Beyond Features and Functions: Is Technology Missing What Humans Really Need? with Leah Reich

Intro

Leah Reich (0s)

A lot of people are very passionate about their Apple watches, which, Godspeed, I mean,

Leah Reich (6s)

you know, yeah, everybody's got to be passionate about something.

Tom Anderson (14s)

Hello everyone and welcome to Basic AF. This is a mostly tech podcast and we're going to put the mostly to work today I think with this episode. I am Tom Anderson and as always joined by Jeff Battersby. Hello, Jeff

Jeff Battersby (25s)

Tom Anderson, good morning and welcome to a very snowy northeast.

Jeff Battersby (31s)

I am a mere 60 miles from Manhattan and I've got an inch and a half of snow on the ground.

Jeff Battersby (36s)

Who expected that?

Tom Anderson (38s)

you you can have that we've been chilly but no snow it's 80 last week 45 42 yesterday

Jeff Battersby (38s)

Not me.

Tom Anderson (46s)

but I think it's 50 something today 70 monday so after all this rain allergies will kill us all

Jeff Battersby (52s)

Awesome. Look at this. Two old men talking about the weather. That sounds like a great podcast.

Tom Anderson (53s)

yeah what else do we have to do just we just need a park bench

Jeff Battersby (59s)

Yeah, and a chess set.

Jeff Battersby (1m 1s)

Which we could do something with that.

Jeff Battersby (1m 4s)

All right, Tom, we want to jump right into this. We do have a guest today who we will introduce shortly.

Follow Up: Gentler Streak Pricing

Jeff Battersby (1m 10s)

But we did want to follow up on

Jeff Battersby (1m 13s)

the the episode, last episode that we had, we talked about Gentler Streak, which by the way, I still am liking quite a lot.

Jeff Battersby (1m 20s)

Um, but we got an email.

Jeff Battersby (1m 22s)

From Katarina Luttrich, who's the CEO and co-founder of Gentler Stories,

Jeff Battersby (1m 27s)

who is the creator of, uh, of the, uh, Gentler Streak app.

Jeff Battersby (1m 34s)

And she wanted to give us an update on why the pricing was so wonky.

Jeff Battersby (1m 40s)

And, uh, so she sent us an email, was very grateful to have, uh, have herself or their app on our show.

Jeff Battersby (1m 47s)

Uh, and she said about the funky app store prices.

Jeff Battersby (1m 49s)

Yes, that is the app store thing.

Jeff Battersby (1m 52s)

As an app, as you grow, you're also changing pricing, sometimes even business models, and then you do discounts, special offers, introduce new plans, et cetera, and you have to have all these prices visible on the app store as that ensures transparency for users on various plans.

Jeff Battersby (2m 8s)

Just thought I'd shed some light on this app store Frankenstein monster.

Jeff Battersby (2m 13s)

So, uh, Katarina, we're grateful for that.

Jeff Battersby (2m 16s)

And yeah, we kind of assumed it was a whole weirdness with the app store where it's not easy.

Jeff Battersby (2m 22s)

I do appreciate transparency.

Jeff Battersby (2m 24s)

And I'm going to say again, I've been using this app now for several weeks.

Jeff Battersby (2m 29s)

And, uh, particularly with regard to sleep, uh, I really like how well the app explains, um, why I'm not getting good sleep or why I feel tired when I wake up in the morning, which is perhaps just a function of my old body falling Anyway, thank you, Katarina, really appreciate it.

Jeff Battersby (2m 53s)

Thank you for updating us on the whys and the wherefores of the weird app store pricing.

Hello, Leah Reich!

Tom Anderson (3m)

Indeed. We do.

Jeff Battersby (3m 1s)

Okay, Tom, we have a guest, very excited to have a guest, very excited to introduce Leah Reich.

Jeff Battersby (3m 8s)

Leah Reich will explain herself shortly.

Jeff Battersby (3m 13s)

But Leah is a writer who I've been following for probably 10 plus years on a variety of platforms about a.

Jeff Battersby (3m 22s)

Variety of things, and she's here with us today.

Jeff Battersby (3m 25s)

So Leah, welcome to The Basic AF Show.

Leah Reich (3m 29s)

Hi guys, thank you. Nice to be here.

Jeff Battersby (3m 31s)

You're welcome.

Jeff Battersby (3m 32s)

Thank you for showing up.

Jeff Battersby (3m 34s)

So why don't you, first of all,

Jeff Battersby (3m 35s)

tell us who you are, what you do,

Jeff Battersby (3m 38s)

and you currently have leahreich.com,

Jeff Battersby (3m 42s)

which is a, I believe leads just to a ghost.

Jeff Battersby (3m 47s)

Is that what it is, a ghost?

Leah Reich (3m 48s)

Well it's sort of my, now I just moved my website over. I was on, sorry Squarespace, but I figured I would just port it all over because you can create some separate pages and there's not much else on my website besides about me and links to my other writing and my newsletter, which is called Meets Most.

Leah Reich (4m 6s)

But hello, I am Leah. I'm a writer and a researcher. I live in New York City. I am currently on a little bit of a sabbatical from working in tech.

Leah Reich (4m 18s)

a long time to work on some writing, working on a book proposal, hopefully getting that finished up and out the door soon. And yeah, I live with a 15 pound cat who is much more liked on the internet than I am, I think. Well, he's very, he's very popular. Yeah, he's also sort of like a, he turned 10 last weekend, actually a week ago, and he has...

Jeff Battersby (4m 34s)

Well, cats do win the internet, I think that's it.

Leah Reich (4m 48s)

been sort of a presence for many people for 10 years. He's great. He's a good dude.

Leah Reich (4m 55s)

But yeah, so I mean that's... I mean, I'm happy to tell you more, but, you know,

Leah Reich (5m)

that's the rough sketch.

Jeff Battersby (5m 3s)

Okay, so you have your newsletter, which is essentially what goes out every week, once a week on a Wednesday, which kind of follows suit with a previous way that you were doing it.

Leah Reich (5m 7s)

Mm-hmm. Every Wednesday. Mm-hmm.

Leah Reich (5m 20s)

So it's a it's a well it's a there was no reason like I don't love Wednesdays personally although I know in Mean Girls and Wednesdays we were pink. That is not why I chose it. So what happened was in 2014 I I think was a 2014 yeah it was the end of 2014, um, I, no, I lied.

Leah’s Writing and Newsletter

Jeff Battersby (5m 21s)

You might want to ask what it is about Wednesdays that is so special to you, other than it being the middle of the week.

Leah Reich (5m 50s)

It was 2013, I think, um, I had been interviewing for a job I really, really, really wanted.

Leah Reich (5m 56s)

Um, it was an editor position at a publication, I will not name, um, for a new section they were launching and I was just really excited about it and I interviewed and, you know,

Leah Reich (6m 7s)

I wrote a whole brief like, you know, to write a brief explaining what you would do, what kind of writers you would invite, what kinds of, how you would envision the section.

Leah Reich (6m 15s)

When I had really wanted this role, I was working at a small start-up in tech.

Leah Reich (6m 20s)

And I just didn't really want to be back working in tech that much after I'd finished my PhD.

Leah Reich (6m 27s)

And I made it all the way to the end of the interview process, and then they hired someone else.

Jeff Battersby (6m 34s)

Mm-hmm.

Leah Reich (6m 34s)

And I was really disappointed.

Leah Reich (6m 38s)

And I went to see a therapist at the time, and I had this whole, like, I'm going to show them, and I'm going to write, I'll publish, I'm going to -- yeah, well, they're going to know they made a mistake.

Leah Reich (6m 47s)

It was very, you know, that.

Leah Reich (6m 50s)

That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

Leah Reich (6m 52s)

Why not maybe write, do some writing, because you love writing?

Leah Reich (6m 57s)

Like, why not write for the love of writing?

Leah Reich (6m 59s)

And I was like, nobody ever does that.

Leah Reich (7m 2s)

That never works for anyone.

Leah Reich (7m 4s)

Very -- that was my -- you know, it was very -- well, you know, whatever.

Leah Reich (7m 7s)

I was really just wanted to kind of run the -- I just wanted to fuel myself with spite more than love at the time.

Leah Reich (7m 12s)

And she said, well, just try it.

Leah Reich (7m 14s)

Try -- maybe just, like, try doing some writing for the love of writing.

Leah Reich (7m 17s)

And so I said -- I promised her I would.

Leah Reich (7m 20s)

I'll do something.

Leah Reich (7m 21s)

And this was right before the New Year, and, you know, in the New Year, January 1st rolls around, and I said, you know, I promised I would do something.

Leah Reich (7m 29s)

And I am someone who -- I know myself, and I know that if I have no accountability to someone outside me, things won't get done.

Leah Reich (7m 38s)

I love external accountability and structure.

Leah Reich (7m 41s)

I thrive with those sorts of, you know, constraints.

Leah Reich (7m 47s)

And so I thought, well, I'll make a little...

Leah Reich (7m 50s)

I made a little medium, I said, I'll do,

Leah Reich (7m 52s)

I'll write something on medium and I'll write every week.

