What is visual storytelling?

Speaker A: All right, three, two, one. Hello and welcome back to Users First, I'm your host, Alessio Ferracudi, UX designer and podcast host. And today I'm joined by Alan pan, a, uh, UX director with 10 years of experience working with design agencies, startups and enterprises. And our topic today focuses on what visual storytelling is and what makes it so unique and why is a crucial element to have to your design skill set. Before we jump into the episode, a little bit about Alan. His strength, his visual storytelling again and prototype. He has formal human computer interaction training and he's also now helping high school students find their dream colleges. Thank you for joining us today, Alan. Such a privilege to have you here and to be able to pick in some of your brains.

Speaker B: Well, sure, Alesso, Very pleasure to be here and thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Where is, where is it that you're located? Right now?

Speaker B: I'm in New York City.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm always asking because I'm always intrigued by what location everyone has, anyone has picked nowadays. Because you can basically work anywhere that you want. Like, we all have a remote job. Like if you wanted to, you could work from, uh, Taiwan or, uh, gettype US money.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The flexibility. Well, I've been here for almost 10 years, so the whole professional life I've been here, but it, it's just a big city feel that attracts me and the opportunities and the people, honestly, that there's just such m diverse group of people that you can always find an interesting conversation here and there. You can, uh, always find somewhere different to visit, whether it's a museum or a restaurant or a park. Right. So it's that, that kind of culture aspect that really makes me stay. I think just the excitement that you can always do something different every weekend is what draws me.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's the thing about big cities is that you have so much variety and like, different, uh, cultures. So let's say on a Friday night you feel like pizza, like a good Italian pizza. You can get it if you know where to look at or, you know, on a Saturday night you want some really good, you know, Chinese noodles, like with the beef and the broth and so on, and you can get that. That's the best thing of being in a big city. I remember when I was, I was living in Glasgow some time ago, and it's a very small city. There's like 300 to 400,000 people. Um, and so hard to find a variety of food. And you get Frustrated after a while because you always see same things. And basically in Scotland, the United Kingdom, you only get fish and chips. That's about your barrier, really. If you try to get any, anything else outside of fish and chips, you're probably gonna have a stomachache for three days in a row.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And then you end up cooking that yourself.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, Alan, I was very intrigued by, uh, what you do for the kids. Um, well, for the high school students, you know, helping them to find their, their dream careers that will lead them to their dream jobs that will get them paid a lot of money. Um, and one of the questions I had was, uh, what made you do that? And, um, and then I'll ask you the second question.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. That I think the main reason is that picking a college and eventually career is one of the most important decision. Right. When you make in your lifetime. So I'm really passionate about the mission that eab, the company I work for, that pursues, which is make education smarter and commodities stronger. We really want to help the high school students to connect to their dream college just because there's so many options out there and it's easy to get confused or get overwhelmed by them. So, so we do that by having a highly visual virtual tour to help them pick which school setting they want to be in. And we also have a smart culture matching website that make the decision making process easier. So it's all those things that make me excited. I have been through that struggle myself by applying for a master program in the States. Uh, well, back when I know how difficult that is to even just fill out application forms and pick. Is this a program, the correct one before I spend say $50,000 per year in the investment. Right. So it's hard to see whether that's worth it. So we're really helping make that easier for high school students and very passionate about that.

Speaker A: Right. And that's fantastic, and that's an excellent reason, um, for getting into these, is because it's such a big investment. You want to make sure that you, uh, help people make the right investment if they have to spend the kind of money, um, especially in the US because it isn't a huge amount of money that they're gonna be spending. Um, lately, um, I came across something called a personality test. And basically what this, you heard of it? Okay. So basically for the people that don't know, a personality test is like, it's like an online test or it could be also like a written test, ask you questions about, uh, how you Behave in social groups or um, as a person by yourself. And based on your social skills and your uh, logical skills as well, um, they assess, uh, the experts, like people that have degrees in psychology. Apparently, uh, they assess like what kind of career you should be associated with. Do you also take that kind of approach, Alan, with the students?

