The UX Consultants Lounge

Lynne Polischuik & Justin Davis - Navigating the Evolution of UX Consulting: Adapting to Industry Shifts

• Kyle Soucy • Episode 5

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In this episode of The UX Consultants Lounge, host Kyle Soucy welcomes Lynne Polischuik and Justin Davis, two seasoned UX consultants, to discuss the evolving landscape of UX consulting. From the challenges of today’s market to the exciting opportunities presented by AI and emerging work models, this episode dives deep into the current state of UX consulting and where it’s headed.

At the top of this episode, Kyle shares a personal update about navigating the unexpected cancellation of a big project and the lessons she learned about asking for help, trusting her network, and staying resilient as a consultant.


Key Topics Covered:

  • How the UX consulting landscape is shifting in today’s economic climate.
  • Where consultants can deliver the most value as the industry evolves.
  • The transformative role of AI in how we work and create impact.
  • The unique challenges and benefits of taking breaks from consulting to go in-house—and how to successfully transition back.


Notable Quotes:
“As consultants, our value isn’t just in the deliverables—it’s in the outcomes we enable, like reducing costs, improving products, and creating business impact.”

“AI isn’t going to replace us, but consultants who embrace AI will deliver more value, faster. It’s a tool, not a threat.”

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I can’t wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode!

Kyle Soucy:

Welcome to the UX consultants lounge. I'm Kyle Soucy, founder of usable interface an independent UX research consultancy. You can find out more about my work and the services I offer at my website, usable interface. com. I'll be your host here at the lounge where I'll be providing a place for UX consultants to gather, share stories, and learn more from one another. I hope everyone in the UX consulting land is doing well. I recently had a bit of turmoil with work, but it had a good outcome, and I wanted to share that with all of you. So last week I was on a research project and it was unexpectedly cancelled. The client just decided to pull the plug due to shifting priorities and budgets and And this was a big project. It was supposed to keep me busy for the entirety of Q4 and into the start of Q1. So I was completely bummed, to say the least. And if I'm being honest, a bit panicked. It's hard to pick up work in Q4, especially the kind of UX work that I do, which is qualitative research. The holidays make scheduling research sessions an even bigger logistical nightmare. So it would be most likely impossible to just pick up a gig to fill this time. I vented a bit to my network in private slack groups, and then I just decided that I should just put it out there publicly that I'm available. I've seen a lot of other consultants do this in the past, but I've always been afraid to. I guess I worried that it would appear desperate. You know, sometimes as a consultant, it can feel like a sin to be without client work. There are these toxic thoughts that creep in that people will assume I'm not good if I'm not busy. So, for the first time ever, I decided to post a Hail Mary on LinkedIn, announcing what had happened and that I have immediate availability. After typing it out, I closed my eyes and clicked post and held my breath. A funny thing happened. I received amazing support from all different people in my network. 23 people reposted it, which blows my mind. And most of them added the kindest notes and testimonials about my work. It was like getting a warm hug from my colleagues, and it just made my day. If you're listening to this and you were one of those people that reacted to my post, I want to say thank you sincerely. I really needed that. You know, it doesn't matter whether or not I get work from posting this Hail Mary on LinkedIn. It was just so helpful for me to get such a confidence boost from my network and to trust them enough. To let them know that I had immediate availability and that they wouldn't think less of me because of it. So the lesson I want to impart in sharing this story is to just trust your network and to keep them informed on what's going on with your business and that it's okay to ask for help when it's needed. Now, I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing this every quarter, but I don't think it hurts when you're in a rare bind. I have had a few conversations that have come from posting this on LinkedIn. So who knows? Um, maybe it will help me find work for this quarter, but if it doesn't, that's okay. It's okay because I'm reassured that this does not reflect on my abilities or value that I offer. This is just a shitty time, and we'll all get through it. I'm a big believer that everything happens for a reason. So it's going to be okay. All right. That was my little update since we were last together in the lounge. Let's get to introducing my guests Today. I have Lynne Polischuik and Justin Davis in the lounge. Lynne and Justin have a wealth of UX consulting experience running their own separate consultancies, and they've also partnered together for a short time, which we'll talk about in the beginning of the interview. I've also had the pleasure of working with the both of them on a UX research project for one of Lynne's clients, which was so much fun. I'm going to have Lynne and Justin introduce themselves, but let me just share some of the topics we covered in this interview. Both Lynne and Justin have taken breaks from consulting from time to time, so we talked a bit about that. We discussed the state of UX consulting today, and how it will change in the future, where UX consultants can provide the most value going forward, and how AI will change UX consulting. These are meaty topics, which is why the episode is so long. But, I want to remind all you listeners that if you only have a short period to listen, I've added chapters for all the different discussions so you can jump around to your heart's content instead of listening to the full episode from start to finish. There's no other two people I would rather talk to about these topics than Justin and Lynne because they're so passionate and have so much energy. I just always feel super pumped after getting an opportunity to chat with them. So let's get to the interview. Please enjoy Lynne Polischuik and Justin Davis. All right. Hello, Lynne. Hello, Justin. Welcome to the lounge.

Lynne Polischuik:

Hello.

Justin Davis:

Hey, hey, it's great to be here.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. It's awesome to have the three of us together again, the band back together. Yeah, we have to fill the listeners in on how we all know each other. But before we do that, I'd like for you both just to introduce yourselves and just tell us a bit about your consulting experience Justin, and why don't you start us off?

Justin Davis:

Sure, absolutely. So I'm Justin Davis. I live in Tampa, Florida, used to live in Nashville, where I got started in UX and consulting. I've been a developer since the late nineties, built a lot of stuff on the web, launched a lot of products and startups and things like that have been pretty active in that world and started consulting in UX. I had my first job at a college I had, I was working actually for the United Methodist Church in Nashville for a few years, um, doing a lot of just general web work kind of stuff for them. And I left there to start my consultancy because at the time in 2006, Seven ish, um, nine, maybe. There wasn't a lot of UX in Nashville. There weren't a lot of people doing consulting. And so, I saw an opportunity to do that. I kind of wanted to work for myself and so started Madera Labs, in like 2009, 2010 ish, started consulting then, and then did it really almost exclusively that, uh, through my move to Tampa and up until really about a year or so ago, and now I've, I've kind of changed. I'm in house and, also had a stint at a startup before this. And most of my consulting's been around design, product strategy, user research, information, architecture, that kind of thing. So that's kind of my story where I, came from and how we got to today.

Kyle Soucy:

Awesome. And Lynne, how about you?

Lynne Polischuik:

Similarly, kind of circuitous route. I've actually been an independent, freelancer and then consultant since 2008. I came to this space from like really weird place. I wanted to work in museums and, um, I had come to Vancouver to do museum studies at the University of British Colombia I had moved to Vancouver, a friend called and said, what are you doing? I said, reading at Starbucks and he said, okay, well, come help me with my startup. So I kind of just jumped in and, did a few online jobs, ended up going back to work. To museums for a year, I worked at the Vancouver Museum for a year was bored out of my tree. So I came back to this in 2005, work for a cool company called CityMax was actually ended up bought by Google Pages. And then I went indie in 2008. I basically outgrew that role and wanted to do. More and my CEO, my boss at the time kind of just pushed me out of the nest, which I'm ever grateful for. I've been working the past few years as a consultant. I've done a couple of years in house, here and there, which ended up being more kind of like long term contracts and, yeah, currently I am back to consulting after a bit of a sabbatical. So that is me.

