The UX Consultants Lounge

Dan Brown - From EightShapes to Curious Squid: Building, Closing, and Reimagining a UX Consultancy

• Kyle Soucy • Episode 10

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In this episode of The UX Consulting Lounge, host Kyle Soucy sits down with longtime friend and industry leader Dan Brown to explore the evolution of his consulting journey—from co-founding the beloved UX agency EightShapes to launching his solo consultancy, Curious Squid.

Together, they dive into:

  • The origin story and 18-year legacy of EightShapes
  • Why Dan and his co-founder Nathan Curtis ultimately decided to close the agency
  • The emotional and operational realities of hiring employees as a small consultancy
  • How Dan approached building Curious Squid, his new independent consultancy 
  • The mindset shift from running a team to going solo
  • Writing as a way of thinking (and how Dan keeps up such a prolific publishing pace)
  • Why he launched a new podcast—Unchecked: The Architecture of Disinformation—and how it aligns with his professional mission
  • The marketing tactics that are actually working for him as an independent consultant

Dan also shares thoughtful reflections on:

  • The power of staying top-of-mind through relationship-building
  • What makes a good consultant (spoiler: it starts with listening)
  • Why authenticity is non-negotiable, even when running your own business
  • His best advice for those considering growth, hiring, and long-term sustainability

Whether you're running your own consultancy or thinking about taking the leap, this conversation is packed with relatable stories and hard-earned wisdom.


Notable Quotes:
“It is terrifying. It’s 100% terrifying.” – Dan, on the decision to take on full-time employees at EightShapes

“Some of the best design work I did was designing EightShapes itself.” - Dan, on designing company culture


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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, usableinterface.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. Spring was rather busy for me, which is why there was a break in publishing episodes. I had two conferences that were back to back, April through May, and also a client project, so that made things a little hairy. I was also supposed to have a guest on to talk to us about sales, but sadly that fell through and created a little bit of a gap in our schedule here. But no worries. I'm actually in the midst of working on getting another sales expert on to chat with us, so hopefully that will be coming up soon. And, before I talk about. Today's episode, I just wanna take a moment to reflect on what the spring has been like with these conferences. So during one of them I was speaking, uh, it was at the local UXPA Boston Conference, and this was the first time that I have spoken in person. In a very long time, uh, since COVID, in fact, so it's been four or five years, which is absolutely insane. Prior to COVID, I spoke a lot, very often. And since then it's just been only, virtually, which I kind of forgot. Is just not the same, not the same at all. Uh giving this talk, at the UXPA Boston Conference really energized me and it was wonderful to finally get back on stage again. And I really just forgot how important it is, especially to. My consulting career, and just in general to just get out there and network and get on stage. So I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to do that. The response to it was really great. Gave a talk on, using AI in UX research specifically my experience using it with journey maps and creating personas, and I know we're all talking about that topic. But it was really wonderful. I was happy with how it went and I've been getting some other engagements because of it, so I'm definitely, excited to do more speaking and to really focus on that, and I'm glad I got this reminder of just how important it is. So just a note from me to get out there, get back into it, if you've taken a break from it.'cause it, it really does help. All right. So that's what's been going on in my world. I hope everybody's enjoying their summer. Today I have Dan Brown joining me in the Lounge. I loved listening to Dan reflect on what he and Nathan Curtis accomplished with eight Shapes. The design firm they created together and ran for 18 years. The work they did, the teams and culture they built are just inspiring. I've known Dan for a very long time, and I've always been amazed by how active he is in the industry. He's always writing, talking, or creating something, whether it be a game or a deck of cards. Uh, something as a way to reflect on how we do our work. I love his passion, and I was excited to talk with him about his lessons learned in almost two decades of UX consulting. Before we get into the interview, let me just tell you a little bit more about Dan Brown. After running eight shapes for 18 years. Dan struck out on his own starting Curious Squid to continue providing high quality information, architecture and UX consulting to enterprise organizations. Through Curious Squid, Dan helps product teams build complex products to align with user needs. Dan has written three books on user experience design, including Communicating Design in 2010, designing Together in 2013 and Practical Design Discovery in 2017. A few years ago, he produced the podcast, A Lens A Day, which was 60 plus conversations about information architecture. And he recently launched a new podcast with Rachel Price called Unchecked the Architecture of Disinformation. In each episode, they look at stories of disinformation and then they try and extract some lessons so that we as people who are responsible for designing information spaces can make, uh, these spaces more resilient to disinformation. It's. Really wonderful, and I highly suggest everybody checking it out. On a personal note, Dan's passion for information architecture is eclipsed only by his passion for tabletop games, which he also creates in his spare time. If you really wanna see Dan and his happy place, I suggest you join him at game night during the Information Architecture conference where you will always find him. All right, let's get to the interview. Please enjoy my conversation with Dan Brown. hi Dan. It's awesome to have you in the UX Consultants lounge.

Dan Brown:

It is a pleasure to be here. I love what you've done with the place.

Kyle Soucy:

Thank you. Try to make it comfy.

Dan Brown:

It's very nice.

Kyle Soucy:

So we're recording this on a Friday after a long week, and I'm curious, do you typically have any routines or rituals for closing out your work week?

Dan Brown:

Oh, that's a good question. Um, I do like to keep Fridays, free of client meetings, but. not strict about that like some places are. And what I also like to do is kind of end my day on these kinds of conversations, conversations with colleagues. One of the things that I started doing when I started my new consulting firm is scheduling catch-up meetings with lots and lots and lots of people. And so, Friday afternoons is usually a good time to do that. Um, I've also started a new podcast and Friday afternoon is kind of our regular for me and my co-host Rachel, is our regular meeting time. So I basically get to end my week talking to one of my favorite people in the industry.

