Nov 02, 2016
Interview with Phil Smithson: Podcast
By Asha Gutierrez
Techshake Radio: November 2016
“The On-Off Group marries human-centred design with technology to
develop innovative products and services and create signature service
experiences across multiple channels, devices, platforms and media.
Phil Smithson, Director of the On-Off Group, gives us a small
taste of their process when conducting customer experience studies. He also
talks about Learn Tagalog Fast, a startup that he founded (seemingly by
accident) that teaches foreigners how to speak the local language and his
responsibilities as a mentor to teams in Ideaspace, where he brings his
UX-experience to the table.”
Interview between Paolo (interviewer)
and Phil (interviewee) the founder of Learn Tagalog fast.
Paolo: How are you doing today?
Phil: I’m good thank you very much! I’m very good
Paolo: I want to talk about the cards that you
actually gave to me.
Phil: Yeah
Paolo: It says, “What problem are we solving here on
one-side and how does this help our customer on the other side?”
Phil: Yeah. The card means that the two questions are
kind of made into cards. This was made from an idea of a Kristine Lowe, one of
my business partners who is actually from the Hong Kong team. The idea here is
that we give these cards out to customers and they use them in meetings, an
orange card. Like in soccer and football you have like a red or yellow card.
The story behind this is we want customers to use these cards in a meeting when
they are talking about new products or services. We want the people to own the
card up. It is like a non-confrontational thing as you hold up and use the
card. It is about getting people back on track and refocusing to make sure that
the focus on the customer because at the end of the day, we are here to solve
the customers’ problems. Whether this be a start-up or a large company we exist
because we add value to customers at some point. So if we cannot answer the
question then what problem we are solving. Then what are we talking about?
Paolo: Exactly.
Phil: That is how to help our customer.
Paolo: Maybe you can tell us about what you do in
such on and off group.
Phil: Yes. We are a service designed consultancy. A
lot of people don’t know what that means and we spend a lot of time explaining
what that means.
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: So service designed consultancy basically in a
nutshell means we help design better customer services for people and part of
that is doing research and learning about their experience. A part of it is
about mapping out the journey through the different touch points and it is
really about the end-to-end customer experience that we’ re talking about. It’s
not just one little channel that is digital, it is the whole. Everything
affects my experience and the customer’s.
Paolo: Okay.
Phil: We have been trying one thing that we have
been trying to do. That is to give customer’s visibility over that. A lot of
companies don’t know what their customer are experiencing. That is why we help
them. The first thing we do is we usually do some research and then we give
them visibility on what we were able to find. From there we look on how we were
able to design a better experience. It is not just about the customer’s
experience. It is also about the employee’s experience that can have an impact
here as well. Because if you are looking at the systems that the employees use can
directly affect how responsive they are to customer’s needs. For example, how
quickly can I accommodate your request depends perhaps in some cases on the
system that I need to use as a customer service agent.
Paolo: What is your process like? How do you actually
find out how the customers’ experiences are like?
Phil: Basically we spend a lot of time doing
research and learning about our customers. Like who are they as human beings.
We try to get inside their heads and observe things like their personas. That
way, we are able to notice the different customer types coming in and the main
goal for this phase is to research and identify the core problem that we are
solving. Whether it is a real problem or optimizing an experience. It is an
intense research phase in which we shadow the customer or the employee.
Paolo: So you actually like, spend time with the
customers?
Phil: Absolutely! Yes, because we
have to. Those are the people who are experiencing the service and we need to
understand from their point of view.
Paolo: Is this just like handing
out forms for them to fill out?
Phil: No, we do a deep dive on
our customer’s data in order to feel the experience form their point of view.
We are kind of persuasive for the bosses of the companies because we have a
survey and a lot of data that can be less persuasive. We need real human
stories coming up and real videos of somebody using your experience. That can
be actually be a good fuel for persuading our customers that they should care
for their customers’ experiences. A lot of companies don’t know or don’t care
much about their customers’ experiences.
Paolo: So we talk a lot about
your user experience but let us go back a bit to know where you started. Did
you even really want to do UX in the first place?
