Daniel Houghton: Chapter 1: Tech and creativity

The thing that I have found, and this is kind of a small sample, 10 or 12 companies, I've never met one that was like, "We have our data shit together." Not one. By the way, like, sorting all that shit out was really difficult.

It's Machine Yearning from Assist. We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we're reshaping our culture. You wouldn't think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand, and the future of digital creative agencies would be machine learning territory, but they are when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton. Daniel is the CEO of PYXL, that's P-Y-X-L, a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build, and measurement. Before joining PYXL this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company's 2018 Most Innovative Companies list, and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30. Now Daniel is on the agency side with Pixel and diving into a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist, and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken, and this was his first interview as Pixel CEO. This is machine learning though, so this isn't the typical arms-crossed looking manly on the magazine cover CEO interview. Hang out and enjoy. Here's Shane and Daniel.

What's up, buddy?

How's it going?

So what I was really actually thinking about was when you were a kid, were you always the gadget guy who had the latest thing, always the newest thing, the newest tech digital thing? Since you were a child?

Such a good question. I'm trying to think exactly when it happened because there's definitely a point— well, I guess when I got my first job.

Now, what was your first job?

Oh, I pumped gas at a, uh, at a marina in Alabama.

So how did technology and gas pumping go together?

They didn't. One made money to pay for the other. The first obsession was probably cameras, really, at the time when digital cameras were kind of just not a joke anymore. They started to become serious. And anyone that's a photographer, has a camera, knows you buy one thing and it's like, oh, welcome, now you're going to spend every other penny you own on everything else.

What was the first camera?

The first camera that I bought myself, I think, was a Canon 30D.

What did it do that you couldn't do before?

It actually had a freaking screen you could see.

That was the innovation?

I mean, like, all the cameras before that, like the the 20D and the 10D, like the first digital cameras that Canon made that were like for professionals, the screens were like the size of a postage stamp. And then the 30D came out, it was like a 3.5-inch screen, and it was like, I can see everything. It just changed, it just changed a lot.

What drew you to photography? Was it the technology or was it the photos?

I think it was a mix of all of it. I mean, the technology was fun. That's just fun after the fact. It's fun, everyone knows it's fun to go take pictures. After that though, like the entire process— I mean, I learned how to develop film in a darkroom and I was like, "Meh, this is fun. Don't know if I need to really do that every day." But there's kind of an equivalent process in the digital world and it's just importing and just your entire workflow around that and trying to understand how you tone your images and how you capture them and the entire thing. It occupied my brain for a long time.

When you say workflow, is that how you think about input, outputs, work in general? Like, compare a workflow in photography to a workflow you do in digital today.

I, I think today I probably think of the word, which is like systems. Yeah, like I have systems and I'm trying to constantly assess those, but I do have like routines and just the way I go about things. It's less about cameras today and more about like What programs am I using, and am I using them the right way? And, you know, it's just whatever makes work easier.

Take me from the photo world to being someone who led something through a digital transformation. When you think about the digital world and what's happening in the digital world and the rate of change that's happening, how did you even set out for you personally to be someone who was thinking about the future, understood where it was going, and were curious enough to learn faster than anybody else what to even go focus on to be good at digital in the last 6, 7 years.

I mean, a couple things. One, I've always thought that like consumers are a lot smarter than we think they are, and I didn't— I never was taught how to think about things from a business perspective, so to speak. So I didn't know if I was right or wrong, or I could only approach things as a consumer. And so if I use something, as someone has kind of constantly loved just new technology my entire life, if I use something that didn't make sense, I was just like, why would anyone else use this? So let's just not do that. I know that sounds really simple and stupid, but I didn't know what ROI meant or P&L or zero business terms. I just knew, like, would I want to use this and could I explain this to other people? And if not, then we're just not going to build it. I don't understand. Or if there was something better and we're going to build a competitor, why? What are we going to do that's better?

Would you compare— because you basically led a company through the mobile era and going to mobile and digital, which is hard— would you compare mobile optimized websites that you want to use versus ones you don't want to use as the camera before the big screen and the one with the small screen?

