Janna Kimel

Episode 127
Brave UX

Stephen Hawking and Sewing Accessible Threads

In this episode of Brave UX, Janna Kimel shares her remarkable story of meeting Stephen Hawking 🧠, how she's growing grassroots accessibility 🌱, and how to better navigate today’s job market 💪.

Highlights include:

How did you come to meet Stephen Hawking?
What approaches to increasing inclusive design have worked for you?
Do people without accessibility needs care about accessibility?
Why should people bring some of their personal life into job interviews?
How can people paint a flattering self-portrait of their work in a job interview?

February 6, 202401:13:58

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Who is Janna Kimel?

Janna is the founder and principal of Third Brain Studio, the consulting practice through which she mentors current and aspiring UX researchers, and helps organisations to plan and execute UX research and inclusive design 🚀.

Alongside her consulting, Janna is also the founder and principal researcher at the Chronic Pain Project 😣; a personal initiative that she hopes will bring visibility to the experience of people living with chronic pain, like her.

Until recently, Janna was a senior manager of UX research at Hinge Health, where she built the UX research practice from the ground up ⚕️. She has also led design research at Dexcom, overseeing the company’s software, hardware, and overall experience projects.

Winding the clock back a little further, Janna worked in digital health design and research at Intel, conducting a range of research studies that helped seniors stay in their homes for as long as possible ♿️, and it’s during this time that she crossed paths with Stephen Hawking.

