Sachi Taulelei
How Design's Lack of Diversity Fuels Systemic Racism
In this episode of Brave UX, Sachi Taulelei shares what it’s like to interview people at the end of their lives, why research methods need to adapt to cultural context, and the heavy cost of poor diversity in tech.
Highlights include:
- What is it like interviewing people at the end of their lives?
- How is researching with Pasifika peoples different?
- How have Māori & Pasifika been impacted by rapid digitisation?
- Why is diversity important on product teams?
- How are our biases in tech shaping a worse world?
Who is Sachi Taulelei?
Sachi is the Design Centre of Expertise Lead (Head of Design) at ANZ, Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest bank. How large is large I hear you ask? ANZ represents 1% of New Zealand’s GDP, and employs 1 in 5 people who work in finance in New Zealand.
Her contributions have been recognised with Gold at the New Zealand Best Design Awards, and she has shared her knowledge at events such as UX Homegrown. Sachi also mentors Masters of UX Design students at the Wellington ICT Graduate School.
Sachi is widely respected and recognised as a design leader, and as a leading voice for Pasifika people who work in design and technology.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, 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 from world-class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Sachi Taulelei. For the past three years, Sachi has been the design center of expertise lead at ANZ, Aotearoa New Zealand's largest bank. How large is large? I hear you ask. Well, to put that in perspective, ANZ represents 1% of New Zealand's GDP and employs one in five people who work in finance in New Zealand.
- Sachi has worked at ANZ for almost nine years. First in the capacity of senior website manager before moving into senior UX design roles that encompass both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of design in her current role, such as actively enabling teams to embed design at scale, building the bank's design capability and advocating for and demonstrating the value of design through excellent UX service design and design operations. Her contributions have been recognized with gold at the New Zealand Best Design Awards and she has shared her experiences at events such as UX, home Grown such. She also meant mentors, masters of UX design, students at the Wellington I c t graduate school. Widely respected and recognized as a design leader and a leading voice for Pasifika people and design and technology. I've been very much looking forward to bringing Sachi's stories and perspective to you on Brave UX today. Sachi, talofa lava, welcome to the show.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Brendan. Thank you for the opportunity.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, Sachi, I am a hundred percent enthusiastic about today's conversation. I really did enjoy researching all the great things that you've been doing as a design leader and something that you actually sent me that isn't specifically related to design leadership that caught my eye was that your mother Miko was a Japanese American and that she was born in an internment camp during World War II in the United States and was raised there before coming to New Zealand as an adult later in her life. Why did her family leave Japan?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- So it's such an interesting story. I think my mother has had a massive impact on my life, but in reflection it was probably a lot more after she passed. When you lose someone who's really special and loved, there's an aspect of that trauma of a want of a different word that makes you reflect on who you are as an individual and even your [inaudible] if you think about from that Maori terminology around understanding who you are and where you come from. So my mother, I don't actually know the reason why her parents migrated to America and that largely comes from that whole episode of them having been interned in those camps created this whole sense of shame to a certain extent around denial of their own culture. They were stripped of all their assets and belongings and had to pretty much start from scratch after the war had ended.
- They never really talked about it either. So mom never really referenced it or when I asked her why they didn't really talk about it amongst the families, it became a very well that was just something that had happened and we moved on. So there is an aspect of being resilient within that story, being overcoming a lot of adversity, but also for me personally, it was very much that whole recognition of where you come from and what that actually means, particularly for people who move to countries or migrate to different countries and cultures. And so there's an interesting conversation that happens when you start to explore kind of reasons why people move and then once they're there, how they assimilate and be accepted, then create their own stories within those communities.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I mean your mother strikes me from what I l little, I know of her as someone that was quite brave. She did eventually migrate from the United States to New Zealand as well. What was it? Yes, that brought her here.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- So before we moved to New Zealand, she actually joined the Peace Corps. So she was one of the first Peace Corps volunteers that went across the world from that initiative that John F. Kennedy created, which was trying to bring more connections between the US and other parts of the world, particularly in relation to what the war had done. And so she actually had never been outside of America before that period of time again. I always created Why did she do that? If you knew my mother, she was not an at risk taker. She was not someone who was an adventurer by any means. She was very much a homebody the most of her life. But there was this one point in time when she had graduated from university and then there was a talk that was being held at college. She went to the University of California and Center. So she went to this talk and then they were talking about volunteering and she off the cuff, decided to do it. There was no rational. I said to her, why did you, oh, I thought it would be I've graduated. There was nothing else that she had planned out for her life and she didn't even know where Samoa was. When she got to sign to go to Samoa, she thought it was in South Africa.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So that's where she went. That's where they sent her.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- That's right. She went with a whole group of people, went to Sam Juan. That's where she met my father. So that's the connection there. We were Sam, Juan, Japanese, Japanese American. So yeah, from there we grew up there. I spent most of my childhood there. We only moved to New Zealand for university. So most of my childhood was spent in Samoa. But again, she moved there, didn't know the language, met my father on a blind date. He was a tag on with somebody else and crashed their date.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Good on
