In this episode of the UMS podcast Matthew Smith (@squaredeye) of Squared Eye and patterntap.com gives us the spill (sorry that was supposed to be a beer pun…) on why beer has been so influential on his design career and we also talk about how the work on alpha.patterntap.com is going.

Gene: All right. Well, I’m sitting here with Matthew Smith of Squared Eye, Pattern Tap fame. I just wanted to take a minute to grab you while you are here, and ask you about what you have going on. First, you talk about beer a lot. I just wanted to corner you, and ask you; what about beer and design gets you so charged up?

Matthew: That’s a good question. Well, beer came before design for me. I used to work for a new Belgium brewery out at Fort Collins, Colorado.

Gene: Really?

Matthew: Yeah. I loved working for them, and I still enjoy their beers to the most degree, but they have in some ways become sort of the Starbucks of beers for me, as I’ve gotten into more and more fine, nuance detailed beers. I’ve had to spend a lot of time with beer, which thankfully hasn’t been too hard, to get into the nuance details of flavors, of different styles, of really researching it, understanding it, not unlike web design. I’ve gotten into brewery, and trying to understand the brewing process. I’m not a beer brewer; just the same, I’m not a web coder. I do know enough to know the process, and I can speak about the tastes, and so in the same way web design has worked that way for me.

Gene: That’s a great metaphor.

Matthew: It ended up working really well for me. It would not be authentic to have the metaphor around like ‘cat’ ownership.

Gene: Sure.

Matthew: I hate cats, so that would not work. So, this works really well for me, because I really enjoy beer, and it is something I can talk about – I think, the same way that like John Hicks loves cheese.

Gene: I’m sorry, beer is more fun.

Matthew: That’s right. I agree – sorry, John. Like Elliott Jay Stocks, and I share this in common, and we really enjoy going after it. It’s a fun way to break away, and then we started Beerdiots. It’s essentially, we’re taking the FAC Club, Friday Afternoon Club, and we’ve re-branded it “Beerdiots.”

Gene: I like that.

Matthew: What’s interesting is that Beerdiots is happening all over the world, people just don’t know it yet.

Gene: Oh, I see.

Matthew: So, we’re trying to re-brand it. What we’re trying to do is beer creates an opportunity for people to get together, and not just talk about web, not just talk about business, but talk about life, talk about things that are interesting to them. So, we’re getting people coming to these things that are engaging about design, but actually are in the industrial design, or maybe they’re a pastor, or maybe they work at a grocery store. I don’t know, but they’re coming, and we’re having interesting dialogue, and people are enjoying themselves. It’s a lot of fun.

Gene: And they’re drinking beer.

Matthew: They’re drinking great beer, and getting beer education. We just started this thing, where it is like we’re doing blind tasting, and some of that as well.

Gene: That’s cool.

Matthew: A great group in Greenville, Orange Coat, which does some really nice web design. They did a neat thing, where they’re trying to help people understand food tasting, so that they can talk about design better.

Gene: OK. That’s another good analogy.

Matthew: So, there’s a lot out there. I agree.

Gene: Well, while I’ve got you here, I want to talk about Pattern Tap.

Matthew: Cool!

Gene: Because I’ve seen Alpha Pattern Tap.

Matthew: Yep.

Gene: What’s your vision for Pattern Tap? Where are you taking it?

Matthew: That’s a great question. Well, first thing is, it has been really interesting to see how people respond to Alpha, and understanding the idea of Alpha. We put it out there, very, like, raw.

Gene: Yeah. I noticed that.

Matthew: We just really wanted to see, “Where is this going?” We wanted to give people the process, and people have not responded that well to it. It’s been interesting. Some people love the idea, but they feel like it’s finished. I don’t know if it is because of our history of putting out really nice finished work, but people didn’t get the idea of Alpha. I don’t know what is pre-alpha, or what says that better, but that was our intention to say, “This is raw. This is in process.”

Gene: So, do you think you’re actually fighting your brand, because the Square Eyed brand is all about like you said, minute detail, like really going over the top on delivering a super polished product? Do you think you’re fighting your brand a little bit?

Matthew: Maybe, but maybe we’re saying, “Hey! Our brand has a little more room than you thought.”

Gene: Right.

Matthew: So, we’re addressing some interesting things, but the big vision for Pattern Tap, I think really is fun. We’re going after not just web patterns, but we’re going to separate out into divisions, so Information Architecture.PatternTap.com, IA.PatternTap.com, the iPhone.PatternTap.com, or maybe mobile.

Gene: OK. Cool!

Matthew: We’re going to look at web applications ecommerce, and actually separate these things out. They’ll share a number of integrations, but we’re actually looking at turning it into a massive educational research hub. In kind of a wiki style, people will be able to add resource links, people will be able to add code that says, “Hey. Here is how you could actually accomplish this.”

Gene: That’s cool.

Matthew: Doing some really interesting things. So, we’re really trying to figure out some good models, and so far using stuff like Get Satisfaction, we’ve been able to get some good feedback on how we’re going to change. For me, I just continually think that we need to keep educating toward better standards in the web, and Pattern Tap was a way of doing that. And it’s helping pay my mortgage, so that’s working out all right too.

Gene: That’s awesome. Congratulations!

Matthew: Yeah, thanks.

Gene: Well, thank you Matt – Matthew.

Matthew: Matthew. I appreciate it. Thank you, Gene.