Episode 40 · 38:02
Can you guess what Dan’s trying to draw?
A drawing game gives Dan and Tom a playful way into visual communication, interpretation and the distance between an idea in your head and what another person can actually see.
The episode shows why rough sketches are useful: they expose assumptions early, invite questions and let an idea improve before polish makes it expensive to change.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- A rough visual often reveals misunderstanding faster than a long explanation.
- If people interpret a sketch differently, the gap is useful design evidence.
- Construction lines and failed attempts are part of thinking, not something to hide.
- Share an idea while it is still cheap enough to change.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
[Music] don't please [Music] okay if you're not on YouTube you need to jump over to YouTube because we're going to do something different today I've got a whiteboard and we're going to do some Pictionary so I've got three topics and maybe Tom you can also come up with a topic as well on camera on your iPad yeah I'll just have to like show up and apologies for all like the sound there's a bunch of like Clips on the end which is a bit.
Irritating that I need to remove it is what it is yeah if you're into that thing then you'll enjoy it for the next hour or whatever depends how long I take to build a build to draw right my three topics and what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw it and then you can guess it and then I'll tell you the story about it right so while I'm drawing you can fill the air this is all.
Live stuff so the iPhone 15 and 15 Pros only just come out and the update for iOS 17 came out yesterday we have to talk about it for about two minutes just so we can add it in the um YouTube description to say that unboxing we actually had the most um we had the most uh kind of like um analytic our analytics like profit jumped kind of thing yeah by just mentioning the uh the event okay I have put letters in this but.
Let's let's see let's see if this is okay so I'm done so this is the image so I'll I'll describe the image as well just in case you're on a pod so it's um two images 1v1 one person's got a mobile phone and they're speaking and the other person's kind of got a desktop in front of them with lines on it and they're speaking and then at the bottom you can see that there's like an A and B and a has more.
Votes than b so what do you think this image is about so describe what you see I would say who uses a phone over a laptop but the speaking element is making me think of dictation of some sort okay and what what about the um I can't even point to the right location because it's mirrored one's a clear winner over there 1v1 yes so what's your final your final guess more people use dictation on I'm assuming B is the right to me so the.
Computer over the phone awesome that's that's a that's a very good guess based on what I have drawn which suggests that I can't draw what I actually want to draw if that makes sense so that was an incredible guess so the story is it was a 1v1 one person presents their app or mobile app or products whatever the second person presents what they've built um it's called um build space they do this six weeks a program of some sort where every week.
They have like a lecture or a talk and then it's all like self-guided um development and they're working on an idea um building it out and then presenting it on their demo day and what this was is the final week I'm gonna build this you actually hinted about what you actually yeah it was accident because I read the word bill and I was going to say draw so yeah they they basically are a 1v1 for Builders um and it was there was 32 so they had.
Presentations for 32 players 1v1 and they whittled it down to you know like a football manager type tree of like final like a World Cup yeah a tournament thing um and then it whittled down to the final eight and then the organization this build space organization selected four individuals all of which won 25 000 pounds um or twenty five thousand dollars and then they gave a special prize to one person that they really liked in the whole process like the um MVP most.
Valued uh participant not player or player yeah um so it's called Bill's base and I was really inspired by it because one it's low entry you can just start something you're building something you're testing it you're getting feedback and what they were doing is flooding social media and Instagram and Twitter and Linkedin with getting these people to create idea slides so the slide would be like a heading and a description and then they would critique the idea slide then it'd.
Be like right now you've got to do video intros of the product and how it works and it's trying to defeat the whole um imposter syndrome slash um just nerves I I guess of biting the bullet and starting and getting yourself out there and being public and then the community around that support them or support each other and I was like such a great idea really like low cost um to start and you could just localize it like before we've said about like.
Localizing ideas is a good starting point so I'm like if you could take that collaborate with governments and universities or local councils to generate your own build space which is a six-week competition of sorts where you'd have like businesses or whatever to to give in surprise me and prize money didn't wouldn't need to be like 100k it could be like even 10K would be like and insane like give 2K to people or or something like that right um so yeah I thought it was a great idea.
