Episode 147
Diego Pulido, Interaction Designer
Today’s guest is Diego Pulido.
Diego is a senior interaction designer at Google, before that he was at Adobe, JP Morgan Chase & General Assembly as an Instructor, and what used to be Rackspace Technology. Today we will talk about the importance of how interactivity with the content leads to developing great content.
Diego has always considered himself an early adopter. Back when mobile phones were coming up, Diego did his degree in Psychology but the Computers in Psychology class cemented his love for technology and people at the same time. This led him to discover Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) which he did a Master’s Degree in. His career took off from there.
Diego grew up in Bogota Colombia, has lived in France, Italy, and South America. His experience of feeling like an outsider in these countries has enabled him to gain a level of understanding and empathy for users, making him a great interaction designer.
How does the creative process of an interaction designer look like? Diego speaks a number of languages and as a result, he is always translating from one language to the other depending on which part of the world he is in. It’s the same when it comes to work. Whenever he gets a request for a screen to do X or an App must do Y, he is able to translate those into things ordinary users can see, touch and interact with. Therefore making interaction designers -interpreters.
According to Diego, it’s not just about the interactivity of an app or screen or process but a lot to do with the flow of that experience, keeping in mind that as human beings, we are interrupted a lot in the middle of what we are doing, so interactive designers make sure that whatever your interruption, the user is able to continue flawlessly with the process.
Collaboration is critical for an interactive designer because of the different teams that come together to create the final product. For it to be successful, communication is at the core.
Communication is not just within the company but also you need to communicate heavily with the users/customer. Although there is a lot of market research you can find on the internet, you must bring in the human aspects of this research. This means bringing your potential users onboard and getting their feedback. Human communication.
In conclusion, Diego thinks that the future for interaction design is in Mixed Reality- a combination of Augmented reality & Virtual reality, and designing human experiences.
Diego’s Website: Diego.soy
LinkedIn: Diego Pulido
Twitter:DiegoPulido
Instagram: DiedoPulido
Transcript
auto generated transcript
Mark (:Hello, again, friends and welcome back to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And this is the podcast where we talk to creative practitioners, literally around the world about their creative process, how they organize their ideas. And most of all, gaining the competence and the connections to launch their work out into the world. Today I'm happy to have as a guest, senior interactive designer, he's at Google now, but if you used Adobe, Chase pay, if you've used Rackspace if you used a lot of these interactive programs, websites, and apps, you've seen the work of my guests today. Diego Pulido, Diego, welcome to the show.
Diego (:Thank you very much, Mark, for having me it's a pleasure. You have quite a podcast here going on. I'm very happy to be part of it.
Mark (:Well, we're on a roll because of the creative people, we all like to talk to each other. And we're gonna imagine that we're in that Starbucks reserve in Chelsea. And we're just having a coffee talking about creativity.
Diego (:we should be having an espresso martini. How about that? Like, that's the one thing you can do at the Starbucks there that you cannot do at your regular Starbucks.
Mark (:This is not your corner Starbucks drive-through. No,
Diego (:Most definitely not. Yeah. And I happen to be very close to it right now. So, you know, if the chance presents itself that’s what we're gonna do.
Mark (:Well, there you go. We're gonna project ourselves there. Well, Diego, we'll talk about interactive design. We'll also talk about your creative process and, you're living around the world and getting these global influences. And it's terrific, but I wanted to start with interactive design because a lot of topics on our creative show here have to do with developing the content, you know, developing the story. But I also think that the experience or the interactivity of the content is just as important and that's really your focus, isn't it?
Diego (:Yeah. It's actually called Interaction show design. but it's in the family. I think that I wouldn't turn around and say, no, If someone called me an interactive designer, a lot of what I do involves interactivity. So that's totally fine, but interaction design, which is the role that I play and I've played for a number of different companies, otherwise known as user experience design, even though I do believe that interaction design is underneath the umbrella term of user experience design, like UX involves research involves visual design involves motion design involves a number of other different practices. So I'm just one of the Cogs in that massive wheel of UX.
Mark (:Terrific. And so when you get the creative brief, so to speak, when somebody comes to you and says, this is the experience that we wanna design, what is your first step in really getting into and understanding the challenge?
