Design for People, Not Just Features With Charly Leetham

Ever feel like your tools change faster than your lesson plans? Jackie sat down with tech translator and founder Charly Leetham to unpack a calmer, smarter way to work with technology—one that starts with first principles, respects human limits, and favors preparation over firefighting. From story-rich field experience to practical classroom routines, this conversation is a guide to making tech serve the teaching, not the other way around.

If you’re ready to replace panic with process and guesswork with clarity, this conversation is your blueprint. Subscribe for more practical tech strategies, share this episode with a colleague who’s drowning in updates, and leave a review to help others find the show. What’s the one routine you’ll adopt this month?

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Charly Leetham’s website and social media links below.

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📢 Call-to-Action: If today’s conversation sparked ideas about simplifying your tech, visit Charly’s website to explore her resources on making technology more manageable. Choose one current course or project you’re working on and use one of Charly’s tips or takeaways to clean up, streamline, or stabilize the tech behind it this month. 

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Transcript

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Welcome & Guest Introduction

Jackie Pelegrin 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Designing with Love podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips, and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello, instructional designers and educators. Welcome to episode 116 of the Designing with Love Podcast. I'm thrilled to have Charlie Letham with me today. Charlie is the founder and CEO of Ask Charlie Letham, where she specializes in translating complex technology into simple, practical solutions so small businesses and organizations can focus on what they do best instead of fighting their tech. Welcome to the show, Charlie.

Speaker 1 0:42

Hey Jackie, thanks so much for having me. I'm really, really looking forward to having a conversation with you.

Jackie Pelegrin 0:48

Yes, me too. And as I mentioned before, we hit the record button. I always love uh giving that shout out to PodMatch because that's where we we got connected. So thank you so much for reaching out and uh and thank you to Podmatch for the connection.

Speaker 1 1:03

Absolutely. I'm I'm I'm really, really impressed with uh the the the post that I found through uh PodMatch. That's great.

Jackie Pelegrin 1:11

Great.

Charly’s Path Into Tech

Jackie Pelegrin 1:12

I love it. So to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and share what inspired you to focus on translating complex tech into simple solutions for small businesses and everyday users?

Speaker 1 1:24

I sure can. Look, I'm a Gen X. Um, so that means that by the time I was 13, I was 30. And by the time I was 30, I was still 13. Um I love that. We really, we really, we really do grow up in the in the world of, you know, get outside and play, don't come home till the lights come home on. Uh if you're not if you're not home by the time the lights are on, you are in so much trouble. Yes. And and that's kind of in in many ways, that has just shaped how I've approached life. It's kind of like get in, boots and all, try things, uh, do things, see what works, see what doesn't work. Okay, so that's that's where I'm at. Uh, I got into tech as a very young girl. Uh, my dad, you were mentioning your your uncle, it was my dad, uh, and he he was playing with stuff when I was a tiny girl, and I'd go up and what you do, and tell me what we're doing. And he would just naturally say, Well, here, try this, do this, do this, these sorts of things. Um, and that's lasted with me throughout my entire life. I uh every time something's come up, and and it really just hit the way my brain worked and the things that I really enjoyed doing. Uh, I I would just get in and oh, here's here's a coding book, here's a book on how to write programs for the the TRS-80 or the what it would be, System 80, whatever it was at the time. And like, oh, okay, cool. Look, I've got raindrops falling on the screen, and I've got a beer running across the screen, you know, the little pixel art that goes across the screen. Um that that's just stuck with me. I and I left school at 16 uh and went and did an associate diploma of electronic engineering because I could see that that was going to be somewhere that would open up as a career for me. Uh, I didn't want to go into secretarial, I didn't want to, I was one of those, I didn't want to go and be a secretary, I didn't want to go and do a chef course, I didn't want to do do the admin side of things. Um, so tech was the way I went. An associate diplomat of electronic engineering is very hands-on. I would build things, I was building power supplies, I was making printed circuit boards, I was doing all those sorts of things. And from there, it just sort of blossomed. I always say I was in the right place at the right time. It was also a matter of taking the opportunities as they appeared. So not only was I in the right place at the right time, the opportunity would appear. I say, sure, I'll give that a go. I have no idea what I'm doing, but let's try it. And I've done sales management, I've done project management, I've done contract management, I've done bid management, I've done customer relationship management, as well as being a field service tech, being out getting my hands dirty, climbing under computer ring floors, running cables in roofs, climbing up ladders, all of those sorts of things. And I've got some funny stories about climbing up ladders as a young lady in high heels. Don't try it. Um Wow. And and yeah, that that all happened. Then I had a franchise and got bored. Like, well, I wouldn't get bored, I got burnt out, I think. I just went, I don't want to work for someone else anymore. I was just hitting 40. Um, I had done my master's business administration by that point. So I didn't go to uni, didn't go to college. I didn't did that when I was in my early 40s. I think that's right. No, I was 30s. Don't worry about it. I didn't have my master's business administration. By the time I was 40, it was like, I want something else. So I went and bought some franchises. Bought myself another job. Uh, I went into retail after never, ever, ever having worked retail ever. And I we did really, really well for the first 18 months. And then the franchise didn't blossom. The franchise didn't grow. The franchise owners themselves weren't reading the market like they should have. And I was seeing it, and I'm saying to my too late. I said to my then partner, we need to get out, we need to go, and we lost a lot of money. So by that point, it's like I've got two kids, I've got a lot of debt, I've got a lot of skill. I know I had a lot of skill. So this business was born. This is this is a really long way of saying this business was born out of the necessity to put food on the table. It was born out of the fact that I knew that I could help people with their computers, with their websites, with their email. Uh, I was learning as I I was, I have always I was always running, was like, oh, you've got a problem, let me go and work out how to fix that. Oh, that's not working, let me go and work out how to fix that. Rarely was it, I've got this thing that I can do for you. It was more, you've got a problem, how do I help you fix that? How do I make this simple for you? How do I take all of this stress out of it? So that's how we got to where I am today. That's why I translate things because I've got friends who don't think like me. Um, I've got, yeah, I've got friends who don't think like me. I've got people around me who don't think like me. And I can look at something and go, well, the answer is this, and they go, Well, why is why? I'm like, okay, now I have to try and bring this back to terms that you will understand so that you can feel empowered to at least try to fix the problems yourself when that comes up. Why do I do that? Because I learned differently myself. I'm not a traditional learner.

