Full episode transcript below
Doug Collins joins Geoff to talk about the careful balance between designing for customers versus users, but in this case, the customers being parents and users being their children. Listen in to how we can "keep the good moving forward."
Highlights include:
💡 What factors go into "good" products made for kids?
💡 Is there such a thing as "ethical consumerism"?
💡 How does the loss of a tactile toy shopping impact the experience?
💡 What is "Hanlon's Razor" and how does it relate to addictive toy design?
💡 How can we encourage educationally-constructive curiosity and sustainability?
Originally recorded on 2 Jan 2022.
Who is Doug Collins?
Doug is the author of “The UX Design Field Book” and is an internationally recognized UX Design expert. He's also socially known for his #UXTalk community conversations.
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And as always, just remember, you don't have to have a fancy job title to start noticing and improving the everyday experiences wherever you work...
Episode Transcript
Geoff Wilson [00:00:05] Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Experiences Podcast, where we uncover potential design improvements in the world around us by exploring one frustrating experience at a time. I'm your host and chief observer, Geoff Wilson, based out of Auckland. And joining me today is special guest Doug Collins, a UX manager based in Denver. Hiya, Doug.
Doug Collins [00:00:23] Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate. Appreciate you having me here. Being on. It's going to be fun, man. We got we got some good stuff to talk about. It's going to be a good time.
Geoff Wilson [00:00:31] Yeah. The theme of today's show, just to tease it for a second, is talking about the balance between designing for customers versus users. But in our particular case, the customers being parents and the users being children, I think it will be interesting. But first, for those listening who don't know of Doug, I consider him a particularly influential leader, if you will, in what we call "Design Twitter". He's got daily #UXTalk hashtags, you know always generating conversations. But he's also a design coach and mentor, a writer for sites like UXNewsMag and UX Mastery, talks at conferences and meet ups. And I think I just saw you do one for dark patterns, which sounded really interesting. But time zones don't work for me. But most of all, you're a dad. And that's that's the whole theme for today. Is there anything I left out of that, by any chance? Any big thing you want to cover?
Doug Collins [00:01:17] Nah, I think that's that's a good run down, I appreciate. It's always nice to hear... If you ever need an ego boost, you just want to have someone read a bio about you. And I'm not that bad. But, nah, it's good. I'm excited to be talking about some kid stuff tonight, especially when you have a larger social following. You kind of, I'm very careful about not driving too much of my personal stuff into my online social following. So some people know some basics about like my personal life, my family and that sort of thing. But I don't get a chance to really talk about it. And I love my kids, my family. So it's nice to be able to at least have an outlet for that and share a little bit about what it's like being a dad and all the crazy experiences that you have, just interacting with products and the world on a day to day basis and in the context of trying to understand it from a usability perspective, because I think like a lot of other people, my brain is always sort of ticking on that level and I'll see things go, oh, this is great, or why did you do that? And hopefully I have more, "Oh, this is great!" moments in a day but you never really know. So some days are going to be better than others. And that's I think if you had any theme for being a parent, that could be it: some days are better than others.
Geoff Wilson [00:02:31] Oh, yeah. And so thinking of that, what started this is I saw you post a picture online on Twitter, a sippy cup for your daughter. And you had a particularly different way of looking at that cup. It's more than just a cup that's a different color and you give it to your daughter. But so can you explain what that experience was like for you?
Doug Collins [00:02:49] Yeah. Yeah. So my my daughter is one and just turned one recently and as one year olds are wont to do. She decided that rather than just putting her cup back down on her plate, that it would be more fun to throw her cup onto the floor, which makes a lot of noise and gets a reaction from mom and dad and Henry and is generally frowned upon, but much more fun to do. So she had thrown her cup onto the floor and I kind of subconsciously noticed this about this cup in the past, but was the first time I really realized that the cup was built in such a way that the handles and the sippy part are organized in a way that if you threw this onto the floor in any really any way possible, the sippy part that my daughter would eventually have her lips on again was never actually going to be touching the floor. Even if you threw it face down, it would bounce and kind of land on its side. There is no way that that cup could ever actually be, you know, sippy cup pressed to dirty floor, which that's another thing when you have two kids, the floor is always dirty. There's no remedy for that.
Geoff Wilson [00:03:56] Well, then you're out in public too, like you're out in places. And, there's so many opportunities for that had to happen
Doug Collins [00:04:01] And not so much in this past year. But it is that that. That's true. That's true. Yeah, true. Yes. That is something that we've we've had to deal a little bit with, with my son when we were traveling more. My son, by the time he was one, had visited something like seven or eight different states and traveled all around the country and been to Hawaii. And so it was it's the same cup that he had when he was a kid and at least same style. And so it was something that I'd always kind of noticed and go, oh, I don't really have to be too careful about this. And that's the other thing too with kids is that you have to balance that level of I want to build your immune system and I don't want you to die from something terrible they contract from a dirty floor. So sometimes even if it's been like, oh, you got a little bit of bounce there, that's fine. Brush it off, give it all. You kids got to build their immune system somehow. And that's worked as a general strategy. It's nice to know that, you know, this is never going to end up in the in the gunk, right? You're never going to have to worry about brushing it off. I just really appreciated that the thought process that went into it, because it was obviously it was an intentional design that was the case. It was something that, it wasn't an accident that that ended up... The flair for the sippy cup was at a particular level that the handles were organized in a way that it was never going to roll that way. The base and the weight of the cup to make sure that was never going to end up quite that direction as well. So, all in all, it was something that somebody had put a lot of thought into and something that I appreciated from a product design and user experience perspective. Obviously, my daughter, if, you know, even if it was in the muck and I knew was being a bad parent, picked it up and gave it to her. She's one, she wouldn't notice. So, you know, the user isn't going to notice that. But the person who bought it, to me, right? The purchaser, definitely something that did. So if I need to replace it or need to find another one, I know where I'm going to start off with.
