Summary: In Episode 15 of the Together London Podcast, I talk to Ben Sauer about speaking honestly, communicating with compassion, and being yourself at work. Check out Ben’s website, his upcoming Dare Conference talk, and follow him on twitter @bensauer. Listen to the podcast Download MP3 file or subscribe in iTunes. Read the transcript Jonathan Kahn: I'm speaking to Ben Sauer, who's joining me from Brighton today. Ben is a UX Designer. He loves thinking about the bigger picture and how to change the systems we inhabit. We're really excited that Ben's going to be joining us at the Dare Conference in London in September to talk about how speaking honestly wins and loses friends. Ben, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Ben Sauer: Hi. Thanks. It's nice to talk to you. Jonathan: You're a UX Designer, and you're currently working at Clearleft in Brighton. I looked on the website, and it says that you plan and design the impact of a particular business culture on users and customers. What does that mean? Ben: You've got me there. I start to think about rewriting, actually. Jonathan: [laughs] Ben: The truth behind it is that often we get asked to design a product or a service, and that product or service is an expression of the values of that organization. Sometimes, we need to explore what those values mean and how they get expressed. That's one part of it, understanding those values. That's often not so explicit at the beginning. That might mean changing those values for their future road map. The other thing is that we talk a lot about working kaizen. I don't know if anybody's heard of that. It's the idea that you're continually improving. Often the products we work on, we work on for six months, and then we're out of the picture. Of course, they're like our babies. We want them to fly, and we're not involved with them any more. We're trying to encourage this practice of continual improvements. That's often very hard for the organizations that we deal with because they have day jobs and tasks that are already taking up their time. The idea of continually improving their products can be a resource squeeze, or they haven't worked that way before. Does that make sense? Jonathan: That does make sense. Kaizen, I think that came from the Japanese, Toyota and Lean and all that stuff. It's about trying to continually improve stuff and reduce waste and not thinking about things in a linear way but in an iterative way. Ben: Yes, absolutely. That's very, very important to us. In our iterative designing, in making products a success later on, what are you measuring or improving? It's very common that the organizations I work with treat digital products as a one-off thing that they do every few years. Then it doesn't get that kaizen approach later on. Jonathan: It's interesting you say that because I speak to quite a few people who say that they work in agencies, and the challenge with agencies is this short-term, project-based approach. Sometimes, we'll say, "That's because of the company who's buying it." Maybe, sometimes, we'll blame the agency for selling it. It seems like it's actually a broader problem than just agencies. Almost every business you can think of thinks of the web as something that you're just going to do and leave. Karen McGrane calls it "redecorating the lobby." You do it every five years, and you leave it. That's not how these things work. I'm interested to hear how you guys at Clearleft are trying to...What's helped you guys to try and get people to think in that kaizen way? I suppose that's my question. Ben: It's hard to say whether I've been successfully... [laughter] Ben: ...involved in that culture at this point. I talk about it a lot. I'm not really sure how much change I've really made. You mentioned Toyota. It's talking about existing products or services that are successful and often how they started out with something completely different. If you want to talk about Lean,
