The document discusses how work culture has changed from the individualistic 1980s to today where companies aim to foster a collaborative environment like an extended family. It encourages finding new ways of working together to help each other and keep the customer in mind. It also provides references to learn more about neuroanthropology and determining information based on rules on cards.
WideNoise is the iPhone and iPod Touch application that samples decibel noise levels, and displays them on a worldwide interactive map.
This presentations explains the why's and how's of the WideTag's WideNoise project.
Survey on The Internet of Things and Social Mediagrins1
In order to find out if people are ready for the technological marriage between the Internet of Things (IoT) and Social Media, we created a survey to determine the likelihood of people using social media as a communication channel in conjunction with internet enabled sensors.
The good the bad and the empathy - UX Australia Design Research 2018Stephen Cox
Follow the journey of an intrepid research team as they seek to quantify their customers’ behaviours to create data driven personas. The journey covers the pitfalls of bad research design and assumptions as well as a redeeming and heart-warming conclusion of how smart people can work together to connect a large business with the real stories of customers.
WideNoise is the iPhone and iPod Touch application that samples decibel noise levels, and displays them on a worldwide interactive map.
This presentations explains the why's and how's of the WideTag's WideNoise project.
Survey on The Internet of Things and Social Mediagrins1
In order to find out if people are ready for the technological marriage between the Internet of Things (IoT) and Social Media, we created a survey to determine the likelihood of people using social media as a communication channel in conjunction with internet enabled sensors.
The good the bad and the empathy - UX Australia Design Research 2018Stephen Cox
Follow the journey of an intrepid research team as they seek to quantify their customers’ behaviours to create data driven personas. The journey covers the pitfalls of bad research design and assumptions as well as a redeeming and heart-warming conclusion of how smart people can work together to connect a large business with the real stories of customers.
Book Formatting: Quality Control Checks for DesignersConfidence Ago
This presentation was made to help designers who work in publishing houses or format books for printing ensure quality.
Quality control is vital to every industry. This is why every department in a company need create a method they use in ensuring quality. This, perhaps, will not only improve the quality of products and bring errors to the barest minimum, but take it to a near perfect finish.
It is beyond a moot point that a good book will somewhat be judged by its cover, but the content of the book remains king. No matter how beautiful the cover, if the quality of writing or presentation is off, that will be a reason for readers not to come back to the book or recommend it.
So, this presentation points designers to some important things that may be missed by an editor that they could eventually discover and call the attention of the editor.
Expert Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Drafting ServicesResDraft
Whether you’re looking to create a guest house, a rental unit, or a private retreat, our experienced team will design a space that complements your existing home and maximizes your investment. We provide personalized, comprehensive expert accessory dwelling unit (ADU)drafting solutions tailored to your needs, ensuring a seamless process from concept to completion.
Can AI do good? at 'offtheCanvas' India HCI preludeAlan Dix
Invited talk at 'offtheCanvas' IndiaHCI prelude, 29th June 2024.
https://www.alandix.com/academic/talks/offtheCanvas-IndiaHCI2024/
The world is being changed fundamentally by AI and we are constantly faced with newspaper headlines about its harmful effects. However, there is also the potential to both ameliorate theses harms and use the new abilities of AI to transform society for the good. Can you make the difference?
Between Filth and Fortune- Urban Cattle Foraging Realities by Devi S Nair, An...Mansi Shah
This study examines cattle rearing in urban and rural settings, focusing on milk production and consumption. By exploring a case in Ahmedabad, it highlights the challenges and processes in dairy farming across different environments, emphasising the need for sustainable practices and the essential role of milk in daily consumption.
Unleash Your Inner Demon with the "Let's Summon Demons" T-Shirt. Calling all fans of dark humor and edgy fashion! The "Let's Summon Demons" t-shirt is a unique way to express yourself and turn heads.
https://dribbble.com/shots/24253051-Let-s-Summon-Demons-Shirt
White wonder, Work developed by Eva TschoppMansi Shah
White Wonder by Eva Tschopp
A tale about our culture around the use of fertilizers and pesticides visiting small farms around Ahmedabad in Matar and Shilaj.
