So, hi everyone. I have here with me Dan, Laura, and Emily, and I'll let them introduce themselves. We're going to be having just an informal conversation today about what it is that we do as UX researchers and designers. So, I don't know if you want to just say, "Hi, I'm Dan" or if you want to say more than that, you are welcome to too. My name is Dan and I figured out that what I do is business management consulting. So, that's how I work but the kinds of advice that I give is about information architecture. Cool. Yes. Excellent. My name is Lauren Messina. I manage a team of Usability Analysts for a customer experience analytics firm. Nice. Looking great. I'm Emily Bowman. I'm a Senior UX Designer at General Motors where I design interfaces inside the vehicle primarily. Cool. I never really knew exactly what it is. So, I'm glad to hear that. That's what I'm doing. That's awesome. So, I think I wanted to start it off really by just saying what did you do last week? Because it really is that point in time, what is your experience of practicing? That sounds so formal, but what is your job like during the week? Since a good survey methodology says, pick something that's close to the sides that people remember and can speak to what that is. That's why. I can start out with just a little bit about what I did last week. So, I think the most interesting research project I worked on is getting a better understanding of what the experience is, looking for an analytics package actually. So, really specific business to business applications. So, how do UX people actually search for analytics platforms? I was doing a remote and unmoderated test, and I had this real aha moment because I'd never watch somebody just like opt in to use a chatbot without being instructed to do it. She would set the task, go look for this analytics package, and she got pressure and was like, "Well I'm just going to try the chatbot." Watching her multitask, so still looking for the answer but also using the chatbot at the same time, was super interesting to me because I'd never seen someone actually do that and kind of talk through what they were doing at the same time. Was her level of frustration, by multitasking, was it sort of alleviated or did escalate it? I'm just curious. I think it was alleviated but I think that it would be different if she hadn't been set the task of doing that. So I think that she probably would have been a lot more pressured if she'd been sitting here like, "I really have to find the answer to this question," rather than, "Okay, I'm doing this test and I can't figure out this answer, I'll just try this." What I can say from last week, I'm trying to think back because last week feels like forever ago. But the one thing that sticks out in my mind is, I spent some time with our analysts as well as other members of our internal team, trying to come up with a research plan for one of our clients. A major lighting company will say, who is going through a soup to nuts. Wow I just said soup to nuts. A soup to nuts overhaul of their site redesign. They need to start from persona, building, they have some personas that are really a skew, and they really need to get in investigate what they are and using survey data to do so. All the way through conducting some cards sort activities so we can understand what their information architecture looks like. Basically, we're designing this full research process, hand-holding schema for them. It's been pretty exciting because we can see where they need to go, we just have to help them get there, and we're hoping to do so and have them achieve some good results. Cool. Yes. How about you, Dan? I'm not sure I remember all that. I just want it all out. Part of being able to do the kind of work that I do is going to conferences, not just speaking at them, but more importantly, attending them. So I was at a conference some of the week but the research related thing that is most recent that I worked on is one of the most rewarding ones that we've done yet based on my own personal interest in getting off of the screen. So, we did some work for a giant transnational company that has a tiny little startup. So, it's both problems at the same time, from a how you engage with the client standpoint, but they have a new product that they're bringing to market and they wanted to know how to arrange the items full stop. Generally, they're at that point in the product development process where they had some gut like, "We're smart people, we could figure this out, but let's head your bet by finding an expert who can take a look at this and then give us a recommendation." Doing ethnographic studies with their target audience was the basis on which we then recommended, literally on the shelf. What does left to right mean? What does further up, further back mean? How different is a pack of these products as you describe it and arrange it relative to the individual ones? Yes. The website and the things are further down the stream, and what we did for the embodied challenge of what are these, how would I pick the one that I want? When it's a new product, it's especially important that the initial interactions with the system be good. So, we told them how we think stuff ought to sit on the shelf. For a taxonomy project, it was amazing. That's fun. That's a lot of fun. Do you do those projects