had to pull all of this stuff together pretty quickly and then, get my application together and then, I think universities are the same kind of everywhere like that. You can't just it's not open enrollment, right? You've got to get your application in when they're open So rush to do that and that was my entry into design school Not the plan and then I thought okay now the plan is going to be i'm going to go be a designer I'm going to do that [00:04:00] for a few years And then where i'm gonna go is i'm going to go to law school and i'm going to do Copyright and trademark type of law.

[00:04:08] Peter: Okay, hold on. So I need to pause there. So you started an undergrad degree with the aim of going to law school. You weren't enjoying it. Nothing was grabbing your attention. You were sitting in lectures, listening to people tell you stuff. Then you discovered design school through a temp job colleague. and realized how it was your thing.

[00:04:34] Peter: Then you went to all the effort of putting together a portfolio, from the different things you'd done, but not with the intention of going to design school. Got to design school, and then this is where my just checking in, doing my best to be a non judgmental interviewer, then you still wanted to go to law school after that?

[00:04:53] Peter: That was still your goal? 

[00:04:55] Dr Dani: It was still my goal. Going to law school was something [00:05:00] that I had determined I was going to do since I was very young. 

[00:05:04] Peter: Okay. Okay. 

[00:05:05] Dr Dani: My brain in lots of ways was designed to be a lawyer. Like I was the kid that, everything for me as a child was a negotiation.

[00:05:14] Dr Dani: Hey, I'll do this, but then I need to have this. 

[00:05:17] Peter: Okay. 

[00:05:18] Dr Dani: So I was that kid. Okay. I also just really loved, argument, not fighting argument, but like presenting a case like, 

[00:05:28] Dr Dani: I want to be able to go do these things. And here is why that whole 

[00:05:31] Peter: construct 

[00:05:32] Dr Dani: of a debate and argument, logical.

[00:05:35] Dr Dani: Yeah. 

[00:05:36] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:05:37] Dr Dani: And I also loved words and reading and books and very fascinated with the idea of you take these words and it, you organize them in a certain way and it can be, so I had that very, which is why law school really, being a lawyer appealed to me because I saw it as you use text and words, existing text and words to create arguments to get your way.[00:06:00] 

[00:06:00] Dr Dani: That was. That was my thinking, 

[00:06:02] Peter: and I want to do that. Okay. 

[00:06:05] Dr Dani: For the record, I am not a lawyer. 

[00:06:07] Peter: You're not a lawyer. Okay. For the record, your honor. 

[00:06:09] Dr Dani: Okay. So I was talking to somebody the other day, they're like you have so many degrees. I assumed it was one. 

[00:06:17] Peter: Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you for that.

[00:06:21] Peter: That's that's helpful and interesting. So we get, we're now understanding where you were coming from at that point, and also why you are still headed to where you were headed to at that point. So design school, and then the goal is still to do that, then get to law school, and then incorporate both, which I think is really interesting.

[00:06:38] Peter: Thanks to oneself. I wonder if we can find a lawyer who uses design thinking to talk to back on track. Dani. Okay. So design school, are we there? You get to design school or you're not quite a design school. Bring us back into the story. 

[00:06:54] Dr Dani: Yeah. So I applied, got in and [00:07:00] then it was just waiting for the, for the school year to start on the term to start and up at design school.

[00:07:08] Dr Dani: And It's probably the first time in my life where I felt like school had a purpose. 

[00:07:14] Peter: I 

[00:07:14] Dr Dani: was always a good student, but I never, I remember in high school being in geometry class and wondering why. 

[00:07:25] Peter: Okay. 

[00:07:26] Dr Dani: Or, being in some class and just wondering why. Yeah, what is the point? The reason that design school appealed to me is that fundamentally in design school, you're learning how to solve problems, you're learning how to make the thing that alleviates a problem.

[00:07:46] Dr Dani: In my specific case, I was doing graphic design. So that includes everything from print ads, layouts for magazines and books, book covers, logos, [00:08:00] anything visual that you can you can think about that is in a 2d format. 

[00:08:05] Peter: It's 

[00:08:06] Dr Dani: also interesting at the time that I was starting design school is also, you could go down the track of digital, which was websites at the time.

[00:08:16] Dr Dani: Which I had a real fascination with websites weren't back then what they are today, but they were pretty prevalent even at that point. 

[00:08:23] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:08:24] Dr Dani: Where am I going with this? 

[00:08:27] Peter: So you're specifically graphic design. Yes. It's what you what you were studying. So 

[00:08:32] Dr Dani: studying graphic design and taking both print and web.

[00:08:38] Dr Dani: courses. I was doing some animation work. One of the things I really liked is that you were playing in a lot of different mediums like play animation. You had to do some basic art classes and sculpting. And so you were really getting a very, you were really thinking about how to create things in [00:09:00] various mediums.

[00:09:01] Dr Dani: And also thinking about if this is the thing I want to create, then what are the things I need to use? What is the path? What is the process I need to use? So you're taking a lot of different classes. And on top of that, you had to do some English classes and math courses and I even had to take accounting.

[00:09:21] Dr Dani: You'd still have to do your, what we call core Again, this is from a U. S. context, like in the U. S., whatever degree you do, there's some core classes that you have to do, regardless of what your major is. So I still had to do all of those. 

[00:09:35] Peter: Yeah, like fundamental, I don't know, building blocks or, things that the education systems decided that you must.

[00:09:43] Peter: You must at least try to learn

[00:09:46] Dr Dani: The benefit that I also had is by the time I got to design school, I had faffed around so much trying to figure out what degree I was going to get. I'd taken a lot of classes. They're like let's see how much of these classes we can hobble [00:10:00] together to get your basic, like I had taken a bunch of biology classes for some reason.

