#28 Designing for User-Fudged Experiences: Insights from Mustafa Kurtuldu
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Hello friends and welcome back to the future of UX, the podcast where we explore the latest trends and ideas in user experience design. And in today's episode, I had the pleasure of talking to Mustafa Kutulgu, a staff product designer at Matter. During our conversation, Mustafa introduced us to the concept of user-fudged experiences, explaining what it means and how it can impact design decisions.

We also delved into the use of motion in design, discussing how it can be used intentionally to enhance the user experience. One of the highlights of the episode was Mustafa's insights into using AI in design workflows. He emphasized the importance of, of course, using AI intentionally and thoughtfully and shared some practical tips for incorporating it into our design process.

We also talked about the importance of testing and feedback and how these can be valuable tools for innovation. Mustafa shared his thoughts on what it means to be innovative and how designers can cultivate a mindset that fosters innovation. This episode is both inspiring and actionable with plenty of tangible takeaways for UX designers at all levels. So without further ado, let's dive into it. Enjoy.

Okay, Mustafa, first of all, thank you so much for your time and for being here. I'm super excited to have you in the podcast. It took quite a while for us to find the time, but nevertheless, I'm super happy that we made it. And yeah, to really dive into the episode, I would just love you to introduce yourself. Tell us a little about yourself. What are you doing? What's your background?

Yeah, absolutely. So, hi, my name's Christopher. I'm a product designer. I was working at Twitter when we spoke, but in the last February cull, about 200 of us got let go. So when we first met, I was working for Twitter, where I was the lead on design systems there on Horizon, Twitter's design system, which...

It's pretty much now defunct. Now the design team is like three people now at Twitter. So there for a year and a half. Prior to that, I was at Google for six and a bit years working on Chrome and other things there, web platform type stuff. And pretty much for 20 years, I've been working in the design industry, various iterations of designer from web designer, webmaster, UI designer, UX. And now the fashionable term, I suppose, is product designer.

Nice. A lot of experience. Went through a lot of different stages. Yeah, absolutely. So when you're thinking about the future, what are some topics that are exciting to you or where would you like to dive a little bit deeper into the next years?

Yes, I mean, I've always had this passion for designing tools for people. So the running theme of my career is building tools to help people do stuff. So when I was working on Chrome, it was where a platform thinks that developers could make super powerful websites with the tools that I would design in the browser. And obviously, I worked on some things on material design, like the web implementation of material design light.

and obviously working on Design Systems Horizon. So I've always liked this idea of building tools. And so the thing which obviously is interesting at the moment on the topic of the day is like AI. And I think there's an intrinsic fear of designers and everyone really that how this is going to replace us. Personally, I don't really have that much fear of it. I mean, I think AI for me is almost like the...

the printing press of our generation. Once upon a time, scribes would write things out themselves. And so when the printing press came along, everyone was terrified that this was going to ruin. But what it did was it made people who were scribes more valuable because it's like natural handmade custom. And then anything that needed to be like mass produced, printing press worked for that.

And the same thing happened when the Macintosh came on. A lot of the printers, when they saw that, were terrified. Our letter pressing and stuff like that is going to go away. This machine's going to automate it. In actual fact, it just made the process of creating things much faster. From a book that may have taken 10 years to produce by hand, now you could do in a few weeks by printing press. Now you can do it maybe in a day by an actual automated process. So I see AI pretty much the same sort of thing. What I think is quite interesting is chat GDP

I think is really fascinating. So at the moment, I've been working on a course through Maven. And so like, sometimes my brain goes like, you know, I want to say something, describe like a module. And so I say, look, I want to say this, but I want to emphasize blur, and then it will help

produce text, okay, cool. Then I can take that into Grammarly, edit it and get it so they still got my tone and voice, but make sure it emphasizes the right things in a much more concise fashion. I think when the design tools do that, I think it's going to be very powerful rather than it taking away. And sometimes the mundane things won't be necessary for designers to do.

I think AI is really interesting. It's like where private companies actually do it. So imagine if you were to open Disney Plus and say you have the premium films and then you say you're like almost like YouTube. So your kid goes, I want to see Elsa fight Simba from The Lion King.