Speaker B: Um, not exactly, but we have something similar. For example, when you go to our college matching website, you can go through a fun exercise, a serious questions that help you determine very similarly, like what your personality would be. And we have a fun test that tells you which tribe you belong to in Harry Potter, essentially. So it's a fun thing. Oh, you belong to that one. And that tell you where your interest lies and what could be the potential college that fits you. But I agree with you, right? Even in work setting, knowing what your personality would be and how you will work better with people. For example, if you're introvert versus extrovert, uh, how do you maximize your strength in your unique personality and traits will make you way more successful than not knowing and just trying to shoehorn the same people or different people within the same box, right? You, you have to present it that way. You have to do it a certain way by having that flexibility and knowing who you are and how you operate just opens up the, the opportunity even, especially in this remote world where you cannot be around people in the same place, you cannot just hover over, have chit chat to smooth things out, so to speak. So that's definitely very important.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Because like once you choose a career, it's, it's gonna be a career, uh, 20, 30 years, 40 years, who knows how long. And you're gonna be making money off it. And you can make money off it happy or you can make money off it, like very sad. Which one are you gonna choose? And I think like we have very successful careers and you seem like a very happy person about the job that you do. And today we're gonna be talking about visual storytelling and uh, why you're so good at it. And well, that I think, uh, I think it was very important that we talked about it. It was a very good point, this one. Um, tell me more about visual storytelling, Alan. Like what, what's so special about this topic? And you know, what is it and why is it used?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I think in terms of what it is, it's essentially communicating with mostly visuals, right? I think the key word being mostly because some people think about that as just using pictures or diagrams, but it's actually a Combination of both. I think the best analogy I can give you is the children's book. Right. I have two kids. One is three, one is six. If you want to read the same story, say Spider man to a three year old, there's a lot of images, there's many one or two words, or even no words to describe the whole storyline. But to use the same story to read to a six year old, there will be way more text, way more paragraph. But it essentially communicates the same story. The one is very visual, but one is less so. So if you can break it down by the words, the words essentially facilitate understanding. It brings clarity to things. The visuals create an experience, it makes things memorable. Um, it generates feeling to the audience. So my 3 year old might not care about what exactly happened, but she gets excited about the character, the world and whatnot. That in her brain just kind of paint the picture very clearly. But for my six year old, he might want to know more about the plot, what happened and all the details. So it's that spectrum and knowing from what you want to bring clarity or understanding to the memory. Right? It's a spectrum. So it's very interesting. That's why I'm very into that. And I'm by no means a trend expert in visual storytelling by any way. I'm into it because I'm not a native speaker. I came from Taiwan. I came to the States ten years ago, early in my career because English is not my first language. My brain was not fast enough for me to chime into discussions or in meetings. Right. And I find myself falling back to communicating with visuals, diagrams. Right. And those artifact really helped me summarize key points and to simplify complex problems that I was helping my clients solve. So. So one of my colleagues used to joke that Alan doesn't talk much, but when he talks it makes things a lot more clear. So that, that's something I am personally pretty proud of that it used to be a disadvantage for me, but now I turn that into a strength. Right. So now I use that every day into my leadership role. I feel like there's a big missed opportunity to influence in that area. A lot of the decks nowadays are very information dense. Right. A lot of text it might be clear, but it's not exciting. Right. If you want to sell a new initiative to executives, it could be very clear. But after meeting, they forget everything. Right. So you might as well have something to be way more impactful by having some visuals tell story in that way.