Kyle Soucy:

You both have. Almost 15 years experience consulting, which is amazing. And having worked with you both, I, I know how brilliant you both are. And let's talk a little bit about how we all know each other. We worked together on what I would have to say. Was the most interesting and fun research project I've ever had.

Justin Davis:

No doubt.

Kyle Soucy:

It was, back in spring of 2019 for Youtube TV And Lynne, since this was your client, why don't you go ahead and explain the project?

Lynne Polischuik:

So, I had a contact that I'd work with for quite some time. She actually ended up going and working at YouTube. Her name is Allison Meier. She. And I had worked on a few different projects for another agency and then when she went in house at YouTube, she kind of conceived the research project that we ended up doing, and I think just because we knew each other so well and she knew the caliber of research and researchers I could bring to the project, she reached out to me about the co watching, project for YouTube TV and it was fascinating it was honestly one of the most interesting projects. I agree, Kyle.

Kyle Soucy:

And for those that don't know, co watching is a term that we were using for people who come together virtually to watch a show, uh, but they're watching it, on their own devices and kind of trying to figure out like, okay, how do we sync the play? Like one, two, three, play. And, it was so fun. We were watching people watch, game of thrones. Um, uh, what were some of the shows there were? So many, Um, I'm

Lynne Polischuik:

Game of Thrones. I know there was some reality. The Bachelor, I think.

Justin Davis:

was like billions, I think might've been one of them, uh, yeah, the bachelor, he had, it was a bunch of, it's a bunch of random housewives.

Lynne Polischuik:

yeah, yeah,

Kyle Soucy:

It was great. I've never been on a project where you're watching people watch TV, but it was fascinating. That was a good time. But I think Lynne, how you're explaining your connection to that, it just goes to show how important, networking is and just, it's all who, you know, and to land a project and a client as big as YouTube TV. I mean, that's huge.

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah, it was an interesting process. I think, it definitely wasn't a project I could have taken on, even two or three years prior. I think one thing that is both scary and great about working with large size clients, like Google alphabet Facebook is, you do need to have a little bit of infrastructure to take on a project that big. So, that required, insurance of a certain amount and, it just wasn't a project. I could have done myself. So. I wouldn't have gotten the project without my network. I also couldn't have done the project without you folks. Like, there would have been no way. So it just was a kind of perfect storm confluence of of good timing. But that worked out

Justin Davis:

I think one of the things that you were saying, Kyle, and I think it's so important because that was such a big project. It's a crazy project. And I honestly, it's one of the projects I love telling people about. Like, yeah, they, they paid us to fly around and watch people watch TV. Uh, it's crazy, right? People like, wait, what do you do for your job? But I think the one thing, Kyle, that you just mentioned that is so important as a consultant is, just that, that was a project that Lynne landed and thankfully brought us into and she got that project because of who she knows, right? And because of her network. And I think that this is something that is, that is You know, we talked about it a lot in consulting, but I don't think you can say it enough, which is that kind of the net worth is the network, you know, or the network is the net worth, whatever saying is. And I think as a consultant, especially a solo consultant, but to some degree at any level in the service business, staying top of mind, staying visible and having a lot of people know you is the way you get work and the way you get job opportunities.

Lynne Polischuik:

yeah, and it's interesting to like, I think we're in a different time now. I think we were very lucky that we kind of came up during the golden age of Twitter and the golden age of this, this being a small community. Industry wise, we were very fortunate that, the pool was a lot smaller then I think we all knew each other at one point in terms of like, UX, you did UX. we probably had met at a conference at one point and I think, that was that in the past has had been great for us. I think it was, my dad or someone in my family was like, how can you be a web consultant? And you don't even have a website. And I was just like, well, I have been too busy doing the work. It was a total cobbler shoes situation, but the reason that was possible was because of my network, you know, it was. And, and this is so important for, consultants. You do a good project, you have a good vibe with a client. They end up changing jobs and going somewhere else, you know, like Alison did with me and, and brought me along. And that, that snowball, of good work, kind of begetting good work, that was the core of my business, for over 10 years. And. I know that it's a different world now. So it's interesting. I think we have a first mover advantage that newer consultants today probably don't have the same access to.

Kyle Soucy:

A hundred percent. And I want to talk more about that, just the state of consulting today and what it's going to look like in the future with the both of you. Before I do that, I wanted to, also ask the both of you, I know you mentioned prior to YouTube TV to work together, and I know that you even created another consulting practice together for about two years called first chair partners. And I was wondering if you could just tell me a little bit about. You know why you created this other entity in the past and what the experience was like for the both of you

Justin Davis:

I can jump in there. I think that we create a first year because back in that era back in the 2018, 17, 18, 19, 20 era. We were doing more and more work together that would just happen to find a lot of projects that kind of fit our combination of skill sets, as well as, uh, another person, Matt Grocki, who was also involved with that as well. And the three of us found ourselves kind of working together a lot. And we thought, you know, man. We don't really want all the overhead unless they're starting a big thing. But it's quite frankly, it just gets complicated. Cause it's like, well, who are they writing the checks to? Like, how do you bill it? How do you invoice it? What, what name is on things, right? How do you create like a presence that feels credible? Um, uh, with a team of just a few people. And so, we decided to create first chairs kind of. Essentially a brand that we could do business under together as kind of this loose collective, basically,

Lynne Polischuik:

Initially, we had started partnering up and I think the first few projects we were just writing through my. Mm hmm. Business, um, and I would like to pass through, I'd get a check, I'd split it up 3 ways, I'd wire off the money to Justin and Matt, and away we go. Um, then my accountant was like, um, no. And, oh, Josh. Um, so he, yeah, so, so it became a factor of like, okay, um, we do, as Justin said, we do need an entity that. Is a separate thing from each of us it essentially was business infrastructure. It really helped us and we were doing projects of a size that it had big tax implications for any 1 of us to kind of deal with that. So, it really was just as Justin said a way for us to work together. The benefit of it was, you know, we, we did some great work with, um, Elise Weeks, up in, Elise as in New Hampshire.

Kyle Soucy:

I think Maine.

Lynne Polischuik:

Maine. That's right. Her company, her team is just fantastic. She did some amazing branding for us. And we did just kind of put together a loose collective. But it ended up being great. It just was really nice to have a banner we could fly under.

Kyle Soucy:

And it sounds like possibly it was easier to do that rather than, Is set up subcontractors under your company. Is that right? Lynne?

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah. And I'm trying to remember, I think also for like insurance purposes, um, there were a few factors that kind of came into play and setting it up that way. It made the most sense for us at the time.

Kyle Soucy:

And you know, the, both of you have mentioned that you've taken breaks from consulting at times to work internally. And I wanted to hear more about what that has been like. Lynne, why don't you start?

