David Connis: Systems Thinking for Content Designers

This is the Content Strategy Insights Podcast episode number 196. As everyone tries to cope with the onslaught of AI, and as content practitioners try to develop the right combination of strategy, design, and people skills, Dave Conniss says that we can all benefit from a systems thinking mindset. Whether you're connecting the words and concepts and objects and digital products, or connecting the people who are building the product experience, a holistic view of your work can help everyone and involve, understand the ecosystem you share. Welcome to the Content Strategy Insights Podcast, where accomplished content strategy experts share their wisdom with our friends in the content community. Our mission is to democratize content strategy, to make its principles and practices accessible to everyone. And now here's your host, Larry Swanson. Hi everyone, welcome to episode number 196 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I am really delighted to date. Welcome to the show Dave Conniss. Dave is lead content designer at OutSystems. Company, I believe you're based in Portugal, but you're in the US, right Dave? Yes, that is accurate. Tell folks about it. There is an office in Boston, so it's kind of USE, but it's mainly Portugal. Nice, and as a lead content designer there, you do, well tell me a little bit about your role there. What kind of stuff you're working on? Yeah, so I am on the design system team. So we're working on all sorts of patterns and lots of systems thinking, lots of components, design tokens, we're in the middle of reviewing design tokens right now. I'm doing a lot of content pattern things, lots of content strategy, working with a bunch of cross-functional teams to get stuff done that is reusable and scalable and all the nice other cool, buzzy words that we like to talk about all the time. It's always something different, always something new, and it's always a big challenge. So it's good time. Well, that's interesting. So I'm really curious now because I've worked on a few design systems and talked to a lot of people who do that. You do, well just for folks who don't know OutSystems does kind of like, I guess it's low-code development stuff for people who do that. It's a low-code platform that you can basically just create your own app. It's typically used in specific industry, so like HR apps, banking apps is some of our bigger sectors. And you just bring your own data. So BYOD and you'll hook it up to OutSystems, configure a bunch of stuff, and then build an app. It sounds really easy, but it's of course not. So it's a 20 year company, so it's been around for a hot minute. And that also provides a lot of challenges from a content perspective. I mean, even from a design perspective, from all the perspectives, technical design, because there's a lot of legacy stuff. So you've got all the technical constraints that you have to deal with when you're dealing with legacy stuff. Yeah. Well, I know a big part of your jet like you mentioned, you're working on the design system, but I know you have a general interest in systems stuff in general and systems thinking. Did that grow out of your work in design systems, or is that just sort of a hard wiring that you're gifted with? Oh, that is a, I'm pretty sure, hard wiring. And I just didn't know. Like when you start off in all of this, you don't know the design systems are a thing. So like when I first started tech, I just, I was thinking that way and I just didn't have the language for it. So I just remember always like trying to push like, hey, how do we do this component in the same way over and over again? Is there a way that we can do this consistently? There was, I was always just like trying to ask those questions, even when I was just a court, like an individual contributor on a team. And it wasn't until really out systems that my manager, your Sandro, was like, hey, I actually think that this is the thing for you. And maybe you should do that. And I was like, oh, yeah. Okay, let's try it. And I've been in love ever since. So it's just, it's where my brain is. I was actually watching Chef's table. Have you seen Chef's table? I don't know that show. Yeah. It's just like interviews, different chefs and like what they're about and what they, like, some stories that they have and just like how they approach food. And there's this guy, forget his name, I think it's Dan something. He was talking about the ecology of food and how he was like, you got to do the farm and the farm, like when you're at a farm, you have to have goats or you have to have cows, but the cows need good grass. So in order to have good grass, you have to have good chickens. And then in order to do good chickens, you have to have, well, and he just like launched into this three minute ecology of a farm and how that affected the restaurant. And the whole time I'm sitting there just thinking like, this is systems thinking for chefs. This is so cool. So I think my brain is hardwired because I noticed it in Netflix documentary series about chefs. So interesting. Well, that's sort of like the, yeah, like good chefs. They're probably, I'm trying to, I'm probably going to, I don't want to do some overrod analogy to a kitchen and a design system. But the way you just described that, like, so is that sort of like the foundation, I guess, of systems thinking at least one of the ways I think about it is that ecological awareness of the environment