Phil: No, I started off as
wanting to be a programmer when I was younger. My older brother was into
programming and he influenced me into making games and other stuff. He was
around 17 that time and I was around 7 or 8 years old.
Paolo: Wow!
Phil: There was a big age gap.
Then I went to the University and started doing Accounting actually.
Paolo: Accounting?
Phil: Yeah!
Paolo: Accounting and then how did
it happen?
Phil: Well, my dad is an
Accountant and that is one of the things we thought about doing. Tried that for
a while and didn’t work out for me and so I switched to Software Engineering
and then I did a 4 year course in the UK. I came here to do an Internship as
part of my third year then come back here to work for an agency.
Paolo: Why come here? I mean why
besides internship, why do you come back?
Phil: I came back because there
was a job offer that seemed to be nice. I think I wanted to experience
something different from UK. Try a different life because I’ve been there for
24 years. I want to experience something different and it is different here.
Nothing is the same. Even the language, they say it’s English but it’s not
British English. It is genuinely more fun in the Philippines. It is why I
wanted to come back.
Paolo: When you came back, your
first job was?
Phil: So, I worked as project
manager in a company who used to make Java applications. I managed a small team
with developers in a project. It kind of progressed through that. We started
off as a small one. They are like a solution provider that basically makes
software for people in Europe and America. They changed the bit into thinking
about company branding and stuff like that. After that they become an ad agency
for local market, we were working with large bands locally and facebook,
mobile, or website apps to compete against the large companies like Lisa Bonet
and those kind of people.
Paolo: Oh.
Phil: It was actually interesting
to see the company change so much. It seemed to change every two years and it
was like having a new job every couple of years. That is why it was very
interesting for me to see its growth and change.
Paolo: From there, how did you
get started in UX?
Phil: We didn’t do UX really, in software engineering. It is really all about
how we build the software. We were never thought to think about the user which
is crazy. For some reason, we skip that module. Software engineering. The UX
came about, in the agency. It is on thinking about the users experience on
sites. I do remember the first time when it became obvious to me that maybe we
do not have the best process…. [ ] They would spend days working for a website,
it was like a competition for a local brand and they did design all these
screens that 3-4 days of revisions. In the end, it does not make any sense
because we don’t need that. We should do something else instead. Then they
start to jump from that one project to another while spending a few days on
design. They go straight to Photoshop which is actually stupid because it does
not follow a kind of flow but this was a long time ago.
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: Looking back it was weird.
It kind of became obvious to me that maybe we should think of the user’s
experience. That came up. Then the day we created a user’s department company,
and starting to create frames which is compared to just going straight to
design as like before. It is quicker to revise the frame. That became part of
the process. The UX team never lingered anymore. This is my first awareness in
this agency.
Paolo: Was your experience in UX
Manila a quick transition or do you have to learn more things. Did you have to
study?
Phil: No, it was an easy
transition. I was kind of doing the same thing. My frustrations were due to it
being an agency and we were working with companies that didn’t really add to
the value of the customer as they were not really asking from a card. We were
not really helping our customers, it is more about on how we can sell more
products and for MSCG brands. It didn’t really like creating an impact in the
world. We wanted to set-up Manila with the goal of working in a way that will
put the user first, thinking on how we can do good for the user. To focus on
making their lives better in some way. That was the drive for starting UX
Manila.
Paolo: Let’s talk about Learn
Tagalog Fast. That’s really interesting also. What made you actually think of
this app or program.
Phil: Just being a foreigner in
the Philippines made me aware of the adjusting I guess. It is different to live
here compared to UK. Everything is different… [ ] They are different worlds..
It makes you realize that there
are different world views not just one way of viewing the world. It is big adjustment coming here. One of the things
that helped me adjust and enjoy life here is learning the language. Since the
beginning, I have been learning Tagalog and I do remember getting a few
phrases.
Paolo: What was the first phrase
you learned?
Phil: One of the basics terms,
like the ‘kaliwa’ and ‘kanan’ stuff. Since the beginning I have been trying to
learn things that would make people laugh. Such as, “Anong balita tiyong.” Or
“What’s up dude.” It’s like a casual way of saying it. When I say that, people
laugh and this makes me want to learn more….[ ] I get a reputation of making
things to make people laugh. It is great and fun, making me feel very welcome
here.
