Amy Jiménez Márquez

Episode 67
Brave UX

Navigating Design Leadership's Pivotal Moments

In this episode of Brave UX, Amy Jiménez Márquez shares her story of going from designer to design leader, what it was like to design Alexa’s personality, and what matters when leading in tough times.

Highlights include:

How did you navigate the move into design management?
Can leaders afford to be outwardly less than their best during hard times?
What was it like meeting Captain Jean Luke Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart)?
What prevents Alexa from defending herself when she’s being abused?
What were the principles you used when designing for Alexa?

April 5, 202201:18:46

Listen on:

Who is Amy Jiménez Márquez?

Amy is a Design Director at Compass, a real estate technology company that’s on a mission to help everyone find their place in the world.

Before Compass, Amy invested four an a half years at Amazon, most of which was as the UX Design Manager for Alexa’s personality. A role that would see her team launch adaptive personalities for celebrities, like Samuel L. Jackson, as well as the “Hey Disney!” assistant.

What a job!

Prior to Alexa, Amy worked on the Amazon Flex design team, where she was the Senior UX Design Lead, helping to improve the delivery driver experience in what became a $20 billion plus global logistics platform.

A generous contributor to the global UX community, Amy is the Owner and Publisher of Boxes and Arrows, a thoughtful peer-written publication that’s devoted to provoking thinking and pushing limits when it comes to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design.

