The UX Teacher Prep Podcast

S2 Ep 4. Lessons in UX Success with Joe Natoli

• Zee Arnold • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Meet Joe Natoli, a seasoned UX expert whose career trajectory offers invaluable insights for both aspiring and experienced UX professionals. Join us as we uncover the wisdom Joe has amassed over three decades, from overcoming imposter syndrome to teaching over 350,000 students on platforms like Udemy. Joe also discusses his collaboration with Leah Buley on "The User Experience Team of One," reflecting his dedication to empowering UX teams and individuals.

Whether you're new to UX or aiming for growth, this episode is packed with insights and resources tailored to your journey.
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Bio: 

Joe Natoli is a UX consultant, author and speaker — and a household name in UX and product design. For three decades, he’s advised, trained and empowered the UX, design and product development teams of some of the world’s largest organizations, from Fortune 100 companies to U.S. Government agencies and startups. He has published ten books — the most recent being the second edition of the bestselling The User Experience Team of One with Leah Buley for Rosenfeld Media — and is a regular keynote speaker and lecturer at industry conferences and corporate events across the globe.

Joe has also taught more than 344,000 students through his online courses and his own UX 365 Academy, at ux365academy.com, in addition to a private coaching practice.

Joe’s approach to improving product UX and design focuses on addressing systemic, personal dynamics issues across individuals, teams and organizations: combating impostor syndrome and increasing self-confidence, improving communication and collaboration, addressing fear and dysfunction driving poor management practices and redesigning inappropriate, counterproductive processes.

His experience has been that when these root causes are improved and solved, the output of the work—and the experience people have with it—improves dramatically.

Joe lives in Washington DC with his wife Eli and three kids, and he strives to be the person his dog Rosie thinks he is. You can find Joe (as well as a voluminous collection of free UX + product design resources) online at givegoodux.com.

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Coach Zee:

Hello teacher friends, welcome back to the UX Teacher Prep Podcast. This is Coach Z, and for today's episode I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Natoli. He's a UX consultant and author and speaker and a household name in UX and product design. He's been in the industry for over three decades. In this interview, we talked about navigating the corporate workspace, coping with imposter syndrome, the importance of a support system and so much more. He also talked about the inspiration for his new book, the second edition of the best-selling the User Experience Team of One with Leah Buley. I had so much fun and learned a ton from Joe. I hope you do too. Let's listen in.

Narrator:

Welcome to the UX Teacher Prep Podcast, the ultimate destination for educators who aspire to break into the field of user experience and product design. Your host, z Arnold, a 15-year teacher turned UX researcher, is here to guide, coach and mentor you through every twist and turn as you make your career transition into tech. If you're ready for a more satisfying career and lifestyle and you want the balance to unleash your creativity, this podcast is for you. Now for the show.

Coach Zee:

Hi Joe, it's so great to have you on the show today. How are you?

Joe Natoli:

I'm very, very good. How are you?

Joe Natoli:

I'm doing great. So this episode is very unique because you are a UX leader and you have lots of insight into the UX space, so let's start by just telling everyone a bit about who you are.

Joe Natoli:

Well, I started my career as a graphic designer way, way back in the 80s, and that changed with this sort of this little thing called the internet. I was working at an ad agency at the time and the guys that ran it the older guys that ran it were convinced that the internet and the web was a trend, it was a fad and it was not going to last. And I couldn't convince them that that wasn't the case and that businesses were going to care about it. And I was frustrated enough and young enough and naive enough to say, well, okay, fine, I'm going to go start my own thing and I'm going to design for the web. And right around the same time, interestingly enough, I started teaching as well, part-time at university, which I've done for all that time, and that's like 32 years, something like that. So I started my own firm, grew it to six people we were right in the middle of the explosion of the internet. You know, designing software as service websites, et cetera, et cetera Sold it to an IT company around 2004.

Joe Natoli:

This remembered why I didn't want to work for other organizations. I hung around there for a couple of years and went back to independent consulting and my wife told me about this little thing called Udemy where you could teach and you could post courses. And I had, about you know, 8 million client presentations. So she said why don't you take one of those, put it out there and see what happens? Long story short, you know, you put this thing out into the world and pretty soon it's 500 students, then it's a thousand, and then it's, and it grew exponentially beyond my wildest dreams or expectations. Fast forward to 2024. Between udemy and my own ux365 academy, we have over 350 000 students wow which is shocking to say out loud.