Geoff Wilson [00:05:46] And this is the beauty of this is and like when I go to meetups and stuff, I do have a nasty habit of, especially for junior designers out there who are like looking for work and stuff, trying to remind people that there's more than just companies to go work for that only do website based stuff or app-based stuff, because you just said somebody put a lot of thought into this. So somewhere there was a group, there must have been a design team that makes these kind of cups for children. And there is more job opportunities, or at least I hope there are. And even if they're not explicitly called like a design role or product design role, they might be tangentially related roles you could get into and start having that same kind of influence, because the principles that we use, whether it's for a cup or for a website or overall still the same. Yeah. So in thinking about that cup, then, do you have any other immediate things that do, come to mind? Let's say even food related to start with, of that same kind of idea of something that works really well for you as a parent? It keeps you from having to clean up less or to wash less. But for your child, they actually are totally fine using it. They're not like ripping it off them or just hate using the things...
Doug Collins [00:06:51] So this is one that I really, I like and I hate this thing at the same time because it's designed well on on one side and not designed well at all on the others. But we found that kind of a hack around it. So once again with my daughter, of course, being one and trying to eat and just get the food from the plate to the mouth is an adventure for whatever it is she's eating. So she'll pick something up off her plate, give it a good look around, go OK? And then she'll get into her mouth. Sometimes when that happens, she gets it in and she's able to get there, that's great. But if it doesn't, you know, obviously you end up with the dirty shirts. We've got, of course, the bibs. Right. Problem with just a straight bib is that if the food hits the bib, it's just going to go splatt, go straight down, and you end up with almost the same situation where if you're wearing a rain jacket, but not rain pants in the storm, your top half is great, but your bottom half is all wet. So for her, she's got these bibs that actually have little pockets on the bottom of them. So when she eats something, if she doesn't make it into her mouth, it falls down the bib and ends up in the pocket, not her lap. Not the greatest to clean, but easier to clean than clothes, that sort of thing. Ultimately, it just takes a little bit of water and a little bit of soap and you get to go. That part of things is great. They obviously focused very much on getting that right. What they didn't focus on was actually keeping this on the child. They have they have Velcro on the back and it's a Velcro kind of snap back behind the neck, which never works. The Velcro is the worst Velcro that has ever been seen in the history of Velcro. And she doesn't even have to move to to dislodge it. I mean, it's you know, she turns her head and the thing falls off. So we actually found a bobby pin. If you put the bobby pin and use that as kind of the clamp over top of the of the two pieces that the connect behind your neck, it works great, but it probably took us two months to figure out some way to make sure that we could get this on there that wasn't going to bother her or destroy the back of the bib. And maybe we're just not the brightest parents trying to figure that out. But if anybody has a one year old, you're marginally less bright anyways already because of the lack of sleep and the lack of, just the lack of attention to everything else that goes on in your life. You have a one year old and there's always some modicum of your attention that is focused on them even when they're asleep. So, yeah, I mean, I love that product and the front is great and the back is terrible. I think there are a lot of websites that are like that to the front end is great in the back end, not so much
Geoff Wilson [00:09:32] Yeah, you collect all this food and then it's just, then it just spills out. So basically instead of a little dribble by dribble, it just holds it all and then it releases and drops. However, you said one thing though that, you said, well maybe we're just not the smartest parents or maybe we're not paying attention. But to me that's the same classic bias that we all have as consumers in that sense is thinking, oh well, we're the dumb ones when I know if you were to probably be coaching somebody, you probably say the exact opposite and going, no, it's not that user's fault that they can't figure that out. That means something wasn't considered well enough or wasn't tested enough in that kind of context of a one year old trying to put that on there.
Doug Collins [00:10:07] Yeah it's decidedly not our fault that we're having to solve that problem in the first place. Right. You can't you can't rely on users. You can't rely on clients to solve all of their own problems. Right. It's the same concept as users don't read, so don't rely on users to read anything. Parents don't problem solve Velcro, so don't rely on them to it. Just make the Velcro work. Honestly, the best fix would be to use a higher quality Velcro or perhaps something that's not even Velcro like a snap. But then snaps are another story when it comes to when it comes to children's stuff, snaps are either a blessing or the absolute devil, and it depends on the situation.
