Kanhika Nikam
Is Bias in UX Research Always Bad?
In this episode of Brave UX, Kanhika Nikam speaks about the challenge design researchers face when trying to be without bias (while also being human) and how growing up in India has shaped her UX research practice, plus much more!
Highlights include:
- What was it like being mentored by David Kelly, founder of IDEO?
- How can you identify your bias when working on a project?
- What are foundational values and what are heightened values?
- How has living outside of India shaped your values?
- What is the message that you bring to the world through your art?
Who is Kanhika Nikam?
Kanhika is a Research Director at Springload, one of New Zealand’s largest digital experience agencies, where she's promoting the democratization of strategy and research across the organisation.
She holds a Bachelor of Design, from MIT Institute of Design in Pune, India, as well as a Masters of Design from Stanford University.
Kanhika has tackled many interesting and challenging design problems, including voice-assisted healthcare systems, airplane cabin experiences, and educational tools for preschoolers.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween and it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX design and product management professionals. My guest today is Kanhika Nikam. Kanhika is a human centered design researcher with over 12 years of experience helping organizations to solve challenging human problems. Although she's originally from Mumbai and India and researching for this conversation, I came to think of Kanhika as a citizen of the world not long after completing her bachelor of design and industrial and product design from MIT Institute of Design in Puna, India. Her pursuit of knowledge took her to California after receiving a fellowship to study a masters of design at Stanford University and a scholarship for Stanford Business School.
- After successfully completing her studies in 2016, Kanhika worked as a design research and strategy consultant and the San Francisco Bay Area consulting to organizations from Silicon Valley startups to industry titans, teaching experimental research to designers and facilitating design workshops for executives. In 2017, she moved halfway around the world again to Wellington and New Zealand. There's definitely a story there where she's currently growing the practice of human centered design At spring Load, one of the country's largest digital experience agencies as a practitioner. Her work has been both challenging and interesting, including designing voice assisted healthcare systems, prototyping and testing new airplane cabin experiences, as well as developing educational tools for preschools. And that's just her day job. Kanhika is also an artist, mainly working through ethnography, performance art and videography where she encourages people to pay attention to the little things. She also dabbles in jewelry and ceramics, a fan of whiskey, tea and chili flakes, and someone who is bursting with creativity. It's my pleasure to have Kanhika here to speak with me today. Kanhika, welcome to the show.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Thanks Brendan. I really liked your colorful description. It sounded like when you were talking about it sounded like a quilted, patchwork of different colors and pieces and places and experiences. A lot of flavors in that as well. The chili flakes, I like that. [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh]. Yeah,
- Kanhika Nikam:
- No, thanks for that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I definitely enjoyed researching for our conversation today. Kanhika, I think your background is just really fascinating and I think it's gonna be such a great conversation to have and I always like to start on a serious note. So tell me the whiskey, the tea and the chili flakes. Is that all at the same time?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- No, that's not at the same time, but different parts of the day. [laugh]. Yeah, I do. My husband is American and when we sit down for to have breakfast, he'll have his toast with peanut butter and maybe slices of banana and I'll have my slice of toast with some avocado, salt and pepper and chili flake. He's like, how do you start the day with chili flake? I was like, how can you not start the day with something like savory and spicy? So [laugh] the morning. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I love to see those cultural differences playing out. Yeah, no, I know people that are really into chili occasionally will take their bottle of hot sauce or chili flags with them to restaurants. Is that something that you also do?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Absolutely. I have my little first aid kit or the last year the new additions have been a mask a small bottle of hand sanitizer, but always in that little pouch is a small bottle of chili flags. Yeah, [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh]. Love it. So you grew up in Mumbai, which is India's largest city and for people that have never been there, myself included, I mean that sounds very exotic. What is Mumbai? What are the sounds and sights and smells that it brings to mind when you think of where you grew up?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- There are just lot of sounds in sight. So it is almost like it can be quite overwhelming at times, but it's also there's so much of all of the sight and smells in. Growing up in school, I had friends I went to a convent school, so I had from class, from kindergarten to class five. We were in classrooms in we would say pray in front of the cross as part of the convent. But then from class five to class 10, I went to Aian school, so that was Parsi and Iranian Umble. So we used to pray to the Zian fire God. So it was just, and at home I had my own spiritual cultural practice from my family. So it did have a lot of diversity. All my friends came from different backgrounds, different schools of thought different point of views and if you go out on the streets in the city not having grown up in Mumbai, you kind of do get a sense of that. There isn't a cuisine of Mumbai really although some people might argue from Mumbai. But it is really that that cultural melting pot from across the country. But also being a big city with a lot of industry, you also have a whole expat culture from people from abroads. It's a really, really vibrant and exciting. It's a city that never sleeps.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It really sounds exciting. Definitely a place to visit. What impact is evident from British colonialism in the city still?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- It has some really interesting lasting impact on the architecture in Mumbai. Mumbai has I think the second largest collection of art deco buildings after Miami. And it is beautiful. A lot of our transportation, our internal transportation system is a big legacy of the British. We have beautiful gothic architecture, like massive railway stations and all of that. Obviously the conmen schools that I went to are legacy of the British colonies. But interesting fact before the British colony before Mumbai was a part of the British colony, it was actually a Portuguese colony and there was a marriage between the Portuguese and the British. And Mumbai as a city was offered as a dory to the British