It inspires me to potentially do something of the same and I would do it in a way that's open source that basically open source is that you're doing it so publicly people can see the documentation and the things you're putting together so they can copy it and and utilize it in their areas and spaces um yeah so that might be something because again products are replica you can replicate products but you can't easily replicate communities that's the USP more so.
Especially because AI the USP is more communities so I'm like if you could build a community of like builders that could be very very interesting and then if you graduate because they do these things in Seasons they've had four seasons so far if you graduate you get invited to their like school and their school is like they you get to build what you want to build in the school now I'm not sure if that's like 30 people for six months or three.
Months or something like that not sure if it's free or pale like I don't know the logistics on that side but just this like first level entry to find like hungry people that building stuff that are interesting that would be good to be networked in and stuff I might really fascinated by it really inspired by it I'm very tempted to do something um of the same now these guys have been going I think for four years maybe longer so like question is what would be.
The first easiest easiest iteration of that to do in Flint or Conway or whatever so yeah thoughts on the idea how would you do the first iteration you don't have to draw it yeah I'm good because I don't have anything to draw with at the moment so um yeah I think the tournament style 1v1 is very clever and building a community around it is it one person build something from an app and one as a laptop or was that no that just happens.
To be so they live streamed the videos and what happened is they played one video with a demo the product which could be a physical product it like some people were like we're building a forest out in the in the desert we're doing like eco-friendly wedding flowers we're doing this mobile app to monitor people that have dementia we have this like um like chip that can basically read brain waves because what we realize is the best um memory is brain memory so we've.
Basically created this chip order so there's a whole range of stuff like some people were musicians I'm creating this album like no somebody else was like oh we've made AI Muse seconds there's a whole range of stuff and it was great because round one it was all live streamed on YouTube round one everybody's voting through YouTube to be like a and b to progress into round two and they had a video for round two so video one gets played if they progress.
Video two guest played where they show the progress that they've done over the six weeks and then they get into the final which is like a the organization chooses the winner um so yeah it was like any Builders any projects um globally like the scale was big small you know anything that you can do in six weeks but I think some were like I have this business and I want to do this feature within six weeks so it could be an.
Aspect of your business that already exists or an aspect of your product that already it's a very interesting very interesting I think an idea that's popped into my head I don't know if it links up or is this slight side step who knows but it's if you have one presenter but a team behind you so either you do a business versus a business or you get different businesses partner running up so for me I was thinking I know in Flint there's a handful of um.
Barber shops so you either do a barber shop there's a barber shop of how do they build a community for Flint um but it might be difficult because they're sort of against each other anyway or would you do like a barber shop versus a pub just to see what different ideas they do or you get a barbershop and a pub to team up on one side there's a barbershop and just a shop to come up with an idea for.
The community and see what what happens because I guess the difficulty is everyone's just trying to build their own Empire a lot of the time which is totally understandable rather than going actually is there a way that everyone can thrive by Building A system that works for the community or for the town obviously it's difficult because if it was a barber shop it's like I'm gonna make my stuff way more cheaper and just undercut you and and I don't know.
Do it in a clever quick way or whatever do simple Cuts because that's what guys want or whatever um it might be tough because then it'll be quite cutting that one person is trying to steal the other person's work rather than how do we encourage everyone to go for a haircut because it is sort of mini therapy for guys or whatever so it's more how do we get a bigger I guess Market rather than just attacking each other's flock.
Yeah and that's the benefit of having such a wide net of anybody can apply um therefore there is such a variation I think they had like thousands of people initially apply and they've whittled them down to the 32. they also kind of pitted together similar ideas in the round one so round one it'd be like two content creators or a content creator and a musician or so some of like some of them are quite similar um to begin with which then made it a.
More fairer vote then when it comes to the next round it's a musician versus a an app to like track Dementia or whatever like um the impact of dementia so it's like well that's obviously difficult so I'm like broadly speaking if you have some social benefits some external um Society benefit you're more likely to progress through rather than oh I'm just making music even if there is like I'm making music so people can meditate to or people can.