Transcript

Janna Kimel:
I had worked in theatre, I'd been around a lot of actors and everybody's a person, right? But Stephen Hawking, I mean, come on. I keep calling it my jeopardy story if I ever get on jeopardy. That's the story I want to tell.
Brendan Jarvis:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of The Space InBetween, the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who need an independent perspective to align hearts and minds and also the home of New Zealand's first and only world-class, human-centered research and innovation lab. You can find out more about what we do at thespaceinbetween.co.nz.
Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting the fields of UX research, product management, and design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders in those fields.
My guest today is Janna Kimmel. Janna is the founder and principal of Third Brain Studio, the consulting practise through which she mentors current and aspiring UX researchers and helps organisations to plan and execute UX research and inclusive design.
Alongside her consulting, Janna is also the founder and principal researcher at the Chronic Pain Project, a personal initiative that she hopes will bring visibility to the experience of people living with chronic pain like her.
Until recently, Janna was a senior manager of UX research at Hinge Health where she built the UX research practise from the ground up. She has also led design research at Dexcom overseeing the company's software, hardware, and overall experience projects.
Winding the clock back a little further, Janna worked in digital health design and research at Intel conducting a range of research studies that help seniors stay in their homes for as long as possible. And it's during this time that she crossed paths with a very interesting person. More on that later.
Janna has seen and done many interesting things in her career, including being the co-chair of Portland's accessibility meetup, a named co-inventor on two patents, and the author of a chapter within the book, presumptive Design, provocations for Innovation. And now she's here with me for this conversation on Brave UX. Janna, hello and a very warm welcome to the show.
Janna Kimel:
Hello, Brendan. Nice to be with you today.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's very nice to have you here Janna and I did enjoy thoroughly preparing for our conversation. And one of the things that I noticed, which is no big secret, is that you recently finished up at Hinge Health, as I mentioned in your intro as a senior manager of UX Research, and you restarted your consulting practise Third Brain Consulting. Now that's a really unique name, and I was just curious, is the story behind the name?
Janna Kimel:
That's a good question. So it is a reuse of a consulting company that I had previously when there was a downturn in the market as well. And third stands for technology, healthcare innovation research. And in its initial formation, the D stood for design. But as I have gotten disability back into my work in this iteration, the D is now for disability. And the third brain is also kind of our gut reaction, if you will, to things. And so as a qualitative researcher, I am of course looking at data but also listening to my feelings. And so third brain represents all those things.
Brendan Jarvis:
That is such a wonderful and expansive answer. I didn't know where that question might lead us to, but it has certainly given us plenty of avenues to go down. The one that I'd like to go down with you now is you mentioned disability, and I understand that you are someone who has for a very long time had a deep interest in accessibility and disability more widely, and this has informed in a very large part of your career and the things that you have contributed to the field. And I understand that or I learned recently that that was somewhat inspired by your mother, this appreciation for this part of our community. How did she help you to see and appreciate the world of accessibility?
Janna Kimel:
It's a great question and there's so many things we're exposed to as kids, and I think it's a little bit weird what we pick up on, but my mother was hearing, although as she's aged, she has gotten hearing aids, but more from age-related hearing loss. But for my whole life, she was hearing but teaching deaf children and managing an organisation where she helped children with hearing loss get the support they needed in the schools. But that also meant that I went to camp with kids of all sorts of abilities. My mom ran a summer camp and it was with kids who were deaf and kids who were in wheelchairs. And I learned sign language growing up because I was part of a deaf theatre troop. So being around people with so many different abilities. And then for me around age 10, having my own issues where I ended up being on off crutches for a number of years, there was already almost an inbred sensitivity around age six or seven. But then when I started having my own challenges, it just came up for me bigger because it was, oh, it's out there and it's also in here,
Brendan Jarvis:
Especially at that age 10. I mean this is the age where people are climbing in trees and doing lots of active things. How did that experience at age 10, forgive me if I'm drawing a line here, not quite a correct one, but I understand that the Chronic Pain project has been inspired by your own challenges with regards to chronic pain and what that's meant for your accessibility needs. Just how formative were these childhood experiences for what you decided to do, what you decided to invest as a working professional adult?
Janna Kimel:
I think some of them manifested very directly and some of them have taken 30 years to actually manifest where I'm comfortable talking about it. Originally, I remember walking on the campus in undergrad at Indiana University and I saw a gentleman with crutches and he had one leg that was amputated and his pants were pinned up on that side. And I thought to myself, well, I mean it works, right? It's function, but it's not form and gee, wouldn't it be nice to have something better than that? So kind of packed that away. I had, like I said, been on and off crutches and there's all sorts of things you can't do with your hands when you're on and off crutches. So had that lived experience but wasn't really designing at that point in my life for myself, my first career was in theatre and I was designing costumes and a lot of the work we did to get people in and out of their costumes quickly was we would add Velcro or we'd add seams in places you don't normally have seams.
And I kind of made this connection and thought, well, if we can do this for people with able bodies that just need to take their clothes off quickly, what could this do for people who might sit in a wheelchair all day or who might be short stature? So because I was young and naive and didn't know any better, I sat down with, I'm going to date myself now, but the Yellow Pages, and started calling nursing homes and explaining what I wanted to do and how I wanted to help their residents and started a company designing clothes mostly I did some manufacturing, but mostly solving one challenge at a time for a person who could get dressed and knew exactly what they needed to happen to their clothes, they just didn't have the capacity to do that sewing. So I would work with them and find out their challenges and then implement those and bring that back to their home.
So that was all a really important, really formative part. I did that for about 15 years and then when I found research, it was still really important for me to be kind of in medical, so still making good choices, keeping people well and healthy. Let the disability piece go a little bit as we get into my fun intel story, we'll talk about that too, but it felt like it sort of went dormant for about 10 years and it's kind of reared its head again. And being at Hinge made me so much more comfortable talking about chronic pain that I've been telling people lately. I've finally become friends with my migraines. I can talk about them and not feel the shame that comes with chronic illness and chronic pain, and that's pretty amazing.
Brendan Jarvis:
There are, myself included, people that will be listening to this episode that haven't suffered chronic pain and therefore won't truly be able to understand exactly what that is and the shame that you have just spoken about and what that may be like to carry. I wondered if we may, and it's okay if we can't, but could we go into that touching on that shame that you mentioned? What is it that sits behind that and why is it something that has been only a recent level of comfort that you've reached in order to talk about that?
Janna Kimel:
That's a really good question. So for many people, and I am very connected to social media these days because finding that's a very lively community because it's a lot of people who don't leave their house or can't leave their house. So for a lot of folks with chronic pain, I had one guy describe it as the wheel of pain. You don't know what's going to happen in the morning when you wake up. And so the shame comes in, there's two things. One is it's invisible. So I can sit here and tell you I have a terrible migraine, and you're like, yeah, okay, whatever. You look fine to me. And that's true of many, many diseases. And that was true of what happened to me at age 10. There was no visible issue with my ankle. So kids were teasing me and said, oh, there's nothing wrong with you.
You're just using crutches. Well, yeah, actually there is something wrong. I don't still don't know what it was, but there was something wrong. And then the other shame that comes with it for a lot of us, myself included, is not being able to do the thing you said you were going to do, whether that's, I told you, you and I are going to go for drinks, although you live in New Zealand, that would be challenging, but a good challenge. Let's go for drinks tonight, and then I call you a couple hours before I'm like, yeah, woke up with a migraine, can't get rid of it, can't do this thing. It might be a work thing. I know how to manage around that, but some days the migraine wins. And so it's just, I think some of it is just the instability, the inability to plan, and then the fact that you're not walking around with a cast or you're not in a wheelchair, so it sounds like you're faking it. And so those two things combined, at least for me, are where most of the shame sits.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, it sounds like there'd almost be quite a heavy social price that you could pay, particularly if people weren't feeling particularly understanding or forgiving of this particular situation. Not that you need their forgiveness, but if you know what I mean, if they're not able to empathise with the situation, it might be quite a costly social price that you have paid.
