132: Delivering Outstanding Usability and Career Experiences with Shannon Clark

Pete Mockaitis
Shannon, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Shannon Clark
Hey, Pete, how is it going?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s going so well. It’s so good to catch up with you and to do so in a recorded fashion.

Shannon Clark
Yes. Anytime.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so much has been happening in your world, but first I wanted to cover, just to break the ice a little bit, I recall from some good old days when you were living in the Chicago area that you have long aspired to have a company in the medical devices world. And you were originally planning on calling it YOLO Medical Devices, which makes me giggle every time I think about it.

Shannon Clark
You only live once.

Pete Mockaitis
And I believe I showed you, I created a case, when I’m doing my critical thinking and communication training programs and workshops, called YOLO Medical Devices inspired by you. Thanks for your input on that.

Shannon Clark
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what led the change of heart or direction from YOLO Medical Devices to UserWise?

Shannon Clark
Well, yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess I had sort of had this vision. I remember on my USC application to college, I went to UCLA by the way, I want to clarify that. On my application I remember writing that my dream job was to be CEO of a product design company in Spain. And it’s so interesting that at the age of 18 I kind of had this vision, and it always kind of circles back to that one theme of, “This is what I want to do.”

When we last were talking about YOLO Medical Devices I guess things were starting to actually fall into place. I was getting that training and starting to get into the medical device field and intentionally specializing in human factors engineering. And then in 2014 I started really seriously thinking about it, “Hmm, this consulting thing, I think I could probably actually do it. I could actually launch a company, if not just be an independent consultant.”

So, I actually had a partner to begin with in 2014, and we wrote down 400 names, potential names for our company. I mean, it ranged from very silly names, Userfy, all the way to kind of philosophical names like Wallflower Medical Devices, which the idea is in usability testing which is our main offering. We will observe users interactive products without biasing them in any way to experiment. It’s basically a psychological experiment to see how people will interact with the product after its launch and in the market. So, the idea is you’re a wallflower, part of the wallpaper experiencing, seeing what other people experience.

So, anyhow, we made this list of 400 names and whittled it down and finally landed on UserWise. Had a reasonable website domain and it wasn’t owned by anyone in the field so I was able to trademark it.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. Well, it seems nice. It kind of quickly conveys what you’re trying to do and it sounds appealing. Like, “Oh, I want to be user-wise. Perhaps we should hire them.”

Shannon Clark
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s cool. Well, so, can you tell us a little bit of your career story that led you to choosing to do your own thing?

Shannon Clark
Sure, yeah. When I graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA, I immediately joined this rotational program at Abbott Laboratories. If you’re a listener and you’re thinking about what to do as the first thing in your career, or as an early thing in your career, I highly advise you to look into these rotational programs. They have them across multiple industries, and the one I joined was specifically in medical devices.

And what’s awesome about rotational programs, or professional development programs, is that you get to experience sometimes four different jobs over the course of two years. So it isn’t necessarily internships. You’re actually showing up to work. You are a working professional and an engineer. And then you get up to speed on a job.

So, my first role in the professional development program was an engineer doing research in design of coronary guide wires which are used in heart procedures. And so I was able to, over the course of six months, learned everything about being an engineer designing coronary guide wires. Well, obviously not everything, but I onboarded to that job.

And the idea is that the things you learn in the first three to six months of a job, you probably get about 70% to 80% of what you would get over the course of two years. So, it’s a very efficient way to springboard your career and basically have four solid jobs over the course of two years.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool.

Shannon Clark
Yeah, so I’m always putting in a plug for rotational programs. So, they’re always actually able to apprentice. One of the world’s leading experts Ed Israelski (?) who is an expert in human factors engineering for medical devices. So, I started to learn the trade from him. I learned about the regulatory implications of designing a medical device. I learned about risk analysis, determining whether the safety of a medical device is adequate with respect to usability.

And so that really opened a lot of doors for me. And I remember during that year, and I was in Chicago during that year, I remember working harder than I had ever worked because I saw this field and I just fell in love with it. I didn’t know what it was. I had never heard of human factors engineering but as soon as I read the description of this one rotation, I saw that this is what I have to do.

And so, I guess, to give some background, human factors engineering is the intersection of engineering and psychology. It’s an exploration of how humans interact with products and services, and it involves a lot of analyses, psychological analyses and usability testing. So we’ll bring in a single end user and observe them interact with an artifact. And then it reveal things to change about that, so is about product. And then we work with clients to improve the design.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good. Please continue. Go ahead.

