Graham McAllister (Part 1) on career pivots: academia to industry to startup (CAL120, S6E14)

Geri: 00:00:05

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas, and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. My guest, Graham McAllister, has had a fascinating career trajectory with many pivots, starting with a PhD in computer graphics in Belfast. And transitioning through roles in industry and academia. Eventually focusing on the video game industry where he founded and later sold a successful company that addressed usability issues in games. He's now exploring his next career pivot, and we'll continue with that story in part two, but for part one here. You don't have to be in the games industry to get something out of this conversation. Graham is an engaging storyteller and he is also really thoughtful. He will likely have you reflecting on what you are doing and where you are going in your career as you listen to how he reflects on the when and why of his different career Pivots. And he's so clear about the value he offers to people and what he cares about. It's a masterclass in how to identify and communicate a problem that other people have and that you have the solution to help them. This is relevant, not just for selling services into industry. But I think for any of us researchers defining focused research agendas and writing proposals, what's the problem? Why is it important and what's our solution? This is a wide ranging conversation and we also touch on lots of other issues including around leadership and the role of luck that we've heard many times before, and the importance of others who help shape our careers. There's a lovely story here about the pivotal impact of the late Gary Marsden that really opened Graham's eyes to the human computer interaction perspective that became his career focus. This is such a rich conversation and so interesting that we kept on talking much longer than is reasonable for one episode. So I look forward to bringing you part two where he discusses what happens next on that Spanish Island. Graham McAllister, thank you for joining me today on the podcast.

Graham: 00:03:07

Geraldine, hello, it's been a while.

Geri: 00:03:09

And it's been a while because, for full disclosure, Graham and I worked together briefly back, um, I think it was 2007 to 2009. There was a two, two year window there when we were both at University of Sussex together. And Graham, apart from just the excuse to catch up, I thought it would be really interesting to talk to you because you've had an interesting career. And before we pressed record, you were joking about being on career, what, four or five, you're still trying to decide which. So you started off doing a PhD at in Belfast in music technology, was it? Or some music related computing area?

Graham: 00:03:58

It was computer graphics, originally, and already you can see the problem here where my careers are, you know, because it looks like it was a music path. But it was actually very low level computer graphics, like image compression, like JPEG or MPEG. So there was those algorithms that squash, squash video. It was that type of stuff. So back then, as a 18, what age are you when you do your PhD? 21 year old, whatever it is. I was very much, you know, Uh, very dismissive of human computer interaction. So, when we talk about that, the idea of backtracking on your own thinking, do a complete 180. I've done that a few times in my career, which is interesting. I thought, who would study human computer interaction? What a preposterous idea, where it ended up being my career for over 20 years. But anyway, so I was not that guy. I was very much low level computer programming. That was my PhD, yeah.

Geri: 00:04:50

And then you went and worked in industry for a little bit.

Graham: 00:04:54

I did because we were, I say we, I mean the group of PhD students among us, we were quite, um, we looked at the lecturers who taught us and we decided we would not be like that. I probably alienated all the lecturers who taught me, by the way. But what we meant was, if we were going to teach building software, we wanted to understand not just Theoretical side of building software, but the commercial side, which what's it like to build it under certain conditions and a company setting on a commercial setting. So we decided that the path I was on back then was I would go and get some industry experience for a few years, but we would always come back. To academia, and then then when we taught students would say, but an industry, here's how you might modify this theory or modify this framework, blah, blah, blah, you know,

Geri: 00:05:40

I, I actually did the same thing now that you say it. One of the reasons why I was happy to work in industry, not that I had a clear plan to, that I was definitely coming back to research, but I was interested in how relevant was the stuff we were doing within a research context when you took it into an industry context. And that was, that was interesting.

Graham: 00:06:01

very much. I think one theme from my careers that I've had, I guess, is when we talked about this earlier, but in the deep in the brief beforehand, but straddling this division, if it is a division between academia and industry, and do they have to be separate and how closely related they feel separate. In fact, one of the. When we talk about some of the criticisms I've experienced with academia, so when I moved to industry, the, um, the perception of people in the industry of academia is not always positive. In fact, it's rarely positive in my industry. So trying to shed that skin of, I'm not an academic anymore. This is actually, this is real. You know, it's like you're playing around in academia, but industry is perceived as the real world, let's say. Um, so you're right that it was this, uh, academia does some great, great things, obviously. But it comes with an image attached, and it can impact on students perception, even us as students being taught. We were, we were querying, is this real? Because we could see what was going on in the industry even, this is pre internet days, 92 I started my degree. And we knew, you're teaching us languages we will never use in the real world, even back then. So why are we, we were always querying and pushing the academics. Um, so again, that pushed out, in a way, pushed us into the, pushed us out of academia to say, we're not going to be like that. If we're going to teach something, it has to be, has to have a greater degree of reality to it. It can't just be theoretical. It's not enough. It's not enough to teach the principles. That's what we thought. I would probably still say that. I would still probably have that.

Geri: 00:07:33

Yeah,

Graham: 00:07:34

mindset, I think

Geri: 00:07:35

if that industry academia link bridging straddling, as you said, is, is, um, a key theme. So what, what was, you know, in part of the straddling, what was the thinking then to straddle back into academia, having been working in industry?