Geoff Wilson [00:10:54] So pick a situation because you've got, I think you've got one in mind to have that much vitriol, like this hahaha
Doug Collins [00:11:01] haha changing a diaper in the middle of the night with the light off, particularly if you're new to parenting or if your children's clothing has more than more than three snaps and even with three snaps, it can be a little bit perilous. So the classic baby onesie is you pull it over their head like a hockey jersey, right? Get their arms through it loops up underneath their butt and you kind of down right at the bottom. There's three snaps. Thing is, if they have pants or like longer legs on those, you might end up with seven or eight snaps and trying to trying to get that right in the middle of the day with all the lights on, with the squirming baby is hard enough and doing that in the middle of the night is almost impossible with that
Geoff Wilson [00:11:42] one eye half open. Just yeah,
Doug Collins [00:11:44] there's always like this little corner, right. That where one snap kind of looks like it might line up with another. And so you go, OK, maybe I'm going to put the snap over here, but it feels like a gamble. And some some places have actually started to color code those snaps so that those when you get to that corner, they'll have like a yellow snap and a red snap. And so you say, OK, yellow snaps go here. Red snaps go there. That's wonderful thinking. Obviously, somebody has either watch somebody struggle with that or more likely, I think is maybe there was a parent that was involved with the design process that said, please, can you make this easier for us? But even in the middle of the night when you've got only the three snaps on there. And the thing about having a baby is they have a timer. When you go in and you start to change their diaper, you are trying to do this within whatever the baby has decided is in an acceptable time limit. And so you go in there, you're unsnapping, you're pulling up their legs, you're getting the second diaper underneath because you don't want to have the situation where you pull the diaper off and then Mount Vesuvius goes off and then you'll be in there cleaning up for months. So you got the second diaper underneath. OK, you're getting the snaps off. Get that on, get the second diaper off. Do any wiping or whatever else you've got to do, get the diaper in the trash can, get the diaper on, get the diaper actually Velcrod on there. And then the last thing that you have to do in most cases is find those three snaps and in the middle of the night without the light on, it's if you've never done it before, trying to get those three snaps in the right order is is tough. Usually end up with the snap on the far right is snap to the middle and the snap in the middle snapped on the left and the step and left just hanging off and you go, OK, I got to do this and your baby's starting to squirm. And so you go, oh God, is this going to end up being, you know, another ten seconds of panic while I try and figure out, I figure this out and then my child goes back to sleep, or if it's fifteen seconds and my child is now awake and now I'm going to be awake for the next two hours,
Geoff Wilson [00:13:43] and then God forbid, when you're doing the snaps to like, you know, kinda like when you're putting up a shirt and you put it in the wrong hole and now you've got just enough time to get it, but then you realize when you get to the last one that you've done it all, like you've alternated them the wrong way and now it's just a consideration. Do you just give up at that point and you leave it as, "Oh, well, I guess my kid's going to have, like, one leg out today." That's just how it is. I don't have time.
Doug Collins [00:14:02] The thing is always it looks so uncomfortable. It just doesn't look doesn't look. I couldn't go to sleep like that. But I always I underestimate a baby's level of ability to just deal with things. We think of babies as being temperamental and in large ways they are. But they also do just deal with a lot of stuff that's uncomfortable or or doesn't feel good for them. And I kind of put myself in the shoes of what it's like to be a baby. You can't tell someone if you have a headache, you can't tell someone if your diaper is a little too tight. You know, you can't tell somebody that even that you're hungry. And so sometimes, you know, if you cry, OK, that might work. But at some level, there have been things where I've come up with my daughter or my son when he was younger. I go, how how have you dealt with this? For the last two hours, I have had your head through the armhole or whatever it's going to be. And it's just it's amazing that they just sometimes babies will just go, it's fine to just move on with life.
Geoff Wilson [00:14:57] So and think of some of the things you said there, too, when you were sitting there late at night and trying to work these out and grumbling to yourself, especially when. It's not working and you can't figure out which one goes to what did you ever consider what other alternatives might work?
Doug Collins [00:15:10] Yeah, when you when you think about what other alternatives there are and you stop and think, OK, what other things could you have? Zipper's between your legs probably wouldn't feel that great, especially because it would have to be a horizontal. You're not talking about a vertical zipper. That would, it wouldn't be particularly good. And then Velcro, you know, if you have even a little bit of that, that loop out of the I'm sorry, a little bit of those hooks out, the hook and loop set up, that's not going to feel great. And I mean, what else is there really safety pins that's not going to and that's that's perilous. So, I mean, what are your other options? You kind of go and I don't know,
Geoff Wilson [00:15:48] my hope is maybe somebody listening happens to work at a clothing place. And then, like, you know what? I never even thought of considering that as a problem.