Shannon Clark
Oh, yeah. And so human factors engineering in medical devices also has an interesting flair just in not given industry because it’s closely interrelated with regulatory concerns and corresponding with the Food and Drug Administration.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. So, that’s really interesting. In your college admissions essay you knew you want to do medical devices, but the, “Aha” eye-opener was, “Oh, wow,” and then there’s this whole human factors engineering within medical devices.

Shannon Clark
Exactly, a subset of a subset. I think I was clever enough then to see, “Aha, if I can work my way into a niche, human factors engineering in medical devices, I could very well quickly become an expert in the field because there just simply were not many of them in 2011.” I was able to very quickly specialize and become one of the only people at a given company that really knew anything about it. And so I kind saw that opportunity and I thought, “That would be a great way to progress my career to really specialize and become an expert in something so that I am invaluable.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, brilliant. And so I love sort of the themes. Like from a very early age you saw you dug something and then you saw some more clarity and specificity in the pursuit. So, there you are at Abbott, you’re picking up some great skills and specialized expertise. So then, what made you say it’s time to make the leap?

Shannon Clark
So, I stayed with Abbott for a bit and then I joined Intuitive Surgical in California. And there I was a human factors engineer, and I contributed to the design of surgical robots, so that’s what I worked on for about two and a half years. And I saw that this job was incredible. I was able to work on the most complex medical device in existence arguably or surgical robotic systems.

And we’re doing the most complex usability studies with the most complex technology, so it’s any engineer’s dream. I absolutely loved that job. But I started to see that I was one of the only people I knew in the Bay Area with that level of knowledge, with that level of depth, and that I had successfully worked my way into a niche.

I also thought about what gives me energy, what detracts from my energy. And I have to say some office politics did detract from my energy and it caused me to look elsewhere. I thought while I love going to conferences, I love meeting new engineers, I love learning about new medical technologies even if they’re not as complex as a surgical robot, I loved being at the cutting edge of my field.

And another thing that I do is I influence regulations. I really like sitting on standards committees and deciding what are our next-generation world’s standards for medical device design. And I guess one problem with working in a corporation is that you might to go your manager and say, “Hey, I really want to go to this world standards committee and be a member of it and participate. Can I do that?” What they might say is, “No, you’re too busy. You can’t go.” Or they might say, “You need to take vacation time and you only have limited vacation time.”

So, the very idea of having those limitations kind of bothered me because I knew, like, “Hey, this is a very quickly evolving field. I want to be at the cutting edge of it. I want to participate in these standards committees,” and I didn’t really like that threat of having to report to some entity that could tell me whether I could or could not do this one thing that I was extremely passionate about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a really, really cool takeaway there, it’s that it wasn’t so much that you left your job because you’re like, “Screw the man. I want to do me.” But it was more so it’s like you had a passion, an interest, a talent, the expertise and you were growing and learning, growing and learning, and then you sort of realized like these employers are no longer optimally useful for advancing where I’m headed.

Shannon Clark
Yeah, and sure they could’ve given me a promotion after a couple more years of staying there, but I saw this opportunity, just give myself a promotion and give myself everything that I really wanted, everything that would give me the most energy rather than detracting from my energy. So, I gave myself a promotion to CEO and quit my job.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. Now, your promotion did not originally have a CEO-style compensation, I would imagine. That was my experience sort at my business.

Shannon Clark
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m curious, how did you find the courage or the game plan so that you could go ahead and say, “Okay, no more to traditional employment”?

Shannon Clark
Well, I did a ton of research. I would take vacation days and go to professional conferences, I had one-on-ones with a bunch of CEOs in the Bay Area, talking to them about, “Oh, if I were a human factors consultant do you think that you’d need my help?”

So, I very aggressively kind of did market research and interviewed dozens of CEOs and working professionals, and I even volunteer consulted for a couple of friends’ companies while I was employed. And so that gave me the courage, the confidence to know that I could, in fact, do it. I could, in fact, be a consultant, and it also was proof of concept. I knew that there was a market there.

Now, there were definitely naysayers. So many people would say, “Oh, but if you just stayed there for a couple more years they’ll promote you and you can very quickly rise to the level of manager.” Or they’d say, “You just don’t have enough years. You only have five to six years of working experience. That isn’t enough to be an expert. It isn’t enough to be a consultant.” So, I kept hearing these things from people.

