My Interview with Jon Shariat

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In this edition, I sat down with Jonathan Shariat, Director of Product at Therapydia, at Philz Coffee in San Jose. What you are about to read is the transcript of an audio recording we did. Some of you may know Jonathan already from his insightful or humorous tweets. Or maybe you know him from his soon-to-be-published book “Tragic Design”. But I know him mainly as my co-host on the Design Review podcast. It was through working with him on the show that I discovered how much fun it was to talk with other designers about design and it helped serve as the inspiration for this project that you’re now a part of!

Me: What shoes are you wearing right now?

Jonathan: Right now, i’m wearing my most comfortable shoes, which are my Puma’s, Puma Roma’s. I’ve always had a pair of Puma Roma’s for as long as I can remember. I always keep a pair around.

Why do you wear them? Of all the shoes out there, what got you to pick them?

The looks, I’m a designer at heart so I always think they look amazing.

Are they comfortable?

Yeah, and they last a long time, so it kind of checks all the right boxes for me.

Has anyone complimented you on your choice of footwear?

Yeah! Actually, one time… My first pair lasted me a long time but I went to do some community work in Mexico and i got a great compliment from one of the kids. He really liked my shoes, so eventually I gave him my shoes.

So there’s some kid with my Puma Roma’s probably around somewhere.

Where do you work now? Job title?

Right now, I’m at Therapydia (http://www.therapydia.com), which is a small startup in Marin and we start physical therapy clinics around the United States. I help direct the product there [Note: Jon is the Director of Product.], which is software that helps run the clinics and do marketing for the clinics. And we’re also prototyping some new apps for patients and doctors.

When did you realize you wanted to become a designer?

It was sort of a process, I think. First, I wanted to be an animator. I loved Disney movies. Still do. I did animation in high school for 2 years, and hated it. It was so monotonous.

I realized that I like ideas, I love the way things look, but I don’t like the meticulousness of animation. You have 24 drawings for one second of work, so… it was not good for me.

…yeah, multiplied by however many minutes long a movie is…

Yeah. So looking back at those Disney movies. Every second there were 24 cells which had to be drawn, and then inked, and then painted… and had to match the voice of the actors, and you had to have a background.

That’s why usually you see the characters that move are a little bit less than the background, which is static. It’s [the background] one painting that they’ll do.

And then after that I did television. There was a small studio that my dad helped run. So I helped do a kid’s show there. That was a lot of fun. I learned a lot!

It was such a small studio, I ended up doing everything. So I learned a lot. I managed the actors, we wrote a script, we painted and bought everything for a set, and did costuming and stuff like that. So that was a lot of fun. I also did some animation there… Still hated it.

But then we started to need websites. Since I was kind of tech savvy just from fooling around on the computer in the years beforehand, I started doing all the websites. I think a lot of designers have this, where they became the website guy [or gal] because they’re visual. So I set up Wordpress sites and I coded some websites, and I loved it! Then I researched some more and found user interface design and I was like “Cool! I wanna do that!”

Are the shows still around? Can we find them on YouTube or something?

Haha! Yeah, I’ve been trying to get a copy from them. There’s a pilot episode… Yeah, it’s a lot less quality than the second episode was. But the pilot episode is on YouTube somewhere. It was called “Googooloo” and this is also in Farsi, Persian language, so it’s called “Donyaeh Googooloo” which is “The World of Googooloo.” So we had all these different characters, like a mailman, and the main character was a girl and her dog, and it was kinda fun! We also got VeggieTales, which a lot of people know! We got it dubbed in Farsi. So we also had that in between the segments.

Nice!

So that was fun!

I’m in one episode! I think it might be the first episode because we didn’t have all the actors yet. But it’s just my hands, giving the other dog. I knock at the door and I’m delivering a dog, but that’s it. You just see my hands.

Haha! That’s cool! We’ll have to find the video later…

Actually, it’s not too bad. It’s more embarrassing for my sister who’s the main actress…

[Note: Jon later sent me a link to the video. You can watch the pilot here: https://vimeo.com/1900917]

Process vs. product (end result) What’s more important?

I think you can’t get away from process… You can’t have a good result without a good process.

It’s like when I go try to cook without knowing what I’m doing, as far as what the ingredients should be and what it does to the dish. It always comes out bad. Always!

And usually when I have a recipe to go off of, and… Throughout the way I’m doing different stuff but I know why I’m doing it. “Oh, I do want more sweetness, I’m gonna add a bit more”… It always comes out pretty awesome.