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah. So, in end of 2017, um, I had an opportunity to go and work at Automatic WordPress. And be actually one of their 1st dedicated researchers in the history of the company. John Maeda was leading design at that point. It was an exciting offer. I don't think. I would have made that move had that offer not come along, but it was just, too good to pass up. So one year contract there. And working in house, and it was interesting. I think the thing that it really made me cognizant of is that, when you're doing shorter term contracts, smaller contracts with a company, you're exposed to some degree to their culture and, their foibles and all the politics. And it just, it made me realize, it is difficult to be a full time in house person because you can't escape. Um, you are there and you are dealing with, you know, the culture of a company and and also just the corporate structure, which, I don't know for me, you know, being independent, calling the shots, um, has just, don't think I ever realized how important that was to me and how much I enjoyed that until I was in house. And so, yes, so I did the year and it was great. I got to work with so many people that I am still close friends with to this day. I don't know how much of that was trauma bonding but um, But but.

Kyle Soucy:

the best way to bond.

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah, right. But it was an experience. I'm glad that I had. And like I said, it's, so interesting to see the other side of things, right? It gives you so much perspective to go in house and to just see how that feels. I think it was just good timing and it was an experience I needed at that point. And yeah, I learned a lot both about myself and about how companies work.

Kyle Soucy:

Awesome. And Justin, how about you?

Justin Davis:

Yeah. I've been running Madera, for, sometime I'd like, golly, I mean, over a decade, I guess, and then my journey in house, in house really started, about a year ago, at Sourcetoad. Before this, I was CEO, for a little while, uh, Chief Product Officer and then CEO of, Of fintech startup that Lynne also helped me with a little bit, um, and then when in house to source toad for me, the timing of that decision was interesting. Because on one hand, one thing that I love about being a consultant about being on my own, I share the same viewpoint that Lynne does, which is I love calling the shots. fairly type a, I'm an entrepreneur CEO type of person. And so I tend to be cut out to just do my own thing just by personality. Right. And also consulting afforded me the ability to work across a lot of different problems with a lot of different people and see a lot of different things and sort of cross train the skills. Right. And I think that is extraordinarily valuable, um, because It allows me and I think what it has done for me over the years has allowed me to like very quickly be able to understand problems and systems and apply things across the board from one thing to another, just because I've seen so many things now going in house has been an interesting experience because, you know, even though I saw a lot of those different things in the variety was so interesting and there was always a lot of really cool things to work on, there was always a nagging thing to me where And I sort of would do a project most of the time, and then sort of hand it over and be like, here's your thing. And then I would go on to do the next thing. Right. And there was a little bit of like kind of the baby leaving the nest and the kind of startup entrepreneur in me wanted to continue working on the problem, right? Continue solving the problem, right? Cause the problem wasn't solved when you first designed the product, right? That's like the first iteration of the solution. And then there's going to be forever, um, adapting that and learning from users and that kind of thing. And so going in house. Has afforded me the ability to look to work on longer projects and longer things, initiatives, over a period of time and solve, continually improve a thing instead of just. Doing one thing, right? And so that's an interesting change. The other thing that it is, has done for me going in house and I'm very lucky with source toad, source toad is run by, um, a great friend of mine, Greg Ross Monroe, who's been running it for about 15 years. And I'm very lucky. A lot of my local friends from Tampa, work at source toad, and I used to contract with source toad. So it was a very natural fit for me to move in there. And I'm very lucky in that for me moving in a house. I have a lot of autonomy and a lot of say over what we do at Source Toad of my, I am in the position now is sort of driving our product development process, right? UX and entire product development process. And I have colleagues that really respect that. And We work together. I don't feel like I'm sort of inheriting somebody else's thing that I'm running, right? Which is really nice. And, it puts me in a really great position. So now I'm getting to work on other things that I didn't have the opportunity to do. I get to now work with teams and coach people and mentor people and be more of a leader and work on operational things and that. Which when I was just a consultant, I was so in the work all the time that I never sort of like stepped out of it and kind of worked on the work, right. I was just in the work, right. On the person in the business. And so it's, it's, there are parts of it now that are refreshing to be able to, to do that. Yeah.

Kyle Soucy:

I really appreciate just hearing your experience, both of you with the pros and cons of it and how, how you felt doing that, because. I get that a lot from a lot of other consultants. They ask like, Oh, you know, I'm thinking of taking this is really attractive, but do I, do I ruin my business? Could I ever go back again? If I go internal for a little bit and you can, you've, you've both proven that. Yeah,

Lynne Polischuik:

you always can. I think that's one of

Justin Davis:

yeah,

Lynne Polischuik:

kind of, like, one of the things that I've heard over over the years is, you know, I could never be a consultant, like, I need the stability of working for someone. And I think one thing we've seen over the past, especially a couple of years, is that. No job is safe. Um,

Kyle Soucy:

yeah, that's true.

Lynne Polischuik:

I'm seeing so many researchers and design folks, UX folks, losing jobs being laid off. And I think the. The good thing about being a consultant is that I feel like I have a lot more control. I know when I go into an engagement, specifically, how long it's going to last. Um, I know that at a certain point in that project, I'm probably going to be looking to my pipeline to bring in some more work. One thing I noticed when I was in house for that year is. You just don't have the same level of control. And, and I think for me, it's a bit scary. And I think seeing everything that's shifted in our industry over the past couple of years, it's made me really thankful, for the entrepreneurial side of my brain and the scrappiness. There is a lot more stability in consulting. I think than people realize. However, it does take time to build up those muscles and to build up a network and a pipeline that enables that. Um, I think that's a core thing with this and I think too, you know, you can take breaks. I certainly have taken a couple of medical sabbaticals over the past couple of years. And like I said, I've been in house for a year. It is a little bit, it's not simple to take your foot off the gas and then jump back in. It is doable, but it requires some real, again, scrappiness and digging and, justin, one thing you raised that's like super, super important and interesting is just that, We do get exposed as consultants to, such a vast array of industries and problems. I've worked in the public sector. I've worked in the private sector. I've worked in tech. I've worked in health care, you know, we worked in finance, um, worked in media. I think it's so interesting, the vast amount of, random subject matter expertise we have. We really bring that as a quality and as a value to our clients as consultants, you know, I'm doing a project right now, around special education, technology and, a couple of years ago, I did a project. On the other side of this, for the federal government, department of education, looking at inconsistencies they were seeing because of this technology. So, you know, this project was a perfect fit because now I'm looking at it from. The school's perspective, but, the knowledge I've picked up along the way really feeds into this project. There's so many projects I go into that, you know, if I hadn't done 1 or 2 projects in the same space prior, I couldn't have done them. And I think that's such a incredible piece of value that we bring to our clients is, you know, we do have subject matter and we have had eyes on things that go beyond their organization. Um, and, you know. This is business leaders want to know what other folks are doing and consultants are very able to speak to that, which is great.

Kyle Soucy:

Absolutely. We take that experience wherever we go. Uh, and it's, it's a lot of very different things that we work on. To switch gears just a bit, I'm curious. You both have such great insights. We've talked before, and I want to know, how do you both see the state of UX consulting today?

Lynne Polischuik:

It's changed.

Kyle Soucy:

How so?