But I think when you hear these recommendations from the naysayers you just have to question, “Do they really know what they’re talking about?” Because what it turned out was a lot of them didn’t really truly understand what human factors engineering was, they didn’t have as much insight as I did into the evolving regulations.

There were only a couple of us, maybe a couple of hundreds of human factors engineers who really got it, who really saw the evolution of regulations and where it was headed. And I was jumping on that evolution, and that’s what grew my company.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a fun story. And it’s funny, this happened a couple of times where I’m really interested in the story but I also realize that podcasts that explore on entrepreneurial journeys there’s many of them. In this one we’d like to focus a bit more on sort of universal skill-sharpening and tools that folks can use in any profession.

So, I’ve got to believe that as you’re doing some of these usability testing, observation, exploration you’ve learned a thing or two that really can be applicable for anyone who’s trying to test out, validate, explore whether their new thing or idea is going to work out and anticipating some complications before they emerge. So, could you lay it on us, what are some of your best practices and tools and processes that help us avoid mayhem and have more successful innovations?

Shannon Clark
Well, I’ve already touched on one theme, which is I went out and I just did it. I charted out, I threw it up on the wall and at first I was thinking about starting a company that did regulatory consulting and human factors consulting, and it turns out that my proof of concept said, “No, human factors consulting is good. You can just focus. It’s better to not dilute your brand.” So just going on and trying it.

So, in the same way, when we developed a medical device we will put it in the hands of end users to predict the future. And the key there, when you’re soliciting input, is to not bias the input. And so there’s this concept that we talk about a ton in human factors engineering which is cognitive bias. And so that’s the idea that you sway the person you’re talking to or observing, your body language, or verbal cues. Or an example is just being overly friendly.

So, in a usability study, when we bring in an end user, my job is to be extremely vanilla and not be their best friend but at the same time make them comfortable. So you have to hit the sweet spot and then observe them as though you’re not there. And so, basically, if anyone out there is designing an actual product, put it in the hands of your end users. Don’t do a focus group. Get feedback on a one-on-one basis, and try your best to not sway their judgment or opinions. Another consideration is thinking about the way you ask the questions because the question itself can be biasing.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us examples of good question/bad question?

Shannon Clark
So, an example of a bad question is obviously, “Don’t you like this feature? Isn’t it nice?” That’s like a really obvious one. And so the way that you should phrase it is, “Share your thoughts about this one feature.” So it’s a very neutral-worded question.

And I guess another more specific example is if you’re evaluating, for example, a set of laparoscopic tools, you could ask, “Which type of laparoscopic stapler do you prefer to use? What size is your preferred method?” A better question might be, “How do you go about performing an anastomosis?” And that might reveal that they want to use a different type of tool or suturing in the place of a stapler.

And so by wording the question and making these incorrect assumptions that go into that original question, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot and leaving out this opportunity to get this really, really helpful additional data.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that that’s so helpful. So, now, I’m wondering, when you talk about body language, tone, what are all of some of the watch-outs if I’m just trying to collect feedback on a product? And that product could even really be just sort of like a checklist or a Google Sheet or Excel tool or a PowerPoint template that’s going to be used again and again.

So, I’m thinking that it can be sort of tangible, a hardware in the physical realm, or it can be kind of more intellectual, folks are going to interact with it and use it. What are some sort of key watch-outs in terms of my tonality or my body language that I might not even think to watch out for?

Shannon Clark
Well, I think the first tip is just to check the ego at the door. A lot of these evaluators design the product themselves, and so they have a lot of emotion behind its design and they have their own opinions about how it should work. I might recommend asking a friend to interview the end users, or if you need to do that don’t raise your eyebrows. Just kind of sit there and listen. Be a wallflower. Don’t interject with your thoughts or opinions.

Or even if they say, “Oh, should I use it this way?” And they look at you and they wait for a response. You could say, “I’m not able to provide that information right now. How would you expect it to be used?” That’s actually my favorite line that I share in usability testing, I’ll say, “Well, what do you expect?”