Transcript

Brendan Jarvis:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of 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 off 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 Amy Jiménez Márquez. Amy is a Design Director at Compass, a real estate technology company that's on a mission to help everyone find their place in the world. There Amy leads a team of UX professionals that are crafting clear, usable solutions for complex problems that real estate agents, staff and their clients have.
Before Compass, Amy invested four and a half years at Amazon, most of which was as the UX Design Manager for Alexa's personality (there are bound to be a few great stories there). Prior to Alexa, Amy worked on the Amazon Flex design team where she was the Senior UX Design Lead. In that role, she helped to improve the delivery driver experience by streamlining processes and product experience for what became a 20 billion plus global logistics platform. A generous contributor to the global UX community. Amy is the owner and publisher of Boxes and Arrows, a thoughtful peer written publication that's devoted, devoted to provoking thinking and pushing limits when it comes to the practice innovation and discussion of design. Amy also kindly volunteers her time as a mentor on ADPList and as a submission reviewer for the Information Architecture Conference. As if she didn't have enough on her plate, she is also currently working with the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle as an instructor on the fundamentals of information architecture. Rumor has it that Amy can also occasionally be found performing improvisational comedy. Who knows where this might go? Well, let's find out. Amy, welcome to the show.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Thank you Brendan. That was a great intro.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, hey, look, all you, it was all your accomplishments and there are some, so many great things in there I'd love to dive into today. Last I heard you lived on a mini farm, which as we call in New Zealand here, a lifestyle block and you have a peacock, I believe, or had at the time that I do that. I heard this called Kevin. Is Kevin still annoying? That's right. The neighbors,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yes. Kevin is still annoying the neighbors happily and he has a girlfriend, Ella, a phe. There's no little chicks running around, but yeah, Kevin's still around every morning. My routine is I feed, I give the dogs a treat, I give the cats a treat, I go outside and I give the peal a treat. So it's fun to just have them greet me in the morning at the door.
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh]. Do Kevin and Ella have appropriate privacy?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yes, yes, they have appropriate privacy.
Brendan Jarvis:
Okay, well.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
And they like all peafowl, they roost in trees. So we have very tall cedar trees around the house and they sleep in the cedar tree that's right outside our bedroom window. So when they wake up we know
Brendan Jarvis:
Do they crow like roosters? Like, how does this work?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Not really right, but relatively between fall and early spring they're relatively quiet. It's just when the feathers all grow out and they're looking for love [laugh], it gets noisy. They crow quite a bit
Brendan Jarvis:
And I imagine it gets pretty nice and visual as well. They're quite spectacular birds.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Absolutely.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Hey Amy, I thought we would actually do something a little bit different today to start the show, although we can continue to speak about Kevin. He sounds a fantastic and I love the fact that he's annoying your neighbors but there's an idea I had last night, I think I mentioned when I was prepping before we started recording, that I had this moment of I feel like everything's coming together for this chat, and I suppose we're about to find out whether that is the case or not. This makes me a little uncomfortable, I have to admit, in a good way. I understand you have a master of arts and theater specifically in directing and that you spent the first part of your career acting and directing in particular theater. Is that true? That's
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Correct. Yes, that's true.
Brendan Jarvis:
I also understand, as I mentioned intro in your introduction that you're a fan of improv. Is this also true? Yes, yes.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
It's not just a fan, but I've performed it for nearly 30 years.
Brendan Jarvis:
How about we do a performance right now,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
We could improvisational comedy is very different from standup comedy in that we need audience
Brendan Jarvis:
Feedback.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Okay, so I'm not sure how we would get audience feedback for this.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, it could be asynchronous feedback I suppose. Oh my goodness.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
You
Brendan Jarvis:
See that I've clearly, I've clearly not done enough home homework around how improv works there. I was thinking that we could do this, you and me, but clearly that's not going to be the case.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Well, you could say that this whole conversation is improvisational.
Brendan Jarvis:
That's true actually. That's very true. I did actually recently ask an another guess if they wanted to sing us into the show, which they weren't ready for. So that didn't go ahead either. So I'm not disappointed and not surprised.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Okay. But honestly, if you've ever seen the show, whose line is it? Anyway, that's a lot of what short form improvisational comedy is. There's like this whole long form versus short form. There's snobbery about it. I do short form because it's fun and it's engaging. Long form is much more in your head and psychological. But whose one is it any way was a lot like Short form and Ational
Brendan Jarvis:
Comedy. Good show. I remember that probably many reruns on TV when I was growing up here in New Zealand. Yeah, very good. I was just thinking we'd have a game of yes and [laugh]. That was about as far as my know knowledge of improv went hope to be honest. Anyway. So Amy, I understand that you grew up in southern Texas and also grew up as a Southern Baptist and
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
That is correct.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. And I mean obviously I come from little old New Zealand, half a world away and that sort of, I suppose that knowledge of what that's like. I'm somewhat lacking and I wondered to explain to someone from me halfway across the world what that's like in three words. Growing up as a Southern Baptist in Southern Texas, what would you say
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Inspiring yet repressive
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh]. Tell me more.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I think it's great to have a good foundation in a belief system. It really kind of helps guide you on a path between right and wrong, between ethical and unethical. But at the same time, any achievement I gained in my life, I was trained to not say thank you. If somebody told me, Hey, you did a great job singing today or You did a great job with this, I was trained to attribute it to God and not take credit for myself. So that set me up for a whole lot mess of a life of never wanting to take credit for anything I
Brendan Jarvis:
Did. Has that changed?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Absolutely. [laugh], thankfully. And what changed? I met some amazing, I well met some amazing mentors about 11 years ago or so. I met Design Professional by the name of Christina Waki. She's amazing. And she teaches at Stanford. She teaches the D School classes there and I met her at the, it was then the I summit. It's now the I conference, but she has from day one, she was amazing and she basically just told me I need to learn how to say thank you and let it go. And it's just been great. There's a lot of things I would not have done in my life and being brave enough to take the job at Amazon cuz it was kind of intimidating. Again, that was something that she was very encouraging about. So just a wonderful strong mentor.
Brendan Jarvis:
And I understand that there is a even deeper connection you have with her and that's boxes and arrows was originally founded by Christina and you took that over a number of years back. How did that come to be? How was that conversation?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
So Christina had a lot on her plate and boxes and arrows is volunteer run and it's always hard to find volunteers because volunteers are always volunteering everywhere and it's hard to get commitments. So she was just kind of really tired of carrying the publication. She had amazing editor working with her. Cinnamon Milk is amazing who's since moved on to work at Capital One and became too busy to continue editing. And Christina was talking to me at, I think at one of these conferences we were at, she said, Hey, I'm going to shutter the magazine or the publication, I'm going to just close it and stop it. I said, no, no, no, you can't do that. There are universities that use your material for their programs, you cannot do that. And she said, well, do you wanna take it on? Would you take it on? I'm like, oh yes, [laugh] slowly do that.
Brendan Jarvis:
Was it a yes with some hi hesitation or was it a yes, let's do it straight away. Well,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
It was a yes, let's do it. But what have I gotten myself into?
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, yeah,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I was going to say I didn't know the first thing about Running U Online. Online UX publication. I knew how to blog something for myself, but that was the limit of it.
Brendan Jarvis:
And the, what's the big difference? If you could attribute the gap between being an individual blogger to actually running a publication, just how big a leap is that?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
It's pretty big leap because you need to have good connections with people who are contributing authors. You need to be able to reach out to people or accept proposals from them and vet them to see is this appropriate for, for the audience we're trying to reach. Right now with my volunteers, I'm trying to come up with how should we set our vision for the next five years? What do we wanna accomplish in the next five years? It's running a business that doesn't make any money. I mean cuz we don't, we just have a little donation button on the website. We don't ask for money. Any of the stuff we have on Medium is free. We don't put a paywall on it. So it's a labor of love for all the people who have volunteered for it because it's just a worthwhile place to have information gathered.
There's, with the dissolution of the Information Architecture Institute, there's really not a center of gravity for IA for information architecture. So like World IA day, the organizers there reached out to us and said, Hey, can we have some kind of a partnership? And we wanna make sure that we cultivate those relationships and across the community internationally. So that Boxes narrows is a place where people can come and learn about things that maybe aren't taught at the university level. There's a lot missing in information architecture at the university level. There's not a lot of voice design out there that you can read about right now. So I wanna make sure we we're bringing that stuff into Fox's Narrows.
Brendan Jarvis:
What does that say about the state of design education? If something as critical and fundamental as information architecture isn't really being done justice to, to the designers that are coming through
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Now, I don't know all the programs, but I know that there are some very fast-tracked programs where they skim over information architecture and just kind of lump it in with interaction design, which is not the same thing. I think it's really important that you to understand how the systems on the backend work to understand how you can structure your website or your app because if you don't have a solid foundation, it falls apart. I, I'm really thrilled with the School of Visual Concepts and that they have this whole segment of information architecture that they treat teach or that I'm one of the few people, they have a few people who teach the I program. They don't wanna burn us out. So they kind of go through, let us rest for a semester or two. It is disturbing because so many ethical decisions could be made at the IA level that it's important for people to understand what you're doing when you're setting up a structure.