Obviously, Disney could make the parameters so that it's safe for family, but it could generate the content because it has all of the models, everything. So you have user-generated content using AI based on some commands. So I think that becomes quite interesting. Private companies could do some interesting things rather than design me an app for food. Because seeing some of the examples, I don't really see anything particularly spectacular. It's just basically dribble stuff. But for a designer where things become really important,

is the thought process. And so in Munich last year, I gave a talk called User-Fudged Experiences, where I talk about how the practice of UX is not just what you do in Figma,

but rather how would you actually figure out what users want to do and that's where ai can't can predict certain things so i think like the metaverse theoretically was about you know it's like a farmer wants to know when where to plant their crops and the metaphors was like basically ai that would superimpose plant it here don't apply in there so maybe there's like some predictive stuff but to actually predict what people want based on um

very little data if you haven't really observed that becomes I think more where we as designers will probably best be focused on the tools will be automate things to create once we have an idea what people want um but the practice of you I think becomes much more fundamental super interesting I would I would definitely love to dive a little bit deeper into the into it but before I have

some kind of like a little um controversial question so this morning i uh i was on linkedin and i found a post about someone using some kind of like a plugin with ai that generates interfaces in figma so this is not galileo ai or all the other tools this was like right in figma so you could enter like write me a home screen for um i don't know

a music streaming app for example and then it created like four variants you could choose one and then adjust are you not scared that lines or other people are going to do the design themselves and think okay this that's actually much cheaper than asking a designer to do it yeah i mean i think i think there is uh the thing is i think there is a market for that

You know, when I was working at Google in 2018, they did a study, it was 2008, 2017, and they estimated there was like 18 million developers worldwide. And there was approximately a million UX designers worldwide. I can't remember what the way, but that was the estimate. And so it was assumed that we will never reach a point where there'll be enough designers and engineers to do stuff. And so I think there is a market for these generating things. It reminds me very similar to like where,

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as a web designer, the world was your oyster. You could charge whatever. But most people don't need an all singing, dancing website. And a matter of fact, things like Wix and these self-service tools are actually, you know, all like even a Facebook page. They do the job that is actually required from a usability standpoint.

And so I think it means that the jobs which designers will do are much more focused on like, okay, something that's meaningful and powerful. And also like, I think if there's like best practices that we know and are well established and well founded that apply across different verticals, like in health or like in e-commerce, whatever, is it really valuable for designers to be doing the same thing anyway? Like, isn't it easier if say,

I'm one of design experience, there's a baseline like what a settings page should look like, get the AI to generate the settings page, because based on the platform's UI guidelines, there isn't much you're going to do in terms of innovation there, realistically, that fits within this, you know, what people are used to. And so why not allow that? But when it comes to if you want to do something that's going to be meaningful, powerful, like AI is only going to parrot what it's already seen.

And so if it's a note-taking app, maybe that's okay. But if it's something much more sophisticated or interesting, you know, like AI couldn't have generated the iPhone because the iPhone didn't exist. And so I think if you want to do something innovative, that's where the interesting thing happens. And so I think, you know, I don't see a problem. I think it's basically an industry that will sit side by side. Because, you know, like we've had Fiverr for so long, where people can go and get,

designers from India who, because of the currency, is much cheaper, that didn't destroy the design industry in, say, Western Europe, for example. And as a matter of fact, things have increased rather than decreased. So I don't see it as a problem. I think if you look at it to enhance, then it becomes more interesting. And when it comes to UI design and the personality, that's down to the individual designer trying to create something new. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not afraid.

Yeah, I totally agree, actually. But I think a lot of people are maybe a little bit when they see, oh, interesting, AI does parts of my job, not everything, but some chunks of my workflow that I'm doing on a day-to-day basis. It can be scary. But what I'm wondering is also like how workflows will change then, right? And I think you're also referring to like,

that a little bit in the talk we already mentioned you know like the talk at the push conference yeah which I found super interesting because you really focused on the why on the question on the problem you also mentioned jobs to be done to really dive deep into problems maybe you can elaborate a little bit about um the whole concept you mentioned there yeah sure and also

why there's such an importance to understand it when it comes to AI, right? Because there is like, I think they're really going hand in hand, like the new workflows, not everyone is working in that kind of like process and having AI as some kind of like an assistant by your side.