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh]. Wow, a
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Dory. Yeah, the whole city. So the Mumbai Mumbai's old name is Bombay, which actually means I think the Bay of Good hope the little bay of Good hope in Portuguese. So yeah, it is quite multilayered in that historical sense as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And of course that name Bombay is Mortalized and the famous Bombay Sapphire. Yes,
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I believe. Yes. Yeah, I grew up in Bombay, so when people ask me what is home, I'm like, yeah, Bombay up. Yeah, [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So before you went to Stanford, I hear that you traveled across India. What was it that inspired you to see your own country before heading overseas?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- It wasn't a specific I, a specific reason or a specific thing that led me to do that. It was more of my family. My parents are very keen travelers, so I've been traveling within the country since I was there's a story that my mom tells me when I was two months old, my grandparents picked me up and took me to travel up north in near, which is a fantastic area of India. But yeah, I guess my family just really took me travel, traveling to places. So I think that is part of my upbringing as such. Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [affirmative]. So picking up on your upbringing, clearly your are a creative and very curious person and I get the sense, not that I have spoken to you before today, but having seen you speak that you have a very strong sense of self. What was your family environment when you were growing up?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Both my parents came from, come from a lot of creative backgrounds. So my mom's an architect my dad's anterior designer within my cousins and aunts and uncles as well. My auntie's a textile designer. My cousins are fashion designers, my grandparents. So when I was growing up, my grandfather, he was in the police force in India, so he had just retired and after retiring he pursued a whole kind of interest in fine arts. So even the people won't [laugh] in the arts and creativity, they somehow did have that aspect and I wonder why, I dunno whether it's in the dna, but that was always an influence. And I think a large part of that is also just growing up and spending time heaps of time with my mother being the only child. So I do have a sibling, I have a younger brother, but we have age difference of 10 years. So for 10 years I was the only child. So I guess I had to invent things to do by myself get introspective, create my own games and my own little universes. Of course I had friends and cousins and the larger fa as such. But the day to day I think it was a lot of looking within, looking into the abstract and making your own adventures in your own little home. Yeah, I think [affirmative] that did feel me in that sense.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, being an only child myself, I can relate to that. When was it that you realized that design and research was something that you really wanted to do?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- It? It's a funny thing cuz I can almost draw a linear line [laugh], looking back, of course not looking forward when I was in the past. But my upbringing, like I said, was quite inspired by a lot of crafts and arts and when it came time to make subject choices and decisions in school, what am I gonna study in India, you kind of after class 10, the timing when you make decisions. So you either going down the arts route, which is social sciences and creative arts or you go down the commerce route which is accounting, finance, and then you have science, which is your hardcore science. And I was partially interested in sciences and arts but arts was more where I saw myself and my skills. So I did two years of high school just studying social sciences. I was like, oh, maybe I'll get into economics, become an economist. That was what was happening. But what I did really like about econ economics was the research part although it's not qualitative necessarily but it's about creating models and trying to understand behavior.
- So that was something that interest me. But I think it was a lot about looking, I had quite good mentors around me at that point in time. I had some family friends and a mentor and in my dad where he was like, Hey what about this program in product design? I was like, oh cool product design, does that mean I don't have to read and write and give exams, written exams? He's like, yeah, [laugh]. So that really, really thrilled me cause coming from that arts and crafts background, the way I think problem solve was very tangible and physical rather than through written words.
- So I think that really excited me. So I did my undergrad in industrial design but after graduating my first job was, although to create a specific product, but I got more interested in the resource, why are we building the product we are building rather than being in that product area? So that was kind of where I was like okay, this research is really really where my skills lie. And it felt sometimes when you do something and it comes very easily you just feel like yeah, this just feels like I'm not actually making an effort to make this work. It's just happening. You kind of in that flow state and I was like, yeah, this research thing, this is cool. Let me get more into this.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And was there anything in the culture growing up as a female in India that shaped the way that you thought and the approach that you've taken to both design and research?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I guess I have thought about this quite a bit and more so in the last few years where I know this is my happy spot for now but why does it feel so happy? Why do I feel so why does this come naturally to me? And I think growing up in India as a woman, as a girl or even in Indian, most Indian families, I wouldn't say all cuz they're very, very diverse microcosms. But in the family that I grew, there was always a hierarchy of the grandparents, parents, the kids. There was a lot of knowledge and respect that you show through the elders because of the experience they've had. And as a kid I almost had two worlds, one world where I could go explore all these things in my internal world, but in the world when I interacted with others it was a lot about listening to what they had to say rather than expressing.
