 Hi, I'm Frances Uljana. This is the service design show and this is episode 195. Hey there brave change agent. Welcome back again to the service design show. The show where we invite the brightest minds in our field and uncover what's truly needed to design great services that resonate with people, push our businesses forward and honor our planet. I'm your host Marc Fontaine. Our guest today, Frances Uljana, needed to make a drastic course correction in her career. According to outside standards, Uljana was off to a flying start. She was being recognized for her achievements and won multiple awards in the process. But somewhere along the journey, Uljana learned the hard way that it's easy to get stuck in a job that fits your skillset, but where your heart isn't. A place where it's hard to motivate yourself to get up in the morning because you don't feel like you're making a meaningful difference to the people around you. Uljana managed to get unstuck and is in a much better place today. She's able to align the work that she does with her purpose in life. It's not being an easy path, but as you'll hear, it's absolutely worth it because the happier and healthier we are, the better we can serve the people around us. So I invited Uljana on the show to share with us what the most important steps are you can take to start working closer from your purpose, how you can make conscious career development a priority, even when your schedule is already filled up to the max and why we as service exam professionals are in the perfect spot to investigate our own needs. I encourage you to listen closely to the story Uljana shares about a single comment a co-worker made on her first day of her last job that had a huge influence on her journey as a designer. So join me for this inspiring conversation with Uljana and I'll get you back at the end for the conversation for the closing reflections. Let the show begin. Welcome to the show, Frances. Hi Mark, thank you for having me. My pleasure. I'm really excited about the things we're going to chat about today. I think quite a lot of personal stories, but let's not jump to conclusions. Frances, for the people who haven't looked you up on LinkedIn, could you give us a brief introduction of what you do these days? Yeah, these days I work as the principal manager of design operations at an organization called Coforma and our main clientele is the government, the US government. So we work for veterans administration, we work for health and human services essentially to make the services that the government offers the people as easy to use, as intuitive as possible. And my job is to serve all of the designers and researchers in making sure that their job is as easy to do as possible. So at least on our side, the tools and resources that they have can empower them to do their best work. Nice. DesignOps is a space on which I'm very interested in. We are all who are listening to the service design show service design. The other question that I always ask is, do you recall the moment that you sort of first heard about the term? Yes, so I heard about the term when I started working as an experience director. So I started off in the industry 2001 as a traditional design. About 2018, I started working for a company that focused on enterprise software, design, consulting, and actually like delivery as well. And service design was the type of project everybody wanted to work on. And I had kind of the luck as somebody coming into UX and leading UX to get assigned a bunch of those projects. And so, or at least I considered them service design projects because we were doing essentially enterprise software design. And so that is the back end of every company, every business. And so making sure that the employees have the best ways to do their work. And so that's where I heard about the term. But I feel like in some capacities, I was doing it as a manager or as a leader in organizations and the design organization I was in. Nice. Thanks for sharing. Before we jump into the meat of our conversation, and we have a quick, well, I hope it's going to be quick, a lightning round. I have five questions for you, five sentences. And I'm going to invite you to finish. They might be challenging, they might be easy, but just try to go share the first thing that comes to your mind. All right. If I could meet a one historic figure, I would like to meet. Oh, easy. Jack Kerouac. So he's a beat writer. And just really when you talk about people that are able to just express in words very well anything. He's a huge influence on me growing up. Noted. And we'll add a link in the show notes to that. Second, next one is the best part of my day is when? Oh, the best part of my day. It doesn't happen all the time, but the best part of my day is whenever, and this is, this is 100% true is whenever I get a note that I made somebody's job easier. That's always the best part of my day. So yeah. Next one. A lesson that I've learned the hard way is? Going, actually getting into design ops and kind of changing careers from being, you know, a traditional like generalists being able to be somebody that could whip a logo up really quick, somebody who could help with the journey map or help to do some research. The hardest thing for me to learn was when you switch to design operations, your job isn't to do the job anymore. It's to facilitate the job. And so I think remembering that, you know, everybody has their own ways of working and in design operations, service design too, you're discovering how other people do things. And so it was really not hard in a, it was just a brand new way of thinking, you know, sometimes designers are in there to solve the problem. And like, whenever you transition to a role like design ops, you're not there to solve the problem. You're there to find out what the main problem is, and then support people in being able to solve the problem on their own. Because