Doug Collins [00:15:56] These are the sort of things that the the trials that you have to think about when being a parent. Right. And it's that that really add to the complexities of trying to understand the market and understand the people that that you're selling to
Geoff Wilson [00:16:09] So, outside of clothes. I know of stories, if you will, of receiving not only clothes, but yeah, like cots you've got to put together. And the problem is then that it's been handed down so many times or used, you know, for your friends' two or three kids, by the time you get it, you're missing screws, you're missing parts. You definitely don't have instructions anymore. And so whether it's a car, that kind of playpen you've got to put together, that goes into another element of the design of like how well can you especially thinking about these things that just get put in the attic or put in the basement and then, you know, a few years later, you bring it back out and try to reassemble it all. Is it made in such a way that after the first use, after it's been packaged, you can actually know how to make this thing a stable product again to use
Doug Collins [00:16:51] The big one for me was the the crib, because Henry had transitioned out of being in a crib and have been in a bed for a while. So I had to pull the crib back out and figure out how to IKEA that back together. And you know, the classic you only need an Allen wrench design of this in some ways made things a little bit easier, but also made things a little bit more difficult. I think this particular crib was trying too hard and I'm not good at this stuff anyways, and I'm just not good with my hands. I'm not good at building things; I want to be, but I'm just not. And so, you know, for me, when I get get through something like that, I just I want to throw something through a window sometimes when I get to that level.
Geoff Wilson [00:17:34] Maybe that's the reason why they use bubble wrap besides the packaging ideals of it. But just again getting out that frustration afterwards, just you can kind of pop and break somethi ng - feels good. That's what they need to ship with it like, you know, "The Foam Brick for Dad". And it's the product that you just can chuck it against the wall when you want, but you know there's no harm. But you get that you get that aggression out. Yeah.
Doug Collins [00:17:51] Yeah. And it's ahh I got to keep that in mind because I'm definitely going to need that.
Geoff Wilson [00:17:56] So, you know, some of these themes, a lot are, again, trying to put products together and deal with things, especially in a half-sleepy state which is pretty much the constant. If there ever was a persona, it's like you have trait number one: always tired. And so with that, I started thinking, well, what other products are again great for learning opportunities for kids, particularly toys that, you know, you want your kid to learn, let's say music. But what does that come with? That comes with now at all hours of the night or day, a drum kit or a terrible little kids guitar, you know, electric guitar kind of thing that just has batteries and just makes heaps of noise. Kids love it. They love pressing the buttons. But after you've heard the song or the cow mooing for like the twentieth time in five minutes, it just rattles your brain a bit and you feel less sane as a person.
Doug Collins [00:18:45] Yeah, there's there's a lot out there. V-Tech in particular, anything made by VTech.
Geoff Wilson [00:18:51] I don't know them, okay.
Doug Collins [00:18:52] Yeah, VTech they are. I don't know if they're world wide, but they're definitely quite prominent here. They're a brand of noisemakers. That's really all they are. They're electronic toys that are ostensibly about learning and that sort of thing. But I've noticed that they're using almost a hook framework sort of thing and that they will give you a push or a prod to come play with them. So let's say you haven't been playing with things for a while. OK, it will turn off. That's fine. It will stay off until you touch it. But you go, you touch it, you play with it for a couple of minutes and then you go, OK, I'm done with that. You walk away, it'll be quiet for a couple of minutes, but then a couple of minutes later it'll say, hey, come play with me and whatever it's like, it's not everything. Oh, no, it's not. And especially the first time that you get it, you go and you try, you try not to curse as a parent but sometimes it gets hard.
Geoff Wilson [00:19:44] Like, "Jesus what is that!"
Doug Collins [00:19:46] So it'll be, "Hey! Come play with me!", then you know the kids will go, oh OK, yeah I want to go play with that again for a little bit, they'll go play with it a little bit and it'll get done, walk away and then repeat it two minutes later, "Hey! Come play with me!" And you're like you know what, you are building addictive behavior by kids that I'd like for you to stop. So it's got to the point with VTech where. We get something from them that that's VTech, if somebody gives us something like that, we usually won't put it out. We'll just... this is for the donation pile or this is for the next family. And it's because I have that cognizance of not wanting my kids to build those type of behaviors when they're young and to fall into those patterns of using technology because technology has told you to use it, which is exactly how social media has been designed to interact with. Right. They give you that push of saying, hey, come interact with me. Whether it's a notification, whether it's something that's internal, I think, oh, I haven't I haven't checked Twitter in a while. They give you some sort of action that you have to take, make a tweet, give some lights, or in the case of the children, go play with the toy. Right. You get a reward. Maybe people like your tweet and, you know, maybe people are retweeting, maybe people are talking about it or say for the kids, you give them the loud, "Ohhh, yay!" and the music that plays and then you build investment in that. You go, OK, I'm enjoying this. I'm having a good time with it. And that leads you to be more likely to respond to the next prod that comes through. And that's exactly what this kid's toy is doing to my children. That is a problematic pattern that exists in technology and exists in, particularly social media, across every social media company that's out there. And to see it being looped into children's toys for me is pretty disturbing. But it gives me the cognizance of saying I want to keep my kids away from this and not get them involved in that thought process, in that line of thinking, until they're at least old enough to understand what's happening and think about it intelligently and combat it if they if they have the need and and want to.