Learning Styles & Simplifying Complexity

Speaker 1 6:40

Um, I hated school. Absolutely hated school. Uh I hated sitting in a class and having people lecture at me and having to remember all of this stuff. The best way I learned was to see, here you see, do. Full body learner. Full body learner, here, see, do. And my dad had picked that up really early on, which is why he got me into tech and said, here's a project, just go do it, just work it out. If you have troubles, we'll go through it. So for me, it's really these are the learning things that I need. How can I take that to help others? How do I help others understand what I know? Long story, there you go.

Jackie Pelegrin 7:19

I love that. Well, and I love that you take that complex information and you make it simple, which is what I do every day. I try to take the complex and make it simple, make it easy to understand and recognizing that not everybody learns the same way, right? So you're, yeah, I like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 7:35

Yeah, that's a big one. Um, I also find that you you do also have to accept that not everyone is going to be able to take the information that you're providing them and actually understand it. And what you what we need to do there, I guess, as educators, as people who are instructed providing instruction on things, is accept that not everyone is going to be able to understand it. Not everyone is going to be able to do the thing that you're asking them to do. And the best thing we can do at that point is say to them, that's okay. That's what we're here for. That's why we're here, so that you don't have to worry about it. You know, I can't do calculus, but you know calculus. If I was to drop a calculus thing in front of you, you'd go, blah, there it all is. And me, I'd look at it and go, they're squiggles on a page.

Jackie Pelegrin 8:22

Yeah, exactly. Right. So it's it's important to make that connection and yeah, meet the meet the learners where they're at and know you're gonna have a variety of different uh different learning styles. And also, like you said, people are gonna be at different points of what they know. So it's important to know not everybody's gonna be at the same place in their learning. So that's that's great. I love that. Yeah, that's wonderful. Great.

Speaker 1 8:48

So do you do do you do you find that as well, Jackie? Like when when you're when you're teaching people that sometimes it's like, okay, this isn't landing. I either need to find something else or we need to break it and go and do something else and then come back to it later on.

Jackie Pelegrin 9:01

I do. I find that I do find that sometimes, um, especially with the technology, they uh students are at different levels. And so what I've learned over time with the curriculum when we go to develop it, um, because we develop a centralized type of curriculum at the university, I I help support. And so uh sometimes some of the subject matter experts, which are faculty usually, or curriculum developers, they'll say, Well, let's let's put this in there. And I'm like, yeah, but we can't assume that all of them will know how to create a video or they'll know how to use AI, or we have to be able to just assume that they won't and meet them where they're at. So um provide them what they need and and um and and then you know they can ask the instructor questions if they need to, but let's at least, you know, give them as much as we can um so and make it digestible. And so yeah, that's an important part of it.

Speaker 1 9:56

Yeah, yeah, that's I've I find that. I uh I know when I try to sit down and do my tutorials, I'll actually start a tutorial and I'll get into it. And I'll go, oh, oh no, they won't, they they won't have this basis of understanding. I'm pulling from a whole heap of stuff that I've already got here. So then I'll break that video and I'll go back and I'll say, okay, let me break this down and write it out. Like, what do I need to do? What are the steps I need to to get them to the point that they can actually do this one thing? And I try to break it down so that if they know the information, they can go, I don't need that, I don't need that, I don't need that. If they want to dive in into the part that's like, this is how you do this specific thing, and they go, I don't understand, I don't, I don't have it, they've got resources they can go back to and say, I need to learn this specific thing. I think that works really well.

Jackie Pelegrin 10:43

I think so too. Yeah, breaking it down into those those chunks, I think really helps. And um, and that's what we call in instructional design is uh cognitive loads. So knowing how the brain processes that information and uh that we don't want to overwhelm the the brain with too much because then long-term memory can only retain so much. So um so it's great that you recognize that and you're able to uh to take your materials and and and create that so that they have it if they need it. And if they don't, then that's okay. They can they can move on from that, but at least it's there as a support if they need it. So I like that. That's great.

Speaker 1 11:24

Yeah, I yeah, yeah. I've got to say that there are times that I'm going, yeah, this is fine. And then someone comes back to me and says, But how did you get there? I'm like, I never even considered that that wouldn't be that was that that was a thing that people didn't know. Uh and that's a matter of you don't know what you don't know until people are asking you questions as well. And I think as as part of my success is that I actually ask people, like I ask people for feedback. Uh, sometimes it's brutal, sometimes it's just rude. Um, but you've got to have that thick skin and go, you know, they they're giving me this feedback now. What can I take from it? What will help me improve what I'm doing so that I can help others?

Jackie Pelegrin 12:04

Right. That's so important.

Applying Small-Business Tech Lessons To Education

Jackie Pelegrin 12:06

Yes. And we kind of touched on this a little bit. Uh, but as you know, many of my listeners work in schools, universities, and even corporate learning teams. So when you think about the way you support the small businesses with their tech, how how do those same principles that you teach them apply to educational settings like classrooms, online programs, and maybe even those learning and development departments?