Brendan Jarvis:
It doesn't have that same appeal as the visual aspects of design. Well this, it's
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
The invisible work and that's one of the things that I talk about is that sometimes the invisible work is the most important work.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, a hundred percent. Hey, I just wanna come back to where we started, not with Kev, Kevin, a step further forward than that. Just regarding you in theater now. Yes. I remember reading, or maybe I was listening to something that you were speaking at, you were accounting, it wasn't until you were 27 or 28 when you felt that you could do something more with your career than theater. And I was curious about that because that 20 age of 26, 27, 28 is a common age range for people to make or not make big decisions about who they wanna be. You're sort of getting to the end of your twenties and starting to figure out yourself a little bit more or at least figure out that you're uncomfortable with what it is that you're doing. What was it that changed for you after being so in love and so engrossed in theater for so many years? Well,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Moving to Los Angeles, we'll knock the love of it right out of you. So I was living in the North Hollywood area and working for a special effects company and really, really what changed my mind was the creative director there because I had some stage design in my background from theater classes. I knew how to use AutoCAD and some programs like that. And she said, Hey, you're pretty good with this graphic stuff. Why don't you build us a website? I think those things are going to stick around. This is in the late nineties. And I said, well, I dunno the first thing about it, but I'm going to learn it. And so I went home that evening and started looking at the W three C schools and their tutorials in HTML C S s, JavaScript. And from that Friday evening to that Sunday morning, I didn't go to sleep. I was so fascinated by it and I was just sucked into it. And I'd never felt, see, I'd never had anything that I was that passionate about outside of theater. And I thought to myself, this is amazing because not only am I using the logical side of my brain, I can use logic to create creativity and to create art. And it was just like this light bulb moment of, okay, I'm doing this from now on. It was just, it wasn't like I chose design, it chose me. So that's where that started.
Brendan Jarvis:
It has a pull to it, doesn't it? Yeah, especially the internet. Around that time, I remember a similar sort of feeling that I had when I discovered, I think it was, was it Web Monkeys? Does that ring a bell as well then? Yeah, yeah. They had a bunch of tutorials and I just remember that active creation using the machine and very simply being able to make something that's hugely powerful. And I think it's something that stays with me today although it's kind of faded into the background cuz we have so many more layers of abstraction on top of it now. And clearly you've specialized as well since becoming, being a web designer back in those days, it sounds like it wasn't that hard a decision for you to make
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
To leave theater. It wasn't hard at all. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it's not like I have to leave theater. I could still do improv and at the time I was single, I didn't have kids so I could still do the evening rehearsals if I wanted to. So I was leaving the option of trying to do that as a profession rather than doing it vocationally.
Brendan Jarvis:
I'm curious, what do people close to you say when you started to move away from film and theater?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
So my brother was always the computer guy. He is a computer science professor. He specializes in branch protection and micro architecture. And when I started looking into computers, he said, I'm going to come out there and start acting if you keep looking into computers. And
Brendan Jarvis:
Did make good his promise.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
No, he's a total introvert. He would not do that. We are, as one of our teachers in high school, said, we are the son in the moon [laugh] that I'm extremely exuberant and outgoing and he's extremely withdrawn and private, but we have a lot of similarities, but only in private when we talked to each other. But my brother was surprised that I wasn't going to stay in theater. And for many years he kept referring to me as his sister, the actress Anna. I'm like, I'm doing web design for 10 years now back then. And my mother wanted to know if I was sure that I should pursue my dreams. I said, well you can have a new dream. It's okay. And that's also, it was an aha moment for me to understand that there's not an age at which you can stop having new dreams. So because I was in my late twenties, it didn't mean that I was stuck in a path.
It meant that at any minute I can change my mind. I can say, no, I wanna do this or no, I'm interested in that. And I have enough faith in myself to know that I can learn anything I set my mind to. And I was learning this really I mean just HTML felt just English. It was just very structured English and it just seemed like second nature. And I had always been almost a technophobe. Really my favorite thing about computers was the font. But once I started learning HTML and css, it was awesome. I didn't wanna look back.
Brendan Jarvis:
You said that once you realized that you could, I think you said you could do or be anything and that's quite a powerful thought and it's a thought that we seem to lose as we grow older. Something that when you're a child that seem anything seems possible to you, but somehow we seem to forget it or it gets beaten out of us.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
How
Brendan Jarvis:
Do we get that back?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
That's a great question. Mean for me, just have, my mom was so supportive. My mom was always the rock that told me I can do anything I put my mind to. I can be anything I wanna be. And her voice is always in the back of my head when I wanna try something new, you can do it. And I have a ridiculous optimist. And that helps too because I'm going to try things knowing I'll succeed. And even if I don't, it's a success because I learn something.
Brendan Jarvis:
I like that. That's the ultimate framing I can't lose,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Right? Because if I make it great, if I don't, I've learned. So that's just the way I approach things. It, it's annoying to some people I know.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh, it's necessary. I mean, sometimes we need people to annoy us, to kick us into gear and realize, help us realize that there's another way that we can be thinking about something. I wanna fast forward a little bit now because you had another time in your life where you realized that you needed to make a change. And that was in 2016. And I believe you came to the realization that you weren't happy in the design role or in your career at that stage where you were and what you were doing. And this involved quite a massive period of change for you and your family. You ended up moving 2000 miles, which we are dealing kilometers here in New Zealand, which is even more than 2000 kilometers away from where you had set up home in Texas all the way to Washington and Seattle. And you had to leave behind a life you had to leave behind friends and all the other things that go with making a home somewhere. Before we get into what that was, what, like for you, what weren't you happy about?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
So I worked at a company called U S A, which is an amazing company. They are great to their employees, they're great to the members that have memberships with them, with it's auto insurance and banking and investments for military and their families in the us. And my dad was a captain in the army in Vietnam. He was a medic. And I had basically inherited U S A membership through him. So I knew about the company and when I moved to work for that company, I knew I was going to go to a good company. I grew so much at that company, I spent nine years there. I felt like I had almost four distinct careers there cuz of the different areas I worked with. At the end, I was in the r and d space where I was leading an amazing design team in design led and data informed innovation projects where they were altruistic.
We were teaching people who live paycheck to paycheck, how to start saving money, think building programs that helped them learn that. But I felt like I had a lot of mentees but no mentors left. And it's not to say that I can't learn from my peers, but I felt like I wasn't, I hid a ceiling of growth there and I just got restless and I got comfortable and I don't being, I know it's weird. I don't like being comfortable. I got too comfortable and I needed a change. And on my nine year anniversary, LinkedIn always tells everybody, when it's your work anniversary, a recruiter from Amazon who'd been pinging me once a year for four years said, happy anniversary is a time for a change. And I was like, oh man, that's good. That's really good. That deserves a response. And I said, okay, that was a good one. What do you got? And you got me. And she said, well, yeah. And she said, well, I have this role in last mile. I said, oh, I have a friend trip who works there. And she said, she's the hiring manager, let me get him on the phone. And I was like, wait, hold on.
Brendan Jarvis:
You're going too fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
The trip calls me immediately and says, I didn't know you were on the market. And I said, I didn't say I was on the market and cause this is a huge thing. The role was in Seattle. And he talked me into, he's like, what's the worst that could happen? You get a free trip to Seattle and you don't want the job.
Brendan Jarvis:
No, he's good trip's,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Good. Yeah, he's really good. He was really good. But I did the interview loop, I loved the process. It was very, it's like an extrovert stream because you've got this panel of people listening to you as you present your portfolio work. And then you have all these one-on-ones. And I really, that's almost typical now for loops. But for me that was kind of a new thing and I really enjoyed it. And so
Brendan Jarvis:
It's not being on stage, I imagine kind
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Of, yeah, and you get the feedback from me and I was just having such great conversations with people and they were very smart people. I really loved working with smart people. And I mean I worked with brilliant people at USA as well, but I could learn in a whole different direction here. And I had to go home and have a very serious conversation with my husband and I've always been the career focused one. He worked because he wanted to make money. He's good at data science, but it's just not a passion. He loves tinkering on cars and he loves designing furniture and things that you do at home mostly. And he said, look, you are the one who has the career that you're passionate about. We should go where your career goes. And this is an opportunity you're probably not going to get. Again, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to go work on this product with somebody you already know at a big company like this.
So we should do it. So we talked to the kids and I told 'em what me? I'm going to go for three months ahead of you because you need to finish the school year. If I hate it, I will resign and I'll come back. And my poor son who had a girlfriend at the time was middle school that you can't have a girlfriend, we can't actually go on dates. But a girl he liked, my son was really upset and he's like, you're not going to like it. You're not going to like it. And I think until they were physically moving outta the house, he kept thinking that we weren't going to move. So it was a rough transition for them. So the kids spent a couple months in Arizona with their grandparents and my husband came up and we kind of set up the house and we've stayed here ever since.