Graham: 00:07:55

it's back to what you originally thought I was doing music, and I can, I can see why you said, I know we're on audio here, but there's guitars behind me, and there's usually a piano beside me and stuff I want to something more creative. So my job that I got was telecoms programming. So telecoms is the 2000s telecoms boom the internet's becoming popular. So as a programmer doing. Uh, that type of work, you know, telecommunications work, basically, and it was fine. Solving puzzles is always interesting. You've been a programmer. You've done a compute CS degree. So, you know, no matter if you're writing a computer program, no matter what it's for, it's probably going to be interesting because the puzzle is stimulating intellectually. However, the output of that puzzle. Was dreadfully boring. No one cares about telecoms equipment. Well, certainly I didn't as a 24 year old, 25 year old back then. Um, so I thought, well, I like programming, but I wonder, could I take that and apply it to something more creative? And a friend said, why don't you come and apply for a job at my video game company he was working for. And they were a very famous video game company in England at the time, I was still in Belfast. And by chance at the same time, a job posting come up in academia at Queen's University Belfast for music technology lecture. And I thought, well, that's a bridge between computer science and music technology. And that would fulfill my. creative output, but I wouldn't have to move to England because I'd have to move country, even though it's a very small hop across the bit of water, but it's still a move away from things you know, I'd say. Friends and family. So that's where I ended up. I ended up joining Queen's University back in academia, um, but create, you know, keeping both my technical interests, but also having a creative, a creative output. Um, but that would, that would change too. Uh, and that introduced me to HCI. I was there as a CS lecturer. So I was officially belonged to the computer science department, but I was on loan to the music department. That was the official structuring of the contract, you know, the academic

Geri: 00:09:56

Mm hmm.

Graham: 00:09:57

but I did not know what I was doing. I was doing there really in terms of what my research would be. I knew I was back in and teaching students computer science, but from a research angle, like I was, I was a blank slate again. I was not building on my PhD. It was not building on my computer graphics. They weren't interested in image compression. Um, nor was I anymore? And I wasn't doing telecoms. this is blank slate number three, it's like computer graphics to telecoms, now music technology, but I'm not really using anything directly in terms of, there's only the transferable knowledge of computer programming languages, but nothing, nothing was transferring, yeah,

Geri: 00:10:36

How did you convince them that you were going to be a music technology lecturer when you're just saying you, you know, computer graphics, telecoms, programming?

Graham: 00:10:48

I don't know, I think, I think we'll have to ask them, and I think one thing we should talk about is luck in life, because I feel I have had a lot of luck, including you, meeting you, because I would ask you the same question, why did you hire me? Because I was not, I, I shouldn't have got the job really. You know, I think there was always an element of luck and I've had it quite a, quite a lot. Uh, even ending up at Sussex, it was another academic at Queen's University who said to me, when was the last time you had a job interview? And I said, well, five years ago when I got the Queen's job, and he said, okay, I'm skipping a few bits because I've moved to HCI or my

Geri: 00:11:29

Mm.

Graham: 00:11:30

was to move into human computer interaction more. And he said, okay, if you won't do that, the next job, academic job that comes up in the field of human computer interaction in any UK university, you go for an interview to find out what people think of you. That's what you should do. He's now a professor at Manchester in Ricardo and he's a

Geri: 00:11:49

Mm hmm.

Graham: 00:11:50

So thanks to him, I said, okay, I will do that. The next job that came up was the one that you posted or someone in your department saying University of Sussex is looking for a human computer interaction lecturer, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, I should go and find out what people think,

Geri: 00:12:07

And, and I'm thinking back then, I mean, we had some great people applying for that position there were two of you right at the end that I remember we were really tossing up with. One of them was very much like me. in the interest in that and the thinking in the end was that you brought something different. So it was about, I don't know, like opening up to more challenging perspectives or different possibilities for different points of view and the fact that you were focusing in more of the music space. Um, and you, you had started to move into games a bit by then, hadn't you? Um, you know, so it felt like that added rather than, uh, deepened, you know, it added breadth and also, you know, that diversity of thinking rather than sort of digging us more into what, how, you know, what we already were. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But we certainly, we certainly interpreted you as an HCI person and I think you had had a paper, if I remember correctly, published one of our key conferences as well.

Graham: 00:13:24

Could have done. So I had. I had five PhD students, I think, at that stage or something, and we obviously had moved into HCI. It was accessibility back then. So that was the, my angle in, and talking about luck, if I was to pinpoint someone who maybe was influential in, I don't want to say changing my career, it was Gary Marsden. Gary Marsden gave a guest lecture. At the, exactly, at the, at the research center, I was in the music research center at the university. And I was, I don't think I was in HCI at the time, but I was looking to change. I knew computer science was not my, pure computer science was not my final destination. I was looking for this other outlet and I was becoming more interested in how people used what I was creating. And I'd never heard of Gary Marsden that was not interested in HCI. And I went, somehow I went to his lecture and. I think he changed my life, because he was talking, uh, I was just listening to his research and the stories he was telling, and I was like, no, that is something that resonated with me, not his exact area, because I was interested in video games, but the problems he was talking about it with saying, well, look, as technologists, we can create this, these things, but if people are frustrated by the way they're not being utilized in the most efficient or effective way, then what's the point? And me listening to that, I was thinking as a video gamer, I'm playing these games and thinking, yeah, but there was probably good intentions and they can build it. My goodness, they could have been so much better. So I was thinking I could take what he's talking about, but apply it to my area of interest. Is that a thing? And that, that was a pivotal moment in my life was Gary Marsden, you know, Talking about what interested him, but me hearing, me filtering it and saying, I've got the same problem in a different domain.

