Brendan Jarvis & Lou Rosenfeld
Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today
In this episode of Brave UX, Brendan Jarvis & Lou Rosenfeld bring you a special episode, featuring Brendan’s opening keynote from Design at Scale 2022 - Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today.
Highlights include:
- What’s been going on for Lou, lately?
- What were the best parts of Design at Scale 2022?
- How is the field been coping with global uncertainty?
- Where can people find out more about the DesignOps Summit?
- Brendan’s opening keynote from Design at Scale 2022
Who are these people?
Brendan Jarvis
Brendan is the insatiably curious Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, formerly an award-winning digital design studio and now the only specialist UX research practice and world-class UX lab in New Zealand.
His mission? Helping enterprise design leaders to develop brave and inclusive design cultures, through effective UX research and research experiences that build the capabilities of their teams.
Lou Rosenfeld
Lou is the Publisher and Founder of Rosenfeld Media, through which he and his team release some of the best books on UX, produce world-class conferences, and curate a number of specialist design communities.
He is also the host of the Rosenfeld Review podcast and the co-author of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web”, often fondly referred to as The Polar Bear Book.
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. You can find out more about that at thespaceinbetween.co.nz. 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 of world class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Lou Rosenfeld, someone who has been on the show before. Definitely check out episode 21. It's a big deep dive into Lou's world and he really needs no introduction, but that's not how we do things here. So first, just a little bit about Lou.
- He's the founder of Rosenfeld Media through which he and his team publish some of the best books in the world on UX and design. They also produce world-class virtual and real world conferences, which have started to come back now and we'll be talking more about one of those soon. Lou is the host of the Rosenfeld Review podcast, a really great show where, like me, he interviews world-class leaders in UX and design. And last but not least, he's also the co-author of Information Architecture for the Worldwide Web, often fondly referred to as the Polar Bear book. Did I leave anything out Lou?
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- No, [laugh] plenty. Thank you so much Brendan. I'm glad to be back on the show.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's really great to have you here today, Lou and I was curious what's been going on for you today in your world? Where are you at?
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- I am in Brooklyn where I live. I am in the final days before getting on a plane for Lima, Peru where I'm going to go trekking for two weeks on the Inca Trail and visit Machu Picchu and all kinds of fun stuff like that while my knees will still allow it. But yeah, we're alls good here in New York. We wrapped up a conference design at scale as you know. Thanks for being part of it. A couple weeks back and we're getting ready to put out a next couple books we just put out Natalie Dunbar's from Solo to Scaled. If you're interested in scaling up a content strategy practice, that's the book for you. And just announced a couple of book signings, so a new book by Donna Shaw on Storytelling for Leaders and another book just announced today by Leah James on Inclusive Design. So lots going on here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, certainly seems like it and some really good topics there. I'm really looking forward to those being released. You mentioned Peru and Match Petrou. Is this a bucket list item? It sounds very much like it might be
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- One of them. I've got a long way to go though.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, very good. Well it's great to hear that you're getting a break, especially after what I can only imagine has been a phenomenally busy year. So as you mentioned, design at Scale 2022 has just been, and it really was, and I really do mean this. It was a great experience for me both as a speaker but also as an attendee. It's definitely, if you're listening to this, definitely a conference to put on your to-do list for next year and if you've got something that you wanna share with the community, do keep your eyes peeled for the call to submit a talk. It's one of those special conferences where it just has a great feeling and it's always a very meaningful experience. So Lou and I thought that we'd spend a bit of time on this episode. This is quite different to what we usually do on Brave UX, but I invited Lou to come onto the show so that we could just reflect on what the experience of design at Scale 22 20 22 was like.
- Just to give you a bit of insight into that and some of the highlights. And we're also going to have a quick chat about the upcoming design ops summit in September. After that though, I do have something, well, we actually have something that's a bit different definitely much different to what we normally do on the show. Lou has kindly gifted me the use of the recording of the opening keynote for Design at Scale 2022. It's called Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today and it's by yours truly. So it is a bit different. It's me on the episode I suppose, which is definitely not the usual focus. So Lou, when you think back about design at scale 2022, we've had a couple of weeks now since it wrapped up, what's the feeling that first comes to mind for you and why?
