 Thank you. So good morning. That was an amazing introduction. So today I'm not going to be talking about human beings, I'm going to be talking about building for their stress cases. But this kind of all feeds into a lot of the work I do and a lot of the feelings that I kind of want to deal with in the experiences that I design. We all too often say, edge case. But that's kind of dismissive. That leaves us room for saying, it doesn't matter, it's just an edge case. And stress is bad. Nobody wants to be in a situation of stress, in that situation of panic. And nobody wants to cause anyone else to have that same feeling. And what I'd like to talk about today is how we can avoid that. I'd like to be clear from the start. I don't think that anyone has the intention of causing someone's stress or causing that within the experience. It's often this blinkered bubble of creating products that leaves us there. And I really feel that that needs to change. We also don't want to think about how we create stress. Naturally, the human nature is to feel content and happy. We don't want to kind of dwell on these things. But we have to. The world, as much as I don't want to kind of ruin your Sunday morning, the world isn't all sparkles and happiness all the time. And we have to be honest with ourselves about the experience that we create. And honesty is the best gift you can give someone when interacting with the experience that you create. I want to take a look at some of the roots of stress and really then look at the problems and some tips along the way of how we can fix this. You know this feeling. When you're trying to connect and you get loading, loading, loading. You can feel it, right? Like in this room, you can feel just seeing this tiny animation. It's very interesting searching for loading graphics and then getting them come up and getting a whole wall of this feeling. That's a stress case. Performance is not getting the experience you want, you need at the point that you want, you need this. That same stress goes into any experience that doesn't mean that need. It's a need gap, that feeling. Another stress cause is not using a desktop when something feels like it's an experience designed perfectly for someone sat in front of a high powered desktop. And we all know that feeling, right? At this big site squished into this tiny little experience that you're trying to do. Maybe buttons don't work. This is actually a great link to find and more resources. But this graphic to me describes exactly the experience I have. A tiny space that means you can't even interact with it. We create all too often for a bubble, sparkling, perfect, illusionary world. We don't do this. We don't assume that people will be interrupted during their activities. But that's more the normal case of things. People don't get to interact in this perfect. We don't design for the interruptions. And we really should be. Time is a huge part of this. If you have to do something in a certain time, that creates a hurdle, that enhances that feeling and magnifies it. And that these kind of experiences well up inside and leave you screaming because you're having that experience. You're not functioning. You're not thinking. We need to remember those feelings. We need to remember what these graphics do to us. And then we can use those as fuel to stop creating experiences that cause those types of stresses. Being unable to use an experience also causes stress. We can't and we shouldn't design for ourselves all the time. I use the phrase of thinking outside our head space and that's incredibly true. We exist inside our body, inside our own little bubble world and we need to step outside of that. This quote to me resonates so, so very much. There are 6.4 billion people who are temporarily able-bodied. We have to stop this kind of difference thinking, this thinking that someone is other and begin to realize everybody deserves an equal experience that works for them when they want it and when they need it. So when talking about stress cases, often people rightly think of accessibility and performance alone. And that's crucial. But I'd like to also think of some other situations and to dive into those today. And a lot of those are related so you can't really separate things so much, but I'm just going to kind of do that a tiny little bit here. What about overly cute messages? A cute publishing flow or something kind of like that celebrates something, but you're actually writing about a loved one's passing. Is this really a good time to see balloons and a celebration of good job you wrote a post? Probably not, right? Yeah, you post to something awesome when you think about it in a context of not celebrating or when if you think about it in a context of something that maybe isn't awesome, doesn't feel so great, right? Eric Meyer, and this is the originator as I showed in the first quote of this idea of thinking about building for these stress cases. He was faced with a Facebook interview showing him a smiling picture of his daughter who had passed away that year. It rightly felt wrong. This was unkind to remind him so forcefully. This was a case of not wording for the worst case. The stress case wasn't even on the radar. And I found this a few days ago. Google has a Discover This Day feature and it's not opt-in. It just showed me these pictures of Discover The Day. I mean, this wasn't a bad day for me, but imagine if it was. That moment