- Sachi Taulelei:
- It. Actually, I actually met the person she went on a blind date with much later on in life, I think it was an adult. And he said to me, I could have been your father, [laugh> another Sam. Beautiful Sam man. So then they moved back to America after the time in Samoa, I was born in America and all of my siblings were as well. And then we moved back to Samoa when I was seven cuz my dad's grandfather passed away and so he had to take on the Mat Thai title for the family.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke about your mum being a homebody
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Very much.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What was it like? I mean there's a fascinating interweaving of culture going on here. Yes. You know, spoke about, yes we spoke about your mum being Japanese but born in America. Yes. So there's obviously an American influence, a Japanese influence, and now a Samoan influence in the picture. What was it like for you and your sister growing up in such a, what I assume was a very rich cultural environ environment?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes. So there's three of, actually actually I have an older brother, he's back in America now living in Virginia and my younger sister. So I'm the middle child Growing up in Samoa, I'm so grateful for, because of our mixed heritage, it actually gave me a grounding in terms of identity. I think if I had been born elsewhere it would've been much more difficult for me to know my fuck and my identity. But because I grew up in Samoa and I don't actually look Sam, that equipped me with a whole lot of knowledge and understanding of the culture and even the language which has allowed me to navigate the western world and then the Sam world very easily. And so I'm grateful for that. I can see a lot of the Sam Juan born, our generations here struggle with that. My husband's one of them. I'm sure he wouldn't mind me mentioning that he was born here in New Zealand and so doesn't have that language necessarily.
- Him and his parents had some hard times. They were the first generation of Sams who came to New Zealand and assimilation was the main drive, be like everyone else don't learn the language. In order to succeed you need to learn English at school. And so yeah, that's the whole generation of people that are, he's just starting to get to know his own culture now and has just started in the job where he is at the Ministry of Health working in the Pacific unit and loving it. But he has his own journey of coming to grips with all of that too. Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- No I definitely want to get into that with you in the context of different communities in New Zealand. But I think, dunno if there's a direct equivalence, but I suspect that around the world particular, particularly in Western societies, there's, there'll be some interesting territory for us to explore there in terms of that assimilation and some of the other perhaps more negative aspects of Western culture and how they have impacted our other ethnic communities within our countries. Sachi, I just wanna come back to your mother. I understand that she sadly passed away in 2018 and something that came from that sad occurrence was that you have since become a biographer at Mary Potter Hospice and that really struck a chord with me and it's something that I wanted to explore if I may with you on the show today. Sure. I understand that as part of a biography you have to do interviews, not potentially not too dissimilar to what we are doing today. What is it like and how do you approach doing an interview with someone who's at a very special stage the end of their life?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- It's interesting how you talk about events in life that have an impact on shaping who you are. My mother's death was one of those and I do think that is something that most all people experience throughout the beginning and ending of life and its cycle. For me I didn't know how I would respond until it actually happened and mom, I was so blessed and fortunate that mom came and stayed with us to towards the end of her life and she actually passed away under our care. And that was such a beautiful experience for me to be a part of. And it helped me tremendously in the grieving process cuz I could see that her passing was actually, she was in a lot of pain towards the end. And so it was a blessing for her to actually be at peace. But then it also allowed me to have that time with her and to talk to her about her life and her, what she had thought her life would turn out to be and the sacrifices that she made that I was not as children, we don't realize how many sacrifices our parents make for us.
- And then I kind of realized that grief and dealing with death is not something that I'm very adverse to. It's something I'm quite comfortable with. And you don't know that until you're in that type of situation. It feels really strange saying that. But there was, again, my sister had a completely different reaction to it. So here we are sisters very, very close. She actually, I would say was mom's best friend when she was alive. They did everything together well, shared a lot of experiences and so forth cuz she was the youngest and was the one that was with mom towards the longest. And so she had a very different reaction to me. And so again that was reflection on my part around why that was and why did I respond differently to death just in general in grief. Mary Potter hospice was fabulous during that whole time where she needed their care, very supportive.