Joe Natoli:

Okay, I want you to understand that that number shocks me every time I say it. That's kind of been my journey. I still consult with clients. I do a lot of speaking gigs at conferences, written about 10 books a bunch that are self-published. Most recent one for Rosenfeld Media is called User Experience. Team of One with the brilliant. Leah Buley and I live a very fortunate life, I guess is the best way to put it. Yeah, teaching is actually at the core of everything I do, even in consulting.

Coach Zee:

Yeah, so when you were teaching at the university, were you teaching like UX courses?

Joe Natoli:

Yes.

Coach Zee:

Okay, awesome.

Joe Natoli:

Strategic design thinking, and that was even way back, you know, in the 90eties. Good design is about what you do with what's between your ears, right? So yeah, all aspects of it. I mean from from freshmen to juniors, to seniors, to graduate students.

Coach Zee:

I've been doing that all the way up until two semesters ago, when I first came into the UX space after teaching in a classroom in New York City. One of the things that I noticed a lot is that folks would say things like and this was like 2022, like you have to be a unicorn, and I was listening to what you just said and I was wondering would you? Consider yourself first of all, what is a UX unicorn, and would you consider yourself one Well?

Joe Natoli:

it's not a term I would use. Okay Because, only because I think the perception of that, when companies say it all right, when employers and hiring folks say it, what they want, is they want someone to do the job of three people.

Joe Natoli:

Oh got it Very different definition. But to your point, I think I am in a lot of ways and I think I'm a generalist. I always have been. I have always felt from the very beginning that I should be good at a lot of things and a lot of areas and a lot of areas of of design, and that's partly just because that's the way I'm built. I'm very, very super interested in a lot of things. I get very excited about a lot of things and you know, if you offer me something I haven't done yet, my immediate instinct is to say yes, whether I have time for it or not.

Joe Natoli:

That's part of it. The other part of it is, I always felt like, the way to be more useful and more valuable, and the way to progress, and the way to have more opportunities open to me was to be really good at a lot of things, so that when a client, in particular when I started working for myself.

Joe Natoli:

So when a client said, have you ever done A, b or C? I had two answers. The first answer would be yeah, as a matter of fact, we just did that for somebody last month and here's how it went. And the other answer is you sort of fake your way through it and say yeah, with the mind of I don't really know how to do that, but I'm going to figure it out with the mind of I don't really know how to do that but I'm going to figure it out.

Joe Natoli:

Okay, got it. Because opportunity, you know, presents itself only so often. You have to be able to say yes, it was. I also think that in your career, at the beginning of of what we now call, you know UX, I think it was important to be a generalist, because the role was largely undefined, right, and nobody really knew what it was. And then we got into specialization over the years, and now I honestly think we're at a strange inflection point where that generalism is coming back to this profession, where you're starting to see specialized roles kind of go away.

Coach Zee:

So I think your point is very timely. Oh yeah, let's talk about that, because I remember when I was studying UX, I kind of did stuff on my own and I was researching things online and taking little courses here and there and I did take some like certification courses. But one thing that. I noticed was that, when it came down to like UX research, I really couldn't find a course that was specifically geared towards that particular part of UX, and I feel like a lot of courses just kind of touch the surface about just UX in general.

Coach Zee:

So talk to me about what you've done, and I know you have that course at Academy, ux 365. So talk to me about what you've done there and how you've kind of like taught UX research, or maybe not taught UX research and UX writing and all the different kind of like smaller parts.

Joe Natoli:

It's a lot of everything. Okay, if you, if you take a look at the curriculum there, it's not structured like a bootcamp where you start here and then you go through the entire progression, you know, and then you come out with a certificate. There are courses that have certificates, but it's it's all the topics you could possibly think of doing UX work. There's certainly fundamental principles and approaches and methods. It touches UX research. It touches content, strategy and writing. It touches information architecture. It touches actual design. It also touches career issues. You know landing and finding a job, negotiating salary portfolio but the the bulk of what is there and where our focus really is is how this work happens day to day. Right when you get a job inside a company, the one thing that nobody tells you is that the way the work is going to be done is radically different than anything you've ever been taught in a boot camp or university classroom or read in a book or a YouTube video or all the stuff you read about on social media. It's different.