you go to your Google page, it's there, on, and it's showing you those photos. Imagine this is something you didn't want to be reminded of. With all the syncing and automation and things just uploading to the cloud, this could easily happen with somebody. Life happens. And we really need to design as if life does happen to everybody and not as if we live in a utopian bubble where life never happens and it's a storybook and everything is amazing. Everything is lovely. Life should be celebrated in all levels, but we should experience life to all levels in the designs we create. This becomes more and more important with AI and machine learning. We are trusting in machines that we need to really teach humanity to. Situational stress is also important. This goes beyond that mobile access issue, but it also is kind of that as well. But to a situation, maybe you're rushed or maybe you're in a situation where you have an extreme weather condition, something that someone else hasn't necessarily thought about because they haven't experienced it. And what about Google Glasses? Maybe for those that want to use this, this is exciting. Situational stress can also be in how something is used in a situation it's used as well. I love this quote. No one could understand how you would want to have that thing on your face in the normal way of social interaction. But when it's been created, it might seem like a great idea. Someone probably says, yeah, that's great. We want this because their situation is okay for it. But nobody really thought about someone walking around with Google Glasses on their face into a room or into normal situations and that people wouldn't want that. Financial stress, again, this is related, but we need to be respectful that not everyone lives in the same place with the same access to everything or the same situation. It's that experience getting outside of our headspace. And there are many, many ways that people experience differently and that cause these stresses. So that was some stress cases. I'm now going to look at why we really want to do this and why inclusive design is good business because, quite honestly, it is. This is quite a long quote, but I'm going to read it because I think it's important. If our goal is to expand our market size, commonly called total addressable market, in business parlance as to meaning the demographic range of your product or services, then the way to grow the time is to incorporate diversity into the content and product team. Just on a foundational level, it makes good business sense if we're going to create products for everybody, we should be having this diversity. Does anyone here know about the Oxo product range? Okay, so this is an example of good business. They made this product to just be more accessible from the handles. And turns out it's better for everybody. It's not just better for people that needed to have it, it's just better for everybody. And it's led to commercial success. This design is good business. It was something that just happens to work better for a lot of people. And this quite often happens when you have this more inclusive, and you build for those stress cases and you include everybody. It's quite by Rogers, to me really put some context into why assumptions we make about age are something we really need to shift from. We don't want people to feel this way. We don't want people to presume or consider themselves technology dumpsters. That's just not what we should be creating for. Presuming someone's capacity, just based on not understanding, that doesn't feel right. That feels like we can do a little bit better than that when we create products. I'd like to share a story from Yvonne's article that is really worth sharing. She writes that a few months ago her boyfriend convinced her to use Snapchat. They were taking goofy pictures, but the app wouldn't map her face. They tried a few things. They changed the position, they changed lighting, nothing worked. She began to get that flush of heat and a feeling in her stomach that she had experienced growing up in Texas where she had actually received negative messages about her dark skin. She was 20 years later and in her words she was too black for Snapchat. That's an experience that didn't look at the stress cases. It didn't look outside that bubble. It didn't look at all that it is to be human. The stories of stress really should be focal points and spread throughout everybody creating the product. They need to be cautionary tales and they need to be used as to warn of those rocks of creation and little points. We need to be careful and I want to add a note here. We shouldn't use them as fetishes. We shouldn't hold them up and not be sensitive to how you tell them. There needs to be a compassion and that word again, respect for how you tell these stories and those that you're telling the story of. Sarah again here builds on this idea of crisis does not have to be. I've listed some pretty strong cases for stress but crisis can be something as small as someone rushing through the airport and we need to consider this. Why do products fail? There's lots of reasons and we would be here a while trying to list all the reasons why products fail. In the context of stress cases I would like to suggest a few reasons why this happens. The first of these is quite frankly having no clue who you're creating for. How can you create something when you have no idea who you're