Geoff Wilson [00:21:48] I expect that if this conversation ever got down to, you know, watching TV or using iPads and stuff, I was expecting it from that angle. But yeah, I'd never thought about it. And I did a quick lookup of like VTech toys and they looked totally innocuous. They looked like just plastic toys and things. And I would have never thought about it from that angle of this addiction where, yeah, maybe after playing, your kid just want to take a nap or just wants to stare at the sky like we grew up doing. Right? You just, you go outside for hours, just stare at it. But now instead of allowing your kid to be lost in thought and just looking at... and just pausing and just looking and not having any audio visual and other things in their mind, then like you said all of a sudden, "Play with me!" That's yeah, it just, it breaks that cycle or you go, we're just going right back to this thing.
Doug Collins [00:22:28] Or even just going onto other things, right. Yeah, just going on to other things. Just doing something else like kids should do. Right? You want your kids to be inquisitive. You want them to explore, you want them to play with different things. You want them to go over to that stack of books and pull out a book. You want them to not be fixated on a toy, and particularly because that toy has decided that it is going to make them fixated on or whoever designed that toys decided that. I understand from a, this is one of those things from a business perspective, it does make a lot of sense if those VTech toys are what your children love and what they always play with and what they're consistently interested in, you're more likely to buy those toys. But when you come at it from the perspective of: I don't want my children to learn how to build addictive behaviors before they can even understand what's being done to them, then it becomes a lot more nefarious and it becomes a negative pattern. That was one of the things we talked about in the class that I talked the other day. I'm not calling them dark patterns anymore because there's nothing really negative about dark in general. Dark is great. Dark is, you know, peaceful, dark is rest. And, you know, we need to get away from a negative association with dark things. So I'm calling them "poison patterns" or "evil design". Yeah. So a little prod for that. But you want your children to stay away from that sort of deceitful design, those poison patterns for as long as you possibly can protect them from that. And we think about, like you said, you know, when we talk about watching TV or interacting with an iPad, we're much more on-point, I think, as as adults and as parents than we are when they're, our children, just interacting with the toys that they have in the physical space. But it's just a lesson. You've got to be careful about it because that design thought and design thinking is everywhere right now. And it's something that I don't think our parents had to deal with.
Geoff Wilson [00:24:18] Do you think if they heard you say this and they said, "OK, fine, you know, we'll take this on board because we actually do, but we didn't realize that we were doing that," maybe giving people the benefit of the doubt, maybe they don't realize that that's what it's actually doing because they just thought it'd be fun to have this noise and do this thing. And, you know, maybe it was the idea of the people that were there were parents and they thought, "Well, my kid, I sometimes want them to just play with this thing for five minutes and leave me alone." Maybe that's what it is? So rather than the nefarious aspect, if they were to go bring you in, I mean, I guess, would you kind of tell them what you just said now of that same idea of what this behavior is starting?
Doug Collins [00:24:56] Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of my favorite logical razors is Hanlon's Razor, which is, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity... but don't rule out malice." Yeah, but I would explain to them that, "Hey, regardless of what your intent was, your design has created the same feedback loop, same established feedback loop in cognitive psychology that social media has and that that particular feedback loop is not a healthy one for adults, let alone kids, and that we need to be more cognizant of not only are the toys something that is appealing to both the people that are buying them and the the the children that are using them, but to build healthy behaviors and interactions with technology, because these are technology, these are technological pieces. These are our children's first interactions with technology. And if we aren't building out interactions with technology that are positive and good and build good behaviors, then we are setting up our children for a lifetime of being slaves to these type of patterns". So that would be that would be my pitch if I was to go and talk with a company like that. And I'd hope it would be something that would that would be listened to and and picked up.
Geoff Wilson [00:26:18] Well, is there, and this is particularly challenging, especially if you haven't given it thought... which I haven't! I just think of these questions as I go - it's the easy part for what I'm doing is I just get to ask questions and I get to go just walk away and not have to bear any of the repercussions.
Doug Collins [00:26:32] Absolutely.
Geoff Wilson [00:26:33] And this is also what I do in my day job. That's really what it is, right? I go and I ask people questions that kind of let them answer it.
Doug Collins [00:26:39] Yeah, that's that's a great part about being a researcher as you go and you ask the questions and you go, oh, that's going to be hard to solve and you just walk in and let somebody else solve it, right?
Geoff Wilson [00:26:47] It's like, "Here, I've got a workshop that, you know, I'll facilitate, but you guys are the ones to figure out the answer of this." But then, they are the experts. So, are there other behaviors that you would like to encourage more? Maybe there is a positive example where it's not some addictive aspect, but something else that, because of the way it's designed, it does encourage that exploration and encourage, you know, curiosity and things in a positive way?