[00:10:06] Dr Dani: So I had all, I had this, mixed bag of classes that if you looked at, it just looked like I was Russian roulette, of course. 

[00:10:16] Peter: Okay.

[00:10:16] Peter: I'm trying to find a, I'm trying to find a gentler, kinder metaphor than Russian roulette. But hopefully you didn't feel like the gun was going to have the bullet in one of those chambers.

[00:10:29] Dr Dani: Here's a little life lesson, though, because, when I was going through this figuring out where am I going to go?

[00:10:34] Dr Dani: People kept telling me, just pick something and stick to it. 

[00:10:38] Peter: Okay. 

[00:10:40] Dr Dani: And I know they meant well, because, that would follow up with you're smart, you're clever, you'll figure it out. Just pick something, get a degree, go out in the world and do something. 

[00:10:48] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:10:49] Dr Dani: Which It's not terrible advice, but it wasn't in my situation.

[00:10:56] Dr Dani: It wasn't useful. , the thing that [00:11:00] kept me in this spiral was what if I pick the wrong thing and then I have to spend the rest of my life doing something that I hate. 

[00:11:12] Peter: Yeah, I can relate very strongly to that. I'm sure a lot of the people can actually, yeah. So you, it is well intended advice to just pick something and go with it.

[00:11:22] Peter: I can see where people are coming from and maybe that's what they did and they they they got something out of that. But you chose to listen to, but not not actually enact that, that particular piece of advice by the sounds of it. Yeah, 

[00:11:35] Dr Dani: I just figured I'm going to keep trying things. The other life lesson here is,, I was always a good student.

[00:11:43] Dr Dani: I was an A student and I remember coming to this moment where I'm going to drop out of university. That was like a big scary thing. And. that I didn't, no one supported that decision. 

[00:11:58] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:11:59] Dr Dani: [00:12:00] But I had to back myself. And the life lesson there is that, you're probably in a good position to know who you are more than any other person.

[00:12:09] Dr Dani: And it's okay to take a step back to go forward. I think had, I just kept going down that path of, what I'm at university, I can't drop out. I'm going to take a bunch of classes and just pick something and get this over with. I don't know what value that would have added to my life.

[00:12:26] Dr Dani: Overall. 

[00:12:27] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:12:28] Dr Dani: So the lesson there is it's okay to drop out. Yeah. But don't drop out and, become a couch surfer. Drop out to figure out what to do. 

[00:12:37] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Drop out to with a purpose. Yeah. Because I think that going back to the advice you were given about just, do pick something and do it.

[00:12:45] Peter: I think that advice can be really useful because. Suppose getting having maybe where they were coming from was having a degree is going to help you or give you more [00:13:00] options than not having a degree potentially. And that definitely. Makes a lot of sense. But yeah, coming back to what you were saying, I think that's a great dropout for a reason or change direction, shall we say.

[00:13:09] Peter: 'cause it might not be university or college or anything. It's like change. It might be something to do with the job, but cha change direction for a reason. Have a purpose even if that purpose is to go right. What next? Okay I'm I'm itching to ask you a question actually about what was day one at design school like for you, because you've been through this journey and you're discovering things about education, yourself, the world, and you're picking up some lessons and then you obviously audited maybe one or two classes at design school and thought this is for me.

[00:13:41] Peter: a bit of a revelation by the signs of it, but what was, can you remember what day one was like when you turned up and then everybody else in your class is there at the same time? What do you remember from day one? 

[00:13:51] Dr Dani: I do remember that and one of the reasons I remember that is, so autumn is my absolute favorite time of the [00:14:00] year.

[00:14:00] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:14:00] Dr Dani: And on the Northern Hemisphere, autumn Is starts in September, right? . And in New York school also starts at that time of year. 

[00:14:09] Dr Dani: . 

[00:14:09] Dr Dani: And I just remember coming onto campus and just feeling autumn . Yeah. But in terms of class, one of the memorable moments, if you will, was, so we're all there, we're in class, we've got our shiny new Mac.

[00:14:25] Dr Dani: They weren't called MacBooks at the time. I think they were called PowerBooks at the time, but Apple laptops. We're all ready to go, and. the professor comes in and tells us to put them all away. And gives us this scraps of paper and just very crude things, looked like leftovers from a kindergarten craft project.

[00:14:54] Peter: The opposite of of Steve Jobs is a dream machine. In other words. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:14:59] Dr Dani: There's this [00:15:00] pile of what honestly looked like leftover craft supplies and asked to, we're asked to create something that represents why we're here. Or was it? No, it was we were asked to represent, to create something that represents who we are.

[00:15:19] Peter: Wow. 

[00:15:20] Dr Dani: So here we are just, and it was literally a pile of garbage. We're all in there sorting through this thinking what the bleep 

[00:15:31] Peter: Did you think it was a joke or a trick or something? You're looking right for the cameras 

[00:15:35] Dr Dani: I know am I being punked? Are we gonna be on MTV? Anyway We all go around and make this thing and then we've got to share what it is and what it means and how it represents us and the lesson at the end was You It's not about the tech.

[00:15:55] Dr Dani: It's about the process. And it's about using what you have to get to the outcome [00:16:00] you want. And I think that lesson applies in so many different ways. Because, in life and work, we talk about What we don't have, if I only had this, we could do this better if this, if that, and I saw this in organizations and I know you're going to guide this conversation to when I got to corporate, but we see that a lot, right?

[00:16:22] Dr Dani: We get so obsessed about the tech and we believe the tech is going to fix everything. But it doesn't and that was day one of design school, 

[00:16:31] Peter: the 

[00:16:32] Dr Dani: The tech will enable you to do some really cool things, but it's not going to make you a good designer.