2024 State of Marketing Report – by HubspotMarius Sescu
https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
· Scaling relationships and proving ROI
· Social media is the place for search, sales, and service
· Authentic influencer partnerships fuel brand growth
· The strongest connections happen via call, click, chat, and camera.
· Time saved with AI leads to more creative work
· Seeking: A single source of truth
· TLDR; Get on social, try AI, and align your systems.
· More human marketing, powered by robots
ChatGPT is a revolutionary addition to the world since its introduction in 2022. A big shift in the sector of information gathering and processing happened because of this chatbot. What is the story of ChatGPT? How is the bot responding to prompts and generating contents? Swipe through these slides prepared by Expeed Software, a web development company regarding the development and technical intricacies of ChatGPT!
Book Formatting: Quality Control Checks for DesignersConfidence Ago
This presentation was made to help designers who work in publishing houses or format books for printing ensure quality.
Quality control is vital to every industry. This is why every department in a company need create a method they use in ensuring quality. This, perhaps, will not only improve the quality of products and bring errors to the barest minimum, but take it to a near perfect finish.
It is beyond a moot point that a good book will somewhat be judged by its cover, but the content of the book remains king. No matter how beautiful the cover, if the quality of writing or presentation is off, that will be a reason for readers not to come back to the book or recommend it.
So, this presentation points designers to some important things that may be missed by an editor that they could eventually discover and call the attention of the editor.
Expert Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Drafting ServicesResDraft
Whether you’re looking to create a guest house, a rental unit, or a private retreat, our experienced team will design a space that complements your existing home and maximizes your investment. We provide personalized, comprehensive expert accessory dwelling unit (ADU)drafting solutions tailored to your needs, ensuring a seamless process from concept to completion.
Can AI do good? at 'offtheCanvas' India HCI preludeAlan Dix
Invited talk at 'offtheCanvas' IndiaHCI prelude, 29th June 2024.
https://www.alandix.com/academic/talks/offtheCanvas-IndiaHCI2024/
The world is being changed fundamentally by AI and we are constantly faced with newspaper headlines about its harmful effects. However, there is also the potential to both ameliorate theses harms and use the new abilities of AI to transform society for the good. Can you make the difference?
Between Filth and Fortune- Urban Cattle Foraging Realities by Devi S Nair, An...Mansi Shah
This study examines cattle rearing in urban and rural settings, focusing on milk production and consumption. By exploring a case in Ahmedabad, it highlights the challenges and processes in dairy farming across different environments, emphasising the need for sustainable practices and the essential role of milk in daily consumption.
Unleash Your Inner Demon with the "Let's Summon Demons" T-Shirt. Calling all fans of dark humor and edgy fashion! The "Let's Summon Demons" t-shirt is a unique way to express yourself and turn heads.
https://dribbble.com/shots/24253051-Let-s-Summon-Demons-Shirt
White wonder, Work developed by Eva TschoppMansi Shah
White Wonder by Eva Tschopp
A tale about our culture around the use of fertilizers and pesticides visiting small farms around Ahmedabad in Matar and Shilaj.
2024 State of Marketing Report – by HubspotMarius Sescu
https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
· Scaling relationships and proving ROI
· Social media is the place for search, sales, and service
· Authentic influencer partnerships fuel brand growth
· The strongest connections happen via call, click, chat, and camera.
· Time saved with AI leads to more creative work
· Seeking: A single source of truth
· TLDR; Get on social, try AI, and align your systems.
· More human marketing, powered by robots
ChatGPT is a revolutionary addition to the world since its introduction in 2022. A big shift in the sector of information gathering and processing happened because of this chatbot. What is the story of ChatGPT? How is the bot responding to prompts and generating contents? Swipe through these slides prepared by Expeed Software, a web development company regarding the development and technical intricacies of ChatGPT!
Product Design Trends in 2024 | Teenage EngineeringsPixeldarts
The realm of product design is a constantly changing environment where technology and style intersect. Every year introduces fresh challenges and exciting trends that mold the future of this captivating art form. In this piece, we delve into the significant trends set to influence the look and functionality of product design in the year 2024.