Speaker 1 13:08

If you were to look at what I do, it is to provide similar information that those sorts of classroom environments actually provide. I'm not trying to replace the classroom environment. I'm just trying to give someone another alternative to learn how to do something quickly. Uh so yeah, educators and and these environment these environments have a real place, but sometimes someone just needs that real quick. How do I do this? What do I do? Um, what what instructional places and institutions can take from what I do and what where they all apply. First of all, as you said, be where the learner is at. Understand where they're coming from. Understand, for me, often when I'm trying to help someone resolve a problem, I don't try to resolve the problem that they've got. I try to find out what it is they're trying to do. What is the objective? Why are you doing these things here that are causing you problems? Why are you doing them? And what is it you want from the end of this? Because sometimes it's easier to say you don't do that at all. This is what you need to do, and redirect that learning to something that they can actually cognitively and uh emotionally cope with. And when you say, Yeah, you I know that you were told that this is the way to do it. I know that you read something and said this is the way to do it. But there's a better way, and we can do it this way and and teach them that way. So understand what their objectives are. What are their learning objectives? Don't don't get stuck down with uh, but the curriculum says we have to teach steps A, B, C, and D. I am sure as as educators, you actually have to teach them. But if you can understand what the objectives of what your learner is trying to get to, you can make those steps stick so much easier. You can give people them reason to learn them. They're not just learning them because the curriculum says they have to learn them, they're learning them because those steps are going to help them achieve an outcome in the long run.

Jackie Pelegrin 15:12

Absolutely. That is so important. I love that. And I love that you connected that um as as a broader um principle, right? Uh, to be able to have that. So that's that's great. That's a great reminder, absolutely, because yeah, we can get bogged down in standards and like you said, the curriculum and and uh and sometimes students can see it as busy work and they're like, why do I have to do this? Is this just to fulfill some type of need somewhere that the the program has or that the course has, or is this actually going to help me in my career? So, you know, you're helping um you're helping those that you know want to grow their business or want to be able to um avoid those long-term types of problems and they're tech down the road. So yeah, so it's great that you're you're taking that proactive approach with it. So I think educators can do that too, and take that proactive approach. Yes.

Speaker 1 16:08

That's a lot from my own experiences as a student. Yeah, like I I remember sitting in class and why am I learning this? And the teachers, that the classes I did best in were the ones where the teachers said, You're learning this because this is going to give you this foundation, and later on we're gonna do this, and you're going to need to refer back to it. And then later on, when we got to that bit, they'd come back and say, So, you know, all that stuff that we did that was really boring. Well, this is where this now comes in. Um, I I think that's the other thing that I I should mention is teaching first principles. Don't just teach by rote, don't just teach you do step A and step B and step C and step D, and you'll get to here. Because sometimes going between step A and step B doesn't work the way you think it will, or B and C won't work, or you get to step D and work out that the result you got from B was incorrect. If you teach from first principles, the reason we're doing this is because of this. When we build uh and I can go back to my electronics background for this, uh my tech background for this, is understanding why that formula works, understand the principles as to why that formula actually does what it does, understand why that formula was structured the way it was formed, the way it was. I keep saying that there are days that my dad and I will sit down, because dad's a tech as well, he's an electrician and a tech, and we'll be sit down and something's not working, and the two of us will sit down and we'll just get a piece of paper and we'll just go, okay, first principles. How should this work? How do we understand that this should work based on our experience and our understanding of the theory behind it? And once we get that out, we go, oh okay, so this is the principle, and this is what's broken. So we can probably look over here, there's what's broken. Now we know what's broken. We can know we might not know how to fix it straight up, but we know where it's broken. We know why it's broken or why it is breaking, maybe not why it's broken, but why it is breaking. Now we've got something we can go and actually work on and and define and try and try and get ourselves through. So understand, get people to understand the first principles, the the base principles. The foundation work is just so, so important. And teach them that if something isn't working or you're not getting the result you think it should, you should be getting, go back. Don't be afraid to go back to the beginning and set it all out again and work your way through it. Sometimes you have to go back to the beginning.

Jackie Pelegrin 18:41

Right. That's so true. And and see why maybe something is is not working and or why maybe you need to make an adjustment along the way. Yeah, that's so true. Definitely. Yes. So from your vantage point, uh, Charlie, what kind of tech mistakes do educators and instructional designers, maybe like me, most often make without really knowing it? And what are some simple ways that they can avoid those pitfalls

First Principles For Troubleshooting

Jackie Pelegrin 19:08

in the future?

Speaker 1 19:10

You know, I've been thinking about how to answer that question. And I I think my answer isn't going to be what you wanted me to say, but I I think one of the things that bugs me the most when I get someone come to me and say, This isn't working, is they say, I should know this. This is simple stuff. And they're saying that because everyone around them is saying, This is simple stuff. Trust me, technology is not simple, it's only simple because we use it every day or you're using it every day, you're doing the same thing again and again and again. So it becomes simple for you. It becomes something you know. Don't think that just because something isn't working, it's you.

Speaker 2 19:51

It it might be you. But it's also likely that there's a couple of things that it might be. You might not be using it the way you should be using it.

Speaker 1 20:04

Um you know, the the the most optimal way of using it. It might be that the instructions were written for a previous version and they haven't updated the instructions, but they've updated the versions and something's changed. And now you've got to work out how how to make it work again, even though it's always worked the way it did until right now, and it doesn't work. Remember what I was saying? It's like you don't know what you don't know until you don't know it. Um something works until it doesn't. Um Be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to say, What do you guys think? Why do you think this is doing this? Go go go out and get that assistance. And certainly don't be beating yourself up because something isn't working the way you think it should be if you don't do it all the time. The reason I do really well with certain things and the things that I work with, I do it every day. Someone will come to me and say, um, oh, can you do this? I'm like, yeah, it's done there. Like, how did you do that? Well, I do this every day. This is this is now broken memory, this is now habit for me. I know what buttons to check and where to look and what to do.