Leah Reich (7m 54s)

I'll put it out there so like I do it.

Leah Reich (7m 55s)

'Cause if I don't do that, I won't do it.

Leah Reich (7m 58s)

And I thought, well, you know what?

Leah Reich (8m 1s)

I'll start this weekend.

Leah Reich (8m 3s)

And then I was like, oh, here we go already.

Leah Reich (8m 5s)

We're, you know, no, you will not start this weekend.

Leah Reich (8m 7s)

'Cause if you don't, just do it now.

Leah Reich (8m 9s)

It just, it's the first of the year.

Leah Reich (8m 10s)

Just do it now and do it once a week.

Leah Reich (8m 12s)

And you know what?

Leah Reich (8m 13s)

It's a Wednesday.

Leah Reich (8m 14s)

So just do it once a week on Wednesdays.

Leah Reich (8m 18s)

And that's how.

Leah Reich (8m 20s)

How I started it. And I also realized that that year there were 53 Wednesdays, which also really was like.

Leah Reich (8m 29s)

Let me tell you, writing 53, you know, at the time I was much more into writing much, much more personal stuff, more personal essays and stuff like that.

Leah Reich (8m 38s)

And I didn't really know what it was going to be. I didn't. I just thought, write something once a week.

Leah Reich (8m 41s)

And I would say for like the first six to nine months, it was like real crapshoot.

Leah Reich (8m 46s)

it felt like I was workshopping my writing.

Leah Reich (8m 47s)

And then by the end of the year,

Leah Reich (8m 48s)

I felt like I sort of.

Leah Reich (8m 50s)

I sort of got into a better rhythm,

Leah Reich (8m 51s)

but it was a long time ago, 10, 11 years now.

Leah Reich (8m 54s)

And I just did it on Wednesdays.

Leah Reich (8m 58s)

And then it just became a thing where Wednesdays were the day that I sent them out.

Leah Reich (9m 4s)

Often the day I wrote them as well.

Leah Reich (9m 6s)

And, or posted them.

Leah Reich (9m 7s)

And that one, that series is called "A Year of Wednesdays."

Leah Reich (9m 11s)

And that, which someone else wrote,

Leah Reich (9m 14s)

they titled a book "A Year of Wednesdays."

Leah Reich (9m 15s)

It came out well after the, who knows?

Leah Reich (9m 18s)

Maybe they, you know--

Jeff Battersby (9m 19s)

They stole from you.

Leah Reich (9m 20s)

Probably not. I think, you know, there are very few ideas are original, but also what can you do? I didn't, you know, I didn't think to publish a book about it.

Leah Reich (9m 28s)

And so when I was-- I started on this newsletter that I have now called Meets Most. I got laid off from Instagram meta in 2023. I was part of the big wave of layoffs. And Meets Most is--

Leah Reich (9m 46s)

It comes from the performance review.

Leah Reich (9m 50s)

the process that you go through at Metta.

Leah Reich (9m 54s)

Yes, I explained it in one of the earlier newsletters.

Leah Reich (9m 57s)

I'm happy to talk about it if it's that interesting.

Leah Reich (9m 59s)

But anyway, I kind of started it right after I got laid off.

Leah Reich (10m 4s)

I wrote for a while, and then I kind of lost my momentum.

Leah Reich (10m 8s)

And I was working at a contract job, and a lot was going on.

Leah Reich (10m 11s)

So I didn't really pick it back.

Leah Reich (10m 12s)

And so I decided to pick it back up this year and really commit to it and be consistent and so I thought Wednesdays, why not?

Leah Reich (10m 20s)

Why not? Why not?

Leah Reich (10m 21s)

do it again. And also this year, New Year's Day also happened to fall on a Wednesday again. So

Leah Reich (10m 26s)

there you go. I didn't count. You know what? Because, you know, trust me, I thought about it.

Jeff Battersby (10m 27s)

And 53 this year, too.

Tom Anderson (10m 33s)

Why'd you have to bring that up, Jeff?

Leah Reich (10m 37s)

But then I thought, you know what? If you really are going to be consistent and stick to it,

Leah Reich (10m 40s)

you'll probably do it beyond this year anyway. So don't worry about how many. Just do it. And yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 47s)

So quick question with that on Wednesday, are you still, how's your writing schedule?

Leah Reich (10m 51s)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 51s)

Are you better now at writing ahead of time and just publishing it Wednesday?

Tom Anderson (10m 55s)

Are you right up?

Tom Anderson (10m 55s)

Because the reason I ask is I've got a small newsletter that I do and honestly,

Tom Anderson (10m 59s)

I dread doing it, but I still do it because I think it's good for me to do it.

Tom Anderson (11m 4s)

Um, but I've tried to develop a way to kind of get ahead of it.

Tom Anderson (11m 9s)

And because part of it is news, so it's, it's Apple related.

Tom Anderson (11m 12s)

And so part of it is news, but part of it, I try to do like something to help

Tom Anderson (11m 16s)

someone learned something that they...

Tom Anderson (11m 17s)

might not know how to do. And so, but even if I have a list and it goes back to what we were talking about pre-show with me being an organizer, it's like, "Well, I can't write it because it's not organized yet." And so I'm like, "Oh God,

Tom Anderson (11m 30s)

it's almost... I'm a Thursday every other Thursday." And I'm like, "Oh shit, it's Tuesday.

Tom Anderson (11m 34s)

I gotta get this done."

Leah Reich (11m 35s)  

• I would love to say that yes, I'm way more, no.

Leah Reich (11m 42s)

But also in my personal defense, my newsletter,

Leah Reich (11m 46s)

the way that I view it is a little bit different from,

Leah Reich (11m 51s)

like I don't have it, it's not like I want to,

Leah Reich (11m 53s)

'cause I think if it's like,

Leah Reich (11m 54s)

if there's a specific thing you want to do and you want it to be like, I want to research it,

Leah Reich (11m 58s)

I want to do this, I want to, you know, give something,

Leah Reich (12m)

I think then I would also feel the same.

Leah Reich (12m 3s)

There are days when I'm like, oh no.

Leah Reich (12m 5s)

This Wednesday I didn't know what I was gonna write about until like 4 p.m. (laughs)

Leah Reich (12m 9s)

And then that whole thing came out in like two hours when I realized what I wanted to write about.

Leah Reich (12m 15s)

I am also working on a book proposal,

Leah Reich (12m 18s)

so that is my priority.

Leah Reich (12m 19s)

And the newsletter for me is more, right now at least,

Leah Reich (12m 24s)

this year is a space for me to play with some of the ideas

Leah Reich (12m 29s)

that I want to write about in the book that I'm hopefully gonna write.

Leah Reich (12m 32s)

It's like a, it's sort of a more.

Leah Reich (12m 36s)

Kind of a less defined space. It's not news. It's not deep dive. It's not I'm not trying to like, you know, do a lot of big research. It's more like a thinking and writing and more of a playground space for me, which is why I don't I mean people pay for it, which is so lovely, but a lot of people it's free for most people.

Leah Reich (12m 57s)

And I don't want to have it be paid right I don't want to have it paid as a requirement right now because it doesn't feel fair because it's a lot of it as me just.

Leah Reich (13m 6s)

through ideas and working on them and sort of tinkering with them. I also am someone who does. This is going to probably sound weird but I do a lot of my writing in my head.

Leah Reich (13m 18s)

So I, I, in the past have. I wrote a some probably 10 years ago now, wrote a letter of recommendation for the New York Times magazine on it's on ant bait.

Leah Reich (13m 36s)

It's about killing ants, but it's really about killing ants is very much like dealing with anxiety.

Leah Reich (13m 44s)

And I wrote it in my head. Like I kept thinking through how I was going to write it so that when I sat down to write it the whole thing came out in like three or four hours, I just typed it all out and kind of pieced it together.

Leah Reich (13m 57s)

And so I do a lot of stuff like that like I walk I think a lot so a lot of times when I feel like I'm not doing anything I'm like my brain is sort of piecing together.

Leah Reich (14m 6s)

The stuff together and then it will come out in one go.

Leah Reich (14m 9s)

That doesn't mean it's like great like wow perfect no one needs to edit it's great but it's more like a lot of the, like the kind of fundamental chunk will come out.

Leah Reich (14m 18s)

So, I kind of am okay if I just write it and send it on Wednesdays because I'm thinking about it throughout the week and if I even if I don't have an idea like this week.

Leah Reich (14m 27s)

This past week, I wrote the one I wrote called The Great Validation Pact was, it's one of my favorites that I wrote.

Leah Reich (14m 35s)

It's one of my favorites that I've written so far this year because, thank you, I, it was a real deep realization that I think is super important that I'm glad I'm glad I had this realization before I wrote a book that I'm the book that I want to write because it's kind of a core aspect of what I want to write about.

Leah Reich (14m 54s)

Yeah, it, I have a list too but kind of some days it's like that's a space for me to play whereas the book is a lot more structured and the book proposal is a lot more organized and structured.