And Tripp set me up with my mentor, Farrah Houston, who was leading the Alexa personality team at the time. And this probably goes into a question you have, I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it. [laugh], Farrah and I would have one-on-ones. And a couple times she had mentioned this content writing position or content editor position she had in her team. And I kept giving her the names of friends of mine that were in content. And the third time she mentioned it, she hit her hand on the table where we were eating lunches, said Join my team. And I said, oh, oh, so I'm not a writer though. She's like, well, you write online and I don't care what your title is here, I don't really need an editor. I need somebody who can help my team understand they are a design team. Because they were all called content writers at the time, or editorial writers and they were really designers cuz they were thinking of what happens next? What context is the person in when they're approaching the device why would they be asking these questions? What might they ask next? We need to make sure we have answers for that. They were really thinking logically about an end-to-end experience, but they didn't realize it was design. How
Brendan Jarvis:
Did you help them to realize that? What was the light bulb bulb moment for that team when you got involved?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Well, I learned through conversations. They were scared of the word design because to them that's visual design and graphic design things that you can see. So I started work shopping with them. And so I just called them think differently workshops or just structured brainstorming workshops. And eventually they got more and more comfortable with the term design because they told 'em what we're doing here is design. And so I would say there were a big group of the team that were very comfortable considering themselves as conversational designers. And there were a couple people on the team who were like, I really am a writer. And that's okay because if what you really wanna focus on is the written word, IM perfected the written word, that's fantastic. But we have this other group of people who really are working on the back and forth conversation. And of course then you have buoy designers voice user interface designers, which are the people who know the technical backend of it as well. Not just how to write prompts, but they understand linguistics. So I think people don't really understand there's a difference between conversational design and voice user interaction design. And it's a lot to do with linguistics and technical proficiency, understanding the backend systems.
Brendan Jarvis:
I do wanna come to Alexa and get into that in more detail, but I don't wanna let you get away with glossing over just what a monumental shift it was to go from life in Texas to Seattle and Washington. You made it sound like it was all a box of roses as far as your relationship was concerned with your husband, but you've been quite open on your blog that there were, although he wasn't as career driven necessarily as you, that there were areas of tension that you had to resolve. And I can't imagine that there'll be people, there'll be, I imagine that there will be people listening that may want to put themselves in a similar situation or may have found themselves in a similar situation. I just wanna ask you, what were the surprising areas of tension that emerged and as a couple, what was it? And this is kind of maybe getting slightly out the remit of UX and design, but yeah, that's okay. I think where that's the whole person. What were ways that you managed to navigate that together?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah, so not only did he leave his job at U S A A, but he actually stopped working, which I actually, I asked him to stop working because the kids were going to be in a transition. They weren't at an age where they could drive themselves around and they really needed somebody to be home and help. And I think his fear was that he wouldn't be contributing enough to the family. And it's honest, it's a valid fear because he doesn't like housework. Nobody likes housework. Well actually my aunt Karen does doing laundry, but I don't,
Brendan Jarvis:
That's just crazy. I think I secretly do as well. But don't tell my wife, please don't tell my wife.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I like, nobody likes housework. Everybody likes a clean house. But so just talking with him a lot about the partnership that it's not my money, it's our money. It's always been our money from the day we got married, it's our money. So whatever I earn, he's earning and shouldn't separate that from him going to an office to work and just being there to support the kids being there to drive the kids, making sure they can be involved in sports if they want to or theater if they want to. His job is to be a good dad and to raise decent human beings. And my job is to be a good mom and raise decent human beings. But I also do this thing that earns income and that doesn't mean that I'm more valuable than him in the family. It's a fact. It's just what we do. He does amazing. I could never do, he can fix anything with our washer or dryer breaks. He can take it apart, fix it himself. I can't do that. And that saves a ton of money.
Brendan Jarvis:
But this is a big thing. I mean this is illustrating how there's a lot of change going on at the moment and we are living through it. And it probably has the case for many generations that preceded us as well. There's been change happen, but there's a fundamental shift happening at the moment when it comes to gender more broadly. But also the roles that we play at home. And I wouldn't say I'm in a similar situation. I run a business my wife say or soon to be a consultant as a doctor, as I believe your dad was also a doctor. Am I
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Right? Yes. He was a surgeon,
Brendan Jarvis:
Right? So yeah, my wife's about to become a surgeon and we are also entertaining these conversations about what it means to be family and how are we each going to play to our strengths and what sacrifices should we be making for each other and for the greater good, so to speak. So I think this is a hugely meaningful topic for us to be discussing because there'll be many people in design that may be facing similar situations and wrestling with these issues.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
And without the support of my husband, I couldn't do half the things I do, like running boxes, narrows, I said yes to that without talking to him. And then I talked to him about it and he said, and basically I think I wrote about this in the article is when we talked about moving to Seattle, he said, Amy, my success is your success or your success is my success. So what if I'm successful, he's successful. He considers that a success. And without his support, without him being there, without him being okay with me going to all these conferences or the family sleeps in on Saturdays. So I get up at six and I start working on boxes and arrows because that's just I, it's not because I have to, but he's supportive of that and we have to find our balance. Every once in a while he'll help pull me back from the edge of working way too much and tell me, Hey, come on. You've gotta secure your private space, your family time, make sure that you're fighting for that because I give my team lectures about this all the time. I don't want you working more than eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. If you're working overtime, I need to know about it because then you're doing too much. I make sure that my team is taking care of themselves and he makes sure that I take care of myself
Brendan Jarvis:
Every later needs someone else to make sure that they take care of themselves. We're often quite good at giving the advice. I'm terrible at taking it.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah, yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
Absolutely. I can see why you and Tripp actually got on so well cuz you both work way too much as far as I can tell. Yeah,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Look,
Brendan Jarvis:
I wanna come to this. No one gets up at 6:00 AM on a Saturday and pause their heart and soul into a publication unless they have passion. I just wanna come to something that you did a few years ago now, which I think was maybe five or six years ago where you surveyed a hundred design practitioners in your network and you found that 91% of them were passionate about their careers, but a third, 33% of them were not passionate about their jobs. Now there's a bit of gap there and I was curious to know from your findings and what you discovered, what were the things that were getting in people's way of actually feeling passionate about their jobs?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
One of the top things was company culture. They didn't feel like they had a supportive company culture. They didn't feel like the company cared about the employees there. And of course along with that went having a direct manager that wasn't supportive or that they did not get along with. I think they say people leave managers, not companies. And I think it was a combination of having a bad company culture and then having a manager on top of that. You're not getting along with who's exhibiting all the attributes of the bad culture of that company.
Brendan Jarvis:
So those are external factors, some of them imposed and some of them not able to be removed by those individuals. What were some of the blockers that people have experienced? Maybe you've experienced them yourself, yourself that you realize that this is actually something that I can change, stop stopping short of necessarily leaving. That's clearly something that you can do that is inside your control. But how can you rekindle that passion if you're just not failing it?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Well, if it's got a toxic company culture and a bad manager, you should bounce. You should interview a lot and get out of there and save your own mental health. But if you've got maybe a bad manager but a decent company, you need to tell you confront your manager, tell them what user situation, behavior and impact conversation. Where in this situation the manager is exhibiting this behavior and it has this negative impact on you. And if that conversation doesn't fix things, then you go one level up and say, look, I'm having issues with my manager, this is what I'm seeing. I've had these conversations. It's scary to do, but people forget that your executive leadership isn't psychic. They don't know what you don't tell them, and they can't give you what you don't ask for. So you have to talk to
Brendan Jarvis:
Them. That's a huge point. People can't read our minds. We have to actually tell them what's going on for us. Going over someone's manager, going over your manager to another manager. I imagine that's not an easy thing for people to do.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Not in general. For me, I hit a point in my career where I was like, I'm just going to do what's right. So I don't care what happens. So I just start talking like at U S A I talked like to a senior vice president and then I went to my manager and said, here's what I did because I knew he would have my back. That's the thing is I had a great manager who had my back, but I also knew the senior vice president was the only one who could affect the change that I needed. So there was no point in going to the director or the vice president. I need to go to the senior vice president. Now. Not everybody do that up. Yeah, not everybody can do that. Cause it's a place of privilege that I was like, I don't care if I lose my job. I need to get this done. And if you're not comfortable talking with your manager though, or with your manager's manager you can talk to human resources. Although there's been a lot in the press lately about human resources not potentially not being very helpful especially when it comes to the large tech companies, they're very much working for the risk management of the company rather than for your happiness or your wellbeing. Which is why, I mean, personally I would just say talk to your manager's manager. It's a safer conversation.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do people need to be passionate about their jobs?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
No. Some people, a lot of designers are passionate about their jobs and I'm not sure, I think it's because you are making people's lives. The definition of design is to make people's lives easier through technology, but in wanting to make people's lives easier, there's like an ethos with that and there's a kind of passion that goes with that. I have known the very rare designer that's like, I enjoy it, but it's not a passion of mine. And that's fine. I mean, if you're working because you make a decent income and that helps you go on the trips you wanna take or spend the time you want to with your family, that's fantastic. I'm the weirdo I love. I'm super passionate about the design and I don't work on something if I'm not passionate about