Yeah, again, I think AI as the assistant makes more sense. And so it can generate stuff, but it might not necessarily know what the best type of graphic choice is. It might not be the best ergonomic thing. So it has an estimation. I think that's where knowing the discipline from the ground up becomes much more important. And anyway, it's like,

Okay, you say, like, what's the creative part in the process? It's the command you give it, right? And so the user fudged experience talk was about how do you get to what is it that you're supposed to design? And so the concept of user fudged experience is when you see users doing weird and wonderful things with your product that weren't intended. And so, like, email is often used to do very weird things that's not intended. So, for instance...

way back when people would use email as basically cloud storage before Google Cloud existed. And Google noticed that. It's like, why are people saving this? It's super funny. Yeah.

yeah i mean it's it's very common because email is so easy and accessible and it's quite malleable as a tool it's often used to do things that it's not designed for and so people would say if you use large attachments before like when you had zip disks and usb drives and whatnot and so then good dropbox the founders of dropbox which i had to speak about in the talk said we were sick and tired of doing this there must be a solution and so it's like

what are people actually doing? And so user-focused, how do you discover that? And so there's design sprint methodology, which I've taught how to run design sprints. I've run loads around the world. And also jobs to be done, which is how do you tease out what people are doing? And jobs to be done is like,

practice, mostly from the research perspective, but it's come from many different places. Like there's the Japanese technique of asking five questions. You know, it's like, why, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? And then you drill down to what people are trying to do. So the very cliche example given there is like,

someone goes to a store and say i need a four inch quarter drill say why because i need to drill a hole why because i want to put a light fixture why because my room is quite dark why because when i read at night i need to be able to actually see okay so the job you're hiring the tool is the drill then really what you're trying to do is read so okay instead of damaging your wall how about i sell you a light that you can affix really easily or something that's portable because that's the tool that someone's actually trying to

that they need, but they're hiring, in inverted commas, the drill piece to actually get to that point. And so uncovering that, which is usually ethnographic studies, user interviews,

is pretty much what the Jobs to be Done framework was all about. And there's like a free book that you can download online that goes through all of the different research methods of how you get to the answer. And so that's why I think the fundamentals of product design becomes much more important because you can't do that within AI. You have to observe people and ask what they're trying to accomplish.

And there's lots of examples like the problem of people wanting to have like portable music with them. You look at the tools over time, it's like being the record player, then radio, then Walkman and then Sony Minidisc and then MP3 players. And now it's Spotify.

And all these things are, you wouldn't consider them necessarily competitive products, but in the jobs to be done framework, they are. Because people are hiring each one of these products to do a specific thing. And so once you start looking at product design from that perspective, AI becomes the assistant to help you get there. So then when you realize what people try and do, it's okay.

AI generate this thing that helps users do blah, then that can be a starting point, like a sketch. Or like when I used to do some advertising stuff early on in my career, we'd create mood boards as a starting point to get the idea. And that's still in design systems, that's still a common thing when you're building it for the first time. You want to just open and be as divergent as possible of your ideas. And AI can help that. That's just another utility. It's like having a library in the palm of your hand of all the things that it's looked at.

The downside is, I think with AI, it's still limited to what it has access to. And so if you're a designer in Japan, the AI model is built on assumptions from Western examples, presumably. And so there's going to be a bias. And so even going with what the AI generate may actually not be that good for you as a designer because it might not fit the market. And that's why you still need to understand your audience and still need to observe them.

and keep prodding them. And that's when all of the research techniques and discovery become far more important. And so like in the talk, user-fudged experience, I basically go through lots of examples and there's like, okay, what does it mean to be UX? How do people understand an object? And so there's like affordance, instruction, and feedback.

Fordham's where people can actually see a thing and say, all right, this thing can be engaged with there. It's a mouse. So it fits in the palm of my hand or if it's a doorway, they go, okay, I need to walk through this or it's eye level. I have to look in this direction. Then you have the instruction where something is telling you how to use it, a button, a sign, a symbol, an icon, and then the feedback, which is, okay, it's being used. And generally speaking, that's kind of the process of a user experience with products, which are successful.