Geri: 00:15:21

It's fascinating, isn't it, how we never know how something that we say or some random chance interaction may impact someone's life. And whether it's your lecturer colleague who said, when was the last time you went for an interview? Like, just go on and have a go. Yeah. To Gary, just happening to say yes to a lecture there and not know, he wouldn't know. And sadly, very sadly, he passed away a few years ago. Um, he wouldn't have known that there was someone in the audience who was sparking with possibilities from what he said. Yeah.

Graham: 00:16:04

Yeah, that's the thing.

Geri: 00:16:05

it?

Graham: 00:16:06

I should have sent him an email. I know he passed away in quite a long time, nearly a decade ago. I think it's quite a long time ago. Um, and I should have said to him, do you realize what you said changed my life? Um, and then impact probably hundreds of millions of gamers as well, because we'll get to the company side. The impact. And so the impact that that random lecture on the impact, like, yeah, a lot of people, I

Geri: 00:16:33

Yeah. Like not, as you said, I hadn't, yeah, I hadn't even made that connection, but yeah, but not just you, but what has happened. And I mean, I I'm immediately thinking of individuals that I know who've been involved as well as, you know, the, as you said, the companies and then the, the players of the games

Graham: 00:16:51

players, exactly.

Geri: 00:16:53

So that's a really nice point as well about just the importance of. stopping for whatever minute or two it might take you to ping a quick email to someone. So if you're listening now and there's someone who did impact your life, stop now and just send that email and say thanks. Yeah.

Graham: 00:17:14

Definitely recommend it, because I, that moment with Gary is gone. And he wouldn't, he wouldn't know me, I just would have been this random email saying, Hey, I was, I was a lecturer, I was sitting in your audience. But just letting him know that he changed my life, you know, and

Geri: 00:17:27

Yeah.

Graham: 00:17:28

so thanks, Gary.

Geri: 00:17:30

These are the things that matter in life, isn't it? So, not the, not the paper that you got that you can't even remember, was there a paper in that conference? So, you, so that's when our paths met then, when you, you came to Sussex. Um, and I do remember you being very good negotiator as well, you know, which was really, I learned a lot actually from watching. And, so, You, by then, um, when you came, you were bringing much more of a Games HCI sort of research identity with you.

Graham: 00:18:09

yeah, they, I, um, like most technical minded people, you know, um, at the time I made a nice chart of pros and cons. Should I move university? And should I move from Belfast to Brighton? Um, and Belfast won on this little organized neat chart, you know, all the pros and cons, but it didn't feel right. Which I

Geri: 00:18:31

interesting. Like,

Graham: 00:18:33

didn't feel right. There was more ticks in the Belfast.

Geri: 00:18:36

So keep redoing the, keep redoing the scores.

Graham: 00:18:41

So, so I, I find that interesting. Well, why doesn't it feel right? Obviously not all information was on the chart, you know. Anyway, um, and the reason is that You know, there's a couple of questions I always ask whenever I'm pivoting jobs, because I've done it a few times, and this question keeps coming back. And the question I ask myself is, am I done yet? Am I done here? And so it's like, have I done whatever I had to do in this domain that I'm currently in? But the other question that goes with it is, is there something to do if I go? Like, is there something, is there something to do here, or something to do there, sort of thing. But why, What didn't sit in the chart, I guess it would have been opportunity, I should have had a column that said if I wanted to be in the game industry and bring human computer interaction to the games industry, there was no industry in Belfast whatsoever in 2007. But Brighton was thriving and it still is, you know, there was like 30, 30 or 40 game studios in one city or something like that, so. Really Different sizes, some are large and some are mid sized, some are small, but there's probably more actually now, including the small ones. So I decided, well, if I want to do this, then you have to go. You know, so that was the final, I don't know if you remember this, but the very first meeting I ever had at the university was not with anyone in the university really, it was with a games company, and it was me, you, and another academic. We went to visit a game studio, uh, to try and bring, you know, usability testing into their game making, and that's the first meeting I remember. I don't remember meeting anyone, like, in the university itself, but

Geri: 00:20:08

I can't, I'm remembering it. I think we. As part of trying to help your network in and we, I think we, I don't know what we did to set up that as a, as a introduction.

Graham: 00:20:23

I can't remember either, but that was, that was wonderful knowing here I am as an academic and already, We're talking to the biggest studio in Brighton at the time, they were a very large studio. And so this, this is exactly why I came. So you could say, back to my, I'm going to link together what I do now with what, with then is vision. I had a strong vision. If I'm doing it, this is the clear and singular reason I'm going to Sussex, is to bring HCI into the games industry. I did not know at the time, however, that I would have a company. I thought it would be consulting. So I remember looking at my contract, my academic contract. I remember grilling someone about how many days consulting could I do per month or per year or something like that. And my intention was I'm going to max that out because I want, I need to bring this knowledge in. The game industry is a problem, academia has the solution, and there's very little company, if there was no company, really bridging that gap. So I thought I would do it in my days of consulting. Um, and here's luck. The second area of luck we're going to talk about at least is someone at the university said, hang on a second, by chance, whenever I joined 2007, 2008, the university was about to give a fund To give academics to have these little small startups, and they said, we're gonna have a small pot of money. And I was one of the first four academics to get that little pot of money to start a spin out. So originally, so now the idea was going, not just my consulting days, but I could do this in a little, little spin out. Um, so that, that, that ended up happening. I was one of the first four to get that little pot of money. So we're, we're moving. Yeah.