Joe Natoli:

There are very purposeful constraints and you are not ever going to have the time or the budget or the personnel or the or the whatever to do all these things.

Joe Natoli:

That that you've been led to believe is the quote unquote right way to do the work. Okay, this book that just came out the UX team of one is along the same thread. Okay, so everything I've ever done is along that thread that I just mentioned, which is here's how it really works. Here's the stuff you're going to have to contend with, and here are the. Here are the things that you should know about what you're walking into, so that you don't get the job and go in and then run headfirst into a brick wall and what happens, right, I mean, the important part about this is that it makes people feel incapable of doing the work. Okay, they have that experience and then they feel like, well, I read all this stuff online you know about, about how UX is supposed to work and I'm supposed to be able to interview users and and they blame themselves you know, and they and they feel like there's something wrong with me.

Joe Natoli:

It must be me right, because I can't get anything done here. And it's not true. It's really absolutely not true.

Coach Zee:

And what you said about the brick wall. It kind of reminded me of teaching, because you read the book, you read all the things that you learn in class and then when you get into the classroom, it's like somebody's throwing a chair across the room and it's like wait, that wasn't in chapter three or four, that wasn't in the book at all. I didn't expect that. So it sounds very similar, and I was looking at your information online about the course and it said that you help people kind of navigate what you call the messy corporate world. Can you talk more about that? Can you talk more about that phrase?

Joe Natoli:

Sure, sure, I mean here's, here's the the simplest way to say it Corporations, companies, organizations from startups to midsize organizations to large enterprise organizations. From an organizational structure standpoint, they are set up, designed on purpose for diametric opposition between departments between people in different roles, between people in different job functions, because everybody's responsible for a different piece. All right, so what they need and the metrics that they need and the outcomes that they need are very different from yours. Right.

Joe Natoli:

You know, product argues with marketing, argues with sales, argues with finance, for example. You know there's a lot of pushback between product managers and their bosses, and then product managers and designers and UXers, and then UXers and developers or the IT department. And it's because all these people, us included, are on the hook for very different results, very different outcomes. Right. You have to walk in, understanding that when you're told no, it almost has nothing to do with you.

Joe Natoli:

Right when you say I need two weeks of research and the PM says you can't have it. We can't do that. That answer has nothing to do with you. By and large, it doesn't reflect the fact that, well, nobody cares about UX and nobody wants to do the right thing for customers and blah, blah, blah. They have a bigger need that has to get met. They have to launch something, anything to check a box in two weeks, because there's a promise that's been made several levels above you that you don't even know about.

Joe Natoli:

Right right right that has to get executed on. Come hell or high water, or someone loses their job, or let's get real someone doesn't get their quarterly performance bonus, or the stock price suffers, or there's all sorts of things that go on inside a company that have nothing to do with UX, and I think that it's easy to believe that we're sort of the center of the universe. We're not.

Coach Zee:

Right. And so here I am in my little you know UX research box and I'm saying you know, why can't we fix that one thing?

Coach Zee:

All the users said you know, this didn't work for them, and yet we're still doing that. And then there's like people above me and above them and above them, and things that have to be done that, you're right, I know nothing about. And I'm just seeing so many similarities between this and the teaching space, honestly, because you know you have your principal and they have to answer to the superintendent and you don't know what's going on in their conversations, sure, and they have their doors closed. But then you, as a teacher, you're like look, these are my students, I know what's best for them and I know what to do. But then you have other people telling you that, no, we're going to go this way, in this direction, and you do end up feeling like you know, it's something against you personally. So it's hard to kind of navigate that space.