actually making this for? It sounds simple to say that. It sounds like flippant, right? But it's easily the biggest issue. When I say no, I mean really no. Have those stories, know that the stress is and really have that solution for solving that the product is doing. Don't just create something for the sake of creating, create it for a solution. This phrase to me is something that I'm being reminded of and I absolutely adore this that Kate came up with. What would a human do? We need to include humanity at every step and become aware of everything that you are doing. Awareness and respect are two words I want you to take away. It's really a great mantra to live through. As you read aloud she says, pretend you are talking to a real person and ask yourself, would I say this to someone in real life? Sometimes our writing makes a sound sturdier or colder than what you'd like. One of my like top issues with interfaces is the word submit because of this. Because you would not say that to another thing. I mean I hope you would not say that to another human being. It's about, we're talking about in design a lot of conversational UI and it's about just respectful conversational UI, human conversational UI. Nobody needs any more products. I hate to break this to you. Created for a select few that can create. That's not needed in the world. There's far too much of it already. Bubble thinking leads us to wrong conclusions and if you create an isolation, how can you create for everyone? This is what you get when you search for a started office in Google. That's pretty similar, right? I mean they're probably okay to be a this is not outside the bubble. This is what products are created in and this is in isolation. We need to remove from that. And moving on from that we need to remove from the same people creating because that's incredibly important. And this is tricky. I know this isn't a problem that is solved straight away and just by saying it doesn't mean it's solved. But we really need to represent outside that bubble with those that have the access and the ability to make these products and it have that influence. But maybe you can use tiny little bit with research but that's really not doing that. You need people involved who are creating this actual product. This is what you get when you search for a developer. You scrolled a little bit, you actually got a woman. And it's still happening and it's changing and it's slowly changing but we need to be aware of this when we are creating. We need to be aware of our privilege in being able to do what we do. Having no clear feedback channels is the easiest thing you can solve in a product. And it's a big thing that I see all too often as a problem. It's that low hanging listening fruit. If people have feedback let them have a way of doing it. If you don't have a clear feedback channel how can someone tell you their experience in using the product? How can you make that experience better for everybody? It's like a closed door. You're not engaging. You're not having a conversation with the people that are interacting. All too often the experience is left to the designer. Experiences I would argue very loudly and strongly is everybody's responsibility. Plain and simple. Experience I hope we've got past has been seen as that pixel pushing or the polish you do at the last bit. Maybe do a bit of research a little bit at the beginning. Maybe really do some user testing at the end. So even called usability testing user testing. This is everyone's responsibility and all too often the human contact and that testing and that interactions and that research is left to the designers and that's how we get these fast disconnected bubble creating teams. Those that are making the product aren't experiencing so they can't take that into the product. And yes designers will often in the small companies take the brunt of this. But including other roles is a baseline here and should be something that is happening. Little by little that that design infusion spreads and it can rapidly change a product's direction. Now we're moving on to something that's a little bit of a hard point because having empathy is great and doing exercises to gain it is really admirable. But when it's not turned into action it's just theatre. You're just doing it to check a box and that's when it can even become a burden and a negative force. You shouldn't be doing a checkbox with your connecting and with your learning about experience. Nobody likes to go through empathy theatre to have their time wasted and that's both sides. People will know if they're not going to be listening to and the action is not going to be taken. And people will know if they're just doing this because someone decided that they had to have empathy for people that were using their product. And it's medicine that people don't want because of that. Be sure your product also is ready to be tested. That word respect have respect at all levels. Don't present something that obviously has broken issues that people are going to fall into because they're not going to progress that way and they're not going to be able to give you good feedback. I will note a little bit of a warning of going too far here. There's kind of these three levels and I think it's worth saying. The first is not empathizing and this is where someone is not feeling unity with the other or with someone that's not in their headspace. I prefer headspace to