Geri: 00:21:52

Yeah, I remember you moving up the hill, I was setting up the, the spin out and do you want to just reflect on then navigating, I don't know, because I imagine there are tensions between this is the role of a lecturer and yes, there are consulting days, but you know, and this is what's expected here and this is what you wanted to do in the startup and how you navigated between the teaching, research, tick box commitments, From the lecturer's side and the, and the, also the, what would be a significant commitment from a startup side if you're going to take a startup seriously, because yeah.

Graham: 00:22:35

I, going in, I did not know how messy that would become in terms of time management and just division of resources, my resources, you know, um, I think, I think in the beginning it was meant to be quite clear. I would teach so many days per week. I love teaching, by the way. That's another thread that I love. Education in general. Something I'd really, really enjoy. Um, But the, but what happened is I think, um, the research side, uh, I didn't do so much, not because I didn't necessarily want to, but I, my feeling at the time was the level of research that HCI is that was good enough to bring the industry. In other words, I did not have to advance it because it was already at a sufficient standard to bring it and solve the problems that needed solving. So the problem I was solving was. The commercial side, there's no business model really to, or it could be a psychology problem. The mindset of the game developers was such that, you know, get off my lawn, I know what I'm doing. We do not need your psychology nonsense, you know, here, sort of thing. Um, so the problems needed fixed were not research problems, they were changing a shift in mindset at a commercial level, which is you think you don't need this, but all the evidence says you need this. So my job was giving talks to try and persuade them and show them with evidence that actually you will do better. You will get what you want. You're more likely to get what you want if you use this tool rather than just dismiss it and let it go away sort of thing. So I ended up doing some teaching, very little research, but again, the research was more me trying to commercialize that and bring that into the, So, that lasted for a few years and I realized that I couldn't do both. The time commitment, as you say, for a startup is immense and I was, you can wear yourself down quite quickly. It's quite tiring. You know, um, so I decided I needed to make a choice really, um, and that came from both angles. University wanted me to make a choice and I realized I had to make a choice. And I decided,

Geri: 00:24:31

they were, cause I, I had moved on by then. So they were pressuring you, like, where are your research papers or you're not doing enough teaching? Like what was, what was their point of pressure for you? I

Graham: 00:24:44

I think they wanted a commitment really, is this, you know, are you going to take us into a company, uh, or are you going to come back as an academic? Like I needed to choose a path, really. I think they wanted a clear cut decision. That's my memory. It's going back over a decade, but I think they wanted a clear decision. Are you an academic or are you a founder of a company sort of thing? Um, and it ended up, I resigned from both positions. So the spin out and the academic job. And I said, well, I think this needs my time all the time. I think there's something here. So I quit both. And then I, I just did the commercial thing. I started a new entity away from the university. Back to the perception problem of, I think we said earlier. I think one of the things holding me back was perception of academia, and I know that I was trying to get contracts done when I was in the startup, and there's real time and there's academic time, and academic time runs at about, well it's much slower, that's it.

Geri: 00:25:41

It's a little slower, a

Graham: 00:25:43

a little slower.

Geri: 00:25:44

time.

Graham: 00:25:45

And I think, uh, I'd certainly had clients at the time who felt the frustrations of academic time. Uh, it wasn't going to work for them effectively. So, and the image as well, academia is seen as slow and expensive and not real world. Those are

Geri: 00:26:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Graham: 00:26:02

Um, perception that I needed to change. I remember telling someone, well, we're now in the center of Brighton or something. I'm away from the university, we're in the center of Brighton, and they were just overjoyed. They were like, oh, thank, you know, thank goodness sort of thing. It's not a commercial, it's a company. You work on company time, you know, real time, real world time. And I didn't expect that. I didn't know that was a thing that I would have to negotiate. To navigate, um, being part of a university the time. So that was, that was interesting. And then

Geri: 00:26:32

So can I just, um, so you've just talked quite, so it's one thing transitioning topic areas from computer graphics and software engineering to. music technology to games to, to start up. So there's, um, there's the topic sort of shifting, but it feels like there are very different skill sets needed between, I don't know, more of a standard lecturer in your first lecturing job to doing a startup. And you talked about, you know, talking to industry and that would be very different talking than giving an academic presentation. Can you reflect on what were the key skills you needed to develop in order to shift from that more academic mindset, you know, including what we just said about the time, to something that's more relevant to industry?

Graham: 00:27:33

I think there's, so I've mentioned, not necessarily a mental model, but some of the questions I ask myself if I'm ready to pivot, like, am I done here?

Geri: 00:27:42

Mm.