you're in. But also for you, it sounds like there was also like a professional development part of this of like you realizing that and kind of, can you talk a little bit about how you stitch that together? I'm assuming this took a couple of years, you know, from that realization, the like, hey, I like doing this. Your boss saying that and all of a sudden, here we are. Yeah. I think I always had this feeling like if you go, if you just dive deeper and like ask a question of like, why is this the way that it is? I think you eventually have to reckon with the relationships of things and like the causality of things and the further you go into the rabbit hole, the more you have questions about because you can't just look at a single thing. You have to look at the whole thing. And I think I naturally do that for better, for worse. And I think it just took time to kind of, you know, I mentioned earlier, it took me a while to get the language of it. I remember in, I worked at a place called a contrast security for a while and I had a, it's kind of like a watershed moment where I worked with this lady who was very systems minded. And she, I just, I learned a lot from her in the short time that I was there about just like, what are systems for at a tech company? How do you, how do you make them? How do you enforce them? How do you point to them? And then I think from there, I also just had this realization of like, oh, all of the stuff we see on a screen, it isn't just like magically appearing and doing stuff like when you press a button, it's not like there's just like a magic fairy somewhere that is doing something. Like that button is happening to something. And then I had some, a tiny bit of experience as a developer, as a UX developer. And so I had this idea of data schemas in my head and they finally kind of mashed together to form this, this idea that there's a system happening. And once I understood that, I started looking for ways and vocabularies to explain it and some of them were my own. And then I started finding, you know, information architecture and for a hot minute content strategy and, you know, content modeling and all of these other ways that people were, were trying to think about it and talk around it. Because the system as a whole, I think getting that correct and getting that down has been a time tested problem. Like it's just always the thing because companies are always, they are, they innately have a system and they innately grow. And they innately grow beyond, you know, ways that you can control. So people are always trying to get it under control. So there's, you know, been, like what, 75 years, 80 years of just new and fancy ways to try and put words to words and titles and job descriptions and all these different ways to try and do the same thing. And that's just telling unified story in a product. Interesting. Yeah. The way you just said that the, the, the whole thing, well, one thing I want to call out from that is like, we're talking about your holistic approach to it. And then you mentioned this kind of like smorgasbord of practices of like IA content strategy, content modeling. But which isn't really smorgasbord. Those are all to me. Those are like inextricably linked. How do you identify now? Like do you, do you go by, you call the content designer that's your official job title? Is that how you identify or? It is it out systems. I, I don't know. I think that's the thing like I just don't know anymore. What I know is that there's a way that I see the world and that there's a way that I approach the product. And whatever that is, I think is the way that a lot of people should try. Even if it's not their main, you know, their main jam, their main squeeze, I think getting some sort of perspective on it is key to just being a human. So yeah, exactly. And being a good designer and just being a good person. Being a good, like a collaborator. It's even just beyond, I think, just making products. I think it's, it's soft skills too. It's, it's, it's a whole again. back to the system, it informs everything. So. - Right, and people are an integral part of that. That's a theme that comes up over and over again in this show. Yeah, and so that, and we talked earlier about, the culmination of that is sort of assuming some kind of leadership role, whether you're, 'cause you're in a leadership role now, but you weren't always, but even before then, how did you, like tell me a little bit about how the leadership part of your personal and professional growth happened, you know, and how that might relate to systems thinking? - So when I started it out systems, there was a team of, let's see, wanna say five other content designers, maybe six, and we were all on a content design team. So we were acting as a consultant model. When I started, we switched pretty fast to being embedded into teams. But at the time, I was, meaning, I was on a one-on-one with my manager, and I was talking about something, an issue that I was having, I'm trying to remember what it was, kind of managing up, and he said, well, you know, you're the most senior person on there. So I think you just kind of have to take it and go like tell people what you need and what you want. And in that moment, I was like, oh, yeah. I guess that's true. I am the most senior person on here. And at that point, I realized like, oh, it's not that I'm just here and offering my skills as a whatever I am, content word, person, friend. But I also have like this other stuff