Diego (:Well, I should also say before I say anything else, if my voice starts to go away, I'm nursing a little bit of laryngitis. So if I start either coughing or somehow, like it's not latency from the internet or, you know, it is, it's just my voice, like failing to speak, but in any case. I'm from Columbia and I'm from Bogotá and I've lived in France and I've lived in Italy and the US therefore I speak all of those languages as well. And I find myself constantly translating what I'm saying, even right now, in my head, it doesn't matter how many years I've been in one place or the other, I'm constantly translating thinking, and then how am I projecting it? And depending on the language that it's projected. So I think the way that I see creative thoughts spanning in my head is a very similar process.
Diego (:Whenever I hear a request of like, this screen needs to do this, or this experience needs to do this. I'll allow for the user to do X, Y, Z. I almost feel like I'm translating those ideas that are coming in as a line of text or as a comment into, things that you can feel you can touch. You can see, you can actually interact with. And those build first building blocks is where the creative oven, so to speak starts cooking, and then puts some of those ideas out whether or not I have one idea or 10 generally speaking that's almost like a translation of a different kind that I'm doing in my mind. And that's, I think of the essence of people that are interaction designers do.
Mark (:And as a principle, when you say we're trying to improve the interaction, what is it that, as we go along, we're all used to our phone. We're used to PCs laptops. We, think interactively now, don't we? But what is the goal of what is the outcome that you're looking for when you think about developing that experience?
Diego (:Well, it is one of the most important things is to make sure that, it is very clear, for us and for the group or the company, or like the place where I'm doing this as a designer to have the goal of the user in mind, and obviously the goal of the business in a mine or the brand in mind. So we are a simple conduit between what the company wants and what the user wants and whether or not we're allowing for that goal to be completed. So, that's actually at the center of the user center process, which is something that we follow. We're always having the users in mind. We are advocates for the users, cuz the users are not there. Therefore we need to think like them take into account how they perceive things, what kind of needs they have. And at that point, we can try and meet those needs with the goals of in this case, the business or the company, and try to allow for that process to go from point A to point B to C until the goal is actually met. So that's generally at the core, of what we do.
Mark (:And I guess you're thinking about, you know, what is the end user's goal? What are they trying to get from the experience?
Diego (:Exactly. But in between that we also have to have in mind, this is where my background in psychology may come in handy, in terms of perception, in terms of color, in terms of where things are located in terms of what's being presented on the screen, is there a cognitive overload? Is it better to put everything in one screen that you scroll versus put in, in five steps that you can follow along? And let's say a small screen, which is what I focus on. And most of it is mobile. So so all of those things are part of what you need to take into account as well as the limitations with this system, the limitations of engineer and the limitations of time, there are all these different things that happen, but you're always trying to be that person in the room.
Diego (:That's advocating for the user and saying, you know, like this may take more steps, but it's clear, therefore it will result in a better user experience or result in completion. It will result in the user understanding, you know, wayfinding where they are, where have they been, where are they going? So for example, like at JP Morgan chase, when I was there, trying to handle a Chase Pay payment and all the different steps for example, between either Chase Pay or Quick Pay for business, like trying to understand how much money I'm gonna get from which account who's the recipient. Can we confirm the, all those different steps have to be clear for the user, especially cuz in this case we're dealing with money, right? So that's a sensitive topic. So trying to get that, down and making sure that we design an experience on a phone that could be very interrupted because in the middle of you sending a payment from your business to another business, the boss arrived or the subway arrived or you got a phone call in the middle of those things.
Diego (:So it's like when the user goes back, is it clear to know what it is that they are? How do they exit the experience if they need to? How do they move forward? We're talking about in terms of the flow of a particular experience. So the flow is very important. No matter it is what you're doing, whether you're saying yes, no to a friend requests on Instagram, or you're just sending money from a business to business at some point the flow, it's always something that we have to make sure it's good for the user and clear, and it's getting in this case, the product to, is on the receiving net, seeing what the user's doing and getting it to complete their goal.
Mark (:You mentioned the flow on mobile. What is the state of the state now? What, what I guess the percentage of interaction is done on a mobile device versus maybe a standard desktop?