But these things in AI is not going to generate any UI. It's not going to think about the affordance, the instruction feedback. Coincidentally, it might because it's mimicking what it's been fed, but it's not thinking about meaningfully what affordance is actually mean. And so that's why I don't worry about it at all. And also, I think product design is much more interesting when you're discovering stuff.

Sorry, my chair's squeaking. So I'll say that again. Product design is much more interesting when you're discovering stuff. Just like generating the same UI. Unless you're building templates for WordPress.com, which is fine if that's what you enjoy. Maybe AI even helps you even better because you can generate more, much more quickly. I guess it depends on what you do. I think product design is much more interesting in the discovery phase. It gets boring when you just, you know, unless you're an illustrator, in which case,

you're trying to get a style. But then if AI is generating these wireframes, then you can stylize them, right? Yeah, exactly. Or prepare different variations that you can present to a client. He gives you feedback. You choose one easily, and then you can focus on the creative work. Yeah, absolutely. Right? There's so many ways to use it. Or use it to generate mood boards. Is this the sort of thing you're looking for? Yes. And if it is, then

You're still charging them, but doing less work. And then you can, like, when I worked at a company called Bizarre Voice, they're like ratings and reviews. It's a software service like Amazon. Apple uses them and a bunch of e-commerce sites. So just, you know, and one of the art directors there said, look, you've only got a limited amount of time to design these new styles or a rating system. Pick one thing that you want to focus on and make that exceptional. And everything else can just be standardized. And I think in that

space, the UI would be very standard. And then you pick maybe it's the logo, the icon, maybe it's a transition or motion. There's something delightful about it. You make that so custom and so unique. And that, I think, becomes more interesting. What would you recommend young designers especially or mid-level designers for the future if they want to learn some new skills, focus on some new techniques to be successful in the future?

what do you think will be more important? I mean, you mentioned a few, but maybe you can summarize your top things you would recommend. I think make sure that you have the fundamentals of design. And obviously that depends on the country you're living in because some things are slightly different. But generally speaking, like affordance, instruction, feedback is like universal across the world. And then I think figuring out a process that works for you. And so the process I've been developing for the last two and a half years that

in practice, it was like the design sprint in Figma. And I do, especially during COVID when I had like, you know, all remote. So I'm going to release a template soon. I've been procrastinating for the last couple of weeks, but I've got a baseline thing where going through these steps,

has solved every problem I need to, you know, understanding the problem, coming out with design, doing usability testing, it works. So developing a process for you that works for you, I think is important. And so that means looking at innovation works like workshops, whether it's Luma or design sprints or whatever works for you. I think because you need to go through the process of not looking at a blank sheet of paper in Figma or frame, but actually drawing, thinking about it, collaborating. I think that's where the most amazing thing happens.

Like when we did a design sprint at Twitter, just going through user experience journeys with the engineers and discovering all of these weird quirks in the app that I could never have learned had we not gone through this. So coming up with a scenario, I as a user wants to save a draft to a reply that's witty. It's OK. How do I do that? And you go through all of the steps and realize, my god, this is quite complicated. It's not as simple as--

and so like anything that involves that i think is really really cool as well and then reading about it you know there's a lot of design books out there i think me going to meet ups if you can going to um conferences i know some more expensive if you can i think being around and having those conversations seeing what other people are doing is a great opportunity to learn

um and yeah I think so basically trying to make sure you understand the fundamental design from color psychology to typography to ergonomics and whatnot looking at developing your own process so there are plenty of design Sprint templates out there or whatever design workshops that you want to do um and then like practicing those things together because I think designer as a facilitator of product becomes much more important at this point and then once you have

the thing that you're definitely, you know what the problem you're trying to solve, then you can put it into AI and see what comes out. It might not be as good as you thought, but you can still sketch side by side. And so, yes, user perception, understanding how people think. Again, ergonomics. In the design talk I gave at the Push conference, I talk about how the human eye works and how 3-3 vision works because it's to help us protect us from predators.

