Ep.21 How to design better - Renato Paixão

Introduction

0:00hello everyone welcome to one more episode of the world class designer podcast my name is gideon mashava and i'm your host uh today with me i have renato paixão renato is a visual designer from brazil a fantastic person that i had opportunity to meet a few weeks ago at a really big and fascinating design community from brazil uh called pretux is basically a ux design community

Guest Introduction

0:34for all people of color in brazil uh but uh i will give renato the chance to talk about himself because i believe he's a fantastic person and i think we're gonna learn a lot with him so hello renato and welcome to the show how are you today hi gideon thank you so much for having me on your show i mean it's an amazing podcast i'm such a a fan of everything that you do is such an inspiration so thank you so much thank you so tell us about you okay so my name is renato paixão i'm a product

1:07designer from rio and i'm living in sao paulo right now and i kind of fell into design i it wasn't really my my my goal to become a designer but i was a very curious kid i would always open electronics to try to figure out how things worked and i loved watching making of videos i was very um addicted to the the behind the music from vh1 i wanted to understand how people got to where they were so i i kind of

1:41joke that every kid has a why phase where they keep asking why this and why that the difference that my my why phase never ended i'm still very curious and asking the why's and how's of things so i kind of fell into design and i was always studying from very mature design teams from brazil and from the ux so you from us so so every team that i got on i was kind of the person that always acted like

2:12bringing more um more diverse views thinking of how could we make our team as designers better right so that was very um very interesting and right now i work at nomad which is a freedom living company we're not hotels but we're not airbnb either so we're kind of in between uh which works great for me because one of my life goals is to become a digital nomad but before that i worked at lambda which

2:48was a ux consultancy and i worked creating solutions for a very wide range of clients that went from microsoft to huge huge banks so i can't unfortunately say a lot about what i did at lambda because my nda's have nda's so there's no much i can talk about there but before that i worked at nibble which was a startup in rio in and there i created a solution for brazilian accountants that helped them to get

3:23rid of busy work so they could have more time to be a consultant to their clients and make more money doing that so i kind of tailored my career to work with startups and helping companies to find innovative ways to engage with their clients and spend their businesses creating solutions that are more user focused and kind of bridge kind of bridge user experience and company objective and goals so that's kind of basically where i'm at right now and a bit about my life well like it's a fantastic career

3:59like really really nice uh so like jumping to the questions to to your younger self how would you

Defining Design

4:07explain design to your younger self with let's say one year of work experience my god my my first year as a designer was very very visual focused i was very much um a fan of stefan segmeister paula share jessica walsh so my my under my understanding of what design was was more of a um what visual design could be

4:38and i was always trying to evoke emotion through the the images that i was creating and so if i if i were to meet myself when i was with one year of work experience i would probably say to myself that that's all great that's amazing but there's so much more to design than you know and that i should keep looking for

5:09for for what design could mean to me and i would split i would explain design to uh to myself as a methodology to solving problems and that's and that right now it's um i was probably solving problems in for different medias but design is basically a solving problem uh methodology right so that's how what i would explain that to myself and it's probably how i i would explain to everybody that's how i

5:44explain to my mom actually okay that's that's nice that's very like a very light explanation i think i'm gonna steal steal this for next time well you can still ask me thank you uh so jump into the next

Design Process

5:59question how would you explain your design process imagine if you have to explain to your mom what you do at work so what is your design process why do you do it when you go to work well that's that's so funny because when i when my mom sees what i uh what i work with she she's kind of like i was very confused because she sees a lot of post-its and uh wireframes and very uh very rough rough sketches and a lot of uh

6:32notes and i'm always interviewing people and she's like when do you actually make things so and that's very um i was very hurt when she said that i was very hurt but i mean i i understand because what uh what end users end up seeing is the the maybe the application of the the website or i don't know what what are you producing so they don't normally know all the work that goes on behind the behind the scenes