- Every single person that worked in that organization approached us with empathy and care and so much love and understanding. And so you be very immediately create this connection with them. There was one instance where a nurse had to come at 3:00 AM in the morning cuz we ran out of drugs for mum. No problem at all. They just come across and I remember that this lady walking in the door and I just had this whole sense of gratitude. They were, and again they people not very much [laugh> in the scheme of things, but the service that they provide is so valuable and rewarding and they should be paid much more. Oh totally. [laugh>. Just ridiculous how we don't value that in society, that type of craft from service. So when she passed, it became a, I still had that connection to Mary Potter. We were so super grateful for them and I wanted to volunteer.
- I had seen that there had volunteers that came through the inpatient unit all the time, but they had the stand down period that you can't do it until you've had about a month sorry, not a month, a year between the passing of a loved one. Just you don't know how you will respond in those circumstances. But I had this real desire to do it. So when that time was up, I reached out and said I'd like to do to volunteer. I actually started as a receptionist. You can't be a bio for straight off cuz you need to do other work within the hospice to get used to working in that type of environment and then you can become a bio. So I think I was a receptionist for about a year. And again that was really beautiful cuz I was able to interact with the nurses who actually cared for mum too and that they were still there. And we developed really close relationships and you are able to greet people as they come in and you can't understand to completely where they're at in their journey and so forth. So yeah, the biography thing has been so rewarding and we often says biographers that we get more outta it than the person that we're working with.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What is that? What has it given you? Yeah,
- Sachi Taulelei:
- I think there's a whole beauty about someone in that stage of life who's reflecting on their life story and also what messages or what they want to pass on. It's a very, very reflective state. Some people are really, really prepared and know exactly what they wanna talk about. Some are, I don't have anything interesting to say. And then they just sit there and tell you about their life and you're like, whoa,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- They
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Were wrong.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Keep telling me
- Sachi Taulelei:
- More me more. I can't believe that you did all that. But I learned so much just about family, the influences people have on each other, being really grateful for things that you've done in life or the most beautiful one I had was, it was a group session and people came to the session, we don't normally do this, it's usually one-on-one. But this was a impromptu session where people just shared their stories about the person to the person. And I was so in awe of the person themselves was the one that was like, I don't have anything interesting. But when you hear their story from other people and the words of gratitude and yeah, it's completely, I don't know, I'm stuck for words knowing how to even describe it. It's very, very heartwarming and just makes you believe in humanity again.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I mean it, it's truly a special time and all senses of the were and also special to hear those stories. I can imagine being someone who's personally not very good handling death.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm projecting a bit here, but I imagine that could present some challenges for your own emotional health. You mentioned that you were quite good with dealing with the passing of your mother compared to how your sister dealt with things. Yes. But in the context of being a biographer and facilitating these interviews and hearing all these amazing stories about someone who is likely not going to be here much longer, how do you manage your own emotional health in that setting?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- It's really tricky cuz that's a really good question. And to be quite honest, I haven't really reflected specifically around how to manage all the different emotions you go through. I feel we talk about it as a biography group, but we have a session every month around looking after yourself and some tips and tricks around how to just come away from it. Cause when you have a session you're actually, you feel quite emotionally drained a little bit afterwards. So going for a walk or sitting and sitting and reflecting and reading a book is also a really good way to unwind. For me, I don't have a specific thing. I think because my life is so busy, very busy at work and very busy at home with the kids, the aspect of just coming back home is something that allows me to just put that aside and do the next thing that that's on the list I think I could be much better with just spending some more time for me is if I was to think about an area of growth, that would be it. And I think most, a lot of women or some and men as well do with our busy lives, they putting ourselves first is often quite hard to do.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I was speaking the other week with Larder GOCO who runs as director of at Mural and she started out her research career professionally in a prison in Ukraine. And we touched on this similar sort of intensity of situation where often as, and again I'm not trying to draw an equivalency between what you're doing in design, but I am interested in exploring if there are some parallels here. We don't often have the training or the support networks as designers or designers that are doing research or as UX researchers to handle and process some of the more challenging situations that we put ourselves in or can find ourselves in with participants. And I wondered if anything, again I'm protecting a little bit here, but has there been anything that's come from this emotional and time investment that you've put into your biography work at Mary Potter Hospice that you've been able to see changes in the way in which you approach your design practice or any interesting parallels that you believe are there?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Absolutely. I think that I'm very much someone who takes every interaction as a learning opportunity. I always think, what did I, that was really interesting engagement cuz they're all different people that you work with. And so what's something that I've learned and often it is just a grounding and I think that's very important too, to have in life where you're got a million things on the plate and then you go to a biography and nothing else matters. It's the best way to get your feedback on the ground. Yeah. So I've used that as an aspect of when life's so busy, I reflect on some conversations I've had with somebody and that immediately makes me go, okay, I don't need to worry about those two emails that are driving. It's in the scheme of things, it's very, very little in terms of the work that I do in that biography space.