often? No. I'm desperate to get off of the tyranny of rectangles of- well, it depends because it's here. The bane of it depends I think when you're embodied and you do this in your work. I'm certain the embodiment of I'm in the cockpit of this vehicle, what I can understand, what I ought to be experiencing, it depends or maybe it is. I don't know, I shouldn't presume. But my sense was when we brought the physical embodiment of us as designers, embodiment of users, that there's less whizzle room for, "Well, it depends because I have this persona in my pocket here who's going to break all your fancy toys." Yes. My week last week was less exciting as theirs. Well, I'm in the midst of documentation season. We have a big design release coming up for a product that I'm working on. So, it's a matter of going over all of the designs as they've been documented to this point in time and ensuring that we have the fit and finish on those experiences where we want them before we hand off a lot of those plans to our software team and our suppliers and all that. But I also did some planning in regards to research. So, that was part of my week around some particular experiences that'll be new for this model year and the product that we're working on. So, just kind of like high level ideas of what of our big questions, what methodology we're going to use, what is our plan for prototyping to support the research which is always where we get a resource crunch usually. Yes, so it's a lot of meetings. Meetings and a lot of typing. Yes. Yes. It's interesting that you say that because I was on site with one of our customers this weekend they are saying, we never write reports. We only create highlight reels. So, how do you document what it is that you learn? I ask that question because I get the sense that there are some people who are still at that we have to document everything because for example in your industry, people are referring back to law. Yes. Well, you'll be surprised like we- Okay I'm sorry. I mean, the design is very heavily documented because we still operate in largely waterfall fashion just in the nature of our products that we create. But research, it depends on who's consuming research. We do a ton of research we don't ever create any reports because the people who are designing, who need those insights are there and part of the process and so they learn what they need and they go off and do it. That's not to say maybe we should have been documenting some of that better and we do utilize video at times to do that. But, if we're writing a research report, it's usually because we need to report that up the chain or to a stakeholder group that's not involved for some reason. Yes. Primarily. How about you? Sometimes we have the luxury of client organizations that are so big that they have transcription and video capture. They've got the rig and it just catches everything. This amazing client who went to the extent of making an e-pub out of the transcripts with the chapters in it for like a kindle would be able to and it gets better, the audio as an audio book format that it was chapterized also of 32 stakeholder interviews. Oh my gosh [inaudible] They're the best client and they value it. As an organization to think that every step that you take along the way is at least as valuable as maintaining some evidence of it having happened, I think in the rush to that little start up inside of the giant transnational they aren't the dream client. There an awesome client too, but they don't want to see how you got there. It was really frustrating for me. I had to really get over it myself in a lot of ways because I don't want to be throwing it open. I want to tell the story of the study that we did and then talk about what it means and that's not acceptable. So, back to owning I'm a business management consultant, they want it to feel like each step is narrower even though my work process is like a double diamond where we explore and then we narrow and then we explore some more and then the no. We just want the answer. So it's realizing that a lot of that stuff I want it. We have this great client who we took him through the analysis phase and she was like, "I can see how that's really valuable for you and that you needed to do that." That was a gift. I've been doing this since the late '90s and the performative aspect of I need to put on a show for you though, I need to tell you all of the things I think there's some impostor syndrome junk with that. That stuff is important to me and my team and we did it great. But do we have to keep performing it to the client? Is this valuable? So, it's a weird spot between they needed the insights, we did it and then we gave it to them and then they operationalized what worked for them. There's got to be something in between the hot take and run with it and I don't want to hear about it just give me the insight I think it's always there's a huge tension between us two things because if you want to show people partially, we did all this beautiful work it's really elegant, we had this really awesome approach or very powerful approach and then all they really want is the answer. That's tough. I mean, sometimes it's about your expertise and you have to build your case and so the documentation. All that stuff has to be wound up, but we were talking with internal