7:06so i i i had to explain to to my mom and that's how i explained to the the people that i mentor how my design process actually happens um my current process is constantly searching for the right problem to solve and that's that's the the the process that works for me i'm always asking why i'm always asking but but what is the real problem here so uh so i'm not actually solving the symptoms

7:39and i'm actually going to the the root cause of the problem so that's for me that's a view that's very that's important to be very um customer-centric very um knowledge hungry and very adaptable because you can't uh always follow the a framework step by step you have to adapt you have to be intelligent enough you have to to know um various ways of solving a problem so you can choose you can choose which which

8:14is better for that situation so i would say maybe i would tell myself try try to be very still try to first understand the problem talk to everyone that's affected by that problem look for ways that people have solved this problem before then you start ideating because in my first year as a designer i was very straight to solving straight to to creating to ideating to to drawing right so i i my first

8:50years as a designer i was basically creating stuff out of thin air without really knowing what the problem was so when i was ready to to finish it i mean i had various problems that would start popping up because i i was i wasn't thinking of the problem as a whole so right now i try to understand the problem i talk to everyone and then i start ideating then i test it out and if it works then i implement it i

9:20talk it to to developers to engineers and then we start creating it and and then test it again and then we put it for people to use it and we start to to to see how it's going if we need to change something so that's that's kind of how my prob my process goes that's how i explain it to people and it's also very important to tell people that design is never done right that that you always have to keep seeing how

9:51things are going because you you can test it out with people you can uh you can ship it but if you don't if you don't uh if you if you're not seeing how it's going it could maybe explode and people are not using it right or not really using it right because people don't use things wrong but uh if people are not if if the experience that you crafted the project that you created it's not working you have

10:22to find out why if people are not can't use it it's a problem with the design it's not a problem with the user so i i try to tell people that wow fantastic uh yeah that's that's that's that's a really really nice uh way of seeing things like like digging deeper into into problems because i think it's easier for us as designers mostly in early stages of our careers assuming that design is about outcome

Mistakes and Learning

10:51like and not focus like enough time on the problem yeah so so like tell me renato which which mistakes would you tell your younger self to make oh i would tell to make each and every one of them if possible i mean the best ways we can learn is by making mistakes right uh at least that's how i've learned a lot um by making mistakes and and i think that i would tell myself to i would i would say get

11:26yourself into holes from which you don't know how to get out of uh and try to find your way my first year as a design student i was i was i was very very careful and i wasn't challenging myself enough and i guess that's why i was always going straight to the solution and not thinking of the problem because if i didn't think well enough about the problem i wouldn't challenge myself but that's changed

11:57now um i would tell myself to do that get yourself into holes from which you don't know how to get out of and i would tell myself to to work a lot keep working because i worked a lot but i would tell myself to work sometimes at bad places because that's a good way to know um what you don't want for your life so i learned very very early on that i would never want uh want to work uh for the government

12:32because that's that's a way that i i i do not i can't function i can't design like that having to having all those layers of of approval i mean that's very complicated you can you can iterate you can't um you can think can't fix things fast because everybody has to approve it so i think that when when you when you're starting out i think you should expose yourself to as much as possible to get

13:04freelance work to to work your nine-to-five to work as an intern to to work for for people from the street actually to start working for everyone um look for look for non-profit work so so do a lot of pro bono work to to actually to to to get your practice on that the to work those 10 000 hours that i guess for you to to become a master or something i think you have to to actually

13:37practice a lot and i would say to myself to get into those holes get yourself into problems you don't know how to solve yet get yourself to uh do some bad courses that's that's that's something that i i learned a lot from now i teach people a lot so i i learned a lot uh i learned a lot about teaching from the bad teachers that i had so i learned oh i can't do that i can't do that i should not do that i should

14:12never ever ever ever do this so i think that's that's a a nice way of uh of learning learning by your mistakes so make a lot of mistakes i would encourage everyone to to do that okay i love this one uh make a lot of mistakes so and in terms of learning what would you such what you would like recommend your younger self to focus on to get stronger skills uh well i think that not only to myself but to to every designer listening and you shouldn't be all into your younger self i mean