Leah Reich (15m 6s)

In a way that I don't always, unlike you Tom, I do not excel at organizing.

Leah Reich (15m 13s)

So, it's nice to have a space where I can just like let loose a little bit.

Jeff Battersby (15m 19s)

Yeah, and I'm with you, I write as well, have written for Macworld, a variety of other magazines over the years, and now based on a short story I wrote, I am working on a novel.

Jeff Battersby (15m 30s)

I got picked up by an agent to write a novel based on a short story, and I am about 40,000 words into that novel right now.

Jeff Battersby (15m 40s)

But I spend a lot of time just thinking about where it is and what it is that I'm doing while I'm writing.

Jeff Battersby (15m 49s)

You know, that way of thinking, thinking your way through things and then sitting down and writing it.

Jeff Battersby (15m 56s)

You still have to do the writing and then the editing and the rewriting and the editing and the rewriting.

Jeff Battersby (16m)

Like I've explained to some people that, you know, fellow writers that I work with or we talk about or work with, and I'm a very recursive writer.

Jeff Battersby (16m 11s)

Like I'll write, and I just did this, the last five chapters I'd written, each one of those chapters I've written kind of for

Jeff Battersby (16m 20s)

rewrite it and kind of build it all the way up until the final chapter.

Jeff Battersby (16m 22s)

And then I went back through five chapters and did the very same thing.

Jeff Battersby (16m 25s)

So, but a lot of that is, you know, standing in the shower,

Jeff Battersby (16m 29s)

washing my lack of hair and, uh, you know,

Jeff Battersby (16m 31s)

thinking about what it is that I'm doing and coming up against like difficulty

Jeff Battersby (16m 38s)

stuff that people would say were blocks, um, you know, in the,

Jeff Battersby (16m 41s)

in the writing process.

Jeff Battersby (16m 42s)

So I totally get the idea of having stuff written in your head.

Jeff Battersby (16m 45s)

And then when you finally do have the opportunity to sit down,

Jeff Battersby (16m 47s)

It's really just kind of...

Jeff Battersby (16m 49s)

Letting that pour out, then you rewrite it and re-edit it.

Leah Reich (16m 52s)

Wait, did you know that Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace at least seven times?

Jeff Battersby (16m 57s)

Oh my God, can you imagine?

Leah Reich (16m 58s)

By hand.

Leah Reich (16m 59s)

By hand.

Tom Anderson (16m 59s)

poof

Jeff Battersby (16m 59s)

No, I can't even imagine that.

Leah Reich (17m)

And then his wife, like, re-- then his wife re-trans-- like, re-copied it for neatness?

Leah Reich (17m 8s)

Yeah.

Leah Reich (17m 9s)

I'm listening to War and Peace right now.

Leah Reich (17m 11s)

Um, I'm-- we are not going to get on that topic, because we will never get to what you want to talk about, because I'm-- um, can highly recommend the audiobook, uh, with Tendi Dwayne Newton, just as anyone needs.

Jeff Battersby (17m 16s)

Okay, oh wait, Tandy Newton is the one who reads.

Leah Reich (17m 22s)

If anyone needs something to listen to, Tendiway Newton is the narrator of the one I'm listening to. It's a great translation, was recommended to me by a friend. Her voice is incredible. If you need 63 hours of audiobook listening, I highly recommend. But we can't get on that topic because then I'll start talking about also Trollope audiobooks, Anthony Trollope, a great English novelist also from the... anyway all of those are...

Jeff Battersby (17m 45s)

Oh, okay, you can you send that information. We'll put it in the show notes, but we won't go down that path. Can you imagine by hand? Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. I'm not I didn't think I was.

Leah Reich (17m 52s)

yeah no but but I he wrote he rewrote war and peace something I think it was something like at least seven times by hand so recursive writing not you're not the first or the last I know no I you're in good company

Jeff Battersby (18m 12s)

And I was gonna pat myself on the back and say I was a genius

Jeff Battersby (18m 15s)

and nobody else has ever done before. Yeah, well, what I wanted to get to before we talk about your writing and it is it.

Tom Anderson (18m 16s)

You can still do that.

Leah Reich (18m 17s)

So you're still at this, Minda.

Tom Anderson (18m 18s)

We'll allow it.

Tom Anderson (18m 20s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (18m 28s)

So a PhD in sociology, a couple of master's degrees under that,

Jeff Battersby (18m 32s)

but what is it that you were doing if you're allowed to tell us it with that kind of background at places like meta

Jeff Battersby (18m 45s)

black and other places that you're working? What is it that

Jeff Battersby (18m 47s)

that they were hoping you would bring or you did bring to the

Leah Reich (18m 53s)

So I worked at all these places as a user researcher.

User Research in Tech Companies

Leah Reich (18m 59s)

Could be-- yes, I will.

Leah Reich (19m 2s)

Well, I was going to say that one of the things about what I did is that unlike smarter disciplines,

Leah Reich (19m 10s)

like, say, data science or software engineering,

Leah Reich (19m 14s)

who had the, I would say, perspicacity to rebrand themselves.

Leah Reich (19m 20s)

like remember when everyone was just called "programmers"?

Leah Reich (19m 23s)

And now they're like "coders" and "software engineers" which "coders" sounds like "cool"

Leah Reich (19m 27s)

and were dead for a while, you know, like "sci-fi" and "software engineer" sounds like you want to give people a lot of money.

Leah Reich (19m 33s)

"Data science" also, they were like "oh cool, let's take two big words that seem like they're valuable and put them together" and then there's "user research" which is if you want a career in which you spend 50% of your time explaining what your job is and why it's valuable, including

Leah Reich (19m 53s)

your own coworkers, I recommend user research.

Leah Reich (19m 58s)

It is also called "design research", "user experience research", you know, it's a lot of different things.

Leah Reich (20m 8s)

So what I did, and there are qualitative and quantitative versions of it, there are mixed methods versions of it, really what you're doing is you are, the kind of basic of it is you're under you're working to understand

Leah Reich (20m 23s)

how and why people use the product and the products that they do but also what they're trying to do and what they would like to be able to do in ways that they themselves can't always articulate so you're you're kind of trying to understand what their own behaviors are their needs their attitudes around the different whatever you're working on or whatever product that you may be kind of engaged to sort of improve.

Leah Reich (20m 53s)

Or, you know, 2.0.

Leah Reich (20m 57s)

And you want to figure out as a researcher what could we do that would meet that need more effectively that would, you know, be able to sort of function in a way that actually engages you to keep using the app because it provides value that maybe you didn't even realize it was going to provide.

Leah Reich (21m 19s)

Or it can be something as simple as, does this flow make sense to you?

Leah Reich (21m 23s)

Can you get through this okay?

Leah Reich (21m 24s)

And that's kind of a lot of the call work.

Leah Reich (21m 26s)

And the quant work is a lot of measuring what, what was the impact of that?

Leah Reich (21m 33s)

Did that work?

Leah Reich (21m 34s)

Like, why was this successful?

Leah Reich (21m 36s)

What worked for you?

Leah Reich (21m 37s)

What didn't work for you?

Leah Reich (21m 38s)

Understanding more broadly, like that, you know, there's market research, which is looking at like, what are the behaviors in the market?

Leah Reich (21m 44s)

What are the white, the greens, the white spaces, green spaces.

Leah Reich (21m 47s)

What are the white spaces?

Leah Reich (21m 48s)

What, you know, what are, what are the opportunities?

Leah Reich (21m 50s)

Um, and then a lot of the product research has really understanding what's like, you know, what are the needs that people have of this product at scale?

Leah Reich (21m 58s)

How is this working?

Leah Reich (21m 59s)

Why is this not working?

Leah Reich (22m)

What's going on?

Leah Reich (22m 1s)

All that sort of stuff.

Leah Reich (22m 2s)

So you're really understanding like the actual user behaviors, needs engagement with that's not captured in your like telemetry and the data that you can measure as, um, a company,

Leah Reich (22m 14s)

right?

Leah Reich (22m 15s)

Like what, like if I use an app, you could see what I'm doing in the backend.

Leah Reich (22m 20s)

know you could measure that if you have the data pipeline, but you can't

Leah Reich (22m 23s)

see where I'm doing it, why I'm doing it, what my experience is as I'm doing it,

Leah Reich (22m 28s)

what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, what could be better, why I may have given up on it, why I quit, why I joined again, why any of those where I came, like why, all of that how, why, where, when is much harder to sort of measure and understand and it's that sort of thing. I mean like that's sort of like roughly what we do, but it's actually when you're doing really, really good user

Leah Reich (22m 54s)

research. I, not to not to over and you know inflate the importance of the role of user research, but really I think user research when it's good helps you think about the problems you're trying to solve in a way that you couldn't have thought about them before. I used to work with a really amazing product lead and And he said, when he's like, what I--

Leah Reich (23m 23s)

a lot of the day about working with you is that you told me how to think about a problem.

Leah Reich (23m 27s)

I don't have the time to figure out how to think about the problem.

Leah Reich (23m 29s)

I have to-- I'm trying to manage all the product teams.

