Fluxible's “Speaker Spotlight” series, features an interview with a 2016 Fluxible Conference speaker. We asked Dan Brown some questions about his work, his inspirations and what he's most looking forward to at Fluxible. Here is what he said:

You are a co-founder at EightShapes, an author and speaker, what does a typical day look like for you right now?

At the moment I have two primary clients, though that number sometimes goes as high as four or five. Both projects at the moment entail lots of design work, so I’m spending a lot of time in Sketch, not to mention Slack and on the phone. One project is in the early stages, and involves a complex new business process, so we’re doing one of my favorite things: trying to get our head around the design problem. That means understanding the opportunity as well as being realistic about how a web application can support it. The conversations sometimes get intensely philosophical.

In addition to client work, I generally have one writing project in the works and one or two speaking projects. The writing project is usually an essay for the EightShapes blog, but right now I’m finishing up Practical Design Discovery, my new book.

How did you move into the work you are currently doing?

Like many web designers of a certain age, I kinda fell into it. I got a job in 1995 (after six months of unemployment following college) at a book publisher, building a web site for them. In those days, I was a jack of all trades. By the time 1997 rolled around, I moved to Washington, DC and was able to specialize in Information Architecture.

Working with some other IAs in the area, we’d organize local events, and I got to meet a lot of people. One person I met was Nathan Curtis. We stayed in touch over the years, referring work to each other, catching up at local events. I took a job that he had a few years before, and he’d counseled me not to take it. It was the last time I didn’t listen to him.

Nathan and I founded EightShapes in 2006, because we both realized that the DC area didn’t have a UX design firm, in the vein of Adaptive Path. We serve clients outside Washington, but I love that we’re based here.

What do you find most rewarding and challenging about the work you are doing with EightShapes?

One of the two things I like best is that the challenges always change. We have to fine-tune the EightShapes culture, find new and better ways to stay competitive, mentor talented designers to bring out their best, and so much more.

The second thing I like best is working with Nathan on all these things. It’s helpful to have a partner: we talk through our challenges, keep each other honest, and have each other’s back when things get tough.

You are working on your new book, Practical Design Discovery. Can you tell us about the book?

Like my other books, this one digs into an aspect of the design process that doesn’t seem to be well understood. There are so many resources on how to do research effectively, or how to brainstorm new ideas, or even how to manage client relationships. I wanted to write a book on how all these (and more) come together in the discovery phase.

The book focuses on the two main objectives of discovery: defining the problem and setting a design direction. Besides talking about the techniques used to achieve those and the outcomes from those efforts, I also talk about how to structure a discovery phase and prepare a discovery deliverable. It’s less a comprehensive manual on every discovery technique and more a guide on how to bring it all together.

What makes being a designer meaningful to you?

I love this question, and I think every designer should take a moment to answer it. It forces us to ask ourselves, “what is design?” and then figure out why design defined in that way is important to us. We’re quick to define design as “problem solving” or “being creative” but design has lots of definitions, and each definition will resonate differently with every one of us.

For me, being a designer means striving to be a better version of myself. Design, as a practice, lets me do that. Through design I can play to my strengths–coming up with novel ideas, untangling abstractions, organizing concepts, communicating complicated ideas, and dealing with difficult situations. But design also lets me deal with the things I could stand to do better–organizing my time, coordinating work among team members, understanding the underlying problems, being decisive, among many other things. Successful design depends on all these things–you can’t just focus on one of them and expect to grow as a designer.

What books/movies/music have inspired you?

To prepare for writing Practical Design Discovery, I read a lot of books about creativity. I was really inspired by the psychology and sociology of innovation. Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From really helped me understand that new concepts are as much a product of the environment as they are the brains they come from. This influences me in how I conceive of my projects. I’ve talked repeatedly about Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, which helps to explain otherwise irrational behavior. Because of Mindset, I’ve thought a lot about the kinds of mindsets people need to succeed as designers.

I tend to spend my free time on board games, though, not books and movies. (Don’t tell my dad, the film professor.) I love dissecting what makes a board game work, the systems of rules and categories that turn a pile of cardboard into a fun evening. It’s much the same as with a web application: overly complicated and people can’t engage; too bland and people don’t care.

The kids and I are really into Power Grid at the moment, a now “classic” euro-style game that I came to pretty late. Power Grid is like Monopoly, but actually good. You have to buy the right combination of power plants to provide energy to your cities, and you need to buy the right combination of resources to fuel the plants. It includes an auction mechanic for buying plants, and you have to spend your money carefully: you can spend it on a shiny new plant, but then you might not have enough money to get the resources you need. There aren’t a lot of decisions to make, but the decisions you do make have a big impact. If that isn’t UX, I don’t know what is.

What are you looking forward to most at Fluxible 2016?

I rarely learn anything new at conferences: I go for the mental stimulation, both in the sessions and outside the sessions. Fluxible clearly attracts a caliber of attendee that likes to think deeply and holistically about the work they do. That’s my kind of crowd, and that’s what I’m looking forward to most.

Will attendees find you sampling beer or at the espresso machine?

I actually don’t drink alcohol, so you’ll definitely find me in line at the espresso machine. Also the ice cream machine, if there is one.