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- The feeling is just like besides the normal feeling of relief, just I'm just so in awe of speakers and curators. Well, all right, let me back up a moment. So as you know, one of our speakers as the one who kicked off the damn thing, you worked for a couple months with other speakers and we prepare our speakers in pods or we call 'em cohorts. And from what I could tell, there was just a lot of really good energy and mutual support among speakers in those cohorts. I think four or five six of you per cohort. And you were led by our curators a lot of GOCO and Kit Unger and they are in a sense a different cohort. Long before they were working with speakers, they were doing the research and design of the program, looking over the proposals that came in through the call for proposals and so forth.
- And I guess it's just a beautiful thing to see how small groups with at least a minimal amount of structure that we've set up for 'em can get together and do just amazing things and not only leave with, let's say a better presentation but leave each other in a better place too. And that's something we've been doing for years at our conferences and it just seems like it gets better and better and we get to be collectively as a field better and better collaborators in these small groups. So that's a very long answer to a short, innocent question, but I just was so happy to see it Brendan
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you're a hundred percent and that's what I suppose people who are attending the conference don't see is they don't see all those rounds of iteration that go into not just the talks that were delivered, the one that you'll hear soon from me, but also the program itself even before the speakers get together and their cohorts and work with each other. There was so many magical moments of really genuine and well-meaning feedback that was framed in such a helpful way that I experienced in my go cohort and just seeing some of the talks including my own actually if I reflect on it, just completely transform from that first very, they call it a shitty first draft into what really makes the design at scale conference what it is and have the reputation that it holds in the community. So a fantastic experience all round Now the theme this year was scaling in the face of uncertainty and that has definitely, I started this podcast nine months into the Pandemic and that's not just all we've been contending with, but that has definitely been at the forefront of everybody's and including our community's minds, hasn't it?
- It's been the thing we've been dealing with. What's your take not maybe not just what you experienced at design at scale, but just your take in general on how the field has been coping with this uncertainty?
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- The take is we're just basically hanging on for dear life. I think that's true for everyone, but we're a field. I think to be in our field you have to be not only empathetic but sensitive to how people feel, how they're doing. I mean, no great insight there, but I think it's just been just murder for people on our field. It just takes so much out of you, even in the best of times when there's some semblance or some illusion of certainty in our lives and in our work. And to see that just flip around constantly every couple months. I just got an email from a friend who just was tweeting not long ago about this great new job she's just loving and how she loves her manager and the organization is really enlightened and in the last couple months that was maybe a couple months ago and since then they've announced a massive layoffs.
- Her boss is gone that she loves and it just seems like yet more back and forth, up and down, no sense of steadiness and it's, we try to really tap into that at the design at scale conference to hopefully move on to have sort of an opportunity to collectively pivot from looking back, distilling what we've learned and using those lessons to help us be more resilient moving forward. I think we did a bit there, but again, we were thinking, okay, maybe things are sort of getting back to normal and since we started programming that event, Russia invaded Ukraine, you don't even, I'm sure you're following a little bit about what's going on in the States, but to live in the states right now is a really concerning to say the least experience and what are all the other things that have happened and now we're looking at an economic downturn and so I hope people who attended the conference did get build some muscles of resilience cuz we're going to need
- Brendan Jarvis:
- 'em. Yeah, I actually fair, you are correct. I think the chaos side of the ledger is definitely winning out against order at the moment and we don't have that perceived security that we had before 2019 seems like such a long time ago before all of this started to unravel. Things weren't perfect then as well. I think it's important to acknowledge particularly domestically for you in the US there were some things that were going on and still are going on, but I feel that the, while there might not have been great answers that came out to solving all the world's problems from design at scale, these opportunities to connect as a community, to tell stories and share stories and connect with one another in the midst of all this chaos. They are so important for us as a field to get a break I suppose, take a breath and just be together. Not wallow, we didn't wallow, we would definitely forward focus, but there is something powerful in that being together. Even if in this case it was a virtual space. It was very, very well done. Thank