other. And then you have empathizing. Empathizing is when someone feels unity with someone else. And then we have overemphasizing and this is almost a point where you can't progress and you can't do anything because all you're having is feels. It's kind of there's a difference between empathy and sympathy and you don't want to move into that sympathy kind of realm. When someone confuses themselves with that person, the lines they take on all the feels too much they just really can't be productive then. You have this balance of empathy and really have that sensitivity to know when something's going too far there. The burden of usability testing and stress case exposure can often be felt in the place you want to release burden and that's where we have empathy pain and this is a big problem that can be seen, particularly when a company or a product is just starting to explore this. And the people at the heart of doing this really are the ones that kind of experiences too much. It may result in, as a result of doing all of this, more bug reports, more changes, more feedback to process and filter, you need to have in place a solid way to really filter that. Otherwise you're about to use up your most valuable resource and force the drive in creating your product. It needs to be aware of tainting and making that heart of your product into bleakness and just see everything is just not worth continuing to make this product or not worth to doing what you were trying to do in the first place. You need to be conscious and really let them feel enough but not too much that they spiral into despair. Desperate doesn't create a product that anyone wants. Narrow testing is also a problem. You need to have a broad and really comprehensive testing plan because that's key to build gradually and be aware again of that word respect and not wasting someone's time. I shared some problems. I'd like to really kind of build on that with some very exact tips of things that you can take back to things you are creating. Take it slowly. Truly you aren't going to fix all your problems in a day or your compassion problems or your stress cases. They're not going to be fixed in one day. It takes time to truly listen and act on your stress cases. Be patient but move forward. Don't fool yourself it's going to be an instant process but put one first step with slowly little by little and you're going to get there. A longer term goal should be create a culture of compassion. This has the added benefit of being a really productive atmosphere that everybody wants to work in and that's not bad for business either. This is a culture where everyone feels the stress cases just enough. Where everyone has the easing of those at the heart of every decision in the product. Those simple things you can do to foster this culture that I'd like to suggest. The first of these is exposure hours and this is often a really simple fix. Ensure that everyone creating has some exposure hours to the customers, the people that are going to interact and then you actually be having that experience. This can range from one-on-one sessions through to support time and even just responding to reviews if you have a plugin or you have an app. My best advice here is don't fix stick to one format because then you assume that one person will respond better to that format. Some people respond better to riddles and people respond better to voice and have that have that flexibility there. And think about the future customers you want and think about exposure hours to those people as well. Never one is empathy challenges. An empathy challenge is where a certain task is done to feel what that experience is like for that customer. For example no bandwidth testing or even using a mobile only device for a certain amount of time a day. I'd note here the caution again of filtering and doing theatre and that can happen with this kind of empathy challenges. If you have a company of 100 people don't get them all to do an empathy challenge that results in hundreds of bugs or days worth of videos to process when you're a week away from shipping. That's probably not going to have a good effect on everybody. Use sense, gain respect, but also use your kind of common sense. The goal is to gain empathy and that's something nobody gains when drowning in work and unable to process everything. Testing should be for everybody and it also should be experienced by everyone. I didn't care what role someone has in the company. They really should be experiencing what the product is like, the feedback that you're getting. All those should be exposed and the kind of small end of this is usability testing and it kind of goes from there. This is the baseline exposure. You shouldn't settle on this but you should just do this and then build up from that, right? Good is listening. Listening is free and it's a skill so many seem to ignore. This goes back to creating the bubble because again how can you truly create for everyone when you don't listen? Sounds simple to say but it's something that's often happens within products. These kind of bits about listening that I'm going to share now are really the minimum that you need for the streams of listening. You should also add more into this. Someone should be monitoring the social streams, monitoring all the listening streams because these are free feedback. This is an amazing resource and a treasure. Support. If you are able to then I strongly