you can't be there all the time. So you're supposed to be putting the things in the place for people to solve the problems when they come about. So you're just trying to find out the roots so you can't do the job. So many questions already, but I'll hold on for a moment. We are at number four. And this is my greatest fear is death. Oh gosh, my greatest fear is that I won't affect change, I guess. All right, fifth and final one. And then you've made it over the finish line. Our world needs more purpose. Thank you for that segue into the next question. That was the lightning round. Thanks, Francis. So you and correct me if I'm wrong, you have a strong vision and believe that if we want to find fulfillment and joy in the things we do, we have to do work outside of the place where we think we should be doing our work. Is that correct? And can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, I think when we introduce ourselves to people, when we meet somebody and especially if it's like an industry meeting, we usually introduce ourselves with what we do. And this is my role. This is the place to work at. I think I did that earlier, but we don't often introduce ourselves by why we do it. And so I think that's where the real meat of the way that the world works really should be. We have a lot of people who feel like they're serving other people's purpose and that's just not really a way to sustain great outputs in a single person. And so I think whenever we look outside of ourselves and say, this is the reason why I do the things that I do, it helps us to really mature what it is that we do so that we can best serve other people. I don't know if that makes sense. We'll unpack this in every bit. So purpose and serving others. I'm, could you share with us how did you, how did this topic get on your radar? What was the journey that led you to this way of thinking doing being? Yeah, so whenever I was actually, so when I grew up in this, I grew up in the States and I have a sister who's like five years older than me. And we came over, we immigrated from the Philippines into Texas of all places. And my sister was like, my parents can't pay for college, so we're going to have to do a lot of service. But my mom was already doing a lot of volunteer work anyway. So I felt like that was just something that you did, that everybody volunteered somehow and my sister volunteered a lot because she was trying to get the scholarship. And so I've always had this kind of service-oriented mindset. I just thought that's how people did things. And so I've always kind of been in that the things that we do aren't really here just for us, right? And so I also, on the sidetrack as I was growing up, I really loved art. I really loved writing. I really loved music. And so there were, there are a couple of things that I read and a couple of inspirational pieces that led me to feel like there's something that we have to do as human beings is you have to leave something behind to inspire somebody. And so it all just kind of just, it just came to be as this way of thinking of like, you know, the things that we do are really here to improve where we're at. And so I think that's just, it helped frame everything for me as I was growing up from like the job that I did, you know, like picking design. I grew up as a, I guess, as an artist. I felt like I was going to be an artist. And then at some point in high school I was like, you know, I don't want people to pick something that I do because it's what they are supposed to do. I wanted people to kind of choose things on their own out of out of kind of like a different way of thinking. So like I was really inspired by magazine art, kind of advertising art, and I would pull ads off of the back of magazines that I really liked. And I put them up on my wall and if they were really creative. And as a kid, as a teenager, I was like, that's, that's what I want my job to be is I want to do kind of like commercial art because it was something that somebody down the road, you know, 20 years or 10 or five years would pick something up that I did and tear it off of magazine and call it art on their own. And so when I was growing up, like early on, that was like a big deal, but it kind of grew as I've matured, where it wasn't a piece of art that I wanted to inspire somebody. It was something that I wrote or something that I said or something that I did or, you know, a service that I put in the place, right, like that that ended up affecting somebody positively, regardless of like time and space. So I don't know if that makes sense. Yes. Yeah, it does. It does. And and so you were you had a surrounding a context where this was just almost the default behavior, right? Yeah. Yeah, you didn't it's what did you experience when you started like your professional career? How did this translate in the things that you were doing? Yeah. So, you know, I think when I started my professional career, I started in, you know, traditional graphic design. We did websites, we did posters and the company that I worked at, we we had a really, we had a really good relationship with, you know, the community. And so I was also then really dialed into serving the design community where I started working. And so I had a lot of opportunity to work on projects that kind of touched the community a bit. So I actually was able to get some feedback. And I don't I don't think a lot of people in design, especially starting out get the positive feedback that like really just makes it like, Oh, no, I did exactly I'm doing exactly what it is that I want to do. But I am the things that I think earlier I said, the biggest joys of my day or whenever people say, you know, you made my job easier, or another another one is like, this thing that you did affected me somehow. And so, you know, we create artifacts a lot, but we don't know how those artifacts like affect other people. And so I think the question