Paolo: Do you have an app or
program that help learn Tagalog fast now?
Phil: Yes! How we started was when I had the idea. I had the idea for a long
time and I got these friends here who couldn’t speak in Tagalog. I am here
speaking the language and really enjoying it. It is not like going to France or
Germany or going to learn the language, here you speak a couple of words and
you feel so welcome. I want the people to experience that welcome as well.
I didn’t know what to do about
this idea for a long time and that was annoying. I was always thinking about
what I can do to take this idea to the next step. I am annoyed to I have not
moved on in this idea for nearly two years or longer. The first thing that I
did was I went to this restaurant and I wrote five different e-mail lessons.
Every five-day course, with an e-mail lesson teaching them something for every
day. [ ] I share the link to a Facebook group for selling products and stuff
saying, “Hey I built this thing, I am not sure if it’s any good, it’s free.
Could you try it out, test it, and give me some feedback?” We had like three
hundred sign-ups from that and I was like, “Okay, so people do really want to
learn Tagalog.”
Paolo: Wow.
Phil: Because my first question
was, “What if nobody wants to learn Tagalog?” I wanted to find out easily,
cheaply, and quickly. I wanted to see the Market and the urgency for that. I
used the e-mail link to check this out. Well, there are two kinds of Tagalog to
learn. One of them is like you super know everything about Tagalog that you can
read books and understand them. I think most people don’t need to know that.
There is another level of Tagalog which is conversational or functional
Tagalog. It is in which we focus on making the people function and work in
different situations. The different applications here would be like learning
office situations or in dialogue during meetings.
Paolo: Oh! That’s nice. I like
it!
Phil: It is very situational.
Yes. Because that is kind of like what you need in the Philippines. You don’t
need more than that. As long as you can do most of those situations then you
are more than capable of speaking Tagalog.
Paolo: I like your number 8.
Dating.
Phil: We haven’t done that yet
(laughter)
Paolo: (laughter)
Phil: We haven’t done any yet. It
is still a concept to consider. But yeah I think for sure, some people are
interested in that. It’s about meeting with the opposite sex.
Paolo: How is it now like, what
are you doing now?
Phil: Now, we’ve got to do the
e-mail program and the feedback was okay. The next step I did was to make some
plan for offline courses related to the lessons. Ten sessions worth of offline
material. I created this last year and again I wasn’t sure if the material was
any good or any useful and I wanted to validate that. I did the same thing, I
put it on Facebook and asked people if they will be interested in a
one-on-one 5 hour free Tagalog language
lessons because I am testing out this material and I am not sure if it is any
good. However, fifty comments said yes. Okay, too many people.
Paolo: (laughter)
Phil: So, I picked a couple of
people, and did some kind of trial and pile up project if you like. Tested it
on them and got some good feedback because they liked the material. They liked
the teaching style as well. That is one of our unique selling points, we are
different in the way we teach. We focus on speaking. We don’t have loads of
exercise books or loads of fill in the gaps crap. It is not about that. It is
all about what is needed in the Philippines. You don’t need to read or write in
the Philippines. You need to learn how to speak and interact with the people
and handle different situations and scenarios.
[ ] They learn Tagalog fast because we focus on speaking. In the lessons
here, it is mostly about speaking. This helps in making the connections between
the words that you do have at the back of your head and getting these when
needed it in a given situation.
Paolo: Oh I see.
Phil: In the session, we try to
practice build-up and the memory recall easier when you are in these scenarios.
Paolo: Okay. I understand.
Phil: Also we have the e-mail as
the first step, then there was the offline lessons. Around the same time, my
friend came to me and said, “Hey Phil, we need to make the e-mail content into
an app.” I was like, “Okay, do it.” He went and did it, he did it himself by
designing and build it.
He works in the Android ios and
he uploaded it to the play store. We forgot about it but when we checked after
six months, and there were five thousand downloads!
Paolo: (laughter)
Phil: I mean, how did that
happen? Okay, so there was an interest in this and so now we are at twenty-four
thousand plus downloads. Which was like totally unexpected. It came out of
nowhere. We’re getting good reviews as well. We are four and a half stars… [ ]
They were giving ratings good ratings. We got the app now as well. We got the
premium version of the app but more content.
