Brendan Jarvis
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
In this episode of Brave UX, Brendan Jarvis delivers an inspiring talk at Design Outlook 2024. He outlines how self-reflection 🪞, clarity 🌟, and courage 💪 can help designers navigate uncertainty and shape a meaningful future.
Highlights include:
- Exploring what it means to be a designer in an AI-infused world.
- Lessons from Miyamoto Musashi on seeing clearly and responding wisely.
- A powerful personal story of resilience, gratitude, and embracing adversity.
- The importance of separating signal from noise in an uncertain future.
- Why designers must cultivate courage to shape the future of their field.
Who is Brendan Jarvis?
Brendan Jarvis is the managing founder of The Space InBetween, New Zealand’s first world-class UX research and innovation lab 🌏. At The Space InBetween, Brendan helps enterprise leaders navigate complexity and achieve internal alignment through a human-centred approach to research and innovation 🤝.
Brendan is also the host of Brave UX 🎙️, an internationally acclaimed podcast that dives deep into the minds of global leaders in UX research, design, and product management. With over 150 episodes and listeners in more than 50 countries 🌍, Brave UX has been described as “courageously insightful,” “thought-provoking,” and a must-listen for anyone passionate about improving user experiences 🚀.
In addition to his work with The Space InBetween and Brave UX, Brendan is a sought-after speaker and thought leader 🗣️. His thought-provoking talks challenge designers and product leaders to reflect, adapt, and embrace the opportunities presented by change, including the rise of AI 🤖.
Brendan’s mission is to foster a deeper understanding of the human side of design and to inspire a future that is both innovative and impactful 🌟.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You were born with everything you need to face, any adversity. One of those things is asking for help when you need it together. If we can see what is in front of us, clearly we have a greater chance of finding a useful answer to the question of what it means to be a designer now, one that might lead to a positive future for our field.
- Kia ora tatou. Hello, everyone. Ko Owairaka te Maunga. Owairaka is the mountain. Ko Hauraki te moana. Hauraki is the sea. No Tamaki ahau. I am from Auckland. Ko Jarvis toku whanau. Jarvis is my family name. Ko Brendan toko ingoa. Brendan is my name. Tēnā tātou katoa. Greetings to one and all.
- I've just given you my pepeha, a brief introduction of my person, my people, and my place in Maori. The language of New Zealand's indigenous people. Being here, with you, in Melbourne, I'd also like to acknowledge the elders past and present of the traditional custodians of the land beneath our feet, the Wurrundjeri people.
- As its people, people like us, design people, and all of our rich diversity, shared humanity and currently increasing levels of existential anxiety that I'm here for today because just a couple of short years ago, it really felt that design had finally arrived. You know what I'm talking about? Admit, it was the best of times. Organisations were hiring us faster than they could think. How good were those pay rises? It was awesome to be a designer!
- But lately, perhaps you've also noticed those little green open to work badges sprouting up on LinkedIn like weeds. Maybe you've been one of them or maybe you're wondering if you might be next. A day at work is starting to feel more like an episode of Survivor than Utopia. On top of this, AI is rapidly coming of age and seems to be coming for our jobs, at least as we know them.
- Will we be co-pilots or cabin crew? The distinct smell of fear is in the air. All of this, that's you, Teddy. Hello my son. All of this, when our shiny new seats at the table had barely bloody begun to get warm. And so here we are at what some consider the worst of times, pondering big questions like where do we go from here? How do we know what to believe? Do we have what it takes? I get it. The future is uncertain, but that's true for everyone. What is certain is that as design people, we don't wear farewell. It just doesn't suit us. We're too optimistic, too creative, too forward thinking for that. So I'm here to share some good news with you. Fear is a choice and we have much better ones to make if we can just bring them into focus to achieve that focus, to build a better future for ourselves and for our field.
- We need to take three important actions. First up, this is the fun one. We need to engage in some critical self-reflection. Yes, we need to spend a bit of time on the couch. Secondly, we need to learn to separate signal from noise as there's a lot of noise out there at the moment, isn't there? And last but not least, we need to cultivate our courage because we're going to need some to help us do that. I'll be bringing each of those gentle nudges to life today by sharing three very different stories with you. Are you ready? Yes. Yes. All right, here we go. Alright, fasten your seatbelt. We are about to dive into some dystopian sci-fi. We've got to travel across some galaxies to get there, but first, let's not beat around the bush. AI is already fundamentally changing how we design, and in the near future, it's likely to take over much of the craft part of the work we do. However you may feel about that, whether you agree, whether you disagree, or if you're just not sure it has raised an important question that each of us needs to answer. And how we answer that question matters to all of us. No pressure. A large heavy automated blaster opens into a narrow austere, dimly lit concrete corridor. The hydraulics of the door's mechanism can be heard working before it comes to rest with a loud clunk.