was, when did I start discovering that like, the purpose and what I was doing is right. I mean, they're like these little moments that I had very like, a couple of them very early on, and I was very lucky to do it. One, at one point, I designed a poster. And I had hired somebody probably two years into me becoming a manager for the first time. And I designed a poster as an individual contributor. And it had gone out to the full design community. And totally forgot about it as a manager, I was in sitting in my office and this person that I had hired as an as our interactive art director this back in 2000s. So he was redoing the site for our company. And he saw one of the posters that I designed. And he said, he comes into my office. And he was like, Hey, did you design this poster? And I said, Yeah, I did, you know, not a big deal. And he told me that he had he had it up in his in his apartment all through college. And so, you know, I was still young, but I was like, Oh, I feel old. But also that's that's really cool. Because one of the reasons why I became a designer, instead of doing art was I wanted somebody to take something that I did and call it art, or, or basically take something that I did and say this inspires me. And there are a couple of times, like within the first 10 years of me working, that something like that happened. And so I think I'm very lucky for, for having had that confirmation of like why I do things, you know, kind of proven very early on, I think it takes a lot of time for anybody to actually have that like actual instance right in front of them. And so I feel very lucky that that happened. But I think, you know, I'm kind of one of those. If as you listen to this, I'm very like everything in the universe is supposed to happen. And we're, you know, we're here to touch, you know, somebody, you know, across time and space and inspire them. And so for me, that was like, yeah, exactly. This is why you were doing what you're doing. So we're sitting here listening to this story. And you said you maybe have been lucky that some of these things happened along the way for you. Do you feel that there's a, can we accelerate this? Can we, can we increase the chance for serendipity? Can we like, well, we do not have clarity on our purpose at the moment. What can we do? I think one of the things, I mean, this is, this is a question that you would, you know, have clients come and basically be like, how do we, how do we touch people the way that we want, right? I think for us personally, I think we just treat ourselves like we would our clients, right? Like take a step back. This is a really perfect time of the year to do it, right? Where, where people are cold. They just need to stay inside, like do a services design project with yourself and basically investigate, you know, your canvas, right? Like why do you do the things that you do? And really hone in on it the same way that we would as we're serving our clients. This is, this is why I do what I do here with the instances where I have contact with people and where I can affect them. How does it, what are the two ways, two way communications for me to know whenever I'm doing things right and positively affecting other people? And then kind of when do I, you know, find those moments of clarity in my work? Or were, you know, when do I have those moments of clarity in just being and existing? And I think whenever you investigate yourself the same way that we would investigate and serve, you know, the organizations and the companies like that helps us really kind of ground ourselves and the decisions that we make in, you know, like a real definition of purpose, you know. You shared that applying our own methodology onto ourselves to find clarity and to reflect and to get those moments of clarity where you're seeing that you're, you're feeling that you're impacting the people around you, the communities around you. I'm curious if you could share a story where you had that experience where, and the thing that we're looking for is how do we know that this is the thing we should be pursuing? Okay. Yeah. So I actually, I actually have this, you know, I've told this story before, but it's not a story. Whenever I was growing up, I think, and I tie a lot of this, I guess, not necessarily to my upbringing, but to the experiences. And I think I feel like I've been able to experience these moments and kind of impress these moments on people because I notice them as I was, I was growing up like pretty impactfully. So when I was growing up, I found this tape on the playground. And so, I don't know, playground, this is a playground back in 19, in the 80s or 90s, right? And I found this tape and I picked it up. No one was around. So like I took it home with me and I played it. And it was De La Soul. And it was the me, myself and I, I think it was like a single, but I like basically played it over and over again. Because I was like, as a kid, you know, I think the thing that I'd listened to right before was WAM or Madonna. So it's very, you know, mainstream. And I heard De La Soul. And I remember, like just having this visceral reaction when I put it into the tape player, I was like, I've never heard anything like this before. This amazing. And really just kind of wanted more. And so my dad and I would go to the grocery store on Saturdays. And I saw, you know, De La Soul, there's like a magazine cover, picked it up in a spin magazine. Fast forward. My dad got me a spin magazine subscription for my birthday. And on the back of spin magazine, there was an absolute vodka ad. And it was a different one every month, every issue. And so I started, you know, like I said earlier, I started tearing those ads off, and I would put them up on my wall. And so like my whole wall is like a 13 year old girl was just absolute vodka ads. My dad came in and he was like, well, you don't, you don't even have access to alcohol. And I was