Speaker A: Right, right. And that reminds me, you know that reminds me of, um, cognitive overload. That is one of the, uh, that is one of the heuristics of user experience is that if, uh, if you read too many things and, and especially the like, they're not structured, they're not categorized, you will get an overload and eventually you will forget whatever you've read. And that's why people are not getting influenced in these meetings, is because they're getting a shit ton of things in their head and they can't, they can't understand like, what's going on. And they get out of the meeting and like, what did, what was really the meeting about? Uh, uh, there wasn't really a good structure. But basically what you're saying is, um, whatever you do, you go prepared, uh, you know your goals for the meeting or for the illustrations. And you try to make it as, uh, iconic and um, clear and structured as much as you can. And you use the visuals to do that, um, and the words to support it, for sure. Beautiful. Um, uh, what's some. Yeah, I guess I was gonna ask you, like, some tips for people that want to do better visual storytelling, but I guess the answer I kind of already know. It's like useless words. But what would you say to people that want to improve their visual storytelling?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say three things we need to pay attention to in that regard. The first one, Alessio, I think you touched on that already, which is knowing the audience, right? You want to think about not only what they need to know, but what you want to make them feel. Uh, for example, in the context of designer portfolio, right? What to include in your portfolio. You could think, oh, maybe I should include a feature shot of the product you designed for versus the whole flow. Some people I mentor, they struggle with that. Should I be include the whole thing, just 10 screens or one? Ask yourself a question. Do you want the audience to feel impressed by the screen or polish. You can, and if that's the case, maybe include one hero shot, right? If the purpose is for them to understand how you design the whole experience, the whole flow, the details, then you might want to include a 10 screen. So again, going back to knowing your audience, how do you want them to feel? Besides, what they don't want to know will help you make that decision. And secondly, you want to strike a balance between what is best described versus what is best shown. For example, what is best described is something like a definition, an opinion, or a context or background. Going back to the portfolio, um, example it might be, what is this project about? What Is the context, what's your role in it? Where you need clarity, essentially. But what's better shown is, for example, relationship between different things, a sequence, a process. That's something that there's an opportunity for you to visualize so that it's easier to scan when you're scrolling through the portfolio. And obviously something like prototype is easier to show than describing or describe a screen or whatnot. Be better to show that. Right. And not to mention that text can actually be visualized too. Right. When it comes to numbers or data, you can visualize the numbers in different ways, tell story, give a different way, different font, a different style. So there's a possibility there as well. And the last one is about you also touch points on that. Also simplifying. It's very easy to be complex, but it's very hard to be simple. Using visuals already force you to be simple. But it's not an excuse to include say 50 photos, uh, on the website. You have to be intentional about which element to keep and their purpose, know which one is to affect the mood versus conveying information and knowing the priority for each element. That will allow you to cut down, read again, and cut again so that you get to the gist of the whole thing. And going back to that point we were making earlier, the more simple or succeed you can be, the more successful you will be in meetings eventually, because people will remember your key point as opposed to being bombarded by the amount of information you have thrown at them.

Speaker A: Right. I love your point. So basically you're saying the more you practice the simplicity of design, you also basically see reflect in your talks as well. Because the less words you use in your designs and your portfolio and everything, then you also start talking like that because there is no really need to say anything else.

Speaker B: That's right. It's also about the best way to know about topics is to teach. Right? Uh, you study, you know a topic, but it's only until you want to teach to someone else. You internalize what you learn and you think about how to communicate that thing and teach other people the same thing. And that's such a satisfying process by just knowing and simplifying so that people get it. I think a lot of the professors that used to, um, be in my college, some of them are really good at what they do in terms of doing research, but they're not that great in teaching because they know about the topic. They cannot simplify it enough so that other people get it. But I think the best ones are, uh, the ones that can Use analogies or use examples to give you something very simple to explain something very complex. So that's also where I got the visual storytelling because I know it's very hard to make that happen. And you'll be very powerful when you have something. Mhm.

Speaker A: Did you feel like, um, before you became a UX designer, uh, did you already have some background in storytelling or you were just good in visuals or you already had some background Start, darling. And you had a background in visual and you started to learn how to merge them together?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. I would not say I have a background in that. Uh, my background was actually in electrical engineering in college. So it's a very different field. So I was in the very left brain heavy field where it's all about understanding the circuits and designing the boards. Right. But it's interesting because in all the textbooks I used to study, it's very hard to read the text and understand the meaning. But whenever I seen a diagram, it just summarizes the last two pages really well. And that's where I picked up the first clue of how powerful a diagram and image can be. And in terms of encoding the amount of things and making a very complex theory. Simple. Right. That's, that's the first thing. But I think the rest is I will attribute to my family. I grew up in the design family where my dad is an architect, my uncle is a photographer. So I grew up, uh, in that artistic environment where I'm surrounded by architect architecture books and good environments too. So that stimulates my brain in terms of how to perceive something that is beautiful and well designed versus not.

Speaker A: Oh, that's excellent. I think you are very lucky that you are surrounded, uh, in such a creative environment. Um, myself every time that I go, um, like in very green spaces like museums or uh, I go in parks or even the subway. Uh, there is a subway in the UK where I usually go to that is like super colorful. And you have like this beautiful, uh, roof glass, um, with lots of light that goes through. It just boosts my creativity every single time and it makes my mood happier. And every time I'm surrounded by all of those things, I feel like I'm more creative. Uh, I can't explain it, but if I'm surrounded by like plain wood around my house, I feel less creative and my designs are gonna be, are gonna be affected by that. Um, um. Do you relate to that?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a scientific theory behind it, um, which is if you're in a very positive and happy mood it broadens your focus and it allows you to be creative and you, your mind will go to different things outside of your immediate focus. But when you are stressed, if you're anxious, your mind tend to be focused on the immediate things and forget about the surrounding. Right. It's because of your all human right. You want to be pay attention to potential danger that become at you. So that's the case. So the more relaxed you can be, the more better off when you're doing creativity or you're doing every creative exercises, doing your work.