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- You. Well I appreciate the opportunity to be part of, to be a fly on the wall of all the interesting ideas and lessons that were floating through the speaker cohorts and actually similarly what the sponsor program put together. Very impressive. I don't have those sponsors to pump up right now cuz the event's already behind us. But we have sessions from our sponsors that are given not by, I'll say that they're given by people from our field. They just happen to work at our sponsor organizations and they do some amazing, amazing work. I mean we constantly are getting people hearing about sponsor sessions and saying, oh, I missed that one. Can I get my hands on the recording? But then the last thing I just wanted to say was the attendees were just so full of energy and to a large degree joy, that was just really amazing to see. And the ones that were the subset of our attendance that participated in attendee cohorts, cohorts, small groups were just on fire. It was just so great to see. Most of them, they don't always work, but I'd say the far majority of them were just really engaged dur during the conference.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There was a, I don't know if you attended this particular session, but the Cozy Juicy Real game that Sophia and Jed Laar run, it's an amazing online board game, which really helps you get to depth with people you don't know. You may not have met very, very quickly for the people that did invest the extra time to connect with people through those opportunities that you presented. I really feel that they got a lot more out of that conference and were able to walk away with some really great connections and some really meaningful conversations that happened as well. So just thinking about where we're at currently, well I assume that the program hasn't yet been formulated. Okay.
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- Well I mean the Design Off summit we've been doing I think since 2018 it's actually kind of become our flagship event. It is curated this year by a really great team, brand new team, been really wonderful to work with. That's Bria Alexander from Adobe who many of, if you've been to any of our virtual conferences in the last year or so, she's been our mc. She is a design ops expert and oh I don't know a dad Jo jokes ops expert.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I mean they fantastic
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- Fun dad jokes by the way, I don't know if you mentioned it earlier, but this addition of the signup summit is a huge big deal for us because we're going to be doing it both in person for the first time in two and a half years, 11 in-person event in San Francisco, September 7th through ninth. But also it will be virtual and we've done just so much work on developing the virtual format and I think we've done well with it and now we get to fold back in person. That's a really interesting design challenge that I'd be happy to get into if you're interested. But just to round out the curation team, we also have Farid Zov who is past speaker at the Design Up summit. He's from EPA M is very involved with Friends of Figma, he's one of the world's leading experts in tooling for design ops.
- And I gotta say, I mean just in terms of his knowledge of tools, he just blows me away every time we have a meeting, he's using Coda and Fig Jam in ways that I didn't know were or were possible. And then we also, Sarah Campari Miller of Intel who brings a real focus on inclusivity accessibility. So when you put those three people together, you get a really interesting mix and vision for the conference. And so the four themes do reflect their interests and their vision. The four themes, let me pull 'em up here so I have 'em handy. One theme is really about growing successful design ops practices and practitioners. So what does it mean to be design ops person and to have a practice or run a practice, you know might be a design ops team of one, you might be running a much bigger organization.
- What's the scope of it? What are the boundaries? What are the adds into it? Are you a leader, are you a doer? Are you some combination? This is the group of talks, this theme that will really kind of reflect on the depth and best practices that design ops practitioners need to keep in mind. The second themes, what we have four themes, it's like basically two days. Each theme is about a half day, about four talks. The second theme is on building inclusive design ops practices. No surprise there. And so we're looking at issues like the role of design ops people and diversity, equity and inclusion, how design ops people might come from different backgrounds in terms of things like being neurodiverse and how does that fold into the work. Looking at issues like accessibility. One really interesting talk by Mon Goop does title drawing from feminist practice to make inclusive design operational.