- It was a lot about and I don't think it's necessarily a good or a bad thing, it was just what it was. But that did really actually fundamentally made me think of it just made me a better listener. It just made me helped try. It got me better at connecting dots between different information pieces and I think connecting it to the work that I do as a researcher, you are always trying to make the person your user or the person you're designing for the experts. So that did come very easily to me cuz that's what I was doing for a long time as a kid.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I wanted to ask you about a saying that I heard you mention and your UX 2020 talk, which was aib, hopefully I pronounce that
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Almost like 80% there. [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'll have to practice. But what does that mean
- Kanhika Nikam:
- If you literally translate it I wonder what Google translates would say, but it means the guest does God. So it is in a way a lot of concepts around hospitality, a lot of concepts around being gracious being welcoming. It is kind of acknowledging that the home is a sheltered comfortable space and if you have someone coming from another space, you know show them, you give them everything that you have. And there are beautiful many, many stories that go onto explain this concept in a practical way. So you have a lot of fairies and animals in the stories children's stories but it kind of really talks about really offering everything you have to people. In one of the stories this lady, she offers everything these berries she has in that house to this guest and the guest lands up being the gods. It's literally, you never know who is walking into your house and what they might need. So that is conceptually what that phrase means.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And what role does that play in your research practice?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- That's an interesting one actually. I haven't actually thought about it in my research practice cuz in my personal life it does mean literally when we have anything that comes into a house if even if it is not just people that come into the house, if you purchase a new let's say a new pot for the kitchen for example, it is there's behind me there's this little shrine here we bring the anything to the shrine and just be like, thank you so much for being in our lives. Be very grateful that I could afford to buy a pot. And then you actually start using it. So it's people but it's also inanimate objects. You kind of welcome them into the house. But in the research practice it is creating that safe space.
- It is about just making, cuz when people are sharing, giving you the gift of their experiences, sharing their experiences, their point of view sharing what their values are in respect to what you're talking about asking a lot of them. And of course we have research incentives and all of that, but more on a human to human level, what are you offering up front? So it is about trying to make the space as comfortable as possible. Just small little things before you start with the interview, just checking in with how is your day? Would you like a cup of tea, coffee, just small things. I think it's really strange that we have to remind ourselves these things in the crazy fast paced lives we live, we just kind of skip on some of these really, really foundational really human to human things.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you do a lot of in context research. So I suppose bringing that principle or that practice into somebody else's environment is even more important than when someone's coming into your own environment.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- And in practice it could be very simple things as just bringing a small gift for [affirmative] them just bringing some food, some Kai [affirmative]. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Now that saying that I mentioned was from the talk in 2020 that you gave titled Is bias Always Bad And you challenged a commonly held belief among researchers that they should be unbiased. What was it that gave you the idea for that
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Talk over the range of research projects I've done, there are some projects where it's a pretty simple dimensional kind of project where it's a noble absolutely necessary project. How do we get our users to have a successful checkout experience on our website? It's a very well defined topic and it's kind of easy to navigate your biases and what you are bringing to that. But then there are also projects where, which are I guess more multidimensional in the sense where you are digging down into the layers. If you are looking at our projects where we're hoping to get some behavior change either in health or in the Egypt space, there are a lot of underlying reasons why you are behaving the way you'll be all do as humans. And I think what you start doing there is you try to understand the deeper motivations. What are the values that drive those motivations? And at that point you might realize that this thing that you're working towards is it, it's not just designing for someone else but you are equally part of the solution that you're designing. And at that point, who is the researcher and who is the user? And that line gets really blurry and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- When you realize that, what do you
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Start thinking about? What do you do [laugh]? I mean that's literally I think what was my trigger point to just take time regularly or whenever I had some downtime at work, just writing in my notebook what does this mean? Trying to expand, trying to think of how do I navigate between those lines. And I think I may be wrong but I feel like I come from applied research background and not a lot of these things are taught to you in school, in design school which I think is a really missed opportunity because the world is so complex and so connected like that. But yeah, I wish someone had taught this to me in school. I wish there was a subject how to deal with bias or ethics and design, but unfortunately it wasn't something that was taught academically to me. So I had to just go on my own [laugh] own journey. And I think it's something that will develop, evolve by my understanding about the topic over time.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you came up essentially with your own framework for identifying your bias. Tell us a little bit about that.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I think you need to really be understand for yourself, who you are, what your beliefs are how you see the world to be then able to say this is another person's point of view. And how that sits besides sits underneath on the side in my worldview. And that I guess just understanding what your values are helps you understand what you're bringing onto to the project which might be yours. And then I guess you can then decide if it is something you want to actually bring onto the project and influence a project with, cuz I do believe that there is merit there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Let's talk about that and let's talk about that in the context of the two categories of values that you identified, foundational values and heightened values. What are those two sets of values for the people listening? How do you describe them?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- The phrase we spoke about earlier, the [inaudible], they will have I've like that's something that I've grown up with and it's something that's very deeply embedded in the way I behave the way I am as a person. So it is a very, very foundational value and if I have to change, it'll take me a really, really long time to change. It's really embedded in me. And there might be other kind of values that people might have that they recognize are again deeply foundational. They've been something that they've been practicing for a long, long time. And I think if you want to bring on to a project where you see this project, the outcomes of this project not only affect your users but also and you want to bring in those foundational values to push your project, influence your project, I think that's totally okay. But I think values are something that are always in flUX, what you see around you, what you experience that change your values.