Kyle Soucy:

Oh, that's nice. Well, it's nice that this actually kind of fit in with what your typical Friday is like then. And I definitely wanna talk a whole bunch more about your podcast, so we will definitely do that. But, I ask about Fridays because as independent consultants, it's nice that we have control over our schedules for the most part. And I'm always curious how other consultants like to structure their workday. And I was wondering, do you have any kind of schedule or routine for how you like to start your day?

Dan Brown:

not really. in the old days when Nathan and I were doing eight shapes, um, we would have standup meetings pretty regularly, which was a little strange'cause it was a small consultancy, but we had a lot of clients. So we were actually fairly spread out among lots of different clients. But that, that regular check-in was really great. Just to kind of stay grounded, stay connected to everyone else, at eight shapes. I'm a morning person, so I'm very alert, very, with it in the morning. And it's really by the end of the day when I'm getting tired that I feel like I need a little bit more structure. And what I've started doing is just trying to do as much client work as I can until about four o'clock in the afternoon. And then I can really feel myself getting burnt out just on a daily basis. Not in a like clinically bad way, but just like, okay, I've really focused along on this. Let me do some of the fun stuff. And for me, the fun stuff is writing about how we do the work, writing about some reflections on, methodology, reflections on information architecture as a practice. So I tend to do that at the end of the day, which is what, helps me kind of keep my energy going.

Kyle Soucy:

Okay. And that, you know, that's interesting'cause a lot of people find writing to be so hard and painful and you would think you'd wanna do it when you're feeling most energized. But I think it's amazing that, it sounds like to you that that's more enjoyable and something you wanna say for the end.

Dan Brown:

Yes. Yeah. I, one editor told me, I think this was when I was writing my third book, she was like, you write to think, and I think she was saying you more generally, but it felt like she was talking about me. And that sort of flipped a switch in my brain. And I realized sometimes when I have a lot going on in my head, I need to do the writing to kind of think through some of the stuff. I used to just write in the mornings for the very reason that you said, and then I had this conversation with my therapist actually, and it was during a time where I was feeling really low about the client work. And she asked me, what, you know, what do you look forward to? what parts of your job do you enjoy? And I said, I really like. Sort, writing about the work. I really like those, that reflection. And she was like, carve out some time every day to do that.'cause that keeps you again grounded professionally. when people ask me like, how do you write so much? Or like, they say, I wanna do a lot of writing as well. I have to remind them that for me, writing serves a certain place in my life. And yes, it's not painful in the same way that, it might be for other people, but I don't think to make contributions to the community you need to write or, to kind of have that experience. So I, try and encourage people to find the thing that allows them to, reflect and unwind, but stay grounded, stay connected to the professional work as well. Whether, whatever activity that might be

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah, I think it's really wise advice from your therapist. That sounds, like a great thing to do at the end of your day if that's something you enjoy. And, I wanna talk more about your writing too, but I also wanna take a step back for a moment. Um you mentioned eight shapes, and for any listeners that's not aware, um to dive into your UX consulting history here and your journey, uh, for 18 years from 2006 to 2024, you had a very successful and well-known consultancy, based in the DC area called Eight Shapes, which, you co-founded with Nathan Curtis. And after closing eight shapes in 2024, you started your own independent consultancy called Curious Squid. And, um before diving into the story of your two consultancies, I just wanna say, congratulations on the tremendous work, eight Shapes accomplished during those 18 years.

Dan Brown:

Thank you.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. And, and also, you know, congratulations on celebrating your, uh, soon to be, first anniversary as an independent consultant.

Dan Brown:

Yes. Yeah. I love marking those, occasions. At Eight Shapes, we used to, have little celebrations for, important anniversaries, but for us it was multiples of eight, not multiples of 10. So I think, yeah, I think on, when eight Shapes turned eight years old, we did a thing and when we turned 16, we did a thing too. So the next one would've been like, 24. And I think we didn't feel the need to kind of keep it alive

Kyle Soucy:

Just for that reason. Yeah. tell me a little bit about that. So tell us about the, the origin story of eight shapes first.

Dan Brown:

Oh, yeah, I mean, uh, Nathan and I had known each other for several years and, this was back in, in the early two thousands. I had gotten, I sort of, ended up doing a lot of federal government work at the time. This was before 18f before US Digital Services. This was before all of that. There were a lot of us in the federal government just trying to do right by user experience in the federal government. And I ended up in this job, that actually Nathan had had before me to some extent. he was with a different consultancy, but it was the same agency we had both worked. I was working for the FCC and he had been in that role before me. Anyway, I was there for about 18 months or so. uh, my wife was pregnant with our kid, and Nathan had approached me and was like, we should start a thing. We should try and be the adaptive path of the DC area. At the time, adaptive Path was a huge consulting firm based in the Bay Area. They were sort of like the gold standard of UX consulting back then. We really looked up to those folks who started that and they were clearly doing great work and there was a, a gap we felt in the DC market. And I was like, Nathan, I don't know. Got this baby on the way. I got this cushy government job. Benefits are really good, pay is fine, and it's stable. and then my son was born and this was 2006 and there was no remote work back then. I had to commute to downtown DC every day from Bethesda, which was not an in insignificant commute. There was no opportunity for me to work from home, after the kind of very brief paternity leave that I took. and I just realized I was missing, everything.

Kyle Soucy:

Hmm.