[00:16:37] Peter: Nice.

[00:16:37] Peter: Can you remember what you made?

[00:16:38] Dr Dani: I don't remember what I made. I think I made something with the number eight. 

[00:16:44] Peter: Oh, okay. 

[00:16:46] Dr Dani: It's my favorite number. I love the symbolism of the number eight. If you turn it sideways, it's the infinity sign. 

[00:16:52] Peter: Yeah, 

[00:16:52] Dr Dani: I think I made something with the number eight that's what vaguely comes to.

[00:16:55] Dr Dani: I'm sure if I, I'm a chronic journalist. I'm sure if I go back and read my journal [00:17:00] from that time, I could figure it out. But,

[00:17:02] Peter: Oh, okay. So something to do with number 8, infinity. Nice. And that was day 1. So how long is design school in the States then, Dani? How long is your, so you'd arrived and how long did you spend there?

[00:17:14] Dr Dani: So generally a bachelor's degree in the US is four years. But because of my dropping out and, collection of classes, I was able to finish in three. Okay. 

[00:17:25] Peter: Okay, 

[00:17:26] Dr Dani: because by the time I got to that point, I only needed a few core classes, and then I could just focus on design 

[00:17:32] Peter: going on. And then I'm just helping us build a picture of your classmates.

[00:17:37] Peter: How many people are you on this journey with?

[00:17:39] Dr Dani: One of the decisions that I made after I dropped out of university the first time was I was going to be very deliberate about picking a small university because I learned that I learned better. In smaller environments where I could interact more with the professor and I could interact more [00:18:00] with my classmates.

[00:18:00] Dr Dani: That's just a better learning environment for me. 

[00:18:02] Peter: So 

[00:18:03] Dr Dani: these classes were, no more than 15 to 20 people. 

[00:18:08] Peter: Oh, wow. 

[00:18:09] Dr Dani: And, what, like a normal university lecture class could have, I don't know, 40 plus. 

[00:18:16] Peter: Oh, yeah. Yeah, at least. Okay, nice. So you're in a place with a small number of students.

[00:18:24] Peter: Nice. Three years. And then was every class like your like your first one where you're guess your assumptions are challenged or you're, what was the, yeah, what was the journey through design school and, or maybe, maybe you can tell us a bit about it and tell us some of the lessons you learned.

[00:18:43] Dr Dani: Wasn't an aha moment. 'cause that's just not real life. . But every class was very similar. You the other thing about design school is that, you're always presented with a challenge. And then the point of that class is you learn to navigate that challenge.

[00:18:59] Dr Dani: [00:19:00] And. you learn by doing. So there are some classes you do a lot of color theory, which is probably more lecture than hands on, but then you do make some things out of the color theory that you're learning. And ironically, Even though all of us that started design school spent a lot of money investing in these, brand new Mac laptops, we use them very, it wasn't until the end of something that you actually sat down at a computer and did it.

[00:19:40] Dr Dani: And I don't know how that's done today because it's been some years since I've been in design school. Yeah. 

[00:19:45] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:19:45] Dr Dani: But you were just learning with your hands and 

[00:19:48] Peter: you're 

[00:19:49] Dr Dani: learning and literally you're learning by doing, right? And we talk about this on our podcast a lot, you cannot learn something by reading about it.

[00:19:57] Dr Dani: We did do a lot of reading in science school, [00:20:00] but the reading was to inform what you were going to do and then you were going to go do it. And that's when the learning happened. 

[00:20:06] Peter: Yeah. Okay. It reminds me. That, that whole concept of not starting with this technology, it's, it reminds me of, it took me a while to, to learn that.

[00:20:15] Peter: A better way to say let's say I don't do these so much these days, but do you know, doing a PowerPoint presentation like the last 10% of the work is actually, you're better off spending the last 10% doing the slides. And the other 90% is everything that comes before that, like some research, some exploration.

[00:20:34] Peter: For me, it was posted, noting and sketching what the slides might actually be saying and then finally getting into the into the PowerPoint. Whereas. I know from a technology point of view that the technology is put together and constructed, marketed and sold and as though that's actually, the start with the technology, because it's got all the answers waiting for you in the form of templates, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:20:58] Peter: See [00:21:00] the. 

[00:21:01] Dr Dani: one of the first web design classes I took, the first half of that first class was sketching out layouts on paper and learning about, the positioning of things like, why is it that the top right corner is such valuable space?

[00:21:22] Dr Dani: Why? Why did we put something like this on the bottom and not the top? Or what, what does that header need to be? Once you've worked that out and then you sat down on the computer, getting the website done was really fast because you had worked out the mechanics of it.

[00:21:39] Peter: Like the top right, for example, or the bottom? Why is that? I'm asking a curiosity because I think again, coming back to the technology, a lot of, technology these days, like computer technology can give us some amazing shortcuts and help us save time, be more on the surface, at least efficient, not necessarily effective.

[00:21:58] Peter: What it can also do is [00:22:00] help us or I think it's unhelpful to take a shortcut, miss out the knowledge, if that makes sense. So we might be creating something, producing something for somebody else, but not truly understand why it's better than something else or why it works rather than why it doesn't.

[00:22:16] Peter: So I like, 

[00:22:17] Dr Dani: I think the better question to answer there. 

[00:22:21] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:22:21] Dr Dani: Is, and this goes back to understanding who you're creating for. So when we were learning about layouts, it wasn't about the layouts as we liked it. It was actually learning about when somebody sits down to look at a website, what are they doing?

[00:22:37] Dr Dani: What are they trying to accomplish? 

[00:22:38] Dr Dani: When you understand that then you could be very deliberate about. Okay. They're sitting down. They're looking at the science behind the top left corners.