Coach Zee:

And you talked about. You talked about like there's more to the whole UX course that you teach than just the actual. You know the training for the skills. But let's talk a little bit about the imposter syndrome, because you know teachers who I speak to and who listen to my podcast. They're transitioning out of the classroom and of course, they have imposter syndrome and they're like, okay, just like you said, I learned all the skills and now like, how do I present myself? I can't do this, this is not for me. Or all the skills. And now like, how do I present myself? I can't do this, it's not for me. Or you know, they start, they start the work and first, you know, first week, it's like, okay, what am I doing here? And how do you kind of teach people to navigate that imposter syndrome issue?

Joe Natoli:

yeah, well, there's multiple parts of that. Quite honestly, and whenever I say this, people are very surprised. Um, I've struggled with that my entire life my entire career, um, ever since I was young. There are probably multiple reasons why it kind of doesn't matter. Okay, it's there, though the I don't think you get any traction over imposter syndrome. You know, whatever the scale that is, however bad you have it, I don't think you get any traction over it until you accept one important fact, and that is it's not going away.

Joe Natoli:

Right, you're not going to wake up one day and suddenly never doubt yourself again. Sadly it is not going to happen.

Coach Zee:

Sadly, I wish it would happen. But yeah, you're right, it's at some point, it's always going to be there.

Joe Natoli:

So instead you accept the fact that, look, this is part of who I am, and then you take steps to manage it, to deal with it, to overcome it. Okay, to say, look, mr or Mrs, Imposter, you get to sit in the passenger seat of the car. That's okay. Right, you're allowed to ride with me, but you are not allowed to put your hands on the wheel. Right, I'm driving this bus.

Coach Zee:

I love that. Wait, I should write that down, that's good. Okay.

Joe Natoli:

So that's what it is. It's moments of checking yourself and saying, okay, I know what this is, I know what this voice is, I know where it comes from. I understand, I accept what you're saying, but it's not real, I have to go forward anyway. I accept what you're saying, but it's not real, I have to go forward anyway. And so the way that you combat this is practice. All right, you combat it by practice. You combat it by looking at your life and say, look, nothing has stopped me up to now. All right, I'm still here, I'm still doing this job. I just got another job. I got a teaching job, I got a UX job, whatever, if you get a new job, it's because you were good enough to get the job period. Yeah.

Joe Natoli:

End of story. You have to walk in and do the work believing that and the other thing that you have to do and there's not enough room in a podcast.

Joe Natoli:

Okay to walk through, like a lot of what I coach people to do, but you have to stop taking other people's opinions and judgments as truth. You have to judge what you do and what the outcome is on its own merit. You are going to encounter people who are going to belittle what you do. They're going to disagree with what you do. They're going to say, well, that just doesn't make any sense to me. They're going to set policies that don't make any sense to you, that you feel very personal about, as if someone's trying to tie your hands behind your back. You have to let that go. It has nothing to do with you. Other people's stuff. No matter what the reason for it is, it's other people's stuff. Judge the work on its own merit. Judge the results on your own merit. Right, judge the work on its own merit.

Joe Natoli:

Judge the results on your own merit, if you teach, if you train like I do. The only metric that I care about is whether or not I have students and clients and product teams right that come back to me and say you don't know how helpful this has been. We've done A, b, c, d and E and here's what it's gotten us. Can't thank you enough. That's my metric, yep, the results. People say to me all the time what do you do when a client won't take your advice? In a way, I don't care. All right, I care about them very much. I care about the outcome. I'm trying to help them, of course, but I can't take their decisions personally. That's not up to me. Mm-hmm Makes To change that. It affects their life a hell of a lot more than it affects mine as a consultant. So my job is to be honest. My job is to do everything I possibly can to help them, but you can't hang yourself on a hook for someone else's decision making.

Coach Zee:

That's true.

Joe Natoli:

And I think that's what we do. I think a lot of us do that.

Coach Zee:

Mm-hmm, that's a good point. That's some good advice right there. So along your journey, I know you've been in this space for basically it sounds like three decades. So along your journey, did you have any mentors who inspired you to keep going? Maybe in a time? When you felt like you weren't going to keep going. Do you have anybody who you looked up to?