Dan Brown:

and that's when I realized, although I'm risk averse. It became worth the risk. and so, so we started eight Shapes. my son was born in June and our official start date was as September 1st. We had Nathan done. Nathan and I had done months of planning before the launch. Uh, and a lot of that planning, it's amazing. Kind of persisted right until the last day of Eight Shapes. And, I took some of that with me, into Curious Squid as well. at its peak, Eight Shapes was about 16 people. Uh, it was really, it was great. It was a lot of fun. We had employees all over the country and 2015 was sort of a pivotal year. Um, even though we had kind of weathered the, the financial crisis in 2008. in 2015, we had to lay off two thirds of our staff. then, a, there was a lot of design moving in-house, and so we found ourselves competing with in-house design teams. and so we got much smaller. And that's, I think where a lot of changes started to happen. the kinds of projects we were getting were really changing. They didn't want big teams coming in. They needed smaller teams. We started offering more coaching, type things. and by then Nathan was ex exclusively focused on design systems projects, and I was doing all the more general UX projects. So yeah, that was eight shapes. It was a great run. And Nathan and I still, you know, on very friendly terms. It was a, a mutual understanding that we needed to, to separate. and, I think we both were recognized that, that in some ways eight shapes was. and might be the highlight of our careers. because it was such a great thing that we built

Kyle Soucy:

It really was. And I'm curious how you came to that decision. Was it because the work, you both had a very, different services I guess, that you were offering, you know him with the design systems, with the information architecture, and was it one was busy, one wasn't, or just it felt.

Dan Brown:

it, it was hard for us to kind of justify staying together since our projects were, so different from each other. we hadn't really worked together. and there wasn't really an overarching need. in retrospect, it's easy to see how the company. For us was in some ways holding us back. given the way the market has shifted, we needed to be a lot more, nimble. And I mean, you're, you might be thinking like it was just the two of you and one employee, how, how much more nimble could you be? But because he and I were working on such different kinds of projects, design systems type work, UX and IA type work, you know, these were kind of evolving into different projects entirely. And so I think in retrospect it was very wise for us to separate because we needed that flexibility to pursue, the kinds of projects that we wanted differently.

Kyle Soucy:

You know, one of the things that always feels like a huge leap for solo consultants like myself, is the idea of taking on employees. You know, suddenly being responsible for people's paychecks is terrifying to me

Dan Brown:

It is terrifying. It's 100% terrifying. Yes.

Kyle Soucy:

how did you and Nathan navigate that piece financially? Was it just careful forecasting, or did you ever need to tap into financing or build a cash cushion to make that work?

Dan Brown:

No, we never took on any debt. And, and again, one of the things I'm extremely proud of, you know, I, one of the things I love about this story is it sort of speaks to, how Nathan and I did things. We were about six months in to eight shapes, so maybe early 2007. and we're having a meeting and we're like, this is great. We're doing it. We got, it's just two of us. We're doing fine. We don't need to hire anyone else. You know, things are chugging along, there's plenty of work for us to be doing. Feel great. And we literally hired our first employee like a month or so later, and we had sort of talked ourselves into the fact that we didn't need an employee. But when you looked at the numbers, it made a lot of sense. At some point you are turning away work, right? Or at some point you are not being as efficient as you can. At some point you sort of, we had a spreadsheet that. Kind of captured, how much load each one of us had, and we were carrying full loads, right? And that sort of created, a need for us to have more hands, available. And it was sort of the early 2010's, that we were doing most of our hiring. and every once in a while we'd sort of look at things and go, okay, we got, I. Subcontractors doing enough work to justify that. You know, I'm projected out far enough that, it seemed like we could take on another, uh, employee. The advantages to having an employee is that, you got a lot more control over their time. when I sign up a subcontractor, I sign them up to a specific client and I need to tell the client that I'm using that person as a subcontractor, but that means I don't really have a lot of flexibility to apply them to a different project if I've got a need on that project that's a whole new subcontractor or a whole new kind of, or a whole new subcontractor contract, a whole new sort of negotiation with the client about bringing on a subcontractor. Um, and so having full-time employees, from a business perspective gave us a lot of flexibility to kind of move resources around, and at that time we had huge contracts so we can kind of move people to where they. They needed to be. it also creates this sense of belonging, right? And it gives rise to things like, professional development and the employees look to us to provide that kind of infrastructure. And when you have to provide that infrastructure, you have to make design choices about what you want the organization to be. that was some of the best design work that I feel like I got to participate in. It was working directly with Nathan to design eight shapes itself, and we worked really hard to create an infrastructure that helped designers thrive, and be the best versions of themselves. and that, that sort of. But I wanna say it kind of creates a culture for the company.'cause you have to make those decisions about, how people are going to come in, how they're gonna exist in this professional space, how you're gonna help them grow in this professional space. And then what it looks like when they have to leave too.

Kyle Soucy:

You know, whenever I talk to someone who worked at Eight Shapes, it's always, oh my God, it's always such a fond remembrance of the time. Like they're always just so happy, that they had the opportunity to work there.

Dan Brown:

That's so

Kyle Soucy:

like, yeah, it, Karen McGrane always jokes that she feels like she's feral because she, she's never had a, a job job. And I kind of feel that way too. You know, I've always been on my own, at least for the last 20 years, and I've always said when eight shapes was at its heyday and everybody who worked there, just I always thought they landed the dream job. I'm like, well, if I ever had to go back, that would be where I'd wanna be. Like, that's the pinnacle.

Dan Brown:

Kyle, if I had known that

Kyle Soucy:

I still would've been feral though. I would've not. I would, I love

Dan Brown:

I would take a feral Kyle, I feel like that would've been, that would've really contributed a lot to Eight Shape's culture.