Doug Collins [00:27:11] Yeah, one of my favorite set of toys that my daughter has right now that my son is probably playing with more than she is, is a set of toys by, I think it's Fisher-Price, so I'm not entirely sure. So we'll go with maybe Fisher Price? That is called, I'm going to mess up their brand name, and I think it's called Linkables [Linkimals]. And these are toys.. and I haven't even I haven't had time to look up how they connect, although I'm fascinated with them. They're toys that can connect and talk with each other. So we have a sloth, we have an otter, and we have a panda bear. And they sell a whole bunch of different toys. Right? And all of these have different sort of user interfaces to them. The otter actually has a keyboard on it. The panda just has one big stinking button in the middle of its tummy that you can wail on. And then the otter has like buttons on its fingers and toes and that sort of thing. So when you get them all together in the same room, what will happen is if you start playing with one, the others will turn on and start talking to it and playing with it and interacting with it, and particularly for a time period where social interaction among children has been a bit more limited, it's almost a way to build up a, maybe not a great, but a surrogate friend-base and a surrogate group - that you can be in a group and not be in a group. And it's been interesting; certainly was not our intent. We got these toys all from different people who I don't think realized that they interacted with each other and certainly wasn't the intent behind it. But the more that I watched them play and the more that I see my son's and my daughter's eyes light up when, you know, the sloth starts to sing with the panda and they're clapping along and all singing the same songs and they'll join in on that, I think that's a very positive experience because it's building those collaborative experiences and showing that across technology there can be collaborative experiences and communication among those pieces. And for me as an adult, it's fascinating to think about the programing and the the user interface design and the thought process that went behind building these. But for a kid, I can only imagine it just must be wonderous just to see your toys talking to each other and playing with each other. And I mean, that would have blown my tiny little mind when I was a kid.
Geoff Wilson [00:29:30] Because you have to do that yourself! You had to, you know, you had to make the conversation for both of them. Yeah.
Doug Collins [00:29:35] And he does that. I mean, Henry has a tremendous imagination and which is a great blessing for him. He'll sit there with his toys and do his thing. And, you know, he's always done that. But I think it's different for him to see the technology doing it on its own. And I can definitely tell it's sparking some thoughts about why is this happening, how is this working? And, you know, when we get a little bit older, we've already started to talk about, you know, how networks work because of this. We've been able to talk about, you know, some basics of how data is sent across the air at a very fundamental level that's still setting some of that groundwork. So it's wonderful to have some technology that sparks a keen interest of because of the impact that it has on the users. And it's been great to see that going forward. That's probably my favorite thing that I've come across recently, is that Linkimals' set up. And hopefully I'm going to continue to explore more because I really need to figure out how they all work.
Geoff Wilson [00:30:33] Yeah, yeah. That's that's definitely interesting. I'm always... I do always think of it as, "How could this be negatively impacting?" And if it is a product strategy to try to force people to sell as many as possible, you know, it's one of those, "Oh well one isn't good enough by itself, so that's why you have to buy the third and fourth and fifth and sixth," because there's been products like that the past. But in this case, it does sound like it's great that one of them is great by itself, and it's just an added bonus that if you get a second one along. So it's not like they're trying to make you buy all 20 of the things. That's just a positive outcome from having them all together.
Doug Collins [00:31:06] And, you know, we only have three, but I'm just kind of looking through Fisher Prices website. They have a ton.
Geoff Wilson [00:31:12] If you get five together, they start taking over your house. I feel like it's a Toy Story movie or something.
Doug Collins [00:31:18] "So play nice!"
Geoff Wilson [00:31:21] Hahaha Yeah it's Toy Story 5 when all the Linkimals get together. And so in thinking about toys, this made me start thinking of where you've got toy stores and you know, that's where you'd go - the entire place is dedicated to that. Now, it might be relegated to like Wal-Mart shelves or something like that of like the toy aisles. But shifting a little bit from the product experience to that service experience in that way of: what was that like? The experience of going to a store, like a toy store with your kids. And, also, I'm imagining that trying to pull them away from there isn't exactly an easy task either.
Doug Collins [00:31:58] The key for parents, I will give this parenting advice, set the expectation that we're here to look, we're not here to buy anything. And if you set that expectation as that is the norm, that when we go look at toys, you can look all you want. You can touch, you can poke and prod. That's fine. Make sure you ask me first. But we're not going to buy anything. We're just going to go and look. And that makes everything a whole lot easier, because when you go to where there are toys and the kids go, "Oh, I want to go look at the toys!" Go, "OK, that's great. But remember, do we buy any toys when we go look at them?" And they go, "No", and you go, "Yeah, that's right."
Geoff Wilson [00:32:26] Yeahhhh. High fives all around.
Doug Collins [00:32:30] Exactly. It's so much easier. So that's the expectation. And the very few places that we have toys with available to us, which it is very much a different experience because you can tell that the packaging is very different from what it used to be, just the way things are connected and strapped in, but how accessible the different parts of the toys are that, you know, the technology has come a long way. Things roar, things run, things blast off. And these toys want you to be able to interact with those in a way that you can get a feel for what the toy will be like to play with while still keeping it in its packaging. And it's not a challenge that was around when we were kids. There were some toys that did that, but there were very few and far between. And those toys were still locked down in layers of, you know, form fitting plastic packaging, whereas today it's just the invitation to come play and experience the toys on the shelves. It's so much more of an experience to go and enjoy these, which makes it a shame that toy stores aren't really a thing anymore because there isn't a place that that you know you can just take your kids and just watch them go and have that great experience. You know, as locked down as things were at Toys R US when I was a kid, there were still Toys R US to go to and check out all the cool stuff. There's just not that place anymore. It's always secondary. It's not your primary reason for going there. If you go into Target, you might look at the toys, but you're going there to get diapers or groceries or clothes. It's always secondary. And kids need a primary place where they can just go and be kids. Yeah, we were missing that. There's not a space for that. And in the technology-retail physical universe right now, so much is being done online. Some things are great to be bought online; buy your hockey jersey online, right, buy your new set of skates. That's fine. But other things like kids toys that rely so much on what are your kids think about them, how do they interact with them, what what patterns are being exposed as you play with them? That experience is not there, and that makes me very sad.