How Race, Age and Gender Shape Attitudes Towards Mental HealthThinkNow
Mental health has been in the news quite a bit lately. Dozens of U.S. states are currently suing Meta for contributing to the youth mental health crisis by inserting addictive features into their products, while the U.S. Surgeon General is touring the nation to bring awareness to the growing epidemic of loneliness and isolation. The country has endured periods of low national morale, such as in the 1970s when high inflation and the energy crisis worsened public sentiment following the Vietnam War. The current mood, however, feels different. Gallup recently reported that national mental health is at an all-time low, with few bright spots to lift spirits.
To better understand how Americans are feeling and their attitudes towards mental health in general, ThinkNow conducted a nationally representative quantitative survey of 1,500 respondents and found some interesting differences among ethnic, age and gender groups.
Technology
For example, 52% agree that technology and social media have a negative impact on mental health, but when broken out by race, 61% of Whites felt technology had a negative effect, and only 48% of Hispanics thought it did.
While technology has helped us keep in touch with friends and family in faraway places, it appears to have degraded our ability to connect in person. Staying connected online is a double-edged sword since the same news feed that brings us pictures of the grandkids and fluffy kittens also feeds us news about the wars in Israel and Ukraine, the dysfunction in Washington, the latest mass shooting and the climate crisis.
Hispanics may have a built-in defense against the isolation technology breeds, owing to their large, multigenerational households, strong social support systems, and tendency to use social media to stay connected with relatives abroad.
Age and Gender
When asked how individuals rate their mental health, men rate it higher than women by 11 percentage points, and Baby Boomers rank it highest at 83%, saying it’s good or excellent vs. 57% of Gen Z saying the same.
Gen Z spends the most amount of time on social media, so the notion that social media negatively affects mental health appears to be correlated. Unfortunately, Gen Z is also the generation that’s least comfortable discussing mental health concerns with healthcare professionals. Only 40% of them state they’re comfortable discussing their issues with a professional compared to 60% of Millennials and 65% of Boomers.
Race Affects Attitudes
As seen in previous research conducted by ThinkNow, Asian Americans lag other groups when it comes to awareness of mental health issues. Twenty-four percent of Asian Americans believe that having a mental health issue is a sign of weakness compared to the 16% average for all groups. Asians are also considerably less likely to be aware of mental health services in their communities (42% vs. 55%) and most likely to seek out information on social media (51% vs. 35%).
AI Trends in Creative Operations 2024 by Artwork Flow.pdfmarketingartwork
This article is all about what AI trends will emerge in the field of creative operations in 2024. All the marketers and brand builders should be aware of these trends for their further use and save themselves some time!
A report by thenetworkone and Kurio.
The contributing experts and agencies are (in an alphabetical order): Sylwia Rytel, Social Media Supervisor, 180heartbeats + JUNG v MATT (PL), Sharlene Jenner, Vice President - Director of Engagement Strategy, Abelson Taylor (USA), Alex Casanovas, Digital Director, Atrevia (ES), Dora Beilin, Senior Social Strategist, Barrett Hoffher (USA), Min Seo, Campaign Director, Brand New Agency (KR), Deshé M. Gully, Associate Strategist, Day One Agency (USA), Francesca Trevisan, Strategist, Different (IT), Trevor Crossman, CX and Digital Transformation Director; Olivia Hussey, Strategic Planner; Simi Srinarula, Social Media Manager, The Hallway (AUS), James Hebbert, Managing Director, Hylink (CN / UK), Mundy Álvarez, Planning Director; Pedro Rojas, Social Media Manager; Pancho González, CCO, Inbrax (CH), Oana Oprea, Head of Digital Planning, Jam Session Agency (RO), Amy Bottrill, Social Account Director, Launch (UK), Gaby Arriaga, Founder, Leonardo1452 (MX), Shantesh S Row, Creative Director, Liwa (UAE), Rajesh Mehta, Chief Strategy Officer; Dhruv Gaur, Digital Planning Lead; Leonie Mergulhao, Account Supervisor - Social Media & PR, Medulla (IN), Aurelija Plioplytė, Head of Digital & Social, Not Perfect (LI), Daiana Khaidargaliyeva, Account Manager, Osaka Labs (UK / USA), Stefanie Söhnchen, Vice President Digital, PIABO Communications (DE), Elisabeth Winiartati, Managing Consultant, Head of Global Integrated Communications; Lydia Aprina, Account Manager, Integrated Marketing and Communications; Nita Prabowo, Account Manager, Integrated Marketing and Communications; Okhi, Web Developer, PNTR Group (ID), Kei Obusan, Insights Director; Daffi Ranandi, Insights Manager, Radarr (SG), Gautam Reghunath, Co-founder & CEO, Talented (IN), Donagh Humphreys, Head of Social and Digital Innovation, THINKHOUSE (IRE), Sarah Yim, Strategy Director, Zulu Alpha Kilo (CA).
