A little bit of service design can go a long way. The trick is to be focussed and purposeful, and design your communication with a specific outcome in mind.

One of the classic tasks of a service designer is to create a customer journey map or service blueprint. Following meticulous, wide-ranging research these dense, detailed and occasionally beautifully diagrams emerge. But then what? Who is the recipient of this work, and what are they supposed to do with it? If you’ve been on the receiving end of these deliverables, perhaps this is something you too have asked? Maybe the same applies if you’ve toiled over their creation yourself.

All research and analysis should be undertaken with a purpose

There should be both an end goal and an immediate next step in mind, or the time and effort can be wasted. And remember that’s not just the service designer’s effort, but the precious time of the research participants too. That’s particularly pertinent when you’re undertaking internal service design, where the participants in journey map research — the ‘customers’ in question — will be staff taking time out of their busy day.

We recently ran research to determine the customer journey for some local councils’ internal functions. Adur and Worthing Councils approached us with the task of mapping their human resources (HR) processes. They had a very specific reason for doing so, which meant we had to think hard about how we communicated our findings.

In a scenario still sadly familiar in public bodies and other less design-aware organisations, the Councils had procured a new HR system without talking to the people who would actually use it. Fortunately their lone Design Manager had got wind of this and insisted that, before rolling the system out, research was undertaken with its users. The end goal of the research was to ensure that, when the new system was set up, it met users’ requirements and didn’t repeat the same mistakes as the system it was replacing.

What wasn’t clear at the time was what those mistakes were. What the Councils needed from us was some articulation of the current experience of the HR processes, in order to highlight the pain points that a new system should solve.

The kind of services we were looking at included onboarding staff and recruitment, booking holiday, and claiming expenses. It was clear that those couldn’t be done entirely digitally, meaning we were mapping a service delivered only partly by a digital product — a classic internal service design problem. This presented a challenge of how best to visualise the information in a way that would be powerful enough to be useful.

Collaborate on how you’ll communicate

We worked with the Councils early on to determine what we could produce that would be of most use to them. In this case we needed a human-centred map which would provoke conversations and point a spotlight at the current system.

We ran our research sessions and began the process of synthesising our findings. Going back to first principles, there were really two dimensions that were captured: the actors (people) in the system and actions (steps) that they take. Rather than try to map the entire lifecycle of HR actions an individual employee might take, we mapped each process separately using the same visual language. What we produced was a diagram to show simply what happens in what order, and how people are feeling in the process.

Added to that was an executive summary of the systems used (an ultra-lightweight service blueprint). This was useful in and of itself, but also unashamedly propaganda. By listing the systems, decision makers would be able to see at a glance just how many were used to achieve an outcome, when maybe one system should suffice.

We gave the Councils’ Design Manager an early draft of the deliverables to ensure the concept would be useful, bearing in mind the purpose was to provoke conversations and point a spotlight at the current system.

The final versions of the maps were designed to be printed out and taken to meetings with Procurement, Human Resources and Executive departments. And they did their job. By helping people understand the current system far better, and how it affected real people in their day-to-day working lives, the Councils were able to go back to their software vendor and make changes to what will be purchased and improvements to how it will be configured.

Without this work — without asking how people use the current system, where its failings are, and being able to communicate that convincingly to people in a position to make change — the councils would have spent a lot of tax-payer’s money on a new system not much better than the one they were replacing. Now the new HR software should slot into the existing processes and enable council staff to get on with helping citizens without being bogged down in HR tasks.

This article was originally posted on the Clearleft website.

Using service design to prevent bad decisions was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Not that long ago we had our own internal design discussion on the nature of innovation. And just last month we held a virtual panel event on designing for innovation. Hosted by our own strategy director Andy Thornton, it featured a stellar line-up of industry experts:

• Janna Bastow, chief executive officer at ProdPad and co-founder of Mind The Product,
• Matt Cooper-Wright, design director at IDEO,
• Akshan Ish, product design lead at Babbel, and
• Dorota Biniecka, innovation consultant at Southern Water.

Defining it

Andy got the ball rolling by asking for a definition of innovation. Janna said:

Innovation is the process of breaking through into something new. In order to get to innovation, you have to be willing to try a wide number of things.

Dorota described innovation like this:

It’s basically creativity in a business context.

Describing IDEO’s work, Matt said:

For us, innovation often just means helping companies tackle challenges, either with new groups of customers that they don’t normally talk to or tackling new problems with new solutions and services that they’re not used to.

So there’s a general consensus that innovation involves doing something new. Doing something new can be risky. Therein lies the paradox of innovation for many companies. Most organisations want to be innovative, but most organisations are also risk averse.

Starting it

Dorota talked about the benefit of having a project sponsor in your corner to help you push innovation through. Akshan agreed:

Something that’s really helpful and really necessary is executive leader sponsorship. If the exec leader — the CEO, the chairman, or whatever — is creating the mandate for the rest of the company, it’s a very top-down thing, but you’re incentivizing innovation. You’re incentivizing people to take risks and you’re making it okay to do that. In fact, you’re rewarding people to do that.