Lynne Polischuik:

Well, I think, there has been a sudden influx of folks who were in full time roles and have been laid off or come out of those roles for whatever reason. I feel like we're seeing, a real kind of supply demand situation, where there was suddenly a lot of supply and we know what happens when that happens. The wages, the hourly rates start dropping. I have seen that a lot coming back into this space over the past few months. Um, whereas a recruiter in the past would reach out with an opportunity and it would never be less than 90, 100, 150 dollars an hour. Now they're looking for researchers somewhere in the 40 to 50 an hour range. And

Kyle Soucy:

yeah,

Lynne Polischuik:

and I mean, from someone who has been consulting for a long time. The dollars and cents of that just don't work. Like, they really, I'm in Vancouver, our cost of living here is, you know, notoriously high. Um, when you factor in things like expenses and benefits, all that stuff, you really, I mean, it doesn't make financial sense to work at that rate. But I think what we're seeing is a lot of folks who are coming out of full time jobs, they are jumping into the, into the contracting, the consulting pool, and they're accepting these rates. Which hurts us all.

Kyle Soucy:

Yep.

Lynne Polischuik:

but I think it's, it's just, it's a learning curve, right? Like, I think. For a long time, we've operated, you know, in this space where the consultants tended to be very senior, very experienced, um, you know, held their ground firm on rates and project, you know, value based pricing, all this stuff. And so now we're seeing a lot more people who are coming into the consulting space who absolutely have the chops to do UX. Work and research work, but I think they, they don't fully understand the business and the economics of it, um, as a consultant, which is tough.

Justin Davis:

Yeah, it's definitely changed, right? And I think that, there is a kind of a larger thing happening as well. I think there's kind of a confluence of events. One thing that we were looking for. The kind of Len, you, Kyle, me, uh, like all of us were lucky in one respect in that the sort of golden age of UX, if you will, right, which like we can say, probably started to started to churn around the early mid 2000s, right, uh, with web 2. 0 and then, and then sort of has grown since then coincided with a worldwide bull market that was unlike anything else for like a decade. Right? And there was tons of money and it was easy to come by and everything was great. Right? And so what you ended up seeing happening was teams got really big. The UX field specialized and broke down. People would just do IA people would just do research. People would just do this, right? And it was fine because the budgets could support it. The economy could support it. Investment dollars for startups were flowing. There was a lot of money going around, and so the world could support it. When 2020 happened, it What ended up happening is another confluence of events that sort of quickly, I think much more quickly than a lot of us thought, um, changed the dynamics of it. The bull run came to an end, the markets globally cooled off, budget started to shrink. We saw that more and more. We're going through a crunch right now that some people say might be dot com era. Ask in its nature, which I think is maybe a little hyperbole, but still it is indicative of the fact that there's a big, like, kind of macro level change in the economics of this type of work, right? When you combine that with what has happened in the past two years with LLMs and Gen AI, right? Um, because the transformer paper by Google was 2018, right? So right near the end of that bull run comes in covid and comes in An entire new way to produce work that. Completely will change how we get our work done and the entire tech industry. And quite frankly, the entire world gets our work done. And so I think what it's a little bit like we had the, and I don't mean this to sound sort of like victim, maybe about it. Cause that's not the way that I'm playing this, but, um, it sort of was a little bit of a rug pull moment, right? And I think everybody kind of looked around and goes, Whoa, what happened? Like. All of this all of a sudden changed and all of a sudden, like very talented people that I knew who had been working at big companies and doing really great work for years, all of a sudden couldn't find work and still seeing that today. And that is a, I think it. It could be viewed as a troubling sign, and it could also be viewed as just like this really interesting metamorphosis that's happening right now in the tech industry at large, and the UX industry is certainly sharing in that change.

Lynne Polischuik:

We're seeing exactly what Justin said. Like, you know, the easy money is now gone from our industry. And, when dollars become harder to come by, certain things become nice to haves. I think design and UX has, well, I mean, internally, we've been going through the whole define the damn thing since we started. Um, what are we called? Should we code? Like, you know, all those questions that make us want to pull our hair out at this point. And I think this is 1 of the reasons that product has taken off is because, you know, I, I think of product management as, the UX people who understood how to speak to business. Like, to me, and that's a controversial statement, but that's what I feel. You know, I, I think it's, it's interesting. Like, yes, the work we do is tied to user experience, but we've always been working in, a capitalist society. And I think product equals profit. I think folks who have kind of moved over into that space, you know, I don't think the nature of their work has changed, but I think the way that they have. Positioned themselves to the business, makes them not a nice to have, it really makes them, core core to the income and the, you know, the economics of having a business. So, as Justin said, I think there's a couple of ways we can look at this. You know, we can take a very sort of I hate using the word victim me, but a little bit, you know, people just don't understand us. We obviously haven't gotten our seat at the table. We don't evangelize still well enough, but I think 1 thing that we lost sight of is, we've been so. Internally focused about our kind of existence as, you know, UX and designers. We really haven't we haven't really learned the business side of things as much as we should. I think I always have felt different because I came to this space from marketing and from web analytics, where. Numbers were my whole job, and then I got into design, as a way to improve those numbers. Um, but I think a lot of folks, they really are struggling because the way that we have traditionally positioned ourselves in this industry and in this business has not really paid off, as we can see now with people kind of ending up. Cut or laid off.

Kyle Soucy:

I have to just say, Lynne, when you were talking about the defined the damn thing conversations, it just drove me nuts. Like I think our industry. It should get a gold medal in navel gazing

Lynne Polischuik:

Oh

Kyle Soucy:

gazing Like

Lynne Polischuik:

Yes. Uh huh. Yeah. Oh,

Justin Davis:

the early IXDA mailing list was like the case.

Lynne Polischuik:

for real.

Kyle Soucy:

It drives me nuts, but you know, Justin, I'm curious to like, uh, you know, talking about this current climate, what hand do you think we, as the UX community, the UX industry had in getting to this point?

Justin Davis:

I guess there's a few ways to look at that. The define the damn thing conversation in some way. I mean, obviously it hurt us because navel gazing, but also it created all these little micro factions. Right. And people are kind of isolated themselves into these like little bitty, like, well, I just do this, this specific flavor of UX and that's great. But like, it's kind of the first thing to go when the budgets get tight, unfortunately, right. Because at the end of the day, and this is. Important and hard to hear companies just want to ship products and the products have to make money and they have to have users that use them and love them. Right? And at the end of the day, that is the goal. UX is not the goal. Research is not the goal. All of those things that we do as UX people, and quite frankly, across the wider than UX in tech in general, one thing I say a lot is like code is a hack. I kind of think of code is like, nobody wants to write code. Nobody wants code. We only write code because it's the only way that we have to instruct a computer to do stuff for us. And it turns out that computers are pretty useful and good at doing stuff. And so we kind of have to write this code to make it do a thing. But nobody wants to write code, right? And by the same token, nobody wants user research. Nobody wants UX work. Nobody wants these things. These things are simply tools that we use to ensure that the stuff we make for other people Will be hopefully as successful as it can be. And I think that like somewhere along the way. We sort of like, this is a little critical of the UX community. And then I'm going to talk about the good things that we did.

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah.