- In the middle of the corridor sits a plain metal desk with two similarly utilitarian metal chairs, one on either side. A flag solemnly hangs at rest beside the desk. At the other end of the corridor is another large heavy blast door, A board bureaucratic looking late middle-aged officer carrying a briefcase, unceremoniously trudges through the open door, making his way towards the desk. His footsteps echo in the corridor. He takes the seat nearest to him and places his briefcase on the desk. He opens it and removes a picture of his family placing it to his left. He then takes out a folder and half-heartedly scans. The papers within here is a man going through the motions, seemingly satisfied. He closes the case, rests his head on the back of his chair and shuts his eyes. He begins to fall asleep. Suddenly the door at the other end of the corridor opens.
- The officer is startled awake for 40 years. No one from the other side has come. And then he hears them. They're unmistakable, intimidating, mechanical sounds. He feels his throat tight and his pulse races. He presses back hard into the chair and instinctively wanting to run, but duty keeps him seated. Two, six foot six humanoid robots into the corridor and stand guard on either side of the blast door, the red dots of their vision systems menacingly moving from side to side. Then footsteps coming from somewhere behind the open door, a tall blonde woman and red kneehigh boots and a striking red outfit appears and purposefully walks around to the officer's side. She sits on the desk in front of him and looks down inquisitively studying him like a curious new pet. The officer doesn't move. She asks him, are you alive? A simple yet profound question and not one that he thought he would be asked today.
- He's captivated and confused. He wonders who this woman is. Is she human then gathering his thoughts? He responds, yes, it's all he can manage. The woman considers his answer and then says, prove it. She leans down and kisses him. Seductively. He's reluctant at first, but that soon fades outside the space station. A massive ship can be seen above. It fires a missile which like a snake winds its way towards the space station, slamming it, bang the corridor shutters violently. The blast jolts the officer from the kiss, a stark realisation, dawning, he won't be alive for much longer. The woman looks at him coldly now and says, it has begun. The officer is now paralysed by fear, not duty outside. More missiles reign down with fury on the space station.
- Within seconds it is destroyed and along with it so is 40 years of uneasy peace between humans and they're now sentient creations. Has anyone guessed it? That's not Michael Tam. The silos. That was the opening scene of the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica. And what immediately followed was the indiscriminate nuclear obliteration of all 12 human colony planets and then the relentless and violent pursuit of the remnants of humanity across the galaxy. And we think we've got problems. As the humans desperately seek to avoid total destruction and find a safe new home, they are forced to quickly adapt to their new reality and to answer an important underlying question, what does it mean to be human? Now, although our situation seems a little less dire, we too are currently challenged. To answer a similar question, what does it mean to be a designer? Now because we find ourselves riding a new technological wave and like those fictional human survivors, the stakes are high.
- It's part terrifying, part exciting, isn't it? Let's not be like the human officer in the story caught by surprise and without a plan. And equally, let's not be like the silent and red seeing everything in front of us as a threat to be exterminated, either we quickly as in very quickly need to accept and adapt to our new AI infused reality. So right now, when I ask you what does it mean to be a designer now, what's the first word that comes to mind for you? Make a mental note of it. And what I'd like you to do is after the session, after I have a chat with Felix, after this presentation, find someone else and ask them what their word was and then share yours with them. What's the difference? Be curious about that and don't be afraid to dig into some deeper discussion.
- Most importantly though, after you've left here today, keep having this conversation with others. Why? Because today a career and design that seldom examined is not one likely to last. On that cherry note, alongside the looming challenge that AI presents, it's pretty clear that companies are actively reevaluating the role we play in their businesses. Is it just a blip or is design in decline? I reckon it's the former, but with so many opinions out there about what's going on, it can be hard to see things clearly and know how to respond. And that brings me to my second story, where we're going to learn to make better sense of events by travelling back in time to feudal Japan and exploring the life of one of Japan's greatest swordsmen.