Speaker A: Interesting. I actually didn't know that. And what do you do um, to relax yourself in your life? Because New York is a highly stressful environment. Like as soon as you get down of your building, you uh, get out of your building. There is probably like people in suits running, taking the subway, like walking up on each other.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I do listen to a lot of music that help me relax. I also play piano too. So I think that playing instruments really help me relax in that way. I also cook. I love cooking different cuisines too. So just tasting different things and doing that experiment helped stimulate myself. I'm one of the person who cannot eat the same thing for two meals. So I have to eat something different. I cannot go to the same restaurant. So of course that's great. Yeah.

Speaker A: Who does? Like nobody wants to eat the same thing though.

Speaker B: Well, I know a few folks who would go to the same restaurant for lunch for example.

Speaker A: Oh no, that. Yeah, no, that's definitely uh, wouldn't do that. Not even if I was revving. Yeah, hell no. Ah, there was some leftover in the fridge that I made uh, yesterday and I'm supposed to be eating it like um, today. And I said like hell no, I'm not eating it today. So now it's gonna be in the fridge for another three, four days. Probably gonna go bad. And I don't know what's gonna happen to it. Uh, going back to the visual storytelling. So again like having a creative. I think it was, it was very important that we talked about, talked about this because having um, having a uh, uh. Being surrounded by a creative environment is crucial to your creativity. This is already it. Right. The more happier the happier you are, the better visual storyteller you are and the better, um, confident, uh, influential person you can be. Meetings when speaking to stakeholders and presenting designs. Right. So it's all related. Um, how do you, you uh, know like this is a topic that is coming up a lot lately about virtual reality and visual storytelling and how they relate to each other. Um, can you guide us through some of their close relationship and shift mindset that there is in between the two?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I got the opportunity to work in VR for three years early in my career and I would say VR just takes visual storytelling to a whole new level. Right. I would say it's the only medium that messes with your brain. For example, if you watch a skydiving video on your computer or your phone, you might think, oh, it's cool, I want to try it one day. But if you do the same experience in VR, you'll be screaming, you'll want to take the headset out, you will fall from your chair because your brain feels like you're there already. Right. So that, that's why when your whole body feels it, it triggers that deeper sense of memory, the feeling. Right. Another example is my company used to design for a experience for Syrian refugees or, or shadow experience that communicate the living environment or whatnot to other people. And it generates much more deeper empathy when you can see their living environment to feel like you live there, um, compared to just watching a video of documentary on your laptop. Right. So that's one thing that I think is very different that just takes that to a whole new level by eliciting your emotion and feelings that way. In terms of the mindset for VR, you're always designing for an experience. For example, on the desktop, we can be designing for say a banking, ah, app that is just transactional. But for VR, since you are recreating a world, um, that the user can be teleported into, there's always a world regardless what you're doing. So you have to make a task or a flow make sense in real world context. Right. For example, if you want to change the lighting in a room, as opposed to going to a menu and select light on and off, you might be just going there and switching that, uh, light on and off physically in VR. Right. So naturally you use less text, you use other cues like lighting, audio cues, or even movement. But again, again, our eyes are always attract to something that moves. So using that in VR is something interesting that you can play around with. For designers that in 2D, we don't play with that, uh, a lot. We can have some animations and stuff to communicate moving movement, but not nearly as much in VR. Right. Another good example is onboarding. Uh, I'm sure if you own an Oculus headset, but the first time I open Oculus headset, the onboarding experience. Yeah, the onboarding experience is.

Speaker A: But you're Getting me curious, though.

Speaker B: Yeah, I highly recommend, uh, getting one. So usually when we talk about onboarding, you'll feel like it's a boring thing. In 2D, it's basically Coach Marks explaining new futures one whatnot. But for Oculus, the onboarding, um, experience is in a spaceship where you learn to use the controller and grab different things. You shoot a gun to learn how to use a control of the buttons. You grab a cassette to put into the recorder to play something. So they basically using again, going back to my point earlier, real life experiences to teach the user and create that experience versus using text or information, essentially. So the mindset shift here is really from thinking about how you explain a layout thing to the user to how do you engage them, what the experience should be, and how do you mimic that. Real life in VR. So it's a very different, uh, constraints or vectors you're designing compared to just, uh, the other devices like your phones or your laptop.