Justin Davis:

We sort of became very insular. Right. And we sort of just started talking about like how great we were and like, Oh, where's our seat at the table when in. When the businesses were going fine, you can have a seat at the table when you prove that you're making the products better. But like, I'm still waiting on that. And there was a lot of patience for that. I mean, we've had these discussions over the past 15 years about, like, how do you tie UX to analytics? How do we make the business case more? How do we get to see the table? But we've had these conversations for years about this, right? And essentially, the underlying thing around that is I don't think businesses a lot of time understand that this is valuable. And the fact of the matter is, is that if it was not driving success in the products, it wasn't, valuable in and of itself. It is only valuable as a means to an end. And that's kind of a hard thing to sit here. I feel like sometimes I can be like, Oh man, that sounds very reductionist or whatever, but it kind of is. The unfortunate truth. Now, one of the great things that we have done over the past decade and a half. As a, I'm going to just say like a, the product industry. And I think UX has driven a massive amount of this. The engineering world has the visual design role has just across the board. But, What we have done in the past year and a half is we have actually figured out how to deliver a lot of value in products and services to users quickly and at scale, and we've learned every year how to do it better and better. We've developed component libraries and patterns and tools and this kind of thing that did not exist 20 years ago, and we had to invent those, and we invented them when we created them in the and now We actually sort of in some ways worked ourselves out of a job, right? Because now if I go to design a product, right, if I'm going to go design an app or a site for somebody, it is not the same process that I used to use 15 years ago. I'm not designing stuff from scratch. I'm not designing drop downs from scratch. I'm not designing navigation from scratch because these problems have been solved. We did a great job coming up with standards. Figuring out like tested usable ways to do stuff in products. And now those patterns are there. Now we just kind of assemble them. And so in a way, what has happened is that our work in the UX world and the product world has moved from design. Classical design, as we think of it in like dragging boxes around on a page and kind of figuring out how things should look and operate and act. And there is obviously still some of that, but it's moved into a world of more orchestration of sort of taking bits and pieces of things that are already built, already available, already out there and combining them into interesting experiences. And that's a slightly different way of approaching product design and UX than it was like. A decade or so ago, I think

Kyle Soucy:

And now that we're here as consultants, where can we provide the most value?

Lynne Polischuik:

This industry is very bottom heavy. In general, right now, um, across the board, whether you're in house consulting, whatever, we have a ton of people now who are coming into this space from design programs from interaction design programs from university courses. And, when I went to university, the Internet didn't really exist. I'm super old, but we're all super old. Like, let's admit. Um, but. You know, this wasn't an option and now you have a real and it's, it's a great foundation of folks coming into the space who are extremely skilled, in terms of the tools and who know, all those patterns and libraries and they've got that great maker skill, but a lot of the time folks who are earlier career, they don't have the expertise, the experience in kind of the overall service design around a product. They don't have enough expertise to kind of deal with, like. A long term product roadmap and. Again, in this time of, smaller budgets, like, being brutally. Prioritizing, you know, products and features and those kinds of things. So I think what's interesting is right now consultants, like us, we have a real opportunity and we present a real value and there are fewer of us around to go around. I've been talking to some folks about this kind of idea of like. A fractional CXO, a user experience person who kind of in the past would probably be hired as a director of UX, but now, we can get a lot more done in a consulting situation. We can bring value to these products because we do have the high level expertise and we do have the ability to kind of see the wider ecosystem around a product. And we're good at laying the road map or the blueprints for folks to come in that are extremely skilled at things like prototyping and doing the on page design, for them to build. So, I think, we're actually in almost a better position as consultants now, because we have a set of skills that are not as common in the industry, but that are absolutely required.

Kyle Soucy:

So you feel like we should market and sell ourselves more as strategists?

Justin Davis:

Yeah, I think like UX is product, right? UX is kind of moving into just kind of generic, product management, but really more product strategy and product ownership, product leadership. And I think it's kind of collapsing a little bit down into that. And I think that the thing about the consultants, like one that I feel really confident is going to happen globally is that over the next. Decade, even really over the next five years, but it really played over the next is the average size of companies. In the world is going to drop precipitously. Um, the gen AI is going to completely change how we do work. I, it's going to completely and fundamentally change how companies operate. I was hearing people talk about the one man, 1 billion company, like there, there will be people that make 1 billion companies. It's a single individual, right? What's interesting about that is. If you take that premise, and you say, well, okay, average size of companies is going to drop because now there's just a lot of work to do. That needs to get done that doesn't require people to do, quite frankly, anymore. Um, and so you have smaller teams, and I think one trend that we're going to see, and this is where the consultants really are going to win out on this, I think, is that you're going to see more ad hoc teams come together for a period of time, build a thing, and then Potentially disband or downsize quite a bit, right? And almost like what we did at first chair, but imagine that if at first year we were actually developing a product for ourselves, and so consultants who have experience coming into a team. Learning, getting up to speed, working in that kind of fashion are really gonna actually have an upper hand in this kind of new model. Because as we continue to move toward more gig economy, we talked about gig economy, gig economy all the time, right? And about how, more people are moving toward that model of working. That's going to continue. And I think that there is a lot of value for us as consultants in that space. Because we. I've operated in that model for a long time. And I think that for senior consultants, especially we can come in and deliver a lot of value very, very quickly. And now we can, deliver that value in such a way that doesn't requires to be an FTE. Right. And doesn't require us to be there all the time because we can just get a lot of work done other ways. So I think that's going to be perhaps an opportunity for consultants

Lynne Polischuik:

And I know, you know, folks seem a little, as we say, you talk about AI, and I know there's probably a ton of people out there that are like, oh, yeah, you know, AI can't do everything. No, it can't. But just as a practical example, the economics of consulting. So, Kyle, Justin, we've talked about this a lot of times, and I've talked about it with, every senior consultant out there. The longer you've done this work, the better you get at it. And. When you are dealing with an hourly pricing model, you end up punished because, 10 years ago, it would have taken me 3 days to write a research plan. Now I can probably do it in half a day, but I shouldn't be penalized for my experience. Right? I'm bringing a lot more value. And that's 1 of the reasons that, you know, I think a lot of established consultants and where senior consultants have moved to a value pricing model, because just that, we get more done in less time, which for the business is fantastic, but for us, it can hurt us. And.

Kyle Soucy:

Mm

Lynne Polischuik:

terms of like, AI even just on, like, a, a very micro level, how that's changing how we work. I am currently on a project that was brought to me client in a real pinch needed a 10 person, little research study done to kind of help validate a hypothesis. Great. There was a really hard two week deadline on it and. If you'd asked me to do this, even two years ago, I would have laughed in your face because, oh, my God, that's not enough time. And honestly, it's not enough time. But one of the reasons I'm able to execute it is AI, like Google Notebook LM, you know, there's some of these tools out there now, where I can feed transcripts into it and work that would have taken me a week of coding my notes. Is kicked back to me in 5 minutes, and this is the thing where, it's changing not just the tech industry in the world, but it's enabling us, if we apply it in intelligent ways, you know, AI has the power to really reduce our workload and as consultants. We have to account for that. We don't want our breakfast, our lunch to be eaten by AI. But it certainly enables us to do things that in the past we couldn't have. This would have been an impossible ask, like I said of, you know, two years ago, but now it's doable and doable well, um, where I feel like I'm delivering quality to my clients and smart answers. But I'm doing it in a fraction of the time. So I'm fascinated with AI tools. I was so excited when this client brought up Notebook LM. We're like, we just done this on another project, you know, and I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, yes, yes. Like, let's do this. It's exciting. And I think for me, what's great about it is that it frees up our time to do the things that AI can't do. Just sit and think about, okay. This is the business case, this is the hypothesis, I'm able to free my mind off the kind of menial tasks that drive a lot of our work. So I think, again, AI is important, I think, for us as consultants to deeply, quickly get up to speed on and understand. And think about it, not just in terms of how it's going to change content writing, but how it can do things like, really expedite our own work. I've learned a lot about AI just through trying to apply it in my own space. So, the changes in AI are already shifting the economics of our work as consultants. I think we really need to get ahead about, laughing I don't but also understand, like, it, there's a huge benefit. To getting good with it.