14:46everybody uh at any stage of their lives or careers should focus on design's impact on businesses i think that people are not focusing enough on how much design can really drive great business businesses and when you have great design you have money you get a lot of money because you know your customer more you know um where you can make more money you you learn about um the best

15:22practices on your field so i think i really think that everybody should be focusing on design's impact on businesses okay i think like design designing like impact on business it's a it's a topic that we struggle to understand as designers and it's a very important part of of what we do you know our daily routine because it gives meaning of to our work right by the end of the day it's it's all about

15:53businesses how much uh how how much what we do can impact the business and i think this is a really really good advice um what we do is it's to to empower businesses it's to it's to enable business so if we're creating things and we're not concerned with the conversion rate if we're not concerned with how much time our uh the user spends on our on our app i mean that's the thing that that actually drives the business is how we can um help the business how can we uh help our users to get to their goals

16:33faster right so i i really believe that people need to to to care more about that okay okay totally agree with you on on on this matter uh so like in terms of reading uh so like what would you recommend yourself to read to read um well the the book that changed my life was design thinking by tim brown from ideo i really love that book i also love mapping experiences by jay callback

17:07um also the power of now by eckhart tolle uh i'm i'm a very anxious person and i know that many designers are very anxious because especially right now i mean we have so much design content in the world that if we don't um sit still with ourselves and understand that we we yes we should look for ways to better ourselves but we shouldn't we shouldn't um think that we are never enough right we should we

17:42should always better ourselves we should we should always stay present understand the place that we're at and not be thinking be thinking of the past and thinking of the future all the time right i mean there's there's that saying let's say when once you have one foot in the past one foot in the present one foot in the future you're always pissing on the present so i think that's very um that's very telling if we're if we're always thinking of the past and of the future and we're never experiencing the

18:17now if we're not experiencing uh the fruits of our labor right because we're always studying so much we're always working so much if we're not um if we're not celebrating if we don't have time to call our families if we don't have time to to call our friends and talk to our friends how how our days went how the week was if we don't do those things i mean what we're doing things for right so i think i think

18:48that design helped me a lot to to enjoy my life actually because once i once i i got what design was which is a methodology for solving problems i i kind of felt like i had a superpower you know i was like oh now i know how to solve every problem in my life so i kind of design my life so every problem that i have that i have i i go through the design thinking process so if i need um to work out more

19:22or to or to to call my mom more i think what is happening right now what is the the current state of what's happening in my life how can i change this how can i think of ways to change things so i really i really think we we should we should be looking for those uh inspirations from books like the power of now and from design thinking by tim brown and also mapping experiences that that show a lot of how can we understand current state and think of the main pain points how can we solve those

19:57problems i think those those books helped me a lot oh those sounds like really really nice books i will definitely add to my reading list um so like in terms of following people like who would you recommend your younger self to follow well i would recommend myself to follow you which i follow already uh you you are amazing i mean i learned a lot from you i would tell myself to follow everyone at ideo um follow everyone on design twitter and i think i think also follow people that are

20:35um are not designers so i get a lot of inspiration from uh people from entertainment and people from sports so i i i'm a big kobe bryant fan so i i have a lot of playlists of motivation words from kobe and motivation words from uh michael jackson uh motivation words from beyonce because those people and also michelle obama and barack obama because those people they

21:11they know what it is to be master of their craft they know what it takes and i really believe that success leaves footsteps and if we if we study those footsteps we can find success for ourselves too so i really think that we should look for people that are out of the design world and are also being successful and try to understand what made them successful try to kind of like use um the design

21:45methodology of of benchmarking when we we study our companies they're doing what we we want to do so why can we do that with ourselves as people and our careers right so try to to understand how everybody got to where they were to to where they to to where they are and find the the the the pieces in common and try to bring that to your own life okay this is fantastic i love this thanks thanks thanks for sharing