Speaker A: Um, is it a lot different from the, uh, visual storytelling that you would perceive in a web browser or in a presentation? And what are the learnings and challenges of this visual storytelling in VR?

Speaker B: Yeah, in terms of the learnings and challenges, I think the biggest challenge for designing for VR is it takes a lot longer to build an experience compared to 2D. Uh, you'll be designing the environment. You want to design 3D objects. So, yeah, it just takes a longer and takes a unique specialist to design for 3D renderings and stuff. And there's also audio you have to consider and whatnot, because every wall, there's audio. It's very weird, uh, to go to the world where it's silent. Right. So you have to account for that additional sense of experience. And the controls may not be intuitive to most people until there's a convention. Right. Imagine many years ago when the iPhone first came out. They have to teach a user what is a swipe, what is a double tap. Right. But right now, who does that? Everyone knows how to do that. Right.

Speaker A: I remember those days. Yeah. Every time I was getting a new phone, uh, being on board, you know, like five minutes, about, like, swipe right, left, like, God damn it. I've been doing it for five years already. I know how it works.

Speaker B: Exactly. But now we're going, uh, to that point again in VR where there's no convention. So a lot of that, you have to teach the user how to use it until they can be comfortable with your experience. But when we become more and more mature, then that might become very intuitive after the fact. But there's still a challenge there. But I think one learning that I have is VR experience is actually way more inclusive than others just because it uses less text. Right. You don't require, for example, English. Say if I don't understand English, I might not be able to use a website that is designed in English. But in VR things are more experiential, so to speak. You can pick up things, you can just get into that right away as opposed to having to know the language. So in a way it's more inclusive. Invites people in to experience things versus keeping them out just because there's a language barrier. So that's something that I like a lot for designing VRs.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Very important. Yeah, yeah. Uh, that's part of inclusivity and accessibility. Just um, having um, a global type of language that uh, everybody can understand despite the language, despite the color blindness that they have or whatever other issues.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, I was wondering, uh, I want to touch base on a couple of more topics uh, before we wrap up for the podcast. Um, what is emotional design? You mentioned what we were talking earlier, um, last week when we met, I think it was a couple of weeks ago now, um, before even Easter, we met and we touched base on emotional design. And you mentioned that this crucial point of, of uh, visual storytelling.

Speaker B: Uh,

Speaker A: would you like to give a quick round on that?

Speaker B: For sure, yeah. When we think about ux, um, people tend to think about usability. Right. And that has been the focus for at least the beginning of the UX industry. But as the product become more and more mature, only having your product to be user friendly or usable is not enough anymore. Right. We think about not only how the product functions, but also how it feels using it. Right. The product that makes people feel good now has a competitive edge over the other product out there. Right. So what, that's where emotional design really comes in. If, uh, you want to learn more about this, there's a book written by Don Norman that's called Emotional Design that has fantastic rundown about this topic. But I'm going to share two ideas that will get you interested in this topic. The first one is when we think about decision making, we always think about the rational part of the brain. Right? You want to rationalize the decision you're making and eventually make a decision. But it's actually the emotional part of the brain plays a big part in that equation. It uh, essentially help you narrow down your choice before your logical part of the brain come in and analyze it even further. Like for example, when you go to a Supermarket in the US There's a lot of options. Right. If you want to buy a can of corn, there's 20 options out there. So your emotional brain will basically analyze all the options out there. Maybe the well designed packaged cans of corns will get picked by you and then you analyze by the price and other factors after that kick in. Right. So it's is part of the equation. It helps you narrow down the options pretty quickly. Yeah. And then the second point I wanted to highlight is better visual design actually makes the product perceived to be easier to use. Right. That's another study that's referenced in this book by Don Orman and better quality. Yeah. Yeah. They test two ATM prototypes with users with exactly the same functionality, exactly the same button placement, but there's one with way better visual design. And the users claim, um, that the one with better visual design is easier to use by overwhelming amount. Right? Yeah, but technically they should be the same in terms of usability because the flow is in one eye is the same, but the one is designed better is perceived again perceived to be better, easier to use. So that's very important and I hope more companies see this because whenever they are cutting cost. Right. Visual design tends to be the first one because it's harder to justify the ROI or that extra mile that you want to take. People used to refer that to the chart on top. Right. You, you have the cake, you have the trade on top. But we can argue that cherry now is a core part of the cake. Without the cherry, the whole cake eating experience is not the same.