- I think for in terms of design, it's made me absolutely more empathetic in my craft too and how I even engage with people on a day-to-day basis cuz you've come across so many different people so therefore that just highlight that you can't approach the same, the conversation the same way. So there is different techniques that you or different ways of connecting. And I think the thing that I struggled a little bit initially as a biographer is that we're a very professional relationship and so you don't get into who you are as a person, it's more about the person that you're interviewing or recording. And the very first three people that I spent time with were Maori Pacific. And so that to me was a very different dynamic because actually the first session we were connecting and that's just what you do [laugh> in the Maori Pacific communities is who are you from? What part of Sam are you from? That's kind of connection where you technically are meant to do that [laugh> strictly within that you was meant to create a relationship but not as much as a friendship or it's still a very professional engagement. Now
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's something interesting there, right there in terms of that culture clash that we alluded to earlier in the conversation with the first samon people migrating to New Zealand and being expected to conform to the western values and leave the language behind. Yes. Here's a situation where are probably for some good reasons, there's been a setup where you're supposed to leave yourself out of this interview picture.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- That's right,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes. Which isn't uncommon, I suppose, in UX research either. That's also one of the things that you're supposed to make the participant feel comfortable but you're not really there to share a lot about who you are. But yet culturally in Maori and samon communities, Pasifika communities, that's actually going against what is most natural.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Absolutely. So this is where I struggle a little bit with that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, well tell me us about that.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- I'm really wanting to change that cuz I think there are ways where I methodology around design thinking it does suit or cultures and for the longest time I tried to fit in and I think I'm of the generation of people who assimilated and so that came comfortably but also not comfortably, if that makes sense. I knew how to do it cuz I'd done it pretty much all my life, but it felt wrong. And there's an aspect of that that they still carry with me on the back in there's a niggling voice in the back of my head around that doesn't feel right. But that's what we've been told to do and this is the right way to conduct research as opposed to the way that we connect and have Tylenol or conversations in the Pacific community. It's completely different. And if we were to approach it using strict kinda research methodology, it would not succeed or wouldn't get the outcomes that you're seeking to achieve.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And for people listening to the podcast, which this is a global audience, a good proportion of which are from TDO or New Zealand, but the majority are from overseas. So just to paint that picture clearly for those people and for myself quite frankly, I don't wanna assume just because I'm a New Zealander that I understand this cuz I don't. What are those key differences that you might Yeah, right. Have between say a European, New Zealand Western way of approaching those conversations and a Pasifika way of approaching those conversations. Right.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Okay. Good question. I think you remember when I asked you about the name of your company, the space in between? Yes. The reason for that is because in the Sam culture and there's similar type within the Pacific cultures in general, there's a thing called [inaudible] which is it is respecting the space. So we are people who connect through all relationships to the land, to our artura, to God and Maori I think are very similar. So that we're, we think of things holistically rather than one dimensional. So in order to even start, you have to have, or that discussion, you have to have respect and you have to understand what your relationship is and respects that bar, that space. So that's critically important in the Pacific communities, particularly in Sam. You can't just go in and talk to whoever and recruit people in our current ways that we recruit people through sending out invites and getting people to sign up. If you were really wanting to do research within a community like the San Juan community, that would not go well [laugh> because people exist within a paradigm within a villa or NewU or a IA or a church. And there are roles that everyone plays within that. And you have to understand the dynamics and the context in which they exist as people in order to then get to the research or the outcomes that you're seeking, if that makes sense. Does that make sense?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, makes complete sense. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose a lot of research approach has been from the western context and it's not actually until I was preparing for this interview that I started to think about what that actually means for the participant experience or the people that we're trying to learn from. So I think this is a hugely important conversation. And again, I'm probably stepping outside of my remit here, but I imagine that there are also many parallels across non-Western cultures that we interact with in the product and design community as well. And that we can do with a little bit more understanding, respect and perhaps some adaptation of our methods in order to make sure that what we learning and how we're going about that is done in a way that is respectful to the people that we're learning for and not one dimensional.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes, that's right. I think that's huge opportunities in that space to do much better and you will get better outcomes and better research as a result of doing that. Yeah, I've only just realized how I spoke before about being the generation of assimilator. So I've only just come to realize what the meaning of imperialism and co colonialism is. I've never really looked into it or read up about it, but I've was just starting to come to the realization that a lot of the research that we learned at university was based particularly within our Pacific communities. I think about, my mom used to be a teacher, she had books on her bookshelf living back in Samoa. One of them was Margaret Meads anthropologist, her research into samon society and culture back then, particularly around adolescents and then reading now about her methodology and the impact that AC research has done in creating kind of, not stereotypes but thinking around how the samon culture is or once back in that time is hugely impactful based on not a lot of rigor in terms of that methodology. So there's ongoing impacts for my culture or in my community based on that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's one of those conversations that I don't think that we are having and I'm really pleased to be able to have it with you on Brave UX in this episode. Now I want to shift gears slightly from research but into something else that is in incredibly important and topical for us to talk about, which is the massive shift to online that businesses and other organizations have been going through as a result of Covid 19. Yes. But that acceleration has made it difficult for some groups of society to keep up, generally speaking, if it's possible to do so. How have Maori and Pasifika people's lives been impacted by what's happened in the last 18 months?