- Well, I mean that's really pretty cool. Third theme on the second day those talks are going to be on scaling design organizations. So that's ultimately a big role that design ops people have. They are looking to not only bring on an onboard talent, but figure out where that talent should be positioned within the broader organization. Both the design organization and maybe with other groups like the product organization, how to make the case for the ROI of design to senior leadership, how to work with other teams or silos inside the organization. And then finally the fourth theme and kind of a late entry. So every one that's on the program right now has come to us through our call for proposals and some people we know and some we don't and that's by design because we don't wanna have the same people coming back every year. We wanna really work hard to surface voices that aren't typically
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Heard. Can I just interrupt briefly, Lou? I just want Oh yeah. Wanna focus on that particular point. Rosenfeld Media does an amazing job of ensuring that the mix of speakers and voices that are on that stage is truly diverse and inclusive. I think if you look at the upcoming lineup for the Design Up summit and also the previous lineup for the design at scale, you have seen the community and I think that there was such a huge such thing for you to be doing that and you do it very, very well and you don't normally talk about that, but I just wanted to call that out because it is wonderful to see and it makes such a difference to the experience for attendees.
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- Well thank you Brennan. I appreciate that. I always feel like we need to do better and we should do better and so we don't talk about it maybe that much because it just seems like it's so important and we take it very seriously, but we never know if we got it right. I don't know what right is, but all I know is there's always a better, but I will say any other product basically if you don't have a diverse group of perspectives and experiences reflected in the people who are creating it, how's it going to work for the people consuming it? It's just better design. That's why we have the whole elephant logo at Coke goes way back to the fable of prime and the elephant. Anyway, I know we're going to get to theme four and that's the one that we haven't programmed yet cuz it was a late entry visiting the future of design operations.
- We wanna, we're actually searching right now and starting to turn over some interesting stones that are about the cutting edge of design operations. Those are not necessarily happening in places that you would expect or in places that naturally are willing to share the interesting stuff they're doing, but we felt like it would be really important to give attendees a picture of where we're going or where we could go and have something that's truly inspirational because we feel that while there are a lot of people that need to work on their practices and maybe new or rising design ops practitioners and they're all working on trying to bring design ops to their organizations and scale their teams. There are some people, I've been this for a number of years. I mean the conference has been happening since 2018, as I said. So we wanna make sure people have a picture of where we might be going and that's what that last theme will cover. So if anyone listening has the world's most amazing example of design operations or research operations or innovative uses of tooling hiring and scaling up in ways that are truly diverse, you name it. We'd like to hear from
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You and I just was reflecting on our conversation on Brave UX, a couple of, or it must have been almost year and a half ago, and you had talked about a moment prison and just for people that are listening moment prisons are those, I suppose l Lou you jump in if I'm not doing this justice, but those constructs that we come up with that keep us anchored in the past and cause us to miss opportunities and not see them in the present and something that if you look at the programming for the conferences that Rosenfeld Media puts on, it's very evident that there is a future focus. You get a really good snapshot of where the field is currently and also where it might be going and the people that are really pushing the boundaries. So if you're interested, if it sounds like something that's for you seventh to the 9th of September, the venue, Lou the Palace Hotel, if you're in person, I had a look at the photos, the ballroom just looks like such a spectacular space. It is, yeah, it
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- Is. Yeah, it's one of those beautiful old hotels that I typically don't like because they're too fr fruit. But this one I love. I love it. It's so
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Beautiful. And where can people find out some information? If this is their bag and they'd like to attend,
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- Well go to the design ops summit site. Of course, I don't have the URL for the
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Design summit.com. There you go.
- Lou Rosenfeld:
- Design ops summit.com. I should know that, shouldn't I? It just, but it always redirects to one of our site pages. So yes, design ops summit. Let's see, does I do it? Zup summit.com. Thank you Brendan. Somebody ought to know our domain name of the company, right?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's my pleasure. That's right. Alright, that's it from us everyone. We hope you enjoy the following. Talk by me. It's called Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today.