stakeholders. With our team, it went from being super gorilla testing to now where we're formalizing and letting them see how the sausage is made. It's always beautiful. It's beautiful and so they get a better understanding of why we're doing these things and then that lends itself to credibility and knowing that moving forward that they can trust us and that we're all moving towards the same goal which is a good UX. Well, that actually brings up a good question because it's the whole difference between once you've established that credibility. So, sometimes you never get a chance to do that because you just have this short engagement and you're getting it done and I think of that being it's more the audio consultants position. But that happens internally too sometimes. Then once you and I'm looking at you [inaudible]. But then there's also that piece of you've develop a shorthand with the people that you work with all the time where they're like, "We know that you have to go and do this expensive and extensive fiddling under the hood in order to make this beautiful deliverable. That is it's distilled insight." I think it can be challenging for us because the physical property aspect takes a lot of planning, it takes a lot of buy-in across different stakeholder groups because as these are experienced department, we don't necessarily own that. We have tools at our disposal that we can leverage, but if I'm working on how does seats work? How is any interaction in seat also reinforced by the displays? I need seat, I need seat to be functioning how we intend for it to. That takes a lot of time and affects the planning and production that that team has to account for and if they don't understand why I need that exact seat as it is intended to be designed and deployed in the vehicle to do this study, there's going to be a breakdown. So, that case making is a big part of what happens even internally. Just like I would when I was working with clients. This is why this is important, this is why we need this time these resources and so on. So, the stuff that's just screens. We have environments that we can put people in to simulate some of that stuff. There's definitely the selling of the value of research that happens internally for sure. Well, that actually brings up a good point because what is the tool set that you use as you're doing your work? You know sometimes people have this beautiful array of expensive software and then some people have these really jury rigged rigs and I know that I at least get students coming back to me and saying. So, how do you test with a watch or with a voice actuated system because there aren't this beautiful array of polished pieces of software and hardware that we go to in order to test these experiences yet? So, how do you do that? Like how do you come up with what we are going to do in order to answer this question, like what are we going to use in order to answer this question? It depends on the question. Of course it depends. It depends on what do you want to get at, but I mean from a software standpoint and just to give you an idea. We were working in this hybrid world of having some dedicated software but then using workarounds for stuff whether it's like a WebEx to do some user testing because the tool that we're using may not accommodate a specific scenario. I mean we're using bare-bones methods a lot of times just because we're building the case that we need to have within the organization again back to that buy-in that we need to have some more advanced technology. We get growing too. Actually, I love that approach just because you're basically you're in the world a lot of times and you're interacting with people who are in that space that feels comfortable to them, and they're not necessarily feeling like they're being scrutinized or tested. So, I like going to coffee shops and hanging out with people on their mobile devices and just talking to them. But to answer the question of what method in which, I think it's again what is the question is? The question is large overarching thing or is it very pointed? Because we have to deal with that array of types questions on a daily basis. Are you tackling their entire IA or is it how do I execute this very granular thing? So, it can be anywhere along where we're doing cards or exercises to where we're just going off of our expertise through research that's been done elsewhere, from our own internal research. How about you? I think UX is now so mature in the kinds of organizations that buy what we saw which is information architecture consulting. It's special enough need when we're talking to anybody that the tools that exist they already have and they've used them and there's something else that they're not able to appreciate. It's exciting to me that there are systems that are so big that their operators truly have no picture. No count. They get billions of visits with a B. If you want to change something, there were 500,000 people who interacted with it the old way 10 minutes ago. So, at that huge unmanageable scale, we have to invent tools. I think that's one of the reasons why we use the word architect sometimes, is because it has this authority. We have to somehow manufacture permission through the clients' agency to recommend and do things on their behalf that haven't been done before. Yes. That's why we still