Janna Kimel:
Definitely. Definitely. I mean, it may dating hard. I do always worry about work. Like I said, I've always managed to work around it and had great people to work with, but you do worry when you can't do what it looks like everybody else is. And the reality is everybody else has stuff. They might not have migraines, but maybe their kid got sick with the flu at school, and I don't have to worry about that. I don't have kids, so we all have, none of us is living a perfect life, but it sure does look perfect when you're on the outside and not on the inside. So that thing we do as humans where we compare ourselves and not good enough or can't do what the other people can do, and yes, when people make cla, they usually hope to go through with them. And so sometimes there is a caveat of I plan to be there and unless my body has another plan.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. One of the things that I've enjoyed through these conversations on Brave UX is hopefully being able to as much for myself as for other people to shine a little bit of a light on what life is like for people in our field in terms of their own personal life. We always see people's contributions, public contributions, but not often do I feel that we get a real sense of what it may have taken for them to overcome whatever their personal challenges is in order to make those contributions. So I really appreciate you sharing that story with me.
Janna Kimel:
Thank you for asking. Like I said, it has been a hard won personal battle to kind of be talking about this lately, and yet we do as researchers, as soon as you share your story, you get 10 back and it's just amazing. The chronic pain project has been really honestly healing. I feel very selfish because people are telling me their stories and I'm thinking, oh yeah, we're in this together. So many of us are going through this. Why don't we talk about this more? And I've met some incredible people having these conversations and really feel like I found my people in some ways.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh, that's fantastic. It's a bit of a segue here, but we were talking about your work at Accessible Threads, which was your company that you founded to create accessible clothing for people, but I want to actually go into something that's clothing related but not directly related to accessibility, and that's that I noticed in your LinkedIn profile that you've done a lot of volunteering over your time, and that's included some wonderful causes that you've donated your time to, a paediatric art therapy clinic, children's Literacy, women in Tech mentoring. You've also, and you currently are is I believe, still serving on the board of a senior living community. But the thing that took most of my attention when I was looking at this was actually your volunteer work for Dress for Success. And I don't know why that was. It just seemed to me to stand out as being slightly different there for people who don't know what is Dress for Success and what was it that called you to volunteer there?
Janna Kimel:
Yeah, so I will clarify that I am no longer on the board at Roseville. I did some time there and then have rolled off, but loved that place is very cool. That is if you're going to retire, they have some very wonderful things there. But Dress for Success admittedly, is near my home. So one of my qualifications for volunteering is not having to go a half hour away. At one point I was volunteering at a horse farm and it was way too far away, but their mission is to help women who are somehow not as able or haven't been taught how to find work. Perhaps they're coming out of prison, perhaps they just never really learned how to get work, but they know that they need to get work or they want to get work. And so one of the first things that happens when you go, at least before times, as we say before Covid, and now as people are going back in the office, you can't go to a job interview and a dirty T-shirt and jeans.
You can't go to a job interview, half dressed, and you need hair, you need makeup, you need the right apparel in order for anybody to eat, start a conversation with you. So if you're in any of those situations, you're kind of already starting one step down. And so the fact that they're trying to empower women, and if those women are empowered, then their children are empowered and they can then take care of themselves. And I don't know anyone who doesn't want to take care of themselves, be empowered, be, I do know people that don't want to be working, but people who, if that's the thing they need to do, they want to take care of their families and themselves. So in addition to the clothing, this organisation actually offers classes and trainings. They do mock interviews. There was one wonderful session I went to where they actually talked about sometimes you actually go out to eat with people when you're doing an interview.
I don't know if you've done that. I've had that a few times. It's totally nerve wracking. You don't want to get spaghetti on your shirt, but they were talking about like what's silverware to use if there's three or four spoons and forks, just so you feel prepared and so you feel on par with the people who are interviewing you. Because for a lot of these women, this is a really big step. So it's a wonderful organisation and all of the clothing that they get is free. We dress for success, works with organisations in the area, different social services that send folks our way. We make sure they have the garments, sometimes the undergarments that are necessary, sometimes, like I said, hair, makeup, and then classes as well. And so I have fallen off a little bit. And then we also have sales three or four times a year to the general public, and that brings in cash to be able to give away, and it's all donation based. There's a bunch of local companies that make these amazing donations of new clothing and some gently used clothing that goes up in the sales. So that's kind of how it's funded. It's a very cool organisation. I've really been enjoying working with them.
Brendan Jarvis:
It really just goes to highlight just how much of a hearing that, just how much of a bubble we, broadly speaking in tech live in. Yeah, it really is something
Janna Kimel:
About we're very privileged. You and I were probably taught how to do all of these things, and you don't even think about the fact that somebody might even know, not know. How do you manage an interview?
Brendan Jarvis:
What sort of feeling do you most often walk away from your time volunteering? They're with,
Janna Kimel:
I'm so humbled. I mean the fact that these women are coming in and saying, I will accept help and also pride, and they usually walk out a little bit taller, a little bit happier. They're like, I'm going to look good. I have these cool clothes now. And so it's some pride in helping them get to the next step and some humility for just how much work some folks have had to do to get work to completely just remake their existing knowledge. Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
It sounds like a really worthwhile dedication of time. I want to segue back now to a time in your career where it seemed to me at least you were taking a big next step, and it was at some point, I'm not quite clear on the exact timeframe here, but it was some point after you started accessible Threads. And I believe a husband of a former colleague found out that you had been doing what you were doing, that you had some skills that perhaps you could sow, and then somehow this conversation led to you at IDEO's offices. And for me, that sounded like a wonderful story to go into. So what is the story there? How did that all come to be?
Janna Kimel:
It is weirdly almost that simple, and it literally was life-changing. So David Little, if you're out there, thank you. I did. I was doing accessible threads. I had worked one of my, I'm probably on career seven, Brendan, but this one has stuck. And a friend reached out and said, Hey, husband works at this company and they want us sew. They need some sew prototypes. And I don't know, I know you do research, I don't know if you work in hardware and software, but getting anything made out of textiles, usually you have to send things to China and you need to get like 10,000 pieces made. Well think about making, if you were designing an app and you had to do that, right, that's not a way to brainstorm and iterate. They wanted somebody on the ground in person. At that time, I was living in Evanston outside of Chicago, and I just went into their offices, they talked about what they wanted and I dunno, I probably sewed 30 or 40 different kits at that point as we iterated together.
What can you sew? What's easy to manufacture? The goal of the project, if I remember correctly, was to have a way for people with haemophilia to carry the factor, the medicine that they need to have handy through Disneyland. That was kind of the overall objective. And so we were kind of designing a fanny pack, but it was also a fanny pack on steroids that had to have a cold pack and had to hold sharps or did it have to hold Sharps? Of course. How did it hold a cold pack? And then watching some of the really talented researchers and designers and just kind of my naive head exploded and went, wait, this is a job. I really like design. I really like talking to people. At that point, I was much more focused on the design and realising it was a career was amazing. And so that absolutely set me up for the next 20 or so years walking down this trajectory I didn't even know would ever be there.
Brendan Jarvis:
And that setup, I believe, ended up with you. Perhaps one of the next steps that you took was you shut down accessible threads or you wound that down because you had a wonderful opportunity come up at Intel, and that was in the health and design and research space. And I understand not long after that, maybe a year after you started at Intel, you met someone who is perhaps one of the most exceptionally gifted people that we have known in our lifetime. Who was that person and how did you come to meet them? That