22:18this like uh benchmarking yourself as the same way people benchmark companies is a very different way of of of seeing things thanks for for this i will definitely like adopt this this approach like going forward yeah yeah uh so what you wouldn't tell your younger self what i wouldn't tell yeah wow uh well i would probably wouldn't tell that that it was going to be easy because it was not um

22:52especially especially being being black and being being gay being from the favelas in rio i mean um i had to to have a very uh to live a very edited life and uh i had to in order to to not continue the the cycle of suffering and um misery in my family i had to be i had to sacrifice a lot

23:25i had to uh sacrifice weekends with friends i had to sacrifice um christmas mornings with my family uh but it all it is all worth it in the end because right now when i when i see my mom smiling i see my mom being proud of me and i see that i can help my family and that i i can now help other black people in design i see that that it was all worth it because it was not easy it was not easy but i could

24:02take it and i just i had to rough it out i had to sink my my feet in the sand and and wait for the storm to pass but now that i i know so much now i can pass it on to to other people and i can help other black people to to get their raises to get their um get their new jobs to to to increase their income and i think that it it was really all worth it but it was not easy so i wouldn't tell myself to uh just write

24:40it out it's gonna be it's gonna be so easy it's not it was not easy but i just had to to to write it out and uh it was all worth it okay this is this is really fantastic uh it's giving it's giving literally a lot thinker to think about so tell me renato in talking to your younger self uh how much

Success and Luck

25:03of your current success like professional success would you attribute to hard work and how much you would attribute to luck i i think that's that's a very um difficult question i mean um i think that it really depends on how you view luck how you define luck right because i i really think it's half and half because luck can get you to the door but it doesn't keep you in the room right and i i

25:34really believe that luck is um i mean oprah said this and once oprah said it i was like oh my god that that makes so much sense she said that luck is when preparation meets the moment of opportunity and once i heard that i was like oh my god that's it that's it because once you get an opportunity and you're not prepared i mean it's not luck it's just an opportunity that's gonna pass but if you if

26:06you're working hard and you and you are practicing and that moment comes there's a moment to shine and i really think that's half and half because as i said before i'm a big fan of michael jackson and i'm a huge huge fan of madonna and i'm a huge huge huge beyonce fan so those are people that that prepare a lot they're perfectionist they they practice a lot so i i learned a lot from them so

26:37i practice a lot so every time that i have to do uh i have a speaking engagement you better know that i'm i can uh the the work can go to to whole whole pandemonium but i'm i'm still gonna be there and i'm i'm gonna be very calm and collected and i'll have everything in place and i'll know each um each phrase that i'm gonna say and i'll know how to to to to deliver my message because i have prepared

27:08because i practice so i think that when you when you practice when you go those um 10 000 hours and you know your craft and you know and you've learned how to to make connections with people you you really you really get to to where you're supposed to be so i think that that's very half and half there's a lot of um preparation and hard work because hard work is very necessary i mean you have to

27:42have a strong work ethic you have to to go for the things that you want i i think those things are very important and i also think that having the the opportunity to to work on those things is it's a lot because um you could be very very prepared you could be very um very talented but if you don't have that opportunity i mean people are not going to see it you're not going to be able to to to work the the way that you want to work so of course now with the internet it's a bit different because

28:17now we can work like i mean i have uh clients from uk and ghana so i i'm working from sao paulo from brazil and i i have access to the entire world but not everybody has the same access not everybody has good internet at home nobody has a computer so i think i i've had a lot of privilege to to do those things that's why i i now try to make sure that everybody gets the same

28:48chances because i think that that once you have that those chances and you have that the opportunity you can you can work and get to those those places uh arenado i have to tell you i'm i'm amazed i knew you were smart but not this level like you are incredible person thank you man i mean like i'm a fan now

29:16that's fantastic dude uh like that's where you thought i'm a fan man honestly yeah i think uh there's a lot of lessons like listening to you talking uh like you literally sound like uh like those people that i expect to be like your level of confidence and uh uh the way you talk it is fantastic thanks thanks man for sharing your time with me and with the audience i think people are gonna