- It was a Wednesday evening, but not just any Wednesday evening. It was Wednesday the 25th of March, 2020, sitting at my kitchen table with my wife, our young 20 month old son in bed and dinner. Recently over I poured myself another large glass of red wine. I could feel the tears welling up like waves crashing against the break wall. I felt helpless and stupid that night at 11:59 PM the entire nation of New Zealand would move into what was called a level four lockdown, complete social isolation from anybody outside of our existing household. There would be no weddings, no funerals, and nobody knew how long it would last. I just put the finishing touches on my new UX lab. It was truly beautiful. I had personally and painstakingly considered every detail, the technology, the cedarwood paneling, even the scent of Vine and Paisley that greeted your nose upon opening the door.
- It was the product of two years of hard work and $200,000 of personal investment. It was the tangible evidence of the future that I'd envisioned after deciding that my design agency, the space in between, would leave the making of things behind to focus solely on research. Only weeks before the lockdown was announced stupidly and I really stupidly convinced that covid would blow over in no time. I'd experienced that giddy feeling of exhilaration that all creators feel when their labor becomes a reality. I'd imagine design leaders all over town beating down my door, the space alive with people getting a real sense of what it was like for their customers to use their products for nine long months as the country bounced in and out of lockdowns, none would come. What had I done? Why was the universe doing this to me? I felt sick.
- Each of us has been through our own version of hell these past couple of years, and Covid isn't all we've been dealing with. The brutal, dehumanizing, and deadly impact of systemic racism has been forever burned into our brains by an image of an American police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nine long minutes, literally squeezing the life out of him as he lay handcuffed face down on the pavement calling out, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. We have also experienced the corrosive influence of populous politicians on our public institutions and civil discourse as they've torn at the very fabric of our democracies bringing the west dangerously close to the abyss. And most recently, how could we ignore what is happening? Most recently, we are witnessing the twisted and horrific nature of nuclear armed imperialist greed exert itself over the lives of the people of Ukraine and sending shockwaves throughout our global village. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have already lost their lives and due to the resulting agricultural disruptions, the UN now estimates that hundreds of millions of people and the poorest nations on earth and now at greater risk of famine. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock. We are now just 100 seconds to midnight and that was back in January.
- So aside from wondering, can I make it through one more zoom call today, you might have started to ask yourself some bigger, more philosophical questions like what really matters to me? Why am I doing this? You may have even gone so far as to ponder, if I died tomorrow, would I be happy with my story so far? While unfortunately I have no answers for solving racism, beating back greed, or ending Russia's war on Ukraine, I can tell you that these questions, these deep questions we've been asking ourselves about the implications of current and unfolding events are being asked universally. I don't know one person who isn't meaningfully considering some aspect of their life at the moment. Our ability to question our external and internal worlds is central to our humanity. Questions are the catalysts of our curiosity. They help us to make sense of the world around us and our ability to ask questions has been with us since we were very young.
- If you've ever watched a small child look up at the moon and wonder or marvel at a worm that's gently held between muddy fingers, you'll know that this process starts before we can speak like philosophers, scientists, and children. As designers, we are motivated to understand challenge and change the status quo, to take something, a product, a service, or an experience, and to make it better for the people who use it. That is a worthy and valuable act. And while we shouldn't let that go to our heads, we shouldn't forget that either. Our potential to make that happen to create value in part depends on our ability to ask great questions and then to work with our colleagues to bring to life great answers. But as Dr. Sam Ladner recently reminded me asking questions is a provocative act. They are a challenge to the status quo and well, the status quo quite likes being the status quo.
- Sometime around 2,422 years ago at the age of 70, Socrates, the founder of Western philosophy and the creator of the Socratic method was charged with Impiety four, and I'll quote now, failing to acknowledge the gods of Athens and introducing new deities. He was also charged with the corruption of the youth of the city state who brought these charges against him, the powerful men of Athens. The political establishment threatened by the uncomfortable nature of his questions and what they inspired in others. After a hot and dusty 10 hour trial in the people's court under the beating, a gian son in which Socrates lectured and provoked more than he persuaded a jury of 501 of his fellow Athenians found him guilty as charged the sentence, death, the method, a poisonous cup of hemlock. Socrates was known in Athenian society as a gadfly, a fly that bites livestock for his overt and intentional interference with the Athenian power structure. Don't be a gadfly unless you are willing to drink a cup of hemlock for your beliefs.