Leah Reich (23m 31s)

I'm trying to do all this stuff.

Leah Reich (23m 33s)

But you helped me figure out how to think about the problem in a way that allows me to unlock different kinds of solution opportunities.

Leah Reich (23m 42s)

And it's that sort of transformative,

Leah Reich (23m 44s)

like, I want to shift your perspective away from just trying to fix it in this way to thinking about all of the different possibilities

Leah Reich (23m 53s)

could fix it that actually are better in the long term.

Jeff Battersby (23m 57s)

Interesting. So this is gonna raise a cynical question for me. When you talk about user needs, and I'll put that into quotations, my feeling is the ideas that you're trying to work on, and maybe you were trying to avoid this in your position at these places, but it is a way to make that app or whatever it is that that the user is interfacing with sticky. So they're always right. So that's the end goal the end goal is. So so what.

Balancing User Needs & Business Goals

Jeff Battersby (24m 27s)

Is it how much of what you were doing actually relates to the needs like legitimate human needs of the person that that's

Jeff Battersby (24m 39s)

using whatever app it is and not strictly speaking meeting the needs of the stockholders in the company.

Leah Reich (24m 49s)

Sure. It's a totally valid. I mean, it's not cynical. It's, that's,

Leah Reich (24m 53s)

so when I was a couple jobs ago, I came up with,

Leah Reich (24m 58s)

I love a Venn diagram, uh, who doesn't, but I, um,

Leah Reich (25m 2s)

apparently don't know how to think in any other way. I'm always like,

Leah Reich (25m 6s)

but, um, I came up with a sort of way of thinking about, um,

Leah Reich (25m 11s)

product development that I think from the perspective of exactly what you're saying, which is that.

Leah Reich (25m 19s)

So, the job of user research is to be, in a lot of ways, the voice of the user.

Leah Reich (25m 25s)

To say, this is what people need.

Leah Reich (25m 27s)

This would actually make their lives better.

Leah Reich (25m 30s)

This would make, not just the experience of the product, but it might actually improve how they do their work.

Leah Reich (25m 37s)

Or how they experience, whatever, it depends on what I was working on.

Leah Reich (25m 40s)

How they're engaging with content that is meaningful to them, or how they're sharing stuff on Instagram.

Leah Reich (25m 49s)

There are some ways that I think you really can get to like the deeper actual human needs in a way that is almost really satisfying to people and I can tell you an example of that in a minute. But you are not the only element that goes into the product development process. There are like what I call the The Venn diagram is there's three main pieces, right?

Leah Reich (26m 17s)

There's user needs.

Leah Reich (26m 20s)

There are product principles and like engineering constraints.

Leah Reich (26m 23s)

That's kind of what, you know what I mean?

Leah Reich (26m 24s)

Like how we build and why we build and what we're building.

Leah Reich (26m 27s)

And then there are, you know, business goals.

Leah Reich (26m 32s)

And in the intersection of the three of those,

Leah Reich (26m 34s)

I think is where you find the best, what I call opportunity spaces.

Leah Reich (26m 38s)

The best opportunity spaces for the product, because cynical or not,

Leah Reich (26m 44s)

I'm not doing research for the betterment of humanity.

Leah Reich (26m 47s)

I'm doing research because a company

Leah Reich (26m 49s)

is paying me to help them improve their product, and the goal ultimately is to improve the product.

Leah Reich (26m 55s)

I think where my cynicism seeps in a lot more is that when you start to define how do we make the product better and what does success mean, because success could mean less explosive stock market, viral, giant, just like, you know, huge amounts of like metric sources.

Leah Reich (27m 19s)

It could be smaller for the company and better for the user.

Leah Reich (27m 24s)

Like you could balance those more, right?

Leah Reich (27m 27s)

But we don't live in that world.

Leah Reich (27m 30s)

Venture capital doesn't reward that.

Leah Reich (27m 32s)

The stock market doesn't reward that.

Leah Reich (27m 35s)

People want to hear about eternal perpetual growth, which is wild, because the only thing that grows -- well, the only thing that grows perpetually apparently is the universe, so scale your ego down a little bit.

Jeff Battersby (27m 48s)

And cancer, I just wanted to point that out.

Leah Reich (27m 49s)

And, right. I mean, right there. Very few things grow forever. It's a cancer and the universe and like, let's be honest, which side are we, you know, closer to in this experience, right? So I'm with you and that if you're going to make these products, there are ways you can make them that balance more of the we do need to continue to exist as a company. You know, we do we can't we're not just doing this for altruistic purposes, which would be great if we could.

Leah Reich (28m 19s)

But you can balance it more. And that's one of the challenges I ran into as a researcher, which is that I always wanted to balance it more in it in favor of the user. But especially really large companies that are hell bent on domination. It's hard to it's hard to have that win out over what's, you know, in the benefit of metrics and products.

Jeff Battersby (28m 48s)

Okay, yeah, and and thank you for that. I really appreciate the the insight especially for someone who's on the inside. I am

Jeff Battersby (28m 56s)

cynical

Jeff Battersby (28m 58s)

But but that particular that particular well and here you are laid off from so

Leah Reich (29m 7s)

I mean, and I, the example I was going to tell you about was one of the rare features that

Leah Reich (29m 15s)

we built as a product team and we launched was hugely successful. I mean,

Leah Reich (29m 21s)

crazy successful. They still, I still sometimes ride the subway. I live in, you know, I'm in Manhattan. I'll sometimes ride the subway and I'll see an Instagram ad and they're still using that feature along with like the other major aspects. It's a, it was a sticker called add yours.

Leah Reich (29m 37s)

It was, it was something that my, the team I was working with, we had a brainstorm session.

Leah Reich (29m 44s)

I, it was based on an idea I had in that brainstorm session. It wasn't the only idea we worked on that half, but the more we built confidence in it doing research, I did a lot of research on it. I, you know, we did concept testing. I talked to a lot of people and, you know,

Leah Reich (30m)

in interviews and concept tests. And I also built around some other, built up some other ideas to help really, like--

Leah Reich (30m 7s)

advocate for this, that what people were looking for was a way not just to share to each other in a sort of broadcast-y way, but to really share with each other in the ways that human beings like to share.

Leah Reich (30m 20s)

And we really advocated for this product.

Leah Reich (30m 24s)

We wouldn't take no for an answer from Leeds.

Leah Reich (30m 26s)

We wouldn't change it to be like what--

Leah Reich (30m 29s)

some of the suggestions they had.

Leah Reich (30m 31s)

We just-- we really believed in it.

Leah Reich (30m 33s)

We went to test it.

Leah Reich (30m 37s)

And the public test actually had to be stopped because it hadn't been scaled enough.

Leah Reich (30m 43s)

And the first time that people started using it,

Leah Reich (30m 45s)

nearly a million people used a sticker.

Leah Reich (30m 48s)

And it almost-- literally almost broke Instagram because the public test hadn't been built to scale that quickly and that much.

Leah Reich (30m 58s)

And when it launched, people--

Leah Reich (31m 1s)

a lot of people, even internally, but other people said this was the first time on.

Leah Reich (31m 7s)

that I ever felt like I was doing something with other people.

Leah Reich (31m 11s)

Um, and when this is an interesting example of qualitative informing,

Leah Reich (31m 16s)

so it's a lot of qualitative research that I did that informed why we should build it the way we should build it, the way we should create the sticker.

Leah Reich (31m 26s)

And then after it was launched,

Leah Reich (31m 28s)

a quant researcher did a bunch of research into understanding why people loved it so much. And three of the four main reasons that, you know,

Leah Reich (31m 37s)

in this big survey she ran three of the four main reasons people loved this

Leah Reich (31m 41s)

feature were three of the qualitative insights that I had used to drive it.

Leah Reich (31m 46s)

And it was, you know, you want to feel invited to do things.

Leah Reich (31m 51s)

You want to feel welcome.

Leah Reich (31m 52s)

You want to know that like what you're sharing is okay to share.

Leah Reich (31m 55s)

You want to share with other people in a way that doesn't just feel like you're like sort of posting into a void and who knows what's going to happen.

Leah Reich (32m 2s)

That it's like there's a,

Leah Reich (32m 3s)

there's a sense of numbers and community and well-being.

Leah Reich (32m 7s)

And that is a, you can do that kind of work. It is possible.

Leah Reich (32m 10s)

And it's possible for it. This is my, this is my, I think the,

Leah Reich (32m 14s)

the sad secret is that it's possible to build that and have it be

Leah Reich (32m 19s)

hugely, hugely successful to the product itself.

Leah Reich (32m 22s)

Because when you build for like the benefit of people,

Leah Reich (32m 26s)

that makes them feel good. Right. And they might want to use your product more,

Leah Reich (32m 30s)

but it's also, it's, you have to be willing to do that kind of work.

Leah Reich (32m 37s)

And yes, they did lay me off. So what I,

Jeff Battersby (32m 38s)

Congratulations on your success, here's a pink slip.