Diego (:I mean, mobile phones are computers. And I think that the more time passes, the more that we can mostly do everything on the phone, like the technology keeps on, advancing people are getting more used to it. And one of the fascinating things for me as someone who saw Steve jobs pull out the first iPhone from his blue jeans and, he said, "this is an internet device an iPod, and a phone," all these things. The moment I saw that that's when I knew that my life was gonna completely change because that's what I wanted to work on. But back then there were still limitations and that gap is getting closer and closer and closer. So just to kind of give you more points, for example, if you think of the operating system inside a Mac computer and the operating system on iPhone, they've been slowly but surely getting closer together.
Diego (:In a way, they're almost being coded in the same way. So apps that would've never worked on one device, but not on the other now they're starting to kind of mesh and mold. So we're we point in time in which as time advances and technology advances virtually anything can be done on a phone. And, and we've been seeing that change dramatically, just ramp up very, very fast. And on top of that, the fact that multi, what, what multitouch allows is at the core of it all too, because there's nothing more fascinating than on one hand scene, my two-year-old nieces playing with an iPad in the most natural of ways, cuz you know, they expect content to be malleable. They expect screens to react to you. And then going from all the way to say my mom who never, if she was put in front of a keyboard, a screen, and a mouse, she would know where to even begin, but she's able to email, which is just another way of messaging through her iPhone and all of those things are just like, yep. That's a representation that technology is empowering us in a phenomenal way and being at the center of that, it extremely gratifying.
Mark (:Very good. I'm thinking about the teamwork and the collaboration, you're working on the experience, the interaction part of it, but there's content, there are writers, there are graphic designers, there are animators, there are programmers. How does the team dynamic work for you?
Diego (:It's such an important part of getting things to move forward. There are cultures that are more engineering-driven. There is culture-driven, more design-driven, more product-driven at the end of the day we all have to be working together to be able to push things forward, and how the communication, how that interaction goes is at the core of it all. The way that I see it when it comes to stuck in specifically between product, me, and engineering, is that say product managers or overall like some sort of leadership type comes up with concepts idea and notions then we have to start trying to turn into reality conceptually, but then it is also important for designers at this point in the process to make sure that, we're communicating with engineering early often because the way that I like to see engineer is that they're building the dreams that are in my head.
Diego (:And so we need to make sure as designers that we have expectations, what can be done, what can not be done, if not now, when, what is the limitations of the technology and in a way, ideally speak a little bit of that language that they speak to be able to come up with the best ideas that suit that space. And, and so always that constant communication and the way that many designers do it is by iterating the different number of design ideas, shopping them around, having people, critique them, seeing them and, and moving forward with that idea now taking into account timelines deadlines, limitations, and so on. The bigger the company, the more have to deal with that. The smaller the company, the more work you may have to do, but the more freedom that you have. So, but at the end of the day, at the core of it all, just without communication, collaboration, none of those ideas, but would ever happen, especially because anybody could come up with anything, but as long as engineering is not involved, it's not gonna happen.
Mark (:That's right.
Diego (:Unless you're a designer commonly known as a unicorn is a designer who can code then yeah. Unless you're a startup of one people then yeah. You're gonna have to,
Mark (:Well now think about that metaphor we use. I mean, a unicorn is well rare if not nonexistent. So, you know, you really have to consider that teamwork. And I think about what you said about customers and the psychology behind these things. And I was curious as far as the human connection, what sort of market research observation, other kinds of ways to gain customer feedback, what, what sort of tools and methods are your channels? Are you using it there?
Diego (:Sure, again, depending on the company, depending on the size and the budget, there's a lot of marketing research. And there's a lot of preliminary user studies about where a market is. For example, if we wanted to make the Google app more gen Z friendly, then we would have to account for this. for example, there's a lot of research out there that said, Hey, for people that are like this and are this age are exposed to these things, these things are important. These things are not important. Those things are important to have in mind. But then there's another aspect that comes after the fact now that you have an idea about what to do and how to do it. That is user experience research. So at that point, once you have an idea and you have a concept and you need to test it out to see if it's actually resonating in this case, again, Gen Z just, for example, we bring in a bunch of Gen Z people and, we show them this idea, Hey, does using this app feel for you does it address your needs?