- Like me, Socrates was an independent agent. He was for Athens, but he was not part of its establishment. For you, enterprise design leaders challenging the status quo comes with a different set of risks. You must poke the bear but with a greater degree of care and often less directly. Questions? Good questions. Are your allies here? Good questions. One's born from genuine curiosity and reason are constructive. They empower you to make change by helping you to learn something new about something or someone. They are the foundation of conversation and like the Socratic method, they are a gift that may unlock a deeper understanding in someone else by bringing into focus something that they had not previously considered. They give birth to better stories about what the future looks like and why we should go there together. On the other hand, bad questions self-serving and corrosive. They undermine our relationships and they limit our potential for progress.
- When Covid first arrived and I asked myself, why was the universe doing this to me? That was a bad question. I was really saying, I don't like this situation. It's unfair. I was seating responsibility for dealing with what was happening. I had begun to tell myself a very self-centered and limiting story about the present and my future potential. As a field we are sometimes guilty of asking ourselves bad questions, ones that we are not really seeking answers to. The types of questions that sap self-respect as they leave our lips. Questions like why can't they see the true value we can create? But for the most part, especially over these past couple of years when cracks have appeared in the veneer of our catch cry to make the world a better place, we've asked some very good and very important questions, the kinds of questions that require answers if we are to travel from platitude to promised land.
- In May of 2021, about six months after I launched the Brave UX Podcast, I received a message on LinkedIn from an old friend. She, a woman of color, said, B Dog, not my favorite nickname. Hope you are well and hope you don't mind me sharing. I noticed that just eight of the 23 conversations you have online are with women. I also saw very few people of color. I remember reading her words and feeling myself getting defensive, even a little indignant, but I knew she was speaking the truth. It was both obvious and impossible to argue with. You just needed to look at the tiles on my YouTube channel to see that they cast a heavily male and particularly white light. That didn't stop me from attempting to justify myself. I replied to my friend. I've reached out to at least half a dozen people of color who are leaders in this space, most of which who are female over the past six months and did not receive any response. Yeah, I'm not proud of myself.
- It is an uncomfortable truth that alfield remain remains stubbornly white and predominantly male. Looking specifically at America and race, the last design census found that 71% of the 9,400 designers surveyed identified as white, only 3% as black in the 2020 US general census, 12 and a half percent of the US population identified as black. When you look around your design org, who do you see? When you look at your research participants, who do you see? When you look at your job applicants, who do you see more importantly, who do you not see? Why do you not see them?
- The gap between our intentions and our outcomes couldn't be more apparent. When we consider who's not in the room and why it is difficult, it is difficult for us to claim that we are making the world a better place. If a wide range of people are objectively absent from our ranks, whose world are we making better? None of us. None of us chose the field of design because it was easy. So when it comes to our efforts to be more diverse and inclusive, we shouldn't settle for good enough or do what is simply expedient. We definitely, we definitely shouldn't attempt to justify poor performance like I did. We should do the work and sometimes that might mean being a gadfly.
- Speaking of work, as designers, we often feel compelled to take on a deeper level of responsibility than our job descriptions ask of us. One of those extra responsibilities is that of de facto ethicist and it's easy to see why we are keenly aware of the awesome power and consequential responsibility we have as we help to create experiences at scale. We are much closer to our users than our colleagues and product or engineering. We see firsthand the effects that our work is having on them, how it can frustrate them, and if the stars alone delight them, we see their light side and sometimes we see their dark side as well.