Graham: 00:27:42

The other, there's another question, which tries to tell me the type of problem that I work on. And I would relate this back in some way. Maybe my PhD, but it's how important is the problem that you work on and so whenever I think about the problem I'm working on, I try and put it into a hierarchy of all the problems I know about in that domain. So let's talk about video games for a second. My domain, let's say, was video games. That's where I was trying to apply my academic knowledge and whenever we, like some of my students even did this as master's projects, but whenever you critique or analyze the reasons why video games get a high score or low score, like what are the problems with them? Usability issues were a major problem. Like they were coming up in game reviews or user experience problems. So this was a significant problem. So I knew that If I'm talking to, if I'm in an academic talk, sometimes academics talk about things which are, you know, the 400th most important thing of all yet, but there's an interesting problem for them. Why not? If you've got funding to do it, knock yourself out, go and work on it. But in industry, if it's the 400th most important problem, no one's coming to your talk. Usability, however, directly related, it's going to be one of the highest related problems, which is especially in free to play. Talk about luck again. The business model changed when I started my company, the business model of video games. So I'm going to lose track of what I'm talking about here, but it's very important because. Pre 2010, let's say, if you spent 50 dollars on a video game and it was terrible, well, tough luck. You know, the company's got your 50. 2010 ish onwards, it was free. So if you, if the user experience or usability was not top tier, you made no money because that player had left. And what's worse is you'd maybe spent 1, 2, 5, 10 dollars to acquire that person, because it costs money to bring people into your game. So you make no money up front, and your impact is worse, it's negative. You're spending money to bring people in. And you only get money if the user experience of your game is sufficient that they spend money, let's say. I'm generalizing, I'm cutting a few details out, but that's generally the model. That was luck. If I'd have started my company 10 years before, it may not have worked. So again, back to the business side is, when you're lecturing or giving a talk at a games conference, I'm talking about a problem that they are seeing. And their KPIs on a daily basis, which is, hey, we paid for 100, 000 players to come into our game, and there's only 10, 000 left. Where did they go? Well, a lot of them could have left for usability UX problems, and that was the problem my company was solving, and I spelt that out clearly by showing that, um, I give one talk a month for nearly 10 years in a row on this type of topic, probably more, um, about that sort of number, so I give a lot of talks saying, if you want to know what's wrong, this is probably one of the major factors Impacting your bottom line and why you're not getting the reviews that you want. That,

Geri: 00:30:38

yeah,

Graham: 00:30:39

to me, was a common sense. You know, you've got a problem, and of course, if I'm starting a company, I'm doing it for a reason. I think, I think you've got the problem, and I think I've got the solution. That's what businesses do. That's what they do, right?

Geri: 00:30:51

yes,

Graham: 00:30:52

So, if you don't think you've got the problem, there must be a miscommunication. Why aren't you seeing the problem? By the way, a lot of them are not seeing the problem. They wanted to say something else. Like it was oversaturation of the marker or somebody else's psychological problem. Well, it couldn't be me. Couldn't be our game because we're experts. So obviously the problem is somewhere else. And my job is to stand up and say, no, the problem's not somewhere else. The problem's actually. View. In fact, that problem continues when we get to my current career. That problem has got worse. I would say the problem is not elsewhere. The problems with the team, you know, but so anyway, that's an academic versus commercial talking. I think academics sometimes talk about problems they're interested in, but sometimes they're not that critical to. There's a small group of researchers worldwide who do that. You know, you've got these research disciplines that are very small niche groups and that's fine. That's okay. But if you're talking at a conference, um, usually people want problems solved and addressed and you have to figure out, am I presenting my problem in a way that, that the people in the audience care about? You know, and that's, that's, it's just common. I thought it was common sense, but maybe not. I don't know. What were you thinking by the way? Cause What do you see the difference between, like, academic conferences and, let's say, industry conferences? Do you see a difference between the two?

Geri: 00:32:13

yeah, I think there are, I haven't been to that many industry conferences, main ones would have been in the healthcare space. It is also the case of what are their immediate pain points, um, what are their immediate problems and what can you help with?

Graham: 00:32:31

Yeah. It's the evidence behind that. I would say that, especially in video games, I think a lot of teams don't, um, look towards the science of the problem. They tend to just have a, I, I, yeah, exactly, gut feel or, well, I saw this, so, you know, it must be true, right? I will do A lot of guesswork intuition. And it's nearly always wrong. Like, there's a lot of bad. Decisions being made because they should do what academics would do and say, well, what do we know about this field? Do we do a literature review? Do we apply critical thinking? There's very little critical thinking. They don't know the limits of their own knowledge. They say, well, I know this, but they don't know what's the counter argument to that. What do we, where do we know where that applies and where that doesn't apply? Or what's the three other arguments that could apply here or three other frameworks? They don't do, at least what I see, very, very little of that type of thinking. It's just, here's a problem.

Geri: 00:33:22

A lot of our cognitive biases playing out

Graham: 00:33:26

Yeah.

Geri: 00:33:26

in that context. So in, in doing the startup proper, like starting your own company in the center of town, there's also lots of other aspects that are more mundane, like budgets and projections and marketing and multi faceted, you know, not just the core work that you get excited about. Did you employ people to do that stuff or were you doing it all? Can you talk about assembling the team that you, you built up in that company

Graham: 00:34:05

There were teams of researchers, so everyone was a researcher, including myself in the beginning. Um, anything mundane, like, I don't like accounting that much, but I love business models. I'm quite familiar. I'm quite, don't say mathematical, but I'm comfortable in that world, let's say. So the company ran on a very simple spreadsheet, for example, but in terms of doing the accounts that was immediately outsourced to someone else because it was not my area of expertise. It's not an area of expertise that I wanted to get good in or anything like that. Marketing's an interesting one, though, because I never called it marketing. I called it education.

Geri: 00:34:37

Oh interesting,

Graham: 00:34:38

told you, for example, um, I give one, roughly, I'm going to average it out here, one talk per month at a games conference. Um, and every, nearly every talk I would give, we would get work. So some people would say, Oh, you were doing marketing then, but it wasn't, I was explaining why you had this problem. It just happened that if I explained the problem well and showed them they had the problem, they wanted to hire us to fix it, to fix the problem. So we never had any, uh, I don't remember, I don't remember spending one pound on an advert ever. During the whole course of the startup, there was none. We didn't have a website for the first three years from memory. Maybe two or three years. That's only because someone said, are you a legit company? I'm like, yeah, we're, we're flat out. We're busy. And they said, I can't find you on the web. And I'm like, well, no, we're too busy to have a website. So I eventually put a website up