Listen to and relax because of you know um meditation is important part of or mindfulness is important part of like mental health and depressionism it's on my anything with some sort of like medical angle was kind of like progressing through pretty easily and pretty well um which is fascinating so right should we go on to idea number two go through this will hopefully be a bit easier but um yeah while I while I draw this you can speak about something else as well.
My qualms with um was it a camera continuous camera because I've noticed an iPhone could be linked to a Macbook so that's what we're doing at the moment to show off the camera now in the latest update the iPhone or the iPad could be linked to the Apple TV to use your Apple TV as a bit of a FaceTime thing Why can't your iPad link with your MacBook because let's say you just have an eye a better camera on your iPad than.
Your iPhone you should be able to link it um yeah discuss in the comments perfect timing right for those of you that are not on YouTube there is a whales shaped um island image of like Wales and then there are camels or is it whales it is whales yeah okay I'm trying not to be too descriptive because I I know that I'm kind of giving it away in being descriptive and then there are one two three four but six.
Objects that have go faster lines next to them which would suggest that they're moving in some ways so they either look like you're trying to churn up butter or whatever yeah we're churning them on the moves that are moving or they look like those what those things that float not dinghies boys yeah yeah okay I can steer you away from it's not churning butter it's also nothing it's not necessarily to do with water so if they're moving with these go faster.
Stripes lines and it's not water what are they doing they must be flying what's your guess spaceships attacking people are outside of Wales again correct based on what I've drawn I'll then morph it into the story that I want to build it so so we all we know Oculus Oculus is the VR headset the creator of oculus is this american guy that's now sold Oculus to Facebook years ago now and he's started a defense company he's realized that the best defense.
Is having um Weaponry or like um kind of tools and and products and stuff um that looks strong enough that you don't want to go go up against it enough to put you off from going to war with that country right right if we as independent if and when most of when probably if and when Wales becomes independent we will have to come up with our own uh defense policies and how we approach defense and I'm not pro-war.
I'm anti-wall however knowing that there is a country that let's say they want our sheep water and wind then how do we protect ourselves we would have to have some sort of mechanism to look intimidating enough um that we wouldn't be attacked and that's all we're doing we're just doing from a um to put people off because we don't want to start it's just purely from a defense perspective so this Oculus guy can't remember his name has created a defense company and they.
Happen to be right now producing um so one thing that they want is they won government contracts because you know in them in America they've got the border with Mexico they're trying to stop people from crossing the border they can't necessarily create more um more offices for example but what they did is created this massive camera that could lock out and scan for miles to be able to use um AI to detect what those objects were so whether I was a human or.
A car or an animal wherever so then they had this alert system so they had these manless um or unmanned cameras with solar panels that were dotted along the lines so you don't even need to build a wall and they won a contract with the border patrol people for that idea um again it's a positive thing it's not a destructive like thing it's about well you want to know people that are going from America into Mexico as well as.
People coming from Mexico thing and so it's kind of like a neutral idea with a um kind of like enabling the border patrol people to have you know same amount of staff but higher coverage so the one government contracts now they're into like building drones so drones that will be able to be deployed really really quickly one for taking out tanks two for taking out other drones and three for like General um reconnaissance I guess it's called right.
For observing so he was kind of concluding that broadly speaking um the next area of interest is between America and China with Taiwan in the middle that sea for example if if China went to war with America or America went to war with China over Taiwan um China would probably be able to rebuild their boats their ships um much much faster than the Americans would be able to so we don't really want to go with ships and fight the ships we.
Want to go in with something else that's a bit easier and a bit um kind of like quicker to be able to repurpose recreate so it seems like drones is kind of like the next level thing that you'll be able to create um reasonably at a low level cost to be able to be your defense mechanism enough deterrent to put someone off that can build ships much much faster than you or does even have ships right because I.