from way back when. So our ancestors who survived could sense something moving in a bush and so ready to run because it could be like a lion or other predator. But we still have that after thousands of years. And that affects how our eyes react to motion. So having really distractive motion is bad because of the periphery of our eyes work will be drawn to it. But that also means if you have intentional motion,

understanding those things and really looking to how the human body works, you know, like how ergonomics really makes the stuff you do design very intentional. And I think AI still will have a baseline standard, but it won't have the whole answer.

yeah that was quite a long answer no cool but yes you have to tell me to shut up if they keep talking no i think it's fun it's it's totally um fine and super interesting i mean all the things you mentioned are really helpful i think for designers to focus on it and and this was also a part of your talk that i really and enjoy where you mentioned

all the human instincts that are still in us. And I remember one example that you showed, which was pretty interesting. I think it was from Twitter. I don't remember it. I think it was something like you could add something to a list and the user didn't understand that it was added, so they clicked on it again. Oh, yes. So...

Yeah, so basically Google, when they were doing Google Flights, the way the UI worked is when you added something to a flight in the bottom part of the screen. So say if you want to do a comparison of holidays and whatnot, you want to go to hotels, you add a hotel and then it appear in this bottom sort of like thumbnail.

But it was so instant that a user wouldn't realize if it had been added. So they would click the button again, then remove it, and then they would press it again. So what Google did was when a user taps on it, a really exaggerated animation where you see like a thumbnail drop from midway to the screen to the bottom. Really exaggerated. But the whole point is this feedback that you say, the thing that you've tapped, we've saved it, and it's here in this repository. And so again, that's motion used intentionally in a positive way.

And so you can do that. I mean, on the web, it becomes a bit complex because of performance. But now there's a lot of new transition APIs which have been released-- W3C, Chrome, and the rest of the browsers-- which make these beautiful transitions possible on the web. And so even now, that's not going to be, in the next few years, too much of a severe problem where you can do that stuff in web design. And so yeah.

It becomes interesting from that point where you're moving away from decorative stuff and more to intentional. But then there's a pendulum, right? And I think design becomes very political from this point of view where you have

People believe like postmodernists where everything should be pure functional. And then you have the sort of more spiritualist view, like Lewis Kahn, the architect, an American architect who like he looked at, say, like churches has been like functionally not necessarily the most functional, like a stained glass window is not functional. But the beauty and the decoration has an intent to teach a person about, say, Christianity, because most people were denied to read and write. And so you almost have like this complete, you know,

diverse opposing views and this pendulum always over time swings from one extreme to the other. So then for me it becomes more theoretical. Is there a place in the middle where something can be functional but also spiritual so it has a meaning but is usable in a meaningful way as well?

I think in one respect, AI is on the postmodernistic extreme or functional. But then we as the human being, we have to be the anchor to make sure that there has to be some kind of deep meaning of why this is, you know, what's the concept? What's the message that we're trying to share? Like even in a logo, like logos often the place where that happens the most. What's the story? I think that becomes quite an interesting way. It becomes even more important as AI becomes much more prevalent.

Yeah, I can talk about these theory things forever. Before we continue with the conversation, I would like to take a moment to share something exciting with all of you.

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Sign up today. You can find the link in the description box and take your X design game to the next level. Everything that causes emotions is so important, I think, especially at the moment where, you know, all websites look the same, all apps look the same. And really provoking emotions is very difficult. Also will be very difficult for an AI to come up with like a flow, like a user flow that provokes certain kind of emotions.

that's even like for us humans pretty difficult to come up with like a good flow understand what are the right emotions how to really provoke them for the target group but if you do it right then you really find something very very unique right that yeah yeah helps it to stand out of all the apps or experiences yeah so like one way to think of it is when i i've been giving talks for like a long time now and so the way i would usually

is I use the same methods that comedians use. So they have a collection of ideas and they tour in small nightclubs. And then over a year, it starts formulating into like an actual story that they tell. And then they do the special. And that's the comedy show, right? And so when I approach giving talks, I would go to small meetups. I would do it in like three or four, like five people present. And I've got these ideas and they're a bit broad.

broken fragmented and then I'll do it and see what the reaction is and then say like what what what would make sense and then people give feedback on it and so use the photo I did that like a bit um and also a lot of the other talks I've done that quite extensively

And so in a sense, the way you actually the reason why is because you're trying to see it's hard when you're in your room by yourself. It's hard to know how people respond because you're very internal in your head. When you put it in front of people, then it kind of reaffirms some of the stuff that you're not explaining things as well as you could do. And it really breaks it down.