Justin Davis:

just Yeah, I think this is so important, and I think everybody really needs to hear this, which is, there is a interesting line that has sort of set up with sort of the yay and nay on AI, if you will, right? And I see a lot of people saying things like, Oh, AI, like you all think AI is so great, but it can't even do this. And they can't do that. And, uh, and I think that those kinds of comments completely missed the point. That is sort of, Where we are right now in, in the AI and, and really it's like LLMs. Really? I mean, we've had AI for what, since the sixties, right? But like it's LL, a gen AI it's specifically, where we are right now from a timeframe perspective is this is sort of like 1995 in web years. We are just starting to emerge into a new modality and a new reality about how we interact with technology. And to your point, Lynne, I think you have to embrace this. It, this is not going away. And even if right now you look at it and you go, Oh, I don't, it doesn't do anything good. I don't like it. And then certainly there's plenty of grumbling about that. I think the perspective shift has to be the fact that it can even do what it can do right now in such a short amount of time that we have seen this being developed should be something that everybody takes very, very seriously because. In 1995, when we were all using Microsoft Front Page and Dreamweaver to stand up websites, right? And we were saying things like, you know, we were bitching about iframes and framesets and all of this kind of stuff and these clunky ways to build web apps, right? We probably would have laughed at that at the moment and said, and a lot of people did, a lot of people were like, you don't need to be on this web thing, websites aren't important, apps aren't important, what is this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Because it didn't look at the time. Like it was really all that powerful. It was an interesting toy. It was something kind of cute to play with. But it didn't look like it was going to be something that completely changed how the entire world worked and invented entire new industries around it. That is where we are in LLM years and in gen AI years. And so. You don't want to be the person in 2015 still saying, man, this web thing is not going to work because you look like you're out the lunch, right? You wouldn't say that, that's how this gen AI thing is going to play out. Um, and it is going to get better and better, faster and faster and faster. And I think that is a great thing, because this is a new way to drive value and provide interesting experiences to people. And I don't see this as a threat to us. I think it is an incredibly powerful tool. There's a thing that a lot of people say, which is AI is not going to take your job, but people using AI will take your job, right? And I think that's 100 percent true. There's a lot of fear around it. And I think a lot of people backlash because of the fear and they're like, Oh, I don't, I don't want to like it because I'm scared that it might take my job or reduce my value. And that is probably true for people who are not delivering a lot of value. But for the people who embrace it and use it and find a way to fit it into the workflow and to get things done faster at lower cost to clients, right, and deliver better experiences and better products to people using those tools will win 100 percent of the time. This is very similar. To what happened in the digital music world in 1998, 99, 2000. And at the time I was getting a degree in recording industry in Nashville. So I had my ear to the pulse of the music industry, literally on music row. And, the conversation for the better part of a decade was. We got to stop the digital music thing. We got to do DCMA. We've got to figure out how to like reign this in. This is going to destroy everything. This can't happen. Digital music will be the death of everything. Well, here we are. And so it's the same song, different verse, no pun intended, um, uh, here. and I think the faster you lean into it and go, all right, this is our new reality. Let me figure out how to make this work for me. Those are gonna

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah, and I think you make an interesting point, Justin, that, AI has been around for a lot longer than we realized. Machine learning has been a thing, you know, someone said to me, oh, AI is so new to research. No, it's not if you were plugging recordings into apps to get, transcripts kicked out anywhere over the last five years, that was probably an AI that was transcribing those things for you. I think there are ways it makes our work more efficient, and like I said, where it makes things more efficient. It frees us up to think bigger. You know, I feel like I have more mental. I know I have more mental bandwidth to think about bigger problems, more innovative solutions, although I know we all innovation is such a overused term, but it really is true. I really feel most of the AI tools I've tried, um, are really making my job easier and really making me available to do more of the thinking that I just couldn't get to before. And also just, it opens up the world for our clients, too, in terms of things they can do with their products and Justin, you and I have talked about this, but, there may come a time when websites are completely moot in terms of, well, do I need to go to my online banking and find things? Or, you know, does the, does it become just fully a voice interface where I'm asking my iPhone, how much money do I have in my checking account? Yeah. And I think, like, this is where, your analogy of us being in the 1995 web space is so true. The difference, I think, though, now, we had the dot bomb bust, back in the early 2000s. That can't happen now. I mean, it can, to some degree. We can have recessions and things, but we, as consultants, know that, every business now is a tech company. You can't exist in our society, in our world, in our capitalist hellscape, if you don't have an online presence, if you don't have technology to drive, if not your products, like operations, every company has tech and web embedded in it. So this is not a situation where we could have the early 2000s happen again, because even at its worst, companies need technology. And what we do is so core to making it useful, profitable, efficient, um, fun. And so I don't see our industry falling off to that degree again, but I do see AI becoming kind of like a bit of a sieve where folks who are not well versed in how to apply it or use it. Um, are going to end up kind of falling out the bottom,

Kyle Soucy:

That is such a good point about every company being a tech company. And before we wrap up, Justin, in our previous conversation, you mentioned a great analogy when it came to talking about AI won't replace us of a race car. Could you share that? Do you remember that?

Justin Davis:

Yeah, this one, I can't take credit for this. This is, my CEO, Greg Ross Monroe at Source Toad who. Who said Gen AI right now is tantamount to having a race car and thing about that is, is that, a race car driven by somebody who doesn't know how to drive a race car, can be very dangerous and very bad, very quickly, right? And can end up in a in a fireball. But for the people who are experienced and use it as a tool and know how to use it, it can massively accelerate what they're trying to do. But you still have to be the trained driver, and no, we are not yet at the point in the world where we have fully autonomous AI, AGI, fully autonomous agents that just can pick up a piece of work and go do it, right? You do still have to coach it. You do still have to be a leader to the AI, right? You still do have to be in the driver's seat. And that's why there's still a lot of value for us. And that's why I'm not at all worried about AI, quote unquote, taking my job. Because somebody's got to sit in the seat and drive it. And somebody's still going to have to sit in the seat and drive it for a while, because we're still probably a ways away from full autonomy in a way that we really think would be good. And so if you want to have a place in this industry, if you want to keep working in this. You gotta start taking driving lessons.