Assume thing so again anti-war but it would be drone security basically for us so critique interesting yeah I think when you're talking about drones all I was thinking is like the light show of a um have you seen Neymar getting signed to the Saudi League they basically used drones in the air to do like a big reveal as if he was like some sort of FIFA pack on the game like when they come through the corridor and the cards.
Flip yeah um style to be first so yeah all like the fireworks in is it London or whatever they had like a um lights of drones and changing to different shapes and yeah emerging drones and fireworks is is really cool there was one where they had drones mimicking kind of like a Transformer style head with like laser eyes and the eyes would shoot lasers which were basically drones lighting up in a line and then would trigger a firework.
Thought that was exceptional exceptional like combination of drones yeah making a shape of an object that would be able to fire fireworks and the fireworks going on but just imagine if you literally didn't know about fireworks you didn't know about drones and you saw that happen and you would literally be like the world is over there's some sort of like megatron-esque thing what's the guy that does the silver who's the Silver Surfer like the silver surface boss is it Galactus or.
Something like that yeah yeah it's like Galactus turning up and basically firing for reference right yeah yeah yeah yeah the guy with like a fork tuning fork as a hat um yeah so yeah carry on okay well that was just my thoughts of just seeing them doing different things it's more I've seen it I guess from a marketing point of view rather than from a what was it a deterrent or whatever you call it just scare people away I guess it probably.
Could work short term and then once people knows it's just a couple of um drones or whatever probably just we had a sniper them out the window or whatever yeah yeah okay I'm gonna draw the second one um three oh building um yeah this is gonna I'm gonna draw this a little bit um better hopefully so this is yeah I can't draw and speak at the same time so you're gonna have to thank you well I was holding off saying anything.
Because it sounded like you wanted to talk at the same time but yeah I'm sure I'm gonna I need you a little bit so tag on that so yeah I'm intriguing to use the latest IOS 17. it's just loads of Apple facts in between you can do stickers with live photos which is basically creating your own memes short term so I'm intrigued to see how that works as stickers of sort of animated stickers to see if we could use them.
Well Plus on a side note I was thinking I wonder if I can learn different drawing techniques to help out social media for my local Hockey Club that I can take photos but then draw on top and then I was imagining imagine if you draw like a manga style Dragon Ball Z you're taking you're running past someone and you've got like the the running lines behind you to make you look faster or whatever or the question marks of if you're taking on someone.
They're getting confused yes random thoughts I've been having the creative thoughts I've been having alongside Apple events stuff very interesting okay perfect okay for those I'm trying to like not have glare on this as well okay for those of you that are not watching on YouTube hopefully this will actually not be cut off by YouTube as well but um I've got two sides of a photo left side looks to me like somebody has created there's a lamp here somebody's.
Like creating something on this desk you know there's a window outside it's night time and they're just creating something on their own then on the other side we have um like creating something it's on a globe so there's a like the world is here in the background or it could be a football but it looks like a glow because it's not um even and this bit is kind of like siphoning off to now like other people I can't even other people and other people.
Are now allowed to use this created thing that's probably a little bit too too descriptive so don't give me your best guess Dan's practicing being a weather woman oh yeah and I can't point to the right locations because I'm looking at the wrong mirrored screen so the guy on the left I thought was cooking and looks like got one of those you know those sort of dish things that you see in um walk and go that they can.
Grab whatever mushrooms and then check it in and then whirl it around so like a glad you set a desk [Laughter] like someone using a wok but anyway someone using a wok and ants boxing on a football that's what I'm getting because it looks like two people are boxing and one person is doing a lion king holding up his contract as if he's one yeah so these these boxes are like one individual two individual two individuals but I wanted to give a.
Variation to show that doesn't have to just be one person it could be a group of people so whilst you're cooking ants are fighting their way on a football that's what I gather from that so unfortunately this one's not as close it's not as correct as uh as my as the drawing let alone my idea or my thing I want to share so person on the left is creating something at night time on their own silently notice that it was kind of paper on pen.