Jackie Pelegrin 21:15

It's inherent, so you've you've learned, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 21:18

It's muscle memory. It is absolutely muscle memory. But for me, that it's my brain muscle, but it's muscle memory. Right. Um, don't be afraid to ask for help. The other thing is um, if you're asking for help, don't go to someone and say, and I mean this is this is sort of all my side of things at the moment, so this should only take five minutes. If you don't know how something should be done, you can't say how long it's gonna take. Now it might take me five minutes, but that's five minutes because I've got 40 years experience and I pay for all my training and I've got all this all this stuff that I I do. Someone else it could take hours to do because I know the little shortcuts through it. I know how to make things move. So don't don't sort of preempt yourself and say, Oh, it's only going to take five minutes and it takes you an hour, and then you think, yeah, I'm sorry to fail it. No, it's not right. Um, so that that's sort of where where you're at. In terms of educators and the tech mistakes they make and what they can be doing for their students. I'm just trying to think how to make that one land for you. I think it's again it's a matter of just go back to first principles. Just always make sure that you understand what a tool is supposed to do, what the outcome of that tool is supposed to be, and and that will inform how you can teach on it or how you can use it or how you can use it in your teaching. Um, that would that would be my next one. One of the biggest mistakes is just assuming that the tech is gonna work when you're going to do your lectures or when you're going to do your demonstrations. Take the time before you set up your lectures, take the time before you actually start teaching. Make sure that your tech is actually working. I don't know how many times I get panic triangles. We're about to start and it's not working. Or did you test it? No. Okay, so let's go through it. Well, so what's happened? Well, an update went through two days ago, or an update went through yesterday, and that's actually blown away a whole heap of settings, or the interface has changed. Now you've got to relearn the interface. Give yourself a break. Make sure you're giving yourselves the opportunity to be successful by making sure it does work the way you think it should work before you open up the screen and say to you, students, and this is what it's going to do, and it doesn't, because you feel like an idiot.

unknown 23:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1 23:50

You want to swear because damn technology. Now you can make a joke of it say, Well, look, there's an update. And by all means, be honest about it too. Look, an update's gone through. This is a classic example of how things might not work for you when you first go to do it. But give yourselves as much chance of success when you're when you're when you're going to do whatever it is you're doing with your students. Make sure you're it does do it the way you think it should do it and was doing it when you go to do your demonstrations. Does that make sense?

Jackie Pelegrin 24:19

That does, yeah. Not making assumptions it's always gonna be the same all the time because

Common Tech Pitfalls & Mindset Shifts

Jackie Pelegrin 24:24

technology changes so much and so often, right? So yeah, being being prepared and having having that mindset. I think it takes some a mindset shift, right? For us, uh Charlie, those that are in education, of just not assuming that it's always gonna work the same and yeah, preparing for for those updates that we may not know it's it's going to make. I've had that happen with Zoom sometimes. I go to get into a meeting and all of a sudden they'll be like, Zoom update. And I'm like, no, I'm getting ready to go into this meeting in two minutes and you're you want to do an update. And so I've learned now, okay, I should get into the meeting at least five to seven minutes before I'm supposed to be in there in case it wants to do an update or in case it crashes. You just never know, right? So, and I don't want to be late to the meeting.

Speaker 1 25:11

So I've got to, I've actually got to sort of just admit today, you know, today I was running a little late. So when I came on, I was actually a little stressed because I hadn't had I didn't check that my camera was working until just before the meeting. I didn't have my background set up. I didn't make sure my background was working because I've I've come on and the background's not worked and the camera's not focusing, and I I've done all that. I've been all there. And normally I try to get in 10 to 15 minutes ahead of time because that's wasting my time. It's not wasting my host time, it's not wasting my guest time, it's wasting my time. And I know that I can get there and go, we're working the way we should be. Getting on three minutes before and having oh, the software updated last night, and you know, it's eight o'clock in the morning, I'm doing I'm doing this meeting, and the software updated last night, and now the UI is all changed, or this has changed, or this is how conflicting with this. And oh it's a nightmare, and you're stressed, you're stressed right from the beginning. Um, do you do you find UI changes are one of the biggest drug bears you have as an educator?

Jackie Pelegrin 26:18

Absolutely, yes. Uh like, yeah, that when they go and change something, and I'm like, where's that icon or where's that feature? I go to file and I'm like, wait, it's not in file anymore. It's in edit or somewhere else. Yeah, it's frustrating. And then I'm like, wait, I didn't know, yeah, didn't know that change. So then you have to kind of learn it on the fly. And they don't give you sometimes they they don't tell you that update's coming. So that's that's tough for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 26:45

So and even if they do tell you it's stuck in the bottom of release notes somewhere and who reads release notes, honestly.

Jackie Pelegrin 26:53

Exactly. Yeah. Right. So true. It's like tiny little text, you know, that's yeah, it's almost like way down legal east type of language and and yeah, that people can't really understand. And yeah, that's true. But I like Charlie what you said about being gracious for to ourselves is and and just knowing that the, you know, that we're not gonna know at all, and that's okay. And to ask for help, I think that's so important because it's it's so true. And um, yeah, because I, you know, there's things that I learned years ago from someone, and then I go to do it and I'm like, well, you know, I I don't know if that's really the best way to do it. Um, but you're right. I mean, sometimes you pick up a user's manual and you may not realize that it's an outdated manual and you're you're learning something that's uh the steps are not matching with what the the software says um or what it or what it actually does. So yeah, I think being gracious and asking for help is so important. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:55

I I I think the other thing that I'd like to just sort of hit on there, uh, if you're an educator teaching people the design side of things and you're in that design space where you know you might be teaching them to write programs, you might be teaching them to generate spreadsheets that people can use to do things, yeah. Those sorts of things. Understand that when you come from at something from a technical point of view, you actually forget about the human aspect of what you're doing. So you will design something and you'll go, I need to do it, so it does this and the I've got to get this input, I've got to give that output. And you tend to forget that there is a user at the end of this that has to use it, and your design doesn't take that into consideration. Now, that is why we have a lot of software, and there is a lot of software that I pick up, or someone comes to me and says, This, this, this, this sucks. This is terrible. And I look at it and I go through it and I go, How did you put that out, Mike? Because I've got a tech brain. Because I've got a tech brain, I looked at that and went, Oh, how would I have designed this? I would have done this and done that. Your average user doesn't think like we think. Um Right. So true. Uh yeah, yeah, your average your average user doesn't think like we think. So when you're doing your design work, by all means, just do the design work, but then get someone who has no idea in to use your system before you put it out for a release or a beta or an alpha. Get someone, get a human involved. When my mum was alive, and you know, make sure you rest in peace. My mum is a lovely lady, but oh my god, she was the best beta tester I could get. And I would just sit her down in front of something and say, just use it and just stand behind her and watch and watch what she do. And I'd go, why? Why are you doing that? She's because that makes sense to me. I love that. Oh my goodness. Um like I would never have expected someone to do that. So