Lynne Polischuik:

and I think I was going to say just that I fully agree, with that, you need to be Lewis Hamilton to drive an F1 car, but I think people, when they think about AI, they're talking about a lot of extremes. Right? And yes, I am 100 percent behind, The idea that it needs to be taken seriously. It needs to be applied in a measured way. I think if I'm looking at it from the point of being a writer or an artist, yeah, I think generative AI is kind of problematic. Margot Bloomstein, just wrote a great little piece on LinkedIn and she said that, AI is great, but that it is really regurgitative and not generative. Which is true. And that places some deep limits on it. We're not trying to go all in and say, you don't need to talk to users. Just talk to chat GPT and ask it to try things or to answer questions. Um, I'm actually seeing I've seen a couple of tools come across my, my screen where people are like, yeah, it's a chat bot that allows you to do research. No, like, no, that's not, that's not how we can use this. But again, if, I have a bot that can sit and pull out pull quotes from my transcripts for me. Awesome. Because, you know, there are parts of my job that I've never loved and that, frankly, AI can do even if it's not perfect. And this is the other thing, too. I think we get really hung up on, the idea of perfect. And we've said in research for a long time that, knowing 80 percent is better than knowing nothing. And it's the same with AI, if it can do a job to like 80 percent of what I need it to, and take a fraction of the time, that's great, it's the same way that, again, transcribing our research sessions for so long, you were willing to go in and read through and fix some of the mistakes the AI made, because you didn't actually have to sit for three hours trying to transcribe something. So I think A. I. It definitely is in its infancy. I think, though, we're already seeing places where it can make us more efficient. And I think again, like Justin said, it's driving us to a place of, you know, when freed from kind of the grunt work of our jobs. We can do so much more, for companies and for clients. And I think that, we already are valuable with our kind of collective expertise and experience and our entrepreneurial brains. I've had a couple of clients in recent times be like, wow, like I don't even need to manage you. You just take all this initiative and you just do the project. And I mean, that's something we bring to this as well. You know, we don't require handholding or babysitting. So I think positioning ourselves as that and then helping us do more work via tools like Google Notebook LM or however many, you know, I think ask Marvin was the other one, um, Kyle, that you mentioned to me. That was yeah, amazing. And so I don't know. I think I don't want to sound, uninformed or kind of like, Insanely optimistic about AI. I think in a reasonable sense, though, it's already helping us so much. I think we just haven't been fully aware of it. And I think people, again, just kind of run to extremes with it, and fearmonger a bit, but it's not needed.

Kyle Soucy:

And that's what it is. Fear. I, I think that you both really nailed it when it came to a key point of not fearing. Market efficiency, you know, that's not going to be the end of us just because we can work more efficiently well, just to wrap up, I want to do some, rapid fire questions here, for both of you. If you had to describe UX consulting in one word, how would you describe it? Justin, how would you do it?

Justin Davis:

I would say, UX consulting it's helping people figure out how to build things that people want. Most people don't build things that people want and don't build things that people like. Our job as product people is to build things that people like in the service of keeping those things and the businesses that sponsor them alive. And, that's kind of part of how I see it. You know, it's

Kyle Soucy:

funny. I say rapid fire, but you know what, that sparks to me. I have to, probe on that a bit because you said something to me in another conversation, or you put it in a way. That was so great about how. UX has in the past, um, been really good at divorcing ourselves from the bottom line and being anti business. It was such a good point that you made. And I think what you just said, just really, it, it's all about, you know, bringing these products to life so that business can do well, we have to be on the side of business as well as the users.

Justin Davis:

You remember the show shark tank. One of the sharks, Robert Herjavec, Canadian, I believe, was on there. And this moment on this show made a really lasting impact on me. There was like, there was a founder who could not make his business work and he was like hell bent on. On having everything produced in the U S and the costs were super high and he couldn't sell anything because the cost was too high. And there was a margin and the company was going out of business and they needed to raise money and all this, Rob Herjavec said, he was arguing with him and he said, you need to offshore this stuff. You need to send this overseas and do this at a much cheaper thing. And he was like, no, I don't want to do that when you're, we're all about American made, we're going to do it up. And Herjavec said, you can't make decisions for values that kill the entire company because then you have nothing. Right. And you cannot let this thing go down and watch it go down because you're going to hurt everyone else around that. Right. I understand that you want to do a thing a certain way and understand that you have values and you have things you care about, but it's not working and you are going to end up causing a lot of people to lose their jobs. And not be able to feed their families and show up at home and go, I don't have any work anymore. That's a really serious responsibility. And that's why we in the UX, I cannot be anti business. We literally are in the job of keeping businesses running. And if we take the other side. Then we will be out of a job, very cut and dry. No,

Lynne Polischuik:

um, how we describe consulting in one word and, the word that immediately came to mind for me is value. Justin had talked about earlier, the fact that the work is not the thing. Right. The, the UX deliverables and work, that's not our product. Our product is the end product. Our product is, the service that's helping people get things done. If you know, for thinking of service design, if you're doing a project for government, the UX stuff is how we get to a place, but ultimately it's the service counter. That people need to go to, to renew a license or to file a permit. In product, the work is on building websites, but the actual product is the leads that that website is going to bring into a company. And I think it's just that we've gotten so focused over this past decade or however many years. In like an internal focus. Who are we? Why do we exist? How can we, make the work better? We haven't, like I said, had that focus on the actual value we provide. I've always said this to clients, you spend a dollar with me, I'm going to save you 10 in development costs. Because you're not going to have to go and build insane features that nobody's going to use. Or you're not going to build something in such a way that like you have to like throw it out and start over in six months. That's always been a big part of my selling to clients is just that, yeah, you know, I am a cost. But I am a cost that like actually reduces a ton of your overhead in bringing a product to market. And I think that value and we talk about value based pricing. I don't cost 100 an hour. I cost whatever makes sense in terms of the value. I bring to your business and I think that's something that. We really need to focus on. And again, I think that's something where product, product management, product design has really eaten our lunch because again, they have never been divorced from the business, you know, from the actual thing that the UX is driving towards. So to me, it all comes down to value. We have to continuously articulate our value. And if you go into a sales meeting with a client and you say, well, I'm going to make these fantastic wireframes and I'm going to do all this IA, and I'm going to talk to all these people, do this research, um, if you just sell that, it doesn't inspire a lot of, you know, need in the client's mind. But if you go in and you say, yeah, I'm here to provide value in terms of reducing your development costs, um, ensuring your product, your go to market strategy is tight, ensuring that, the service design around your product. Is what it needs to be that you have a proper support staff that you have a proper sales team that you're marketing and selling in the right places i've had a couple of projects in recent years Um where they were trying to understand how do we market ourselves in this like incredibly fractured? Chaotic social space and where should we be putting our ads and it ended up that the answer wasn't, we should be putting our ads on a website. The answer was, we need to make a partnership with Costco so that we're offered to their business clients as part of their, benefit package. When you buy a Costco business membership. You get a free trial of our product that has nothing to do with making wireframes But it has everything to do with connecting those dots and making that value for that client That they might not have seen otherwise. So I mean that's a long way of giving a one worded answer But I think it does come back to value all the time and our value is not the process Our value is the product

Kyle Soucy:

It's great. It's such an important point. Just two more questions here. So I would love to know what's the best. Best piece of business advice you've ever received.