Janna Kimel:
Was the inimitable Stephen Hawking, and I have a family trait of being a little bit of a pit bull when I see something that sounds really interesting to me. And yes, I was working at Intel and I was in their digital health group and one of the guys was working on a project around the computer that Intel provided to Steven Hawking. We had his voice, his computer were all provided by Intel. I always joke that I'm the kind of person that sticks my foot in the door. I was like, I want to be a part of that. I knew I wanted to support that in some way, and I kept just kind of knocking on the door with the engineers and just seeing if there was something I could do. And at one point it came out that the people, so he has a bunch of graduate students around him, and those graduate students are the people that take care of his computer.
Well, his graduate students are like astrophysicists. They don't know anything about, I mean, they're not stupid, but fixing a computer is not their job. And so it turned out, and I don't honestly remember how this all happened, but I was supposed to go to London and actually follow him on an aeroplane to see what was happening to the wheelchair, which is still an issue for everybody in wheelchairs right now. What happens during flight that did not end up happening. But by then he was down in California and I was able to take a quick flight and meet him and follow him and his caregivers for the day. So I probably said two words to him. He was very busy doing all of the big thinking he does, and I was busy doing the little thinking that I do and watch what was happening, interviewed the caregivers, I got to have dinner with him and all these caregivers.
It was pretty cool. And during the course of the conversations like we do in research, talking to all the stakeholders, asking what the issue was, they kept telling me that the biggest problem was things just came unplugged. Then they didn't know where that plugged them back in. That was the crux of the issue. And so along with some other issues, one of the other interesting one was he uses a cheek switch. And so we were rolling back, or he was rolling, we were walking back to the house for dinner and there was the shade and light and shade and light. It was probably about six o'clock at night. And I was like, what's that noise? And they said, it's his cheek sensor because it senses dark and light, and so it was going blah, blah, blah, but it wasn't really saying anything because he wasn't actually giving input.
So the problem we didn't solve was that cheek sensor, at least not while I was there. We talked about it a lot, but the problem we did solve was those plugs, and I don't know if you remember back in the day when HP had those little purple and green little things and then they'd have a little purple and a little green on the side of your computer. Basically what we did, the engineer bought some nail polish, painted the connections and made sure people knew where to plug it back in. And literally the calls to the customer support or to the intel engineers went down dramatically. So it is the best example of how user research is important and also how the ROI can just be almost, I mean, you don't have to put anything out to get so much back.
Brendan Jarvis:
And I believe that was one of the grad students who was a theoretical physicist. Her name was Nikki. She was the one that raised that issue with you. How did Nikki feel when you came back with a solution like how stoked, that's Kiwi for happy? How happy was she with this particular solution?
Janna Kimel:
I don't know that I was the person who got to talk to them again. So I think once that solution was done, but I would imagine they were pretty excited about it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, like you say, they're very intelligent people, but their thing is not hardware or software. Exactly.
Yeah. It's actually quite humbling being a researcher, and I'm sure many of us who are researchers have had this experience where some of our participants are hugely capable, talented individuals, and we put them in front of our software sometimes and we almost reduce them to tiers. And it's always so humbling to see just how far we have to go in our industry to create software experiences in my case that are that very able people, very competent people, are able to actually achieve what we've created it to achieve for them. So I imagine this was an amazing experience. I want to go back to, and I know this is some time ago, so just cast your mind back, but what was your first impression? How did you feel? What was going on for you in that moment when you first met Steven? Oh,
Janna Kimel:
I was totally in awe. I mean, I do remember standing in the office with his caregiver, who was the person I talked to the most. There was a gentleman with him, I want to say his name was David, but just knowing that I was even near him. I had worked in theatre, I'd been around a lot of actors and everybody's a person. But Steven Hawke, I mean, come on. I keep calling it my Jeopardy story if I ever get on jeopardy. That's the story I want to tell. No, definitely in awe and humbled and really honoured again to be able to support his work and allow him to do what he does well and do what I do well. Although it was a smidgen of anything, but it was important to make everything keep going.
Brendan Jarvis:
Was there a briefing beforehand? Were there rules things that you could or couldn't say or do when you were with Steven as he quite gated and guarded? Or was he, I should say?
Janna Kimel:
That's a good question. I do remember being told you're mostly going to be able to talk to the caregiver that this is not a conversation for Steven. He is very busy. He'll be in the room, but the caregiver is the person who you're going to talk with most. And that made sense because that person actually knew what was happening under Steven's chair. He didn't
Brendan Jarvis:
Speak about under the chair because I think you undersold your involvement here just a little. And you talked about the cables and the colour coding that went on there with that solution. But I also understand there was a bit of an issue around the backup battery, and there's quite a critical role that the battery, which probably sounds silly now that I'm saying this out loud, that the battery plays in Steven's life. What was the story there? If
Janna Kimel:
I remember correctly, and you are testing my memory, they didn't have a way to keep the backup battery nearby and wheelchairs, people are already carrying lots of bags and lots of things with them, and again, lots of wires. So I do believe I either made or recommended a battery bag so that he could just have another battery with him that again, really shouldn't be astrophysics. There should be a way to attach a battery to the chair and it's there at all times. So that was again, another solution that unless you have the knowledge of what fabric can and can't do and what kind of fabric you should use and how sturdy this is versus that, all those things that I needed to take into account to make sure he had what he needed. Does that match with what you read? I'm trying to remember that far back.
Brendan Jarvis:
It does. It does. And it sounds like it was thoroughly worthwhile investment and time for everyone involved. I wanted to ask about the entourage, which I believe is what they were referred to themselves as. And you've said that they were graduate students. And I realise here that we're only talking about a small moment in time here, but I am curious about your initial impressions because it struck me to be strange, but also sensible pairing of intellectual interests that the grad students would have in being around and mentored by someone as prolific as Steven. But then that crossover into what also struck me having a mother that worked in aged care for a while, having seen my grandparents go through aged care and of various levels of ability. At one point, my grandma being pretty much locked into her body with Parkinson's, there's a very personal aspect and a very, I wouldn't say it's less than dignified, but you definitely see people in a light that they would probably not wish anyone would see them in that role. What sense did you get of the nature of the relationship between the students and Steven? Did this strike you as strange or how did it come across to you?
Janna Kimel:
It seemed very familial. I mean, the fact that they said, oh, comfort dinner at the house we're all eating together tonight. His students were there, he was there. He at that point was eating with a feeding tube, but he was there. I have all these fantasies. I don't have a big family. I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be cool to have 10 people at the dinner table together? And so I thought it was really cool that they weren't just students together. They sort of were a family other than the computer. I'm not really clear what kind of duties they had for his actual medical care. I'm sure there was somebody assigned for the actual medical care, but getting 'em from class to class or just making sure that the computer is reachable or whatever, small iterations that anybody can do with or without training, how wonderful to have that as the thing you give back and still get so much from that person who's your mentor and your teacher.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, definitely. Do you remember how you felt when you heard the news that he'd passed away?
Janna Kimel:
Oh, it was devastating. I mean, it is very rare in a lifetime. Most of us get to meet somebody that's that iconic, and he's done so much for the world and so much to help us at least attempt to understand so many things that we don't understand that it was definitely sad. I love the episode of The Simpsons that he's on, sort of immortalised on the Simpsons that way. But yeah, having that one day that I got to follow him around has definitely put him in what I consider my circle. I'm quite sure I'm not in his circle, but in just the circle of people that I think about
Brendan Jarvis:
What a great story and what a great memory really is. You spoke there about him giving a lot to the world or thereabouts. I want to speak to you now about something or some things that you've been giving to the world. And I understand in your past two roles that you've started, what are called accessibility employee resource groups or ERGs as they're sometimes referred to, and listening to you talk about this previously, this seems like a lot of work. This isn't really just something that you just do an hour or two on the side. It seems like quite an effort. What is the purpose of an accessibility ERG, and why have you started these?