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- I think yeah, there's been huge impacts. But again in that article I wrote they've, these inequalities have existed prior to Covid. It was just Covid came along and highlighted even more inequities that exists within our society. It is a problem that there are quite a lot of organizations and groups and people trying to address and solve. So isn't one solution to it. I think there's a multi-prong multifaceted response that needs to happen across the board. Government educations in institutions, corporates like the one I work for, all need to pitch in to help. But the impact I think is real. We often, and I can guilty of this to a certain extent, I talk about it but I don't see it on an everyday basis. I'm also quite far removed from the reality of people who are in with communities now even in South Auckland going through what they're going through in the recent cases. That is the reality which a lot of us don't get to see very often on a day-to-day basis. But I hear about it through the connections I have within the community. So we're all kind of slightly removed from it and I'm answering this question very badly, but it
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Is, I think one of the things that comes to mind for me, and I wondered if this is something that you had heard through the community as well or had experienced, was when I was talking to Jared Spall a couple of months ago, he highlighted the issue of lack of access to appropriate devices in households that now had to homeschool children. Largely cuz of economic factors. But as we know, those economic factors disproportionately affect certain ethnicities within society more than others. What has been the impact on the taiki the children? Yes. In these communities from what we're all doing now at the moment in New Zealand, which is sitting at home cuz we're not able to go to work. How has this played out?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Well devices is one thing, but actually people are struggling just to feed themselves and to survive. That's really the reality of it. And can't, the secondary education and access to the internet devices is secondary if you're in that situation. And often, and this is something that we're trying to work through with the work that I'm doing, which is very small in comparison to some of the other trusts or doing in the community, is helping create opportunities in the workforce. So there's two angles we can take at it. There's new talents. So people who education the graduates are coming out of schools and providing opportunities for them that way or even earlier on when they're selecting subjects to study. My son's going through that right now. He's 13. He has a whole list of subjects that he can select for year 10 next year. And he's often going to the thing that he will would like to do versus something that's aligned to a career that we're thinking about now.
- And so having those conversations even now helps guide our young people into career path for them. One aspect, there's another aspect around just providing opportunities for people who are going through or need a chance. And I talk about paying it forward cuz someone actually did that for me at one point in time and stuck their neck out and said, give her a chance and look where I am now. If that person hadn't done that for me, I don't know where I would be. It would've been a completely different pathway. And with the way that we recruit, we've just successfully placed someone from an relationship that we've built with M S D into our team because we were recruit trying to look at other ways to recruit rather than the normal foot place job at ons, seek and see what happens. We actively have to seek people out and create spaces for them in order to create a really diverse workforce.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Like the spaces we were just talking
- Sachi Taulelei:
- About.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Like how we were talking about before in terms of research approach. Yes. We can't just necessarily apply the same approach and expect a different result in order to create a more diverse work workforce. Now we talking about recruitment, I understand that in your office you can literally count the number of Pasifika people on your hands and that there's a joke with your Pasifika colleagues about that. What is that joke?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- So that joke is there's very few of us and sadly true, we ran the numbers in our recent survey that we've done internally and they're appalling [laugh>
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Because jokes often mask an underlying feeling. People use human to cover up pain sometimes or hurt. Yes. When you guys joke about that, you and your colleagues joke about that, what is actually the underlying feeling behind that realization that you can literally count the number of Pasifika people in your office On one hand
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Feeling's probably a little bit of frustration and just being really a bit has become a joke. Even [laugh> to the point where we laugh about it. But you're right, the underlying feeling is frustration. A little bit anger around why is that And if it hasn't worked in terms of our current recruitment processes, what do we need to do in order to change it up a little bit? It also is a core to action for us, which we've started to do. We we've started to rally a group of us internally to make some change and to change some of the systematic changes that need to happen within the fa fabric of the corporation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I mean it's actually a call to action for everybody and I just want to paint a picture for people listening to this and that is in New Zealand, Maori and Pasifika people make up 25% of our population, yet only 5% of the technology sector. And if you look at how this is reflected more globally in technology in the western world at least it's almost 80% white and male. My question is that I wonder how confident are you that the sector, the technology sector, will meaningfully and proactively address these issues?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- I think there in order to survive and to be viable in the future to there has been a change in society. I don't know if you've felt it yourself, but I've definitely felt there's been this shift in terms of we actually wanna be a much more inclusive society in general. And the way that we used to do things is not no longer acceptable. If you are a company that really puts your business well, it takes your business there seriously. But also that you are wanting to provide a service or a product or to people in society, you actually need to start sipping up now, planning to do so is too late I think. But there's an element of, in order for us to do that, we need to have a really good self-reflection upon ourselves as organizations. So I'm talking broadly here in terms of workplaces.