[00:22:48] Dr Dani: It's just, they've done a lot of eye movement studies. That's just their prime real estate because it's a place that our eyes gravitate. Okay. 

[00:22:55] Peter: Yeah. Nice.

[00:22:56] Dr Dani: Again, it's not about that top left corner.

[00:22:58] Dr Dani: It's really about [00:23:00] understanding what is somebody trying to do and when they do that. And then you bring in the science to go right. We know that's a space that grabs the eye's attention. So what needs to go there? But you don't know what needs to go there unless you understand who the, who's the user of that website is.

[00:23:17] Dr Dani: So the format for learning in design school, at least in my experience was you do some reading, then you go do something with that reading. Then you show off what you've done. And then you reflect this is what I did and here's what happened. And then I had to do it again because I realized it was.

[00:23:37] Dr Dani: No, a hot mess. 

[00:23:40] Dr Dani: There's also this way of iterating. And that's design school way of showing your work. You have to show iterations of One of the early on one of the things that we were taught is assume the first thing you do is going to suck. 

[00:23:58] Peter: Yeah. [00:24:00] 

[00:24:00] Dr Dani: And that helps get a lot of anxiety out right this is going to be really bad, but I'm going to, I'm going to put pen to paper pencil to paper.

[00:24:10] Dr Dani: Whatever that medium and process is, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to accept that it's going to be bad, but I need to do it so I can make it better. 

[00:24:19] Peter: Love it. Was that was that 

[00:24:21] Dr Dani: another lesson? 

[00:24:22] Peter: Yeah yeah, or was, yeah, it sounds like a lesson, but was it difficult to learn? Or was it something?

[00:24:26] Peter: Yes. 

[00:24:28] Dr Dani: I found myself early on in design school, always asking for extensions because I can never get my first iteration done in a previous episode. We've talked about perfectionism and I refer to myself as a a recovering perfectionist. Cause I would sit there and obsess so much about the assignment that I actually just wouldn't get on with doing it.

[00:24:49] Dr Dani: I was told, no, I never got an extensions that turned something in. And as I went on, I learned actually the [00:25:00] first assignment, the first iteration, you're not really being graded on the quality of it. You're being graded on the process of it. 

[00:25:08] Peter: Right? 

[00:25:09] Dr Dani: How do you conceptualize the idea or conceive the idea and then evolve it over time?

[00:25:15] Dr Dani: Which is more valuable, if you could learn how to conceive an idea, conceptualize it, and then evolve it over time, that is more valuable than the idea just ruminating in your head. 

[00:25:30] Peter: Yeah,

[00:25:31] Peter: Yes, that's you're taking me back to our conversation about perfectionism. Nice.

[00:25:36] Peter: And also you're reminding me of a book I just started reading called The New Designer by Manuel Lima. And he quotes Paula Sher, who's a very famous graphic designer, early on. And it's something along the lines of you need to get bad in order to get good. And I guess, that's the whole point of the process and having non extendable deadlines and getting used to creating something that is just, it could be absolute rubbish to [00:26:00] begin with.

[00:26:00] Peter: But in the analogy, if you keep following the process, keep iterating, then actually that that will turn into gold potentially. 

[00:26:08] Dr Dani: And also to point out that keep iterating doesn't mean, because sometimes you have a crap idea and iterating on the crap idea isn't going to make it better. 

[00:26:18] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:26:18] Dr Dani: The iteration sometimes isn't improving the first idea.

[00:26:22] Dr Dani: It's actually going, I've iterated this enough that I think this is crap, but here's a different direction I could go. Sometimes the iteration is a different direction. Okay. 

[00:26:34] Peter: Yeah, 

[00:26:35] Dr Dani: You won't know that you need to go in a different direction until you have gotten to that point.

[00:26:40] Peter: Yeah, you can see the 

[00:26:41] Dr Dani: different direction. 

[00:26:42] Peter: Yeah, exactly. And maybe to bring another point to life. And this is going to turn to a long winded, potentially, and definitely loaded statement stroke question, but perhaps just to be clear. You spent four years or three, three to four years at design school on day one, and [00:27:00] in term one, in year one you're learning basically this process of you're learning to fail, you're learning to meet deadlines and essentially at the end of the fourth year, you're still doing the same thing.

[00:27:09] Peter: It's not like you've learned to create the best piece of work in that short amount of time by using that process. By, skipping through the iteration or going, you've not learned to create great design a great solution on the first attempt at the end of four years that I'm going to hear the question in there.

[00:27:25] Peter: Does that make sense? Yeah, 

[00:27:27] Dr Dani: it's not that you don't do this once. And then you're just a master at it, right? You do it over and over and over and over and over in every class, in every assignment, in every term, in every year. You just repeat the design 

[00:27:42] Peter: process. 

[00:27:43] Dr Dani: And that's how you build the muscle, 

[00:27:45] Dr Dani: and this is where and I'll talk about this in a little bit. This is where this idea of capability in the muscle building, because what happens is from first year to year last year, You're still doing the same thing. There [00:28:00] is no shortcut to iteration, but when you know how to do it, you get faster at it, you get cleverer at it and you don't fluff around, in the beginning putting up all these barriers.

[00:28:13] Dr Dani: being a perfectionist because you're like, that's a waste of time. I'm just going to get on with it and do it 

[00:28:19] Peter: and 

[00:28:20] Dr Dani: see how I go and figure it out as I go. So you get it. So that's so by the time you get to year four, your perfectionism is a bit. tired. 

[00:28:31] Peter: Yeah. It's been almost almost trained out of you.

[00:28:34] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:28:34] Dr Dani: Yeah. 

[00:28:35] Peter: Okay. 

[00:28:36] Dr Dani: You get more clever about it one of the things that stood out to me is all of my other schooling and all of my other education I was taught don't fail having the wrong answer is a bad thing.

