Episode 159 – A Chat With Piccia Neri

Show Notes

This episode of Hallway Chats is a little different from previous episodes. Recently Cate and Topher had the opportunity to go to WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal, where we had some literal hallway chats. This one is with Piccia Neri.

Piccia’s Site: https://designforconversions.com/

Twitter | @Piccia

Episode Transcript

Topher: So I have heard your name pronounced seven different ways today. So first order of business, state your name.

Piccia: Pea-cha. 

Topher: Pea-cha. 

Piccia: Like peach with an A at the end. And it’s quite interesting. Like for you and me, English Italian, is quite innocuous but you know… I was printing out again the pass today because I couldn’t print it yesterday for some reason, and there was one of the guys behind the desk that was just really, really chuckling. And I was like, “You’re from Slovakia?” He’s like, “Yeah.”

And then in Spain, it means the opposite of what it does in Slovakia. And now I now live in Spain. But the way you pronounce this, the way it’s spelled because I’m Italian, it’s not a name in Italy either. I mean, you know, we could go on. But in Spain, they read it Pik-cia. So I tell them Picsy and then… yeah. Anyway, so Pi-cha. Like peach with an A at the end. 

Topher: Piccia.

Piccia: Yeah.

Topher: Cool. I like it. What does it mean? 

Piccia: It doesn’t really mean anything. But if it does mean anything, it’s small, tiny.

Topher: Make sense. Cool. So I was asked to pick some people to interview, and I deliberately picked people I did not know except for you because I only know you a little bit. And I found that interesting. And I would like to know more about you. So what do you do with WordPress?

Piccia: I am a designer. I don’t actually build that many sites anymore, but my mission is to get everyone in WordPress to be design-led and an accessible design-led as well. 

Topher: Sure.

Piccia: That’s become my mission. Because what I find very interesting is that, what do we do with WordPress? We build products, we build experiences, we build websites. There’s very little talk about design and there’s very few designers even in a WordPress environment, if you think about it. So it should be entirely design-led but isn’t it.

And that’s really interesting to me. I think that’s a limitation, I think it should definitely be a design-led because I think ever since I started doing this or I started… because I started using WordPress in… I think my first blog was 2009. It was called One Sketch a Day. I would post a drawing a day.

Topher: I remember those.

Piccia: Because it was pre-Instagram. And then when Instagram happened I just didn’t do it. I don’t know why, but anyway… So that’s when I first started playing with it but I wasn’t very involved in community. 

And then when I really saw the gap, I was like, “No one’s talking about design, this needs to be done.” Because sometimes you would see talks about CSS, and it’s like, Yeah, but that’s not a design, that’s a tool. It doesn’t matter. I mean,