Leah Reich (32m 43s)

I mean, it was, it was, you know, it's a lot, I have a lot of thoughts on that,

Leah Reich (32m 46s)

but it was funny because I also, I also, um,

Leah Reich (32m 49s)

during that time had started talking about how social media needs to design for what I call participation experiences,

Leah Reich (32m 56s)

rather than just like sharing or consumption or like, you know,

Leah Reich (33m)

validating interactive experiences.

Leah Reich (33m 3s)

And I had started talking about this around the same time,

Leah Reich (33m 7s)

about just about two years before I got laid off.

Leah Reich (33m 8s)

And everyone said that the day they laid me off,

Leah Reich (33m 11s)

they said there was going to be a big reorg and one of the new reorganized groups teams was going to be focusing on participation.

Jeff Battersby (33m 20s)

Eh?

Tom Anderson (33m 21s)

So how long were you there?

Leah Reich (33m 23s)

Um, just, uh, about two and a half years.

Tom Anderson (33m 25s)

Okay, and how many reorgs did you go through in that period of time?

Leah Reich (33m 27s)

I mean, my very first day, the man I joined and my manager,

Leah Reich (33m 31s)

the first thing she said to me was there's been a reorg. So, um, I mean in tech,

Tom Anderson (33m 33s)

Yeah.

Leah Reich (33m 37s)

you know, every six.

Tom Anderson (33m 38s)

Yeah, and my my start was

Tom Anderson (33m 41s)

back in the 90s. So, you know, I watched one of your old talks on YouTube and you mentioned dial-up and the BBSs and everything.

Tom Anderson (33m 48s)

And so I started at AOL in 1992.

Tom Anderson (33m 52s)

And I was call center, sales, billing, tech support, and then moved over to corporate because, you know, what's company gets certain size, but we don't want our support folks here.

Tom Anderson (34m)

We're going to send you to Florida.

Tom Anderson (34m 1s)

And then Florida ended up being Bangalore and all these different places.

Tom Anderson (34m 4s)

Um, but probably, so everything was pretty stable from 93 to 96, maybe,

Tom Anderson (34m 12s)

but it was really growing because at that time, AOL was the internet, right?

Tom Anderson (34m 16s)

There was Prodigy, CopyServe.

Tom Anderson (34m 18s)

There's other ones.

Tom Anderson (34m 19s)

And that's our history lessons for the kids today.

Leah Reich (34m 21s)

It wasn't the whole internet because I was on I was on the internet with and then I never used CompuServe AOL or Prodigy and I was on the internet starting in 92. So it wasn't the whole internet

Tom Anderson (34m 21s)

Um, no, right.

Tom Anderson (34m 27s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (34m 28s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (34m 29s)

And so it kind of took a mainstream, I'll say, put it, we'll put it that way.

Leah Reich (34m 30s)

Yeah, that was that was that was the mainstream internet, but then there was those of us who were nerds

Tom Anderson (34m 33s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (34m 36s)

Nerds, right.

Tom Anderson (34m 37s)

That's right.

Tom Anderson (34m 39s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (34m 39s)

Oh, you have an AOL address, but, um, and now this come back to that.

Leah Reich (34m 41s)

Yeah now well, yeah, yes we have now yes, yeah

Tom Anderson (34m 45s)

Um, but once we hit 96, 97, it was like every.

Tom Anderson (34m 51s)

18 months we'd, we'd have those and they would lay off 200 and then

Tom Anderson (34m 56s)

they'd reorg and they would hire 300.

Tom Anderson (34m 59s)

It's like, why it's like, you have good people here that have proven,

Tom Anderson (35m 4s)

you know, if you want to cut dead weight, fine.

Tom Anderson (35m 6s)

Cause not everybody is a fit, but yeah.

Tom Anderson (35m 9s)

So that I got cut from there in 1999.

Tom Anderson (35m 13s)

Uh, and then went back in 2000 and stayed until 2007.

Tom Anderson (35m 17s)

So I saw kind of the AOL go up and then the AOL go down.

Leah Reich (35m 20s)

[laughs] Yeah.

Tom Anderson (35m 21s)

I was like, I'm out, but it all kind of turned with, uh, the time Warner.

Tom Anderson (35m 25s)

Merger there for them.

Tom Anderson (35m 26s)

And they didn't, they refused to acknowledge that broadband was going to be a thing and did not pivot to.

Leah Reich (35m 34s)

Yeah, I mean I my laugh from Instagram was the fourth layoff of my career. I got laid off

Leah Reich (35m 40s)

to once in

Leah Reich (35m 42s)

the 90s once in 2001 and then Once from a startup like right before I started actually at the end of the year Wednesdays, I think

Leah Reich (35m 55s)

And then this last one, so it's like yeah, I feel like I'm averaging like every five to ten years I mean, which it follows the cycles of this.

Leah Reich (36m 4s)

And, you know, this past cycle has been very interesting for layoffs because,

Leah Reich (36m 9s)

um, you know, speaking of user research,

Leah Reich (36m 14s)

user research has been gutted across the industry.

Leah Reich (36m 19s)

Um, at, I think there was, someone did a, wrote a blog post about this.

Leah Reich (36m 24s)

I don't know where it is exactly. I'll look for it.

Leah Reich (36m 25s)

But there was a blog post that said, um, at one point,

Leah Reich (36m 29s)

After the sort of layoffs started in 2012,

Leah Reich (36m 34s)

so MEDA's did their first big round,

The Shift Away From User Researcher

Leah Reich (36m 36s)

do you remember their deep,

Leah Reich (36m 37s)

I mean and I remember they got on and they said,

Leah Reich (36m 39s)

oh yeah, we're doing a really deep cut 'cause we don't want to do this again,

Leah Reich (36m 41s)

it was like 13,000 people got laid off in November, 2022,

Leah Reich (36m 47s)

and they were like, we don't want to do this again,

Leah Reich (36m 48s)

it was really big, or 11,000, 13% or something like that.

Leah Reich (36m 52s)

Anyway, and then like four months later,

Leah Reich (36m 56s)

they were like, just kidding.

Leah Reich (36m 58s)

We really loved it, we actually loved it,

Leah Reich (37m)

it turned out really well, so we're gonna keep going.

Leah Reich (37m 4s)

Then of course the stock price soared to previously unknown because what does a stock market love?

Leah Reich (37m 9s)

A human sacrifice.

Leah Reich (37m 16s)

It really does because it turns out you can waste $45 billion on the MEDAverse and still have your stock price go to like $700 as long as you lay off a bunch of people.

Leah Reich (37m 31s)

So, uh.

Leah Reich (37m 35s)

I think what was interesting, though, is that user research, um.

Leah Reich (37m 40s)

During those layoffs and meta started it, and I have some theories on why,

Leah Reich (37m 44s)

and then the rest of the industry follows suit.

Leah Reich (37m 46s)

But across the industry, at some point, job listings were for user research specifically were down 89% from their peak in 2021.

Leah Reich (37m 56s)

And even though people would say like, oh, well, the same, you know, yes.

Leah Reich (38m)

But like a lot of user research has got laid off from meta, but the same number of.

Leah Reich (38m 4s)

software engineers got laid off.

Leah Reich (38m 6s)

Um, one cannot look at total numbers.

Leah Reich (38m 9s)

One needs to look at percentages, right?

Leah Reich (38m 12s)

The ratio, how many software engineers work at meta and how many got laid off versus how many user researchers work versus those who've got laid off.

Leah Reich (38m 21s)

Um, and it has been really like a very interesting inflection point that has not shifted back where, you know, there's this, um, just, it's very, it's the The industry has really shifted away from it right now.

Leah Reich (38m 34s)

Which is interesting in an industry that wanted to be very user centric.

Leah Reich (38m 39s)

Much harder to find those roles now.

Jeff Battersby (38m 41s)

Interesting. So, speaking of Venn diagrams and your love for, this kind of brings up what is very interesting to me about your newsletter is that it kind of hits that spot in the Venn diagram where we've got a product and we've got a user and you're talking a lot of times about the need that it is or is not fulfilling.

Jeff Battersby (39m 9s)

of the things that--

Jeff Battersby (39m 12s)

I've talked to Tom about.

Jeff Battersby (39m 13s)

I do currently wear an Apple watch.

Jeff Battersby (39m 15s)

I got one a couple of years ago.

Jeff Battersby (39m 16s)

And I am-- it's still ambivalent about this thing.

Jeff Battersby (39m 21s)

It's on my wrist for a variety of reasons.

Jeff Battersby (39m 24s)

And oftentimes, I feel like many of these companies are creating products in search of a need,

Jeff Battersby (39m 34s)

as opposed to seeing a need and creating a product that kind of takes care of that.

Jeff Battersby (39m 38s)

And that is one of the things I feel--

Jeff Battersby (39m 41s)

I've watched in my life before this.

Jeff Battersby (39m 43s)

I'm not a watch wearer, have never been a watch wearer,

Jeff Battersby (39m 44s)

and may not be a watch wearer after this one--

Jeff Battersby (39m 47s)

the battery dies on this one.

Jeff Battersby (39m 48s)

But you had, in one of your newsletter episodes,

Jeff Battersby (39m 55s)

we don't need no innovation.