that I can offer. So from that moment on, I think I tried to lean into that development side of myself because I hadn't realized that at all that I could do anything other than that, other than just the word side. And out systems is really good at giving you the chance to do stuff. So like if you say, I wanna study quantum physics and you know, enact that and the product, they'll be like, all right, weird, but let's figure out how to do this. So I think a lot of, I've had a lot of support from out systems to kind of figure out what that looks like for me and also have chances to give that. So it has been very intentional and it's taken time. So it didn't just randomly happen. And I think I'm constantly trying to figure out, you know, what are the parts of me that are not just random work parts, but are just parts of me that I have to offer that maybe are just different in other people and trying to think of that across the board as well. Like what is, there's a guy who I worked with, who I worked with for a year or so and I didn't know tons of about him, but I took on a new project, knew nothing about it and he was kind of my buddy. And he taught, he was such a good teacher. He was so calm, he was so patient. And I was like, at the end of this whole thing, it was about a month long thing. And I was like, dude, you're a great teacher. Like that is an asset to out systems. And I don't think I would have known that if I hadn't have done this with you. So how do we like call that out in you? Like this random soft skill that is just you? It's not people, it's just you. So like how do we call that out and bring that out of you so that we can all enjoy this? And you can feel like you're offering something that's unique to you. I think that's a huge thing that I would love to see leaders do more is just pay attention to the people around them. That sounds like a core leadership competency that I mean everybody had drawn out the best there. Or are figuring out the best in people and then drawing it out and encouraging it and developing it and growing from there. Yeah, that's, and again, back to the systems thinking around it because as you were talking just now, I couldn't help but think about the, it's kind of like your role in that system. The individual, that kind of teasing out those things that you're good at identifying the things that are good in the people around you. It's like I was picturing, as you were talking, I was picturing this kind of like little, like rippling out network kind of thing. Is that? Yes, yep. And I think that's what, I mean, that's what people do in companies, right? Like you are a part of a culture. You are a part of people's days. And people are coming to days, coming to work with this whole other life that is not work. And I think it's really easy to just see people with this work people. And I think you have to kind of work against that, but also work with that. It's really weird, it's complicated, work is weird. That's right. Yeah, you think about a few hundred years in none of us had jobs remotely. Right. A miracle we're getting, anything done at all. Yeah, and then you add the remote layer and you just get this whole other thing going on. Yeah, it makes soft skills that much harder. So that's a really interesting point. And we've all had that applied in like a ridiculous extent in the pandemic. And subsequently it seems like even though the big return to office pushed, there's still a huge amount of virtual employment out there. Does that, how does that, because you're a pretty remote. I mean, you're not involved in you're out and done in Georgia. And there's a lot of colleagues in Portugal. What's the, how do you, what are the some of the keys to doing systems work in a virtual, you know, distributed collaborative environment like that? Okay, a whiteboard, so digital whiteboard, so either Miro trying to get some FIGJ, I'm going on. But, and basically just good questions and preparation. You can't, I try not to show it up to a meeting empty handed. I try to start without a blank page. I feel like specifically with remote, starting with a blank page is just incredibly difficult. So I try to have some sort of thing that we can go off, even if I know it's completely wrong. Sometimes that's even more helpful is to have something that's completely wrong because people are engaging it more. It just, yeah, I think just having preparation and having thoughts and having a good way to get people going. Because I think the cold start, you don't have the energy of being together. So the cold start feels a lot more stark. So I think facilitation is massive for remote work. You have to be a good facilitator in order to get work done. And you have to be a good summarizer and a good active listener because you have the one call and then you have to make sure that you have your answers in the call. I guess you could say the same thing about meetings, but you could just swing by somebody's desk. And I guess you could say the same thing about Slack, but you have to like get habits of efficiency. And the danger with that is you start to lose out on the people aspect because then everything's about efficiency. So you have to have this balance of facilitation as efficiency and facilitation as just relationship. And it's really difficult to know when to do what. Especially with meeting tiredness because if you have like 80 meetings and you're just like, well, I don't even feel like talking now. - I won't name names, but