Kyle Soucy:

Well, I think you designed something amazing because everybody holds it in such high regard and what, the whole company gave back to the industry, uh, in spades is, is huge too. but you mentioned, that it is terrifying to bring people on and I was wondering when you started the company with Nathan, was that always a vision? Did you envision it to ha to be a firm, like a adaptive path with employees? Or did you always assume it would be just the two of you

Dan Brown:

No, no. I think, I think we had, I. I can't, I couldn't say for sure. I couldn't point to an email or anything. But when we talked about the adaptive path of, of the DC area, it was definitely a agency, model. The question was not so much, if it was gonna happen, but just when it was gonna happen and we had fooled ourselves into thinking it was gonna happen later than it actually did because we hired that first person dimple. she was, great, I got to actually reconnect with her, uh, recently. It was really nice to catch up with her. And we went from that to probably six, I think, total employees within a few months, or a year after that.

Kyle Soucy:

Amazing. That's amazing. And what advice would you say you have for consultants who are starting to scale and think about bringing others into their practice?

Dan Brown:

I was having a conversation with, uh, years and years ago with an agency owner, and they were complaining about all of the policies that they needed to write because they had employees. And I think that's the wrong attitude. I think it's really important to get those policies right, even if you need to use them only once, even if they never come up. Because by writing them and by thinking about them, by being deliberate about them, you are showing your employees and you're reinforcing within yourself a commitment to making. This a place to work where people know what's expected of them and people know, how they're meant to operate and act within the company. And so a lot of the time that Nathan and I spent thinking about eight shapes, some of that time was very much focused on, writing a good onboarding procedure or constantly tweaking and refining the job description that help people understand what their expectations were. I think that investment is, it can feel pointless, but at the end of the day, I think it helps solidify within yourself what you want the company to be.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. I could see how that's critical to the success of the consultancy for sure. and really time consuming and, that you have to want to put that in, I imagine. Yeah.

Dan Brown:

We ended up hiring a HR consultant, I think, a couple times to kind of provide some guidance and feedback to us to help us get the policies right. Those kinds of things. to review the materials that we had. it was tough work, right?'cause it's not necessarily inside any of our comfort zone. but no matter what kind of work you're doing, we're asking people to show up and use their brains. These are. You know, human beings who just wanna understand what's the nature of the environment that I'm working, what's the nature of the relationships that exist here? I think any time you spend creating more clarity is not wasted time. So

Kyle Soucy:

A hundred percent. Yeah. Now, how did you balance, business development, client management, you know, the actual client work, the design, research work across the team as you grew?

Dan Brown:

Nathan and I, did the lion's share of the business development. We had a couple very senior folks working with us too. Chris Detzi James Melzer, who, took on some of that. I. Sales work, especially if they were leading an existing client, they had some responsibility to grow that client. Nathan and I ended up being, you know, sort of targeting 50 to 60% billable so that we had time to do a lot of that other stuff too.

Kyle Soucy:

And when, you closed eight shapes in 2024, was there a brief moment where you ever considered going internal or did you know for sure you were gonna go independent consulting?

Dan Brown:

I guess I thought about it. and I don't wanna shoot myself in the foot if I ever do need to get a job in-house, but it is very hard for me to picture myself working in-house.

Kyle Soucy:

I hear you. Yeah.

Dan Brown:

So I'm not, I'm not just to any potential future employers out there. I'm not saying it's off the table. I'm just saying they may need to do a little bit of work to help me picture myself. there, Eight Shapes was remote starting in 2006, so I've been remote for nearly 20 years. So the idea, and I did my fair share of commuting. I've been in, you know, I was in the workforce for 11 years before we started Eight Shapes. So I'm, I've commuted in dc I've commuted in the Raleigh Durham area. I know from commutes I get it. But I've been sitting in this basement. For nearly 20 years, it's very hard for me to picture, going somewhere every day or even three days a week. And I mean, I, I don't mean to make it all about that, but sometimes it's all about that. So,

Kyle Soucy:

Oh, definitely. I am right there with you. I don't know if I could do it. I mean, I'm sure I could, and I, do get energized when I have to go to a client in person, but doing that day after day, luckily there's so much remote work now, but, um, yeah, I don't know if I could do a nine to five in person. 40 hour work week thing.

Dan Brown:

I like having lots of different things to think about. I am in a great position where it's not the same project just on different clients. It's like lots of different projects that I get to do. I like having a little bit of non-billable time to do some writing to do. like I said to you, I've been doing sort of anywhere between one and four hours of catch up calls every week. I love doing that stuff. so there's a lot of things that are important to me that are important to my career. I think that I think would be harder for me, to do. so yeah, when this idea first came up and Sarah, my wife and I would, talk about it, we were just sort of trying to picture myself not being at home every day or trying to picture myself having, extra time at work'cause I'm on a commute or whatever. And it was hard for us to picture. at the same time, I felt like certainly at the time, the kinds of new business that Eight Shapes was getting I would be able to sustain that. I had some clients coming with me. I had some prospects for some new clients, which I had already communicated to them would be under a different entity. So we did everything very deliberately. As I was saying about kind of the HR policies, Nathan, I designed a transition process and part of that was kind of figuring out where the clients went, which was very easy because he had his clients and I had my clients. And, that part wasn't hard, but thinking about how we were gonna communicate that out to client, the timing of that, was all very deliberate, and very planned. so my thought was, let me try Curious Squid for six months or a year and see how it goes. and, I got some work that, allowed me to keep it going, to make it happen and gave me sufficient runway. So if I did need to kind of transition to a job search, I would be financially okay.

Kyle Soucy:

It's, yeah, it's wonderful that you had that runway. And, talk to us a little bit about Curious Squid. It says on your website Advisory Services, and can you just unpack that a little bit more about what services you're now offering?