Jeff Battersby (39m 57s)

And I sent that one to Tom and said, hey,

Jeff Battersby (40m)

I think we should try to get you on and see if we can get you on the show.

Jeff Battersby (40m 4s)

Tom's response to this, and he'd be fully willing to fess up to this is.

Leah Reich (40m 10s)

I did.

Jeff Battersby (40m 11s)

Yeah, right.

Jeff Battersby (40m 11s)

Well, why doesn't she just get rid of it?

Tom Anderson (40m 14s)

Which you did, that's right.

Jeff Battersby (40m 15s)

Which you did in fact.

Jeff Battersby (40m 17s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (40m 17s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (40m 18s)

So you were listening, listening to Tom through the ether.

Jeff Battersby (40m 22s)

Um, but talk to me a little about your, a little bit about your experience.

Jeff Battersby (40m 26s)

You don't have to, you know, rehash that particular, that particular piece, but

Jeff Battersby (40m 31s)

talk to me about what it is that you felt that wanted you or had you putting that on your wrist and what it is that, uh, made you get rid of it in the, in in the long run and kind of what.

Leah’s Apple Watch Experience

Jeff Battersby (40m 41s)

was or wasn't being met by having tech strapped to your arm.

Leah Reich (40m 45s)

I mean, you know, a lot, like a lot of people are very passionate about their Apple watches, which, Godspeed, I mean, you know, everybody's got to be passionate about something.

Leah Reich (40m 59s)

And, and I, you know, and I don't want to take away from it, because I know people do get value out of the things they use and the, and the, you know, I don't mean to say like, oh, this is the stupidest thing ever invented, and it's garbage, and no one should like it.

Jeff Battersby (41m 3s)

Mm-hmm. Absolutely true.

Leah Reich (41m 11s)

It was more that I was ambivalent.

Leah Reich (41m 15s)

Also from the start, just full disclosure,

Leah Reich (41m 19s)

I just think it's just aesthetically very displeasing.

Leah Reich (41m 24s)

It just looks like a big black square on your wrist.

Leah Reich (41m 28s)

And for me, I care about the aesthetics of things.

Leah Reich (41m 31s)

And it's interesting that a company like Apple,

Leah Reich (41m 35s)

which historically, for many years,

Leah Reich (41m 38s)

has been very driven by, in part,

Leah Reich (41m 40s)

not, I mean, obviously it's driven by a lot of things,

Leah Reich (41m 42s)

but the aesthetics of design and--

Leah Reich (41m 46s)

and functionality are obviously hugely important to Apple.

Leah Reich (41m 49s)

And I think that Apple Watch is just like,

Leah Reich (41m 52s)

no matter what you put it in, it just is sort of ugly.

Leah Reich (41m 56s)

And, you know, I got it because I really wanted to,

Leah Reich (42m 4s)

for fitness tracking primarily, right?

Leah Reich (42m 6s)

Like I really wanted to use it as,

Leah Reich (42m 8s)

I looked at all the different fitness trackers.

Leah Reich (42m 11s)

I wanted to like get myself moving more.

Leah Reich (42m 14s)

I want it to be able to track like--

Leah Reich (42m 15s)

what was going on with fitness and, you know, maybe even sleep because I wasn't--

Leah Reich (42m 20s)

we don't need to get all of the details of health and all of that.

Leah Reich (42m 25s)

But at the end of the day, I thought, like, you know, I looked, I was like,

Leah Reich (42m 30s)

should I get a Garmin?

Leah Reich (42m 31s)

Should I get a Fitbit?

Leah Reich (42m 32s)

Should I-- you know, everyone's like all these things.

Leah Reich (42m 34s)

And like, I was like, the Oura Ring, I don't really don't--

Leah Reich (42m 36s)

I wear rings and I don't like the way the Oura Ring--

Leah Reich (42m 39s)

and also it really was good for sleep more than fitness.

Leah Reich (42m 42s)

and the Fitbit, I was like, "Ugh, I don't know."

Leah Reich (42m 46s)

Anyway, it was sort of like a lot of like,

Leah Reich (42m 48s)

"Fine, I'll just get an Apple Watch.

Leah Reich (42m 50s)

"I'll just do it," right?

Leah Reich (42m 52s)

And at first, I was like, "Oh, I do find value in it."

Leah Reich (42m 56s)

It's not like the whole time I didn't find value in it,

Leah Reich (42m 59s)

but I got the Apple Watch.

Leah Reich (43m 1s)

I didn't get one with cellular because I also was, number one, so much more expensive.

Leah Reich (43m 5s)

I think it would have been slightly less ugly to me 'cause I could have gotten gold.

Leah Reich (43m 9s)

I'm a gold person.

Leah Reich (43m 11s)

I could have made it maybe match a little bit more,

Leah Reich (43m 13s)

And then, you know, it was like the cellular so much.

Leah Reich (43m 15s)

More expensive.

Leah Reich (43m 16s)

And then if you're going to get the stainless steel, it's like, what is it?

Leah Reich (43m 18s)

Like a thousand, $1,200 watch.

Leah Reich (43m 20s)

And I have to pay $10 a month to get it on my phone plan.

Leah Reich (43m 23s)

Right.

Leah Reich (43m 24s)

So now I'm like all of this money.

Leah Reich (43m 26s)

So I thought I'll just get the regular one.

Leah Reich (43m 29s)

Um, you know, and then I realized, Oh, well now I can't leave my phone.

Leah Reich (43m 36s)

Right.

Leah Reich (43m 36s)

So now it's now I'm tethered to two devices rather than less tethered to the one that I want to be less tethered to.

Leah Reich (43m 44s)

Um, even if, you know, I.

Leah Reich (43m 45s)

Didn't, I tried to like remove as many alerts as possible, but like, it turns out my email, I get so many stupid emails from like, no matter how many mailing lists I try and get off.

Leah Reich (43m 55s)

It just feels like, I feel like for every one I get off somehow I've joined five more without realizing it.

Leah Reich (44m 2s)

And so I would get like a thousand, my email, my just buzzing on my wrist constantly where I just felt slightly crazy.

Leah Reich (44m 9s)

And, but I, cause I thought, well, if I turn off email then, and essentially what I have is a very.

Leah Reich (44m 16s)

Fitness tracker and easy Siri timer.

Leah Reich (44m 19s)

I was like, except the timer really, but I loved it.

Leah Reich (44m 20s)

I was like, is that a timer?

Leah Reich (44m 21s)

I'd just be like, you know, but I could do that on my phone.

Leah Reich (44m 24s)

Um, it was a little bit easier at the gym.

Leah Reich (44m 26s)

If I wanted to set a timer, I could just in my headphones say, Hey Siri.

Leah Reich (44m 29s)

And I, you know, it wasn't like yelling into my phone and the fitness timer was great.

Leah Reich (44m 33s)

I really liked it, but, and I will, but what I also noticed was that, um, as someone who is very easy to mark number one, you can market literally anything to me.

Leah Reich (44m 45s)

That is the ugliest shit I have ever seen.

Leah Reich (44m 47s)

And in six months I'd be like, but I might want to wear it.

Leah Reich (44m 50s)

Um, genuinely don't know what is wrong with me.

Leah Reich (44m 54s)

I lived, I, when I, I did my PhD in UC Irvine and that's why I lived in Orange County, California for a while, five years.

Leah Reich (45m 1s)

And in the first year, about like nine months in, this was in the early 2000s.

Leah Reich (45m 6s)

So it's a little bit different vibe, but there was this period where I was like, you know, I really want is a silver Mercedes coupe and a.

Leah Reich (45m 12s)

solitaire diamond ring, two things I'd never really been interested in my

Leah Reich (45m 16s)

one day, like I woke up and I was like, Oh my god, it's really like, I'm just marinating and what these like, yeah, I was marinating and that's like Southern California vibe, which is not not to cast aspersions on it. But like,

Leah Reich (45m 27s)

I, I, I'm just very susceptible to that. And so things like streaks and rings and closing them, and the stand don't get me even started in that fucking standard, literally, I would walk, I set it for the minimum

Is Gamification Good For Us?

Leah Reich (45m 46s)

I would walk around my apartment waving my arm for 15 minutes and it wouldn't register.

Leah Reich (45m 53s)

And I was like, this is making me crazy.

Leah Reich (45m 57s)

You can't choose which rings.

Leah Reich (45m 58s)

And then I did like that, like it got me to move.

Leah Reich (46m 1s)

I liked that it did some things, but over time I was like, I feel like I care more about tracking than I do the activity I'm doing.

Leah Reich (46m 11s)

And it felt like it was distancing me more from what mattered.

Leah Reich (46m 16s)

And getting me to focus on, it's like, this is also kind of how I feel about Duolingo, which I do religiously and pay for, and I love languages.

Leah Reich (46m 26s)

I've spoken different languages my whole life, literally since I was a baby.

Leah Reich (46m 30s)

I, you know, I had two languages as my first language when I first started speaking, and so I've always been a language person.