advise embedding support staff into product teams. It's incredible the impact that this can actually have. If it isn't possible ensure they are being heard as the voice of customers have hangouts, regular town halls with them. These are the people who are getting that exposure and can bring that exposure back. They can be a filter. It can be that contact and also get those working on the product to have exposure to support going back again to not creating in isolation. Testing again but not just you. This is a point because beyond this being for everyone it should be done at stages of the product. Before you create, test in the same market. See why things work. See why people are excited about the way that Bob's whatever does this and all these different ways. Continue to do that as things change and know your market is essential to revisit. Don't go do that kind of market research at the beginning and find out what's in benchmarking and then you go right into the product and then maybe you've got like months or a year development phase and then you never have contact. You're going to be completely out of the loop that way. Testing without showing the results is pretty pointless as well. Compile it and have ability to digest and turn those actions. Ensure you close that loop with testing and closing the loop is turning it into actions. Don't just test again. This is something I mentioned earlier but I'm going to say again for importance. Don't test an unfinished flow because of course you're going to get the bug that you know that exists because that bug exists. Fix it. If you do a couple of tests and there's people keep on stumbling on the same issue, fix that issue. Be conscious of the experience and whilst you aren't creating a false experience don't send users into a situation that they're just going to report they had a problem with. And don't fake being a certain type of customer. If you can and you need a certain stress case to experience the product go and get that certain person to experience that product. Don't try and fake that you are them. Only to imagine a customer. She's called Mary and she can't ever get through sign-up. She's constantly contacting support. No matter what you do they can't get through sign-up. Nobody can work out how Mary will find every single possible hitch and flow and ensure people have experienced a customer like this. They seem to be amazing bugfinders. Mary is more valuable than your product. They are a treasure. She should be someone that you reach out to. Have a pool of these stress cases. These amazing bug-finding people, these people that seem to know, no matter what, always hit these problems or hit these issues. Make them part of your process embrace them. And if you can't do that then really try and learn from them. If they can't come into the product, learn from them. Write their behaviour flow as something that you check. Learn. We all have stress cases. A lot of people reacted when I put the loader up on the screen. We can often tap into these and feel what a customer is truly feeling. When you think about that time that we connect, that loader, we don't want to think about it but it's there. And if we can feel that and remember that and store it, we can then withdraw it from our kind of emotional bank later. It can be your experience around as a balloon that you can pull down or you can experience later when you really need to, when you're creating a product. There should be this product loop. This is a really simple loop. There's incredibly complex loops but the simplest one is test, iterate, repeat. Go around. Really simply. Do small loops. Often big product cycles are done. Do tiny little loops and just do this. Test, iterate, repeat round. And increase their size maybe as you allow for development and you're allowed for complexity. And once released, stay in this loop. Looping like this checks. It keeps the bubble from surrounding you, from you listening to maybe only a few section of people that are having an experience and really check your loop. Don't assume it's a loop. Don't assume that you're flowing. Don't assume because nobody's told you that there isn't a problem of your experience. Journey Maps is one tool that I recommend if someone says what's the one tool and that's Journey Mapping. I would also say story arts kind of comes with this as well but Journey Mapping is like the baseline because they have so many benefits beyond being visual. You always work better as humans with visuals. That's just the way that we work but also this identifies gaps and this is in a format that everyone who's working on your product will get. Remember that diversity of your product? Make sure you redo and iterate on maps though. Don't do it once and forget it. Nothing should be where it comes to a user journey that you've said and forget it. This should be revisited. This should be so you should have several user journeys and you should really can concentrate on doing these Journey Maps. Empathy isn't sympathy. Empathizing doesn't by itself create products. You need action. By embracing the stress cases you create just like also a better product for everybody. Building for the stress cases is good business practice. Creating a culture of compassion at every level of your product. When you build products and when you embrace the stress cases you create products that are better for everyone and that's just good business. Thank you.