If you could tell someone who is just entering the field one thing, what would it be? What’s that one nugget of sage advice?

I always find this kind of hard because some of those things, you kind of have to just really learn. But I call it “flailing”… Which I guess is really just the whole “fail forward” movement that a lot of people have been talking about. But it’s about just not being scared to fail, like just putting yourself out there. And that can reveal itself in a lot of ways. One is just trying to get a job or trying to push a design through, or fighting for something in a design position… All kinds of stuff like that. Just throwing caution to the wind and just throwing yourself out there has been one of the most useful things. Because 9 times out of 10 it was just some sort of caution that wasn’t real or people appreciated throwing yourself out there, or it pays off!

Yeah. Sometimes, you sort of put up barriers for yourself that don’t exist.

Yeah, they don’t exist and … I dunno. The world favors risk takers, more than you think.

I’ve always been a very cautious person. Like, if you ask my childhood friends if Jonathan was a very quiet, cautious person, yes. They would have said yes! So it hasn’t been natural. It’s been very unnatural. But it’s paid off, enough times where I keep doing it for some reason…

If you could only use one typeface from now on, what would it be?

Haha. Uh… Decline! That’s really hard…

Because it’s Comic Sans?

Hahaha! I would use Comic Sans because it would be a statement!

No, I think other than Helvetica, which is still a great font, it would have to be Georgia. It’s one of those that I like because it’s good font but it’s also a default font. Which is really cool because I love it when you can have one brand over email AND everything else. Because in email, you can’t really embed fonts, so it’s kind of cool that it works everywhere, and it’s a nice font.

Who is a designer, working today, that you look up to?

There’s a lot of designers that I look up to. It’s really hard to keep track. I dunno. There’s a lot of designers that I appreciate something different about each of them.

Just need one! If you had to pick one that was someone that you aspire to be or…

Well, one that comes to mind is Allison House.

Why?

Not only is she a great designer, in user experience and UI, but I love her art too. Which is kind of like, glitch art, and it’s got this really cool feel to it that I’m a big fan of. And then she also does like, really cool writing, and other stuff like that. I feel like she’s really well-rounded. Um, who else…

You just get one… Haha!

So if I took your phone and deleted all your apps, which app would you be most upset about losing?

Hahaha! I don’t think anything…

Nothing?

My wife challenged me to not use my phone for a week. Honestly, nothing happened… Maybe my games?

Any particular one?

It always changes, but right now it’s one called “Heroes Charge”, which is one of those games that you just like to do all these little tasks…

Actually, it would be GPS! Because I always get lost and … the first thing I did when I bought a car, and I had a job, is I saved up $400 and I bought a GPS, because I always got lost! I got lost coming here!

In the coming zombie apocalypse, what personal belonging will you keep with you?

Haha! For survival? Or just for any situation?

Whatever. It doesn’t have to be for survival…

Does the internet still work?!

No.

Oh dammit! Hahaha! Well, the first thing that came to mind was my knife. I have a nice knife my wife got me.

….

It’s probably not a good sign that I can only think of wifi. Hahahaha!

Hahahahaha!

I think I would probably just run and get my knife and some camping supplies, and run off to the forest. Or Costco!

Yeah, I would think that the internet would go down.

It would probably survive for a little bit.

Yeah, for a bit. Some communication systems would survive for a while.

Yeah, and then if no one was taking care of it, it would just degrade.

Ok. Now I have some “Rapid Fire” questions for you.

Android or iOS?

iOS

Uber or Lyft?

Lyft

Yahoo or AOL?

Yahoo…

Coffee or Tea?

Tea

Cats or Dogs?

Dogs

Ice cream or pizza?

Ok. that’s it. This interview is over!

…

Pizza

That’s a hard one.

Yeah, i thought this was going to be a normal interview. These are hard-hitting questions!

Batman or Iron Man?

Batman

The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones?

Game of Thrones. I like that setting.

Ok that’s it. Anything you’d like to plug?

I’m writing a book, “Tragic Design”, and I also have an amazing podcast called the Design Review. Check it out!

[Note: I am the co-host of the design review… :P]

Can people contact you? How?

NO. Hahaha!

@DesignUXUI on Twitter. Hit me up! Gimme your favorite gif…

Cool, that’s it. Thanks!

Thanks Jon! Sign up to receive these via email at Designers & Shoes.