Leah Reich (46m 37s)

I love languages, but in Duolingo, I will find that I'm like more interested in getting a bunch of points and maintaining my streak.

Leah Reich (46m 47s)

And I, you know, I want to be in the diamond turn.

Tom Anderson (46m 47s)

Mm-hmm

Leah Reich (46m 48s)

What the fuck is the time?

Leah Reich (46m 49s)

What am I gonna do?

Leah Reich (46m 50s)

Go to France and like, not, you know,

Leah Reich (46m 53s)

not be able to like order at a restaurant,

Leah Reich (46m 55s)

but I will say I was in the finals of the diamond tournament.

Leah Reich (47m 1s)

I mean, I never, you know, like I go to Italy and I can say four words.

Leah Reich (47m 5s)

I mean, you know, I can say a phrase in, you know,

Leah Reich (47m 9s)

what Portuguese and Korean, but what is most important is that I never broke my streak on Duolingo.

Leah Reich (47m 16s)

And that started to get me to feel like,

Leah Reich (47m 19s)

oh, you're focusing, like,

Leah Reich (47m 23s)

why are you focusing on something that doesn't matter rather than the thing that really makes, right?

Leah Reich (47m 28s)

And I think it's also,

Leah Reich (47m 30s)

so one of the things that really interests me about tech and the ways in which we engage with tech is that we know that products are designed to make us want to keep using them.

Leah Reich (47m 44s)

We know they're sticky, and--

Leah Reich (47m 46s)

It is also a very--

Leah Reich (47m 50s)

it's also a decision we can make to say, I would like--

Leah Reich (47m 54s)

it's the same with social media.

Leah Reich (47m 56s)

Do you want to get a bunch of likes and catch up with people in a really superficial way?

Leah Reich (48m 1s)

And it's not--

Leah Reich (48m 2s)

I've made a ton of friends online.

Leah Reich (48m 4s)

A lot of my friends have been made throughout--

Leah Reich (48m 6s)

since I first got online in 1992.

Leah Reich (48m 8s)

I still know people I made friends with in 1992 on the internet.

Leah Reich (48m 13s)

but do we want?

Leah Reich (48m 16s)

To have that sort of superficial interaction do we want to close a ring, maintain a streak,

Leah Reich (48m 24s)

or do we want to do the thing that provides value, that makes us feel like we're doing something meaningful in our lives? And like for me I was like this, the watch just feels like I'm now tethered to another thing that I don't, yes, like I could move, I could get the exercise.

Leah Reich (48m 43s)

The exercise is the same whether I try it or not.

Leah Reich (48m 47s)

And I don't mean like, look, some people really love data.

Leah Reich (48m 50s)

They love tracking things, and that brings them joy.

Leah Reich (48m 54s)

And I think then people get mistaken for like, it's the device that brings me joy.

Leah Reich (49m)

No, it's the act. You love data. It's okay. Some people love it.

Leah Reich (49m 4s)

I would like to love getting exercise, moving, feeling good, being outside.

Leah Reich (49m 11s)

And even if the watch helped me do that, I felt like I was just more beholden to it

Tom Anderson (49m 17s)

Yeah, I think it goes back to the Venn diagram because it's, I've got the activity and I've got the tracking and kind of that sweet spot is like, well,

Tom Anderson (49m 24s)

it encourages me a little bit if I'm feeling lazy and there's nothing wrong with that, but you know, I've got a streak that, speaking of the streak,

Tom Anderson (49m 31s)

it is ridiculously, stupidly long.

Tom Anderson (49m 34s)

Um, but just like you were saying with your Duolingo, it's the same thing.

Tom Anderson (49m 38s)

It's like, Oh my God, it's 2,800 something.

Tom Anderson (49m 42s)

I don't want to lose that, but it doesn't mean anything.

Leah Reich (49m 43s)  

• Right, what are you losing?

Tom Anderson (49m 45s)

It means nothing.

Leah Reich (49m 47s)

Right, what are you losing?

Tom Anderson (49m 48s)

Right. Nothing.

Leah Reich (49m 49s)

Nothing.

Tom Anderson (49m 50s)

I think I'm losing my mind is what it is.

Leah Reich (49m 52s)

Right, I mean, right, no, it's exactly that, Tom.

Tom Anderson (49m 53s)

But yeah, go ahead.

Leah Reich (49m 57s)

I think like that's the most interesting thing to me is this feeling of like, I don't wanna lose the streak and it's like, why?

Leah Reich (50m 7s)

And I think for some people there is the feeling of if I lose the streak,

Leah Reich (50m 12s)

I feel like I'll

Leah Reich (50m 13s)

start falling off and I'll slide back into my old habits and I understand that like I don't I don't want to discount that because I like I felt it I definitely feel like the watch got me to move more or at least and I but I don't know if it did because I was like does it track was it just that I would track it more you know and I think that I think that like this you know I understand like I don't want to lose a streak because you know I'm worried that it will...

Leah Reich (50m 43s)

I'll go back to bad habits or I'll slide or I won't do as consistently it helps me.

Leah Reich (50m 48s)

But I just feel like the idea of this, like one day of losing the streak isn't, you're going to, right?

Leah Reich (50m 55s)

But this feeling of like this, the streak and the rings and that I want to do, like I can't lose it.

Leah Reich (51m 1s)

It's like, it just makes me feel crazy.

Leah Reich (51m 3s)

It makes me feel like the wrong, it's like, what are you losing?

Tom Anderson (51m 7s)

It's not the right focus.

Leah Reich (51m 7s)

You're not.

Leah Reich (51m 8s)

Yeah.

Leah Reich (51m 9s)

No.

Tom Anderson (51m 9s)

Yeah.

Leah Reich (51m 10s)

Yeah, you are.

Leah Reich (51m 11s)

I'm going to lose something else.

Leah Reich (51m 13s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (51m 13s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (51m 13s)

Because what is my, my end goal is to be active, to stay healthy as anything, especially as in my mid fifties almost.

Tom Anderson (51m 22s)

And it's so that's the goal is to stay active, mobile, you know, maintain strength.

Tom Anderson (51m 29s)

The rings don't really matter, but it's like, Oh God, I still have to close it.

Tom Anderson (51m 34s)

It's seven 30.

Tom Anderson (51m 37s)

There is that friction there.

Tom Anderson (51m 38s)

And it'd be interesting to see where that flips, because I think we all start.

Tom Anderson (51m 45s)

Oh, this is great.

Tom Anderson (51m 46s)

This is going to keep my habits going.

Tom Anderson (51m 48s)

It's a nice reinforcement.

Tom Anderson (51m 50s)

And when I first started with the watch, you know, about the very first one.

Tom Anderson (51m 53s)

And when I started with it, I didn't care that much about it.

Tom Anderson (51m 55s)

Like it was great.

Tom Anderson (51m 56s)

Cause I came from Fitbit, which really didn't track anything other than steps.

Tom Anderson (51m 59s)

And I was like, Oh, this is great.

Tom Anderson (52m)

But if I didn't close it every day, I didn't care.

Tom Anderson (52m 3s)

Um, I would work out the days I was supposed to work out and I would do my recovery things.

Tom Anderson (52m 7s)

I was supposed to do that.

Tom Anderson (52m 8s)

And if it closed a great, if it didn't, it didn't.

Tom Anderson (52m 11s)

But then somewhere along the line, it said, Hey Tom, 300 straight days, bro.

Tom Anderson (52m 16s)

You're doing great.

Tom Anderson (52m 18s)

And I was like, Ooh, 300 is a lot.

Tom Anderson (52m 20s)

That's almost a year.

Tom Anderson (52m 21s)

I have to keep this going.

Tom Anderson (52m 23s)

And so I'm curiously, where did that flip for me mentally?

Tom Anderson (52m 26s)

Because somewhere it did.

Tom Anderson (52m 27s)

Cause it used to not.

Tom Anderson (52m 29s)

And now I do probably more than well, definitely more than I should.

Tom Anderson (52m 32s)

And I don't know where that happens.

Tom Anderson (52m 35s)

Like for, I'm sure it's different for everybody too.

Tom Anderson (52m 37s)

streak with Duolingo. And you know, I started using that. And it's funny because the streak on the watch, and the stand prompts and the coaching pieces and everything, come on, Tom, you could do it. When I tried Duolingo, it would send similar things with with little, I forget what the character is the owl. Yeah. And I was like, Tom, disappointed or whatever it would say. And I was like, I don't give a crap, shut up. And that one I didn't care about. And so it's, that's another interesting thing to dig into is like, well, why did I care

Jeff Battersby (52m 56s)

Yeah. (laughs)

Tom Anderson (53m 7s)

because I didn't care about learning that particular language that much. This is something I've been interested in for 30 years at this point on the fitness side of things.

Tom Anderson (53m 15s)

But yeah, it's it's interesting. And it can be a bit much of a

Leah Reich (53m 22s)

I don't know where the switch is because I, again, same--

Leah Reich (53m 26s)

I mean, I've had Duolingo for a long time.