- So for me there are certain values which are I guess heightened, which are, I'm still deciding is this me or is this not me? They could be influenced by events or experiences that you have. And I guess these events or experiences, you almost have to process it and understand what it actually means to you before you use it to influence your work. And I think as researchers that is line, I'm trying to understand how much of myself do I bring in or not and when is it important, when is it good or bad to bring that in? Cause if I feel like if there is something that I haven't yet resolved and I don't an experience I haven't resolved and I haven't really said that this is a value that is foundational to me, it can be very tricky to navigate that on a project.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So often in a research situation you'll be working within a wider team context and people in the wider team will also be bringing their biases to bear. In the work that you're doing together, how do you as a group a team identify your individual values in a way that's safe and enables people to share them with the wider group?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- So there are two key things, like you do it in a group and how do you do it safely? Cause we often, our biases cause assumptions that we make about people. So assumption is an output of the internal biases that we hold and a very safe a group a safe thing, safe activity to do in a group format is what we do is just an assumption dump where we're in a team and we just literally just put out what are the assumptions we have about this specific project, this specific user the person who we are designing for. And just put it out there. Once it's out there, it's not your bias or my bias, this is our bias as a team or these are I guess just labeling bias as assumptions also just makes it easier to work with. Cuz assumption is very it translates very well in the research language cuz from assumptions you can then create your research questions.
- So if all your assumptions, your team's assumptions are out there in the open, then we can discuss how do we mitigate these? Is there any desk research that says otherwise about this specific assumption? If there is no research then cool, let's actually just put that in our research session to actually say yes or no. Is this assumption true or not? So I think that is still at a very high level, at a very surface level where we can start addressing some of the assumptions that we have which are caused by biases. But I do think before you talk about your biases in a group format, I think it is an individual activity that you need to do by yourself. And it is something that you need to come in terms with yourself before you feel comfortable talking about it to your colleagues or in a group and cause it can be quite confronting.
- I've taken a couple of tests around what my implicit biases are and when I've seen the results I'm like, shit is that, who is that how I feel? I'm a bad person. And it's really interesting, you really need some time to actually come in terms with that. And the interesting thing about biases is that most of our biases do not change over our life. Which when I found out I was like, oh my god, does that mean I can never change myself as a person? But being aware of what they are then you can at least put some counterbalances in the way. Yeah. But yeah, I think you do need to do that activity or whatever the thing is by yourself before you feel. And I think as in the team environment and working with teams, I think it is something that we can gently guide people to do because it is really, really important in the world we live in today where we interact with so many different people from so many different point of views and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Particularly for the outcomes of the project. And you touched on there when you said you had done some work to understand your implicit biases and you were some somewhat horrified to find out what some of them were. People are being asked to be quite vulnerable and I suppose I wondered how other people on the team might feel about sharing things that could potentially reflect poorly on them. So I imagine that there's an art and getting the team to a place where they're actually comfortable being transparent with each other and in a safe way because they're not always complimentary, the things that we might think about other people or the world around us. Part of the challenge with research is also to identify and understand the world view of the participant perhaps what their values are, why do they do what they do? Why do they believe what they believe? How can researchers identify when a participant will view as being temporarily impacted by a heightened value and does it even matter?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I can think of a specific research project for this example. When you ask people, so how is it that you do that thing? Can you tell me about it? People be like, oh yeah, I'm really conscious about my health I try to cook as much healthy food as possible. I try and buy fresh produce as much as I can and that's really how I like to cook. And then be like, oh I actually just, would you mind giving me a tour of your kitchen? And at that point we are going through cabinets and the fridge and you see oh there's a lot of frozen food. So you know, pose a question in a very respectful way, oh said earlier that you know to get a lot of fresh produce, I see a lot of frozen food here. Can you help me understand what is happening here?
