Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Jul 18, 2016 · Article · Medium

Podcast #22: Karen McGrane — Content and discontent

Podcast #22: Karen McGrane — Content and discontent

Photograph: Erik Westra

How does a content strategist see the web? This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk to Karen McGrane, a user-experience expert who writes books, gives speeches, leads workshops, and takes on a variety of web projects with her agency Bond Art + Science. Topics covered include the bold fashions of the dot-com era (many buckles); nightmare pitch meetings involving handcuffs and action figures; introductory email etiquette; and Paul’s formal apology to the International Association for Pawn Shop Owners.

►iTunes/►SoundCloud/►Overcast/►Stitcher/►MP3 /►RSS

Paul: [When the web started.] Everybody’s terrified that they don’t know something, and they go to these companies where young people are working, and young people are just, like, naturally cool with clear skin and cooler clothing, and they’re narcissists, so they just kind of tell you, “Oh yeah, absolutely, I’ll solve this for you.” Right?

Karen: Yeah.

Paul: Like, no 27-year-old will be like, “There’s a large, serious — ”

Rich: Let’s take a deep breath here. [laughter and deep breath noises]

Paul: “Boy there’s like…honestly what I see is a chain of risks that we need to evaluate before we even get down to a prototype phase.”

Karen: [telling a story about a late-nineties meeting with Disney execs] We were building some brochures that kind of had some creative to them. So we get in this meeting, we think we’re going to present logo directions to Eisner. This is not what happens. Eisner pulls out a bunch of photographs of green things in his neighborhood. “This is a green park bench.”

Rich: Oh boy.

Karen: “This is a green dumpster.”

Rich: Oh boy.

Paul: [dying of laughter]

Karen: “These are some green trees.” So then he’s like, “OK, so I got the Disney Imagineering team to brainstorm some concepts.” So he pulls out, you know, like, everything’s on boards in those days, so he pulls out this 18x24 board of a dog wearing goggles. [explosion of laughter]

Rich: Tremendous.

Karen: And so, like, all the executives are like, “Oh yeah, that’s great. That’s really great. Great concept.” So then, it gets better. He pulls out another board of a monkey wearing a diaper holding a road sign, and he says, “This is Bobo, your guide to the information superhighway.”

Paul: Woooooow.

Rich: Ohhhhh no no no no.

Paul: Woooooooooow.

Karen: I think, for me, it’s almost like having an ability to survey the landscape and try to figure out how you can articulate someone’s pain to them, in a way that makes them recognize, “Oh, that, that thing. That’s what hurts. I didn’t even know that was what was hurting me, and you’ve just described my pain to me so perfectly that now I actually feel like I can fix that pain.”

A full transcript of this episode is available.

Links

Track Changes is the weekly technology and culture podcast from Postlight, hosted by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. Coordination, research, and management by Elizabeth Minkel, who also prepared the summary of this episode. Production and editing by Tom Meyers. Podcast logo and design by Matt Quintanilla of Postlight. We record with Paul Ruest and Noriko Okabe at Argot Studios. Listen to more episodes here.

Loading...