Because, yesterday, I was in a usability study and someone said, “Oh, is this the button that I go to for Settings?” And they looked at me and there’s this awkward pause, and then I say, “Is that what you would expect?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Shannon Clark
But then also that question can reveal what it is that they expect, and then that could unveil changes to make about your product that improves it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is so good. I remember once I was with a buddy of mine who worked at Nike, and we were at the Nike employee store. I found this backpack and it had these sort of grooves on the back where it connects to my back. And I said, “Oh, these are really cool grooves. Is that sort of enable there to be kind of airflow so it cools down my back and it won’t have that sweaty back situation in the summertime?” And he just said, “Do you perceive them to?” I was like, “That’s your whole game, isn’t it?”

Shannon Clark
Is that the sales guy that said that?

Pete Mockaitis
No, he did some product design stuff as well.

Shannon Clark
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, “Is that what you perceive it to?” And I was like, “Well, I do but I actually want to know, does this have them?”

Shannon Clark
An engineer will go into a design having a very-defined intent of the design but he’ll be shocked to see how many ways someone can interpret that, the outcome of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is good. Well, I’m also wondering, as you’re observing sort of users doing their thing, how do you get them to kind of narrate what they’re thinking and as they’re engaging with the stuff? Is that part of the protocol? Do you say, “Hey, just think out loud and I’m going to watch”? Or, how do you get them to actually verbalize what’s in their head?

Shannon Clark
Exactly. So, that think aloud technique is the official term for it, and we will ask users in those early stage iterative usability studies. We’ll ask them to use think aloud technique because it’s the only way that we can really get inside their head.

Now, a funny thing about that is that the FDA prohibits think aloud technique in a final usability study that’s used to prove safety and efficacy just because think aloud technique can be a little bit distracting and it does take away from the “representativeness” of the simulation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right.

Shannon Clark
For any usability study other than that FDA-grade final usability evaluation, think aloud technique is a great way to truly understand people’s thought process and even those close calls where they might not make a mistake but they’re about to and then they catch themselves. And you can hear that full monologue as they’re about to make a mistake, and then you get even more and richer data.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. I do find most people are pretty candid with that, like, “I can’t get the darn thing open. Argh.”

Shannon Clark
Yeah, I did have a usability study one time where someone said, “Oh, yeah, at this point I would throw it across the room.” So, that’s a good gem.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. I could see there’s some giant pull to quote on your slide that you report to the client. So, I’m wondering, so observation is one sort of tool on the toolkit. I’m wondering about the notion of, do you also use sort of surveys? And are there any pro tips on doing surveys well?

Shannon Clark
We do surveys, and a lot of that is when you’re in the very early phases of development where you don’t really know what the product is yet, and later stages if you just have questions. For example, “What percentage of nurses use gravity flow versus infusion pumps for a given product?” That’s an example of a survey that was done in the late stage of a design of something that I’m working on.

Surveys are really helpful and they can be quick, so a lot of that ethnographic data surveys are pretty efficient. It’s also really nice to do phone surveys and get people’s input by phone. That can be a very efficient way of gathering demographic information, information about the use environment. For example, when you perform surgery, is it performed under green lighting conditions? Or is it dark lights with white lights shining on the surgical field? That’s something that could be addressed via survey.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. And do you any sort of pro tools that you go to in terms of sourcing people, survey takers, interview volunteers, or is this kind of your own networks?

Shannon Clark
I usually go through the network of my client. I consult on the design of all kinds of medical devices ranging from surgical robots to widgets used to transfer medication in a pharmacy. So, it’s hard for me to maintain a database of participants. So, we have processes to quickly find participants but mostly I try to leverage the sales teams that are in-house at my client’s site. Or there are individuals who have contacts other than the sales and marketing team. Like for early stage startups, many times the CEO will have the connections so there’s various ways that we use.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, any other sort of tips or tools or tactics or sort of ninja goodies that you could share?

Shannon Clark
Yeah, another technique that we use is called task analysis, and it’s something that I see engineers skip all of the time. So, they’ll design a device and they’ll say, “Okay, this is how it works. These are all the features and functions.” And they’re so focused on features and functions that they don’t zoom out or think about what’s the individual workflow.

So, for example, you might have a device that’s sterile, which means that only a sterile-gowned nurse can handle it at the bedside, and then you also have what’s called a circulating nurse who’s non-sterile. And when you’re an engineer working in a cubicle you’ll design this device, but then you don’t realize that there’s actually two people doing these different things. So it’s really important to take and go to the whiteboard and actually map out who is doing what task at any given moment.