Brendan Jarvis:
It. Yeah, that's a rule that I live by and it consumes so many waking hours. But I am not not afraid, I'm not ashamed of it. I'm actually actually quite fond of spending my time doing things like preparing for podcasts at 10:00 PM the night before, making sure that I've got everything sorted. I think you just have to be wide a certain way. And you're right, not everyone is wire that way. And you're obviously someone who's clearly confident. You talked about there just going to your VP at U S A to get something changed or try to change something. You are willing to risk your job. You said you also acknowledge that you're in a position of privilege to be able to do that at the time. Not everyone is going to be in that same position, but it wasn't always the case, I believe you didn't always feel this confident. I just wanna go back to something and it was around about 2016 that you wrote on your blog and I'll quote you now, and you said, I no longer feel like a poser. And you went on to say, I know what I'm doing. I do it really well, and I mentor and grow other amazing designers. Where did that feeling of being a opposer or feeling like you were being a opposer come from?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Well, there wasn't a school for UX design when I was learning this stuff. It was very organic. I taught myself everything I know about design, whether it's starting in Photoshop four or whatever at the time, whether it's we
Brendan Jarvis:
Used, remember those loading screens? Oh
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
My gosh, they were beautiful. Yeah. Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
They,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
But we used Corll draw. I've used COR Express all the different weird applications. And of course now we all use Figma apparently. But having self-taught and with a masters in theater and enjoying my job so much, I kept thinking that I was going to get caught as a fake because I loved my job so much. Why are they paying me to do this? And I don't know if it's more common for women or if a lot of guys feel this too. But I just felt like my achievements maybe weren't my own. And I have trouble, I still to this day have trouble accepting any sort of recognition at work where I can't acknowledge my team because an improv, everyone can see, the audience can see that it was this entire troop of people who put this thing together, who made you laugh, who made you feel things.
When you're getting an award at your company for being one of the top people in your organization or whatever, that's uncomfortable because there's so many people who helps you get there. There's mentors, there's coworkers, there's managers. And so that's where I think, and also being brought up in the southern back religion where I'm not allowed to take credit for anything. It was really hard. It took me a while and it took talking to a lot of other women too who are in design to realize that I, there's nothing. I mean, yes, they should pay me. And yes, I'm doing a good job and yes, I'm good at what I do and I've been doing it for a long time. Yeah, I mean it just took a while. I don't know if that there was one aha moment, but I gradually realized that I'm okay
Brendan Jarvis:
And there was no need to apologize.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
I bet you had some good award acceptance speeches written that acknowledged a few people.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Absolutely. [laugh]
Brendan Jarvis:
The trick, if you're going to get the Oscar, you've gotta have a good speech.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Right? Well actually I gotten a word at U S A A that was in front of the entire technical team. It was a big organization. And when I went on stage, the the CEO who was presenting it said, I know what you're going to say. It was a team effort. And he said, because anybody in your position would want to acknowledge their team. I'm like, oh wow, okay. He knows me. So that kind of set me at ease, but at the same time is still awkward. I don't mind receiving praise on a stage where you can see everybody. I have a little bit of trouble receiving it where it's just me.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, and it's understandable. I have been curious about this subjective imposter syndrome for a little while now. And I suppose I discussed this with Darren Hood on the show a few weeks ago, and he has a very specific view about it in terms of how he frames imposter syndrome, which is that imposter syndrome is only felt by those who are at the top of their field, yet still don't feel like they belong. So that's clearly quite a narrow definition and doesn't really speak to how a lot of people feel when it comes to feeling uncomfortable about the position they find themself in. And that self-doubt creeps in there that you spoke of wondering, Hey, are they going to eventually discover me? They're paying me to do this amazing job. This is almost too good to be true. Are we really imposters though? Are we really poses or do we just come to a realization, although not with great clarity, that we have some gaps, that we just have a few things to learn and that makes us uncomfortable?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah, I don't think we're actually imposters. I think, so here's something I do with my teams is I have a self-analysis tool for how proficient you are at these several different skills, both technical and soft skills in design. And I've adjusted it per team everywhere I go. And always, the junior designer raised themselves super high on everything. And the very senior designer raised himself low on everything. And it's, for me, this tool is a conversation starter. So when the junior designer says the scale is from not learning to learning to mastering, to could teach it. So the junior designer's, like, I could teach us ability, or I could teach user research. And so I asked them, what's the definition of user research? Well, I've seen usability tests, so I could totally teach people about that. I'm like, so this is where we start a conversation. I say, okay, here's what user research actually is. And you take them through the litany of the millions of tools you can use and the millions of techniques you can use. That's hyperbole of course. But this is what user research really is. Where do you think you are in terms of user research? And then they bring it back down. So you don't know what you don't know when you're a junior designer, when you're a senior designer, there's so much more out there that you don't know.
Brendan Jarvis:
And yeah, you're conscious of your incompetence. There's that moment where you're like, huh, there's a lot of things I don't know here. Yeah.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
And then you get to a point though, when you are conscious of your competence, and once you get over that hump of being conscious of your incompetence and focus on your strengths and realize that that's what you lean into, it's a healthier place to
Brendan Jarvis:
Be. I think you're very kind with your junior designers. Not to start with the definition of the Dunning Kruger effect.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Not at all. No, it's cuz it's not it. It's knowing what you don't know. I've met people that have the total Dunning crew, Krueger effect, and they're not necessarily necessarily apprentice designers. Yeah, there's something else. But when you're talking about very entry level designers or even interns, they, there's so much out there they don't know about. So they think they are mastering all these things that they only have scratched the surface on.
Brendan Jarvis:
One of the moments in your career, and I know this will speak to a lot of other people's careers and design as well, is that moment where as a practitioner you get asked maybe one too many times, or you have that thought on the shower, should I stay on the individual contributor track or should I move into management? Do I have what it takes? And this is often an area of someone's career where there is a lot of doubt about what you will give up and leave behind, and whether or not you actually have the competence to move into that role of managing other people's careers and do that successfully. Now you, that's something that you have done and you've done that very successfully. But I also know that you've acknowledged the fact that it wasn't necessarily an easy thing for you to do, but you've gone from in seven short years.
And not to say there's anything wrong with being an individual contributor. I just wanna make that clear. You've gone from being a lead designer to a design director. So that's quite a leap. It's quite a new set of skills that you've had to learn and to develop and to hone and build on your already strong competencies in design and empathy and all the other things that have made you the leader that you are. Was it easy, though, to decide to put down the tools and to move into management and put your hand up for those responsibilities?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
It was a gradual progression. Starting as a design lead. I was leading a team of 10 designers without having direct management. So I managed their workflows, but I didn't manage them as individuals. What I would do is make sure that they had all the interesting things. And the IC work I took was the garbage because I wanted to make sure that they were working on things that they could grow in. And I would sit down and have team meetings every week about what was coming down the pipeline, talk to people about what they're most interested in, where they haven't had an opportunity to grow. You haven't worked on mobile yet, so let's get you on a mobile project. You haven't worked on this backend system. I know it's not glamorous, but let's get you on that. And then any ticky-tacky compliance things I would take on for myself, because those are annoying and often about information architecture decisions. And I knew that I could do that. And I think that actually helped me work myself out of IC work by making sure that I took on the least interesting tasks, the ones that were mostly maintenance or compliance or any kind of regulations.
Brendan Jarvis:
I'm only laughing here because it sounds like you intentionally made yourself hate the individual contributor role. I didn't. So that you could move into management
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Didn't. What I wanted to do was make sure that my designers were enjoying what they were doing. It wasn't as important for me to enjoy it because I could do anything and just get it out the door. What I really cared about was helping them grow. And so made it a bit easier to let go of the visual interface. I still make sure, to this day, I make sure I keep some information architecture tasks on my table or some process improvement tasks or something where I can make an nice diagram. But I think that's important to understand, can't you let go of, because for me, I'm not going to take a job that won't let me make it what I need it to be like, yeah, this title is design director, but here's what I'm going to do with this job, and if I can't define that, then I'm not going to take that job.
Brendan Jarvis:
So that self-determination, that ability to set your own boundaries and how you'll contribute is quite important to
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
You? Yes, very much. And I leave jobs and I leave managers who don't let me determine what the best course for my path is and who only want me to conform to what their idea is. If they have no knowledge of design themselves, and they are a director I'm reporting to, and they literally know nothing about design and try to make me do some program management work or something like that, I'm going to leave because that's not where my passion is. That's not what I wanna do. That's not even a strength of mine. So because I cannot determine my own path, I
Brendan Jarvis:
Let that be a warning to any current or future hiring managers. [laugh] of Amy's, you've been told. Yeah. What was the area that stretched you the most moving from that IC role into leadership effectively into that leadership of others having to do what you did, where you were sort of bearing the cross, so to speak, of the crap work so you could ensure that they were successful?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I would say moving to the Alexa voice team the Alexa personality team. It stretched me in many, many ways. It was a brand new subject matter. It was a brand new type of design. It was helping a team understand design, the definition of design and move them closer to that. And then on top of that, I also had the UX designers under me who were building backend systems. So it stretched me all over the place. And it was just fascinating work and it really helped me let go of IC work because I didn't have time for that. The thing I held onto was we had people in the team who wrote jokes for Alexa to tell, and I loved joke reviews. Every Friday we'd have almost like a writer's room where the content designer or the conversational designers would gather some, we'd invite engineers, we'd invite the PMs, whoever wanted to come, and we would sit there and listen to the jokes that people have written during the week in Alexa's voice. So we'd program it into our little testing interface, and we had a person on the team Will North. If he laughed, the joke was good, we could just, cause he got such a good laugh too. But we, we'd all give it kind of thumbs up, thumbs down, some thumb sideways, thumbs up, meant good to go. As is thumbs sideways means let's workshop this and improve it as a team. Thumbs down was like, there's nothing there. Get that outta can't
Brendan Jarvis:
Too British, too sense of, it's too much of a British sense of humor.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Usually it was too vulgar because the team like to slip things in to shock me.
Brendan Jarvis:
Are you paying attention, Amy? Right? Yes, she is. Yeah, she's paying Well,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Because for a long period of time, I had the approval button where I would push things to live. So it was like this. Mm-hmm. So it's on my head, literally, if I don't,
Brendan Jarvis:
No, that's power. Yeah.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah. That's
Brendan Jarvis:
One. And risk,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
That's one crazy thing about that team is that we have the Go Live button. I'm like, really? I don't know if you vetted us enough to give us the Go Live button.
Brendan Jarvis:
Just before we get into Alexa in more detail, tell me about Alexa and how it works. Is it true AI in the sense that it makes up these jokes and stitches them together on the fly? Or is it more like you were just describing there that you would write jokes as you'd intend them and that you would feed them into some sort of decision tree or something that Alexa would then use to determine what to tell?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah. The AI for that particular system is on the backend serving the right content. When it comes to personality, that's something that AI quite hasn't quite cornered yet. Sure. You've seen, they feed a bunch of garbage into an AI system and have it spout out poetry, and it's just horrible. With Alexa, we have to write the jokes verbatim, but if somebody says, tell me a dog joke she will look, do this quick test across all of her systems and say, okay, this is a dog joke and this one is a good joke. So we'll surface this one. And we have a rating system on the back end. What's a good joke? What's a mediocre joke? Because sometimes we'll serve up a joke and the next thing people will ask is, tell me a good joke. We're like, oh, well then we know the joke before wasn't great. And we might wanna take a look at that joke.
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh] closing the loop right there. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Do you also listen for people's laughter? Is that a thing that's allowed or
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
No? No. No, we don't. We don't at all. So when I say people say, tell me a good joke, it's an aggregate of what was the next utterance, the next thing that somebody said. So we're not like looking at people's, and I say, I'm not even there anymore. They're not looking at people's individual responses. They're looking at aggregated responses, and there's millions of them in a given week.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. The scale is quite something, isn't it? The
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Scale is
Brendan Jarvis:
Unbelievable. When you were, and I mean that in itself would've been a really interesting territory design wise to navigate and to steer the product down different directions. And I was curious about this challenge of designing for something that scales to this degree, and what's some of the unique constraints or blockers or things that you and the team ran up against that others in other areas of design might not have even considered as a potential potential challenge? So
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
One of the challenges for me, and really for my predecessor, Farra, was we always wanted the device to have, I'm not saying her name because there's one right there, and I don't want it to talk to me, but we have always have the device. We wanted to have the device respond to insults in a manner that was standing up for itself, but the executives to the highest level disagreed. They felt that that was being judgemental and that this should not be a judgmental device in your home. You should be able to say what you want. And if somebody is very it likes to curse a lot, you know, don't judge them for that. You don't say, I don't appreciate that language, or whatever. And we try to argue with,
Brendan Jarvis:
We try their money. Their money's still the same, right? Well, everyone's dollars the same.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
They're not paying, the device itself is not very expensive, but their subscriptions are so, yeah. Yeah. They're still customers and we still want to not be judgemental, but we wanted to present at the argument that if they're cussing, that's fine, but if they're calling her slurs or threatening her or something, we should be able to respond. And we wrote a very eloquent defense of why that should be. And we wrote what the prompts might be, the responses she might say would be, and it was because of the men up the chain. It was declined.
Brendan Jarvis:
Now that's something that's interesting and hugely relevant. I'm not sure if you've met Eva Peney. Mok? Yes,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I have.
Brendan Jarvis:
So Eva, as you would probably know then wrote Design for Safety. And we had a conversation, I think it was the end of last year, about how technology is being weaponized to enable domestic violence and abuse to happen. And then recently, I think it was earlier this year, maybe in January, I'd sent Eva through an article that I'd seen where there was a company that would allow people to set up AI friends or girlfriends in particular, that it was disturbing to see the amount of abuse that people had fed into their AI and how men in particular were treating the ai. And I just, I'm really curious about this and what that says about some of men in particular, but also what it says about the product to continue to permit that kind of input. Now I realize there's a lot to weigh up here.
There's the whole argument at the moment that's going on about what Big Tech's role is in censoring content and deciding whether some views are more appropriate than others. And that is a tricky line to walk, particularly in an American demo and an American democracy because freedom of speech is quite a central tenant, not just in America, but to all democracies. And it's one of the things that enables our way of living to be the envy of many other people around the world because they don't experience that same degree of freedom. But tell me more about that. When did you realize that that was a thing that was happening? How did you feel when you realized that? What was it like presenting that view up the chain and receiving a no? And how did that go down amongst the team, particularly women and the team in the organization?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
So learning what the most common utterances were and UN is what a customer says to the device. And a prompt is what the device responds with. So learning that some of the most common utterances were shut up. I get it. Sometimes she talks outta turn, but calling her names threatening her. Things like, hello, were very, very common things. Thank you. Were very, very common, which is great. There is a balance of light and dark. There are stories out of almost every country that Alexa's in where somebody has said, Alexa, I wanna kill myself. And she's responded with the line to the suicide hotline for that area and responded, Alexa, stop
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh]. Alexa, please stop. Very kindly. We're trying to have a conversation here.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
So apparently she consider killing myself. I'll have to go erase that.
Brendan Jarvis:
But you're going to get a call in a minute. Yeah, someone,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
No. The thing is, we can't really take an action, but we can express sympathy and we can say there's always someone to talk to. Call the suicide hotline, be safe. That is great to have stories coming back for we have saved people's lives doing that. And you have to balance that against the negative comments that primarily men make towards the device. And doesn't, not really a statement to me, it's not a statement on the echo devices themselves is a statement on our society that so many men saved so many vile things to the device. And I'm sure there's women who do it too, but some of the utterances could almost only have been said by men.
Brendan Jarvis:
Why is Alexa her?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
That's a great question. They did a lot of test marketing with voices and tested what worked well and resonated well with all kinds of customers. And this particular voice, which is code named Nina voice, the default voice was the one that was the most popular, that the sounded the most trustworthy, the one you'd most likely be friends with. And I don't think when I wasn't there for the inception of this product, and I wasn't there for the launch of it, I came in a couple years after, but there wasn't a lot of doubt about like, yeah, it's okay to put this thing out. There weren't a lot of other voices. So Siri was out there, and I think that was about it. We didn't think about the implications of having something that is your assistant being a woman, and then if Yeah, that is gendered. Yeah. So I mean, they've released a male voice. They've released Samuel Jackson's voice, which is definitely not a subservient kind of sound. And I got to be part of that was my design team that put all the experience out there for Samuel Jackson. And it's so funny to get pre preliminary feedback from customers that there's not enough cussing. I'm like, what [laugh],
Brendan Jarvis:
Have you heard him do the nursery rhyme, the go to
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Sleep? Oh my gosh, it's hilarious. Yes.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, that's
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Brilliant. Yeah, you should ask
Brendan Jarvis:
Him. I imagine
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Have access to an echo device and can get the Samuel Jackson boys ask him to sing Happy Birthday because Oh, that's a good one. There's a lot of F-bombs in there.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. So make sure your young children, people aren't around or people that are Well, and then with that, a little bit sensitive to
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Things, with having a voice that had explicit mode, basically, we also had to make sure that we had an on off toggle for explicit mode. You have to opt into explicit mode because we wanna make sure and we need to make it per device because if you have a device in your kids' room, maybe you don't want that to have it, but you want your device in your own room to have it. So there was a lot of considerations to take. But going back to how I felt about not being able to stand up not letting the device stand up for herself, I understood not the part of not judging people I did not agree with, not being able to respond when something was a threatening sound. Instead they just have her make that little do-do noise she makes, which means, I heard you, but I don't care.
But who knows that [laugh] outside of that team. So it was disappointing for sure. But one of the principles at Amazon is disagree and commit, which means that you may disagree with the decision that was made, but you all align that though you disagree, someone higher up the chain said you have to do this, so you will move forward gracefully and graciously and get past it. I think that that's one of the tenants there. It's have backbone, disagree and commit. So you stand up for what you believe in. And when you're overruled, you go, all right, I made my disagreement, I've given you my data as to why I disagree. We'll just move forward. I'm not necessarily aligned with that. And that was a really hard one to swallow.