like, it's the art that and he was like, okay, I get it. Because he was a big supporter of me, loving art. And just kind of I, I collected these ads, like, religiously. And it was to the point where friends of mine and like people's parents would be like, hey, we found these ads that you would like. And then those kind of my personality. So my whole walls were papered with vodka ads and also like music posts, like music posters and everything. And I really just felt like this is, this is what I want to do is I want, I want somebody down in, you know, 20 years from now, 10 years from now to want to do that with the work that I do. Right. And then I learned about design, I learned about graphic design. And like, you know, that is a way to kind of do, I mean, that's what I was really astounding to is this graphic design, but it's also this message messaging, right. And there's this kind of, I also read on the road. And I also read this one book by Kandinsky, which is concerning the spiritual and art. And he had this thing about kind of inspiration triangles and like, you know, you create art to influence, you know, people in front of you, but ahead of you, right. And like art is art or the things that we create have the potential of changing the worlds behind this. And so that all of that was kind of like swimming around. And then I read the fountain head and I was like, I want to create things that inspire people across space and time. And so just being young and having something that I made for work really affect other people. Like that, that just kind of, you know, kind of amazing to me that there's something that we can do in one space and it affects somebody positively somewhere else. And so as I kind of grew in my career, those experiences and those opportunities to do that became more and more what grounded me into like, you know, when you're doing traditional design, again, not a lot of people get that experience of being able to say, I did something and it positively affected somebody. But whenever you are in, you know, UX or service design or design ops, like you can see it like that. You can see the results of your work positively affecting people a lot quicker. That's interesting. As a service design community, we see that sometimes often it's really hard to see the tangible impact on the people around you. And that's one of the big struggles. It's hard to see if we're making progress, if it's if it's creating impact. I can imagine with art, like graphic art or music, daylight soul, like you can immediately see the visual impact. You mentioned within design ops that you do see the impact. And could you share with us, how do you see that? Because sometimes again, our work is so about systems, processes. It's hard to see how we're contributing. Yeah. So I mean, I think I've been I'm lucky because I work within an organization where you know, I work directly with like our designers, right? And I'm a team of one. We actually just now brought on a research ops specialist, but he's actually serving one of our clients. But I serve the full design team. And so, you know, when you first joined an organization that was brought in to stand it up, we didn't have design ops before. And we were right about to so I joined in 2022, the beginning of 2022, we were right about to scale. And so when I joined, we had about 26 designers now that were close to like 50 designers and researchers. And the company as a whole was maybe 50, 60 people when I started. Now we're close to, you know, 160. And so the scale of the design is really like, I've seen it go from we've got a smaller team and the tools and processes to, you know, we're right at that point where we are, I guess maybe like 18 years old, kind of not 18 years old. But like, last when I joined, we were maybe like a teenager, right? And now we're growing into an adult as a design organization in like an art and our maturity. And so I've had the luck of being able to kind of come in to the, you know, your first design ops listing tour, right? I interviewed every designer and researcher. I honed in on on the things that needed to be focused on first, right? Because it gives a team of one, you can't click, you know, you can't check everything and put them all on the roadmap. But you know, there's the small wins that you have to do with every, you know, whenever you when you first start anywhere. And so I saw those small wins, like we're going to put in a learning and development system where, you know, people will make the request for learning and development, I will help facilitate those requests and actually, you know, being able to say, hey, you got approval on this conference, you're going to go and here's two other people. And then here's how y'all might learn together the channel, like really facilitate that to earlier this year. We put together, we kind of finalize our skills matrix. And so it's a general design skills matrix we're working on, the practice matrix is now, but when we put the skills matrix together, really formalized it, folks were actually able to say, here are the things that I need to work on specifically versus they're being kind of like, not not as defined ways and paths of improvement and career path thing. And so those things directly affect the designers and researchers, like whether it's like their career growth or a process that they're using or, you know, learning and development. And so design ops has allowed me to actually, you know, see exactly, you know, these these benefits. And as a manager before actually was, had the title of design ops, I was a, I was a manager or director was leading, you know, the design and organizations and a lot of people get into design ops because they're doing this like free work in these agencies before them to like, okay, this is skills pathing, this is process, you know, you have to put these things in the place. And so I got to see, like, these are the