Janna Kimel:
Well, I'll get on the soapbox for a minute because I am very proud to have started them, but I am very sad that they are unpaid roles. I recently attended a conference, I think it was in June that was a conference about accessibility. And the majority of people at that conference were people who were leading ERGs just like myself or participating in them. And it is 99 to a hundred percent of the time a role that we do because people think it's important, but not because anybody's paying us to do that. And being in management and also taking on something like that and not necessarily having senior leadership buy into you, taking your time to do that is quite frankly very difficult. But being in healthcare in general, we are obligated to serve all people. And by ignoring a segment, whether it's by gender, whether it's by age, whether it's by tech savviness, very often the thing we ignore, and we have DEI, right?
We have diversity, equity, inclusion. People always leave off accessibility. People have numbers all throughout their company on what race, gender, people are. Only in the last year I would say, does it feel like people are asking about disability and it still doesn't feel safe to answer it? Of course, now I'm sitting here broadcasting it all over the place, so I'm going to start answering it. And because it is often very invisible, I mean for some folks, gender may be fluid, gender may be invisible. Your age, well, you can fake that a little bit. And your race, again, there's lots of people you can look at and you certainly can't pinpoint what that race is or disability, I'm sorry. It can be completely invisible. And we're designing, like I said, we're designing products for health products for people, sometimes health products for people with a disease like diabetes that causes higher incidence of deafness, a higher incidence of low vision, a higher incidence of neuropathy.
And then if we're not catering to those users, we're doing ourselves a disservice as a company. They have money to spend. Why not? If you're thinking purely with your business hat on, they've got money to spend just like everybody else does, and you want as many people to use your product as possible. So why wouldn't you be as inclusive as you can and include those folks with a disability? And there is, I dunno an assumption, nobody wants to do bad design. Nobody goes out tomorrow and says, oh, I'm going to design this pen and make sure only people who have five fingers can use it. That's not what we do. But unless you proactively understand, okay, but what would a person with only two fingers do with this pen? And I'm just using this pen, it's here. That's when the really interesting juicy conversations start.
That's when the challenges come in. Not only do we have to make the pen that fits in the package and hits the skew, but now we have to make something that even more people can use. And I don't know why, but that seems to scare people. So the more we can educate folks and just give them the tools to make good decisions, people want to make inclusive decisions, that's when we can be better. So at one company, I was really focused on the product itself and making the product more inclusive. At another company, I was actually more focused on our employees and making sure that the employees had the breaks they needed. There were some changes made where folks had to log in time and log on for a certain amount of time, and particularly some of the folks identified as having autism and they need to go stem or they can't sit on a keyboard for four hours.
And so the ability to just say, I will only take a one hour lunch, but instead of taking that one hour at noon, I'm going to take 15 minutes at 10 30, half an hour at noon, and another 15 minutes at three 30, that's going to help me and my disability. Nothing has to change with your company. You're not asking for anything else financial, you're just getting what you need to do your job. People who are accommodated in that way, by and large, stay in their jobs a lot longer. Anybody with a disability stay, if they're getting the accommodations they need, they stay. They feel good, they feel cared for. And so you're hearing the soapbox that I'm on. I just think it's so important. We all have different ways of living our lives. And when we are clear that there is a certain community that needs support and it's not going to cost you a whole lot more money and you're going to get a dedicated employee, let's do that. Let's do this. Let's put people to work. And the pandemic, more people with a disability were working than ever before. So it's because they could stay at home because people who find it either getting the right transit is hard or leaving the house is impossible for some reason people still want to work. So let's do that. Let's get people jobs and let's bring them in and talk about how to create a product or create an experience for literally everybody.
Brendan Jarvis:
Stay on the soapbox a little longer. Listening to you talk about those experiences. I couldn't help but hear frustration in your voice. And it's a frustration that I've heard from other people in our field that mostly dedicated to accessibility, inclusive design, the needs of people with disabilities. Do you get the sense that it's more of a case that people who are not from those communities don't care, or it's that they simply don't care enough to make a change?
Janna Kimel:
I don't think it's that they don't care at all. I think they're not given the bandwidth to care. So what I mean by that is you're in a hot startup and everybody's moving really quickly and you were just moved onto a project and next Tuesday you need to have a prototype. And if you haven't had the training and you don't know what it means to make something accessible, not a great time to start figuring that out. So what I've tried to do is bring in that training for the entire team, even the most basic training, so that people know maybe when to stop and ask a question, maybe when to look something up to just start the conversation. And I think that's where the frustration for so many of us is that the conversation is kind of held at arm's length. I'm not asking you to go buy a whole bunch of new software.
I'm not asking you to spend a lot of money. I'm asking you to think about the people who are using your product and make it a better experience. And we have proven time and time again, we talk about curb cuts. That is the prototypical conversation is curb cuts. Were created for people in wheelchairs. And the little dots that are raised were created for a person who's blind. But if you've ever pushed a baby stroller or dragged a suitcase with wheels or were even temporarily into a wheelchair, those curb cuts help you too. Text messaging designed for people with hearing impairment originally. Now, I don't know anybody who talks on the phone anymore, so there's this kind of weird us them thing, but it's really all us. It benefits us all. And so I think the frustration comes from the fact that people feel like it's this big ask and this big lift, but if it's done well, everybody, I firmly believe everybody benefits from it.
Brendan Jarvis:
So picking up on this smaller X, maybe this framing, it is not this massive big lift you were speaking about there. I've heard you say something that quite beautifully touches on this before, and I want to quote you now. You've said sometimes we get stuck by thinking that there's some great big process when really we can literally ask the person next to us who we see twice a week and just make change. So what is it that's special about these little acts?
Janna Kimel:
The little acts being like the little changes, little deltas?
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Not trying to move the entire mountain in day one. I
Janna Kimel:
Think it's such a trap that we've put ourselves in. The business world has put our in as, oh, we got to make all these big changes and make a splash and put something big out there. And maybe it's just making the font more readable, or maybe it's making sure that your app is more scalable than it is so that even people with reading glasses can do that instead of go hunting for their reading glasses. I think that maybe that's what organisations reward. They reward big change. And so we feel like we're obligated to make big change, but sometimes little change can be as impactful and just cost a lot less in time, money, resources, just do something to move the needle. And you do that little thing and people go, oh, okay, we move the needle a little bit. That wasn't so hard. Let's try and do that again. Right? It was like if you're doing something for the first time, if you're, I was learning to crochet, well, the first thing I did was just a simple scarf. I didn't decide to make an entire pants suit, right? Lemme just see if I can get one thing done. And so we have to prove to ourselves, we have to prove to our organisations that we can actually make these changes without completely upsetting the apple cart. And because for some reason there's a perception that that's what happens.
Brendan Jarvis:
Let's speak about upsetting the apple cart because you've also said something previously, and I'll quote you again. Now, you've said, where can I have an impact and not be seen as getting in the where can I have a measurable impact but not impede business as usual? And this is what you're talking about in terms of not upsetting the apple cart, and I get that don't piss the people off that can kill your initiative. You don't lose before you've even started playing the game type thing here. But isn't this business's usual way of thinking of being, isn't this the actual problem?
Janna Kimel:
Yes and no. I mean, some of that comes honestly, Brendan, from just who I am. I'm not a come in guns blazing person. I kind of want to just slowly rally the troops and have people slowly drink the Kool-Aid. It's sort of the, you catch more flies with honey kind of thing. And for me, that's just how I operate better. I know there are people that do come in big and that's awesome. If you can do that and you figure out how to do that, that's great. I haven't been in the position where that was the right thing to do, and I just don't frankly think that's who I am. So if somebody wants to upset the apple cart, I will support that. I'm probably not going to be at the front of the line.