- Miyamoto Musashi was born in 1584 in the Harima province of Japan. And if you could choose a peaceful place and time for your birth, this would not be it. Japan's most powerful clans were at war, a war that would last 136 years. The son of an accomplished samurai Massai was trained from an early age by his father in the martial arts, and when he found himself an orphan at the age of 10, he was taken in by his uncle, a Buddhist warrior monk, who completed his training when he was just 13. Much to his uncle's distress, he challenged a much more experienced and older samurai named Arima KeHE. This was no play fight. It was a jewel to the death. Unfortunately, for KeHE, it did not have a happy ending. Massai wielding, a quarter staff charged at him, knocked him to the ground and let's just say he didn't get back up again.
- Just a few short years later in 1600 at the still tender age of 16, Musashi found himself fighting in the battle of Sharra. This would turn out to be one of the most decisive and important battles in Japanese history because it paved the way for the victorious Tokugawa isu to unite Japan. So if you've seen Shogun recently or watched the show or read the book, this is basically the period of history that that's based on this time. Massai was not on the winning side, and while he survived the battle in subsequent massacre, he became what is known as a Ronan, a samurai without a master. In the years that followed in search of meaning, Massai undertook what was called a Gio, a warrior's pilgrimage where he engaged in over 60 jewels continuing to refine his swordsmanship. He didn't just fight though he also painted, practised calligraphy and reflected heavily on life, eventually withdrawing entirely from duelling to focus on writing about and teaching the martial arts, including their moral implications.
- I imagine killing over 60 people gave them plenty to think about. And 60 16, 45 Massai recorded his philosophy in a book called Goran NoHo, the book of five Rings, which is often compared to a very famous book you may have heard of before, sun's out of war not long after at the age of 61, he died eventually bested by lung cancer. I dunno if he was a smoker, but I suspect he might've been one of the most well-known aspects of Ash's philosophy is the distinction he drew between our observing eye, Ken and our perceiving eye can. Our observing eye is what tries to see things as they are. It tries to find the objective reality of a situation without automatically muddling in all of our unfiltered value judgments in the other socket, our perceiving eye tries to see beneath the surface. It tries to find patterns to make sense of events, to understand their significance. This 1986 ad from the Guardian does a really great job of illustrating these two eyes and why we need them to work together.
- The Guardian's 1986 'Points of view' advert:
- An event seen from one point of view gives one impression seen from another point of view. It gives quite a different impression, but it's only when you get the whole picture you can fully understand what's going on.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- After watching that, I hope you can see that it's this deliberate mental suspension from what is happening and what it means that helps us to get the whole picture. If you think about design research, that's why there's a very clear separation between observation, literally the observing eye and synthesis, the perceiving eye. But how can we make practical everyday use of this? It's a lovely story about a samurai and a couple of eyes, right? The next time something unwelcome happens in your day, like that criticises your design unfairly again. Or someone stands on a stage and tells you the sky is falling on our field. Take a moment before you rush to judgement . Give yourself a chance to separate what you're experiencing from what you think it means. Take a breath and ask yourself, am I getting the whole picture? Now I've got what might sound like some bad news to paraphrase Epictetus, a first century Greek philosopher.
- Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Just like the movements of an opposing samurai, your company's decision to let you or your colleagues go, or how AI eventually impacts our field fall into the category of things that are largely, if not entirely outside of your control, but that does not leave you powerless. It's merely a constraint. And as every great designer knows, constraints, breed creativity, I'll help you out there. What is and always will be up to you is how you choose to respond to the things that you don't or only partially control. And the way you do that is driven by the stories you tell yourself about them. If you can bring both of your eyes into focus, your kin and your can, you'll be more likely to see what is up to you and be able to use that to create a more accurate and more useful story.
- Let's speak plainly now. It's not a guarantee of a positive outcome. This is not that kind of talk. There are no silver bullets, but it is a powerful technique that you can use to make better decisions. One of those things that was up to us today was to be here at Design Outlook, participating in shaping the future of design in Australia. And as we've been sharing our stories and reflecting on the profound changes that are happening all around us from the economic conditions that are weighing on our minds to the way that AI is literally reshaping our world, it feels like this is our eight mile moment. Are we going to capture it or just let it slip? And that brings me to my final story, a personal story about someone who I loved and admired greatly, a cheeky bugger who went to Hallenbeck more than once.