Geoff Wilson [00:34:46] Yes. So what is it like now? I mean, so you know before you said you can look and not buy and I guess online, that's even more so. I guess, really, because you are just literally looking at a picture of a kid playing with a toy or the picture of the box now. And buying I guess could be dangerous because if you don't have it locked down well with parental controls, it could be just a one-tap buy. And look, now you're buying heaps of stuff. So has there been any of that kind of interaction with you and your family in terms of, you know, like you said, you used to be able to walk into a store and you're a little kid in her hand and walk them down the aisle and see all the stuff around them? And you get to watch them explore, like go to the things that interested versus online. Now, do you even have that kind of moment of, like, sitting on a website and like showing them pictures of things that you might buy r is that not even a thing?
Doug Collins [00:35:33] We do that a little bit, but for the most part, you're kind of guessing what your child is interested in and trying to feed those interests in a positive way and just more or less hoping that what you buy is going to work for that. So for Henry, yeah if we want to buy him toys to teach him about dinosaurs, you're kind of taking a runner on some of these because the experience of buying something online is is a bit murky. It's a lot more just point-and-pray at this point in time than what it was when I was a kid where you could really go and get your hands on things, at least get a good physical look at something before you decided you wanted to buy it and your parents could actually look at it and say, "Oh, no, that's trash. We're not going to buy that." And that's a whole other argument. But it's definitely a different experience nowadays.
Geoff Wilson [00:36:28] And that made me think of, you know, if you buy something and they don't particularly like it or it doesn't work as well as you thought it were, things like that, I was starting to think about waste because, you know, part of design, I think that's the human centered design aspect, just thinking about the long term repercussions of this for us and the world around us. So there is a level of not just buying things for the sake of buying it. And in this case said you're not you're right. You're trying out you're hoping that it'll work. Well, there is some thought that, OK, now you've got these plastic toys. What do you do with it? If you had whole intention that hopefully they would like it and they didn't, well, how do we prevent that? Just going into a landfill? How do we do something with this, especially as years go on? So I guess first I'll start there and then they don't want to get into another aspect of that first. Do we have any... What do we have available to us to help not just throwing it away?
Doug Collins [00:37:18] Yeah, well, there are some companies that actually make their toys out of entirely recycled material, which is great. And I should note, too, for your sake and for mine, we don't have any... we're not paid to endorse anything or talk about any of these products. They're just products we're talking about
Geoff Wilson [00:37:34] Unless they want to pay me! I'm not against it haha
Doug Collins [00:37:37] No, I totally, I'd totally do promoted stuff, but I will make sure everybody knows it's been promoted. I want to say, what's the green toy company name, they might just even just be Green Toys? Yeah, Green Toys is their name. Everything they make is made out of recycled plastic. So it's great because you know that whatever you're buying is 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic that's useful. And that if it breaks, if it doesn't work out, you can again put that back in the recycling. This is going to go back through the recycling queue, which is great. So that part of things is great, but it's the other side of things where you go, OK, we've we've bought this and we know that we're going to use it for a while. But in all likelihood, this plastic thing is going to outlast my child. So what happens to it then? And there has been a rise in second-hand stores for toys that didn't used to be out there and you could just go there, you can either decide to donate something you got (I don't want to sell this) or you can sell it. If you decide you want to do that, they'll give you 10 cents on the dollar or whatever it is for what it's worth, and then go back and resell it. But at least that way, you know that it's getting out there and it's it's being recycled into the toy conundrum, but it really makes buying decisions hard sometimes as a parent, knowing that, you know, this thing is going to be junked out or in a landfill at some point in time. So how do are you going to handle that? I don't have a good answer for that. At some point in time, you kind of you kind of go, it's pragmatic. This is what's available out there. And I have to go with what's available to me unless I want to make things. And then that has morphed into a conversation with me and my child about making our own things and making our own toys where we've started to make toys out of cardboard. So we actually have a whole bunch of maker stuff for him. So it's been a great conversation of, hey, this is how we're going to make things out of cardboard. We've made cardboard pictures, we've done cardboard pirate ships, we've done cardboard rocket ships - blast-off type rocket ships, and learning how to how to make those things and talking about why we're doing that, because not only are we learning about how engineering works, how to put things together, but this is more responsible. When this toy breaks and we're done with it, we can put it in the recycling and it will come out as a textbook or it will come out as a paper and an afghan (blanket) or it will come out as somebody's newspaper down the road. And it's a good way to introduce those concepts to your child. So it is kind of a roundabout way of getting there. But when you start to think about your responsibilities of parents to teach ethical consumerism to your children, I almost think that's a contradiction in terms: ethical consumerism. But it's a victory, to say the least. It leads you down those paths and you do have to be be cognizant of that.