Geri: 00:35:24

Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm,

Graham: 00:35:24

to say we're here, but we were, we were completely booked out, you know, um, so it's back to this thing that I, I love education. I love explaining to people. I'm an introvert. I do not like, if there's, if there's an event or a space at the back of the room where I can hide, that would be, that would be me, you know, but I also give a lot of talks publicly, which is complete opposite. People must think, Oh, you love giving talks. That's not true. But what I love doing is explaining to people the problem that they're facing, and if you do this thing, your problem will go away. It's helping people. You call it education, you call it help, you call it what you want. That I find fascinating. And of course the book goes along with that, The Researcher Brain, which is my current journey around team psychology and shared mental models and things. It's the going deep into, why aren't you seeing this problem. And then the other question, why isn't there a solution to that problem, which I had to go and design for the last five years. So doing all that, and then, and then getting to tell people about it, like, by the way, the reason you're having this problem is not what you think it is. It's something else. And the good news is we can fix that. And that bridges, again, I had to go and do research and go back to school again, to be a student, to bring that back into industry and to a very practical, we're jumping around a little bit here, but I think all these things are connected in terms of. Yeah. I don't really call it startup marketing. It was just, I don't think you're seeing the problem that you have. You're attributing the problem to something else. You're not seeing it correctly. There's a great quote I found out only a few weeks ago by Einstein. I'm going to butcher it, but it's like the quality of what you see depends on the quality of your mental model. Like the model you use to see the world completely dictates what you see. And my research, the results would show is the reason you're not seeing the problem is the quality of your mental model doesn't allow you to see the problem. So you're attributing it to something else and you keep trying to fix the problem and the problem keeps happening. The problem is you can't see it for what it is. You don't see the problem. So again, it's bringing it back to mental models and things like that. Um, but that's the joy is now I get to teach that and educate people and say, Hey, you thought it was this, but. What if I told you it was something else? Would you be interested? Wow, there's a discussion. That's, that's where we're at in 2025. I'm about to bring that to the games industry. And I think, well, I know a lot of them will not want to hear the answer. It's going to be, some people will love it, but I think some people will say that can't be true. That can't be the reason. It can't be me. That's an identity problem. I'm an expert. I'm an expert in game development. Are you telling me I don't know? Yeah, I think that's what's going to happen.

Geri: 00:38:01

It's a skill to have that sort of discussion. I love, you know, apart from the specifics of what you said, I love it as an example of tapping into your strengths. Like you've said, one of your strengths, one of your passions is education. And it plays out, that this education can play out in lots of ways, like it was probably part of the reason why you went back to lecturing, I imagine, in the first place. And that There are still ways to do it. And I love that mental reframing. You know, if you talk about mental models and that as well, you're standing up and giving a talk isn't about putting yourself up there and, you know, like in front of all these people and isn't it nerve wracking? It's about this is a great opportunity to do that thing I care about, which is educating on a topic that I'm really passionate about. And this is a way to connect to people.

Graham: 00:38:58

Yeah. I always thought of talking as educating. I never thought I'm giving a talk. I thought I'm going to go and educate, reveal something that is new to what's in the audience and their life will get better. You know, if I explain this thing and if I do a good job explaining the thing, they're going to go away thinking, wow, that problem I have, there's, there's a solution to it and I understand more about it. That's a great thing. That's why we're in education, right? It's like, why do we do education? Let's go back to the fundamentals. Why do this job? It's not for money. If you're in education, there's a reason, why do I want to spend my time discovering something, researching something, finding an answer or going deeper into the problem and then writing about it and telling people about it? Why do I do that? What's interesting about that? Because that's universal. That's not just the little discipline you're doing your PhD in or your postdoc or whatever, you know, it could be, it could be anywhere. You know, it could be computer graphics, telecoms. It's the same type of thing, which is, do we understand, but And if that's what drives you, the uncovering of going deeper and understanding why and But it's also helping, right? Because if you share the knowledge, sharing is a large part of it. It's not just, I did it for me and I, I kept all knowledge to myself and that was the end. It's like, no, well, you went and give a hundred talks or wrote a book or did something at workshops or whatever it may be. That's elevating a group or a team or a society or. You know, that's, that's a bigger mission than just, well, I do research like, well, really is that what's going on here? I think it's bigger than that. You're not just doing research.

Geri: 00:40:32

Yeah. Yeah. Reminding us to connect to that, that sort of drive and that passion underneath it. You mentioned team then, we're going to move on to sort of a next transition pivot that you did, but, um, just in the startup company, you, you built up a team. So that put you also in some sort of leadership position. Again, can I just get you to reflect on leadership skills that you had to develop or what you think was most important, or, uh, you know, you may even have a story of things that didn't go well that you, there were big learning points.

Graham: 00:41:11

I would say I'm very, I'm very different now than what I was then. I think I would do it differently. Not surprisingly since going back and studying organizational psychology, which we'll get to and studying the science of team performance. The word I would use, what I know now is that was probably authentic leadership. In other words, I was just me. There was no thought put into leadership whatsoever. That was probably the truth. I started a company to solve a problem and I was just purely focused on solving the problem. And I hired people to solve the problem. I didn't, I don't think I put any effort really into team building or anything like that. But I did try to hire the people I thought were the best and fit for the team. I mean, I know there's problems with culture fit as well. So I just want to, it's not necessarily culture fit, but, um, So I think it was more authentic. In other words, I was just being me. And that That took the company to a certain stage, uh, not, not, maybe it was okay, but, um, I think, you know, you don't need the same person for all stages of a company's growth that you're probably better off not doing that in some ways. Um, so, yeah, I think, I think I was very much focused on the technical side as a leader, even as very much focused on my two main tasks were, can we do the job very well? Uh, and then this education piece giving talks, telling the industry that, you know, um, what do we, how are we solving your problems? Because there was a certain degree of, the company started by only offering one single service, the easiest one, usability testing. Like an MVP, you start small, we offer this one thing, and

Geri: 00:42:41

MVP being.