things that are positively affecting my team members or the or my art directors or my designers. And so it just becomes something you get like, a little addicted to because you're seeing how you're positively, not just affecting the product or what you're creating, but you're positively affecting the people. Even kind of grooming people to to take on the next role, right, like the more senior role, you get to see them be really satisfied in the work that they're doing and the growth that they're seeing. And so I think design ops has allowed me, whether I was doing it as a function or doing it as the role, like to see, you know, positive, the work that I did positively affecting the people that I worked with. Thank you for sharing that example. And listening to this, I'm curious, if you have a specific neck for recognizing positive impact around you, so maybe because of your background, you just know what to look for and see it. How do you feel about it? Are others just as easily able to recognize these wins? I think I'm able to recognize it. I mean, I can speak about it now. I've been in the industry for like 22 years and I can recognize looking back here are the things that brought me joy here are the things that like I thought brought me joy, but aren't actually what I like I feel like joy. And so it's a, you know, maybe, maybe it's a knack, but maybe, you know, people that are listening to this will hear, okay, these are the things that I'm chasing, but might not actually bring my fulfillment down the road. I think that there are things that I was probably chasing whenever I was just starting out in design that I thought were what I wanted. But now that like, you know, 22 years in, I'm like, no, these are the things that have brought me joy because now these are the things that they get to focus on. And so I think, I think I can, I think it can answer that question a little bit. I think, I think what brings us fulfillment involves as we grow in our career, right? Like before what brought me fulfillment were, you know, the, like the awards of like doing great design, right? But now I think now what fulfills me are those just those simple statements of people that I work with, like you made my job easier or actually in this, in my role now, what brings me joy is someone saying you made my job easier or somebody taking what I did and like referring to it. So it's not, I'm not even involved anymore. Like if somebody on Slack is like, where is this? And one of the other team members is like, here's five resources and those resources are something that I created, right? I'm not even getting the credit of helping that person anymore. It's like, you know, the the person that referred to him. I think, I think it's really, I think it gets it gets back to like that purpose, like I can identify it because I've already said this is this is the purpose that I've realized. And that and because of that, I can identify it. Great. I think if you haven't identified what your purpose is or are able to articulate it, it's harder to say, oh, here's the here's that match, because you you haven't identified with that first part of the matches. I think you mentioned something very profound and that is where you find fulfillment evolves. Makes sense. You sort of learn and gain experience. You get exposed to different things. Was there and you mentioned that the things you thought gave you fulfillment, maybe in the end, didn't I'm really curious about that as well, because maybe in a moment they did give you fulfillment, but now like it wouldn't be the same thing. So if you look like I'm trying to see where I'm heading with this question and probably is, is it about taking stock, whether or not you're still aligned with the things that bring you happiness and joy in your work and the things that you're doing? Yeah. Yeah, I think I think I think that's that that's definitely something that I've done probably every year around the same time, whether it's been my birthday, like it's whenever I'm like, really, because that's August. So like I really get hyper focused on, you know, and this I haven't been like this for probably like maybe the last five years, the older that you get, where you're like, okay, this birthday is here to say whether or not I'm doing what I need to be doing. But like really, I think it was learning some of these these ways to investigate, like, and this was through work, right? Like, Nintendo, I started I started teaching probably around 2007, 2008, and I was teaching like folks that were right about to graduate design school. And so I was teaching them like, okay, this is how to present yourself to new employers, right? This is how to interview this is how to get from, you know, design school to the real world. And so what I created for them to kind of help get them to this to the to the point where they're presenting themselves personal brand, right? It was a, you know, fill out a creative brief for yourself. It's like, these are the things that we do for our clients. But these are ways that you actually, in design, investigate what it is that you're trying to communicate. So essentially, this is me trying to communicate myself. And then as evolved in my career, you know, I went from traditional design to UX to design ops, right? I got the tools that I needed to help investigate the problems that I was solving. And I think the one thing that we're all we all forget is that like, the one person and the thing that we're responsible for is us. So why don't we take these tools that we use for our clients and use them on ourselves. And so I think that's kind of, I didn't just evolve my purpose, I evolved the tools that I had to investigate them. And I think that's where we as, as folks in, in the fields that we're at in this kind of specialized way of investigating things is, you know, we have, we have the tools that we can, that we need to be able to find this in