Right so that can't necessarily go anywhere and there as alternative plan is you create something and it goes everywhere it goes across the world to other people individuals start using it teams of people or groups of people start using it now I did drop the word open source in earlier on and open source is essentially this creating something that you are putting online so other people can access it utilize it modify it manipulate it and so forth I've been thinking a lot about.
Um Insider which is the patreon meets Spotify music streaming app that we've been creating um it's been created I have a version of it and this version is for people that don't know coding but don't have coding skills don't want to run their own servers and so forth they can sign up and utilize it right so it's all my stuff now it looks like Insider now what happens if somebody like for example a manager or a record label or whatever.
Would want to do a similar idea but have it customized uniquely for their artists this is where open source comes in if I create an open source version of Insider they could copy it and modify it for themselves right now the benefit of this is one I get collaborators so they might not modify it just for themselves they might push something back to me so the the core the base version gets better over time right so that's what open.
Source generally is it's about collaboration it's about building in the open now typically there's a bit of imposter syndrome in there you think that people are going to critique your code so I'm taking the dive one I've done a couple hackathons and hackathons sometimes are open source you share what you've built and you share the code so people can see how it's built um I want to go one step further so I've basically started open sourcing or create I've created an open source.
Version of Insider so people can download and spin it up for themselves and run it for themselves if they want to they also can still use the paid the or not the paid version but our version that's hosted if they don't want to do all that stuff so the benefit of it is one more collaboration the idea benefits because more people pour into it and hopefully collaborate with it it's it's a profitable way of doing it because broadly speaking you would provide.
Support and regular updates for those people that want to stay with you and don't want to do their own infrastructure so there's still money involved in it you can get sponsors and so forth but more than anything because we are like patreon Spotify aka the streaming side of page the streams have Spotify and the membership subscription of patreon those businesses aren't open source you can't see the the code you can't um see what's in there and for algorithms and so forth you can't see.
How it's recommending your songs to other people so in open sourcing this stuff it distinguishes it makes a complete difference and a pro Creator difference to our positioning so Spotify not open source patreon is not open source so we can say we are an open source Spotify meets patreon alternative or an open source Spotify alternative or something or an open source Patron alternative now there are open source versions of patreon and so so forth but they've stopped being.
Developed they've stopped being used so I'm like it's an interesting way of in creating something that Enterprise level people so now a record label might be like cool we'll take this attack and use it for ourselves and also because of of that you'll be able to say hey well our Tech is embedded in these labels and hopefully they can feed back into it and so forth so I've been quite passionate about it because one it's removing my imposter syndrome of like putting myself.
Out there for my code to be critiqued and I've always been um I've always not I've always felt a better designer than coda it kind of then opens up to like more collaboration so it's not just me and I've enjoyed um committing stuff to other people's open source projects even the the two technologies that I've built it on Super Bass and Quasar are themselves open source Technologies open source Frameworks or Open Source Products um so yeah I've basically started it.
I've been thinking about it for a while and I started it last night by open sourcing um open sourcing Insider it'll still be a like a paid or a more advanced version so it's not as if I've just oh sold my ideas into the internet and will disappear again it's all documented in to like something called git which is an underlying kind of like technology of like it's kind of like a Google doc with versions but for code so that's git and.
The semical GitHub which is where those uh repositories are stored and visualized and you could read them and you can see who's committed what which is a word of adding and removing you can add and remove in a commit and so people can see that I was the first one to build this thing and I was the first one to do as well as other collaborators can see oh well they were collaborating x amount over the time so.
Um it's all about visibility and you can see it um so yeah thoughts on that that was my final idea um yeah it sounds really interesting I think making yourself different in a positive way and I guess because you've had positive experiences with open source um stuff in the sense that you're using it or the hackathon stuff um I guess you can double down on it of understanding what you get from it what is useful how do you create feedback.
Loops or collab with individuals obviously I'm sure there'll be some individuals that aren't so bothered or whatever but standards to the internet a lot of the time yeah but I guess you could double down on your positive experiences and knowing what you liked or didn't like and hopefully will be able to develop from the systems that you've been a part of um which is definitely yeah it's interesting because I think a lot of time people are scared that you.