Designing product is pretty much the same thing. The first thing you come up with may not be usable. That's why it's like paper prototyping, seeing how are people responding. So it's almost like you're touring, in inverted commas, the concept that you're building. That's why I think things become much more interesting. And I think AI can't do that because you don't know how a person is going to react.

And so, and when you start seeing a person, okay, they tap that button, but they miss this thing, but I want to make them do this. Like, so I have to educate them about this new, um,

that, you know, like pinch to zoom or pull to refresh. There's a new gesture that you have to create. How do I educate them? Okay, right. So, and then you're designing, okay, because that's like a cognitive load, but then it's like, okay, but we need a person to put in their credit card deals. How do they do that? And one of the examples I gave is when we were at Google designing best practice for credit card, you know, where you take a picture of your credit card

It says, you know, put the credit card here and take a picture. And people were putting, like, instead of taking a photograph of the credit card, they're putting the credit card on the screen because the language is put the credit card here. And it's like, I can't predict that because it makes logical sense. But when you put it in front of people, then you realize what ergonomically doesn't make sense. Like, you know. Yeah. And so, like, that's why.

I did a bunch of design sprints for Delivery Hero, the food delivery service based in Germany. Ah, in Berlin, I think, yeah. The biggest startup in Germany. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a few of their brands came to like a design sprint workshop over two days. And within two days, we ran a design sprint and I got them to...

create like three or four iterations of prototype first the sketches then as like a more thinner sketch then a paper prototype then an actual mock which they were using principle at the time because that was like a very nice believable thing and then they did like usability studies and so like

I remember one of the products they had, they're pretty certain of the flow they wanted to create. But we said, okay, we do paper prototype and the paper prototype, the thing failed miserably. And that's when I went, we need to fix this. And so that was even before they got to high fidelity. And so just that one, and like that epiphany moment, I was so confident that this would work and seeing that it worked for

for a product which I had no connection to and I said okay see like I'm telling you you have to test these things again and again and again until like you get to like you know the granite which you're chipping away until you get to like you know the the work of art and so yeah no I mean

So yeah, it's almost like using the comedian's methodology and design, which is quite interesting. I love that. And I think, I think like for me hearing that is super interesting because I'm also seeing like a lot of parallels. For me, like being a comedian and testing your jokes on a group of people would be totally scary, but I'm not funny. So like for me, it would be like totally out of my comfort zone and totally scary. Yeah.

But what I'm definitely seeing is the more controversial your jokes are, the more vulnerable you get presenting these jokes. But maybe those are the best jokes, right? It could be a very basic one, but the more out of the norm they are because you talk about something like you make jokes about AI or something like that's a little bit more controversial, the more vulnerable you get if they don't land, right? And the same, I think, with innovation.

right like you need to be vulnerable like try things out talk about them and i had the experience like several times where i came up with like ideas and they were like totally crazy that i was wasn't really sure should i present that even to the team

And in the end, it turned out they were like the best ideas and really got us like winning a pitch or something like that. But when I came up with it, I wasn't really sure like, can I even, you know, talk about it? It's like maybe too crazy. So I think also creating...

for yourself but also for your team you know this atmosphere of vulnerability where you can test and don't feel bad if they fail right like if this is part of the process same with comedians like i really admire people who do that but i think like yeah listen now

Yeah, I mean, because the thing is, it's better that they fail in a small audience rather than when they're in a stadium. And even then they can fail, like they can bomb terribly. I've bombed giving talks like really bad. I can't imagine that, you're such a pro now. No, yeah, and I mean, I think it's interesting, like the three times when I've done badly, it was pretty much the same subject. But I think, and that, I mean, the lesson it taught me there is like,

The formula that I created for myself is I always start with a story about, you know, and again, it's like that may be completely unrelated to say like UX design. So when I talk about the McDonald's example in my talk, I won't say anymore. People can go look it up if they want. Or like when I talk about Houston airport in one user hacked user for hacking user perception and designing for speed was like, these are not, these are my service design things rather than UX design.