Brendan Jarvis:
It almost sounds like a military organization.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I would say all of the tenants, the principles came from Jeff Bezos. They were basically his way of thinking. So the entire company culture is very reflective of Bezos himself.
Brendan Jarvis:
So thinking of how, not necessarily how Jeff sees the world, but you can see that expressed in the personality of maybe some of the companies that he's involved with in particular Amazon. If we draw that back down to Alexa and think about the principles that you were making design decisions with or buy or trying to hold two, what were some of those design principles that guided what you did and didn't do with the product?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Well, we had very definite principles about being non-judgmental, about not being partisan. That was really important. That became much more important in 2016. But she's not a political partisan. She's a supporter of technology, literature, and science, which is interesting because for some reason the United States suddenly that became partisan. One of the tenants was she needed to be accepting of people. And I wish I could remember all of them. I can't remember them all off the top of my head. They're completely internal tenants that we have for the product. And we use those tenants to weigh decisions on. So the 10 tenants all have kind of attention to them, we won't do this, but we'll do this kind of tension. So they helped us make decisions in cases like that. So when Trump became president, yeah, we're not going to tell jokes about President Trump. People were asking, they were asking for a lot of jokes about President Trump. We did not serve any jokes about President Trump.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, you'd isolate half of your customer base, wouldn't
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
You? Yeah, absolutely.
Brendan Jarvis:
If you started to take a side. Yeah. This is the tension between technology that's so pervasive and our political system at the moment. And I, I'm not qualified really to go into this. It's just an interesting observation that at a company like Amazon that where they do have the scale to reach into people's living rooms like this, and you do see that demand coming through. You have to be quite intentional about what you do and don't do. And whether or not you stray into that political arena, which many American companies in particular have chosen to on certain issues. And I can't imagine those decisions are faced
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Lightly. It was no, they were not faced lightly. And it was pretty heavy because it's not just the United States, you're making this decision for, we Alexas many, many company countries, sorry, they're in all over Europe and Australian New Zealand and Mexico and Latin America. So we would work together and we had a central base of repository of stories and songs and jokes and responses that were a core content, but then you had to localize for the regions. So figuring out
Brendan Jarvis:
In New Zealand, you gave us an Australian accent. Sorry,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
[laugh], sorry.
Brendan Jarvis:
Which didn't go down very well. No, it didn't. If only I'd known you when you were back then,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Wasn't me that the voice itself comes from a different team. But yeah, but there's all kinds of decisions that you have to make in, well, well, French Canadian voice versus the Canadian voice. There's just all kinds of nuances and imagery that you show on the screened devices. There's countries in which you cannot show any alcoholic imagery. So when we had a Stanley Cup image, they created the Stanley Cup image with a cup and with champagne and confetti, and they're like, Ooh, gets the champagne off there cuz this country and this country do not allow images of alcohol. And I'm like, oh, okay. Wow. So it's just really interesting trying to navigate that not just for the United States, but with your partners across all these different countries.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's very difficult to please everyone. And one of the things that you were working at with Alexa in particular was trying to make her more human, as far as I understand, so that the product could become a trusted home companion. What does it mean to make something like Alexa more human now? What does it actually look like?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
So what that looked like for me was being more inclusive. So being a Mexican American, when I came on the team, a lot of the stuff I tested were like, how do I celebrate Cinco Mayo? And I said it totally un accident because if you say, how do I celebrate Cinco de Mayo? It sounds kinda artificial, but yeah, how do you celebrate Cinco de Mayo? It was like a well-intended written by somebody who was clearly not Mexican. Well, I grabbed my moras and get your family together for a fiesta. And I'm like, oh God, now. So I started looking into how we could be more inclusive in content that wasn't mainstream middle America. And I had a great person on the team, Jess, who was really invested into making sure that everything was equitable and inclusive in our content. So we started working with other areas of other teams for the music.
If somebody said, how can I celebrate? Think of Mayo, we'd say, oh, we have a great sake of the Mayo playlist for you. Would you like to listen to it? Or would you like to know the history ofs of the Mayo, why it exists? Or would you like some recipes for sake of the Mayo, rather than just telling them something awkward From a green Gas's point of view, they got education about the holiday and this became true for all of the different for Ramadan and for Yoon Kipur and for different holidays that weren't just mainstream middle America. So any, even the oh, Festivus from Seinfeld, we were like combed through all of the different holidays that there are and tried to be as inclusive as possible across actual cultures. [inaudible] is not, but Kwana and Martin Luther King's Day and going through all of them making sure we had really sensitive answers to that for that. And we worked with, there's a black employees network inside Amazon where we worked with them to create a skill for Black History month so that if you ask about Black History Month, there's this huge trove of facts about Black History Month that's in the voice of black activists. They have different people giving these sound bites for this. So that's how I wanted to make it better and more human.
Brendan Jarvis:
That's fascinating. I think you've referred to white people as Gringer
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Gringo. Well gringo. The white women
Brendan Jarvis:
Are gringo gringos. If you wanna gringo about everybody. So as a gringo, what is, I dunno what Cinca de Mayo is, what is this holiday?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
It's really a holiday that's more celebrated in Texas than it is in Mexico. It's about a specific battle that happened in Mexico where a certain village won their freedom. It's very obscure. It's not their Independence Day. September 16th is their independence day. For some reason, Zico de Mayo has been grasped onto as something really important, at least in Texas to celebrate. And it's kind of moved its way north and it's just an excuse to have margaritas I think, and lots of good food.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, you wouldn't have to twist my arm too hard for sure. Hey, can people ever fully come to trust something that's sitting in their house and listening to them all the
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Time? I do doubt that that's a whole team that's working on privacy and trust within the Alexa organization where they want people to understand that it's not listening to you and recording you all the time. What it is, is a speaker opens to listen to ten second loops or some number of second loops to hear if the wake word was spoken. And then it does doesn't remember any of that. This was the wake word spoken.
Brendan Jarvis:
What is the wake word?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Oh, so Alexa is the wake word. Or you can make it computer or cause because it was Jeff Bezos love Star Trek and he really wanted Alexa to be a lot like the computer on Star Trek when they say computer do this or whatever. Oh,
Brendan Jarvis:
That makes so much sense. That does make so much sense. I was actually just seeing whether or not you would say, Hey Alexa, and whether or not your Alexa would wake up. But you've also mentioned something there quietly. Yeah, well we'll have to try and keep it quiet because she does tend to interrupt. You said something there about Jeff Bezos loving Star Trek. Now I also know that you are a huge trek and I'm maybe not quite as big, but I'm pretty big. I'm pretty big up there. And we have a mutual love, the two of us for the next generation in particular. Yes. In fact, you love it so much that one of your recent talks that you've given as titled after one of the main characters, Deanna Troy, what is it about Deanna Troy in particular that you identify with so much?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
The way that she is empathic and nonjudgmental in the way she deals with people and she's got gray hair.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh yeah. Does she ever [laugh] Never to be seen again. Actually we've moved off that kind of per permed look. I'm sure it'll come background, right? Yeah, she is, isn't she? Yeah. And how have you channeled or brought forward your inner Deanna Troy in the way in which you've led your teams?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I'm working every day. I'm working on active listening because I enjoy talking so much. I have to be very conscious of active listening. And that means not listening with what your response will be in mind, but listening to understand what the other person is saying. And then formulating your response
Brendan Jarvis:
Like, Alexa
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yes, AB and improv is that you have to actively listen. If you're not actively listening, you're going to drop the scene and you're going to screw it up. That's great. Practice is listening to what the other person is giving you. And it's really great. A lot of what career coaches do is they reflect back to you what you said and what they heard. And oftentimes people will say something and you reflect back to them what you heard. And they're like, that's not what I wait. Oh, that is what I said. Oh my gosh. That's right. And they, they're revealing things about themselves or about their desires, about their motivations that they didn't realize, but you picked up on it because you are really listening to what they're saying.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you ever intentionally reflect back something that's not quite what someone said to you?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
No, I think that's manipulative. I would not do that.
Brendan Jarvis:
And what is it about the reflection of what people are saying back to them that helps them to realize something that they might not have realized when they were first saying those words?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
There's what people know about you, what you know about you and what nobody knows about you. A lot of times when people are talking, they're voicing things that they don't know about themselves. And if you're listening, you hear that thing that they don't know about themselves and you speak it back to them and they're like, oh man, you're right. [laugh] a genius and it's a revelation. Right? And suddenly you're a genius. That's why everybody's getting these life coaches and career coaches cause be having that talent to be able to really listen and reflect back. It's not everybody can do that. And then suddenly you're people really love being listened to because we don't listen to people enough in this world. Everybody wants to have their say and their spotlight
Brendan Jarvis:
And it, it's been a difficult world to be in the last couple of years in particular. And yeah, it's always been difficult, right? Life as you get older, you realize, I think they're saying here is it's not a box of fluffy ducks and [laugh] not sure if that travels well outside of New Zealand, but
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
It it's adorable, but it's not a saying that we have here.
Brendan Jarvis:
Maybe we should write to the Alexa team and see if they can pop that in there somewhere.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