- A lot of workplaces probably haven't done the numbers to see what the makeup is of the workforce. We have often hired for skills and experience and gender has come along as probably something else we need to look at. But we haven't looked at our workforce in a very holistic way. And that's beyond ethnicity I know is there's certain areas that we probably need to focus in on cuz that long-term impacts into lifting certain people within society in general. Pacific's one of them, which is why that's on my radar cause it has long term for those communities. But there are many, many aspects that could be looked at in terms of defining what your diversity profile is for your company and what is it that you want to represent.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it has huge impacts as well for how we shape the experiences that we are designing for. Correct. The people we are designing for. What are some of the, where you work lead the design center of expertise, there's a lot of complex problems that you tackle there and I know research is a part of the design practice there as well. Yes. What sort of things have you been doing in your spheres in sphere of influence and workplace to tackle this complex problem of diversity? I think you mentioned in terms of hiring practices, but is there anything else that you've been doing as a company or as a team?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes. So besides the hiring aspect, which is super important, we're also doing a reflection of the work that we're doing and how do we connect that into a different way of doing research. So I know I passed onto you the beautiful Miriam be who he leads the indigenous design Al design agency looking at how do we rethink our approach to design from using different perspectives and lenses in our work, challenging ourselves as designers to be better. And we've never actually done any work specifically for modern Pacific. It's always been like an add-on or a, we'll include a few people with access needs. So there's an element of let's just do some research for this community and see fresh eyes what comes out of it rather than the other way around. Which is often the way, cuz we've got very busy delivery pipelines, so we [laugh> need to support them and get work out the door. But spending some time to really interrogate do we have the right insights and how do we start building a toolkit of understanding to inform our work. So it goes hand in hand. It's ensuring that your team have a whole range of perspectives, which comes from the diversity element and then ensuring that what you are actually doing as a design team has a very inclusive approach to it as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I think I'm a little bit afraid actually of framing this question.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Okay. But I'm, help me with that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, well I mean this is Brave UX. Hopefully it's not stupid UX. But let me frame this question
- Sachi Taulelei:
- [laugh>.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What I wanted to say and ask you was, I feel like it's often easy for people like myself, clearly I'm male, clearly I'm white to have this conversation and get this, say things like, or get this sort of sense that it sounds really unfair and obviously something needs to be done about this. But then go back and just live my life how I was living it before without yes really taking any action to help influence the status quo or knowing, knowing what to do. And this is the bit that I suppose I was a little bit afraid of asking because I feel like it's something that's been covered before in the media, which is white privilege people asking other people what they should be doing about their white privilege. But what I wanted to ask you
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Is
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What is it that you want this predominantly white and male technology sector, these people that are like me, that are in design and in technology but are part of that majority ethnicity? In this case in the west it's probably the European and New Zealand, well, European, new Zealanders. Yes. What do you want us to really understand or to do? Or both, what is the thing that we aren't getting because clearly the status quo is not acceptable.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Interesting question. What do we want you to know? I think it's really important to have allies in this together. I think it's a acknowledgement that there is a problem as a start, but we need everyone to be on board with the realization that it's for all of us. It's not just we are wanting to lift modern Pacific and that's it. By lifting modern Pacific, we actually become a much better society across the board for and so we all need to be in it together. I think the biggest thing for me having, cause I'm a woman and Sam and I have always come up against struggles, been in meetings where I'm the only woman often and there are a lot of people around the table who of will often pause the conversation and go, okay, I wanna hear from Sachi. So inviting my voice in to be heard.