But then people relate to, okay, the problems that they're trying to solve and then bringing that back with research and then showing the physical equivalent examples in UX, like that story. Because then you start thinking, what do I like as a person and what hits? But then I think you're right. The most innovative thing I think was probably the iPhone in our generation. When you look at how...

mobile phones from before that time look today look so archaic and so old i think when something new comes along um because again this i i listen to a lot of talks by comedians not giving the stand-up when they just talk about the theory of comedy um and so there's one comedian talking about uh richard pryor who's ranked as one of the best comedians ever lived and and they said

When you saw him, everything that came before him looked so out of date where people were just doing one liners and punch lines and you'd have like a drummer with a rim shot. But then he started telling these stories like,

when he often like what they call alternative comedy when he started talking about stories about um his life and where there was a narrative throughout the whole of the comedy show and sometimes he'll call back to things maybe it's politics where before it just be like rim shots like you know very sims like they'll say oh take my wife no really take my wife didn't like that was like the very yeah pun type thing of comedy um and so everything he did

The sign of innovation is when everything that comes before it looks out of date immediately. And when you look at the iPhone, most phones before that, it was 30% screen, 70% input, the keyboard. And then iPhone was like, no, the most important thing is the screen. So it was like 90% screen and 10% input with the one button. I mean, if you were to propose that to say at Nokia, they'd be like, are you crazy?

That doesn't make sense. Why would we have one button? But it changed everything because it emphasized what people, like the opportunity, what people could do. Because at that point, WAP on the web, on the mobile phone existed, but it wasn't that good. So the market didn't exist. But this thing came along and suddenly that becomes the focal point for the next billion users worldwide who are accessing the web for the first time for a mobile device, not for a desktop or a laptop like most of us in the Western world did.

And so I think that's why I look at other disciplines in particular comedy or how they, because it's writing basically, and writing is the creative process and it has to be a narrative. So what's the narrative in UX? And this, you see, so I'll keep talking forever, but you see this in game design. There's a really, it's sad because the talk is like a sort of fireside chat and they don't see many people in the room, but it's one of the most amazing talks I've seen. And it was interesting.

the creative director and the art director of a game called Deus Ex, which was released in 2000. Basically, it's a shooting game. But they're just talking about... And it broke... It's like a warding game. It broke many things because it was like... There was a narrative and a story. It wasn't just people randomly running around shooting. And depending on what the character did, it changed the pathway of the story.

In a very limited scope, because this was back in 2000. And so a lot of games follow that kind of like template. And he was just talking about when they were designing these characters, like it was like a TV show, a character coming and then leave. And then a story writer approached him and said, listen, you need to finish the arc of these characters. Like what happens to this guy? Why do I care about this person when they come in? Why are they disappearing? Like there has to be like in the user's mind where they're building up the fantasy, where a large part of the game is happening. What's going on?

And so then they started rewriting the game and said, okay, we need to have these different character arcs. And so you start thinking, how does that apply to a UX? Like what's the story that you're telling? Like if you just have UI that pops in and out,

it confuses a person there has to be something that takes them through consistency this is why we you know having system standards is really important because people are familiar it's like each ui becomes a character in a story and when you start thinking like that um you realize what is actually important in the experience then you could do the innovative stuff like you have some really weird and wonderful apps that do like these really crazy stuff um

And that's brilliant because then it becomes the personality of it. Yeah. I think about these things way too much. I think that's like typical problems of our profession, right? Like thinking about all these things, like,

interfaces, UX, motion design, like so much also because we are interacting with all these elements like the whole day and analyzing it, thinking about how can we maybe use that for another project? What could be better comparing that to like different industries? But I really like what you did with like the storytelling or the comedian part. I think this is like super, super interesting to make that correlations.

And like from my experience, this is also kind of like the next step. First, you analyze, you see what's going on. You maybe, you know, say, okay, that could be better. That is maybe ideal. I will use that pattern for the next project or something. I will keep it in mind. And then at some point when you're a little bit bored of everything that's going on,

you look for patterns outside and you combine them very differently. And usually that happens after years and years of experience where you want more, at least from my experience. Yeah. I mean, the whole responsive web design came from architecture because it was like we were influenced heavily by graphic design. And so the UI we created were basically double page spreads. But

And it just didn't work. Something was wrong, especially with smaller screens. It just felt wrong. The technology wasn't there. And so there's like looking outside, how do other disciplines deal with the challenge of changing surfaces or changing environments? And so architecture was one that came in.