Paolo: You have brand new app
before?
Phil: It’s like we’re using the
same app but with more content. It is really a simple app. It’s clearly more
about the content and the way in which we wrote it. We make it focused on
situation Tagalog dialogues. The next thing that we’re doing is creating video
lessons.
Paolo: Okay. I think I saw it.
Phil: I think I showed you.
Paolo: Yes the one, “Mag beer
tayo.” (Let us drink beer.)
Phil: Yes, so I did like five
video lessons yesterday based on the e-mail program. We make like micro-lessons
2 minutes per lesson. It is just showing me explaining the topics of the lesson.
We launched it again on Youtube yesterday for free to validate other’s interest
and see how we can make the videos. I do not have a video team yet so it was
more of a practice for me as I create something that adds value to people’s
lives and solve some problems for them. It always come back to the cards.
Paolo: Yeah.
Phil: We had some good feedback
and we have some people who subscribe to the channel. We are already going.
Just two hours ago I sent an e-mail and created a list for the program showing lessons
for the people who are interested.
Paolo: Do you reach more people
that way? In terms of videos.
Phil: Yeah.
Paolo: Versus like one-on-one
classes?
Phil: Yeah. I guess. Now, we are
going to see. That is something we will see given that we just launched this.
Planning on doing some podcasts.
Paolo: Awesome! Just like, “Teach
me Tagalog.”
Phil: Yeah. Some micro podcasts I
guess. Because some requires a little bit less responding and it is easier to
set up. Try to keep it light and fun. Maybe interview some students for that as
well.
Paolo: Yes!
Phil: That’s one of the things
that we have up the pipe as well right now.
Paolo: On your way here, like
into your room, there were like a few people from Ideaspace walking out.
Phil: Yeah.
Paolo: So I want to know, like to
ask about your experience as a mentor now?
Phil: I really really like it!
Paolo: Enjoying it?
Phil: I am really enjoying it!
Paolo: Did you do that in UX
Manila right? Like you kind of also mentored there and thought people. How was
it different from your experience now?
Phil: We did a lot of workshops
before, like a two hour UX workshop for a lot of students last year and that
really didn’t feel like mentoring because we go in, we teach UX, and then we go
away and we never see them again.
Paolo: I see.
Phil: Which is a shame. That is why the Ideaspace the we are doing now is
really good because we get to follow a start-up from the beginning in
validating their products and helping them solve team problems and things like
that. It really feels like you enjoy and you learn. You see the progressing of
the people going along well. There are a lot of mentor teaching them things as
well so there was a lot of to do. [ ] There is an attorney, and many different
kinds of mentors actually. It is really fascinating. So the teams get to learn
from everybody and you see them progress through the journey. You meet them
regularly and it’s nice seeing the team learn from that. We just had a session
this morning and they had a problem in regards to how they were working as a
team and product validation. [ ]
Paolo: Yeah! Back to the cards!
Phil: Yeah, it always go back to
the cards.
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: This stuff that you can see
on the whiteboard behind me is a retrospective meeting.
Paolo: Can we talk a bit about
it?
Phil: Sure!
Paolo: On the left side says, continue or good.
Phil: Yes.
Paolo: Then stop bad on the
right.
Phil: Yes.
Paolo: So what did you mean?
There are other stickers: laugh, be creative, and be optimistic. Okay, what’s on
the bad side?
Phil: Let me explain to you.
Three columns. Things going well, things we want to continue doing, and things
we want to stop doing. Then after we’ve done the first two things, then we go
to how do we improve those things. From there we categorize the different bad issues
into different kinds of solution areas there.
Paolo: Oh. So that’s what I was also wondering about. You guys are doing well
because the bad sides are really empty.
Phil: No. All the bad things are
gone into the improving now.
Paolo: Ah I see.
Phil: Actually I took a picture
this morning. There were just so many things in the bad section. We spent the
first fifteen minutes of silence, to give them a pen and a pad of post it notes
and then they write down good and bad things.