Janna pointed out that design is not the only discipline that has to deal with uncertainty. Other teams have to sell in risky endeavours all the time. The marketing department acknowledges that “half of your ad dollars are wasted; you just don’t know which half.” Similarly, the sales team talks about their pipeline in terms of probabilities: “we’re 70% sure of these deals and 60% sure of those deals.”

Those teams try things out. They run experiments. Some of the experiments are going to fail and some of them are going to be successful. So, as Janna says, it’s not that different for design:

All we’re saying is that there are rewards if you do it. And risks if you don’t. And it’s easy enough to do. Look how others are doing it. Let’s get together and we can do this innovation thing and it should start moving the needle in the right direction.

Selling it

You’ve still got to make the business case for any innovative initiative. Andy asked if anyone had any tips for that situation.

Dorota said she got a lot of value from pushing for an open-ended research project:

It was a legacy product that had a lot of value already, but you obviously had to add new innovations to maintain it. And it was kind of a fresh pair of eyes on what’s actually possible in that space.

Matt talked about the benefits of “show, don’t tell”:

We’re all humans with tangible senses. When we can look at something and hold it and walk around it or click on it if it’s a digital thing, it changes your understanding of what you’re looking at.

As ever, designers also need to speak the language of business. As Janna put it:

We can talk until the cows come home about customer delight and journey mapping and design thinking and all these things. It all sounds a little bit fluffy to our leaders. At the end of the day, they want to know that their bucks are going a little bit further each time. So talk to them about the return on investment that they’ll get.

And you can also show them examples of other companies that have reaped the benefits of investing in innovation. There are plenty of case studies out there.

Matt pointed out that we need to be aware of what we’re asking of people:

They’ve probably got to where they are in the organization by not doing any of the things that we’re asking them to do: embrace ambiguity; trust the process; take stuff to users really early; get stuff wrong. All those things are literally the opposite of what they’ve been taught to do for their whole career.

Maintaining it

Innovation shouldn’t be a one-off event. It should be continuous. But what’s the best structure for maintaining innovation? Andy asked if a skunkworks-style lab was the way to go:

The lab concept is one way of handling innovation as in it’s a siloed self-funded part of the business that’s allowed to make lots of failure, but very often it doesn’t have much communication with other parts of the business. How blended should innovation be within a business?

Dorota described how things have evolved at Southern Water:

Earlier on we probably developed some of the solutions a little bit more in isolation. I think that’s not the case so much now. And it’s definitely visible in the types of benefits and impact that we’re having as a team.

Akshan talked about the importance of co-creation rather than delivery:

The way that I’ve seen innovation labs work really well, in my opinion, is when they’re not actually doing the innovation, but they’re facilitating the innovation.

Pondering it

There was a lot of food for thought in this panel discussion. As always, the time just flew by.

If anything, the discussion raised more questions than it answered but we knew going into this that we weren’t going to “solve” the dilemma of innovation; that fundamental tension between risks and rewards.

But one of the simplest solutions to cracking this conundrum is for us all to share our experiences and our stories. We’re so grateful to Janna, Matt, Akshan, and Dorota for giving their time and expertise.

We’ll be running more panel events like this again. Keep an eye on our events for details.

This post was originally published on the Clearleft blog.

Designing for innovation: a virtual panel event was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been globetrotting to carry out research as part of a design project for UCL (University College London). It’s an institution that prides itself on attracting students from all over the world, and across all the nooks of the UK. It’s important that the work we’re doing is informed by their voices and needs.

For me, honing my remote research skills has been one of the positives of lockdown. Although I was no stranger to remote research my go-to method was always the more controlled environment of a usability lab.

Now I can see the advantages of a blended approach in many more projects. A combination of some in-person and some remote sessions is a way of extending the geographic reach and diversity of the participants we talk to.

I don’t think it’s just me that’s improved my skills. Participants have become noticeably more comfortable using the technology and talking on screens. It’s been a while now since I’ve had to talk someone through how to share their screen or how to open the chat window to find a link to a prototype.

Having done multiple projects and numerous research sessions during lockdown, I’ve been reflecting on what helps to make remote research successful.

Selecting your software

I started counting up the different bits of software we use in most sessions. I soon ran out of fingers. There is no one tool to use, rather a hotchpotch of bits and pieces. Some are free to use, others are available with licences and subscriptions.

Within sessions, it’s common for me to simultaneously be using software to screen share (Google Meet, Zoom, Teams), a way to record the session (OBS studio, Scre.io plug-in for Chrome, Screenflow) and a way to share stimulus (Figma prototypes, Google docs, Typeform surveys and polls).

Our preference is to have members of the project team and clients observe research in real-time. To ape a participatory backroom of a research lab we livestream sessions on a private link on either YouTube or Vimeo. We then guide those observers to collect structured notes in a shared virtual space such as on a Miro board, in Airtable or a Google sheet.