I worked at a place where I would go eight hours back to back to back and meetings and yeah, that was hard to reflect in that environment for sure. But as you talk about facilitation and leadership and how you pull that together, like how the way you talked about facilitation seemed much more, like even though you were called to the systems thinking part of it, the way you describe facilitation sound like that was just like it came naturally to you as well, like even more naturally to you. But have you thought about like in both of those instances, like have you teased out like not like a three point plan, like concepts or ideas that have helped people, have you ever helped people, I guess, become better facilitator, better leader, better systems thinker? - I've done the systems thinking side in the facilitation side. I think I'm still putting my finger on what matters and how to do that. I think I want to be a better facilitator and see the need for that. And I've actually thought about a lot this year and next year's focusing on that's like what I want to learn, like how to facilitate and just questions. I think a lot of what I have now is just by, I've been in a, it was a group of guys that just got together and kind of did like, it was kind of like a counseling 101 course together and we all learned about, it was basically facilitation and active listening and all of these things like listening to people's words, paying attention to what they call emotional buzzwords and then asking questions of digging into things. And I think that has impacted a lot of how I approach both work and relationship because it gives me a framework to go off of like, okay, this person just said that this couldn't happen. couldn't is a really intense emotional word outside of like, yeah, we We might not be able to do that. Couldn't seem very strong. So what can I tease out of this? Couldn't where are they coming from? What's the question behind the question? What's the idea behind the idea? What do you actually want to say and giving a space for that to happen? Has been in my personal life for a good 10, maybe 14 years now. So that's just a skill that I have practiced because I have other guys that I am practicing it with. I still meet with two of them. They're my best friends now. We still do that to each other all the time. So yeah, in a work world, I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, but that's a really interesting intersection of personal growth and professional growth. Like the capabilities you're developing there. And that's sort of like you talked in when we were talking before the podcast about just personal growth is like a thing. And I was like, how am I even going to work that into a professional podcast? And there it is. It makes perfect sense. There it is. It's a whole system. It's like I have been thinking about this. Like everything you do influences everything you do. So if you think again, if you pull back to the system level, why? Well, because you're a whole being and you're bringing that being to work and then that person who is at work is also learning things that is then going back into a normal life. And everything is talking to each other. And even if you're intentional about looking at what those things are, then you can actually be intentional about naming them and saying like, oh, this little bit that I have experienced in work is also something that I can bring to my life and practice. This little bit in my life is actually something I can also bring to work and practice. And you just continue if you're actually paying attention and naming those things and writing them out or whatever you need to do, you can't, you start to be able to get better at those things and develop those things. Like, so I'm kind of a gym nerd too. So there's this big saying that you don't know if you're progressing. If you don't track it. So I'm not saying you have to like, track everything and become like a data guy, but a data guy or a girl. But you have to be able to see it. And the paying attention and the being curious about it is one of the bigger things that I think is a lot of people just say, well, that's my work. That's my life. And maybe there's things, but I don't know. Now, you're reminding me that, like the gym metrics that you have, like, about measuring your progress, you can do analogous things that work. You also reminded me of, I read David Allen's book, Getting Things Done many of like 20 years ago. And one of the things he talked about in there is like, you know, the myth of work-life balance. And one of his points is like, it all has to get done. You know? And so there's something analogous in the personal and professional growth kind of overlapping. But I want to circle back something you just said. This might seem like a tangent, but I think it might be related. We talked way before, like months ago, I think about, you had this, made this observation that of how concepts and digital objects are related and connected. I can't remember the context of that conversation, but they just kind of came back and like a slightly stretch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. I mean, it's connected in the sense that everything's a system and everything relates to each other. So yeah, so this is coming out of a lot of the thinking that I've done to try and figure out how to words and concepts and objects from the digital standpoint work together. Because there's been a lot of talk. So you have your