And then I challenge you to think about what are different workflows that could occur within that workflow? What are alternative ways of doing this and alternative sequences of tasks? And many times that will reveal potential use errors or potential ways to optimize the workflow through design.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. Now, I’d love to shift gears a bit. So, you’ve been doing your own thing for a while here. Could you provide a bit of reflection on terms of the employee world versus your own CEO world, pros/cons that you’ve discovered along the way?

Shannon Clark
Well, I think a pro is that I’m completely in control of my destiny, and I like that feeling. I like the feeling of mentoring people. There’s been some major wins over the past year as I built my team, finding awesome people to work with.

And there was a really cool moment the other week where I had an employee say, like, “Oh, no, you can go to the standards committee in Canada. I’ll handle the usability studies.” So she really stepped up to the plate and took over and I was just blown away by that. I thought, “This is it.” Like she really has improved kind of over the past year, year and a half and has gone to the point where she can just own it. And so, watching the evolution of people and the team, that’s just really rewarding for me.

And then, so I’d say those are some pros. Also, like learning a lot, learning really fast, throwing yourself in the fire. And then the cons are probably being on fire. So I thought it was kind of funny. This is a podcast about how to be awesome at your job, and to be honest, sometimes I feel like I’m actually not awesome at my job. And something that I’ve learned to think about over the course of this evolution is, I don’t know, forgiveness.

Like, you don’t have to be at your best all of the time. And if you put pressure on yourself to be perfect, you’re never going to make it in entrepreneurship. Sometimes an approximation has to be good enough. So, that said, it is very stressful. It’s stressful being an entrepreneur.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. So, the fire and not being good, where is that coming from? Just like the sheer low volume of stuff that commands your attention?

Shannon Clark
Yeah, when I started UserWise I had this kind of two-year vision. I thought, “Oh, we’ll slowly grow. We’ll, hopefully, be able to bill out a lot of our hours.” But this thing has just snowballed so fast it’s hard to keep a handle on it where we just have a huge client base at this point. And sometimes it’s challenging to keep up with it with the seven-day workweek or working 14 hours a day. It can take a toll on you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man. Tim Ferriss said it was supposed to be a four-hour workweek. But what’s going on?

Shannon Clark
I knew it. No, Tim Ferriss has amazing insights about how to get it down to that four hours. I actually took him up on some of those recommendations, and so I hired a virtual assistant. I tried to think about what I can delegate at all times. I pursue zero inbox, so there’s some things that I do to try to cope with having such a giant workload. But I think right now, the things that keep me up at night are just trying to hire those next human factors engineers so that we can keep up with this work volume and making sure that they’re fully trained in the way that UserWise operate.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Shannon Clark
And another stress in my life is probably trying to find a bookkeeper. It sounds kind of trivial but it’s something that I’ve just been doing everything. Tim Ferriss said you’ve got to delegate, you’ve got to let other people do some of these things.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, it’s cool. So, I appreciate and respect that. It is not all sort of rainbows and butterflies on the entrepreneurial side of things. There are some great pros, some real cons, and you just sort of weigh it out and balance it day by day. Well, I hope that you get your people and you get some more control and R&R time in the near future.

Shannon Clark
Yeah, I have this vision that I’m going to spend a month in Argentina later this year, and I still have hope. I have these things planned where I want to take advantage of the fact that I am an entrepreneur, that I am self-sufficient, that I have my own company and why not work remotely like Tim Ferriss recommends. So that is actually on the docket this year.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so funny. We’re talking to Tim Ferriss. You go to Argentina, so you’ll be sipping Malbec and doing some dancing and/or martial arts.

Shannon Clark
And/or remote usability testing.

Pete Mockaitis
Not at the same time though. The clients won’t like that.

Shannon Clark
Nope.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Shannon, is there anything else you really want to make sure we cover off before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Shannon Clark
Well, I feel like we covered a lot. I was actually thinking like we definitely need to mention 4-Hour Workweek that definitely shaped my thoughts on working and being awesome at my job. Yeah, that’s about it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, then, could you start us off by sharing a favorite quote, something that you find inspiring?

Shannon Clark
So, actually, my friend, Cath, shared a quote with me the other day, and I actually didn’t write down the quote but it’s more of an idea. And she said that if you are working your job and you’re super stressed out working at your job then that means that there’s no way that you’re going to progress to that next level. And she said that that was a source of comfort to her because she knows that she’s awesome, and she knows that she can progress to the next level. So it’s this counterintuitive thing where she’s like, “Oh, I can’t be stressed out because I know that I’m awesome.”