Our toolkit for remote research is not limited to just the sessions. Calendly has become indispensable for inviting participants to book days and times that fit their schedule. Its automated calendar invites (in local timezones) with screen-share links is a huge timesaver. Incentives can be conveniently sent as Amazon vouchers. Then there’s the sense-making. Automated transcription software (Descript, Otter.ai, Rev.com) and collaborative cloud-based tools for synthesis and analysis have made this part of the process a collective — if still distanced — activity.

When it comes to technology and remote research, I’ve found success mostly comes from two factors:

1. Playing around with different tools to find the ones that best fit the budget, timeframes and needs of the project. With new features and updates appearing regularly it’s useful to keep an eye open for opportunities to expand the tools you use.
2. Having a practice run to iron out the gremlins. The more tools in play, the more potential for hiccups. You want to be concentrating on the participant in the session, not worrying about the technology being used to run it.

Putting participants at ease

It’s not a huge leap from facilitating in-person to remote research. There are some small changes to be mindful of to make the sessions easier for the participants and yourself.

One big positive change I’ve noticed is that participants seem more relaxed and open by being in their own environment using their own technology and at a time that better suits their lifestyle.

Even so, it’s still important for the facilitator to make the participant feel comfortable. A free-flowing conversation is harder when there’s a screen between you.

In tackling this I make a point of always being on a call five minutes early so that a participant is never left waiting in a digital void. Then in the introductory chat, I acknowledge the technology might let us down and I tell them what to do if either of us freezes on screen, has distorting audio or connection issues. Being upfront about potential issues helps participants know chaos is to be expected and embraced.

As I’ve done more remote sessions I’ve come to accept that I’ll get through fewer tasks and questions than in an in-person session. Pauses for blips in technology and asking for clarifications because the sound temporarily dropped out are all part of the medium.

Hello world!

The great thing about remote research is it’s more convenient for a wider cross-section of your audience to take part in sessions.

You’ll likely need to elongate the duration for research. Don’t expect neatly timetabled back-to-back sessions. And you’ll need to be more flexible with your working hours to fit the lifestyles and locations of your participants. But broadening the conversations beyond who’s available on a set day in a set location can only improve the insights you gain.

The choice shouldn’t be between doing remote or in-person research sessions. A blended approach is often viable and desirable and gives you the best of both worlds.

Right, I’m off to prepare for tomorrow’s travels to Buenos Aires, followed by Newcastle and Seville

This article was originally published on the Clearleft website: https://clearleft.com/posts/remote-research-around-the-world-in-a-day

Remote research: Around the world in a day was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You can listen to an audio version of Weighing up UX.

This is the month of UX Fest 2021 — this year’s online version of UX London. The festival continues with masterclasses every Tuesday in June and a festival day of talks every Thursday (tickets for both are still available). But it all kicked off with the conference part last week: three back-to-back days of talks.

I have the great pleasure of hosting the event so not only do I get to see a whole lot of great talks, I also get to quiz the speakers afterwards.

Right from day one, a theme emerged that continued throughout the conference and I suspect will continue for the rest of the festival too. That topic was metrics. Kind of.

See, metrics come up when we’re talking about A/B testing, growth design, and all of the practices that help designers get their seat at the table (to use the well-worn cliché). But while metrics are very useful for measuring design’s benefit to the business, they’re not really cut out for measuring user experience.

People have tried to quantify user experience benefits using measurements like NetPromoter Score, which is about as useful as reading tea leaves or chicken entrails.

So we tend to equate user experience gains with business gains. That makes sense. Happy users should be good for business. That’s a reasonable hypothesis. But it gets tricky when you need to make the case for improving the user experience if you can’t tie it directly to some business metric. That’s when we run into the McNamara fallacy:

Making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and ignoring all others.

The way out of this quantitative blind spot is to use qualitative research. But another theme of UX Fest was just how woefully under-represented researchers are in most organisations. And even when you’ve gone and talked to users and you’ve got their stories, you still need to play that back in a way that makes sense to the business folks. These are stories. They don’t lend themselves to being converted into charts’n’graphs.

And so we tend to fall back on more traditional metrics, based on that assumption that what’s good for user experience is good for business. But it’s a short step from making that equivalency to flipping the equation: what’s good for the business must, by definition, be good user experience. That’s where things get dicey.

Broadly speaking, the talks at UX Fest could be put into two categories. You’ve got talks covering practical subjects like product design, content design, research, growth design, and so on. Then you’ve got the higher-level, almost philosophical talks looking at the big picture and questioning the industry’s direction of travel.

The tension between these two categories was the highlight of the conference for me. It worked particularly well when there were back-to-back talks (and joint Q&A) featuring a hands-on case study that successfully pushed the needle on business metrics followed by a more cautionary talk asking whether our priorities are out of whack.

For example, there was a case study on growth design, which emphasised the importance of A/B testing for validation, immediately followed by a talk on deceptive dark patterns. Now, I suspect that if you were to A/B test a deceptive dark pattern, the test would validate its use (at least in the short term). It’s no coincidence that a company like Booking.com, which lives by the A/B sword, is also one of the companies sued for using distressing design patterns.

Using A/B tests alone is like using a loaded weapon without supervision. They only tell you what people do. And again, the solution is to make sure you’re also doing qualitative research — that’s how you find out why people are doing what they do.