Joe Natoli:

Oh yeah, there's a lot of them. There are a lot of them. Um, there are a lot of them, and I always feel bad about this because I know I'm leaving people out. David Flynn, who's a lifelong friend, was a was a creative director at the first agency that I ever worked at. Um, incredibly kind human being exposed me to all sorts of parts of working with clients, you know, and I was a kid, I was an intern, and instead of relegating me to like cleaning and coffee maker, he let me work on real projects, you know, and that was, that was massive, and he taught me along the way. I'm forever grateful for that and the user experience space. There've been lots of people who I feel like are responsible for my career when it came across the work of Alan and Sue Cooper, for example.

Joe Natoli:

Cooper for example, um, blown away. I'm like this, this guy, in the way that the way that the two of them as a couple, the way they were doing their business, the way they were running cooper, was the blueprint for my own firm. Okay, even earlier than that, um, I didn't come across ux through don norman, like a lot of people did. I came through it through Jesse James Garrett and his book, the Elements of User Experience. To me, that was like my head exploded when I read that book. That was the beginning of my transition from traditional design to UX, because everything that Jesse said in that book was it just made total sense to me. It was in line with everything I had been taught about how to design appropriately for people. I cannot overestimate the importance of that book and my career trajectory. Okay, it absolutely guided everything that I did. And to come full circle now and have Jesse write the foreword for this book he wrote the foreword. Oh, wow, that's amazing.

Joe Natoli:

You have no idea.

Coach Zee:

That is amazing.

Joe Natoli:

What a moment that was. You know, and I've he and I've conversed back and forth over the last couple of years, um, which in and of itself is a gift. Right, okay.

Joe Natoli:

But talk about just an incredible human being. You know Alan Cooper. Same thing. Alan and I have gotten to know each other over the years. I mean, it's not like we're best of friends, but we have become friends. We talk often.

Joe Natoli:

He and his wife were kind enough to help me write a foreword for another book that I'm working on. Just pure inspiration, okay. Kindness, generosity. These folks were always willing to take the time to step in and answer questions. You know there are lots of people. A friend of mine by the name of Brian McIntyre helped me get my first business off the ground. You know, was absolute support and believed in me and gave me tremendous guidance business-wise that I wouldn't otherwise have had. You know the folks who worked for me early on in my career. There's just a long list of people who've continued to inspire me, and there are people that do that now. It's one of the great strokes of luck in my life that, because of what I do, I come across a lot of people, from students to colleagues, people that I speak at conferences with. All these other authors that are at Rosenfeld Media. Are you kidding me? I?

Joe Natoli:

came up looking up to these people and now I talk to at conferences with all these other authors that are at Rosenfeld Media. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I came up looking up to these people and now I talk to them every week. I cannot overestimate the importance of that. Whatever you want to call it right Support system, family inspiration, guidance, something to sort of check yourself against it's immeasurable.

Coach Zee:

That sounds really amazing. Just to have all those people in your path to guide you as you went and just to keep you motivated to do the work that you're doing.

Joe Natoli:

If you ever told me 30 years ago, if you told me I was going to be mentioned in the same sentence with some of these people, I would have laughed you out of the room. Okay, there's no way, there's no way. So I, I. This doesn't even make sense to me some days.

Coach Zee:

Yeah, it sounds amazing Like you know everything coming full circle with the book. And also, speaking of the book, yeah, so UX, team of one, and I noticed that it said second edition, so it was a first edition. Tell me a little bit more about you know, without giving away the entire book, just tell me a little bit more about the book about the book Sure.

Joe Natoli:

Here's an massive credit for all this goes to the books. The author of the first edition, Leah Buley, who's I coauthored this book with. This is one of those situations. Okay, Like all the people I just talked about, I read this book when it came out over a decade ago and I was in love with it instantly. Okay, it's one of three books that I read and I felt like after I read it, I'm like man. I wish I'd written this you know I seriously um.

Joe Natoli:

Jesse's book was was the first, leah's book was the second and then steve krug's. Don't make me think, but they're all good one, they're simple right and steve is the same way.

Joe Natoli:

I mean, what a guy? Yep, um, but they're all practical and actionable and simple. What leah did and people tell this story okay when she was at adaptive path. This book was born, apparently, out of a presentation that she gave while she was at adaptive path and everyone who was in the room people still talk about this online now that second edition is out was blown away. This makes so much sense and she did what I think this book still does, which is bring all this down to earth.