struggle as a 12-person consultancy. We've been around for six years, it's been tooth and nail the whole time because we only add time and expense to the front of your project, and we're asking you to use a tool that we invented. By the way, we've used it twice or maybe once, or maybe. Never. How many multi-billion visit websites are there? Who are your peers? We've all been in those meetings where some idiot says, "Well, Amazon does so and so, Apple does so and so." Think about it. There are people like us in those organizations for whom that isn't, think that we're Apple, we're Amazon. So, there's this weird tension between we shape our tools and they shape us and that's our field, that's what you can expect from one of our students to know what that is, but then there's, and the part that I worry about is, the commercial forces that make that go. They just want unbounded three percent or more growth infinitely. Yes. So, the tools and the methods, they work and they're good, but they really have cater to, I don't know if any of you are satisfied with the state of digital, but I'm not. I think it's ruining beauty and wholeness and life for people on the planet/ and why are these things so terrible? Maybe one reason is that the tools were built to do one thing, which is make that arrow go up in an unbounded way and the picture of scale that you give me, I hate the language constraints on this conversation. When this system becomes twice the size it is today. Right, yes. Our expectation is that its properties will be two times what the properties are now, and that's what's made these inhuman terrible things that, not to bring us all down, but to the extent that this is about learning and education ultimately. Tool mastery, as a way to know how to get away from what the tool biases give us and, he who pays the piper calls the tune. I don't think the tune caller cares about people, and that's where our tools come from. Yes. I think there's a huge tension. I'm actually in the midst of media. Folks at my company asked me to write this reaction to a piece that is just about that, which is, they are seeing this evolution, there's this particular article, and I've only read about half of it so far, so don't quote me on this. Where, essentially in the last year, we are seeing more people who are getting intentional about trying not to make terrible things anymore, or to leverage anti-patterns in order to incent people to do things that are ultimately not good for them. I'd like to think that I'm seeing evolution and a consciousness and an ethic around really trying to make good things to make people better. I come upon people at organizations that are billion-dollar, billion people scale, who actually really do get very passionate about making things better and more reasonable. We think with a lot of them better and more reasonable, there is a bottom line to that, right? It's tied to a bottom line. If something is more efficient and effective, then a lot of times they're going to see that. Yes, what's convincing people that. It's the question. Yes. And the motivation may not be the same, but if there is an outcome that benefits people, and if we can help facilitate that conversation and the empathy, then even if it stems from maybe not the best of intentions of very self-centered I guess or what not, then I still think we're performing a good deed. Do you think there's this like iced tea thing though? I do. It's definitely a hard topic I've had with my colleagues. I mean, we have the idea of editing things down to what is the true value, trying to move away from just, throw all the features in the thing so that we have everything over our competitors have, and more of how can we craft an experience that is distinguished in the marketplace. A lot of conversations are happening around that, but I think we also have the opportunity as we transition into autonomy, to focus on that and re-examine what are the role of automobiles in our lives and in our cities and in our societies. So, that's very much the kinds of ideas that people are exploring, how much it is actually impacting the work is, it's chipping away and making an influence, but that's something I anticipate will play more of a role I think over the next few years, at least in automotive. You know you're saying, I spend a lot of my time at conferences, and one that stands out in my mind, basically everybody that I went to last year around this time actually was, everybody was talking about building empathy with users and not just building empathy to just do it, but really to be able to say where are they in their lives where they need the product or service that we're designing, and how can we help them to achieve their goals? So, with the assumption, actually, that we can do more business, better business, do bigger things if we actually are in service to. Well, that reminds me of, you all probably know Kat King. I think she's been influenced by Thomas Wint, that when we talk about empathy in our field, that it's a proxy for talking about ethics, and that business doesn't want to talk about morality and ethics. That empathy has become the Trojan horse concept that what's in it, after it gets in the game, you shake it, what comes out. For some of us, when we say that what comes out is a framework of ethics and morality, that includes right and