Speaker A: Right, of course, yeah, you can have the best product in the world, but if it's unusable, um, for whatever reason, then it's not gonna work out. Or there is even cases where like the usability of a product of like a web service or a website or a video game or whatever, it's like the usability of it, it's okay. It's like the user experience, uh, functionality of works, you know, like it follows heuristics and whatever. But then the UI of it is not so great and still people are gonna. Just because it's good in UX doesn't mean that the people are gonna be thinking about ux. People don't know how UX work and they're gonna be thinking about, oh, the visuals of these websites are shit. So the product also must be, must be like not uh, good at all. And that's how people think. You know, they get into a website after like less than a second, I think after like 0.2 seconds. People immediately have, uh, prejudice about what the product, uh, and services are going to be like. Right? So, oh, boom, I get to this website. Uh, does it look nice? Does it look bad? How's the product going to be? Right? People think about this right away and so like, yeah, so emotional intelligence, um, a product that feels good has definitely an edge on other products. Uh, coding, uh, Don Norman from the book of, um, Emotional Intelligence. And we're going to, we're gonna put a link to the book in the description of the podcast episode. And uh, before we go, Alan, one last question for you. Um, you also mentioned to me, uh, some time ago about designing, um, in conversations and the influence to influence people. But I guess we talked about that, um, at the beginning of the podcast. But is there anything else that m you want to talk about? Maybe some useful things that really helped you as a director of user experience, uh, whenever you are in a position to be influencing others?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I found that to be very useful when I'm selling an idea or if I need to explain something quickly. I think two ways that meetings fall usually is when there's too much info presented and people forget about what was said. I think you mentioned that, uh, spot on earlier. One example I can give is when I was working with the CEO from my previous company, we were working on envisioning the future of our platform and it was such a complex topic that's hard to explain. So I designed a diagram in a meeting that present to him. He told me that he loved the diagram so much that he took the diagram to all the meetings that he went to for the following two months. And that was uh, artifact that is very easy for him to explain to any stakeholder what does the future mean by just using that diagram? So I think that's one example I can give is if you simplify things enough, uh, if you know what you want to communicate and if you can pack that in one or two powerful visual, it'll get you very far. Right. And if that's very simple to digest, um, people will remember it, people will socialize it even when you are not there. So it's a time well spent to simplify and think about what you want to communicate in that format versus writing a 10 page report to the higher up, like, hey, this is my proposal. Think about from that perspective.

Speaker A: Right. Is there any last advice that you want to give to people that want to improve their visual storytelling skills before we go?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it comes down to be more intentional. Right. And going Back to knowing why you want the audience to feel and why you want. Whether it's bring clarity or being feeling, getting people engaged. Right. And once you're clear on the purpose, it's easier for you to choose the best way. Whether it's purely visual or some text to help you explain something better and try it out and test. You probably won't get it in one shot. And to a point it's easier, say, than just having a diagram. But just even that one diagram can take you the whole week to produce. Right. But it doesn't really discount the fact that maybe after that week, the impact of diagram can last for the next five months. Right. So it's worth it. It's hard to measure the roi, but I would just encourage you to think about what the other ways you can explain something visually by just only trying one medium, which is mostly using tech.

Speaker A: Look, Alan, such, uh, a pleasure to have you here again. Uh, this was Alan Pan, uh, uh, user experience director with 10 years of experience in startups, agencies and enterprises. Such a pleasure, man. Thank you so much for doing this. Look, if people wanted to contact you and get in touch with you and ask you questions, where would be the best place to be asking, uh, things?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. My handle is AlanPan UX. Um, you can email me too. I also do mentor sessions on ATP list, so if you want to chat more, feel free to book a session with me. I'm always happy to connect with designers in the industry.

Speaker A: Wonderful. And thanks for listening to users first. Never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on the Apple page, podcast, Spotify or wherever you're listening to. And again, if you want to support some of our streaming expenses, you can go on our website users firstbootcast.com you can buy me a cup of coffee. And if you're interested in getting a job because you have done your bootcamp or, uh, you just finished one of your courses and now you're looking, um, to make this, uh, big step in your career, uh, feel free to book a mentorship with me and I'll help you out in the interview process. Thank you so much. Have a good day.