But as I’ve pondered the lessons from last week’s conference, I’ve come to realise that there’s also a danger of focusing purely on the user experience. Hear me out…

At one point, the question came up as to whether deceptive dark patterns were ever justified. What if it’s for a good cause? What if the deceptive dark pattern is being used by an organisation actively campaigning to do good in the world?

In my mind, there was no question. A deceptive dark pattern is wrong, no matter who’s doing it.

(There’s also the problem of organisations that think they’re doing good in the world: I’m sure that every talented engineer that worked on Google AMP honestly believed they were acting in the best interests of the open web even as they worked to destroy it.)

Where it gets interesting is when you flip the question around.

Suppose you’re a designer working at an organisation that is decidedly not a force for good in the world. Say you’re working at Facebook, a company that prioritises data-gathering and engagement so much that they’ll tolerate insurrectionists and even genocidal movements. Now let’s say there’s talk in your department of implementing a deceptive dark pattern that will drive user engagement. But you, being a good designer who fights for the user, take a stand against this and you successfully find a way to ensure that Facebook doesn’t deploy that deceptive dark pattern.

Yay?

Does that count as being a good user experience designer? Yes, you’ve done good work at the coalface. But the overall business goal is like a deceptive dark pattern that’s so big you can’t take it in. Is it even possible to do “good” design when you’re inside the belly of that beast?

Facebook is a relatively straightforward case. Anyone who’s still working at Facebook can’t claim ignorance. They know full well where that company’s priorities lie. No doubt they sleep at night by convincing themselves they can accomplish more from the inside than without. But what about companies that exist in the grey area of being imperfect? Frankly, what about any company that relies on surveillance capitalism for its success? Is it still possible to do “good” design there?

There are no easy answers and that’s why it so often comes down to individual choice. I know many designers who wouldn’t work at certain companies …but they also wouldn’t judge anyone else who chooses to work at those companies.

At Clearleft, every staff member has two levels of veto on client work. You can say “I’m not comfortable working on this”, in which case, the work may still happen but we’ll make sure the resourcing works out so you don’t have anything to do with that project. Or you can say “I’m not comfortable with Clearleft working on this”, in which case the work won’t go ahead (this usually happens before we even get to the pitching stage although there have been one or two examples over the years where we’ve pulled out of the running for certain projects).

Going back to the question of whether it’s ever okay to use a deceptive dark pattern, here’s what I think…

It makes no difference whether it’s implemented by ProPublica or Breitbart; using a deceptive dark pattern is wrong.

But there is a world of difference in being a designer who works at ProPublica and being a designer who works at Breitbart.

That’s what I’m getting at when I say there’s a danger to focusing purely on user experience. That focus can be used as a way of avoiding responsibility for the larger business goals. Then designers are like the soldiers on the eve of battle in Henry V:

For we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.

This was originally posted on my own site.

Weighing up UX was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A keen supporter of the grassroots design community, Tom is a design mentor, co-organiser of UX Camp Brighton, and regular contributor to the UX Brighton community. In 2020 he started Designers in Business, a newsletter aimed at helping fellow designers build their business confidence.

We catch up with Tom ahead of his talk on Strategy & Business day at the #UXfest Festival on 10th June.

UX Fest: How has your approach to your role evolved with more experience?

Tom: There’s one thing I definitely say more often with experience: “I don’t know”.

As a younger designer I often felt under personal pressure to have immediate answers. I’m meant to be a problem solver after all! It’s liberating (and humble) to say “I’m not sure, but give me some time and I might be able to help”. But it also takes confidence and trust.

Thinking time is so important in design but it’s increasingly at risk in our delivery focused product teams. We might feel uncomfortable if we’re not producing or shipping. Learning not to feel guilty about this is an important hurdle to get over.

Often with some thinking time I’ll conclude that the right thing to do isn’t design at all. That kind of decision-making is just as valuable as design output to most organisations.

UX Fest: What are the greatest opportunities to improve accessibility in design?

Tom: Designers building trust with non-designers and decision-makers.

Some of our colleagues genuinely don’t realise that the things we make could be difficult or completely impossible for many people to use. By having great relationships with decision-makers we can expect more forums to explain what accessibility is and why it matters. We can help them understand their product’s accessibility shortcomings and how to take remedial steps.

I’ve typically found that when existing accessibility issues are flagged, clients realise that fixing them is the right course of action. Unfortunately, this often requires a little time, planning and patience (especially for technical fixes). It can be frustrating if change doesn’t happen quickly when accessibility issues arise, so preparing for incremental progress is often a mindset I need to get comfortable with.

On the plus side, taking smaller steps to more accessible experiences helps highlight that getting this right from the start doesn’t have to be a lengthy or expensive process either.

UX Fest: How do you view the relationship between design and business?

Tom: As one that designers need more confidence with if we’re going to keep our seat at the table.

As designers, we’re often uncomfortable in our relationship with business. Sometimes this is down to a perceived conflict in value systems which can stifle any appetite to educate ourselves about the business world. But a better understanding of the business landscape we’re operating in is critical to see how we can navigate it more effectively and influence change.