- And that's when you start to understand, okay this person actually as aspires to be in a healthy diet eating fresh food. But the reality is they have five kids, crazy job, zero time, they actually need to have all of their meals for the week prepped on the weekend. But what does that say about the person? It's not saying that they're lying to us, but there's a interesting gap or an opportunity where this person wants to be a better version of themselves. This is the aspirational version and this is what their reality is and this is their current sort of situation. And our job as researchers is to help them figure out what can we do to close that gap between your aspirational view and your current view.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, [affirmative]. So it sounded like there that the foundational value was one of being healthy and eating healthy but the heightened value as a result of work and life stress had modified the behavior in such a way that they weren't necessarily living up to what they believe their foundational value to be [affirmative]. So you've spent the past five years or so outside of India Kanhika, how have your values over this time changed given the experiences that you've had since you left your country at birth?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Yeah, there's a lot of experiences have shaped, really changed me over the last few years more so than it's probably my foundational years. When you really grow and become your person, you're kind of preteens and after teens I feel like I had a second burst of that. And I think more so I guess living in New Zealand I think family has landed up being somehow more important to me. Having a sense of community those are all things that I feel that are my aspirational values. It's not something that I have in my life yet. Of course I have a beautiful nuclear family, my cat, my husband, and my three chickens [laugh]. But I do feel like a sense of a grounding sense of community and family is something that's missing. And I think yeah, that's something still I'm working out how I bring in into my life.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Shifting gears and thinking about something on a potentially more deeper and serious level, it's international woman's day tomorrow and as a person of color and also a woman, what biases have you encountered in your professional life?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- In conversations with friends or at the bar or in a chill? I do get asked this question every once in a while and I often ask myself, when have I felt uncomfortable by the way people see me because of who I am on the outside and I don't know whether I've just been very lucky that I haven't had any experiences which make me feel marginalized or make me feel I'm not part of the group in the room. Or then maybe I wonder am I just very naive and I just don't see or I don't read people or just assume good intent what is it? And the more I think of it I think it's probably just the way I see the world.
- Growing up at home, my parents they never really treated me different because I was a girl child necessarily which unfortunately can be the case for a lot of women in India. But I never had that. My father used to actually use the male name for a child. So you know have butcher and butchy, which are two words in Hindi, which means child but male and female. But he used to call me the male version of it just for fun and in a nice way. So it never really, I wasn't very aware of my gender as such, me being a woman when I used to look up at role models or things that people that I wanted to be like when the internet became a big thing, I was all over Wikipedia. That was my kind of window into the world and what's out there, what are the cool things happening, who are the people?
- I still love reading, I still read the people pages and look at what they're doing, but gender never really stood out to me as such. It was just like, okay, has this cool person, here's what they're doing and here's color. Sometimes did. And it was more of an aspirational thing. Oh cool, look at this cool person and they're doing these awesome things like oh wouldn't it be cool if I could do that? So I guess I, it's just don't see that in my life and I think it that's, that is my personal experience as a woman of color. I don't see any difference in the way people treat me. But I do know that that is only one point of view and people have very, very, very different experiences.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [affirmative], it really sounds like your parents set some excellent conditions for your childhood to give you the environment to develop this sense of self and this confidence and it's obviously served you really well. Speaking of serving you really well, you went to Stanford University and this is one of the world's most respected universities. What led to the situation where you were awarded not just a fellowship but also a scholarship to study there?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I often think it's the world's biggest loophole that I just got into. [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh].