Brendan Jarvis:
So if your approach is more, you catch more flies with honey rather than the coming in really heavy and hard to try and build more inclusive design cultures. What framings or approaches or ways of working have you found to be most effective perhaps particularly when dealing with decision makers, the people that can either make or break an initiative like this in a company? What have you found really works
Janna Kimel:
Data? I mean numbers, right? Numbers. As you've seen in some of the presentations I've done, and I don't have those numbers handy, but the billions of dollars available from this community, the community of people who identify as having a disability, the community of people who maybe can't do all of the activities of daily living, billions of dollars to spend, and then just the sheer volume of humans. We have, again, millions of people with a variety of disabilities. Often comorbidities, you could be blind and deaf, so you're just really losing out on market. And so the data is one thing. As a researcher, I honestly tend to lean on the stories. I like to take one individual. And in one company there was an individual who had written to us who was blind and couldn't use our product, and I kind of used her as our guidepost and said, as humans, if you talk about the 11,000 people that something happened to, it's kind of mind boggling.
We can't think about that. If I tell you that this individual who lives in New Jersey and uses our product is having trouble with this one particular thing, that's a much more compelling story, just the way our human brains work. And so I lean on story. I partnered with others who were really good at parsing the data and bringing that together and showing where can your numbers go as an organisation if you start to make something that more people can use. And then the other thing, most people I've worked with will tell you, and then I just keep having that conversation. I may not go in and flip the apple cart at the beginning, but I will continue to throw Apple watch out. This has been a long conversation for the last five years, and I really believe it's important and I don't want to let it go. I know we can't do everything overnight, but I also think that if you put down your guard, people will turn away and do something else. And so you kind of have to tap the glass and go, remember that thing we talked about? Yeah, we're still going to have to do that.
So that's more of my approach, honestly, is just kind of consistency and persistence and having a good story.
Brendan Jarvis:
Some people in the community are flipping apple carts, and you've noted that there is a marked increase in the number of lawsuits related to accessibility that have been happening particularly in the past decade. And about this, you've previously said, and I'll quote you again, one of the things I learned in one of the webinars I attended is that there are a few legal practises that spend time sending out crawlers, and they're actually just trying to find websites that are not accessible. So of course, this is touching on people that have raised lawsuits against companies for inaccessible experiences and quite rightly have won those cases. But how do you, thinking about this practise of sending out crawlers for the purposes of this type of legal action, how does that sit with you? How do you feel about that type of action?
Janna Kimel:
Yeah, I don't think that's the best way to go about it. I mean, it's what explains the spike in the numbers. I mean, the numbers have just spiked exponentially over the last few years as people have figured out they could do that. Also don't know that the onus should be on this. The poor person who tried to order a Domino's pizza and couldn't do it, and now they have to figure out how to file a class action lawsuit, that's maybe not the greatest thing either. It is what is making some companies participate more is knowing the threat of a lawsuit. So we'll take what we can get. But in an ideal world, I don't think that that's the best way to go about things. Not, I find it unethical. And it also speaks to one of the things that people try and do is they'll test a website with an organisation and do kind of what they call automated testing.
But what you need to do also is manual testing, because automated testing can test for code. Is the code written right or not? But until you use something, you still don't know if it's actually accessible or not, or if it's actually usable by the person with their screen reader or not. So I think it's unethical from a bunch of different standpoints. It's just you shouldn't sit around just filing law. We have a glutted system of lawsuits. You shouldn't sit around filing. And we need to really understand what's broken, not just, oh, you're not writing the code, but why is this actually not accessible?
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, yeah. It's almost like there are necessary evil as far as helping to further the conversation and get some action happening. And it's also, for some reason, it's making me recall my conversation with Bob Baxley from a couple of years ago and recalling a part about that, which was specific to Steve Jobs and his ability to work out what motivated people, whether it was the disappointed, I'm disappointed in you, or whether it's the real firecracker coming down really hard on them. And I know people have views on how appropriate or not that is from a management perspective, but it's almost like not all companies are motivated by the same things. Some of them do need the fear of insert deity to make things happen. Yeah. But turning things back to perhaps a more positive lens here now in those organisations that have managed to develop a positive culture around inclusive design, and they're actually doing more than just talking about it, they're actually doing something about it. What characteristics or what are your observations of those companies and those leaders in those companies, what have they managed to do or see differently that the ones in perhaps the less successful or less active companies are doing?
Janna Kimel:
I don't know that I've seen it in at the C level. That's probably because I don't talk to those folks as much. But I think Microsoft is an amazing example. So they have a chief accessibility officer, they have made and much research. I think research and accessibility are two things that right now people are turning away from. We look like we cost too much money. There's very rarely a VP of research or certainly a c-level research person. There might be a designer. And Microsoft and Apple have done so much of that work to get, I don't know if Apple has a chief accessibility officer. I know for a fact that Microsoft does. They've given it the same amount of gravitas as they've given everything else, finance, it, design and accessibility. What a cool thing to have somebody that high up who says, you know what?
This is actually important and we're going to pay attention to it. And in the companies where it is less a part of the conversation, I think it's just there's nobody high enough on the food chain who finds it important enough or finds it valuable enough. I worked at a company at one point, and the CEOs, I think their mom got very ill, and they suddenly understood what it was like to be a caregiver. And the whole company shifted to focusing on caregiving. And because that person had a real experience. And so I don't wish pain or anguish on anyone, but unfortunately, until we have our own lived experience or know somebody close to us that does, those things just aren't as important. And so unless those leaders really go out and educate themselves and they're busy doing other things, it never quite hits as high on the list.
Brendan Jarvis:
You are touching on what I suspect is getting pretty close to truth if not truth here. And it's reminding me of another conversation that I had where this is somewhat related, but the observation for my guests in this conversation was that big global companies, you assume that a lot of the people that are in what you would consider upper management or perhaps upper middle management, have more power than they actually do to affect change. And that as much as we talk about flat structures and distributed decision making when it comes to actually committing significant resources, like carving out the resources for a VP of accessibility or a chief accessibility officer, those decisions are almost exclusively always made from the existing c-suite. So you a hundred percent hear you what you're saying there around, until someone has a lived experience of their own, it's very unlikely that you're going to see something terribly meaningful come from those organisations.
Janna Kimel:
And I think if you want to circle all the way back to, even if they do, well, Steve Jobs had pancreatic cancer, so that could have creeped into what he was trying to do. And I know Amazon does do actually, they have pretty decent accessibility. I mean, it's too big of a company not to, honestly,
Brendan Jarvis:
They understand the dollar signs I feel, which, hey, look, it's not a bad motivation necessarily on its own or maybe on its own. It is a bad motivation, but it's not a bad motivation when it's mixed in with some good outcomes. But yeah, I think they see the value of the community from a dollar cents.
Janna Kimel:
Nobody wants to be perceived as weak. So if somebody's losing their eyesight or going deaf, they're not going to say, oh, we need to change our company because I'm having this thing that I'm going to tell you about, but now you're going to know that I have a weakness or I perceived weakness when it just, I mean, our bodies change and shift as we age. It's just different. Or maybe you get in a hunting accident. I mean, who knows, right? But people don't necessarily want to share those things. And kind of circling back to what we talked about at the beginning, there are probably CEOs who have some of these lived experiences, but perhaps they're not willing or ready to be as open with them because there's still stigma around it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Stigma, particularly when it comes back to what we were speaking about at the beginning, chronic pain, symptoms of disease like IBS, for example. Things that aren't necessarily completely debilitating for everyone, that suffers from them, but they are also not things that people are comfortable speaking about openly. You touched on a little bit earlier, Janna, about how those of us in research and accessibility might be finding ourselves looking for work more than we ever have in the past. And I wanted to ask you about this. You recently published a really useful resource to help those of us in that position. It's called the Resource Bank for job seekers, and it's specifically focused on UX job seekers. In this, I want to quote something that you've said. There are many great things in here, and I'll link to it in the show notes. But you have a section about networking, and I wanted to start here with you if we could. And what you've said is put the person before the profession, who are you and what do you do? What makes you stand out? Add what's important to you personally? So that sounds to me like people need to do a bit of reflection before they put themselves in what could be perceived to be a networking situation.