For most of us, a little bit more business knowledge can go a very long way to improving our relationships with stakeholders too. For me, better relationships are the foundation of influencing better business outcomes. But business confidence can also help us demonstrate our impact more effectively and help us influence positive outcomes for a broader set of stakeholders.

Business can seem an overwhelming world to get to grips with, so I usually encourage other designers to start small and reach out to business stakeholders for help. This can also become the first step in forming those better relationships which are critical to our long term success.

Business confidence can also open exciting new opportunities for designers. Our skill set puts us in such a strong position to design new business models; ones that could deliver innovative, inclusive business models to market that we haven’t seen before.

UX Fest: What advice would you give practitioners who are just starting out in their careers?

Tom: Firstly, don’t be afraid to move around a fair bit early in your career. I wish I’d done more of this.

Some people will say it looks bad on your CV. But I think it’s more important to try your hand in a few different design environments to discover the kind of place you might want to double-down longer term.

So, give agency life a go. Join an in-house team. Get to grips with startup land and compare it to a more traditional organisation. Most future employers should appreciate this curiosity when you’re starting out and it will give you the confidence to look more broadly when it comes to making a longer term employment commitment.

But this kind of career experimentation isn’t for everyone. If you do land your first role in a place with a great progression framework and plenty of senior folks to learn from, that’s a really great option too.

Secondly, it’s fine to not use the design tools or processes you see everyone else using (or talking about on Twitter). Critical thinking is an important design skill. Don’t be afraid to apply this to the way you work as well.

UX is particularly rife with dogma around the right way to approach problems using design and Design Thinking. But if you think there’s a better way to solve a problem that doesn’t involve a popular process, workshop or tool… try it!

Thirdly, design leadership isn’t for everyone. Don’t feel you have to take your first leadership role when it’s offered to you, or that you even have to go into Design Leadership at all. It’s becoming increasingly realistic for designers to pursue senior IC (Individual Contributor) progression routes which are just as well paid and respected as leadership roles.

If you love the craft of design and want to focus on being a better practitioner, perhaps leadership can wait. Most talented designers get more than one shot at leadership in their career, so feel comfortable turning down management opportunities if the time doesn’t feel right.

Finally, it’s absolutely fine to see design as just a job.

You can be a great designer without being passionate about design. It’s a privilege to find purpose in design work, but work can give you the means to find your purpose outside of design.

Don’t underestimate the value of consistently turning up. Your work, presence and cooperation can bring real value to others without being extraordinary.

UX Fest: What’s the best thing you read/watched/listened to in 2020

Tom: I really looked to escapism and comedy to make 2020 more bearable. Laughter was the medicine I needed, so most of my ‘best things’ made me chuckle when things got tough during the height of the pandemic.

I got a bit obsessed with sports documentaries in 2020, and particularly loved The Last Dance (it’s already queued up for a rewatch). On the lighter end of the competitive spectrum, Taskmaster had me crying with laughter most episodes. I highly recommend designers check it out, as it really appeals to our lateral thinking sensibilities.

UX Fest: Lastly, what’s got you through lockdown?

One of the ways I kept busy during the early part of 2020’s lockdown was by launching a side project called Designers in Business.

It’s a monthly newsletter in which I curate useful content to help designers build more confidence in the business world. If that sounds like your cup of tea, head over to designersinbusiness.com to check out the archive of previous editions and sign up.

We’re delighted to have Tom Speaking at the Festival on
Thursday 10th June, with his talk ‘The Designer with Business Confidence”. Tickets here.

• On Twitter @TomPrior

UX Fest is brought to you by Clearleft, a strategic design consultancy based in the UK. We work with global brands to design and redesign products and services, bring strategic clarity, and transform digital culture.

Interview with Tom Prior was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Can you briefly explain how your career led you to your current role at Google?

I was talked into my first UX writing role at Xbox in 2010, when “UX writer” hadn’t appeared as a title, yet. The writing manager explained that my background as a high-school science teacher was ideal: I already had experience helping teenagers understand abstract concepts in concrete ways, with simple language. He promised that he had a good team, and that I could learn what I needed to know while I was there. He was right.

Since then, I worked in UX writing roles in Windows and in Microsoft Education, and then moved to a startup called OfferUp. I first started at Google on a contract project, which turned into a full-time role.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing those in content disciplines right now?

Content is, in general, about half of any digital design. But most of that content hasn’t been designed. Content folks still need to educate the industry about which problems we can solve, which problems we can’t solve, and which opportunities content can realise.

How do you see the future of content and UX writing evolving?

I see content and UX writing becoming more of a first-class citizen in the toolkit of UX teams. For that to happen, teams need to recognise how much better that half of the design can be, and start to learn principles and guidelines to judge “goodness” of text beyond how the team “feels” about it.

What in the tech industry are people not talking enough about?

As long as we don’t take full responsibility for the text we write, we fail to take responsibility for the social and ethical implications of those designs. People use tech to do their jobs, drive their cars, maintain their health, and connect with each other. Those designs are all built to meet business purposes, and those ulterior motives influence people’s experiences in myriad ways.