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Yeah, I think it is a very, very interesting program where our cohort every year they have 15 to 10 people. The year that I went to we only had 10 students. So it's a very tight knit cohort and I think it is kind of my previous kind of experience cuz I did work before I had applied for my masters. So my work and I think there was, looking back there is a theme of theme through all the different bits of my work around education. And that I think really, really came through strongly only when I was writing my statement of purpose and kind of collating all of my work together to be like, what does this mean? I think it had a really strong point of view and what I wanted to do in life, which I guess was compelling to whoever was deciding whether or not to offer us offered the fellowship. But yeah, I think it's a great program and it did really helped me think critically about my research practice but also it really bolstered my art practice and my creativity, which I feel like not a lot of programs do both of those things simultaneously.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And how do those two things complement each other for you?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I think they're really essential pieces of who I am and they almost cannot exist without each other. As my day job, as a researcher, when I am, I'm kind of being an empty vessel to gather everything, the stories, the experience that they have to offer to help the work. But I feel like I don't have space for my thoughts and feelings and experiences. So my art practice is where I just unleash [laugh], all of that. But then again it kind of helps to have a dedicated place where I can express myself cuz I'm not necessarily, I am expressing myself at work but I'm not expressing those really foundational things at work cuz I am giving that point of view to the user, to the people that I'm interviewing. So I feel like both of those really need to exist for me to be successful in my career as well as my personal life.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sounds like your art fills you up with the energy to be able to do the research and your professional life.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- And if you think of want to have a research career for a long time, you do need to think of how do you decompress, where else can you make sense of your own personal experiences and thoughts and feelings if it is not at work? Cuz you're being, you know, are being biased, unbiased, sorry you're not bringing all of that to the work and project. So I almost think it's necessary if you want to practice research for a long time,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's a message in your art that you've tried to bring to the world. What is that message?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I think when I started making art, I was just making art for the sake of making cuz that's what brings me joy. But when I looked at what I was trying to do, it was to just look at what's in front of you, look at what's next to you, be present in the moment. So a lot of my artwork have weird experiment aspects to it where I get people to just slow down for five minutes and look into the space and then tell me about it after afterwards. Or it has graffitiing at random pots of the city with just small cues for people to be like, hey, slow down, look at this shadow of this beautiful leaf here. Have you noticed it before? So I think yeah, I do live at a pace where I feel like I get to acknowledge the little things that nature or life has to offer and I feel like I wanna share that with other people. So my art is almost prompts for people to be like, hey, this is the way that I see the world. Do you find it interesting
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you did that quite beautifully in a piece called the Mundane. Tell us a bit about that project.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Yeah, using the mundane was I think all of the things that I do built a lot on my past experiences and using the mundane quite literally was I just painted a room completely white windows, walls, floor furniture was like a big red couch, was upholstered in white [laugh] it was white tables, chairs, everything. And I spent think two weeks just drawing on all the surfaces just very meditatively patterns things that you know, start with your hand but almost forget after a couple of minutes and you just kind of get into that meditative mode. But I left it slightly unfinished and then when the exhibit went live, when people were invited to actually step into this world, which was part blank canvas, to just fill in and do those meditative things, but in a very mundane environment, in the environment that is a living room, it has the same cow, the same window that everyone has at home, but you're doing something very differently. I had kids coming into the space and they were drawing on the couch and looking excitedly at their parents, I never can draw on the couch at home, I'm drawing it. Yeah, isn't this cool? But parents were also doing that. It's kind of just breaks you out from your day to day in that physical day to day environment, which is your living room, but you do something different, a little more relaxed, meditated. That was amusing the mundane.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I believe it was inspired by a formative part of your childhood and particularly your father's influence through his interior design. What was it like having other people come into, albeit an abstract view of that and contribute to that piece of art?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I think it felt very gratifying and encouraging in a way where I have this very special part of my childhood memory many memories strung together and I've created this thing to show it to others. And the fact that they're willing to engage with it and add to it is a very, personally, it's a very gratifying experience.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Coming back to Stanford, one of the projects that you were involved with, there was a truly wonderful educational therapy game for children who are hearing impaired called Rambus Rumbles believe it received first place at the reason Student design competition, which is sponsored by the United States Science Foundation. What was the problem you were trying to solve? There
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Were problems around my education kind of thread came in here where I was interested in looking at how do deaf children learn language? And there is, there's heaps of scientific research that talks about the more words you're exposed to as a child, the better your language develops [affirmative]. But if you are a deaf child, you obviously have that disadvantage from day one, right? [affirmative]. And so how do you create other tools or other tools in that age is toys, which is so exciting. So how do you create these fun educational games that the kid can play, not just in therapy sessions, which with a speech therapist. Cause the research that I did for the project was part in India and then part in California [affirmative]. And in across both I guess the both parts of the world if you are going to a speech therapist, you'd probably go to them once or twice a week and that's it. And if you have a parent that's working full time, who is actually going to do play those games with you? So this was a game that you could play with people who have full hearing capacity. So you're kind of leveling the playing grounds for a deaf child and a child with hearing to play together [affirmative]. So even though you're not in a therapy session, even if you're playing a game with your brother or a sister or your friends or your parents, you still are learning those language skills. So that was the concept behind the project.