29:46love this uh this is fantastic thank you thank you so much for it that's really i had like uh i had like a really good expectations for for for for this interview but like god definitely a way higher like uh yeah that's fantastic thanks thanks for this yes like to close renato uh tell me uh do you have any any any questions for me yes i i have one question because i'm such a fan and i i i love the way

30:16that you that you see design i don't think i deserve that uh like i'm your fan no you do you do you you are amazing i mean man really i mean world class designers conference it's it's amazing man i mean i i i i don't even i i can't even put into words the the the people the level of content that you were

30:46able to put together those those minds man i mean oh my god that that was amazing i mean how how can i not be your fan i mean really i and i i really have to ask when um because you have been exposed to those those those amazing minds and um and you talk to other people and you talk to to young designers what do you think designers are lacking today what do you think it takes to become a a world-class

31:17designer i think people like designers need to be like you if i could simplify like uh this answer like designers need your level of confidence so what i'm trying to inspire designers to be is to be someone literally like you because you're amazing like honestly so i will tell people go listen to these interviews over and over and over again and you have your answer here wow me i i i don't even know

31:51what to say man really really really i don't even know what to say honestly like the level of confidence that you have and what you shared here i think it's fantastic uh yeah like and uh like literally you show that talent it's talent and excellence and world-class people are literally everywhere so like you coming from brazil and bringing this like amazing perspective of the world so we can see that you're a very knowledge person and you have such a confidence that is really

32:23important for professional and it's not it's not about confidence about being a designer also alone it's confidence as a person because by the end of the day your results your outcome are based on how do you see the world and how you see yourself also so yeah so i would see like i would suggest people to trying to learn from from from your steps and trying to become like you you're a fantastic man wow so much man and i i really i really i really i really i'm really taking it to heart because

32:57it means a lot coming from you and i think that if we if everybody gets themselves themselves to to those places of i don't really know how to work this i don't really know how to solve this problem then they'll find out how to solve the problem that when you when it's like i really think uh i'm remembering right now a a line from um what is that song uh run this town by rihanna jay-z and kenny west

33:29and there's a there's a line that says um uh victory is within the mile you're almost there don't give up now and i when once i heard that i was like that's it that's really it i mean i i i can't give up that's the thing and there was another um line from a rihanna song i think uh i think the name of the song the title of the song is the weight is over and she says um sometimes it takes a thousand tries

34:05to win and people don't really seem to people seem to think that success is a a straight line people seem to think that people get successful overnight and i mean i think of myself as somebody that's very successful and if somebody says to me oh you became successful overnight i would i was gonna say oh baby that was a very long night then because i've been working i mean a lot from a long for for

34:39a long time and and people really need to to understand that success is not it's not a straight line doesn't happen overnight and you have to be persistent you have to be humble because my road to growth was filled with a bunch of no's from everywhere but then you get a yes and that yes is enough to get you excited enough to keep learning is ex it's it's good enough it's it's the it's the

35:11proof that that you should keep going that should you should keep learning and i mean it it only takes one yes to say to to change everything so i i really think that we should we should keep going no no matter what i have to tell you now that this is so far one of them one of my my favorite episode of this podcast wow so like i really really enjoyed talking to you like this was was fantastic thanks thanks for sharing your knowledge with us thank you so much it was so much fun yeah so uh so to

35:48wrap up uh so there is uh where can people find you online okay so i'm not various i'm not a very social person so i only have twitter uh it's at o renato paixão um and i'm also on linkedin and on medium i i write a lot of content uh a lot of design related content because uh at least here in brazil the the the access to to design knowledge is very very pricey so you have to pay like 300 bucks for for

36:22course to understand how to do usability testing so i i write a lot to be more accessible to people so people can learn more about design so i'm on medium and i'm on twitter and i'm on linkedin always writing a lot so if you guys want to know more about design and learn more about design and business you you guys should follow me okay that was fantastic thanks thanks again renato and for everyone you know what when renato on linkedin and twitter so i hope you guys enjoyed this episode as much as i did so

36:54see you next time uh stay safe stay safe