But well, we usually say it. It's not all rainbows and unicorns.
Brendan Jarvis:
So that's exactly what that translates to. You sort of become conscious of this as you get a bit older and you have a few bumps and maybe you lose a few friends or someone close to you. These sort of things come up and stress us. And in the last couple of years, something that we've all been through together is the big P word, the pandemic. And this has taken a toll on everyone. And I don't wanna necessarily go into this in any more detail than I'm about to, but what I wanted to talk to you about in particular was the toll or the stress that it puts leaders under. And as leaders we're often looked to for strength and as the people that have their shit together, so to speak. And one of the things that you said that I thought was quite insightful, there's many things, but this is one of them, and I'll quote you now, is that you need to be keenly aware of your own state of mind when talking with your direct reports. If you are in a stressed or anxious state of mind, reschedule things that for me, I don't know, I had a moment with that and I'm like, that is some really great advice right there. And my question is, is that can leaders afford to be anything less than their best during a time this that's been going on for so long when the people that they are leading are looking to them for strength and answers?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I think it depends on your audience. Most answers in design, it depends. If you're talking in a one-on-one forum with somebody, it's important to be yourself. It's okay to show that you're having a hard time too, otherwise you're inhuman. And if you're not having a hard time, your teammates will think, well gosh, why am I having a hard time? Maybe there's something wrong with me. So it's important to, and that's the hard part, is you meet to be vulnerable with people and you have to also measure as a leader how much information is enough, but not too much. Where do I need to cut this off and make sure that I'm not burdening them, but I'm helping them? So it's a very fine balance and it takes a lot of, I guess, emotional intelligence to be able to do that. I don't always get it right. I do my best. But
Brendan Jarvis:
How do you know when you've got it wrong?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
That's a great question. I think if somebody gets scared, you've definitely gotten it
Brendan Jarvis:
Wrong. If they start moving towards the door, got it wrong.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
No, I mean if, that's a really tricky question because everybody deserves some grace. So if you get it wrong, hopefully the person you get it wrong with understands that. And you just have to learn and reflect on how successful something was. For me, I have people on my team who I'm really close to, who are my touchstones, and I say, how is the team doing? How am I doing with the team? Could I do something better? And I'm open to feedback from anybody, but I have specific people who are just really good with their colleagues and are really in touch with things across the board. And I can say, how's the team and how am I doing with the team? And they'll give me honest feedback.
Brendan Jarvis:
And is this in a one-on-one context that you're having these conversations? Yeah, yeah,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah. Or sometimes if it's all most senior design team members, sometimes we'll have a small group talk conversation. But usually because people are just, they feel so much more free to be open in a one-on-one.
Brendan Jarvis:
So we don't wanna be data as leaders, but is it more important to be authentic and vulnerable or to be professional and certain?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I think there's benefits to both. Again, it depends on the situation. If you're in front of a large group, you should be authentic and certain,
Brendan Jarvis:
I like what you did there
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
But it's not terrible to show vulnerability in front of a large group. But that's when you have to show a little vulnerability because it gets uncomfortable for them. It shouldn't be something where it's a catharsis for you. It should be you sharing that, Hey, I'm human
Brendan Jarvis:
Too. Yeah, fairly good point. Just before we move on to something else, tell me about meeting Captain Jean Luke Picard, who's also known as Sir Patrick Stewart.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
That was awesome. That was the best day ever. I didn't even realize Jeff Bezos was in the room. I'm like Patrick Stewart.
Brendan Jarvis:
But if Jeff listened to us, he'll be crushed.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I just don't think he'll care. But I'm a huge Shakespeare fan too. My emphasis in my master's degree was directing Shakespeare. So I knew Patrick Stewart long before he was John the Picard, as far or knew of him. And when they told me that I was going to get to meet him and he was going to come into our joke review session, I was like, what? Oh my God, am I wearing the right thing? I was just really excited cuz they don't really let you know far ahead of time because they don't want the word to get out and they don't want a crowd together. And so when Patrick Stewart came in the room, I shook his hand and I said, I just want you to know that your Claudia on the B BBC version of Hbe was the best most humanus ever seen. And he said, oh my dear, thank you. And I was like, oh my God, he's just so humble. And he is just like, he started blushing. And I was like, it's so cute.
Brendan Jarvis:
You really spoke to him. Right? Because he probably doesn't get something like that very often. And that's how he started. He's a Shakespearean actor.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah, he started with the Royal Shakespeare Company and doing productions there. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Have you washed your hands since?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yes, of course.
Brendan Jarvis:
That's mandatory.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Yeah. But I have a picture I'll never forget. And he was very complimentary. I played him some Shakespeare joke from that we had written and he laughed and he thought they were amusing. And then I think a memorable thing about that was I initially Jeff Bezos was opposed to Alexa having much of a personality. He wanted her to be the computer on Star Trek, just kind of factual. So my whole team shouldn't exist. The whole personality team shouldn't really exist. But because the customer said, no, we want this, I mean, we could see from all these failed utterances that we couldn't answer of How are you? Good morning. All these things people were saying, sing me a song, tell me a joke. People wanted a personality. And this was of course before my time. The team before me, I stand on the shoulders of giants who built this from the ground up for the couple years before I joined. But with Jeff in the room, he actually said, and he directed this to me, and it wasn't just me, but I took it cuz it was Jeff. And he said, but thank you so much for giving Alexa such an amazing personality. And I was kind of stunned. I don't know that I could have said anything at the time because I knew the history that he didn't really want a personality for it. So it was kind of cool.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you remember what you said to him,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Blah? I don't know. I think I said thank you. Or what's something, I dunno.
Brendan Jarvis:
I'll tell you what, if Alexa had a Patrick Stewart voice, like a similar L Jackson voice, I think I would have to get a few echoes around the home for
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Sure. That would be awesome. I would love that. But I don't think the last I heard when they asked him about that he's not interested,
Brendan Jarvis:
Amy, normally I finish these conversations on a serious note. But today, given what we've just been talking about, and given your strong input into Alexa's personality in particular jokes, I thought I'd mix things up a little bit. Now this is a little unfair as I had a person on the inside who fed me some state secrets. Oh no. What is your favorite dad joke? The one that you weren't allowed to put on Alexa?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Oh my gosh. Oh, you know what? It's not dead anymore because we were able to put it in Samuel Jackson's voice, but I can't say it. I can't say
Brendan Jarvis:
It. You've gotta say it. We have to say it. I don't bleep out will bleep out anything.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I don't remember the whole thing. You're putting me on the spot. Well, but
Brendan Jarvis:
That's unfair of me. Any parting thoughts for design leaders that at a point in their career where those little voices well, they might not be little, they might be screaming at them to make a change. What would you say to them?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
For design leaders or just designers in
Brendan Jarvis:
General? Designers in general that may be considering leadership or any other career change. Oh,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Okay. Well, you just jump in. The best way to do it is to jump in but talk to a lot of people. Talk to people you admire who are doing what you want to do, and people who are doing what you wanna do, or people in parallel careers who have moved on about their experiences. And then jump in. You can organize a conference, you can be a chair of a conference and learn what it's like to manage something like that. If you can manage that kind of chaos, you can manage a team.
Brendan Jarvis:
That's really important,
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Baby, baby steps, but making the steps towards where you wanna be, they're important.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I love it. It's a great place to end on. Amy, thank you. This has been such a great conversation. It's actually been exactly what I needed today. I really appreciate you being so generous with your stories and your insights today. Thank
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
You, Brendan. This has been a pleasure too for me.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh, I'm glad you've had a good time. I'm sorry to have put you on the spot a couple of times today, but it's been a wonderful conversation.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I shouldn't known to prepare a joke.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, I, I'm sure at some point in our future we'll get to do some improv together. I can't imagine that I'll be any good at it, but I'm willing to give it a go.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
The best improv is trial by fire, so you just have to do it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, let's make that happen. Amy, if people wanna find out more about you and all the wonderful things that you've been doing also about boxes and arrows and your upcoming conference talks, of which I believe you have three coming up, what's the best way for them to do that?
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
Oh, that's a great question because my AmyMarquez.com really just shunts you over to my medium blog. Twitter, I'm @AmyMarquez on Twitter and I make a lot of updates there.
Brendan Jarvis:
Perfect. Thank you, Amy, and to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Amy and Boxes and Arrows and all the other great stuff that we've spoken about today. Maybe I'll also be able to put into the show notes that joke, if Amy can recall it at some point. So keep your eyes peeled for that.
Amy Jiménez Márquez:
I'll. I'll have to ask Samuel
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh]. All right. Yeah, ask Samuel and get back to me. If you enjoyed the show and you wanna hear more great conversations like this with world class latest in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast, subscribe as well, and pass it along to someone else in your network that might get benefit from these long win long ranging deep dive conversations into design and all the other things that surround it. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn. My profile link is at the bottom of the show notes on the podcast platforms and on YouTube. Or you can head on over to thespaceinbetween.co nz if you're in the United States or NZ if you're in England. And until next time, keep being brave.

Amy Jiménez Márquez

Navigating Design Leadership's Pivotal Moments

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Who is Amy Jiménez Márquez?

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