- And that's great. I think that's a really good start. But I think it would be sitting in those rooms and looking around go, oh, why do we all look the same? And I think the [laugh>, the biggest thing that made me feel so emotional actually was in my team we had a little bit of a restructure and some of the team were moved into another part of the bank and one of them messaged me and said, it feels very strange here. Everyone looks like me. I can tell the difference. And that was said in a little way but also quite rewarding for me because I, you can feel it [laugh> an aspect of creating a really diverse inclusive where you can't measure it necessarily. You can't put it in a graph or anything, but it's the feeling that people get when they're part of it. Really the ask would be is that we try and aim to do that together. Yeah, that makes
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sense. Yeah. Yeah, it's huge. Hugely important. Thank you for sharing that with me, Sachi. I really appreciate it. I want to come back to this underrepresentation that, well this clearly been one of the big themes of today's conversation and I feel like it's important territory to cover with you.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you mentioned that we're doing this for all of us and yes there have been some well-publicized examples of when design and technology teams are to monoculture and create experiences or products that clearly have harmful consequences. I don't think there's any way of stepping around that to other people in society. And in the article that we've been referencing that you wrote, you talk about some of the ways in which that often it's well intentioned, it's unconscious. Yeah. Call it whatever you like. But clearly the outcome is poor. Yes. What are some of the ways that underrepresentation leads to harmful outcomes or products that you highlighted in the article?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes. And the harmful aspects of it is when there are consequences to the result of your product or service when someone gets marginalized or doesn't have access to it. So when we just talk about accessibility in general, the way if regardless of ethnicity itself, if we don't build or design products and services to think of all to be inclusive of all society, then there will be people who will be left out. And that number's growing. I think within that are demographics across eldor and it impacts us all. Rather that's whether that's immediately I talk about that case that's happening currently in Auckland, south Auckland, I'm not immediately impacted, but I have people that are in my network who are impacted. It would be the same across the board for people with access needs too. Who you would as we age, our eyesight, it's failing and we all have instances where we only have one use of one arm or something if we'll break. So there's elements of, if we just take that approach around being more inclusive at everyone benefits from it. Mm-hmm. One of the examples round about the way,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. One of the examples that was quite horrific actually, that you gave in that article was the Google photo app, which is quite a well-known one. Yes. Mistakenly labeling photos of black people as gorillas. Yes. I just want people to think about that for a second. Just take a moment, maybe pause this interview and just have a think about that and think about the harm that has caused a huge proportion of the world's population unintentionally. This is the sort of stuff that we're talking about. If we don't get our diversity mixed in the way in which we create these products is hugely harmful. I think Sachi also talked about the New Zealand police making some sort of acknowledgement around some of the AI technology that they were trialing.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes. That it adversely targets people from Maori Pacific backgrounds. And I think that's just prevalent throughout society. AI is one aspect of it, but there are definitely, even in, you can see it a lot in America too, we're profiling is go, goes haywire. Yeah. I
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Mean we're literal literally building this into our products, aren't we?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Yes. And it comes from stereotypes that have been created, our own biases that we hold unconscious or consciously within our heads. And so that comes out in the work and as products and services that we create as a result.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about in this segment, which is there was an M I T technology review that covered how credit scoring algorithms similar to the AI that we were talking about mm-hmm In the context of the New Zealand police and how it racially profiled Maori and Pasifika people. But those credit scoring algorithms keeping people in poverty. Yes. What was Daniel and Emma Totus experience of this in New Zealand?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- So they also had a very similar experience where algorithms, in terms of credit scoring, what do you have a really bad credit score? It's really hard to recover from that regardless of what you do in your life as a result. And so we keep people in the cycles of not being able to get a loan or not getting it, be able to get a home loan to buy a house or that absolutely disadvantages a whole lot of people from acquiring wealth. I think one of the indicators for financial wellbeing is having a home. The people who are able to have assets like land or a home are significantly more advantaged than society than those who don't. And so when you have algorithms or credit decisions that are made that go against a large community of people, that just takes them out of the equation of ever being able to be in that kind of wealthy of wealth category.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I'm just going to read a quote from the article, which is from Daniel, just for people to get a bit more context about what you've just said. And he said, it made me feel like as a person, I'm uncomfortable to be a Pacific Islander. Maybe if I wasn't born a Pacific Islander, maybe I would've got a house for my wife and kids already. That's just how I feel. And I think is, again, this is probably a moment to pause honestly and have a think about those words of Daniel there. But I mean these are the impacts and consequences that we are talking about. And in terms of the way in which we design the technology that we are all working on. I mean they're clearly outcomes that we don't want.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- No, that's anyone to feel. And the pre premise of that article was the lack of diversity is creating that cuz you don't have people who have different life experiences or are able to contribute from different perspectives. And so therefore of course you're going to create something that you think is the best solution with your own knowledge or the team's knowledge. But I think for me that quote rung true largely because people who like me and Daniel and Emma have at some point in time experienced when you have not been accepted even I think even for me, a reflection, I wouldn't have had it as bad because physically I don't look Sam, but I do have a very odd looking name [laugh>. It's clearly not European or Western of Western Origin. Origin. So I have had experiences earlier on where just trying to apply for a job, this would've been earlier on in my career.