Trends In Paid Search: Navigating The Digital Landscape In 2024Search Engine Journal
The search marketing landscape is evolving rapidly with new technologies, and professionals, like you, rely on innovative paid search strategies to meet changing demands.
It’s important that you’re ready to implement new strategies in 2024.
Check this out and learn the top trends in paid search advertising that are expected to gain traction, so you can drive higher ROI more efficiently in 2024.
You’ll learn:
- The latest trends in AI and automation, and what this means for an evolving paid search ecosystem.
- New developments in privacy and data regulation.
- Emerging ad formats that are expected to make an impact next year.
Watch Sreekant Lanka from iQuanti and Irina Klein from OneMain Financial as they dive into the future of paid search and explore the trends, strategies, and technologies that will shape the search marketing landscape.
If you’re looking to assess your paid search strategy and design an industry-aligned plan for 2024, then this webinar is for you.
5 Public speaking tips from TED - Visualized summarySpeakerHub
From their humble beginnings in 1984, TED has grown into the world’s most powerful amplifier for speakers and thought-leaders to share their ideas. They have over 2,400 filmed talks (not including the 30,000+ TEDx videos) freely available online, and have hosted over 17,500 events around the world.
With over one billion views in a year, it’s no wonder that so many speakers are looking to TED for ideas on how to share their message more effectively.
The article “5 Public-Speaking Tips TED Gives Its Speakers”, by Carmine Gallo for Forbes, gives speakers five practical ways to connect with their audience, and effectively share their ideas on stage.
Whether you are gearing up to get on a TED stage yourself, or just want to master the skills that so many of their speakers possess, these tips and quotes from Chris Anderson, the TED Talks Curator, will encourage you to make the most impactful impression on your audience.
See the full article and more summaries like this on SpeakerHub here: https://speakerhub.com/blog/5-presentation-tips-ted-gives-its-speakers
See the original article on Forbes here:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2016/05/06/5-public-speaking-tips-ted-gives-its-speakers/&refURL=&referrer=#5c07a8221d9b
ChatGPT and the Future of Work - Clark Boyd Clark Boyd
Everyone is in agreement that ChatGPT (and other generative AI tools) will shape the future of work. Yet there is little consensus on exactly how, when, and to what extent this technology will change our world.
Businesses that extract maximum value from ChatGPT will use it as a collaborative tool for everything from brainstorming to technical maintenance.
For individuals, now is the time to pinpoint the skills the future professional will need to thrive in the AI age.
Check out this presentation to understand what ChatGPT is, how it will shape the future of work, and how you can prepare to take advantage.
A brief introduction to DataScience with explaining of the concepts, algorithms, machine learning, supervised and unsupervised learning, clustering, statistics, data preprocessing, real-world applications etc.
It's part of a Data Science Corner Campaign where I will be discussing the fundamentals of DataScience, AIML, Statistics etc.
Time Management & Productivity - Best PracticesVit Horky
Here's my presentation on by proven best practices how to manage your work time effectively and how to improve your productivity. It includes practical tips and how to use tools such as Slack, Google Apps, Hubspot, Google Calendar, Gmail and others.
The six step guide to practical project managementMindGenius
The six step guide to practical project management
If you think managing projects is too difficult, think again.
We’ve stripped back project management processes to the
basics – to make it quicker and easier, without sacrificing
the vital ingredients for success.
“If you’re looking for some real-world guidance, then The Six Step Guide to Practical Project Management will help.”