Janna Kimel:
I would argue you don't even have to do any reflection. I mean, if I said to you right now, you weren't thinking about it, who's Brendan when he's not a researcher? I'm pretty sure you have an answer to that.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah,
Janna Kimel:
There's some cool things you do, right? Some hobbies you have. Maybe you travelled recently.
Brendan Jarvis:
Are you trying to flip the interview here, Janna?
Janna Kimel:
No, no, no. But that we are humans first. We are not workers. I mean, we are workers, but that's not the whole of us. So I don't want people to think, oh man, now I got to sit down for 30 minutes before I network and figure out who I am. Just go in and talk about the cool thing that happened to you on the way to the event. Oh man, I saw the Unipiper Portland. He had his little Darth Vader hat on and his bagpipes. That's all it has to be. It's just what did you see? What happened two hours ago to you, Brendan? Not to you, Brendan UX researcher.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, no, that's a really healthy reframe. Yeah, I had started going down that path as you quite rightly picked up on of just how much do I need to have thought about who I am before I step into that arena? But I think that's really been quite clarifying. Speaking of the arena, going out to find work. I was recently speaking with a new friend who after over a decade has found themself looking for work for the first time and quite a senior person regardless of what age or ability you are or experience level, this is quite a confronting position for people to find themselves in, particularly when the economy isn't that great or at least our sector of the economy isn't looking that great. One of the things you've spoken about in this resource is encouraging people to go and find, particularly for large companies, subreddits and read what their employees are saying on their sub Reddits in terms of their hiring tips that they have for people wanting jobs there. I didn't even know this was a thing. This probably shows how woefully out of touch I am. But what is it that you and perhaps others that you know of have found useful in these subreddits?
Janna Kimel:
Well, for me, at this point in my life, culture fits really important. And I know I hear that from tonnes of people I mentor. It's like they want a meaningful job, but nobody wants to work with a-holes, if you will. We all are jerks. Let's just use the word jerks. We want to work with people we resonate with. And on a good day, you can go to LinkedIn and get somebody to actually respond to your query and set up a 20 minute meeting and learn about the culture. But that's one person. And if you go on, I mean as researchers, we are amazingly well set up to be prepared for a job interview. If you're a researcher and you go in unprepared to a job interview, you failed hard.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, maybe it's a career change needs to
Janna Kimel:
Come because very well set up to look and dig and read. And there are whole communities talking about what it's like to work at certain organisations and you have to take it with a grain of salt, especially the bigger companies. I worked at Intel and people in one part of the organisation were unhappy. People in my part of the organisation were elated. We were having so much fun. So it just kind of depends, but to at least get a sense of the culture and you've got Glassdoor to let you know is the CEO somebody people respect or not? We got that kind of data, but again, I like story. And so, okay, if only 2.6% of the people don't like that CEO, why? And if 4.9 do I want to know why? Because I don't know if my values are still there. Maybe they like him because he is not doing anything for people with disabilities or her, and so that's not going to be in line with me. So you can find out people are having a lot of these conversations right now. People want to work at companies that align with their values and there are a lot of people having those conversations out there.
Brendan Jarvis:
The importance of values really can't be understated. The thing that was going on for me there was the context of the economy and the constraint around our choices when the industry is not as plum as it once was with the roles. There's more experienced practitioners in the market at the moment, perhaps looking for fewer roles than there ever has been before. This is a completely loaded question, but is there ever a time to compromise on value fit for the practicalities of needing to earn a living?
Janna Kimel:
I personally think that's something each person needs to decide for themselves. I mean, I have talked to people who were literally getting thrown out of their homes. If I was them, I might put my values aside and go to work for six months until this all blows over, hopefully in 2024. I don't think it's fair to judge people for earning a living and making sure there's a roof over their head and health insurance in their pocket. It is a privilege to be able to live your values a hundred percent. And if what you need to do is get a job and put food on the table for your family, do that and live your values as much as you can at work. But if your value is surviving and having food, we're talking about Maslow, right? Hierarchy of need. And if the first thing you need is just sustenance, I've been to about a hundred webinars in the last month and somebody showed the hierarchy of need with the value structure, and we only get to consider values if you are myself and I'm assuming you or we have a little bit of a cushion and we get to say, I'm going to wait and make sure it's the right thing.
But not everybody gets to do that in research, and many people don't get to do that in the rest of the world.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, so true. Very true. Staying in values now, but in the context of being in an interview and having to talk to how my values, for example might align with the company that I'm interviewing with, is it fair game to, in your opinion, flip the value question back to those that are interviewing you and inquire around how they are living the values of the company and how aligned their values are with that of the company?
Janna Kimel:
Totally. I actually saw somebody write about that recently and if you're, I don't want to call any of the missions out that I've seen or the values, but yeah, if that company has a value and hey, I see that this is your value, how do you think the company's living that value 110%? If that's a hard question to answer, that should be a red flag.
Brendan Jarvis:
Speaking about other red flags, you've also suggested that it might be a red flag in a salary negotiation if someone isn't willing or if the company isn't willing to negotiate on salary. Tell me a bit about that.
Janna Kimel:
Is that a direct quote? I don't remember ever saying that.
Brendan Jarvis:
No, actually, I'll give you the direct quote. This was in the context of negotiating salary, and this is around, I suppose we hold quite a lot of baggage when it comes to money, and that conversation can be quite difficult for a lot of people. Very unhelpful baggage we are holding here, but it's real. And the quote, what you actually said was, yes, it's absolutely okay to negotiate your salary if someone pulls back an offer because you ask for more. It's not a good work environment.
Janna Kimel:
So I think that's a slightly different take on it, and I do stand behind that. Yes, if somebody says, I'm offering you a hundred thousand dollars, and you say, I want 110, and they just pull out, I believe that that is not appropriate. It's another thing to come back to the table and say, you know what? This role is only slated from 80 to a hundred. We're bringing you in at the top of, or it's slated from 80 to 1 0 5, and we want you to have room to grow, have a normal human conversation about why that choice is being made great. Then it's a company that's willing to have a conversation, but if they say, you questioned us or asked a question and we're not going to offer this to you anymore, I would have some real reservations about that.
Brendan Jarvis:
It may not even be that direct, right? But it's almost like you get a gut feeling about the way that you're being treated in a communication. And I don't want to just go out on a limb here and say, you should always listen to your gut. There are definite times where you need to take a step back and get up on the balcony and have a good hard think about things before you decide to do something. But in that case, I feel like it's worth listening to your gut on those communications.
Janna Kimel:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean a good organisation that has open communication, if that's what you're looking for, that is not a sign of open communication.
Brendan Jarvis:
On the other hand, if you're looking for an organisation that might be quite repressive, then maybe you've found it fun
Janna Kimel:
Or in communicative or patronising that just sends down declarative. This is just what it is and that's what it is. And if it doesn't work for you, then you can leave. I don't know about you. I don't want to work in that kind of environment. I'd much prefer somebody explain things to me and then I can make my decision. Am I, oh, given that knowledge, sure, a hundred thousand dollars is fine, or given that knowledge, I'm still not okay with it. That's still your choice, but having knowledge is much better than just being told. Nope. I mean that's like going to your parents and saying, they just say, oh, that's just the way it is. I think we're a little past that.