Who are your content or design heroes?

I am most impressed with people who model fantastic ways of creating with others. People like Bryce Johnson, the co-inventor of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, who built a team around listening to people, believing them, and working hard to make all of their good ideas happen. There’s also Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder of Creative Mornings and more, who leads from a place of loving possibility. I saw her make the case for wearing our hearts on our sleeves as a business strategy — and dang, does it work well. There’s also Don Knuth, who not only wrote the Art of Computer Programming, but also wrote the very best ever digital typesetting program — TeX. I repeat his maxim frequently: “Do not optimise too early.”

When you’re not writing for Google, how do you like to relax?

In the past year, I’ve come to realise that I need to learn about this thing called “relaxing.” I’ve been optimising (too early) for doing as many things as possible, especially in learning new creative skills. So I’m pretty good at intensive non-work activity like making shoes, jewellery, garments, writing fiction, drawing, designing simple machines, printmaking, and suchlike — but it’s not relaxing. So lately I’ve been engaging in needlepoint and knitting, which has a lot more orderly repetition with fewer decisions.

Content by Design takes place on 6th and 7th July. Tickets are on sale now.

This event is brought to you by Clearleft. Clearleft is a strategic design & innovation consultancy based in Brighton UK. Our team of industry-leading strategists, design thinkers, technologists and innovators work alongside global brands to help design leaders get the most from their products, services & teams.

Why Torrey Podmajersky just can’t seem to relax was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing those in content disciplines right now?

The current political, social and environmental backdrop — and specifically the pace at which we’re experiencing change — means there’s a demand for rapid creation of new content.

Whether it’s changes to policy or legal documents, reports on environmental crises, or campaigns for change, content is going to sit at the heart of what’s coming, one way or the other.

The challenge for those in content disciplines is to deliver quickly without compromising on standards for content clarity and quality — not just to deliver, but to deliver something viable.

What do you see as the biggest opportunity for content designers/UX writers right now?

To change the world with words. To give voices to the people who most need them.

Who are your content or design heroes?

As a GDS alumni, I’ve been fortunate to meet many brilliant people in government that I consider my content and design heroes — far too many to name.

I have so much respect for people doing content and design work in the civil service — especially at the moment. There is no alternative to government, so putting user needs at the heart of content and design work is essential.

It’s challenging, and it doesn’t often get the recognition it deserves.

When you’re not busy running content teams, how do you like to relax?

I love cooking (and eating) good food.

If you weren’t in content design, what would you be doing?

I’d be a psychotherapist — I find psychology absolutely fascinating. I’m really interested in understanding people’s behaviours and quirks, and how dynamics form in social groups, at work and in relationships.

What would you tell yourself if you could travel back in time 15 years?

I’d tell my 16-year-old self to embrace the unexpected and not to get disheartened when things didn’t go how I wanted them to.

I didn’t get into the uni I wanted. I had a terrible time at the one I did go to, and dropped out after my first year. I had a series of knock-backs when applying for jobs, and the lifelong journalism career I had planned turned out to be a mere 2-year foray into the field and back out again.

But all of those trials and tribulations led me to where I am now — in a job I absolutely love, that I didn’t even know existed back then.

Content by Design takes place on 6th and 7th July. Tickets are on sale now.

This event is brought to you by Clearleft. Clearleft is a strategic design & innovation consultancy based in Brighton UK. Our team of industry-leading strategists, design thinkers, technologists and innovators work alongside global brands to help design leaders get the most from their products, services & teams.

Amy Hupe’s unexpected content design heroes was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We catch up with Steven ahead of his Masterclass and Festival talk at UX Fest.

UX Fest: What did 2020 teach you about design leadership?

Steven: 2020 was a true test of design leadership in so many ways. With the sudden shift to a remote workforce due to the pandemic, teams had to quickly adapt to new ways of working. As a design leader, it was not only instituting various software for collaboration, but also finding balance for the team navigating the confusing balance both life and work and keeping morale high.

During the height of social and political movements, creating space for team members, especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color to heal, listen, and educate. Being a design leader during a tumultuous time was less about telling people what to do, but to help team members navigate through an unprecedented difficult period.

UX Fest: How has your approach to your role evolved over the years?

Steven: Over the years, social activism has become more and more integrated into my work. Most recently, I started a non-profit organization called QTBIPOC Design — an organization that provides free and accessible design education to LGBTQ+ designers of color. After many years of working and leading creative teams, saw the lack of diversity and wanted to make a change. By focusing on empowering and educating our LGBTQ+ BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities, my hope is to increase the talent pipeline with much more diverse talent, especially Black queer, Latinx queer, non-binary, and trans designers.

UX Fest: What are the greatest opportunities to improve accessibility in design?

Steven: Unfortunately for many individuals who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, design is not an accessible career. Low-income neighborhoods and schools de-prioritize their art programs due to their limited budgets, and BIPOC families rarely recommend design as a career to their children, possibly due to a lack of education and awareness of this industry as a viable and thriving industry.