OUX idea where it's about, or even if you go back for then, that object oriented programming, right? Where you have these objects, these things that you're interacting with when the digital system, but then you have the words that are representing those things. But words aren't just representing the objects. They're representing other things too. What is the other things? Well, we have to have a system for how we deal with concepts because the concepts can be represented by anything. So all of that kind of came out of this workshop I developed in collaboration with UX content collective called systems thinking for content designers. So the idea is is that in your products, you have words that are representing a concept, but those words are also might represent a digital object and they can be the same thing. So like think of a bird. So there's an autobahn app, which is like a bird tracking app. In that app, you might have a, then it like the whole thing would be about bird sighting. So you could say, well, you have three bird scene today. Bird scene. The scene is likely some sort of action. You would say you saw bird. You would, in like, atticiting. But that bird word is representing the concept of a thing with wings that flies in the real world. It's like a literal thing. But in the case of this app is representing a digital object that can be seen that is, has some code somewhere that is saying if scene added, if like if added, increase the number of time scene. Like that is that that time scene has to live somewhere within an app and it's likely this bird object. So in this case, the word bird is representing the concept, the thing that flies and the object, the digital data thing that is collecting all of these attributes that we would associate it with in an app somewhere. And those things are all working together to do something. And it's pretty, like that relationship is pretty tricky. It's because it can get broken really easy in any direction. And that's making me think of like the role of word nerds in digital design. Do you feel like, as a content designer, do you feel like you bring, I don't want to diss any engineers or product people? But do you feel like we bring a little more to that game of labeling and figuring out concepts? I think so because we're already thinking about it. Like that's where kind of where we're already hanging out is with the word stuff. So I think it's not that big of a stretch for us to say, oh, the words are doing stuff. And it's not just, you know, we say it's not just a few words when everybody says, hey, we just have a few words to add it to edit. So I think our brains are already there and we're already attuned to what does it look like for to have a clear story, product story. We're already trying to do that. So the concepts and the digital objects, like all of that stuff, I think is while I do believe that everybody should be thinking this way, I think that content designers have the skills and the upper hand here to to fall into this and to do this well. Because I think there's just, we're already there. We just need to find the way for it. No, and I've met some other, well, they all come from content backgrounds. But I've met other digital designers who are good at that as well. Hey, Dave, I can't believe it. We're coming up close to time. But before we wrap up, is there anything last, anything you want to revisit from the conversation or that you just want to make sure we share before we wrap up? Yeah. Check out systems thinking for content designers, the workshop, there's also, I think as AI kind of takes the world by storm relationships and facilitation and structure and unified ecosystems. Those are all, I believe, very unique to human endeavor. Like I think as the world goes on, we're going to need more people who know these, who can hold all of those things together and to lead the charge in unifying systems and bringing people together that way. So I would say if for the next year you're looking to learn some sort of competency, dig into systems thinking, it can be any flavor, it can be any person, it can be any book, there's a lot of resources out there. As content people, we have lots of different, go back to the beginning of the episode, we talked about information architecture, content modeling, there are all different perspectives trying to get to the same thing and that's just a unified ecosystem. So dig into it, we need more people who are thinking on this unified scale, this big system and I think it will serve you in the long run. So I'll send you a note after this conversation and ask for some resources and I'll dig up some myself because I'd love to get some resources about systems thinking for folks. One very last thing, David, if folks want to connect or follow you online, what's the best place to find you? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, I think I am Dave Conniss, I might be David Conniss, sorry, not content reuse. I'm one of the two, so find me there and then if you want non-work Dave, then you can go follow me on Instagram, I am DeConniss there because in consistency. - Excellent. - Embrace it. Embrace it. - The honoring our humanity to every turn. - Expression. - Expression. - Yeah. - Well, thanks so much to a really enjoyable conversation. - Yeah, thank you. - Thank you for listening. If you can think of a friend who might enjoy this episode, please share it with them. And please join us again for our next content strategy interview.