Leah Reich (53m 29s)

And I really only sort of was like, I'm going to--

Leah Reich (53m 32s)

what I said was I want to commit to--

Leah Reich (53m 35s)

I studied French in college.

Leah Reich (53m 39s)

I've spoken Spanish for a really long time.

Leah Reich (53m 41s)

I spoke Cantonese as a child.

Leah Reich (53m 43s)

I started learning Mandarin as an adult.

Leah Reich (53m 46s)

I've spoken so many different languages and learned so many different languages.

Leah Reich (53m 49s)

And so what I wanted was to--

Leah Reich (53m 52s)

I want to go back.

Leah Reich (53m 55s)

I speak Spanish, but sometimes my vocab and my verbs--

Leah Reich (53m 58s)

because I haven't studied it in a long time.

Leah Reich (54m)

So I want to use it to get better at French and Spanish,

Leah Reich (54m 4s)

which I used to speak, and beef those back up, and maybe pick up some other stuff.

Leah Reich (54m 8s)

And I think I had started Duolingo probably when I was living in Sweden.

Leah Reich (54m 11s)

And I was trying to--

Leah Reich (54m 12s)

I was taking classes, and I was trying to learn Swedish and everything like that.

Leah Reich (54m 16s)

And when I went back on it recently--

Leah Reich (54m 18s)

and now I started this streak where it's over 800 days now

Leah Reich (54m 22s)

and it was because I wanted--

Leah Reich (54m 27s)

I was like, I wanted to commit to engaging in languages because that gives me joy.

Leah Reich (54m 33s)

I love talking with--

Leah Reich (54m 35s)

I mean, I love talking, period, if it's not that obvious.

Leah Reich (54m 41s)

But I love being able to connect with people in their own language.

Leah Reich (54m 45s)

It makes me really happy.

Leah Reich (54m 47s)

I would rather be uncomfortable and stumbling around if someone else is comfortable.

Leah Reich (54m 52s)

And also, I just feel like you get to learn more when you're engaging in another language.

Leah Reich (54m 56s)

And I did it for these really very human reasons.

Leah Reich (55m)

And now I'm like, I've got to earn 1,000 points because--

Leah Reich (55m 5s)

800 days later, right?

Leah Reich (55m 7s)

And I don't know where that switch happens,

Leah Reich (55m 10s)

and I don't know why it matters.

Leah Reich (55m 12s)

And I am really fascinated by it, right?

Leah Reich (55m 16s)

It's like this thing where it just--

Leah Reich (55m 18s)

I start to think much more about,

Leah Reich (55m 21s)

Am I really learning?

Leah Reich (55m 22s)

French, relearning French.

Leah Reich (55m 25s)

And I do think I am.

Leah Reich (55m 26s)

I know I've learned, I've picked up a lot of stuff.

Leah Reich (55m 30s)

It's not that I'm not learning, it's not a waste of time, but it's the focus, it's the way my brain prioritizes and cares more about this aspect in the moment where I'm like,

Leah Reich (55m 42s)

I should put the phone down.

Leah Reich (55m 44s)

I've done a couple lessons and actually work on something that's important, but I'll stay on the app for another half an hour to earn more points.

Leah Reich (55m 52s)

And it's that part where I just think, what are you doing?

Leah Reich (55m 58s)

And I think that's where part of me is also really curious about what are the decisions that we make as autonomous adults who are fully aware of the effect these products have on us,

Leah Reich (56m 19s)

the impact they have on our lives, the ways we engage.

Leah Reich (56m 22s)

I literally work on products.

Leah Reich (56m 26s)

I know.

Leah Reich (56m 27s)

I'm more interested on--

Leah Reich (56m 30s)

so one of the things you said, Jeff,

Leah Reich (56m 32s)

earlier was that this sort of intersection of the product and the user.

Leah Reich (56m 36s)

I find that a lot of tech writing and writing about tech tends to focus on the companies, the products, the executives,

Leah Reich (56m 48s)

the money, the industry.

Leah Reich (56m 50s)

And there is very, very, very, very--

Leah Reich (56m 52s)

very little focus on us, the people who use the product,

Leah Reich (56m 59s)

even the individuals who help make it on a lower level.

Leah Reich (57m 2s)

And the real impact of all of the big stuff is how it impacts us as human beings, our societies,

Leah Reich (57m 12s)

our relationships, our everything.

Leah Reich (57m 14s)

And that's really where I get, like, what choices do we make?

Leah Reich (57m 17s)

And is the call coming?

Close

Jeff Battersby (57m 21s)

And that's a great segue.

Jeff Battersby (57m 22s)

Um, eh, this is what you will find in Leah's writing.

Jeff Battersby (57m 28s)

Uh, if you check out her website, which I'll have you tell us about in just a second, um, to the end of what you were just talking about Leah, one of the, one of the pieces I'll highly recommend is ungamify your brain, um, which is exactly what you're talking about right now.

Jeff Battersby (57m 46s)

And that, that kind of, uh, that kind of stuff, but why don't you tell us where

Leah Reich (57m 53s)

www.liareich.com. First name for someone born in the 70s, a lifetime of princess.

Leah Reich (58m 6s)

And last name, a lifetime of the Nazi joke you really want to make. I've heard it. Please don't.

Jeff Battersby (58m 14s)

Yeah, I won't, that's just why I asked you how to make sure you pronounce your name.

Leah Reich (58m 17s)

Not you. Oh my God, just honestly, what a last name to be saddled with for...

Leah Reich (58m 23s)

decades. I mean, you know, it is my name, but it's...

Jeff Battersby (58m 25s)

Yes, stuff like, "Is your middle name Third?"

Leah Reich (58m 31s)

Are you the third in your family? Yeah. Wow. Never heard that, guys.

Jeff Battersby (58m 32s)

Yeah, yeah, right.

Leah Reich (58m 38s)

So yes, www.liareich.com. You can find more of my writing there. You can find my newsletter.

Leah Reich (58m 43s)

You can say hi. Jeff likes, un-gamify your brain. I have two that are pinned on the top.

Leah Reich (58m 54s)

Um, uh, underneath a little about me. One is, um, technology is not the answer.

Leah Reich (59m 1s)

And one is the one I wrote this week, which is the Great Fall Day.

Jeff Battersby (59m 4s)

I highly recommend those both as well.

Jeff Battersby (59m 7s)

And pretty much everything, like I'm not lying when I say that your writing is excellent and I really appreciate it and it makes me think and it's, you're one of the few writers that I send to a lot of people, so you're welcome and well-earned, it's not, I'm not just saying this because you're sitting in front of Tom and me.

Leah Reich (59m 18s)

No, that's very nice. Thank you

Jeff Battersby (59m 29s)

So Leah, thanks so much for taking the time to come on and actually I would say we hope

Jeff Battersby (59m 34s)

you're willing to come on again.

Jeff Battersby (59m 36s)

Awesome, really appreciate it.

Jeff Battersby (59m 38s)

Alrighty, so that is the end of this episode of The Basic AF Show.

Jeff Battersby (59m 43s)

As usual, our lead in music and close out music is Psychokinetics and Celsius 7, highly recommend that you check them out.

Jeff Battersby (59m 52s)

And Random Art Design has designed the seriously true-to-life robots that make up our, and And you can look at us and know that artwork is not a joke.

Jeff Battersby (1h 5s)

It's pretty much the real us.

Tom Anderson (1h 5s)

It's very realistic.

Jeff Battersby (1h 7s)

Yeah.

Leah Reich (1h 8s)

It's you.

Jeff Battersby (1h 8s)

I think it actually looks better than the two of us do.

Tom Anderson (1h 11s)

There's that.

Jeff Battersby (1h 11s)

That's another story.

Jeff Battersby (1h 14s)

Um, you know, do the usual stuff like us, uh, recommend us to your friends.

Jeff Battersby (1h 19s)

Uh, again, not that we pay a whole lot of attention to how many people are downloading our episodes.

Jeff Battersby (1h 26s)

We kind of do, um, we're more interested in just hanging out with each other and talking.

Jeff Battersby (1h 31s)

And if somebody else is interested in listening.

Tom Anderson (1h 34s)

Bonus

Jeff Battersby (1h 34s)

That's a bonus.

Jeff Battersby (1h 36s)

But Tom and I like hanging out with each other.

Jeff Battersby (1h 38s)

And we really enjoyed hanging out with you today, Lia.

Jeff Battersby (1h 39s)

So thank you very much.

Leah Reich (1h 40s)

Thank you, that's great.

Tom Anderson (1h 42s)

We did. Yeah. Thank you very much. Appreciate the time on a Saturday and hopefully it's a little warmer for you up there today. It's not, no, it's still just as cold. Yeah. Great. Okay.

Leah Reich (1h 51s)

It's honestly not a bad day for staying inside and podcasting.

Jeff Battersby (1h 55s)

laughs Very true.

Tom Anderson (1h 55s)

Okay. Well, we're very thankful that you'd spend some time with us. So thank you very much.

Tom Anderson (1h 1m 1s)

So that is it for this episode. We will catch you all again in a couple of weeks until then.

Jeff Battersby (1h 1m 7s)

See ya.