I know some people look at gardening or landscaping or even like the theatre, how you're able to change that. What is the theoretical thing that the principle there and how could that apply to design? And then you start asking the question, are we actually doing the right thing? And so that becomes a much more interesting conversation. And that's how I think we evolve. Product design has become now a much more multidisciplinary industry where before

it was programmers and graphic designers. Now it's you have motion and, you know, it's psychology and, you know, much more depth research. Then it becomes, I think, much more engineering, industrial design. And so as a product designer, you need to have some insight, specialism in one thing and insight in other. Just kind of what's going back to you. I know we're almost out of time, but going back to like your original question, what would I advice I would give? I've just thought of, I think probably the most important advice is

Early on in my career, I thought it would be great to be good at everything. And I've always done multiple things, write code, whatever, because naturally I just was like that. My teacher goes, your problem in your life is going to be because you do too many things. And you do it well, but you do too many things. And I didn't really understand it. And at Google, I started realizing that. Google hires generalists and then tries to turn them into specialists, basically. And I think the biggest thing, I think, is focus. Focus on a specific thing that becomes your passion. And then you hear...

Jonathan Ive talking about like the most important thing is focus like Steve Jobs will say to him how many things did you say no to today and not no to just like you know randomly things that you really want to do but you can't because if you do that it takes you away from this one thing that you should have focus on I think that

focus on like you know but you write down all the things you want to do pick the top three and get rid of the rest because that's what you should focus on um and then you'll grow and develop in your career if you try to do too much you'll be all over the place and i think that was a mistake where i made earlier in my career so that's the one a bit of advice like generic advice i'd give to an designer i think the best advice i wish i would have heard that earlier in my career

Because when I started, I was like, I want to learn how to code, wanted to be good at JavaScript. I want to be a motion designer, UI design, concept, service, strategy, all over the place. Because I thought that's the best way to do it. Yes. No?

Yeah. I mean, it's possible, but to do it meaningfully over a long period of time takes a long time. But I can draw and illustrate, but I'm not an illustrator. And for me to become a top-tier illustrator, I have to draw every single day, five hours a day for at least six months to get to the level I want. But that's great, and that's your focus, but then you can't do anything else. If you want to be the best at it, you can't. It's just not feasible.

Makes sense. I think perfect last words for this episode. But before we end it, I just want to give you one last opportunity to share any resources that you can recommend or any resources you want people to check out. I will link them all in the description box. But maybe there are any books, courses, talks that you would recommend. So I'm working on like a course on Maven. Maven's like Skillshare but live. Nice. So

So they call them cohorts. So I'm still working on the course. Basically, it's design sprints the way I do them, like remotely. That's one thing. Also, like, I've got a YouTube channel. I'm not that active on there, but I'll post the talk videos just for prosperity that I have them because sometimes conferences die and you lose the videos. So you can check out the YouTube channel, like, use a first experience. Later on in the year, I may be back at UX Push, and there's another conference which I'm going to be speaking in Hungary, hopefully.

in the same sort of topic and i'll be doing workshops there hopefully as well so yeah i should be should be out and about sounds nice okay i will link everything in the description box so anyone wants to check it out and you can just find everything there okay mostafa thank you so much for your time for everything you shared things super insightful super interesting i really loved your perspective on ai the future and all the skills and resources that we will need in the future so

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay, perfect. Okay, I will stop the recording. I really hope that you enjoyed this amazing and inspiring interview with Mustafa. I am so happy that I had the chance to talk with him and hear his amazing ideas and thoughts about the future, about AI, about designing with motion, with intention, with storytelling. So I think it was super inspiring.

If you think this episode was helpful to you, if you really like listening to the podcast, feel free to rate it on iTunes, on Spotify. A five-star review would definitely help the podcast to grow and for more people to find it. So thank you so much for listening and hear you in the future.