[00:28:50] Dr Dani: That is something that's shameful. Never want to be in a position where you don't have the right answer. In design school, it's there's no right answer. [00:29:00] Assume you're going to fail. And it's this big, you're literally like, what the, 

[00:29:06] Peter: it's a very, 

[00:29:07] Dr Dani: It's a very mental yeah, it's very mentally mental gymnastics is the word that comes to mind because you're kind unlearn everything you've been taught about.

[00:29:20] Dr Dani: What it's like to be smart. Smart means you have all the right answers. Clever is having all the right answers. If you want to up in the world, you've got to have the right answers. But in design school, it's there's no right answer. And then, you're like what am I doing here?

[00:29:35] Dr Dani: What am I learning here? If there's no right answer, then how do I know if I'm learning? How do I know if I'm passing a class? 

[00:29:41] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine that was That was one of the kind of of the big challenges to design school, especially if you come from a a place of succeeding with logical things, with things, with specific answerable questions to then step into that world.

[00:29:58] Peter: Yeah, that must have been must have been [00:30:00] quite the journey to make sense of that and then start going, okay, now I get it. I'm going to now understand that I'm going to start learning in a different way and for a different reason. 

[00:30:09] Dr Dani: Year one, that was really hard.

[00:30:12] Dr Dani: You're getting feedback on your first couple of iterations and it sucks. And you're told it's going to suck 

[00:30:20] Peter: and it sounds like you're not getting, again, just to maybe dwell on a point or emphasize a point you're not, I think a misconception about design school and design full stop is that you're getting feedback and getting told it sucks because it literally sucks.

[00:30:35] Peter: It's not that it's because the, in the early days, at least your teachers are telling you it sucks because you haven't explored the process in the right way, you've jumped to a conclusion or you're trying to just show the perfect answer straight away, whereas that's not the best way to get to a great or maybe I'm tripping myself up with my own perfectionism.

[00:30:54] Peter: Over to you, you were there. Tell us about that. 

[00:30:57] Dr Dani: It was this idea that [00:31:00] You are not going to learn in design school by doing one iteration and then that one iteration path to learning comes from doing and then stepping back and going. 

[00:31:14] Peter: So 

[00:31:14] Dr Dani: what we would do in design school is let's say it's, you're sketching a logo you make some drafts.

[00:31:20] Dr Dani: And we have discussions, we show it to each other as classmates. We show it to our professor, you get feedback, you take that feedback, and then you do another version. And so you go through this a couple of times. So the path to success, as you're taught in design school, is that you don't make something good, By creating at one time, you make it good by continuously iterating on it.

[00:31:49] Dr Dani: So the process to learning. So when somebody gives you feedback and says, this is not good, it wasn't about it being good. It was about how do you make it better? 

[00:31:59] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:00] Yeah. Cause I 

[00:32:00] Dr Dani: don't know that anybody, in, in my whole design school. Process. No one actually said, this is crap.

[00:32:08] Dr Dani: What were you thinking? It was more, have you thought about this? How can we make sure, could this be this way or that way or, . And what you were being graded on is how are you evolving? The concept. . 

[00:32:21] Peter: . Nice. I like that. That the teacher as a coach almost that have you thought about not.

[00:32:26] Peter: You have not thought about, or this is wrong, or this is right. It's more invitational to continue to explore and it's like, all right, try not to be too jealous of your design school experience here, Dani, 

[00:32:42] Dr Dani: The irony about design school, and I just have to throw this in there.

[00:32:46] Dr Dani: When I told. Family and adults in my life that look, I've dropped out of school, but I think I know what I want to do now. I'm going to go to design school. It, I was told it was going to be a worthless degree. I'm going to be on the sidewalk drawing [00:33:00] portraits. And the irony is. That my design degree is what's made me the most successful in the corporate world.

[00:33:10] Peter: So 

[00:33:10] Dr Dani: As I've gone back and gotten other degrees, but I think in terms of ROI, that's probably the one that has had the best ROI. 

[00:33:20] Peter: Nice. That feels like that should be like the mic drop moment at the end of the broadcast, but actually it's a great segue into so yeah, tell us what are some of the lessons you learned at design school that are still completely applicable to the corporate world.

[00:33:37] Dr Dani: So my intention was never to work in the corporate world. So I remember I was going to be a designer and then I was going to go to law school and write and trade law. The, my first corporate gig was in banking and not in a million, billion years that I think that was going to be where I would end up.

[00:33:58] Dr Dani: Also doing the work that I thought I was [00:34:00] going to do. So if people don't know the story, basically I got recruited by a bank. They were going through a bunch of mergers and they were stuck. 

[00:34:08] Peter: This is straight out of design school, isn't it? You got recruited by a bank? 

[00:34:13] Dr Dani: No. Nothing's ever straightforward.

[00:34:16] Peter: Okay. Is it? Maybe before you answer it, is it important where you were between the design school and being recruited by the bank? 

[00:34:22] Dr Dani: I had been a designer for about five years before I got recruited by the bank. But I'd only been out of school for about a year and a half I started picking up design work while I was at university.

[00:34:35] Dr Dani: And part of that is because At that time, the need for websites was really big. And I was just in a good environment to pick up good freelancing work and lots of reasons. So anyway, I, if you add it all up, I probably was a designer for about four, maybe five years before I was recruited by a bank. And.

[00:34:58] Dr Dani: It was [00:35:00] like a very random call from a recruiter and basically this one bank was buying all these other businesses and they were trying to figure out how do we make this one company? And they were really stuck and some executive there. Decided what we need is somebody that has the visual skills to come in and map all these things out.