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What was the mechanic of the game?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- It had the first few words that children learn and we selected words that are specifically phonetics. So you have words that you can lip read then there's certain words that are produced slightly inside of your mouth and that was the levels of the games. Level one, the easy, big no level was all the words that you could see your lip making. And the kids had just prompts on tiles where you had a bunch of tiles on the table, you could put as many tiles or as little tiles and you're trying to almost lip say a word and the other person is trying to read what you're trying to say. And those words are confined cuz it's not any word in the English language, but they're words which are on the table. So then you can add a time aspect to it to get it fast and speedy. So it just, even the child person who is not deaf can also play the game through lip reading and it's kind of just a fun game.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- When you were evaluating the game with the children, how did it feel to see them engaging with it?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Oh that's just the best part, isn't it? When you have gone through a couple of iterations and like, oh, is this gonna work? And so we kind of tested it at a place called, and we had one specific child who's very, very, very shy and the child never actually speaks much in the classroom, but when we had the game with four other kids on the table, this kid was going crazy with the game he was winning. He's like, yes, we got the word. It just goes to show that different people learn differently. And I think we just have to provide as many ways of as we can for people, for kids especially to learn and just bolster their confidence from a young age.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's such a great example of the impact that some great research and some great design can have for people. Before we move to closing things out with some rapid fire questions, [laugh] and then take the show to its natural conclusion, I just wanted to touch on briefly one other aspect of your time at Stanford and that is I understood that you were mentored by David Kelly, the founder of IDEO, for your final thesis or your project within that. What was that experience like?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- It was fantastic but then again there wasn't necessarily a sense of oh my god, it's David Kelly. It's like, oh yeah, cool, it's David Kelly [laugh]. It was really great. Cause one thing that was obviously one on one kind of feedback that my me and my team got from David Kelly, but there was also just so many interesting people he got into the classroom. We had the top design human centered designers in the Bay Area coming to our classrooms and I was like, wow, you, you'd just have a moment. Wow, am I really here? Am I in the midst of these people and they're just offering the time and giving me advice on my project. So yeah, I think it was really great. The one thing we obviously had a relationship outside of the thesis project as well and after working for a year or so in the Bay Area and I was trying to move to New Zealand, it was a big decision in the sense at that point in time at least I was like, oh wow, I'm in Silicon Valley. It's where the things are at. Do you remember, this is a couple years back, [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- The epicenter. Yeah.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- And oh, should I be going to New Zealand? Is this a good decision? My parents are,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. How did that come about? What a move to make from being in Silicon Valley to Wellington and I'm from Wellington and don't get me wrong, I love Wellington. It's not Silicon Valley.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- The thing is I think I don't hold too much importance on things in the moment. And at that point in time I was dating a dude who is now my husband who moved to New Zealand and in Wellington and we were doing long distance for a while and was like, there's only one way this is gonna work if one of us moves. So yeah, I just followed the love of my life to the other side of the hemisphere and my parents at that point were like, what are you doing? Focus on your career. What is this typical Indian parents like, oh why are you follow this dude? Some white dude,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Some biases coming out.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Yes, yes, yes. And that point I just went to David, I was like, what do you think? It's pretty cool. I'm working with all my friends here. We used to do interesting projects, just get a group of friends together and work on projects. It's just a great time. And I was like, should I move to New Zealand? I'm not sure what it's like. I've never been there, I've never traveled to New Zealand even. And he said the one piece of advice he gave me, I still remembered it every now and often and it does help me have confidence in my decision, is it's like the further you move away from your home, cuz this is kind of my home, it was my home where I did grow quite exponentially. The further you move away from your home, the more you learn, the more your skills will be valued.
- And I feel that every few weeks I'm coming to New Zealand, I feel like I was bringing a different point of view to New Zealand and I think that was valued. That is still valued and that is part of what I bring to the table. But also I'm sitting with such talented people on the table who are not like me, who don't come from the same background as I do and I have so much to learn from them. So it's such a great reciprocal thing to do at this point in my career, [affirmative]. So yeah, that was the best piece of advice I got from David.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So not everybody can say that David Kelly's the reason why they got married.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- [laugh]. Yeah, [laugh]. That is true. Yeah. When we got married I just put a post on Instagram and David's like Congratulations. And I was like, yeah, thanks for the intro [laugh]. Cause also my husband is we went to the same program at Stanford, so David did pick both of us to be on the program.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So he was really instrumental. Yeah.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Matchmaker,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Are you up for some quick rapid fire questions?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Let's do it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So these are scenario based questions and I'm just gonna read them out and then we're gonna see what you say
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Came is scared, but let's see how we