- Back in 2020, Amy Jimenez Marquez was the head of UX design for Alexa's adaptive personality. After discovering some of the truly vile things that people were saying to Alexa, she and some of her female colleagues wrote an elegant appeal as to why the gendered tech product should be able to defend herself. The response from the highest levels of management, Alexa was not to be judgemental of what users said to her no matter what it was. Amy told me how the business had a tenant called have backbone, disagree and commit. Amy had backbone. She disagreed, and a little while later she left.
- Amy's story is just one of several that my guests have shared with me about the ethical tightrope that enterprise design leaders have to walk. It is hard to stay clean in a dirty world. It really is. But what we choose to do when we see good products or users go bad says a lot about us as it does about our field, and we have a range of options available to us for navigating the actual and the potential negative second order effects of our work. We don't have to restrict ourselves to playing the canary in the coal mine. We can design the harm out of our products before they've even taken flight. Doing so means that we need to ask an important supplementary question immediately after we answer how might we, and that's what might happen. If design had a universal code of ethics, I'd like to think it would suggest that we would be in danger of malpractice if we didn't give careful consideration to the answer of that question. After all, we are not just a pair of hands, right?
- Humans are social creatures and we are keenly aware of both the pecking order and the benefits afforded to those on top. And if there's one question that haunts designers, can you guess what it is? It's how do we get a seat at the table? If only we could just get that seat to suggest that we are somehow above caring about our status relative to the others in our organizations would be disingenuous. No one, no one wants to be picked last in gym class and no design leader wants to be left off the invite for an important meeting. It hurts and hurt. Feelings can lead to dark places sometimes in this little echo chamber of ours, especially on this topic, we can sound a little bit obsessive, slightly desperate, even a tad toxic. To paraphrase David Longy, the late former Prime Minister of New Zealand, as he spoke at the Oxford Union debate in 1985, defending New Zealand's position that nuclear weapons are morally in defensible, ironically against the moral majority founder Reverend Jerry Falwell. The others in our organizations can smell the uranium on our breath as we lean towards them. So how do we get that seat
- On the isolated and wind Sweatt Pacific Island of Rapanui, 2000 miles off the coast of South America, a thousand stone giants silently stand guard called Moai carved from volcanic rock. These giants were brought into existence by the island's ingenious indigenous people, sometime between 1250 and 1500 ad averaging 14 tons and four meters in height or 13 feet and ranging up to 80 tons and nine meters or 30 feet. How they traveled to the furthest reaches of rapanui has vexed many minds over hundreds of years. Captain James Cook, the famous British maritime explorer, wrote in 1774. We could hardly conceive how these islanders wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power could raise such stupendous figures. When asked how the moai traveled, the RPA nui people have always said that they walked. For a long time, Western thinkers thought that this was just a nice story. And then in 2011, after 10 years of extensive study of Rapanui and the Moai, two archeologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lippo proved that the locals were most likely right.
- Using hundreds of carefully cataloged photos of moai, they were able to create a 3D model that then became a five ton 10 foot tall replica. It was called [inaudible]. With the help of around 40 people, some long ropes and physics, tu ETI was able to walk a distance of 100 meters in about 40 minutes. But it's not those 40 minutes that matter the most, it's the 120 months that preceded them. The decade that Terry and Carl came to question the conventional thinking, the traditional narratives, the dogma that surrounded Easter Island, the Moai and the Rapanui people, even if in the end they only validated what the people of Rapanui had been saying for centuries, the story of the Moai highlights the importance of integrating various perspectives of taking a mixed methods approach to how we solve problems. Let's not be James Cook's mystified at how these product engineering and business people unacquainted with design, have managed to sol to survive this long, let's continue to do what we do so well, which is to connect the dot dots for others and let's not be afraid to let them connect a few for us as well. That's where new possibilities begin. It's where mutual respect is found. It's where value is created. Getting mad, mad as hell about not having a seat at the table isn't productive and neither is prostrating ourselves on the altar of business. Boundaries are important. Knowing where participation in design ends and our expertise begins is critical. Being able to defend that expertise against inevitable challenges is vital. And if we can do that with gentle confidence, we might find that instead of fighting for a seat at the table, we're invited to create our own.