ourselves, right? And so I think whenever you're able to do that, then again, you're better, you're better able to kind of steer where you need to go. And whenever that, that place and where you are and where you should be match like the better work that you do. So let's imagine that we adopt this approach. And I think it's a great approach to do that at least once a year. What have you found, what have been the most helpful tools, methods, frameworks, models to do this investigation? So there is, I've actually like taken just those like, mirror templates, there's the business model canvas, right? Doing that and translating all of those questions to face yourself, right? Like here are the questions that I'm going to ask myself. Like what are, you know, what are my journey milestones? When have I been, what have I been the most satisfied? What is my North Star? Like the things to investigate that and to say like, these are the, these are my values, this is my mission, and it's my purpose, inside of work, but also outside of work. Like these are the reasons why I do the things that I do. Anything that we would prescribe like, I think we can, we can be like, okay, here are the things that are difficult for me or my client to answer. And then you kind of like tailor the discovery workshops towards being kind of the, the things people are able to answer or things they haven't been able to answer and like the kind of path you want to take them through discovery. I think you kind of find those, you facilitate those exercises on your own. And then you just kind of do it. And I'm amazed that something like a business model canvas, I would be very curious to try it out on myself to see what happens. Any other tips, recommendations, things that we can try? I think, you know, if folks are good at like, okay, so if people do, if people journal or if people like take a look at, you know, there's a couple of apps where you can kind of record yourself talking about like, you know, if you could, you could basically, this is one of the things that I've been working on for the last year is I've started transcribing my, my writings, the things that I pick up at conferences or things that like I'm taking notes. So I've been transcribing my notes and I'm starting to do an affinity diagram with all of them and see if there are like themes that come up. And so it's this, this constant like, constantly taking like a look back, it's basically doing, doing a diary study with yourself was just like going through and finding those things that pop up completely like repeatedly. So like, if you're not, if you're not wanting to do like a full excavation, right, like going back and seeing what it is that you wrote about is always a really good tool, because you wrote about your basically, you're, again, like using the tools that we use for, for studying people on processes, right? Like you, you just kind of do that. You've got all the material around you, you know, and something like a diary study. I do journal for over a decade now. And that gives you the raw material to reflect like, once quarter, once a year. That's maybe the hardest thing that people get stuck trying to do these exercises that you sort of have to grab it out of thin air do it on intuition. And I don't know if you even journal once every week on Friday and write down what are the things that I'm proud of this week or what, what would I like to do again, stuff like that, a few of those questions, that will give you quite a lot of material over a year or time on where you find fulfillment, right? Yeah. Is there, now looking back on your 22 year career, what kind, what piece of advice would you give in a younger Francis who was just starting out with her career with the knowledge that you have today? Man, I don't know if I'd have the same answer like two years ago, because like right now I feel like, like I'm at a really great place career wise, because I've had all this time to kind of really think about it. And so like my answer today would be like, just keep going, experience the things that you need to experience and like write it down. Like, I mean, I think that was one of the things that I've done that's helped me out quite a bit was like I wrote, was always writing down like experiences. And so I think, you know, keep writing things down, invest, like investigate, like always take a, take a look back at how the things that you're doing are affecting you, right? Because I think we always, I think maybe some people don't, you know, some people are, I don't know if the word is like you're doing what you think you're supposed to be doing, because this is just, this is an accept, this is an accept, but really investigating whether or not you're happy with it, right? I think a lot of, I think some of the damage that has been done is because people weren't necessarily happy with what it was that they were working on. And that is a luxury to say, like, are you really happy with this? But like, is it, is it serving you? And is it serving other people the way that you want to leave impact-wise? Right? I think, and again, I might be one of those people that's also just like, because I identify, oh, purpose, I'm fulfilled and like also luck and like these things that I'm very, I think certain about are a lot of, it's through a lot of reflection. And I think, I think more people could do that. And it would be, especially in this industry, right? Like, folks that are in, in this line of work, I feel already have that kind of way of thinking, like serving others or kind of bringing, making things better, which I thought in design before, people who are designers or problem solvers, but not everybody is. But I think whenever you get into this part of the industry, you are, you are trying to solve problems. And so I think I've trailed off there. Well, the advice you've given, you would have given yourself. And what we're hearing is reflect more often and see if you're still in line and check in with yourself. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's what you would, that's how we would talk to our, you know, our clients and the organizations that we serve as it is always self-reflection, you're never done, right? So I guess like continually inspecting, adapting, iterating, you know, I think it seems like a simple thing to, oh yeah, you're never done. But some people actually don't think that way. So we're sort of getting close to the wrap up. And you mentioned that you started a side project. I'm not sure if you want to share something about that or maybe how we can contribute or help. Yeah. So I actually started this project. And I've had on the kind of a little bit backward nerve. I've kind of just on the side for fun, you know, put this, this site together. It was right, right at the, during the first year of the pandemic. And I think I actually created this around August of, I think, 2020. And essentially, I was, I see a lot of like, I see a lot of inspirational, like, some things out there that people are like, here's another webinar about how to do XYZ for your job, or here's another webinar about, and this is another way to do these things about your job really well. And I was just thinking that people needed some more just inspiration of like what brings people joy in their work. So like, designers, like, why do you do the things that you do? So basically what I was talking about. But I started this site called Sundays, period, cool. So it's like Sunday school. Because one of the things that I think really drive me is, is community, right? And like, kind of what I was talking about before is like, I've always been inspired by, I've recognized inspiration whenever I see it, and whenever it affects me positively. And so I remember, you know, like going to Sunday school, there's like a story that I would hear, and it would bring me kind of guidance for that week, right? And one of the other things associated with like Sunday school, and like kind of the way that I recognize inspiration is I also recognize gratitude. And so I felt like, you know, one of the things that might help bring inspiration to other people was just to kind of be, to create a site where people just share their thanks, like here's somebody who affected my design career, made me go this way or whatnot, or here's somebody who told me some advice and it really affected me, or this is somebody that encouraged or championed me. And so I put a project together that's basically like, just a site for people to share their thanks to somebody or something, like it doesn't have to be somebody that's alive now, or it could be some, you know, I could be, I could write a letter to De La Soul and say, you know, thank you so much for your song. But, you know, this is the time of year that people, you know, I can either be very thankful or they need to remember those things that that bring them gratitude. And so I have a site where hopefully people will feel like they might want to thank somebody and send a letter in the person that they are thinking may or may not see it. But it's really for the person that's writing the letter that that it really brings something to and then it might affect somebody outside across time and space. So if people would be willing to send a letter of thanks to somebody, something, I'll send you the link, but it's Sunday's period cool backslash praise. And so hopefully it allows me to be a platform for other people to share, you know, some their joy and energy and really kind of can keep radiating that purpose into the universe and hopefully affect other people positively. Awesome. And the link will definitely be in the show notes. And this is I wanted to end on a very practical note like what can people do, but this is the practical thing you can do. Take a moment to express gratitude to express praise. And those will probably also be very good signals about what's important to you in your life, whether you want to be. So, yeah, great initiative. And I hope many of our listeners will will participate. Francis, I want to thank you for sharing your journey and sharing so many personal details about where you are today and what you would like to pass on to everybody who's listening and who's working hard in this community. It's been inspiring to listen to. So once again, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me as we start to wrap up and look back on the conversation and want to leave you with some of my personal reflections. What I'm going to take away from this chat with Eliana is that getting closer to our purpose in a healthy and sustainable way should be a matter of many tiny course corrections, as opposed to letting ourselves run into a career cliff and having to start all over from scratch again. The basis for these tiny course corrections is the conversations that we're having with ourselves each and every day. And the best part is that we already have all the necessary conversation tools. We use them every day in the work we do. So let's start to apply them on to ourselves. Because as Eliana said, the happier and healthier we are, the better we can serve the people around us. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, please do me one big favor. Click that like button below the video if you haven't done so already. Not to feed the YouTube algorithm, but rather to let me know whether or not you enjoy exploring topics like this. Finally, before we part ways, please take a moment to reflect and celebrate it by joining us today. You've directed your attention towards learning and growing as a professional. So from everyone that you're going to impact through your work, thank you for taking the time and making the commitment. My name is Marc Montaigne and look forward to having you with us again for a new conversation on the service design shop. Take care and see you soon.