wrong. For others, it's a negotiation strategy for a world that it depends. I think business wants it to be a negotiation strategy for a world that it depends. I think some of us are interested in talking about the truth and right and wrong. Empathy is the battleground where that's happening. I'm not hearing that word as much this year, and maybe it's because people like Kat and Thomas had been like, 'No, you're cheating. You're saying empathy but what you lack is a moral compass." Should you have a front page of a news website that is set up for two points of view? The story is the rise of Nazism. That's spatial. That setting up of a world spatially, and yes, on the phone, it probably collapses down to one and these, probably a [inaudible] thing. Then that's good, because we'll say, "Yes, we would know Nazi would go first." But then in the second position is something parading as an equivalence, because the space said that the modality of truth telling today is it depends, and now words from our sponsors. So, I think we're all in positions to poke at that. Yes, to highlight it. Yes. I can't say, I know that they're looking at this, that news organizations are very much looking at, probing this very question, and looking at not just themselves but their competitors in that space to be able to get a sense of, so if we position ourselves in this way, how are we going to look by comparison to these other spaces that are doing just that. Because people might choose to go there and pay to go there because there is that equivalence. Yes, and look what Jack and the Twitter board announced yesterday. Who is going to make this thing worse? How about twice as many characters. Yes, it's a tough one. I would say though on the side. Because I was thinking about this while we were talking about the sad side of this, the happy side of this is. So my husband recently got a new car, and he was saying, "So by the time our daughter gets to be the age that she's driving, one will probably have more autonomy but we can just give her your car." I'm like, "Okay." So my car, five years old, the difference in technology between my car and his car, which is coming out now, is universes. So, he's got all this additional information about where he is on the road, like lane departure and other people on other things around him, like there's somebody in your blind spot. I'm like, "You know what? There's no way that I, even with the five-year difference that is between your car and my car, that I wouldn't actually go out and buy a new car with all the latest and greatest because I know for a fact that it's going to make our daughter a better driver actually." Or if she does make a mistake, it's going to save her from herself. Less likely to be injured in the vehicle, yes. Yes. So, I think that there is, in some ways, there is that brighter future around that. So, hey. We can leverage technology to save lives. Absolutely. Yes, and make it more accessible too, I mean, that's a big deal. Yes. Value add for autonomy, particularly for new populations now have mobility that they didn't have as easily, previously or currently. I am optimistic in a lot of ways about the future, but there's still fights to be had. Yes. I think obviously, the evolution of that technology too is going to displace people too, and that's something that I worry about because we're creating these huge scale experiences and displacing large percentages of people from jobs, roles, responsibilities, earning potential, that we've been supporting with the technologies that we have now. So, like five years from now, how are we going to make life meaningful for people who occupy those positions in retail store settings for example, that's another. It's happening right now. That's happening right now. So, I think about that a lot, and so I'm like working on different projects, what's going to be the downstream impact of what seems to be this little project, this little question, this little answer. But I know it's going to get magnified in ways that I may not even be thinking about right now. Yes. Think about it, a dating app for an elite Ivy League school 10 years later is enabling flash mobs of political gatherings that are being conducted by foreign nations. Like what? This was to find cute people. Yes. And look what it does, look what it can do. Yes, I don't know if you could say there's something small enough where the systemic piece is that you're off the hook for that. Now, how many people are really considering that when you're making very minute design decisions? Well, it takes leaders, takes people like us who have a staff to create the permission for that, and our incentive structures. If I'm a manager in a company and I've got no incentive behind that, other than, this is how I think we ought to be doing this, it's really hard. So, until you can incentivize differently, I think it's make it better faster, three percent or more growth and mounted forever is the decider. Yes. I think that, probably last question, I'm going to double check that time, is so what are the biggest trends you see coming up? I think, a few things before I came in this morning, I was reading an article that's actually that. Okay so, how do you prepare to do a design project that is your first voice interface? Or how do you prepare to do something you've never done before? So, that