Diego (:How do you go about doing X, Y et cetera? At that point that's when you start getting more specific data, that speaks to the solution that you're trying to come up with. And, and that becomes very important, but there are different stages. There's preliminary information. That's very global that we can say like, oh, like like what's one thing that we could say about millennials, oh, millennials. We're not looking to buy homes as well. I'm just kind of making something up right now I just like millennials don't wanna buy homes because they prefer to buy avocado toast or something like that. So maybe that somehow depending on the product that we're designing, then we need to account for say more information on lifestyle versus buying homes or something like that.
Diego (:Or like perhaps a particular type of users are more drawn to video versus articles, maybe surface video content like that. All those things are just very basic, very global, very out there. And then when it comes to the specific example that I'm designing, for example, an app for news consumption, then at that point, I can say like, all right, so bring in more stuff from ABC on YouTube or something like that versus just article. So the aggregators that exist today, because we're trying, to tackle that demographic. And then depending on the style of the companies, depending on their design language and depending on limitations, then we come up with something that either resembles pictures or resembles Instagram or something new so it could go really anyway, but it's not done without various touchpoints of information for the demographic that you're trying to target.
Mark (:Yeah. I see what you mean. And I think, I always love to look at the bottom of the resume, the LinkedIn profile, then scroll way down and see early in your career
Diego (:The deep cuts, the B sides
Mark (:Yeah, that's right. The B sides. So I was curious, back in, early in your career at the VA hospital, or in the educational platform, you know, these were before a lot of these interaction concepts were developed. But what were the learnings that you feel like you gained as a foundation in these early experiences that you carry forward even today?
Diego (:That's a great question, Mark. I think...
Mark (:And that's not an interview question. I didn't get that from the HR manual.
Diego (:No, but what's really interesting is that there's connecting labor there that sometimes most people don't think about what is it that you did before that, have you doing what you're doing now? What is still inherently there? And I think that, for me, it started at the end of my psychology degree in which I decided that I was interested in technology and computers. I've always thought of myself as an early adopter. And I'm the first one that got Google class or the first apple watch, or I just wanna try all this. So but then I realized that I didn't, wasn't going to finish my psychology degree and go to a computer science degree for more years to be able to get into tech.
Diego (:So that's when I discovered a class called computers in psychology, which was experiential and perception psychology class, in which we got to use a language called visual basic.net to program our own color and facial experiments for psychology. So that's when I realized that programming was not for me, but that I was still very much interested in what computers can do and technology can do. So after that, I didn't know exactly I was gonna call myself a UX designer or interaction designer. I just knew that I wanted to do something to do with technology. I didn't know exactly what, and that's when I discovered the area called human-computer interaction or HCI. So at that point, I realized that there was this kind of umbrella term called user experience design that held all those different, you know, interactive design, visual design, motion design.
Diego (:But HCI was a little bit more about cognitive science, ergonomics, human factors, a little bit more academic, just to say. But nevertheless, I think that I just started to put myself into situations that involved technology and I guess the internet. So I was a webmaster for the city of Reno, Nevada government and a webmaster. Basically. I just maintained as some HTML called on a site that was pretty horrible, like just very dated. At the VA hospital in Indianapolis, I just took a, very light touch job on being a research assistant that included a lot of data entry on a computer and a lot of being exposed to just systems, veterans, at the fair hospital, things that would show that I had an interested in something with technology while I was getting my degree and my master's degree, human-computer interaction.
Diego (:And I was just trying to be exposed to one kind. Now at the time, this is all pre-2007, 2007 being the year where Steve jobs come out, and is like this is the iPhone. And then just kinda changed my life. But even at that time, there was something called, windows mobile, six or something like that, already at the time the Motorola razor, like all those phones, I started to think, oh, so there's an internet component, that's mobile and it's starting to surface. And I was already interested in mobile interaction design even before smartphones, as we know them today. That's right around the time where I started to kind of shift that into mobile. But at the same time, if we're talking about these deep cuts and these B sides I just wanted to know to what extent and in which way I wanted to be involved or exposed to technologies to see how, or if at all, like how I fit in that world.