Dan Brown:

Sure. that's a good question. I, would normally answer that by saying something along the lines of, we do, project delivery work. So, you know, you are designing a new product and you need some product design. Me and a couple of folks show up and we help you design a new product or an IA or, I do a lot of kind of big marketing sites. Uh, the navigation and content strategy for big marketing sites. So I think of that as delivery. What I'm seeing is there's increased demand for. Providing leadership. so coaching and advising, on specifically IA things. These are teams that have, you know, pretty experienced designers, but they've never had to think like an information architect. I was literally just talking to Rachel[Price], about this, about how in sometimes we find ourselves working with designers who can do design really well, but don't have a way of thinking about it systematically, right? or thinking about kind of the underlying structures that are present in all of these products. and so the role that I find myself playing is a little bit more of a kind of, Coach or advisor to provide critique or feedback or input into the work that folks are doing. So it's a much smaller commitment, but it's very rewarding for me because I get to help designers grow.

Kyle Soucy:

And it's nice to have a narrow focus.

Dan Brown:

Yeah, that was an unexpected, but, I think necessary choice that I made, which was to focus as much as I could on information architecture. Um, I can always, spread out and kind of do more UX generalist stuff if I need to, but, for now, there seems to be sufficient demand and interest in IA work. I think we are starting to see some recognition that, ignoring information architecture for as long as we have has now, Consequences, which are poorly designed products and navigation schemes that are not supportive of the range of content that people have. So there's IA problems that need solving out there.

Kyle Soucy:

There sure are. Yeah. And I'm glad you're still carrying that torch'cause we need it.

Dan Brown:

As you know, IA conference is still going strong. it's not as big as it once was, but there's still plenty of interest and it gives me hope every year to see that about half the attendees are first time attendees, which means that there's new people still discovering, the importance, and spending their money and time to learn about ia.

Kyle Soucy:

And with Curious Squid, what was the, the biggest mindset shift for you going from, you know, co-running at one time was a a 16 person firm to becoming a solo independent consultant.

Dan Brown:

well, by the time Eight Shapes had ended, it was really just me and Nathan and James, one other employee. So, and James and I would work on projects together, but he largely had his own, book of clients as well. So I feel like we had been kind of running things independently for a while. I had a bunch of subcontractors that I relied on for that. so for me, the thing that scared me when the transition was happening was that Nathan and I had really done a pretty good job of. Dividing up the administrative responsibilities of, at Eight Shapes. And there was a lot of stuff that Nathan did, that I learned from Nathan. But, you know, it would be on me to do it entirely. Now that really scared me because it was like, sometimes it just feels like, black magic, like I don't, I dunno how this stuff works. but one of the good things about doing this later in life is I definitely have this attitude, like, I'll figure it out or I'll ask someone, or there's, you definitely feel a little bit less or I certainly feel a little bit less stressed, about it.

Kyle Soucy:

good.

Dan Brown:

yeah. Did that answer your question? I

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah, no, it did. It did. And I can totally relate. Some people will ask me a lot, like, you know, how do you make this happen? It's like, I kind of don't know. It just does, I'm just, going along for the ride here. But no, it, there is some intention there of course, but you do figure it out as you go and, you can't let that fear hold you back.

Dan Brown:

Right. Also, eight Shapes was great in that, we ended up facing a lot of weird situations and we emerged from those situations. I can't say we necessarily emerged unscathed from situations. There was like, we had to pay some money or we had to there's stuff that there were consequences, but we always emerged from those actions. So, yeah. so one of the things that I learned from all of those situations is everything's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be okay. You learn to distinguish between this is a temporary frustration that is occupying some time in your, brain versus, this is an existential threat that we need to, think much more deeply and do much more planning about.

Kyle Soucy:

And you come out of those things wiser. Right. You know, you learn. Yeah. So now I'd like to talk about your continuous, contributions to the UX community. Uh, I would say, you know, we talked about your writing earlier. Um, you're one of the most prolific writers in our industry that I can think of. you've written three books, tons of articles spoken at so many conferences, and I'm curious, how has that body of work supported your consulting business?

Dan Brown:

That's a good question. I would say if you had asked me this same question a year ago, I would've been like, I don't know. the writing gets me speaking gigs, speaking gigs, let me be out there a little bit more. They sort of, pay for creating workshop materials, which I can sell elsewhere. Right. But it was very hard, I think, for me to draw a straight line between any of that writing and any actual consulting work that I've done. That being said, I do feel like things have changed a lot and so, in part the venue where I do the writing, I'm posting a lot more on LinkedIn now than I had in the past. and I think that for better or for worse, it's like going to a networking event at a venue you don't really like, but you're like, oh, I gotta do this. Um, I don't like that. That's where my writing lives. I don't like that. That's the way the web works these days. Like, there's so many things I could complain about, but, you know, posting a lot on there about the kinds of things that I'm thinking about, I think has kept me top of mind for people. or even better has led them to give me a call because actually one of my current clients, she said you posted something about navigation design on LinkedIn and, uh, and we are dealing with that exact problem right now. So I called you.

Kyle Soucy:

Perfect.

Dan Brown:

yeah, so I do feel like there's, and I don't know that I do it right, like I, for me, my main audience when I write stuff is still me and it's what allows me to write, but I, I. Still feel like there's a lot of room for me to grow as a writer, to do a much better job of writing for marketing reasons rather than strictly just for educational, or thought provoking reasons?

Kyle Soucy:

But you know, I presume that if you did that, the writing probably wouldn't be as good or as fun.

Dan Brown:

Probably not. Probably not. I mean,

Kyle Soucy:

it's obvious you write from the things that you're passionate about. That's obvious.