Graham: 00:42:43

minimum viable product, which is, you know, like I think every company. Every video game company has problems with usability, like tutorials, feedback, controls, although there's no one who does it really well or they could certainly improve. So I've been to find going into here's another mental model or mindset. If I go into a conference, my mindset was everybody in this room is a potential customer for me because I think, or I can prove that they all have usability problems. So depending on your product or your research area, you may go into a room and think, I think maybe 3 percent of the people here are the people I would connect with. We have similar interests or similar, you know, or I could solve their problem. In my case, it was always a hundred percent. If you're making a game, we can help you. There's no exceptions here. So that was my, my, I knew my MVP, my, my, my little tiny service, service number one was applicable to a hundred percent of the market, which is interesting for a business, right? But eventually we ended up like 10 services or something or whatever it was. Um, cause we developed more and more. Whenever you get to see a studio, you realize, Oh, you've got that problem. Well, you know, giving computer interaction can solve that problem too. So we ended up, so part of my brain was developing or seeing new services, going and visiting clients, listening to them, seeing their pain points, and then figuring out What I like getting this bridge between academia and industry. I'm always looking for, is there a method I'm aware of? That I could modify to fix that problem. It's very rare you would take it completely as is and just, you know, apply it and it would work. So you're always thinking, I recognize that problem. And if I modify this method, I think I could do that or do it good enough. So we ended up with like, I say, seven or 10 different services, a current member, depending on how you count and then giving talks and educating. Um, but for leadership, um, no, I think I was just being me at the time in terms of focusing on the. I think that's very product oriented. Is the product good? And I don't, I think I thought if I hired good people, the team would take care of itself. I wouldn't do that now, I don't think, knowing what I know. I'd probably build the team differently. But back then, I think that's what I did.

Geri: 00:44:48

So, let's come back to that, um, later, just to step it through, because I think it'll make, your reflections on that will make more sense then. And I'm just sharing that the picture I have in my head is You've got this drive, this passion, this vision to make this difference and you've hired people who stand with you like you're linking arms and you're marching together and able to deliver this service. So it's leadership in that you're bringing people with you, they're contributing to you delivering on that passion. Yeah.

Graham: 00:45:22

I think, I think as well, if you join a small company, there's a certain mission based element to it. Like you're not joining MegaGames company X or Y, you know, you're I'm not doing that. I'm joining this, this small one. So I think you're attracting people who are maybe more open to trying new things, which is the reason I don't work for Megacorp X is because if I have a new idea, which I have a lot of, I have a lot of ideas, but if I have an idea, I'm probably going to try it out. And if I feel like I can't do that in Megacorp X. I don't want to work for you. And I've asked those questions by job offers from certain people at the time. And I said, how do you work? How do you do your research in your, in the megacorp? And I said, I specifically asked if I have an idea, can I try that out that morning? And I said, definitely not, you know, you will not get the chance to do that. This is our method. This is our way of working. And I said, well, I'm probably not the guy for you because I'm probably going to try it because I think it's a better idea, but I may fail sometimes and that's okay, but I will learn. That means there must be something worth exploring. Otherwise it wouldn't do it for fun. I'm doing it because I think there's a problem with the current method. I also think that if we try in a systematic way, we'll probably get to a better solution at some point.

Geri: 00:46:33

Yeah. So that creativity again, coming through again as a strong thing and obviously the, the freedom and independence to just play that out.

Graham: 00:46:47

I've never really had a boss, and you're making me say, think things through here. I've never really worked for a company, apart from the telecoms one, but really you're worth working for yourself. Um, I think I've always been wanted to try. Why don't you try? You know, are you doing something because you're told to do it, or are you doing something because you cannot stop thinking about it? And I definitely fall into the latter category. Like, like for the company, I remember where in the road I was standing when I realized I was going to quit my academic job and start a company. I know exactly the bend in the road because I, I stopped walking. My memory of that event is I stopped walking. I stood still and went, I'm done. I'm going to start a company. I've only had that twice. That's strong. That was one. I knew I was going to start a company doing, bringing HCI to the game industry. And the second one was my current one on game vision, where I realized the last, the end of my career, I'm at the last chapter, I would say, chapter of my career is game vision. And it's a team psychology problem, not a player psychology problem, but a team problem. And that's going deeper into the problem. Why do we have a player psychology problem? Why is HCI needed on the product? Because the team are the problem, so there is a, that's the through thread here is that yes, you can put a band aid over and say, we'll measure the product, we'll do user research and put a little sticky plaster over the top of it and, you know, patch it up, but it's not really addressing the problem fundamentally. It's more, well, why don't the team know what they're making? And that's a shared mental model problem.

Geri: 00:48:16

You're reminding me of the five whys, um, technique, isn't it? You're like, and why is that? And why is that? Why is that? To get to the real issue underneath. So you, you've mentioned going and doing an organizational psychology masters, um, now did you still own your company at this stage or what happened to the company?

Graham: 00:48:36

I sold the company. We were acquired. I never thought I would do that by the way. We, after about year three from memory, end of year three, we had an offer to be acquired. And I said, no, for different reasons. I said, no, uh, maybe it was year four. I can't remember. No, year

Geri: 00:48:51

weren't done.