Prepare, Test, And Handle UI Changes

Speaker 1 30:04

to me, that was a really big experience. Um, yeah, and when when people come to me with problems, I'm like, well, how are you making it do that? And I get I it used to be, you know, you'd have to go and stand behind them and watch them on the screen. Now I can at least do a screen share and say, show me what you're doing. Right. I would never have expected that you to do it that way. So they do do it that way. Um, and and and as designers, as people who are people who are learning the design aspect, understand that your design aspect, this is where I'm going to get it to land now for you. That design aspect does have a human aspect to it, and you need to include that in your overall design. Don't do it as a ballpo. Don't just go at the end of it. Now we need to get the humans to use it.

Jackie Pelegrin 30:47

Yes, that is so important. I'm glad you brought that up because that's something that I talk to my students a lot about because they are designing training. They're designing professional development for a user at the end of it and a learner. So yeah, having that human-centered design approach is so important. And yeah, it's true. We tend to, as tech people, we tend to kind of isolate that, right? And just think about the technology and oh, this will look so great if I do this. But then yeah, it's true. We forget about the users. That alpha and beta testing is so important. That's something where I work. We we do that um before new technology is rolled out by our web services department that they're the ones that work on the new technology and they do updates to our systems internally. And so they do the alpha and the beta testing, and it's so so so vital and so key because they're they actually tell us if do what you have to do, if you break it, that's okay because we want you to actually go in there.

Speaker 1 31:47

Yeah, it needs to break. They need it to break to know where the holes are, to know where the deltas are. The fact that you've got them telling you that tells me that they are really, really good at what they do. Um, because they understand they don't understand what I keep saying it, you don't know what you don't know. I know what I know. I just couldn't tell you what I don't know until someone asked me a question. So I go, oh, I don't know.

Jackie Pelegrin 32:11

I'll go find exactly, yeah. Because then we have times where we have deadlines, and our deadlines where is where we have, you know, a bunch of people in the system at the same time. Well, yeah, I mean, if you if you don't test all that out and figure that out before you go and implement it and release it out, and then you have a hundred people in there trying to do the same thing, and then it the system can't handle it, then you've got a lot of angry, angry people going, I can't get my work done. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 32:45

My experience comes from actually rolling stuff out in a corporate environment. In fact, we were corporate and we were selling into government. And my experience of yeah, they just go and I'm laughing. I'm laughing because it's such a good story. Like, like I've got so many stories like it, but we went in and we were being told that this system is failing. And we're sitting there and we're looking at this system, we're like, we can't make it fail. And we ended up getting uh a network analyzer. We stuck it on the network, and we're watching the bits and bytes go back and forwards and the packets go back and forwards, and we're watching the handshakes. And I saw this thing happen, and I said to my mate who were on working, we're like, That's not right, and he goes, No, it's not. But that's not us. He goes, No, it's not. That's funny. After so, well, we're sitting there, the two of us are sitting there, and we're like, and we had asked the network team that we were working with because we were networking. It was they were saying the net this this device on the network is not working, then the everything device isn't working like that. And we'd asked them like when we got in well, so what changed? Because it was a Monday morning we got called in, or Monday afternoon we got called in. Like, so what changed? You know, what happened over the weekend? Did you do any updates? No, nothing happened to the network. Network, nothing changed, nothing changed, nothing changed. Hmm. And I'm like, okay, cool. And we're looking at this thing, and finally I went, I turned around to the guys we were working with, the the customer. And I said, Okay, you said nothing changed from the network, nothing changed on the network. I said, were there any other updates done to your systems over the weekend? Oh yeah, we upgraded this software system. So we dug down. It was the software upgrade was failing, but it was reporting, it was manifesting itself like a network failure, and we had to go back and we had to roll back the software on this system. It all worked once we rolled it back. Contacted the uh the the software provider and said, Here's the network choices of what's going on. We need this to work. They went, This is really valuable. We didn't expect that. We were working with like they had it working within 24 hours of that, but we spent hours troubleshooting it because we didn't ask the right question. And that was that was one of the lessons I learned. It's like we asked what had changed on the network, nothing had changed on the network. It was the next level up. It was a system that used the network. Like, my question should have been at that point what were the changes that occurred over the weekend? What updates had occurred, what systems did they occur on? How did, you know, what what what were they? I still I don't think I would have got the right answer, but at least if I'd asked the question earlier, I might have. We might not have had to spend all that time sitting there looking at network traces, going, that doesn't look right.

Jackie Pelegrin 35:34

Lessons learned, uh, absolutely. And that's something that we asked of of our subject matter experts and our students is you know, asking questions asking the right questions and digging deeper, right? And uh yeah, you you learn from each experience, absolutely. Wow.

Speaker 1 35:50

Um the other thing I'm gonna suggest is open-ended questions rather than closed-ended questions. And that's a really like that this is something about communication in general. Right. As a as a tech, when we're out troubleshooting, we need to start with really open questions. Tell me about this, tell me how you use it, what do what does what do you think this does? What do you think that does? And then once you start to get down, you then need to start to really hone down those questions. And sometimes, sometimes you will get too closed-ended questions. And sometimes you need those closed-ended questions. When you do this, is it this or is it this? And if they say it's neither, you know you've you know you've got a problem. They're either not in the right place, they're not in the place that you think they were, um, or the system's just not working the way it should do. But if you're asking, if you start to get down to those questions, you then know, oh, we're here and we're doing this. So you've got to you've got to know when to ask those open-ended questions. They're really, really important, but you then also need to know when you need to start changing it down to I need you to be really direct and tell me what this question, what the what the answer to this question is.

Speaker 2 36:54

Is it yes or no? Or is it A or B or is it C or whatever?