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Go. Feel free to shake out any nerves.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Okay,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- The first one is, you suspect that a stakeholder is bringing some unconscious bias to their assessment of the problem space. How do you help them to see that?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- I would ask them what you've said, where is it coming from or if they're reacted in a certain way, it's like what are you feeling right now for you to be reacting that way, hopefully. And obviously not in a meeting environment but in a more for one-on-one cuz that can then just open up the conversation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, that sounds really disarming, really smart. The next one is you are interviewing a participant and they seem reluctant to talk freely with you. How do you encourage them to open up?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- And I would ask them would you like a change of scene? Would you like to go for a walk instead? Would you like to hop into the other room? Is this room to stuffy? It may not be the room, but I think just literally changing environment might change things up a little bit. So [affirmative], maybe that's the first thing I'll try. And then if that doesn't work, I'll try something else and something else.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Gold, good place to start. Change the context. I really like that. And the final one is you've designed a script to evaluate an experience that your team has designed. After the second of five participants you realize that there's a problem with the script. What do you do?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- So I have had this experience quite a few times, [laugh], and the two things you weighing is like, do you change the questions and then the data being all messed up or do you just, and then just go ahead with the misleading question or whatever the question that's not working or do you change it up? And I think it depends on what level of fidelity the thing that you're testing is. If it is quite highly if it's a high fidelity thing, I think it's okay to change things up a little bit cause you don't need a lot, the number of participants to validate a certain thing which is quite highly defined. And hopefully you have gone through multiple rounds of testing before that so you can have confidence in smaller numbers, [affirmative]. So I think that's the point where I feel like I could switch it up. But if we are testing something which is a little more conceptual I think I'd still keep the question that seems like it's not working that well. Cuz I know down the line we would have the opportunity to refine and get more from that area. That question.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, makes a lot of sense. That's the end of our rapid fire questions. And now just bringing us down to the close, thinking about the field of design research in 2021 and the immediate years ahead, what are you most excited about?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- A couple things. I think one is people in general are being really aware of the dilemmas and I guess the harm that a lot of digital products can bring. And I think we as researchers no longer can be in that naive, innocent point of view. People when you go to research people, we have sometimes people asking us questions, so how are you gonna make this experience not addictive? And I think that is it's, you do need that counterbalance to actually design and create something that is truly innovative and good. So I think I am excited to work with the challenging opposing force and I think that's gonna be really, really interesting navigating in the next few years. And we see it everywhere in all the different countries. That's what happening globally. People are more divided on online than united and people are starting to see why this is happening and how the digital technologies are playing an adverse effect adverse role in this.
- So I think it's gonna help us to push our field to a better place than what it is currently. So I'm excited to be part of that I think in the next few years. I think the other exciting thing is people and organizations are being more aware and supportive of the big challenges that are in front of us, like climate change. For example, even five years ago we didn't have that many people acknowledging or accepting or doing something actively about it. And it just feels like it. The time is ripe, it's stuff is happening, things are changing. And to be part of that, I think it's gonna be really, really exciting.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Most definitely is some really important ethical considerations for the field and clearly if we helped to create it, we can also help to change it, play a game.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Okay. [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- A pretty simple one. It's called, what's the first word that comes to mind? So I'm going to say a word and
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Is this a psycho psychoanalytic like test or something? After this I'm gonna get some results,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I promise it's not So I'll say a word and then you just tell me what the first word that comes to mind is. We've got three of them to go through. The first one is bias.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Humans,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Mumbai,
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Sensory overload in a good word. That's not one word at all.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It doesn't have to be one word, it can be anything.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Okay, cool, cool, cool.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh]. And the final one is whiskey.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Ooh ice.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I see.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- If you could get a message out to all of the girls growing up in India today, what would you say to them?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- For me, it was really important for me to have many mentors and role models in front of me. And that is not something that everyone has, but I think I would urge girls, women in India to look at women around them in unsuspecting roles who may not be a role model or a mentor at the first go. But look at our grandmothers, look at our sisters, our moms, they are really strong, really resilient women. They have over their lives, they've created such beautiful families, supported such great children. And that in itself is not a small task. The foundational, I think, skills that are needed to have a successful career is not very different from running a successful household. Running a loving bringing up, loving children, bringing up children that are confident about themselves and are just good humans. That is, I feel like you would need more skills and work to work towards that. So I would urge girls to just look at other women and support them and get inspiration from them.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Such an important message. Kanhika, it's been a truly insightful conversation today. Thank you for so generously sharing your knowledge and experience with me today.
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Thank you, Brendan. Yeah, your questions were really, really interesting as well. They've gotten me to think about different parts of what I do and who I am and I always appreciate that. Thank you so much.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- No, it's my pleasure. And for people that are interested in connecting with you, finding out a bit more about what you do, what is the best way for them to do that?
- Kanhika Nikam:
- Just reach out to me on my email, which is my first name, KHI, K E N H I K gmail. Yeah, I'll get back to you at some point. [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sounds great. We'll be sure to put those details in the show notes as well as a link through to your website. Thanks. And to everybody who's tuned in, it's been great having you here. Everything we've covered today will be in the show notes, including as I mentioned before, where you can find Kanhika including any resources that we've mentioned as well. If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more of these great conversations with world class leaders in design, UX, and product management, don't forget to leave us a review and to subscribe to the And until next time, keep.