[00:35:20] Dr Dani: Now, keep in mind, this is before we had things like journey mapping and, post it notes. The only post it notes that were in offices at this time were the yellow ones. But this executive felt like if we had somebody that could visually map this out for us, and we start to see how these things don't connect, then maybe we can make some progress.

[00:35:45] Dr Dani: So this recruiter was out, they didn't really know what they were looking for, they found me, and I just, I didn't understand what they were asked. I knew what they were asking before, but I'm like, that's really not what a graphic designer does. But, me [00:36:00] being curious, I'm like, sure, I'll come do that.

[00:36:03] Dr Dani: So that's how I. That was my first entree into, and it's supposed to be a three month gig. And as I've been in banking was what, 13 years of my career. 

[00:36:15] Peter: Yeah. Wow. 

[00:36:16] Dr Dani: Be careful what you commit to because it changes. 

[00:36:21] Peter: It was one of those things, three months to 13 years.

[00:36:25] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:36:27] Dr Dani: When I arrived in the corporate world, I had no other skills, but my design skills, all I knew, that's not fair. I had other skills, but from a working world perspective, I was a designer and I was being asked to do something that I.

[00:36:46] Dr Dani: Didn't really know how to do. And I didn't understand banking. I didn't know. I really didn't know anything about that world. So the only thing I could rely on was what I learned in design school. And [00:37:00] it turns out. It worked. 

[00:37:04] Peter: Wow. Really? 

[00:37:06] Dr Dani: So one of the lessons that I learned that translated really well from design school to the business world is begin with the end in mind.

[00:37:18] Peter: Okay. 

[00:37:20] Dr Dani: When you sit down to design anything, you have to have a good understanding of who are you designing this for and what are they trying to do? And you don't design anything until you have that clarity and the reason for that is when you are solving a design problem or when you are solving any problem, you have choices and as you start making choices, the options get smaller and smaller, and that's how you get the solution, right? You start with lots of options, you make some choices, then the options reduce, and then as you keep going, but if you don't [00:38:00] understand the end game.

[00:38:02] Dr Dani: You don't know what choices to eliminate. So simple example of this is one of the assignments we had is we had to do this catalog with only two colors, and it had to do with budget. But if we did not understand that the end thing that we are going create and print could only be in two colors, we were going to spend a lot of time creating something that when we got to the end of it, the client's going to go this doesn't work.

[00:38:36] Dr Dani: What I compare this to is in the corporate world. And I think I shared this example before where I got pulled into this meeting, they were developing a learning app. I kept going, okay, what is this learning app thing meant to do? And they kept talking about the learning app and it turned out 

[00:38:54] Dr Dani: the problem they were trying to solve is that people weren't completing their compliance [00:39:00] training in time. They didn't have this clear picture of when we create this app, how is it actually going to help? So it turned out that the problem they were solving was different than the actual problem.

[00:39:16] Dr Dani: So in design school, lesson one, begin with the end in mind. Where are you trying to go with this? 

[00:39:20] Peter: Nice. Who's it for? What are they trying to do? 

[00:39:23] Dr Dani: Yes. 

[00:39:24] Peter: Nice. Okay. 

[00:39:26] Dr Dani: The other one I'll talk about is because I see this in organizations a lot. Assumptions are like Schrodinger's cat. That wasn't the lesson taught with us.

[00:39:39] Peter: Now you've really got my attention. 

[00:39:42] Peter: Are you sure? This sounds like a whole episode in itself, but go on. We'll do a sneak preview of it right now. Tell me Assumptions are like 

[00:39:52] Dr Dani: Schrodinger's cat. In design school, you always had to explain if something was an assumption or something was [00:40:00] something we knew because we've talked to users.

[00:40:02] Peter: Okay. 

[00:40:03] Dr Dani: What we were told is until. You have unpacked the assumption, it could be true or it could not be true, which means that your solution could work or could not work because you haven't validated the assumption. And so that's, and for those that aren't familiar, Schrodinger's cat is the whole thought experiment that you put a cat in a shoe box with a vial of poison and until you open the box, the cat is both dead and alive because you don't know.

[00:40:32] Dr Dani: Until you validate your assumptions, they're both true and not true. Which means that if you build something on assumption this, what you're building could or could not work.

[00:40:43] Dr Dani: And then the other lesson you also learn though, is that sometimes you do have to make some assumptions, right? There are times when it's appropriate to use assumptions, but you always have to validate those assumptions. And sometimes we make assumptions, but those assumptions are made [00:41:00] this facts behind it, there's data behind it.

[00:41:05] Dr Dani: So it minimizes the chances that. The cat is dead. 

[00:41:09] Peter: Yeah, maybe those sort of assumptions are like, being able to have a tiny little hole in the box or being able to nudge it a little bit to see if it it moves in response. Something along those lines. 

[00:41:22] Dr Dani: But we in the corporate world, I find that we limit ourselves so much based on assumptions, 

[00:41:30] Peter: yeah, 

[00:41:31] Dr Dani: can't do that because we haven't well, okay, or, we tried that 10 years ago, and it hasn't worked, it won't work again. We do these things, tend to take standard of practice to be all, end all and assume that other ways aren't possible. 

[00:41:45] Peter: Yeah.

[00:41:45] Dr Dani: Until we're proven otherwise, but we can actually, we don't have to wait for something to happen to prove us otherwise, we can actually go test those things. 

[00:41:52] Peter: Our brains they've evolved to make decisions quickly, and that means we generally are making decisions [00:42:00] based on assumptions a lot of the time.

[00:42:02] Peter: And in corporate life, the trap we fall into is not just slowing down to think and go, is this like you're saying, is this an assumption we're making that our brains are thinking they're helping ourselves by just having a shortcut, but actually, it's worth pausing to go is this shortcut, this assumption actually helping us or not.