Dr Andrew Makar, Tactical Project Management
About 20 years ago I was an anthropologist / archaeologist and now I work in UX. I love trying to understand the intersection between the two disciplines and try to find ways to connect them. This talk is about Neuroanthropology and how it might help us as UX’ers.
I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but I feel like the world is getting more selfish. People seem more individualistic and seem to care less about each other.
But as a society all the indicators suggest we are actually becoming less “actively social” in the physical world and I think this is beginning to show in the way we treat and interact with each other.
it is weird, because for hundreds of thousands of years humans have relied on each other and rich interplay of culture, their minds and the environment to survive. We hunted together, built cities together, and the multiplying effect of people working together in large organisations is testament to the fact that humans are social animals and we work better in groups.
So why is it happening?
Some people would like to blame the baby boomers, some the undefined youth, others Kim Kardasihan, and her friends
Well like all good archaeologists and anthropologists I’d like to start with a bit of context setting and history
So let’s go back to the 1980’s. (Whoa who’s that good looking dude?)
HCI, Usability and UX as we practice them today all have their roots back in the 1970’s and 1980’s (yes – some may disagree – but let me construct an argument fer gawd’s sake).
As computers moved out of the “computer departments” into people’s worklife and eventually their homes. With this shift the need for understanding the human elements of the computer system fell to people like us.
And computing has grown, this year we will reach 3 billion people connected to the internet and sales of computers and devices containing computers surpassing a million a day.
But one of the interesting things about the way we work is that we still cling tightly to the roots of our founding disciplines, psychology and human factors and the thought processes and theory of the 1970’s and 1980’s.
30 years have past and our understanding of humans and the ways of being human in the world have progressed a long way since the 1970’s-1980’s and it would be remiss of us to not bring this new knowledge to bear on the work we do and the impact we have on the world around us.
But where did we start?
Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s we thought an adult human brain was pretty immutable that it didn’t change. That we had a series of basic processes that took inputs from the world, processed them and then spat out fairly similar results. We pretty much thought the insides of all people’s heads were the same and we all worked the same way. The brain was a sausage factory if you will.
Why did we think that the insides of people’s head were all the same? Well we didn’t have some of the amazing technology like fMRI which allows us to peer inside people’s brains we have now.
But scientists like to reduce confounding factors, and so we also did most of our studies on the brains of individuals rather than groups of people. So the subject of brain science and the founding of our discipline is based on studies of individuals.
So what’s changed in brain science in the past 30 years?
One of the most important discoveries over the past 30 years has been the idea that the brain isn’t immutable after adolescence. And that it can change dramatically over the course of one’s life.
We have found that the brain can re-route around damage, that areas that are less used get re-tasked to new jobs etc.
This idea has been called neuroplasticity and essentially means that our brains continue to change and adapt throughout our life, our brains continue to wire and rewire themselves throughout our lives.
We have learnt a lot from Neuroscience and the way the brain works and responds to things at a physical level – however most modern neuroscience occurs in one of these – an MRI
Has anyone had an MRI?
Well imagine then while having one of those done, in this big humming magnet you were tested on all sorts of stuff, from having an orgasm (really?) to choosing between different brands of toothpaste.
As you can imagine these machines are large and a little unwieldy Not something your would typically take on a design research field trip.
And as you can see it’s probably pretty tough to get more than one person into these things at a time, though no doubt someone has tried at a Christmas party somewhere.
So how do we resolve this issue that even modern neuroscience is still looking at individual subjects in a laboratory setting?
Lucky for us there has been a series of parallel developments in social sciences in areas like Neuroanthropology.
Neuro anthropology really seeks to understand the connection between the human brain, the environment and culture in “natural settings” – brains in the wild as it were.
What is Neuroanthropology? Neuroanthropology looks at the overlaps between three different elements:
The embodied mind – which is not only the brain, but the brain and body connection – for those of you who don’t know we have more than 5 senses [somewhere between 14-20] sight, taste, touch, pressure, itch, thermoception, sound, smell, proprioception, tension, Pain, Equilibrioception, Stretch, Chemorecptors, Thirst, Hunger, Magnetoception, time. In neuroanthropology the mind is connected to the rest of the body and brain through the extended nervous system. This is how we experience the world.