Diego (:Like I have an interest, but am I cut out for it? Can I do it? And if so, what feels good? So those were just basically attempting to see to what extent. And at the time, you know, up until mobile started to become a thing, I just thought, I'm gonna be a web programmer. I just wanna do websites. I guess the web is the thing, and I'm gonna learn, what does it, what does it take to do that? Okay. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or I guess that's kind of like what I wanna do, but I, but then again, everything quickly changed with the introduction of this mobile phone and, here we are today talking about it on your podcast.
Mark (:Yeah. I love It. Well. And thinking about, the title of the podcast, the world of creativity, Diego, you have gone from Columbia to Italy, to France, to Reno, Nevada and now in New York and all points in between what is that global exposure, you know, and cultural, you've got a very wide lens on the world. How does that feed into your work and your creativity?
Diego (:Well, there is no better way to learn how multidimensional people are, and what's important to different kinds of people all over the world. I mean, I, didn't live exactly in Tokyo and Soul and, in South Africa, they're all Western countries like they're, they are a lot of similarities yet. I also have traveled around the world quite extensively. And just for fun. And that paired with, being exposed in, long chunks of time to different cultures, different systems, different ways of seeing life. It only adds to, that train of thought when you're working on something, I guess, creative or something along those lines, like try and take into account that what would work for the most people regardless of their differences. So, it really makes you pay attention to the fact that things have to, especially at a company like Google that serves the entire world, like what works for, the next billion users, right?
Diego (:Having lived in France and Italy doesn't make me the ultimate user experience researcher at all, but at least if anything, it's a reminder that I have felt like an outsider before in different flavors and in different ways. And, and so I can, I don't wanna use the word pain, but I guess, like, I almost like feel the pain of someone who's like on the other side of that equation. And so it allows you to gain a level of understanding and empathy, which is the number one ingredient to be a designer. Without empathy, there's no business doing this kind of thing. And, because it is through empathy you can come up with solutions that are more inclusive and solutions that are more, that just works for the most people while you take them into account.
Mark (:You've really added a thought to this empathy and inclusion idea by turning it inside out and saying, I've known what it's like to be an outsider. It's almost that, train of thought that says, what if you were left out of the joke, or what, if you, you know, wasn't involved in the conversation, you would feel like an outsider, and bringing that feeling to interaction design is an interesting idea.
Diego (:It, I mean, sure. Because like, ultimately, even it's in the word interaction, you're allowing for people to interact with a system or, you're allowing a system to, for them to interact with other people or other, entities in the process of interacting with those entities, you don't want them to feel left out because you didn't understand that the right bottom placements or the right flow were adequate for X amount of people, or it wasn't clear enough, So, yeah, absolutely. That's when a lot of people have the reaction of the remote control, I don't know, there are too many bonds. I don't know what to do. Right. So, and having to take into account. I mean, perhaps the Apple TV remote is not the best example, but, you know, it's up there. Yeah. It gets closer to the direct TV. Sorry at ATNT nothing against direct TV, but yes. It's just, but too much.
Mark (:So looking into the future Diego, I couldn't help, but smile, when you were mentioning the Motorola razor, I think I had one of those. And there are days I wish I had it back because it was a good phone back then. Wasn't
Diego (:It, there is nothing more satisfying than ending at a call by closing the Motorola razor. I don't know that there's anything more viscerally exciting than hanging out by simply just clamping. And you know, now that the phone is back, as a foldable people get to do that again. I'm just curious to see where companies like Apple with the iPhone are gonna go into that territory or not. but yeah Motorolla Razor had that unique physical aspect that hasn't been really replicated in the same way.
Mark (:Well, and thinking ahead, then there's no way we could know back in oh '06, '07, '08, what the world would look like today, but doing your best to look at the crystal ball, even thinking, as you said about not just Steve jobs, but jobs, careers that there was no, the idea that some of these jobs would even exist today, but what would you say to a high school student, a college student who says, you know, I, I really have the technology and the interactive design bug, but where would, where would you take it for the next 10 years?