And I thought that was like a really interesting concept, and it made me think about, “Hmm, I’m pretty stressed out at my job. How do I get de-stressed so that I can move to the next level and become better and constantly push the boundaries of what UserWise can do?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Shannon Clark
So I thought that was a cool concept, that if you’re stressed out in your job right now you’re not going to make it to that next level.

Pete Mockaitis
And the rationale underpinning that is you’re stressed out because the current demands of you are equal to or in excess of your own capacity.

Shannon Clark
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And, thusly, you’re feeling stressed and it can co-link, ipso facto, you don’t have the time to develop the skills and to strategize and to figure out the upgrade.

Shannon Clark
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is a big one. Thank you.

Shannon Clark
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve been a little stressed out. I just got some more help, that’ll probably get the job done there. So, how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Shannon Clark
So the challenge of that is that everything I work on is confidential but I’d like to share two thoughts. First of all, there are 40,000 deaths here in the United States as a result of automobile accidents, so that’s like human error related to automobiles. And here in the United States we lose 210,000 lives in hospitals due to preventable medical error. Here in the United States. So you can compare that 40,000 in automotive and 210,000 in medical devices.

That’s why I go to work in the morning. I want to reduce that number. I want to help to design hospital processes and medical devices that minimize lives lost and maximize health to the patients and users. So I think that’s a bit of research that I’d like to share.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Thank you.

Shannon Clark
And that’s why I get up in the morning. I guess another practical example of what human factors can do for a medical device – there was an AED that was on the market until about 2009. And imagine that this AED is on an airport wall and someone goes into cardiac arrest. A laser runs up to the AED which is designed to be used by lasers, and they go up to the patient, they hook them up and they’re about to resuscitate using an automated external defibrillator.

And they suddenly noticed that there’s this blinking light on it that says, “Battery low,” and they say, “Oh, this isn’t going to work. I guess I shouldn’t use it,” and then they don’t use it. But it turns out that they were misinterpreting it. It turns out that they could proceed with using it and they could proceed with saving that person’s life.

So that’s an example where a very maybe seemingly minor element of the design of this AED led to potentially, the potential for a patient death. And so that’s an example where any usability study would simulate that scenario and catch it before it ever makes it onto the wall of that airport.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Shannon Clark
The 4-Hour Workweek.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Shannon Clark
Yeah, I’ve got to stick with that.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s good. It’s good.

Shannon Clark
Highly-recommended.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, or maybe a service or a product or software app, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Shannon Clark
My Hours. I mean, obviously Gmail is amazing, but MyHours.com is how we log all of our hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great. So, if you’re billing out to clients?

Shannon Clark
Yup, and then Lucidchart is really good for making these task flows. Lucidchart.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. And how about is there a particular nugget that you share with folks that really seems to resonate with them, gets them sort of nodding their heads and taking notes, a Shannon Clark original quote?

Shannon Clark
Don’t design a product that needs training. As soon as you start talking about training users, it means that your product is deficient.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Shannon Clark
That’s a constant conversation I have with engineers it seems where they say, “Well, we can leave it like that on the user interface and then just train them how to find it.” It’s like, “No, we’re going to change the user interface.”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Thank you. And how about an ideal contact information if folks want to get in touch with you and see what you’re doing? Where would you point them?

Shannon Clark
Well, you can come to www.UserWiseConsulting.com and fill out the form there. Yeah, that’s pushed directly to my email really. So, again it’s www.UserWiseConsulting.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or a call to action for those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Shannon Clark
Do a T-diagram where you have two columns, and on the left side write about what in your job gives you energy. And on the left side write, I might be confusing my lefts and rights, but on the other side write what it is that detracts from your energy. And think about, “What minor changes can I make in my daily life to make sure that my energy is maximized?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Thank you. Well, Shannon, this has been such a treat. Great catching up.

Shannon Clark
My pleasure. It’s great to talk to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Congratulations on all of your growth, and I look forward to hearing more from you and seeing you less stressed out.

Shannon Clark
I see the light. I see the light.

Pete Mockaitis
Good.

Shannon Clark
Well, thank you so much, Pete. This has really been awesome, and I’m so proud of you for making this all happen.