Lynne Polischuik:

I know um, I know in general, one. piece of advice that my father gave me long ago, I was starting out in the spaces. If you go into every interview or sales call, with the mindset that, I've already got the job. This is my job. I've got the job. It just kind of helps you manifest, success or what, but I think it really has always helped me sell myself, and help me sell my value to clients is just having this mindset of. I got this and I know that's not, specifically business advice, I think it has really played into my ability to build a business and to be successful at it is just, this mindset of, I can do this, I can do bigger things. And not doubting yourself. That's an important aspect of making a consultancy or any small business happen. Right? So for me, it's that.

Justin Davis:

Yeah. It's a hard question to answer because I can't think of any like quotables, right. That I'm trying to think of. But I think one of the most important things that I have learned and that I quite honestly, A buddy of mine, Josh Sherman, who I've been great friends with for a long time, he's an engineer, lives in Austin, used to live in Tampa, joshtronic.com. He taught me over the years, we would joke, our saying was ship, ship, ship, ship, and we talked about shipping, shipping, shipping, get things out into the world. And, I think one of the most important lessons that I've learned is that You cannot get things in front of people, and this is from a design standpoint or a business standpoint, a product sample, anything you can't get things in front of people fast enough. And I think that especially as a consultant, the kind of mantra of ship. I have a sticker on my laptop that says ship, right? And the idea behind that is every day, get things out into the world, do things that touch people and it get feedback and start conversations and that kind of thing, because at the end of the day, the more you do that, the better your products will get. The better your marketing will get, the better your networking we talked about will get. All of these things get better when you get things out of the building faster. And so I think that from a philosophical standpoint, from a business standpoint, what that's about is taking risks, go and getting things out into the world because At the end of the day, the people who ship and get things out are the people who win, not the ones who wait to get it right or something like that, right? Get it close and get it out. And I think that's one of the most valuable things that I've learned definitely over the past decade.

Kyle Soucy:

The good enough MVP mindset.

Justin Davis:

But everything from your blog posts to your products, to your networking, to everything,

Lynne Polischuik:

And I think another thing, Justin, that, just hearing you talk, I've learned a lot from you, uh, being a shippet squirrel, the idea of MVP, I think so much of my learning and so much of my growth in this work has come from working with folks like Justin, has come from working with folks like you, Kyle, I feel like, A rising tide lifts all boats in the consulting space. I know that I could not have done the work I've done, had the success I've had without The ability to reach out and collaborate with folks around me. I think you can take a very competitive, secretive stance, or you can really lean on your network and collaborate with your network. One of the reasons Justin and I have worked together so long, and so well is because, to be honest, I've said this a million times. Justin is a unicorn in a legitimate sense. He is a fantastic researcher. He is a fantastic systems thinker. He can code and he understands the tech stack and he's a fantastic interaction designer. Amazing at putting ideas into visuals. Those are some of the places where I'm not super strong. I feel like I love the research and I love the strategy piece. And I found that, you know, In a lot of the projects we've done together, Justin is just kind of like half my brain and that brings so much, value to the client, but also to us as consultants, like I would not have learned everything I've learned. Kyle watching you work, and seeing how you got to the answers that we needed. I think we couldn't have done that research project without your brain because you are remarkably talented facilitator and moderator. And I think like just so much of our strength in this space as consultants is. Working with other folks, like minded folks, other talented folks, to help us build our expertise and our experience. you know, I really couldn't have done the work that I've done over the years or gotten to the level of knowledge that I have without collaborating with other folks. So, I think it's it can be lonely working as a consultant and being on your own. Um, but having folks you can bounce ideas off of and talk through problems with is just so fundamental to doing this job. Well, so I highly recommend collaborating because. it's made such a massive difference in my work and in projects where I've been really an island on my own, I, I have not done my best work.

Kyle Soucy:

think that segues nicely to the last question I have, which is really what consulting resources have been most helpful for you, whether it be books, podcasts, coaches, other people, like collaborating, like you said, um, just if the listeners, um, Could go off and consume one thing to help them. What do you think that would be or follow someone?

Lynne Polischuik:

one person who has fundamentally shaped how I think about my work and how I execute my work is Erica Hall. Um, she just actually released, uh, a new edition of her book, Just Enough Research, which, is not a book about research. It is, it is. But it's also, you know, I think I've said this before, Erica really has helped me understand as a consultant and as a practitioner, how to navigate the different cultures of a company. And, she talks about the fact that like, our job is not research so much as it is facilitating like a culture of learning and that book for me has been huge. and I'm excited to read the new edition, because I think the other good thing about Erica is she is so on the pulse of things. And as, as our world shifts, she is someone whose voice I always look to immediately. on top of being an insanely amazing researcher, she's an excellent business person. you know, she and Mike have been. Made Mule like such a, a success. And I think it's because they are transparent and they are just, incredibly good at managing the kind of business side of what we do, um, and the cultural side of what we do.

Kyle Soucy:

can't wait to read her new book. And, actually that's a good Easter egg because I am in the midst of scheduling her and Mike. So hopefully coming soon.

Lynne Polischuik:

so fun, Like, it'll be great.

Justin Davis:

Um, I'll say, I actually have this book sitting in front I'm going to mention it, because it's a really great book that I bet a number of people in the UX world probably actually haven't read or heard of, because it's not a UX book, but it is, to me, an incredibly valuable book in terms of how to tell good stories. And how to talk about what you do as a consultant or what your product does, right? It's a very hard thing for us to do is talk about what we do, talk about our product. there's a book called building a story brand by Donald Miller and I'm holding it up, but get the, uh, the listening audience cannot see this. Miller actually lived down the street from me when I was in Nashville. And he talks about how to build and think about effective stories. And what is really interesting about that is that not only does it talk about how to, tell great stories and how to build interesting messages around story, it also helps shift your thinking about what is the role of a product in somebody's life? What is the role of a service in somebody's life? One of his big things that he talks about is that you are not the hero. The user is the hero. You are the guide that helps them accomplish a goal. Right? it's a very important perspective shift. and I believe that storytelling is one of the most powerful things that we have one of the most powerful stories we have for everything that we do and getting better and better at storytelling is, is one of the best things that we can do for our career and personally, uh, so building a story brand highly recommended. I would definitely oh, I have to check that out. I'm all about storytelling. Yep.

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah. The other book, Justin, that you recommended to me that has been on my desk for, like, years at this point, um, is Thinking Fast and Slow.

Justin Davis:

Yes.

Lynne Polischuik:

Such a great book in terms of just helping us understand, yeah, just, how people think, how we can kind of shape our thinking and articulate ourselves. That book has been just amazing. It changed the way I think, the way that I write, the way that I work, I think that's great.

Kyle Soucy:

So I'm going to include links to everything we've mentioned, all the books, and everything in the show notes. And thank you both so much. I am so glad you could just join me today to have these important conversations. It's been awesome.

Lynne Polischuik:

Yeah. We love it.

Justin Davis:

Thank you, Kyle. Been

Lynne Polischuik:

Always good to talk to you.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. Until next time.

Justin Davis:

guys.

Kyle Soucy:

Bye. All right. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for joining me. So do you have a topic or a question that you would like us to explore on a future episode of the UX consultants lounge? Perhaps there's an anonymous consulting story you want to submit. If so, click on the link in the show notes to submit your story or question from the podcast website. Until next time, keep that consultancy going. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode.

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Kyle Soucy

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