Our organization’s mission is to address pivot points within the lives of our community members — when they shift careers or life trajectories based on passion and new insights. Currently, we are working with many adults who are either graduating college or transitioning from another career into design.

I have a firm belief that education coupled with an uplifting community is what’s needed to empower individuals to chase after their dream careers in design. Nobody should be gated from getting the design career of their dreams — regardless of their previous education, race, sexual identity, gender identity, or previous lived experience.

UX Fest: How can we all encourage more diverse design teams?

Steven: Currently, many tech companies have pledged to increase their diversity across various domains. However, if the corporate culture has not been radically improved to be more equitable and inclusive, diverse talent will leave the company as soon as they are hired.

In the past year, our organization has been creating various frameworks to help creative and product teams to re-evaluate their own culture and to create safe spaces for diverse perspectives. From design critiques to presentations, we have been challenging teams to create a radically different collaborate atmosphere — one that is free of judgement and inviting diverse, and potentially opposing perspectives, so that teams can be comfortable with diverse ways of thinking and solutioning. Not only does this make the culture more hospitable for diverse talent, current team members who may not have felt safe to voice their input also feel supported.

UX Fest: How do you view the relationship between design and business?

Steven: In the work of equity, businesses must find a balance between serving the business and the community. Uplifting marginalized communities should not be based on impact to the bottom-line of the business. We uplift those who are less disadvantaged than us because we have the means to do so. Otherwise, equity work becomes transactional only to serve corporate needs.

Design methodologies have gone through a metamorphosis in recent years, shifting from a sole designer-centric model (top-down) to a community-centric model (bottom-up) to better serve marginalized communities. Design Thinking as a practice has been iterated upon to invite more perspectives into the space, and has the potential to shift how we engage with our communities-at-large with our work. The practice of design may be very well the tool that businesses must rely on to implement new ways of equitable thinking.

UX Fest: How have you rallied your team through a very challenging time?

Steven: Our organization was founded in the midst of COVID — while the world was still trying to navigate through a global pandemic. The core team of QTBIPOC Design volunteers recognized the importance of supporting new design graduates and those shifting their careers into design during a period of massive layoffs and business closures. My work was to provide the volunteers and members the space to come together — clearing all barriers and vigilantly creating a safe space. With deep empathy and compassion for one another, our team rallied together to help one another stay afloat during this difficult time.

UX Fest: What advice would you give practitioners who are just starting out in their careers?

Steven: My advice: keep on going. The first job is always the hardest to secure — especially when we haven’t had the opportunity yet to work on projects to fill our portfolios. After the first job, it will become easier to move around the industry.

And if that means being creative with the first job, I highly recommend exploring various types of employment, including freelance work to get your foot into the door, but also get to try various companies and creative team dynamics.

Find a community that uplifts you and your work. One of the upsides of the pandemic has shifted countless design organizations to be online-only. What used to be only regional are now offered online and people from all over the world can attend their events. Try a few spaces and see which resonate.

UX Fest: Lastly, what’s the best thing you read/watched/listened to in 2020

Steven: There has been a tremendous amount of amazing films centering Asian perspectives in the last few months and I highly recommend everyone to watch Minari — a beautiful narrative of a Korean-American family’s journey through two divided cultures. There hasn’t been a film like this that captures so many subtleties of the Asian-American experience navigating immigration and finding a home in foreign America without overt romanticization or comedic prose.

We’re delighted to have Steven Speaking at the Festival on
Thursday 24th June, with his talk on building equitable design teams. Tickets here.

You can also join a masterclass with Steven on the 15th June on Creating Equitable Design teams.

• On twitter @wakuu

UX Fest is brought to you by Clearleft, a strategic design consultancy based in the UK. We work with global brands to design and redesign products and services, bring strategic clarity, and transform digital culture.

Interview with Steven Wakabayashi was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I interviewed Content by Design speaker Harry Ashbridge, Head of Writing and Customer Experience at Monzo about writing, tech, and what he’d tell his younger self.

How did you get into digital content?

Might be controversial but I don’t think of myself as being in digital content! I’m a writer, and I think the fundamentals of good writing apply everywhere. Just happens to be that at the moment most writing exists digitally.

I ended up writing for a living in a roundabout way: I got a masters in history and thought the world was my oyster. Turns out no-one cares if you have a masters in history, so I ended up proofreading training materials for a company which did banking qualifications. Eventually I was running a small publications team, but not having a very nice time.

Then I saw an ad for a company called The Writer which said “We’re out to rid the world of the tyranny of linguistic mediocrity”. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I liked the sound of it. I got a job there as an editor, and worked my way up to writer, trainer and eventually looking after the customer experience function.

The Writer specialised in big tone of voice projects, training and general writing consultancy. I had a great 6 years there, and then jumped ship to start a writing team at Monzo a few years ago.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing those in content disciplines right now?

Consistency. Most companies can write well some of the time, but practically none write well all the time. If 15% of your content is beautiful and clear and elegant, but the other 85% is corporate, bland and confusing then what will customers believe is the real you? (Spoiler: it’s not the good stuff. We’re primed to see the worst in businesses.)