[00:42:21] Peter: Thank you. And also, is it true or not? 

[00:42:25] Dr Dani: Not knowing is okay, not being curious is fatal. 

[00:42:30] Peter: Hold on. Not knowing is okay, not being curious is fatal. 

[00:42:36] Dr Dani: When you sit down to design something, there's a lot you don't know.

[00:42:41] Dr Dani: But the path to figuring that out, the path to knowing is curiosity. Curiosity. It's asking the questions. It's testing things out. It's seeing how it might work. One of the reasons in design school that in addition to learning how to do cool things and, fancy software that you learn [00:43:00] how to, the pile of scraps from craft projects is really important is that you can quickly pull together a model.

[00:43:09] Dr Dani: to go, okay, if this is what I'm thinking about doing, and I did it this way, how would it work? It's really being very hands on about thinking through things. And that takes curiosity.

[00:43:19] Peter: It's the active curiosity. So some people's mental model of curiosity may be Rodin's the thinker sculpture, literally a piece of stone that is in a thinking posture and is thinking for eternity.

[00:43:33] Peter: Maybe that's some people's idea of curiosity, but we're talking about here is actually not just having a question, but In one's mind that is unanswered by actually figuring out how do we find the answer to that question? And that's almost always meaning doing something in the world to sense and respond.

 The stark difference that I saw when I went into corporations is, in organizations when we don't know what to do, what we often do is we look [00:44:00] back. What's worked before? What else does everybody else 

[00:44:03] Peter: do? 

[00:44:03] Dr Dani: And those are all okay things to do. But in the context that we're operating in now, looking back at what's worked before is likely not going to work.

[00:44:15] Dr Dani: Even if you're going to look back for ideas, test them out, be curious to go actually in what situation this worked. But if we apply it here, is it going to work? But what happens is people will say, Oh, four years ago this happened and we did this and it worked, so let's just do that.

[00:44:34] Dr Dani: Yeah. And then three years down the line why is this still a problem? 

[00:44:37] Peter: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. So looking back is okay, but maybe being, bringing awareness to the fact that is okay, but potentially the purpose of looking back is to find out what did not work and not finding something that is going to work again.

[00:44:51] Peter: Right now there's a bunch of organizations around the world that are. Mandating people to go to the office five days a week because there's a perception that [00:45:00] previously worked. It's not necessarily the right answer to what's going to work from now going forward.

[00:45:06] Peter: Yeah, it's a good live example. Okay, so I've 

[00:45:09] Dr Dani: got two more. 

[00:45:10] Peter: Okay. Yeah. 

[00:45:12] Dr Dani: Empathy isn't fluff, it's everything.

[00:45:14] Dr Dani: There was this one assignment where we were asked to create something for somebody and we were given the description of what, it was for a nonprofit and we'd never met with them, never talked to them. And we all did something and presented it.

[00:45:29] Dr Dani: And then in that meeting, we actually learned. what they were looking for, who they were, what their needs were. And that's when it became very apparent that actually what we've created isn't going to work. We do this all the time in organizations. We create solutions and then we try to find people to use it and this goes back to begin with the end in mind You have to understand the people you're [00:46:00] creating for when we use the word empathy it's got this softness to it and we Have this view oh, it's a nice to have we'll do empathy if we but fundamentally to problem solving If you do not understand who you're solving the problem for You It is not going to work because you don't know what that problem feels like.

[00:46:18] Dr Dani: You don't know what it feels like to have a problem. Even if you do, even if you personally experience that problem, you are just one person. Your life experience is not going to be the same as the five other people that are experiencing that problem. So you don't have to talk to the whole world, but you have to make sure you're speaking to a variety of people.

[00:46:39] Dr Dani: Empathy in corporate terms is very misunderstood. It's actually about having a broad perspective and taking in these various views and being able to understand those views and bring them together to create something. 

[00:46:55] Peter: Yeah, nice. Empathy is everything. Yeah, [00:47:00] yes, love that. And especially like this kind of, it's almost a paradox, isn't it, that empathy is a, it's an intangible, it's a, an emotional thing and often, I guess in corporate world labeled as a soft skill, but it's actually And therefore, we can start to think of it as fluffy and, it's actually completely fundamental as a fundamental concrete building block to successful anything and successful organization.

[00:47:26] Dr Dani: Even a simple conversation. If you could understand the person across from you that you're having this conversation with, the outcome of that conversation will be a hundred times better.

[00:47:35] Peter: Love it. 

[00:47:36] Dr Dani: Okay. Final lesson. Not final, but the final one we'll cover in this episode. 

[00:47:42] Peter: Yeah. 

[00:47:42] Dr Dani: Embrace constraints.

[00:47:44] Dr Dani: They're everywhere. That is actually a direct quote I pulled from some of my notes from design school, by the way. 

[00:47:50] Peter: Oh yeah. 

[00:47:52] Dr Dani: Embrace constraints. They're everywhere. When I say that it's oh, yeah, that's true. But a lot of times we operate like [00:48:00] that's not the case, right?

[00:48:02] Dr Dani: Every assignment in design school had some crazy constraint whether it was a budget or you had to use a certain color You had to use a certain font that Was awful and ugly and you're like why? There was always a constraint or two or three or four and what you're taught is good design doesn't happen because There is a lack of constraints, good design or good solutions happen because you've figured out how to make something work within the constraints.

[00:48:36] Dr Dani: I was working in very large organizations that have been around forever and ever, and they don't have the flexibility Startup would I've worked in industries and financial services is a highly regulated industry. I had a lot of innovative roles and a lot of change type roles in those spaces and had to figure out [00:49:00] how are we going to bring in something cool like digital signature?