Brendan Jarvis:
You know what, I'm a parent of a five-year-old, and I find myself doing that sometimes and then always cursing inside my head going, I've got to reframe this better next time and actually context, but it's okay. You're fine with some context.
I know. I know. But I do feel like I'm in that groove that my parent in my case had set for me and not in a bad way. Mom, if you're listening, definitely not in a bad way. But anyway, have you spoke about real human conversations? A little earlier on you sort of touched on those words in terms of a salary negotiation. It is a conversation between people. There's a quote in your resource that comes from Preti Wai, who's a UX research leader at Google, and she's talking about having a real conversation, but in a slightly different way, and this is to do with portfolios. And what she said, and I'll quote her now, is keep in mind that your portfolio isn't a research readout to your stakeholders. It's a self-portrait of you as a researcher. So if we use that analogy now, in your opinion, how do we paint a flattering self-portrait in that type of a conversation?
Janna Kimel:
It is such a challenge for researchers. We are in love with our stories and we are in love with our data. And what I've heard a lot of people talk about now is pick two or three things. You pick something that had real impact, you pick something that you can share and say, I heard this, I shared this information. The designer, the product manager understood it. This is the thing that we did about it. So choosing something that has that through line where you can show impact right now anyway, is definitely the holy grail. So it's all of it. It's the language you're using, it's the cadence you're sharing. It's whether you're sitting there for 60 minutes and word vomiting or if you're actually allowing a conversation, like the entire portfolio review, if you're doing something live, it's you. This is how you would be working with that team.
So think about that. It's sometimes nice to ask a question before you're going in, oh, do you have any idea how many people use a product like this? And then how many of you have ever seen this product? Engage your audience. Don't just stand up. And my husband always talks about my FM radio voice when I get too into my presentations. And so I also have to just kind of dial it back and be like, okay, let's have a conversation. This isn't just me standing up here saying stuff. They don't care about every detail. All they really want to know is, well, they want to know a lot of things, but it's usually, can you choose the right method? Can you find some nuggets that other people might not have found? Can you find something that would have an impact? And can you work with a team long enough to actually integrate those findings?
I think the hardest part for us to prove as researchers, we get moved around, we may not know the impact. Go back, find out. I called a colleague a couple of months ago and I said, we did this research two years ago. What can you tell me now? She was able to give me some amazing numbers that I'm able to share now and say, I had that impact. Just because you leave a company doesn't mean you didn't have an impact. And making sure that you are only sharing the 30,000 foot level, not the 5,000 foot level, they don't care. They don't care about all the little nuggets that you found in your research. Just can you do the job that we're hiring you to do? And that's hard. That's really hard for all of us. And I think specifically younger researchers. So exciting. All the stories are so awesome.
Brendan Jarvis:
I have thought for a long time that saying more meant more, and it's only in recent years I've come to really truly understand that it's actually better to say far less. And I catch myself even in these kinds of conversations asking a question, and maybe you've run into this too sometimes in a research setting where you're asking a question or you're framing a response and you keep talking and there's a little voice that goes off in my head now going, Brendan, you need to wrap it up now. You need to bring it down to a close. So definitely say less than perhaps you think you need to For sure.
Janna Kimel:
Totally. And rehearse the heck out of it. I mean, so that you know the high points. So it's so easy to swan dive into, oh, and then we did this and...
Brendan Jarvis:
Let them ask.
Janna Kimel:
Yeah, make 'em ask, or maybe they don't care. And so stay up here, keep it simple. Have the three bullets per slide and know what you need them to take away and to your point, and then stop talking, which is so hard for all of us,
Brendan Jarvis:
Isn't it? On the note of stopping talking, and I definitely don't want to stand too much longer in front of you and your dinner let's the show down to a close. Now I've got one final question and it follows on from what we've been talking about here in terms of those of us that are finding ourselves in a tricky period of our career in between roles dealing with the uncertainty and the world around us. And I want to pull a quote from your website now, which is, you've said, my journey is not a straight path and I see my career as a set of sailing tax moving this way, and that always headed in the same general direction with a bit more focus here or there in each role. So thinking about where you currently find yourself within your career and how it has unfolded and those words there, how are you currently thinking about perhaps this time in your career where it's forming the next chapter? What thoughts have you had around this that others might find some connection to or some value in? First of
Janna Kimel:
All, thank you for pulling up that quote, because what I hear when I listen to it, and I know I only built that website a couple months ago, but I'm tacking a lot less as I get older. At the beginning I was doing costume design and the children's museum that I worked in, a PR firm like the tacking was really big, and now it's a much more gentle wind and still kind of headed in this direction of making sure a consumer has a voice in a conversation with a company. And what that looks like can be a lot of things. But what I'm seeing a lot of now is people not knowing, do I put my time and energy into starting my own practise or do I put my time and energy into finding a job? What most people are doing is both, and I honestly think that's the thing to do.
It's unfortunate it can be exhausting, but the job market is like a complete roller coaster right now. There are absolutely jobs out there. There are people getting jobs every single day, and they're a lot fewer of them. There just are. The data shows it, and having control of your future feels pretty good. And while you're creating your company, you're also figuring out who you are and what you stand for. So they do kind of merge and they do kind of overlap. I have at least one mentee who's been talking about that, and actually, I talked to somebody else today who said the same thing, do I go get a job? Do I keep running my business? And the answer is yes to both. But the important thing is to keep your story clear. If you say, I want to be a forest jumper and I want to be a UX designer and I want to be a firefighter, it's like, ah.
But if you can come up with a really clear story that allows you to then go a little bit broad, if you just tell people, I'm a designer, it's like, okay, that could be a thousand things, but if you say, I'm a designer who specialises in packaging for running shoes, okay, now I know how to help you because I know what you're really good at, and B, you're going to get the job you want. And then if I do meet somebody, it's way easier to make that connection versus, well, this person said they're a designer, but I don't know if they do websites or apps or packaging. I don't know what they do. So what I work with people with when I'm mentoring is telling a really clear story, and it feels so dangerous when you're doing it because it feels like you're cutting out everything else, but you're really getting to where you want to be and it feels so scary. But I really think that starting your business or looking for a job, as long as you know what you want to be doing, that eventually you should get there. Hopefully eventually you get there. No
Brendan Jarvis:
Guarantees. No guarantees. Yeah, no guarantees. That's a great and very specific point to finish our conversation on. Thank you, Janna. This has been a really enjoyable conversation, very thought provoking. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
Janna Kimel:
Thank you, Brendan. You do an amazing amount of research ahead of time, so thank you so much for the opportunity to dive in and look through the Wayback machine.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh, it's been my pleasure. My pleasure. Janna, if people want to connect with you, they want to know more about what you're up to, the contributions that you're making to the community, the types of things you do, what's the best way for them to do that?
Janna Kimel:
Best thing is probably just hit up my website, which is jana kimmel.com, and all the contact information for all the things I'm doing and trying to triangulate and move forward with a clear path are on that page as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
Great, that's Janna with two N's and one L at the end of Kimel. I will link to Janna's website in the show notes, so if you want to connect with her there, you can find it there.
Thanks Janna, and thanks to everyone that's tuned in. It's great to have you here as well. Everything we've covered, including as I mentioned, where you can find Janna, will be in the show notes, so please check those out including detailed chapters of all the different topics that we've covered today.
If you've enjoyed the show and you want to keep hearing more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX research, product management and design, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast wherever you listen to it, subscribe so it turns up every couple of weeks. And also tell someone else about the show might be just one other person who might find value in these conversations at depth.
If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis. There's also a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes or head on over to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.ß

Janna Kimel

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