Jackie Pelegrin 36:58

Right. Yeah, I like that. Starting broad, open-ended, and then you then you know when to

Human-Centered Design & Real-User Testing

Jackie Pelegrin 37:04

uh really hone in on those things, and then you can, yeah, you can better better help them. I like that. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned earlier, Charlie, that you've been in tech for 40 years, which is to me is absolutely incredible. I I love that. Um, that's amazing. So looking back, what are some things that you think have changed the most about the tools and the landscape in general? And what in your opinion really hasn't changed at all about using technology well?

Speaker 1 37:31

Um, what's changed everything? Like everything. Yeah. Um look look, let's let's just start that when when I was a teenager, we had a phone that was hooked to the wall or sat on a table and it had a cable. Um you didn't know who was ringing you.

Speaker 3 37:50

Right.

Speaker 1 37:52

Uh if you wanted privacy, you would just hope that you had a really long cable on the handset so you could go and sit in a clo in a cupboard or up the hallway so that you could talk without everyone else hearing that conversation. Because those phones were in the in the in the shared space of the house. Now we've got a phone literally in our hand every day. Um we can tell who's calling, we can, we can screen our calls, we we can uh decide to answer them or not. Now that's actually had uh a slightly detrimental effect in that it's with us all the time. So we now have that feeling of, oh, we've got to answer this, we've got to, yeah, there's that feeling of urgency and that feeling of obligation. Um and that that's changed for us because you know, you leave the house if the phone rang, if you were lucky enough, you had an answering system, an answer phone, you know, a little bit with a cassette tape. I don't even know if our listeners will know what a cassette tape is.

Jackie Pelegrin 38:49

I know. I think I think about that too sometimes because I had a pager when I was in high school and I talked to some of some of the kids today, and they're like, what's that? And I'm like, payphone, what's that? What what was that like? And I'm like, oh my goodness, wow.

Speaker 1 39:02

Yeah, so so yeah, if you if you if we just look back to you know, what do we have as kids to what we have now? I can literally travel Australia. Um I can I can work from my car, I drop a small little dish out the side of it, I connect to Starlink and I've got connectivity wherever I am in Australia. Um that that wasn't physically possible. You couldn't do that. You left the house, you had no way of being communicated. You couldn't communicate with anyone who wasn't physically with you at that time. Um computers. I now I'm trying to think of what the statistic was or what the what the metric of it was, but the the computer that was used to send the the astronauts to the moon, the moon the one that did the moon landing was something like a sixteenth of what our mobile phones have today. The bug of the computers. Mobile phones are like 16 times, 20 times the metric might be wrong, but they are just so much more powerful than that computer that puts astronauts on the moon. So there's this sorts of things that we're looking at. Everything has changed. I say everything has changed in that it's now it it's just there within our life. It's endemic within our life. You can't go out and um, you know, you want to use your washing machine. Well, it's got a computer in it now. Yeah, I know it's amazing. You know, it used to be washing machines for people who are listening who are really young or not even. Really young, but for people who are listening, our washing machines used to be you had a dial and you'd have to crank the dial, and it was literally a mechanical thing that would set the timer, would set the we we didn't have very variable water levels, it filled the washing machine. You make sure your washing machine was filled with washing because it would fill with water anyway. Didn't know how much you had in there. It would a mechanical thing would tell it uh what how long to run for. So your programs were pretty much just time-based, and it would set little dials to do it. We didn't have the electronics in our things today. I mean, when you hear when you hear people, when you hear Gen X's and boomers say, I would give anything just to have a machine that didn't have electronics in it. We lived like that. And honestly, those things, those things worked. They just worked. If they failed, we could get someone in to fix them. It wasn't a case of they fail now and we've got to reel them out and wheel in a new one. Um so it's endemic in what we do. Yeah, we've got our microwaves, we've got our air fryers, we've got uh our our our my goodness, video cameras in the houses, ring doorbells. It's all there. That that everything has changed. Just everything. What hasn't changed? First principles. It's failed, it's not working. I need to make this work. How do I do it? We still go back to the same things we were doing 40 years ago to troubleshoot it or to bring things up and make it work as we do today. That that to me hasn't changed.

Jackie Pelegrin 42:12

Yeah, I love that. Those principles. That's that's great. Wonderful. Uh, we talked a little bit about this about being proactive instead of reactive. So if you had an educator or someone like me, an instructional designer that came to you and said, I want to prevent the next big tech breakdown before it happens, uh, what's maybe uh some proactive strategies or routines you would recommend they put in place to kind of prevent that, right?

Speaker 1 42:39

Have a maintenance schedule. So have have a have a checklist of things. That's the first thing I'm going to say, and run through those checklists. Uh, make sure that, yeah, we were speaking about when we come on podcasts or when we come on our interviews, we we get out, we we open up a little earlier and we make sure our systems are working. Uh, it's the same thing. Just make sure you've got your checklist of okay, I've got this system, it controls these things. Um, what what is it I need to do to make sure that this is working the way it's working? Have your little checklists. I can give you uh just remind me that um I can go through like things that I've done with people on websites to to to avoid the problems that they're gonna have later on. Uh but have your checklists. Know how you test it, do your maintenance, please, please, please. With particularly with technology, if you're getting notices saying that there is an update available, don't keep clicking later. Don't keep clicking, I'll do that later, I'll I'll do it later. Schedule the time to do the update. The reason I say that, and you know, there was a time when Microsoft would update our computers and we go, no, we're not applying that patch from Microsoft. We're gonna wait until we've got a day where we can actually recover our computer when it fails. Those days are are well and truly

What Changed In Tech And What Hasn’t

Speaker 1 44:04

behind us. I'm not gonna say that it never happens, but those days are well and truly behind behind us. If Microsoft comes up today and says to me, you've got an update ready to go, when I shut down tonight, I will apply that update. Why? A couple of reasons. First of all, most of those updates are security patches. Security is a massive issue in everything we do. We are online, there are hackers. Don't ever think, oh, they won't hack me, I'm too small. Hackers hack because they can. I I I when someone says, We wanted that why did they come after me? Because they could. You were open, you were a target. They just, oh look, look what I've done. Mum, the one I clever, no, but anyway. Um so most of those patches are security patches. They're really important to get down. Um maybe people don't realize too is that when a patchbook comes out and it's got a security patch in it, there is a there is a set of release notes we've spoken about. We spoke about release notes. Those release notes talk about the the vulnerabilities that have been patched, the vulnerabilities that have been closed. So now what you've got is a list for people who want to go and do bad things to go, oh, are they running that system? Because that system has this set of vulnerabilities. I can go and use that set of vulnerabilities to help.