Culture – is the social world we grow up in, but also the social structures that we work and play in now. Culture in this case essentially an embodiment of history. It’s the way we relate to each other.
Environment – the environment, in this case the physical world, including objects and things we create. The environment is the non cultural aspect of where we live and the things we can see feel and touch through time.
In order to look at this interplay and why neuroanthropological thinking is important to us as UX designers I’ve broken the model a bit so that we can examine various interplays between different elements “in the wild as it were”.
The first is the idea that the culture you grow up in can wire your brain a little differently, and that in turn affects the world you see.
I want to take a quick look at some of the neuroscience done around independent and interdependent cultures. As this is particularly relevant to our discussion on our obsession with the individual.
The easiest way to describe the difference in these world views is to imagine this:
A parent at the dinner table is despairing that their child will not eat their food. In a culture that is “independent” the parent appeals to differences between the child and others.
“Just be thankful you aren’t living in Africa, where the kids are starving”. This statement essentially shows how different the kids life is as an independent entity.
In a more interdependent culture the poor parent might instead appeal like this:
“Just think how sad the farmer who spent a year tending to the rice, then harvesting it. Imagine how they all feel that you don’t value the hard work they put into making this food for you”. This statement plays on the connections or interdependence of people within a culture.
I personally know they are effective at getting a child to eat, though Lilly seems to react more strongly to the rice farmer story than unwell children in Africa. (not that we experiment with my daughter Lilly at my house).
When neuroscientists study the brains of people from independent and interdependent cultures they find that people from interdependent cultures brains work differently to those from independent cultures.
So your culture does rewire your brain and people from different cultures think about social things differently.
What examples do we have of your embodied brain being influenced by the environment? I think a relevant one is using the internet.
Here we can draw on the work of Gary Small from UCLA – who showed in 2008, that the brain patterns of people who had never used the internet before changed significantly after a week of using the internet (in particular the front of their brain the frontal lobe).
It has been proposed this brain change was due to increased levels of dopamine (which activate in the frontal lobe) and is essentially a reward drug for the brain that can get released when you learn something new – and the internet is somewhere where you always learn something new.
Nicholas Carr took this work and has popularised it in his book the “shallows” where he suggests that the internet is not only addictive but it also shorts circuits the way we store long term memories. He proposes (but it’s yet to be proven) that your brain on the internet doesn’t learn things deeply.
So yes, in an information rich environment your brain does change, and it changes your behaviour.
This is a more traditional space for an anthropologist to play how does culture affect environment and vice versa.
One example of our environment changing is the increase in the number of smart phones sold – think about the way people are on trains – when I did a study back in 2000 on train etiquette in Sydney my study showed that as the number of spare seats in the train shrank people who were sitting on the outer and inner seats of a triple seat would move inwards. With the advent of smart phones and the ability to ignore others more easily this shuffling in to make way for people doesn’t happen anymore. The technology (environment) and its ability to help us isolate ourselves has changed the way people interact on the train and in wider life.
The last example I want to explore is one that shows the power of considering all three of these circles together.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614.html
Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with conditions such as schizophrenia are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful.
The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition. The culture that the Americans grew up in had taught them that the voices were symptoms of a brain disease caused by genes or trauma. While in other cultures they were considered the voices of elders providing an advisory role.
Here we see a cyclical effect of the culture being accepting on not about a condition, then the environment (in this case medication) being able to treat the condition, and change the brain state, but that also adding to the stigma of people who do hear voices in the community (because it’s not a natural state)
So what have we learnt? Basically that there is a complex interplay the goes backwards and forwards between our embodied minds, our culture and the environment and that all of these things are always interacting and changing each other at different speeds and timescales.
This view of the world is certainly a long way from where we started our journey in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
As user experience practitioners we have always championed the individual in our work because alongside the best science traditions of our industry we have always worked one on one with individuals. We test one person at a time and tailor our results to their needs. We care about the individual because like brain scientists and psychologists from the 1970’s and 1980’s that’s our unit of study.