- I've asked some questions and I've told some stories today, and whether you agree with my framing of design and its challenges isn't what matters. What matters is whether the questions that you are asking and the stories that you are telling yourself are serving you. Are they helping you to be a better design leader to shape a better world? Are they moving you and the field forward, or do they limit the range of options you see available? Do they curb your potential for impact? Are they circular in nature, contributing to the field, spinning its wheels? The stories we tell are framed by the questions we ask. Our stories repeated become our beliefs and our beliefs influence our behavior and in the complex social environment of an enterprise, behavior impacts outcomes.
- Back in April, I had a conversation on Brave UX with Dr. Susan Wein. Susan is a behavioral scientist and she has been a truly valuable contributor to our community for over 35 years. I remember preparing for this conversation vividly as I typically do. I watched a number of Susan's previous talks after pressing play on what was the third or the fourth video, an interview that she'd recently given. At the end of 2021, I noticed something Susan was different. She was still happy, thoughtful, and eloquent, but her hair was much shorter, gray, her mood, more contemplative, and she seemed to have less energy what was going on? And then near the end of the interview, Susan casually explained, during the early days of the pandemic, Susan had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
- She told me about the choice she had to make after receiving her diagnosis, the choice of which story she was going to tell herself about her cancer in her own words. The first story that she told herself went like this, I have breast cancer and I don't know what's going to happen. It could reoccur. I should just assume that this is the beginning of the end. Being conscious of that story, Susan realized it was not the story she wanted to be telling herself. It was not a story that served her particularly well. So she deliberately started to tell herself another story again in her own words. I am very fortunate I have great medical care. I don't know what's going to happen, but I am going to live my life to the fullest and take every chance I can to beat this cancer. Susan is now cancer free. When we spoke, she made it clear to me that she was under no illusions. That changing her story is what made her that way, but she told me it did help her to enjoy herself more, her life, more in the face of cancer, to appreciate the good things that were in her life, even while she was facing such a terrible thing. Personally, I can't help but wonder whether Susan's new story was the defining factor.
- What does any of this have to do with design? Like all fields design as a story. One that's always being written by people like you and me. If we don't like what we are reading, then it's on us to change what we are writing. So how do you change the story? How do we do that? When I spoke to Susan, she also told me about a book called Redirect, written by world renowned psychologist, Dr. Timothy Wilson. Redirect is about the stories we tell ourselves and how we can recognize and then edit those stories to achieve better outcomes. The method is really very simple. First, you've gotta be prepared to get a little uncomfortable here and shine a light on the story as you currently see it. What is that story that you've been telling yourself? Write it down and then read it aloud. That part's really important, the writing it down and reading it aloud.
- How do you feel when you listen to yourself? Read that story. Ask yourself, is there a better version of the story I could be telling myself? If the answer is yes, then repeat the process. Write down a new and better story and then read it aloud. If there's something that you've been struggling with as a design leader lately, perhaps it's a colleague that just doesn't get you, or it's that feeling that you're an imposter that all of us get at certain times, or perhaps it's also a deep uncertainty about the future. Write that story down and then rewrite it in a way that makes you feel more empowered and more in control. It is, I'll admit of cold comfort to realize that most of what we experience in life is largely outside of our control. Russia's war on Ukraine and climate change are just a few examples, so we need to be very careful about where we direct our energy, looking for the things we have an outsized chance of changing.
- One of those things is the stories we tell ourselves. So as these next few days unfold, listen for the underlying stories about design. What are they? How do you feel about them? Why do you feel that way? And how do they contrast with the stories that you're currently telling? And then make a choice. A choice like Susan had to make about her cancer or that I had to make about Covid and my lab. Choose either to keep believing the story that you're currently telling or choose to edit your story to integrate a new, more useful and perhaps more accurate perspective. It is up to us, all of us, to create a better frame for design tomorrow by questioning design today. Thank you and keep being brave.