Diego (:Mixed reality. . So augmented reality, virtual reality there's an interesting segway between mobile and augmented reality because the phone it's already an augmented reality device, and you're talking about designing from 2d to 3d. And then of course, when it comes to VR, of course, we're talking about devices and, and glasses and so on. But like that I think is the next frontier when it comes to technology, if someone wants to get into design right now, I think anything doing anything on mobile, fantastic grade, like relevant doing anything on the web and doing anything like, sort of design, there are so many things that people could get into when it comes to user experience and interaction design. But I think that is one of the things that seems the most exciting to me right now, and it's already happening.
Diego (:We can get an Oculus quest and have an incredible experience, or you can there are people over at Facebook, like collaborating at work through VR and with avatars and stuff like that. So I think that that is, one thing that if, someone wanted to Futureproof, what's happened in the next five, 10 years. And I'm talking about just Facebook. I mean, obviously, all the companies are probably thinking about this space in different ways, but we just, don't know it yet. so, or we're not entirely sure. So I think that's one to pay close attention to because it's gonna be a lot more relevant a lot sooner than I think most people think
Mark (:well, the pace of acceleration is, is getting faster and faster. Isn't it?
Diego (:And t that's what happens with technology every single day, more is possible in less time and that's exponential.
Mark (:Wow. It's very exciting. Thanks for sharing your experience. My guest has been Diego Polito. He's a senior interaction designer right now at Google, but his experience as Ze. And I'm sure you got a bright future ahead, too. Hey, as a footnote to our conversation, Diego, I had to ask on your Twitter description, you say that you're the creator and inventor of the Diegoccino. And I have to know the design recipe and concept behind this fantastic Dream.
Diego (:It is, a secret if I told you that would just ruin the whole secret. No, Diegoccino is nothing but an actual cappuccino that just happens to be made by me. And that's how special it is. And that's how especially should be. And that's it.
Mark (:And can't, we all learn from that to put our fingerprint on whatever we're doing. It could be uniquely ours, right?
Diego (:I'm a firm believer. Then when you cook something or you make a drink, it doesn't matter how easy it is that you're putting in a little bit of your energy. You putting a little bit of your love into it. So big or small, and that's why sometimes concrete meals taste better because I can sense that dedication and loft that's been put into it. So Diegocciono is just the smaller, somatic version of that, it just happens to have a little bit of me in it. And if it's just the intention that I made you a cappuccino on my mostly automatic machine and just kind of put it together, then that's what a Diegoccino is.
Mark (:I love that. And I love the passion and energy even behind a simple cappuccino Diego. I wanted to be sure people knew how to find you connect with you and follow your work.
Diego (:Absolutely. Yeah. If you wanna learn more about anything involving who I am, my website is painfully easy to type in it's Diego.soy S O Y like soy milk. It's actually a plan that works cuz soy means I am in Spanish. It's just basically I am Diego. So Diego. soy. And just about anything else that involves social media ixdiego@ ixdiego. ix is short for interaction design. It's a bit of a play on words. I actually used to be @Diego on Instagram before my account got hacked and given to a Mexican celebrity you can inquire on your own time about how that unfolded, but let's just say that, it was a whole deal that went from a medium post to an interview on MTV, true crime. How that happened.
Mark (:it's a great Read listeners. You gotta dig into it.
Diego (:Yeah. It's I mean, definitely just grab some popcorn and sit down and, or watch the true-life crime episode, I'm at the beginning of it, but yeah, anywhere else ixdiego, that's how you can get ahold of me. And, of course, anything that with and talking about here with Mark or any questions, comments, concerns, happy, just reach out, always happy to connect with more people.
Mark (:That sounds great. Thanks.
Diego (:Thank you very much, Mark. Thank you for having me here. It's amazing.
Mark (:Oh, it's been, it's been a fantastic conversation. Appreciate it a lot. And listeners come back again for our next episode. We're gonna continue our around-the-world journeys and talk with creative practitioners. I everywhere around the world about how they come up with ideas and of course how they organize those ideas and prepare them and gain the connections and confidence to launch them out into the world. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we've been unlocking your world of creativity. See you soon.