Jackie Pelegrin 45:27

Oh, then think of that. Okay.

Speaker 1 45:29

Yeah, that's that's why we say do the pack do the updates. When the updates come out, understand that and they have to do it, they can't not do it. They've just given a list of things that your system is now vulnerable to the book.

Jackie Pelegrin 45:43

Apps will do that too, like on the app store, right? Like they'll say bug fixes and they'll list all the bug fixes and improvements. Oh my goodness. So they've just given them a window to that.

Speaker 1 45:55

Wow. So your computer, your phone, your apps, um you're not gonna see it so much for your internet of things. When I talk about the internet of things, I'm talking about the fact that yeah, your washing machine can be on the internet and people can, yeah, you can monitor your washing machine from the internet, your your um video cameras and all of those things. You're not really gonna know that they've got updates. Those updates tend to occur anyway, like that that's just part of it. But if you're seeing those notices come out, make sure you're updating it because you are leaving yourself open to compromise. Um, the other thing that you want, the reason you want to do your upgrades, and I I know I'm pushing on this one, but it's the biggest thing that I see. Compatibility. If you aren't upgrading a particular app that something else upgrades in the background, you are now going to be running into the particular potential that the they're not going to be compatible anymore and something's gonna start failing, something's not gonna work. So when I normally get when someone comes to me and says this isn't working, I'm like, have you done all your updates? Well, no, like we'll do all your updates, restart your phone, restart your device, let me know if it's still occurring. If it's still occurring, I'm happy to help you. But don't don't waste your time with me and your money with me until you've done all these basic things, because these basic things will normally fix 80 because I mean if I work on the Pareto principle, it's 80% of the problems are fixed by 20% of the things, right? Yeah. Do your updates, reboot your device, it's going to be fixed. Right. Um, so yeah, so do your updates. So know what your systems are, make sure you've got your systems documented, know what their inputs and their outputs are. Now by that I mean is what are they connected to, what feeds into it, what feeds out of it. Because if something fails, you can at least then look at look at your diagram and go, oh, it could be here, it could be here, or it could be here. Uh make sure you know what your maintenance channels are, make sure you're doing your updates. Um I guess the other then thing is that just that human aspect. Uh I want to say something like don't assume that you understand it. Know that you probably did understand it, but if there's been updates to go through, make sure you're making sure that that that your understanding has evolved with the updates that have gone through as well. Because things do change. We spoke about UI changes. UI changes are maxia. Um and the final thing, have backups. Please do back up. Yeah, you need to plan for the worst. I am gonna say that with security, the best that I can tell people is that you will get back. The best I can I the best I can say to you is you can do a best effort thing to reduce the possibility of compromise, the con possibility of being hacked. Without a doubt, at some point, something is going to go wrong and you will end up with a compromise somewhere. It might not be a big one, but you will end up with a compromise somewhere. Um, so have your backups. If it happens, if the worst happens and an update fails, or something, someone gets into your system, you can at least blow it away and put it back to them. The last known good build. So have your backups. Um if you if people are gonna ask about that, your computers, you should run a backup program on your computers. Uh, make sure all your data in your computer is is saved off somewhere because once it goes, it goes, you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to get that data off your computer. So don't just rely on hope that the data stays on your computer. Your phones, uh, use the utilities that the phones come with to back up to the cloud. Uh make sure you've got them stored off somewhere else so that if you need to blow your phone away, at least you can get your contact release back, at least you can get your phone risk back, at least you can get whatever data you have, like the documents and your music and your your your books duck onto your phone. Um same for websites, do your backups on your websites, same,

Proactive Routines: Updates, Backups, Checklists

Speaker 1 50:04

same for everything, really. Just don't don't assume that it's all gonna be okay. Plan for the worst. You might never need it, but at least you plan for the worst.

Jackie Pelegrin 50:13

Yeah, that's great. I love that. That's wonderful advice. Uh, definitely. Great. Thank you, Charlie. So, as we wrap up, what are some of maybe your top few tips for listeners who want to level up their technology skills and confidence without feeling overwhelmed by all the tools, the trends, and constant updates that we talked about? Um, or what are just some top tips you wanted to share with that?

Speaker 1 50:36

Um avoid avoid the shiny, shiny thing syndrome. Please avoid the shiny thing syndrome. Just because something is out there um blasting you on YouTube or on your on your ads on your phone, like when you're watching things, you get these ads coming through your social media, just because it's out there saying this is wonderful, and yeah, I I can talk to business a lot more than I can talk to educators, but it's gonna help you earn a thousand dollars a week. Uh no. Yeah, I I've cracked the code to do this. No. Most of those ads, most of those people selling those sorts of things, and you know, touch food. There are a few that are really genuine, but most of those people are people who have never actually done the work themselves. They're just selling a project, a product, or or something, a service that takes your money. It might it probably won't help you. 80% of the time it won't help you. There's only 20% of the things out there that we 80-20 are right. There's only 20 20% of the things out there that are actually gonna do what it's say they say. They do a lot of them are just I'm gonna say scams, but they're people who um haven't done the work themselves. So don't avoid the bright shiny object syndrome. It is really easy to get overwhelmed if you're looking at all this something I've got to learn this, I've got to learn this, I've got to learn this. Find one thing that you're really interested in learning. If you're trying to level up your skills, find one thing that you're really interested in learning. Um, let me see. You want to understand how cloud technology works, you want to understand how cloud storage works best. Uh now, what do you mean by that? Understand what you mean by that. Do you want to understand the technical technical details of it? How it how it works, where things are stored, what what happens? Or do you want to understand that if I say on my phone I'm gonna store this on Google Drive, what that action means, or I'm gonna store this on OneDrive, what that action means. So break it down. Go to bite-sized chunks, then follow follow the warrant. You can get down into um down into the weights of that really, really quickly, but you've got one thing. You've got to have that in your head. What is it I want to learn today, this month, this week, this quarter, this year, whatever it is, and follow it through.