Joe Natoli:

It's accessible, it's approachable, no matter who you are, no matter what challenges you're facing, whether you're a team of one or a team of a few. This book is kind of like everything you could ever possibly want to know about ux practice and methods and the world in which you will be working in in one place. It's an astounding, astounding feat. So when Rosenfeld when Lou Rosenfeld reached out I think it was like a year and a half ago now and said would you be interested in doing, you know, the second edition of? And he started to say the title and I was like yes, absolutely. And he's like do you want to hear the rest? I said no.

Coach Zee:

Wow, what an opportunity.

Joe Natoli:

Yeah, you know, same thing. Like I told you, when I read the book the first time, I was like this is just. It's phenomenal, as someone who's an author. Like I said, there are lots of books I've written where you finish them and you go. Man, I wish I wrote that Because it's in line with everything that I believe Right.

Joe Natoli:

So to be involved in a second edition and really what we've done is we've brought it into the present. You know, time, dates, everything, the core of the book, the methods, the approach, the process, the principles that she first talked about, you know, a decade ago, are still absolutely 100% true. All we really did is we included a lot of the challenges that have come about as a result of the way business has changed, quite frankly, over the years and with the advance of technology and then speed at which that's happening, there's been a lot of rapid change, you know, in a 10 year period or whatever it is. So I couldn't be more honored to be part of this and I also honestly think without sounding like I'm biased, which I probably am, I think for new practitioners especially, or practitioners who are struggling, I think this is the absolute best book you can pick up. I really, really believe that, and that is more on Leah than it is on me.

Coach Zee:

Wow, sounds amazing. It sounds really good. I remember when I first started in UX, I was like trying to get the best books out there. I was asking people like, what's the best UX book I can read? What are the books that I did get? Don't make me think, and that was one of the first ones that I read as well, so yeah.

Coach Zee:

So, before I let you go, I just want to ask you for my audience, who are basically teachers, who are transitioning into UX or interested in the UX field, what advice would you give them, as they're trying to transition into the field.

Joe Natoli:

Well, a couple of things. I mean number one, because you're transitioning from one career to another. One of the things that you absolutely have to do in your resume and your LinkedIn profile in a portfolio is you cannot completely discount your past experience as a teacher. Okay, Okay.

Joe Natoli:

You want to look back at all the things that you've done as an educator and you want to tell those stories from the lens of user experience. In this case, it's probably student experience, learning outcomes. There is a whole lot to me, there's a whole lot of crossover between teaching and UX, but you can't necessarily just tell stories by being a teacher. Go back through your history, look at what you've done and say to yourself okay, which of these stories, which of these things that I have accomplished, what outcomes do I have that I can reframe through a UX point of view perspective. That's important, because what you don't have, the one disadvantage you are operating at, is that you don't have real client work yet.

Joe Natoli:

And that's a problem. We're at a point where recruiters, most recruiters, are going to give you 30 seconds. That's not a lie. Okay, that's a.

Coach Zee:

that's a fact yeah, talk to just about any recruiter, if they'll admit it.

Joe Natoli:

They'll tell you that. The ones that I know and the companies that I have you know worked with in the past. They'll tell you they've got a list of stuff. It's 30 seconds. Do I care? Does this matter? What is this person done? So the fact that you don't have actual work and you have to get some, by the way, that is, that is a of course, prerequisite as well um.

Joe Natoli:

So you've got to be telling really compelling stories. From the minute somebody hits that page, it can't just be did this, did this, did this, did this, did this? Who cares? If you've worked for an organization, if you've taught for university, if you whatever, what did you help them accomplish? How? How did you make them better? What did you give those students that they couldn't get anywhere else? You have to be telling a compelling story that says I am uniquely positioned for this role and here's why. Yep, it's a sales pitch.

Coach Zee:

Yep exactly.

Joe Natoli:

It's hard. It's a hard time to get hired in this profession right now. The hiring process itself is very broken.

Coach Zee:

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Natoli:

That's putting it, putting it kindly. It's just it's broken. Right now, everything takes longer than it should. There's bottlenecks because of the you know, 12 rounds of interviews. Right. All this process and artifice that's in place because people are risk averse. It's all very silly and it slows down the entire thing. And you just have to be my three, three things. I tell people all the time. It's the three P's patience, persistence, perseverance.

