Paths, Puddles, Products

On how our need for impact and value creation affects our career choices.

This time we climbed the hills of Normafa with the dogs, watched out for the boars, and talked about some projects we worked on from the perspective of an impactful career.

The path we took:

• An unexpected career move and how it fits or does not fit in our impact-driven pattern.
• The triangle of impact, fulfillment, and stress in our work projects.
• Structure in working environments: the structure of processes and the structure of a well-planned and communicated strategy.
• Direct and indirect impact: the impact of education or tool development versus projects directly affecting environmental or societal issues.
• A trip down memory lane with our favorite impact projects.
• Expectations versus reality - what we wanted to achieve in these projects versus how they turned out.
• And a look into the crystal ball to see what an impactful career in the future could look like.

Grab your headphones, and head to the closest hill to walk with us!

Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!

On how to make a meaningful design-driven change in a product-focused organization.

This is our first guest episode. Long-time friend and fellow service design leader Kata Dóczi-Nagy joined Juli and the dogs for a walk on the muddy slopes of Three Border Mountain, where they talked about her approach to service design, and the organizational prototyping project where their paths converged.

The path they took:

• How an industrial design background can lead to service design leadership.
• The sustainability of manufacturing-focused product design, and climate anxiety.
• The different approaches to making lasting change - from within an organization and as an outside consultant.
• How one pioneer can change the design culture in a product company.
• Working in high-impact domains, namely, in healthcare simulation.
• The challenges of strategic design in the fuzzy front end.
• Juli + Kata's appreciation and love for the Netherlands.
• An organizational prototyping project to surf the waves of remote work, and what the company learned from it.
• And the impact of pandemics and war on businesses, organizations, and the people we're prototyping on.

Grab your headphones, and head to a green spot to walk with us!

Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!

On why we struggle with defining what we do.

This time we took the scenic route to Three Border Mountain in the Buda Hills and let the dogs frolic in the wildflower fields, while we fought with job titles and talked about how we work.

The path we took:

• Defining service design, and the difference between a service and a product.
• Working "in business" and business in a job title.
• What makes someone an expert in something - with a short rant on the inflation of knowledge.
• Developers coding in a dark room and other layers of creating value with code.
• Agile coaches, scrum, and Shape Up; frameworks for working together and decisionmaking.
• How working on strategy looks like vs how the visionary designer is pictured.
• How to bring an outside perspective and install lasting changes in an organization.
• And how our job is sometimes like therapy - people getting all vulnerable and being open to change.

Grab your headphones, and head to the nearest lookout to walk with us!

Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!

On how we work less to be happier and to make clients happier as well.

The weather finally allowed us to venture out into nature: we took the dogs to Óbudai Island, and while they ran around in the grass and took a dip in the Danube, we rambled about our self-management experiences in the freelance world.

The path we took:

• How do we manage our day-to-day work?
• Our tricks for incentivizing clients and bosses to respect our time. Spoiler: it's just communication.
• Our addiction to clear roles and responsibilities, and clarity in client relationships in general.
• Working hours challenges across roles and timezone differences.
• Our struggles with context switches and some tools we tried to stay sane.
• The tools we use and don't use for managing our tasks.
• And all the work we don't do, but should be doing for a successful freelancing business.

Grab your headphones, and head to the nearest park to walk with us!

Ps. If you want to chime in, send us a DM or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!

Quoted Podcast: Focus on this! by Courney Baker, Verbs (Mike) Boyer, Blake Stratton

On what drove us to freelancing, how our paths converged as co-owners of a company, and how we both found ourselves in the burnout puddle.

The weather was not kind to us this time, so we're recording from our homes - no birds, only crickets.

Introducing the Paths, Puddles, Products podcast - a quick hello from the forest.