Speaker 2 52:56

Don't get distracted.

Speaker 1 52:58

Don't get distracted by the next bright shiny object, don't get distracted by the fact that people are now saying, oh, the way to do it is this. Um, I I'm sure you remember at the beginning of last year, AI came out and we were all told that AI was going to run our lives. Well, how's that going? Right.

Jackie Pelegrin 53:16

Exactly.

Speaker 1 53:17

How's that going? Now you've got people like me sitting here going, yeah, AI, you know, it lies.

unknown 53:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1 53:24

Hallucinates. We still don't have an AI model that works even 50% as well as you would hope it would work. So don't get too wound up in the fact that, oh, this is the next big thing. My my general thing is I wait. I wait until we have a stable release and then I'll worry about whether I need to learn it or not. Um, if I've got a client come to me and say, Oh, I want to do this thing, I'm like, okay, well, let me have a look. Now tell me, tell me what is it you want to achieve? Because I'll say, I want to do this, well, then why are we using this product? This product isn't going to do it. You've got this product already, you've got this already within your business. Why are you going to spend money on it? Um just don't get distracted. You talk about the overwhelm. Find one thing that you want to learn. Find one thing that you want to do, and then find someone reputable or an organization reputable that you can learn from. I look, I could I could plug my podcast here and say, listen to my podcast. Sure. I do this every day. I do this every every other day at the moment. I have an episode that goes out. I try to keep it down to 15, 20 minutes, where I talk about something that I've seen someone do, or something that I've experienced, or something someone's asked me about. How do I do this? Um, the biggest one recently was how do I delegate my mail in something really simple for me. Something really simple. How do I delegate my mail in Microsoft 365 so other people can access it and help me manage my mail without me giving them their lawyers? That's been a huge one. But it was a really like that's really niche, right? That's really, really niche. Really topic. But find someone that you you can learn from. Uh, don't and don't let let it get too bored.

Speaker 2 55:17

Try to keep it down to what it is you really want to learn.

Speaker 1 55:23

Yeah, yeah. I think that's I think that's the best answer I can give you.

Jackie Pelegrin 55:27

That's wonderful. Those are great tips and suggestions. So thank you, Carly, so much for joining me today on the show and for sharing such practical insights about how to make tech work for us instead of against us, right? That's what we want. Um, so I loved all your stories and your strategies and your real-world examples. I know they'll definitely help all of the educators and instructional designers out there feel more confident as they choose, maintain, and troubleshoot the tech behind their learning experiences. So I wanted to give a little bit of call to action for my listeners. So for all of you out there listening, I encourage you to choose one current course or project you're working on, kind of like what Carly did earlier, just choose one thing and then um use her tips or takeaways to clean up, streamline, or stabilize the tech behind it this month. So hopefully they'll they'll do that and then they'll take all of your tips to heart. So I look forward to having you back again on the show, Charlie. Um appreciate it. And um and feel free to plug your website and your podcast too if you want to do that as well before we close out.

Speaker 1 56:29

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Jackie. And they are really, really good call to actions, particularly at this time of year, by the way. This time of year is a really good time of year to do that sort of thing. It's yeah, we're coming to the end of the year, things are wrapping up. Just do a bit of a in fact, it was one of my podcast episodes, just do a bit of an audit as to where you're at with things and then you'll know where to move forward to. Um, on that note, you can reach me on askcharleetham.com. Uh, if you go to askchareleatham.com slash connectpyth to hyphen me, the little minus signs between it, uh, you you'll be able to find all of my contact details there. I'm basically on every social media network except for TikTok. Uh, and I put out content on those those networks pretty much every day. Um my podcast, ask CharlieLetham.com/slash podcast, easiest way to find it. Every other day I have a tech tip interview go out, uh, sorry, tech tip episode go out where I talk about something that I think is topical to the day. It might be a question I've got in, it might be something I've seen something do, it might just be this set this sounds good. Um, doing the holiday series at the moment because we're coming up for the holidays. Um and I also have interviews with other people in in the sort of space around using tech for business. And sometimes it's inspirational as well, sometimes it's just that that personal development stuff as well that goes along with all of that.

Jackie Pelegrin 57:59

So that's where you can find me. Great. I love it. And I love that you you take what's

Avoid Shiny Objects & Learn With Focus

Jackie Pelegrin 58:04

already out there and what you're seeing, and you're just you're putting that into the podcast. So it's uh it's in the moment and it's helping helping people in that moment of need. So that's great. I love that. Thank you. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much again for being on the podcast. And if there's anything you can think of that you think would benefit my listeners in the future, uh, you're more than welcome to reach out and you can come back on the podcast and we can dig a little deeper and go into some other things as well.

Speaker 1 58:31

That sounds fantastic. And listen, if any of your listeners want some advice, I do offer a 30-minute free consult for new clients. I'm putting that in vertical commerce. Feel free to take take me up on that one, guys. Um, also just reach out via one of the social media networks and message me and ask me questions. I'm always, always open to trying to help people as I can.

Jackie Pelegrin 58:53

Great, wonderful. Yeah, I'll definitely make sure that we get connected on LinkedIn and stuff like that. I always love connecting with professionals that um that are in that that space. And so, yeah, great. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, thanks again, Charlie. I appreciate it. And um we'll can we'll definitely stay connected.

Speaker 1 59:12

Okay, thanks, Jackie, and thank you to your listeners for bearing with us for all this time.

Jackie Pelegrin 59:17

Yes, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review, or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference, and I'm truly thankful for you.