Narrator:

Not going to be fast. Yeah, it's not going to be fast, it's going to take longer than you want. Yeah.

Joe Natoli:

It's going to hurt. You're going to be demoralized at multiple points along the journey. You got to stick with it, yeah.

Coach Zee:

Stick with it. I you got to stick with it. Yeah, stick with it. I like that. I like that advice. I mean, I think when I came into UX in 2022, it was a little bit faster than the norm.

Joe Natoli:

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Coach Zee:

Definitely I'm seeing now, after interviewing so many people and just keeping a pulse on what's happening, I'm seeing now that that is definitely changing and it's taking longer, just like you said, and so I think it's really important for teachers to be able to look at all the things they've done in the past and kind of try to look at it through a UX lens and see what they can pull out and say, okay, I've done this for users, my students, just like you said. So don't start from a place of deficit, but talk about what you've already done and how that relates to UX space.

Joe Natoli:

Yes, I mean, think about it. Okay, teachers, I don't know a single teacher. I've never met a single teacher, at either high school level, middle school level or college level, who hasn't essentially been working to educate a class with one arm tied behind their back. You never have the resources you need. You certainly don't have the time you need.

Coach Zee:

Okay.

Joe Natoli:

Anybody that has ever taught knows that it is not restricted to the hours you spend in a classroom. Right. It's three times that. Mm-hmm. So I feel like there are lots of stories where you had to overcome constraints, limitations. You had to innovate. You had to say, okay, well, how do I get this done? Right. I think those stories are there. I really do.

Coach Zee:

Yeah, I agree, they are definitely there, so it was so great to have you on the show today. Joe, thank you for all the advice you gave and telling your story here. So if anyone wants to reach out to you, get their hands on your book, connect with you, work with you get their hands on your book, connect with you, work with you. How can they do that Two places? My public website is givegooduxcom. I love this. You'll find links to just about yeah, give good UX.

Joe Natoli:

I just love that. Okay, I saw a t-shirt once that said it was an environmental kind of thing. It said give good earth, and that always struck with them Like that's cool. You know, I saw something years years ago that said give good earth, and that always struck with them like that's cool. You know, I saw something years years ago that said give good interface. And it's so. It's funny like and I came up with that many years ago but I've always kind of liked it. It just makes me chuckleademy. Ux365academycom. You can also go to Rosenfeld Media to find the new book. But everything is everywhere. You know, and I do a lot of social media, probably too much. I probably spend too much time on social media. I have a YouTube channel where I try to post lots of just quick instructional videos or ideas and concepts and principles and methods that I think will help people. I have lots of free books on my website as well that people can grab, Just trying to give back.

Joe Natoli:

you know, as much as possible. One of the things that you hit upon, you know, when you asked me about people who have helped me throughout my career. I take all that very seriously and, as much as I can, I try to make sure that I'm always putting something out there in return, Even when I have to promote my own stuff. I try to make it so that I'm giving three or four or five things before I ever ask for anything. I just feel like that's the right way to do it.

Coach Zee:

Yeah, that sounds right and that feels right. I mean just the fact that you just mentioned that you have a lot of free books that people can access. That's amazing too. So I'm going to drop all those links to the things that you mentioned in the description box in the show notes.

Joe Natoli:

Cool.

Coach Zee:

So that people can access them. And, joe, I just want to thank you again for coming in today. It was so great to hear from you.

Joe Natoli:

Thank you. Thank you, Zia. I really appreciate the time and this has been wonderful. I could probably do it all day.

Coach Zee:

Yeah, I know, all right, Take care.

Joe Natoli:

You too.

Coach Zee:

Bye-bye.

Narrator:

Hey, thanks so much for tuning in. If you like this podcast, hit, follow and scroll down to leave a five-star rating. Then share it with a friend. If you're looking for resources to help you on your tech transition journey, head over to uxteacherprepcom. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at uxteacherprep for daily tips and motivation. Have a topic you'd like to hear addressed on the show? Send us a DM on Instagram. If you're listening on YouTube, like, subscribe and share. Until next time, be well.