Paolo: Okay.
Phil: Then we stick them all on
the wall, and that’s how it looked this morning.
Paolo: Okay.
Phil: We looked at the wall and
we discussed together. About the bad things and think on what we need to do to
stop these things from happening again. We then categorized the different
improvements into four different solution areas. Depending on what comes down
naturally so there is no fixed rule in the improvements. We take them one by
one actually. So we went through about fifty bad points this morning.
Paolo: Wow.
Phil: Yes, and one-by-one we
figured it out by finding how we can solve them.
Paolo: That’s interesting because
your experience is more on the user experience. How does this relate to you.
Phil: I think that there is a lot
of overlap here. It’s really for me, everything we do, we build, we create,
it’s all about human interactions and human experiences.
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: So we are using it as a
base. It’s quite easy to just use your empathy to help the team understand what
they are going through as well and what is causing the problems. Having that
experiences as customers translates you to working in teams. It is really a
problem with start-ups. There are always an issue in communication. [ ] Talking
to each other, even about things like tracking work and making sure that we
have regular check-ups and in a working progress. Working together as a team
and are we communicating well with our stakeholders. It is always a key to have
communication.
Paolo: Yes. I see.
Phil: I remember being a student
of Software Engineering. Something about project management. They were telling
us that the biggest problem they have is not technical. The biggest problems
you are going to have would be around communication. When you are like twenty,
you are like, “Yeah, whatever, I need to fix this database thing.” And then you
start work and you start business. That’s when you realize, “Wow, actually
yeah, so many problems are down to about communication.”
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: I really enjoy helping the
start-ups because they come in and they don’t know how to solve it. The first
help that I do is get out from each of the team members’ problems by putting it
somewhere visible, so we can talk about it. That way we solve it as a team. [ ]
I really like that, I really enjoy that part in my work.
Paolo: That’s great. I think you just really enjoy solving problems and finding
what the problems are. I think that is the biggest take in your class. Like
what problem are we solving here?
Phil: Yeah. Exactly.
Paolo: We should give these
people the cards.
Phil: You can text some and tell
them. [ ]
Paolo: I want you to plug your
different themes, like how can people reach you, how can people learn Tagalog
fast with you?
Phil: So they should check-out
the Facebook page Learn Tagalog Fast. Also Design Thinking Asia. We are doing a
lot of UX training around in South East Asia.
Paolo: We can also talk a bit
about that. What do you do for design in Asia?
Phil: We do build a community
around design thinkers. Because design thinking is overlapping between things
that are hard to separate from.
Paolo: Yeah.
Phil: Design thinking, human
design.
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: User experience, customer
experience.
Paolo: Yes.
Phil: I don’t know. I’d rather talk about what they have in common than how to
define them because how to define them is just an endless, never-ending
conversation. We do everything around these different topics. One thing we do
is the regular user experience, once a month in Manila and also in Hong Kong.
We do service design training in Hong Kong. We try to bring that in Manila as
well. Not just Manila actually. We also got UX in Cebu and Davao later this
year. We kind of experimenting actually. Because we don’t know if there is a
market there for UX.
Paolo: Okay.
Phil: Yep.
Paolo: So this design thinking in Asia.
Phil: Yeah.
Paolo: On-off group, Learn
Tagalog Fast,
Phil: Yes.
Paolo: and what else, what else
do you have going on? Besides your security bank interviews?
Phil: (laughter) I enjoyed that.
That was really funny. Weird.
Paolo: You are a celebrity now
apparently!
Phil: Apparently, yeah. Just
mentoring for something is what I do. Yes, I think that feels the most
rewarding. Yes, that’s the work, rewarding. Seeing these young people learning
by doing these things. That’s why I do these e-mail, and all. You won’t know
what it will look like until you’ve done it. Then you know more about it, then
you can start seeing on how you can choose your direction about it.
Paolo: Any last words? Say it in Tagalog!
Phil: Salamat.
Paolo: (laughter)
Phil: (laughter)
Paolo: Thank you so much for this
interview.
Phil: Thank you so much.
Paolo: I want to thank Phil
Smithson for this wonderful podcast and for letting us do it in his office. [ ]