Yeah, it's always about content, right? And so like you go, especially running a content company, you go to some of these content websites, you can't see the fucking content. There's just boom, bam, pop up, and then you start scrolling and then it's like this other thing comes in. I don't know what that is. The only thing that doesn't load is the actual fucking words you're trying to read. And there's so many ads and none of them work and it just That's all so broken. So yeah, there's a pretty clear differentiator. I've always been heavily influenced just by good design, and then when I learned that product design was, was different than just design— there's many types of design— I just started to have an appreciation for that and have always tried to drive towards just really good user experience over everything.

How do you change your mind about a system, or who do you listen to to know when you're using an outdated system or you need a new system?

Well, the easiest one is if you have been using something for more than 2 months, I know you're probably not gonna switch off of it.

What do you mean?

Well, like, we started using Quip so heavily and I fell immediately in love, and I had been an Evernote user since 2008, but I started calling it Evernot Sync because it just never— it just wouldn't sync. I had the notebooks, I like, I had everything, had the pen. I think they made a pen at one point for that, like I I'm so into Evernote, and it took me about 10 minutes using Quip to be like, I'm never opening that again, ever. It was just so good.

So you're saying you've been in Evernote for 5, 6, 7 years, and in under 5 minutes you knew you were gonna switch? What was it exactly that was like, this is so much technologically better, I'm gonna switch?

The first thing was just the ability to reference other documents within. So just to be able to type and then the name of a note so that I could build like a master file because like I know you can do all that with Google Docs, but that's just so much. Like there's so many easy shortcuts in Quip. Just be able to like search and like create a new note, reference another one, throw in an easy Excel sheet. Everything was just so simple to jump back and forth between notes. And I saw you're like, hold on, I reference this over here, boom, click, and then that was there. And then I just started getting really upset that all my information was in Evernote, and you were like, "Oh, don't worry about it, they have an importer." That was the end of that. Haven't opened it since.

Who's the person you've worked with specifically that really changed and taught you what you didn't know about product design?

Probably the original is our, I guess, my former creative director, head of product, Brad Haynes. But he actually came and found me and said, "I think I know what you're trying to do." and I know you're a photographer and you have this kind of visual background. I think we can make something really amazing. And I wish I could claim I was smart enough to be like, hire great people and get out of the way. I didn't know any of that stuff. I just knew that every time he would bring me something, I was like, that, that works.

You knew it when you saw it.

That is so much better. And that's, and we did work on stuff like this is better than this or different things like that. But definitely like a, him as the beginning and another designer that I had, Adam Moore. He was the designer on my team, and it just fueled just kind of an obsession with just well-done design and user experience.

How do you even explain to someone what good product and bad product, good design and bad design is? What's an example?

I think more than anything, I just try to show it to people. I'm a visual person, and I guess the most recent example I have in my head I bought a car the other day, and I bought 4 or 5 cars in my life. Kind of like with cameras and computers, I'll have one for a couple years and sell it and go on to the next thing, just because I'm curious. And when I was doing all my research on the car, I found out that it had this whole suite of mobile apps for iPhone and Android. One that does your navigation, one that does third-party apps, one that is specifically designed to turn the car on and off, see where it's located. Is the valet going too fast on the way to the garage? All that kind of stuff. And I got really, really excited when I found out about that. Like, my eyes rolled back in my head because I was like, tech heaven. And Katie was even joking with me like, oh great, yeah, of course, now you're gonna buy the car. Like, it has apps that it comes with. And I got really excited and I went to the App Store and every single one of the apps had a 1-star review. And that baffled me because Their product is rolling technology, but then they couldn't figure out like the one— like, we're kind— I think I'm an idiot, right? Like, but I can help build applications. How could they not figure it out? And it just blew my mind that something that you would think that would have been the easiest— and I get it, it's hardware, maybe really difficult integration for all that to happen, but it was more just about like the product is, and it just didn't work. Does it work or does it not work? That's the only way I know how to explain that to people.

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