- And I remember someone saying to me, have you ever thought about changing your name? And I thought, why would I even do that? But then it became a, oh, is it my name that's putting, as you screen cvs, is there some element of yeah, just going, oh that's clearly not a name that we're familiar with and therefore hosting it on. And I think about how that then kind of weaves itself into how we build things like forms where we ask for people to identify characters, first names and last names. That's very western construct. Again, like most Asian names W wouldn't have that kind construct within itself, but we acquire people to fill it in a specific way. So that's again denying that there is any other way to have a name than that. So all those types of interrogations of experiences create much better solutions.
- I think in the long run. When I worked in the web team, we had a whole team in China who serviced China, who serviced the delivery aspects of the website. And one of them had come over from Chandu to visit us and spend some time with the team and his name was Jared and I was calling out to him, he was sitting on the desk across from me. I was Jared, Jared and he didn't respond at all. And then I trying to wave at him and calling out his name turns out that that's actually not his name. [laugh> his name, he had a Chinese name but used Jared because in the requirement from his employer, I don't back in, was that they had a wisdom name where they communicated with everyone from overseas when usually email correspondence and he had never heard it verbally. That was kind of the first time. And so I thought, why are we even asking you to that? How terrible is that that we require people to take on different names just to make ourselves comfortable? Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Literally where a disguise, in order to get by
- Sachi Taulelei:
- And make my life easy when I could just spend some time getting to know how to pronounce your name, what's wrong with it. And again, so I dunno where I'm going with this point, but it feels like there are little elements like that where being inclusive is just seeing people for who they are and accepting them and taking some time to be respectful about that and some time to learn more about them. There's so much goodness that comes from just taking that time.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There are some good things going on in our industry, but there's a long, long way to go. Sachi, if you could get a message out to all young Pasifika people about design and technology, what would that message be?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- I think my message for young Pasifika would be to dream big and to be brave. Yeah. This whole talk is Brave UX. I think we all, there's an element of being really true to yourself. If I had done that earlier on in life, I wouldn't have gone down the medical road that my dad wanted me to do. I would've been more on the creative path, which I actually ended up being on [laugh> much sooner on in life. So there's an aspect of knowing what you want to do, what you're really good at. The [inaudible> guy, principal, I always talk about that with my team internally. The Japanese, again, this is where I bring my Japanese, tell us about it. So guy is a whole philosophy of living. So it has a dimension around knowing what you love to do, knowing what you're good at, knowing what's good for society or the environment or the wider world, and then what you get paid for.
- And once you can identify those four things, what comes together is either your vocation or your mission and life or your proficient. And that requires a little bit of reflection on your part and it can change over time. Cause Iki guys is not about having the perfect balance or understanding, it's all, it's learning that as you go along. So as you're branching out studying, you may have different things that you love and are good at and as you go through life and it kind of moves along with you. So I'm a huge advocate for just being able to verbalize that in a conversation. And often I do that with my mentees. So what are you really good at and what do you love doing? And half the time, our conversation is just based on that. They will often say, well, I'm not sure yet. That's fine. But what are the things that you are in your flow when you're in that flow where you're just super happy? And yeah, what are those moments and what is it about that moment that you are really motivated and interested and engaged about
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Really important things to consider. Sachi, this has been a wonderful conversation. It's been quite a deep conversation as well. We've really gotten into some really important issues today. It's been so valuable hearing your perspective and experiences on that. So fa'afetai tele lava, thank you for so generously sharing those with me today.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Fa'afetai tele lava, Brendan, and awesome on your pronunciation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I was worried.
- Sachi Taulelei:
- Thank you. You're very brave. So well done.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's a very small thing for me to be able to do. Sachi really is, and you're most welcome, Sachi. If people want to find out more about you and the things that you're up to in your practice, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Sachi Taulelei:
- I think just connecting on LinkedIn is probably the best way to get in contact with me. I'm more than happy to have further conversations with people and learn from others as well in this space.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Perfect. Thanks Sachi. And to everyone that's tuned in, it's been really great to have you here in listening to such an important episode. Everything that we've covered today will be in the show notes, including where you can find Sachi and any of the resources that we've mentioned. I think I'll put a link in there to ikigai as well. If you enjoyed the show and you wanna hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe. And until next time, keep being brave.