Dan Brown:

I'm thinking about. I rough estimate 80% of the things I've written are things that were provoked by a conversation that I had with someone where I was like, okay, well if this person's asking me about this, there's probably a thousand other people who have this question. So lemme get my thoughts down on paper. so maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. Part of me, and I guess this is one of the consequences of turning 50 too, is um, you know, you start to think more in terms of what am I leaving in the world? What's the residual effect that I am having? And, all the articles that I put in the world, I want them to be genuine reflections of what I'm thinking about in that moment. Um, so yeah, they may not be the best vehicle for connecting to perspective, clients. I'm working on article right now where I've, I sort of had this idea that, another way I can explain the role of information architecture in product design. And I left it for a few days and I've just come back to it. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if this is any good, but I. I think I explained myself pretty well, and maybe it'll resonate with someone and it's done. Like those are my criteria. So, so maybe this will find its way, up on LinkedIn at some point. I,

Kyle Soucy:

know, when we previously talked, you mentioned, that your writing process is a bit weird. Can you take us through that? what your process is like?

Dan Brown:

did I say that

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah,

Dan Brown:

that was very candid of me.

Kyle Soucy:

and it's okay if you don't wanna share it.

Dan Brown:

no, I don't, I don't mind. I think I characterized it as weird, because, a couple things, depending on the type of writing that I'm doing, I rarely start with an outline for an article. So I'll just like. Start writing. and, a superpower that I have, that I did not know I had until I started writing books was I can write a lot of words. Which maybe is not that surprising because I use a lot of words when I'm speaking as well. But, I can very easily take a topic and write a couple thousand words, about it without really trying too hard. So usually it's me like putting a lot of words on paper and then I kind of think about it as like sculpting or painting or like continually refining it, refining it. so maybe that's what I meant by weird. When I'm doing a bigger writing project, like when I'm writing a book, I, you have to use an outline. There's just no other way to do it. Otherwise you're not really gonna have a coherent sort of thread. With a book, you wanna sort of have a set of themes that you are constantly referring to. And, uh, the only way to do that is with an outline. But with articles, it's like, I have an idea. I literally can't do anything else until I put this idea down on paper. I'm gonna write a whole bunch of stuff and then over the next few weeks I'm going to kind of continually revisit it to make sure it makes sense.

Kyle Soucy:

And when you're writing a book, do you, designate a certain chunk of time during the day to just writing or part of the week? I.

Dan Brown:

Yeah, there's really no other way to do it. I don't care what anyone else says. it's almost like exercise. You've just gotta say, during the four o'clock hour, I'm gonna sit in front of my computer and write, and I'm gonna stop writing when the hour is up or when I've hit, 1500 words or whatever it is. it's one of the reasons why I haven't written a book since 2017, is because, I'm not in a place in my life where I could sort of just, abandon my family for a little bit of time every weekend, to go write a book.

Kyle Soucy:

And how do you deal with negative book reviews or article comments?

Dan Brown:

I feel like I put ideas out there, and all I want is for someone to engage with the ideas. I mean, if they engage with the style of writing it, you know, it is what it is. My, it's not for everyone, I will spend the rest of my life trying to sound less academic. I just can't help it. I will spend the rest of my life maybe, double checking every little joke that I put, in, but it is very, very rare for me to get any kind of pushback that really challenges the ideas, in a substantive way. The most recent one think of is I wrote this, I'm sort of preoccupied with how people categorize things. I'm an information architect, and what I find sometimes when I show up to new clients is that they have this say, list of categories of, things in there, let's say tags that they use to tag their content. And the tags are kind of apples and oranges, and they're apples and oranges because some of the concepts are really what I would say is orthogonal to the others, right? You, the best example of this is something like sustainability, right? This is a, concept that can apply to lots of different things, but they just lump it in with everything else. And so I wrote this article about, I think I call them crosscutting topics, and Peter Meholz responded saying, aren't these tags, or, I can't remember exactly what he said. Isn't this just facets, I think is what he said. And I was trying to make this point that some of these categories operate at a different level. That was a great critique. That was a great piece of feedback. And I wrote a whole new article to try and explain it, but the. Number, I can count on my one hand the number of times that someone is online substantively engaged in, in the work.

Kyle Soucy:

that's great. And I think it's wonderful too, that even with the ones that are like nitpicky about writing style or something like that, you can actually just look beyond that and be like, but the content, like the ideas, the concepts, they're not having an issue with

Dan Brown:

Yeah, I mean I guess it's easy to pick on people's writing style. But also like, I guess this is a call for people to just read anything I've written and give me some meaningful critique on it. I would love that. I would love for folks to meaningfully engage with my ideas,

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. And speaking for myself, whenever you write anything and put yourself out there, it's scary. It's like, oh shit. Like, who's gonna come for me now? You know? Um, so it, it's good to hear you say that, it hasn't been a ton that you've heard or anything.

Dan Brown:

The key, Kyle, is to just write so much that they can't come after everything.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. Well, you've also put out podcasts. So in 21, 22, you had a lens a day, which was amazing. You had, over 60 discussions about information architecture, and you've recently launched, another podcast called Unchecked, the Architecture of Disinformation with Rachel Price that you mentioned. can you tell the listeners what your new podcast is about and what inspired you to start it?

Dan Brown:

sure. you know, with Launching Curious Squid, I was thinking about other ways to create content, and I found a lens a day, back in the early days of the pandemic. Very rewarding. I really enjoyed that process. and I was thinking, what could I do? that's, information architecture, related. And I had this idea, or I guess, following the election, it was becoming increasingly clear that disinformation was becoming a much more prominent problem. I was becoming. Even more aware of it. And I sensed that it was going to become even more of a problem, when the new administration came into power. I, I started kicking around this idea, and I remember, actually in December, my family and I went up to Boston, to go visit my sister and we got a lovely invitation from Jared Spool and Dana Chisnell to come visit them. So we went to their house, and hung out. Jared and Dana and I have known each other for years and years and years. so they watched my kids grow up and I was like, guys, I've got this new idea for a podcast. Let me just pitch it to you and see what you think. And basically what I said was we look at kind of stories of disinformation and then we try and extract some lessons so that we as people who are responsible for designing. Digital information spaces can think about how to make those spaces more resilient against disinformation. We're not gonna get rid of misinformation altogether. We're not gonna be able to quash disinformation, but maybe we haven't been paying attention enough to the threat of disinformation. What can we do to, to make the information spaces that we design more resilient against it? and Jared and Dana seemed very enthused, about it. They were, as Jared says, they were encouraging my behavior. So, um, I pitched the idea to Rachel[Price]. And she was like, that sounds really cool. And I was like, I also would like you to co-host with me. And she was like, okay, gimme winter break to think about it. But I knew by then she was already, committed. So we spent a few months kind of planning it out and thinking about what we wanted to do and then, signed up. Our first interview, which was, a person named Susanna Fox. She wrote a book called Rebel Health. And, I was, I'm very fortunate that I, I kind of, know her, uh, through the DC community. and I pitched the idea to her and in an email and she wrote back and she was like, I understand exactly what you were trying to do. And it was so gratifying to get that response from her. Susanna was a perfect first guest because she'd been promoting her book, so she had done a ton of this stuff. she really kind of walked us through like how to bring someone on to have an interview, uh, with them. we also found an editor, someone named Emily Duncan. she's edited all four of the episodes that are live now. She's in the middle of editing another one. And we, working with her has also been very gratifying because it's helped me and Rachel be more efficient. but she's also kind of taken a lot of this raw material that we have and really made, it flow nicely,

Kyle Soucy:

In listening to the first couple episodes, it's very clear that you and Rachel are comfortable with publicly sharing, your own personal beliefs about a range of topics. do you ever find this scary or risky when owning a business?

Dan Brown:

I guess. So, I mean, I guess so, back in the day of eight shapes we took on a client that, was a conservative think tank. it was really the only, political client that we had taken on back in those days, I'm talking like 2010 Conservative think Tank meant something very different than it does today. but even back then, it felt a little bit risky. And what was interesting was actually the project they had us do was not political at all. It was an inf information based website that was politically neutral, but it was sponsored by them. So we felt like it was acceptable. But even so, there were folks at, at Eight Shapes who didn't wanna work on the project because of who was sponsoring it. and what was interesting was, because we had done some work for them, we sort of ended up being a name in those circles. So we were approached by at least one or two other conservative political groups, which we said no to, because it was, that started to get into more political,

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Dan Brown:

one of the things I took from Eight Shapes was. how important it is to be authentic. Nathan[Curtis] and I started the business with, honesty and transparency being one of our values. And, I'm not really a person who's good at compartmentalizing these things. Like I am really an open book for better or for worse. there are a lot of things, uh, that I've put out in the world and for, again, I'm maybe very lucky here. There's not been any kind of adverse consequences, for me. but at the same time, I understand that, that doing it is a risk. and, I am willing to take that risk because. At this point, I think the work is really important, which may be self-aggrandizing, but the more I do it, the more Rachel and I get to talk and think about this stuff. The more I think we're making a tiny, tiny contribution to helping people, understand the threats and the challenges of disinformation. So that's at least what I tell myself.

Kyle Soucy:

I really applaud it. The authenticity, everything. Uh, it's very admirable. I love that you're doing it and I love that you're doing it even though that you are your business and you're not afraid to put that out there. I, I think that's great. To listeners, I highly suggest, you checking it out. I'll definitely include the links and the the show notes to check out the podcast and that kind of segues into the last topic I wanted to talk about. you mentioned before that you've had to do more marketing and business development in the last year than you've ever had to for Eight Shapes. but that you have a good pipeline and you feel it's, due to your approach, to marketing. And can you share more about what you're finding successful with, marketing Curious Squid?

Dan Brown:

sure. So I've tried a, a few different things. I got really enthused when I first started Curious Squid to set up a discord. Server and actually a lot of people joined it, which was really nice. But then I kind of lost steam on making any meaningful contributions or posts there. I set up a newsletter, which I felt would gimme a venue to do some maybe more personal, writing or writing that sort of walk that fine line between being an information architect and being everything else, uh, that I am. and I really drew a lot of inspiration from Jorge Arango's, newsletter for that. And then I started a, a webinar series which gave me a chance to develop some, workshop materials, as well as some other materials I've sort of been thinking about creating an IA playbook. and so that webinar series allowed me to explore, that, I was doing a book group, but I found the book group way too stressful because I'm a slow reader and so, I dunno, I just couldn't get through a book. And then I got stressed showing up and then it was not, actually not as popular as I thought it was gonna be. A lot of people showed up for the webinars. But mostly what I've been doing is writing, a lot on LinkedIn. And, again, those posts, I think, every project in my pipeline, I can draw a straight line between that or, these catch up calls. That was the other thing I decided to do when I started Curious Squid is just start to reach out to people and try and set up quarterly catch-up calls with folks. I like hearing about what people are working on, what people are thinking about, what people are doing. None of it is like overtly salesy. It's just me kind of staying up to date with people. me trying to stay top of mind, for folks so that if something comes up IA related or UX related, they remember me. so I would say that's where I'm spending Those two things are where I'm spending most of my time. Those catch up calls and then doing the writing. I'd love to get in an editorial schedule, but, I think that's part of my weird writing process is I just write when there's something that needs to get outta my head. So

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. It's hard to schedule,

Dan Brown:

Yes.

Kyle Soucy:

but I love that approach that it's just staying in touch, not necessarily selling.

Dan Brown:

Right, right.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. You know, I did notice, at the, IA conference, in Philadelphia, back in April, that you sponsored and you were a lanyard sponsor for that. Did you see some leads come in from that? Would you recommend sponsoring events for independent consultants or.