- This is my grandfather, Ray Xavier Jarvis. Poppa, as he was affectionately known to me, was born a little over 100 years ago in Lyle Bay Wellington, across the pond. 21 short years later after qualifying as a sparky, he left that small sleepy seaside suburb for his big oe enlisting in the New Zealand army and joining the second New Zealand expeditionary force. Poppa's overseas experience was probably a little different to yours and mine. It saw him fight Nazi fascism on the front lines in North Africa and then Italy alongside other young anzacs, one of the lucky ones. After the war, he returned home only to find that his mother had given away all of his things. It seems she never expected to see him again. After waving goodbye the day he boarded the boat to Africa, not long after returning to civilian life, he met and married my grandmother Mary. Together they lovingly raised five children. They also endured as many miscarriages exhibiting excellent Protestant work ethic for a Catholic. Poppa served his local community as an electrician for 58 years until in his early eighties his sight failed and the insidious early stages of dementia meant that he had to give it away. 20 years earlier, he had invested a significant portion of the proceeds of that work ethic in the share market, and then along with many other hardworking families, he subsequently lost it all on October 19th, 1987 and infamous day known as Black Monday.
- It was probably an awkward conversation that night between Ray and Mary over the dinner table, but from what I'm told, Poppa just got back to work the next day. I lived next door to my grandparents growing up and I went many places with my Poppa when I was 12. I remember going with him to a funeral. It wasn't just any funeral, though it was his best mates. George O'Leary. Uncle George also fought in World War II and most of them made it back. He lost his leg above the knee and the meat grinder known as the Battle of Monte Casino. Although like George, my Poppa survived the war, he never completely escaped it. It was buried deep in his subconscious, like a parasite. It would often show itself late at night in the form of sleep sweats. Something that I've since learned as a symptom of PTSD, I guess it had to come out somehow as like many in his generation.
- He rarely spoke about the war, but over the years it became clear to those who were privileged enough to share his confidence that he had seen many of his mates lose their lives. And yet he almost always had a cheeky twinkle in his eye. He was a merciless shit stir even after all the death, all the heartbreak and loss. He kept choosing to be a kind, generous and good humour person. Whether he knew it or not. He was also a bit of a philosopher. And there's something that he would often say that has always stuck with me. Brendan, don't wish your life away. Don't wish your life away. I admit I didn't fully understand it then, but I do now. It was his way of reminding me to appreciate what I had and not worry about what I didn't. Especially maybe you can connect with us some people in the audience when things weren't going my way, as they somewhat don't feel like for us at the moment or for some of us, the thing is, I reckon Ray believed that he was lucky to be here whatever his circumstances, and I think he wanted others to believe that about themselves too, because this life doesn't last forever.
- On Wednesday, the 9th of December, 2009, as he was laying in a hospital bed dying, I remember wiping his brow with a cold, wet flannel and looking into his tired eyes. He couldn't speak. His cheeks were sunken. His breathing laboured. Death was on his way. But even through the midst of his cataracts, I'm sure I could still see that cheeky twinkle at 4:00 AM the following morning, the phone rang piercing. The night my mother answered, it was her eldest brother Poppa had died during his 87 years on this planet. Ray Xavier Jarvis didn't let external events crush his spirit, not the economy, not miscarriages, not even war. He never wished his life away. And so he lived a good one.
- Why did I tell you this story? Because for many in our community, these are difficult times. And if they aren't for you today, then they may be tomorrow. Whether we like it or not, adversity is part of the human condition. It's just part of the deal. What matters is how we face it, because facing it well gives our lives greater meaning. Think about it. Who would you be without the challenges you've already overcome? And who will you inspire by how you face the one around the corner? I'd better wrap this up now so we can welcome Felix to the stage. Before we do that, I would like you to think about this, that any of us are here as in alive on this planet, and this room together at this very moment is a statistical miracle. It's almost a 0% probability, so let's make the most of it and of whatever is to come, because are you ready for the secret?
- You were born with everything you need to face, any adversity. And one of those things is asking for help when you need it together. If we can see what is in front of us, clearly we have a greater chance of finding a useful answer to the question of what it means to be a designer now, one that might lead to a positive future for our field. So have that conversation at afternoon tea about what it means to be a designer. Start seeing situations like a samurai. And most of all, no matter how hard things get, no matter what's going on, don't ever wish your life away. Thank you.