was very interesting to me just because I feel like a lot of the questions that I get asked in my everyday work, or like, so we don't know how to do this, we've actually never done this before and I'm like, how do we do this? And the question doesn't go away just because there's not an easy way to answer it. So, getting creative about. Yes. How you do it. That's my attitude, just try it. You don't have to be perfect right out of the gate. We have the benefit of working in a field where sharing what we know and what we've learned and what we've tried is like a part of our profession. So there's a lot of resources to draw from. You can get to a point where you have a pretty good guess of what's going to be successful in terms of getting you to the next step. So, my point of view is to just take your best guess, try it, see what you learn, and iterate from there just like you would any other design problem. Yes, I think that's exactly right, the iteration. I think there's also for me, obviously just go and try it. But there's also a grounding and fundamentals and fundamental principles. So, if you keep that here in your head and then also move forward and try and be creative, then the outcomes are usually pretty as well. I think I would like there to be a trend of embodiment in everything that we do to try and force the issue of remote meetings not working. The physical self of the designer being a magnificent sensing array that is sensitive beyond any imaginable. Because there's also this like, how do we use Watson to help solve our design problem with us? How do we dis-intermediate people. Right. So that we can get better insights into other people? I want to know about that for sure, but I think the offset to that is to double triple 10 times down on what we have so uniquely, which is embodiment, and differences in cognition, and just the focusing on that. Is there a way that I could do this activity that maybe we would stand up more? Could I do this where there would be more people in the room? Is there a way that I could go visit the context of use even if it means doing less of this killer thing that clients love then the dog and pony times? Maybe I'm not going to cut out that budget that everybody you know and like. So, I don't know that that's a trend, but that's something that I don't want to just do the same thing all the time and with my bad attitude about where we're at, well then, how are you going to make a difference? I think that honoring the bodies, the presence of each other more and better in what we do, and there's something really evil about that you are not your user, which makes you a disembodied brain in a jar, just like I am so much like I am a million, zillion times more like another human being, than I'm like anything else in the world. So, now that we have to throw away all of that axiomatic stuff that has served us, well, maybe we do. So yes, let's be in these things, these things are awesome. Yes. So, I'll ask one slightly provocative question which is, what about the idea of there being un-assessed? So, the Watsons of the world essentially being able to say, we take your embodiment every easy one? You're in the hot seat as it were for that. I can't answer that question. You're talking about user partnering with a machine hurdling through space in an urban environment. Yes. I don't quite know how to answer that question honestly. Yes. I think there are going to be opportunities where there's something meaningful that we can derive from machine intelligence, I guess, that will get us closer to what is right for the people we're designing for, but I think I align more towards there's something else we can get being in the same physical space with someone and talking face to face. Just back to the empathy question, it's much easier to experience that emotion when we're here together than if I'm just parsing through, or having a machine parse through data that was collected through some vast study that was done. I won't discount it, I mean, I'm excited to see what's possible, but the analogue way of learning about people is probably much more comfortable for me at least at this point. Yes, that makes perfect sense. It is for me too. Even though I do all this, disembody, looking at path rates and looking at data and being far away from people in doing all this remote testing. I still fly halfway across the country to have the half-hour long meeting with people, I do it, I did it a couple days ago. It's still something that happens. I mean with cars too, you have to watch what people do and not what people say they do. Right. A lot of what I think the machine-assisted research tools are, a lot of that is what people say they do and actually being in a car with someone in their normal commute, and the kinds of behaviors that they exhibit in that sense, that's a different set of data than you're going to get from one of these other methods. So, that'll probably continue to be part of our research plans for when we want for them. Yes, I definitely think so. So, thank you everybody so much for having this conversation. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts are a great deal. Because, I don't get to have these conversations very frequently at all. In person. In person. Right. Now it's a real treat. Thanks for inviting us. Yes. Thank you, awesome. Thanks.