Dan Brown:

That's a good question. I don't know. I just love the conference. I think I made the joke on stage that, I sponsored because I need to pay for friends. but, but I wanted to make sure that that conference happened. I'm really proud of the logo, so I kind of wanted to see it on a lanyard to see how that looked. But

Kyle Soucy:

It looked cool.

Dan Brown:

it looked pretty good. So no, I don't think I got any leads, from that. I was thinking about sponsoring another conference. but I have to admit, I wasn't sure it was right. for me, I think curious squid. I think we need to be doing a little better. And I would want to be able to have a real presence at the place. and the way I was talking to these folks, it didn't seem like I was in a good place to have a real presence. there they were perfectly willing to take my money and give me that presence, but I wouldn't have been prepared to make that

Kyle Soucy:

Right.

Dan Brown:

so no, Eight Shapes sponsored a bunch of times. We never sponsored'cause we thought it would be good for business. We always sponsored or had a presence because we thought it would be a good place to recruit people. so I think it really depends on the conference, what you want to get. Out of it from a business perspective for the IA conference, it's staying tapped into the community. You know, I've got my narrow little thing that I set of clients that I focus on. So hearing what other people are working on is really interesting. Helping me find inspiration for things to think about, find people to, that I could potentially use as subcontractors or partners. But it seems unlikely that, new business would come out of a place like the IA conference.

Kyle Soucy:

I thank you so much for sponsoring'cause that is definitely the conference that's nearest and dearest to my heart and I'm so glad that you did sponsor

Dan Brown:

Oh, good.

Kyle Soucy:

just to help keep it going. I didn't ask you before and I meant to, I know your son is deep into oceanography. Loves it. Is that where Curious Squid the name came from?

Dan Brown:

that's a good question. Yeah. My kid told us when he was four years old, he was going into marine science and now he is majoring in marine science in biology at Duke University. So yeah, he's committed. yes, cephalopods featured very heavily throughout his childhood and beyond. the name came from just sort of a lot of soul searching and brainstorming. I really wanted to, after some advice from a friend of mine, I really wanted to use the word curious in my name, and I was just trying to find a good pairing for that word. and then I was having a conversation with my sister and, she had mentioned the word octopus and I was like, octopus, I really like octopuses, but curious Octopus doesn't feel quite right, but curious. Squid feels really good. And the more I say it and the more people see it, the more they like it. I knew I couldn't just be Dan Brown Consulting. I knew for a variety of reasons, but I knew when we decided to dissolve eight shapes, I knew I needed to create a company that I was gonna be excited about, a brand that I was gonna be excited about. And every time I see the logo, every time I see the name, it gives me a little spark of joy. and that's sometimes what helps me get, through, running the, place. So,

Kyle Soucy:

I love it and it definitely stands out, so good one. Yeah.

Dan Brown:

Thank you.

Kyle Soucy:

So to wrap up in the remaining minutes we have here, I just do some rapid fire questions.

Dan Brown:

Oh boy.

Kyle Soucy:

in your opinion, what makes a consultant good?

Dan Brown:

It's rapid fire. So the first thing that occurred to me when you asked that is listening. I really feel like, maybe it's a, a kind of, I dunno, cliche answer, but, I can think back to several highlight conversations in my career and a lot of those conversations came down to me listening for listening's sake, listening for curiosity's sake. so yeah. Especially in the kinda work that we do, we're constantly asking people to search their souls, search their brains for things that are important to them. and, we have to listen to the kinds of things that they say so that we can continue to probe, sensitively and efficiently and smartly, to get at those answers.

Kyle Soucy:

I love that. And what would you say is the best piece of business advice you've ever received?

Dan Brown:

Oh, that's a tough one. I'm trying to think back on some of the business advice that I've gotten. I will go with the most recent piece of business advice that I got was when I started Curious Squid, I decided to work with the same accountant who was helping us with, Eight Shapes for many, many years. he's great and I expressed my anxiety of having to take this part on myself. And he said, all you need to do is just. Do half hour every week of paying attention to the books. it's very practical. I can put a half hour on my calendar. I can dedicate, you know, Friday morning you asked about rituals. I've got a Friday morning ritual. That's when I go through and I do a little bit of bookkeeping every week. I like that if you've got, tasks that you need to do that you don't love to do, uh, that you're worried about better to do a little bit each week, than, to let it pile up.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. Wise, very wise. And, uh, last question here. What consulting resources have been most helpful for you? You know, whether it's a book, a podcast, anything that you would consider a must read for UX consultants.

Dan Brown:

Oh, I, there's this great, podcast called the UX Consultants. They have mostly really

Kyle Soucy:

Subscribe like,

Dan Brown:

they have goofballs on who, I think the best thing you can do is talk to other consultants. Um, we are, not in this all by ourselves. they may one day be a source of business for you, but most importantly, other folks who are dealing with the same thing can be, sympathetic. we are a community that likes to help each other. and I still ask Nathan for advice on things. I think it's really great to have a network of people that you can lean on, to, just get some advice and perspectives, on things.

Kyle Soucy:

I couldn't agree more. And that's definitely the whole impetus for this podcast. And I always appreciate you being there when I have questions and just being so accessible and generous with your time. And thank you so much for doing this. And for the listeners, how can they keep up with you? Follow you?

Dan Brown:

Uh, yeah, best bet is on LinkedIn. Um, I'm Dan m Brown on LinkedIn. or, um, just email me at dan@curioussquid.com.

Kyle Soucy:

And you mentioned too a calendar of events, right? For Curious Squid

Dan Brown:

Yes. Yeah. I've got a calendar. It's linked on, curious-squid.com.

Kyle Soucy:

Perfect. All right. Well Dan, thank you so much

Dan Brown:

Thank you, Kyle. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for the chat.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah, thank you. 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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