[00:49:04] Dr Dani: Into a banking environment where there's lots of regulations, a lot of legalities documents that are signed have legal implications, right? Those things aren't going away. So how do we bring in these types of technology into banking and work within those constraints? 

[00:49:23] Peter: Yeah nice. And I like, again, it's I think a lot of these lessons I guess to design in the kind of popular culture for some reason, people, I guess it's because we see the, we see like our experience of great design.

[00:49:40] Peter: Hides almost every lesson you've been talking about. We don't consciously realize that a great design of whatever kind that we're experiencing is as a result of the designers and everybody else actually embracing those constraints. Yeah, so yeah, I love that. I've been writing these down.

[00:49:55] Peter: So shy. It's a bit like one of these. Programs where I read things back to you, tell you all about your [00:50:00] life, but Dani's some of the careful wording. There's some of the lessons Dani learned at design school, which are applicable directly to working in organizations. First of all, begin with the end of mind.

[00:50:12] Peter: So who is this for? What are they trying to do? Secondly, assumptions are like Schrodinger's cat. And so we need to be. Continuously asking ourselves, is this an assumption or is it actual knowledge? And if it is an assumption, how do we turn it into knowledge? And number three, not knowing is okay, but not being curious is fatal of that.

[00:50:35] Peter: The path to all knowing is curiosity, and that's about active curiosity, doing something in the world to find answers to the questions that we have. Empathy is the fluff. Empathy is everything. And then finally, embracing constraints. They're everywhere.

[00:50:52] Dr Dani: That's it's really cool to hear them back and, when I was making the transition from the [00:51:00] design world to, to corporate world, those are the things that, people ask me how'd you do that? 

[00:51:07] Peter: Yeah, 

[00:51:08] Dr Dani: that's how I did it. 

[00:51:09] Peter: Nice. Love it Dani. 

[00:51:12] Dr Dani: That's the secret recipe. 

[00:51:14] Peter: There we go. So it's like one of these, you can read the secret recipe as it's written down to actually be the chef and make the dish.

[00:51:24] Peter: That's the real, that's the real art. I don't know how to wrap this up really, Dani, but I asked you the question about your first day at design school. I'm not sure if asking about your last day at design school is going to give us a nice kind of bookend to this to this conversation or not.

[00:51:42] Peter: Do you remember what your last day at design school was like? 

[00:51:46] Dr Dani: I do. So the last day of my design program, so basically you have to do this project where you design something and you bring it to life and then there's Art exhibit and people come. There's a paper [00:52:00] you write behind it, but the thing that you are displaying.

[00:52:03] Dr Dani: And so my project was this is when micro breweries were starting to become a thing, and I created a brand. And a whole brand concept for a microbrewery. And so I designed the bottles, the labels coasters, a whole ad campaign. A website layout and then, did all the color theory work behind it tried to bring the story of the microbrewery to life and visuals, and it's a really cool way to end because you're bringing together everything and all the professors that you've had along the way come.

[00:52:41] Dr Dani: People from the committee come to see it. And the paper that you write for it is about, it's like a tiny novel because you've got to, you've got to explain why you've made these choices and, 

[00:52:51] Dr Dani: And within your paper, you've got to show iterations. 

[00:52:54] Peter: Yeah. Okay. 

[00:52:55] Dr Dani: So that was that was the last day.

[00:52:58] Dr Dani: Nice, [00:53:00] that's 

[00:53:02] Peter: memorable, for me in particular, because it's beer related, I do like craft beer especially. Nice, what a way to finish up your design school journey, and did you go for a beer after? 

[00:53:16] Dr Dani: Now, I'm actually not a beer drinker, ironically.

[00:53:20] Peter: There we go, folks. You don't even have to be a user yourself to design great solutions. But I 

[00:53:26] Dr Dani: did talk to a lot of beer drinkers and I have a lot of pubs and I visited a lot of microbreweries to both learn the stories of the people making them, the customers, so that I could bring this to life. I guess a place to close this episode off is.

[00:53:46] Dr Dani: One, we started this with me saying my plan was to go to law school. I haven't gone to law school thing about life is you have to have a plan. You've got to have some direction, 

[00:53:55] Peter: but 

[00:53:55] Dr Dani: you also have to be a little bit curious and open [00:54:00] to the path changing because I wouldn't be today doing the work that I'm doing in organizations.

[00:54:05] Dr Dani: If when that recruiter called me and said, Hey, can you come do this? 

[00:54:09] Peter: Yeah. If 

[00:54:09] Dr Dani: it wasn't for me being curious in that one moment, I'd probably be in a very different place right now. 

[00:54:16] Peter: Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that's saying yes to certain things. A whole other episode on that, perhaps. Thank you, Dani. That was a really enriching conversation for me.

[00:54:28] Peter: I loved hearing those lessons you learned and how they apply to the apply to corporate world and, just maybe it's almost myth dispelling about what happens at design school and what you learn at design school and what the I'm sure there's lots of technical things that we didn't cover on graphic design that you learned as well, but the fundamentals that could be applied to all walks of life, some of them we covered there.

[00:54:55] Peter: So thank you so much for sharing part of your journey there. Really appreciate [00:55:00] it. And yeah, hope you got something from that listener. 

[00:55:04] Dr Dani: Hope you did too, and it wasn't just me. blabbering about but going down memory lane.

[00:55:09] Dr Dani: Thanks, Peter. This has been awesome. 

[00:55:11] Peter: Yeah. Thanks, Dani. That was great fun. I look forward to having the tables turned on me. 

[00:55:15] Dr Dani: Yes. And an episode coming soon. Coming soon. Bye now. 

[00:55:23] Peter: All right. Bye everyone. See you next time. Bye everyone. See you next 

time.