In my industry, banking, the big players spend hundreds of millions on ad campaigns, but their customer satisfaction scores are in the toilet. They care about the wrong words.

It’s not just about perceptions of the brand either. Every bit of writing has a purpose, and better writing will improve any metric you care about. I’ve seen better writing make and save companies millions.

How do you see the future of content and UX writing evolving?

People are finally seeing writing as an essential role. I see great strides from content folk on the design side, and hear the welcome death knell for ‘just put some copy in that box’. But words are your company’s main product, and most still don’t get the care and attention they deserve (internally or with customers).

I’m hopeful that companies will recognise that since everyone spends most of their day writing, helping people recognise and develop that skill has a big impact. Hiring more writers without creating a culture where everybody appreciates the importance of words will only get us so far.

What in tech, are people not talking enough about right now?

Tech companies talk a lot about doing good, but haven’t really followed through. They’ve proven very good at making a lot of money for a few people, but growth as an end in itself will consume the planet and already is. I find the obsession with valuations for start-ups especially depressing, as if how much VC funds think you’re worth is any indicator of the good you can do for the world.

Who are your content or design heroes?

I remember being blown away when I saw ‘Up-Goer Five’. It’s web-comic xkcd creator Randall Munroe’s explanation of how the Saturn V rocket works, using only the 1,000 most common words in English. (The Saturn V is the huge booster rocket which took the lunar module to the moon in 1969.)

It’s just such a clever concept. Generally everything he does to distill difficult ideas into something clear and interesting is great. That’s the kind of writing I aspire to.

What would you tell yourself if you could travel back in time 15 years?

Oh Lordy. Eat more vegetables and get more sleep.

Content by Design takes place on 6th and 7th July. Tickets are on sale now.

This event is brought to you by Clearleft. Clearleft is a strategic design & innovation consultancy based in Brighton UK. Our team of industry-leading strategists, design thinkers, technologists and innovators work alongside global brands to help design leaders get the most from their products, services & teams.

Harry Ashbridge explains why he thinks consistency is our biggest challenge was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We catch up with Melissa ahead of her Conference talk at UX Fest.

UX Fest: What did 2020 teach you about design leadership?

Melissa: 2020 taught me how important communicating the value of UX is to product teams, and how valuable having a strong UX presence as part of the product development cycle can be when world-altering events like a global pandemic cause real-time changes to your products’ audience and the general marketplace. Having an established practice of connecting with and learning from the people using one’s product made it easier to connect with them about how their perspectives had been altered during the pandemic and how their needs and priorities had evolved.

UX Fest: How has your approach to your role evolved over the years? / With more experience?

Melissa: I always used to be (and still default to being) a person who likes to dive in and have impact right away, such as through completing easy-to-answer research questions in an effort to show quick impact for a new project/team/position. I’ve gotten better about taking more time to understand a problem space and being more deliberate and strategic with my first and subsequent projects. This allows me to be both more knowledgeable and impactful in the long run by getting to know all the various perspectives of both primary and connected teams and lowers the possibility of redoing work that may have already been done.

UX Fest: What are the greatest opportunities to improve accessibility in your field/ in design?

Melissa: We can improve having more people from different backgrounds within UX and design by improving education about, and championing the field itself. Ask 10 UXers how they first learned about the field of UX and more likely than not, you will receive 10 very different answers, typically with people stumbling into the field via some indirect or corollary path. Increasing education about the career path that is UX, how it applies to every kind of product that humans interact with, and how its multidisciplinary nature means one can really find the parts that appeal most to them is a way to improve accessibility to the field of UX.

UX Fest: What are the common challenges you see faced by product teams?

Melissa: A common challenge is thinking that you (as a member of a product team) are a typical user of the product. With very few exceptions for a few very niche products, many modern tech/software companies are designing for users who are not reflected in the people on the product team. This is not a disparagement, per se, it is a truth. Realizing that many users will not necessarily have the latest, cutting edge technology, the fastest/most reliable internet connection, or even multiple devices is already a big step to realizing that you are not the user and need to keep that in mind when making decisions about the users of the product. This is a place where UX Research can be especially helpful.

UX Fest: What advice would you give practitioners who are just starting out in their careers?

Melissa: Keep learning! Always keep intaking information and expanding your perspectives. Whether about new methods in your field or breakthroughs in completely unrelated areas, inspiration and breakthroughs can come from anywhere and help you gain ideas to get through those day-to-day mental blocks and ruts.

Don’t underestimate the power of a positive mindset.

UX Fest: Lastly, what’s the best thing you read/watched/listened to in 2020?

Melissa: Factfulness by Hans & @Anna Rosling

We’re delighted to have Melissa Speaking at the conference on
Thursday 3 June, with her talk on the psychology of Dark Patterns. Tickets here.

• On the web www.mabsmith.com
• On Twitter @mabsmith

UX Fest is brought to you by Clearleft, a strategic design consultancy based in the UK. We work with global brands to design and redesign products and services, bring strategic clarity, and transform digital culture.

Interview with Melissa Smith PhD was originally published in Clearleft Thinking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.