Geoff Wilson [00:40:21] And interestingly, as I started thinking about, well, from the manufacturer side of things, you know, maybe they do have those ethics in mind in that future mindset of being green, but then it does... You get trapped in that just, you know, consumer product world of, "Well, we we want to make it with green materials, but therefore that costs more. We want to encourage recycling, but that cost more to get to import this kind of old things in to do that with," and you know, and then with all of these considerations, if the price is too high, the parents will buy it. And so you're trying to find that delicate middle ground. And I would fully guess that is a very hard point in the design world of whatever toy company. I'm sure they have to fight for those things a lot and make these tough calls of how do you balance all of these factors to do really good for us in the world in general, but then also make something with the goal of actually educating kids, for example, letting them explore, letting them have fun. Because the way I like to think about it is I believe in kids and health care and stuff a lot where the kids side of things, the yeah, the more educated, the better they can learn to explore, the better. If they can learn to experiment, they will be the ones that grow up that hopefully make the new thing that solves more problems. And so that's that goal is always just continual teaching and learning so that they can not just take care of us, but just take care of the world. They can make something better on. And, you know, coming back, maybe they'll be the ones that designed those snaps that they remembered when they were kids and had to deal with snaps on their onesies and stuff. And they're the ones that do have, because of some toy or something to help them, twenty third years later, they're in the design studio and figuring out, "Oh, I've just got this new cool way to do this based on everything that I've experienced in my life" and their own kids. And it's that circle of improvement - feels optimistic.
Doug Collins [00:42:13] Well, no, it is optimistic, but there's a very real stakes at the table right now in that it's not going to be us, that you and me that are going to be dealing with the drastic effects of climate change. It's going to be the generation that comes after us. It's going to be, you know, the next two or three generations are going to be crucial for the survival of mankind on the planet, that they are going to be the ones that will determine whether or not greenhouse gases and global warming ultimately lead to mass extinction, or if we find a way to solve that and live in a way that is more ethical and sustainable than what we have now. I think our generation is doing a good job of of getting things on the right track, but there's still a lot of work to do. I can't go out and I can't stop, you know, these giant corporations from creating products that are unsustainable. I can't stop them from using manufacturing techniques that pollute the environment. My voice is is is minimal. Even with even with a smallish Twitter following, I can't really get much done. What I can do is I can set up Henry to be thinking about those things and have that thought process from a young age where it's not even a question to him to be thinking about, "Is this recyclable? What happens when I recycle something? Why is it important that I pay attention to these things?" and those lessons that start from the time that they're born and that is going to be the lasting impact of our generation will be setting up, you know, the the generations that come after us to take on that fight head on and to make those changes, because it's a fight that we can win, but our time is running out. So that's the best thing that we can do at this point in time, is set up our children to fight those battles and understand the importance behind them.
Geoff Wilson [00:44:06] And that's such a big theme. I feel like that's a great one to end on with this big call.
Doug Collins [00:44:11] I think for the most part, you know, we hit on everything that I really had in mind. And I appreciate the chance to to talk about this. It's like I said, it's wonderful to be able to to put myself in my kid's shoes and talk about things from their perspective and provide what I can here. It's a great, great conversation. And hopefully people will take something away from that and, you know, pick a few useful thoughts out of that to bring forward into your own life and your own interactions with technology and your children. And keep the good moving forward.
Geoff Wilson [00:44:40] I love it; love it. So, Doug, how can people find you?
Doug Collins [00:44:44] Yeah. So the best place to look for me if you want to interact with me and learn from me or teach me, because I certainly have a lot to learn myself. You can find me on Twitter @Doug CollinsUX, which is my username, just about everywhere that you can possibly look for things on there on Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, even Reddit. Now I think my username is now DougCollinsUX. You can look for me, my website is denveruxer.com. You can always send me an email: doug@denveruxer.com. But however you want to interact with me, whatever you feel comfortable with, I want to interact with you. The strength of my audiences is the people around me. I'm blessed to be surrounded by really wonderful community of user experience and design professionals where we are engaged and talking with each other daily. So I hope you'll, if you're to listening me and meeting me for the first time, I hope you'll join up and learn and have some fun with us.
Geoff Wilson [00:45:43] And with that, folks, thank you for listening to this episode and I hope that's helped you see the world in a new way, especially from your child's point of view. To see examples of what we were talking about today and to keep this conversation going, you can find and follow us @EverydayExpPod or myself @GeoffWilsonHCD. I also have accounts on pretty much every platform except for TikTok - we're not going to be dancing.
Doug Collins [00:46:06] Haha I have a TikTok account so you can watch me there.
Geoff Wilson [00:46:08] Yeah, find Doug! Lastly, please consider subscribing to the show on your favorite podcasting app and checking out our previous episodes. Thanks again for listening. And as always, just remember, you don't have to have a fancy job title to start noticing and improving the everyday experiences wherever you work. Thanks. And we will be on the air again soon.