Just someone's going to steal their stuff run off and make more money than you and then you're your product dies and it's as if they've sucked the only oxygen in your body and live for eternity and you just die there and then from a business point of view so I think it is a I guess bold move it's probably right word or Brave move yeah but it's probably easier to start off like that rather than to switch it to that because.
It is probably you don't know how it's going to work out but you could obviously switch it back worst case scenario I'm assuming on some level yeah I'll stop developing on it to a certain level and then only put advanced stuff and all the extra things into an into the other version of it and I think what's interesting is like in doing this like public publicly people can see it all and I hope that that shows um culture and uh values so again when.
We talk about the music industry generally speaking the music industry is a pro-business owner rather than procreator what I mean by that is artists typically don't get paid much for their Creations it's the business side because the artist doesn't know business so they get manipulated and so forth obviously yeah it's not all the time but we want to create structures and things that kind of decouple that like platform lock-in like once you use platform a you always have to use.
Platform a you know trying to remove these um typical boundaries which become then USPS I do recognize that an actual musician won't care it's more so for the business the entrepreneur the tech side of it those are the people that care that are kind of like different people it's like the back office as it were um but again if I can have a distinguished thing like I said before products ideas literally can be replicated there's nothing special about the idea.
As such it's more so can I build the community and can I be public about it and can I get known then it's more likely to be like hey did you take this or did you Fork it which is the the terminology for like duplicating the product uh for their own version so they can modify it um but like yeah if you can go in at the Baseline and use it and also it might be that not many people use it in this mode.
Which is this self-hosted mode and fully customized and so forth and that'll be fine because what might happen is they're adding to it because they want it in their versions that I'm providing to them anyway which yeah excuse me which is very much the case with super bass or quote Quasar um in some ways so yeah it's an interesting thing that I'm doing and I'm starting from scratch and therefore I can choose what I want to put in and how I want to.
Structure it uh to be able to kind of like best um think about it but yeah if there's anybody that's watching that runs an open source product or has experience in open source would love to Rack your brains because again it's like I recognize I get stumbled on cool there's a thousand and one ways to architect this arrangement of things how do I do it and I'm like you know what because of Version Control you can just start one way and it worse comes worse.
You can change it later you can revert back you can do whatever like just start anyway it might be wrong I don't actually know I've done as much reading as I feel that I can in this period of time before I get to like the first decision now I'm like cool I've made the first decision we'll run with this if it works great if it doesn't that's fine too we'll revert back or put extra stuff in um so yeah it's uh an interesting.
Journey um for sure but it's like defeating the whole imposter syndrome of like worried about being critiqued for my code and I've realized there's The more I've got involved the more um I've met some really interesting people that are like me and similar to me uh in mindset of like excited to build stuff and entrepreneurial and ideas and things so I'm hoping that I'll meet more uh people of the same elk of the same type in doing this journey.
Rather than just keeping it for myself building it for myself and stuff so yeah it's very much like a tech focused um angle but hopefully I'll meet interesting people um because ultimately Spotify is a bunch of technologists right a bunch of techies yes marketeers in there too but broadly speaking it's a tech platform it's not necessarily um musicians in there yes they are the users but um so yeah that's my third and final drawing for you so here we go.
Fascinating any closing thoughts just pondering to know what we ties to listen it's um what's the game Pictionary isn't it like we've probably got to put something like uh iOS picture week yeah yeah I was open source open source protection all the buzzwords see if anything's inspired you um I'm glad let us know what has inspired you let us know what you're thinking about let us know um what you're thinking of building like yeah just imagine you I like subscribe.
And comment yeah exactly if we don't say that nothing will happen right the whole build space thing I'm tempted of doing something small to that as well um but yeah we can come back to that one and it's something for the Dome the mine Palace uh to process in the background so as always thanks again for spending your precious time with us until next time keep hammering those nails [Music].