We also know that we will design for what we value, and if we value the “individual” in our minds, our culture and our environment then we will design for the individual and the cycle will reinforce itself.
But what does this more complex model of the world that neuroanthropology gives us suggest to us about the way we might be working if we were to adopt more contemporary view of our work, to move beyond the 1980’s?
We spend 30% of our awake time at work. We know that what we value influences the way we design, and we know that if we change any of the three elements, culture, embodied brain and environment we can make long term changes.
I’m not advocating brain surgery to make us better team members (or dopamine shots), but I do think we have a great deal of control over our environment and culture. And there are ways we can work together to create cultures that value interdependence, and therefore will design for more collaborative outcomes.
From a business perspective this is a good strategy because we know that a lone genius in our team can be amazing, but people who can draw on different expertise and the intelligence of many, are much more effective employees.
I’m not saying the way we work at Westpac is perfect, like most organisations we are founded on individual reward structures, bell curve assessments, KPI’s etc. but we are working to shift away from this way of working and thinking. We are trying to prove through doing (at scale), the value of collaboration, and understanding the broader social contexts in which we work.
We treat the people we work with like family and our work colleagues in digital like our tribe. Because let’s face it, not only do we probably spend more time hanging out with these guys than our actual real world kinship groups. This family nature extends to people who contract with us, who we try to involve in the interesting “team meetings” [including drinks etc.] (not the slightly more boring admin ones), and who are assigned an internal people manager for the duration of their contract.
We help each other, every week we spend time working on each other’s design problems – we even have an official once a week 2 hour design jam where we get about a weeks’ worth of work out of the whole team to resolve a particular design problem.
We work collaboratively across the business – We work with other families and tribes (the tech tribe, the PM tribe etc.) across the organisation, because we know that we aren’t the only ones who have good ideas and that collaborative design is an effective way of working. We are even getting better at doing collaborative design with our customers.
We know and love our personas. We integrate the social problem solving aspect of personas in each of our projects. [See the appendix of this presentation for info on the Wason selection task – Thanks to Carson Lewis for the tip.
We aren’t perfect, but there are things we want to do more of:
We will find new ways of working – not by using EEG’s but rather by thinking about our customers broader contexts and perhaps start doing customer research with more than one person at a time, family groups, partners, tribes?
These are some of the ways we are looking to rewiring each other at work to bring us closer to interdependent working relationships, we are still at the beginning of this journey but I do think it will be as transformational for us because ultimately we want to care about each other and the world around us as much, if not more than Lilly cares about the farmers producing her rice.
And it all comes back to this. We are connected. You, Me, Eveyone we design for. We as UXer’s need to think beyond the tasks we want people to get done.
Neuroanthropology has shown us that the things we make and put into the environment not only affect our culture, but our brains. And if we design for individuals then we will be designing for selfishness.
I think we as a community need to introduce new ways of working, collaborative design is a start, but really being considerate about the long term impacts of what we create now means a shift away from our roots of the 1980’s, the safe world of absolutes and simple situations.
RIGHT NOW – we have a chance to stop and think about how we might begin designing for “us” as a connected whole.
This thought experiment was pointed out to me by Carson Lewis and is called the Wason Selection task.
The Wason Selection test is this:
I put 4 cards on the table and then ask you this question.
From the cards above – which cards do you have to turn over to “test the idea that if a card shows and even number on one face then its opposite face is red?
The cards on the left have colours on the backs, the cards on the right have numbers on their backs.
Does everyone think they know the answer?
Now let me pose it in a different way, with a social twist – If the rule is “Which cards do you have to turn over to test if someone is under the age of 18 is drinking illegally”
The ages on the left have drinks on the back and the cards on the right have ages?
In most cases people find the answer to this socially construed problem a little easier than the first abstract problem…
The answer is of course the 13 and Beer cards – or in the first case 8 and Blue.
The same cards – but when couched in social terms the answer seems obvious.
That’s because our brains are wired socially. Because we grow up solving problems like these (in this case “is someone cheating”) in social settings.
That’s why in our work we use things like scenarios, and personas. We use these to not only get into our customers shoes, but to also set a more social context to the problems we are solving for people. Things like personas allow us to use our social brains to solve problems for others.