Graham: 00:48:53

Yeah, I wasn't done. That's true. I wasn't done, which is my fundamental reason. There was still more to do. But by year four, um, they come back again. It was partly I wasn't done and partly their offer didn't fit with me, my creativity, let's say, there was an element of that at risk. Um, by year four they came back again and a few of the things had changed and I could see the advantages in doing it this time. So it wasn't just 'am I done', but if we do go down that path, is there an advantage that I could not do on my own? And there was, and that, that was moving to a different country. That was becoming more of a need, which is, you could call it. You know, cultural UX in terms of, but we understand gamers in the UK. Could we do that in America or Asia or Australia or wherever else it might be? You know, is there any difference? What are the differences? Who's exploring that? And I thought that's interesting. Clients are now asking for the American market in particular, because that's the biggest video game market. And we couldn't really do it, you know? So that was the, that was a main driver. So I sold the company in 2016, I think. And then I left in 2018. Um, so I stayed for two years.

Geri: 00:50:02

working in a changeover period.

Graham: 00:50:05

Yeah, for two years, two years.

Geri: 00:50:08

was that?

Graham: 00:50:10

Well, well, I left. I think back to that question, I was done. There's no one singular reason. I would say there was multiple reasons in this particular case. Uh, quite a few actually. Um, but I think the main one was I was done the journey I started out. I want to bring. I want to apply human computer interaction to the video game industry in an affordable, quick way, not just the richest people who could afford it, but also the very small game studios. Being fair is very important to me, for example. And so it was meant to be, um, I wanted to build a studio that any game studio could afford us. And that ended up being true, at least back then, it ended up being true in terms of if you were, you know, two people in a shed in Brighton, you could afford to hire us. Or if you were Megacorp X, you could afford to hire us. And we work for all those types of people worldwide. So the pricing model was very much, I thought we could. Be fair to the whole industry. Um, and still have a very good business doing that. We didn't need to just work for the 10 richest, which was some of the advice. I've got. I got lots of advice over the years as you can. Some of it interesting. Um, as you can imagine. Um, but that was not what I wanted to build. It wasn't just, we'll take the. We'll build a list of the 100 richest studios and we'll go and sell to them. It was, no, if you're anybody making a game, you should have it in your budget to afford us. And there was no difference in pricing between the cheapest and the most expensive. So Megacorp X paid the same price for usability test as, you know, a couple of people at a shed in Brighton, for example, same price. So no difference whatsoever in quality or time or pricing. And it was designed like that from the beginning, you know, so that was important to me. That was one of the. principles that it was built on is why would you just build a company, and I'm not criticizing that, to just go for the richest people. Um, if you want to do that, that's completely fine, but it just wasn't what I wanted to build. You

Geri: 00:52:02

Didn't fit your values.

Graham: 00:52:04

it didn't fit. It wasn't the point, you know, um, it was meant to be part of the process for everybody. Back to your five why's question, I would say what drives that is I wanted to change how video games were made. In other words, people are spending five years building a product that comes out that is, uh, reduced. It's a reduced form of what it could be. And the players are, they're playing it and thinking, oh, it'd be better if they had have fixed that. I said, well, we could do that. We can actually make those. We can do it as part of the process. And so that's part of, I wanted to change how video games 2025, but it's just switched from player psychology to team psychology. This is the lowest level of the five whys. At the end of my career, I've eventually got to the bottom of the, bottom of the question, why are games like this? Why are they made this way? It's back to your question around leadership or culture, which is, well, partly it's an education problem. My research from LSE would say the quality of your mental model is not sufficient for you to build it in a better way. That's one problem. But we also have to tackle leadership and culture questions, which is, well, why aren't we looking for better answers? What's stopping us building it? Why aren't we exploring? You know, why, why did I have to go back to LSE? Why aren't they doing this research themselves? Or why don't we carve out a research division on, you know? So yeah, eventually at the end of my career, I got to the bottom of my pyramid of whys, which is it's, it's mental models combined with vision and culture are the two things I ultimately come back with.

Geri: 00:53:38

So why did you think you had to go back and do an MSc

Graham: 00:53:47

I didn't know. I'd, so here's, when I left my company, I did not know for the first time what I wanted to do. But I did know that I was done there.

Geri: 00:54:00

hmmm

Graham: 00:54:00

I've never had that before. I've always known what the next leap was, like, you always join these dots up. My dot is here, the next dot's over there. I see, you kind of form a path. But there was no other dot in this case. But I went on holiday to a Spanish island, and in the morning I went for a long run, and in the afternoon I sat with my iPad and started writing a book.

Geri: 00:54:20

And that's where we'll leave this for part one, and I really look forward to bringing you part two where Graham goes on to discuss his next career moves. As usual, he does it in this incredibly engaging and also very thoughtful way. So in the process you'll get to hear much more than just about his moves. But he shares so much that can be taken as relevant to running research groups and developing a group culture and developing a shared vision. And as a last thing, I want to encourage you, if you haven't already done it, to take up our challenge to stop now and thank someone who's really had an impact on you, this small but genuine gesture on your part. Can really make a big difference for them and for you. And it goes towards creating that culture of care and support and collegiality that recognizes we are in this together. You can find the summary notes, a transcript and related links for this podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com. You can also subscribe to Changing Academic Life on iTunes, and Stitcher and I'm really hoping that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently. And you can contribute to this by rating the podcast and also giving feedback. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues. Together we can make change happen.