 Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. How's everybody doing today? All good? Maybe your time's so far? Awesome. So yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Let me briefly introduce myself. So I started off by creating a list for this line, designing things like this, furniture, appliances, gadgets, electronics, all of that stuff. And then I fell in love with human computer interactions starting to build software, designing interactive products, services, tools, and systems. And I have a little bit of also like history working on apps, multiple apps, services, and tech, and started the world. So, Michael started in Swarm and War Square, are you guys familiar with these apps? So I formed a social app for you to check and share location with your friends, and then I also started discovering search engine for places. So yeah, I was working on those products back in New York, and last year I was able to go live to work at Punderlist that I quite like, so later on. And actually, this is quite a fresh news for you guys too. I moved to England last week, so now I'm working on a vision, so any feedback, any future requests, please come by me. And I'm super excited to be a part of the future of tools for digital business space. But yeah, so that's kind of my story. As big citizens, very good designers, product people, how many designers do I have in my room? We also like to deal with it. So we are all dealing with lives. And the audience, like this guy, is super-orange, we have a TV all day, we will humanize all these technologies around us, and how to apply design ethics and thoughtful way of taking your design to our processes. And as I always believe it's possible that we keep hearing everywhere that we are trying to be integrated into our process, which can be quite democratic, which can be quite accurate, it requires a lot of commitment, and it, again, today allows us to shift things through these products, deliver good experiences for our users in a very agile, speed manner. But today I want to focus on, in the next 40 minutes or so, I want to focus on how design ethics can come in many forms, from how you create your company, how you create your team, how to spread the love for doing the right thing for yourself, for your team, for your users. And we will talk about these ethical choices and embracing these methods that are value-driven. And obviously we will discuss how our brains are reacting to all these things, how we have biases towards creativity and how we can kill it as an organization. So we're going to hopefully work both of our left brain, right brain, have fun and think together and discuss at the end too, so sounds good so far? Cool, let's dive in. So let's get to the business first as what we can do as a company to do the right thing. So as companies we don't want to build products that have a popularity for a day or two. We don't want to be like that secret, anybody remember that app secret, which was basically like a gossiping app for Silicon Valley? The guys made like two million dollars, but now nobody remembers who they are, what they do. So nobody wants to beat that. We want to build long-term remarkable relationships with our users. We want to evoke trust in them. We want to have these long-term goals, whether we are startups or small-scale or large-scale companies. We want to take the risk of doing something great. And we face a lot of challenges along the way. So I would like to share a few thoughts, a few practices that helped me, helped the companies that I worked with in that journey to move from imitation to more innovation. So let's start with building with intention. So by the way, like I'm hoping that you guys will enjoy my gift taste. I really like this Renaissance theme gifts. It's quite hilarious. But the ultimate conflict that we always face is like making something systematic versus making something meaningful. So this is where like the monetizable values start to clash with meaningful experiences. And this conflict sometimes, you know, like manifests itself in these conversations various across disciplines. So your product manager can come and ask you about the low retention, click-through rates, not going really well. And then your CEO might come and talk to you about the revenue. But as the designer, before the click-through rates, you start to think more about like, okay, is the onboarding experience not good enough? Are the users frustrated with some part of the experience? So before all the numbers, analytics, data and everything, you care about the users first. You care about the experience that they go through. So, you know, those like moments of truth reveals itself when you have all these like gut checks around your priorities. So what is your priority? The click-through rate, the revenue, or your users and delivering something good at the end. And interestingly, a very little known fact is actually we look at technology always from a very cold perspective. Like, yes, robots are taking over, you see all these like dystopian scenarios of the future where like, designers don't have any jobs anymore because robots are doing it for us. But actually technology is coming from a very, very human place. So just like any word, it's also coming from Greek, shaker. So the word technology comes from like techna, the origin of the word techna and logos. And interestingly, techna actually means art, craft skills and the means by which a thing is gained. So even when we tend to see technology as cold, putting a distance between us and machines taking over our like lives, but it actually originates from this human craftmanship place. So where we should see the technology as challenging art and art inspiring technology and the human life. But first we should also define like what parts of like human life we are trying to improve, right? Like yes, our human life should inspire technology, technology should inspire life, but let's be more specific about the parts of lives that we are improving. And during this journey, you know, like sometimes some companies can fall into these like buzzwords, again the traps of like addictive or, you know, like disruptive. But we already know that internet is eating up itself and the tech bubble is already facing challenges. Now, you know, like the capita is not flowing as fast as it used to compared to three, four years ago. And, you know, I really like this code from Chris Dixon. So a product doesn't have to be disruptive to be valuable. So there are plenty of products that are useful from day one and continue being useful because of the value that they deliver. So at the end of the day, our product shouldn't fight for attention. It should be built with intention to help people. So I read this book recently, Yohav Noah Harari's book. So A Brief History of Humankind. Anybody read that book? It's quite fascinating. I totally recommend you all. So he talks a lot about history. He dives into our evolution of humankind. But there is this part that really hit me when I was reading. So he was talking about this like worldly revolution and the history's biggest fraud, which he calls this as a bed bargain between humans and grains, which is the domestication of wheat. So this is how like the agriculture started, but actually with agriculture beginning point, it also start to introduce a class system, working class and the people who are taking advantage of that class. And then all of a sudden we start to face long hours of work, even, you know, greater risk of starvation at the end of the day too, crowded living conditions, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, this type of revolution actually turning into a bargain between us and the grains agriculture. In this sense, in today's world, I kind of think of that as a bargain between us and the technology and the machines. So, you know, now I'm living in Germany, so I feel like I have to quote a German philosopher. And German history is full of all these like thinkers and really the great historians. So, anybody familiar with the story of Faust? So this like bargaining story reminded me of Faust and how Faust was ready to give his soul, exchange his soul for knowledge and for information with the devil. So you see this conversation here between Faust and the devil where like Faust with this greed for information, he's just ready to give up anything. So does this remind you anything with the relationship that we have with data, with this like hunger for information, but the things that we also compromise on the side? But then from a role-playing perspective, are we becoming the devil now because we are the technology makers? And if that's the case, like do we want to be that devil? And, you know, I like the fact that from a designer perspective, we should talk about the purposes, the goals and the intentions rather than this is what we want to do. This is a solution, take it or leave it. It should always be like, okay, this is what we are going to do, but why? So all right, let's also talk about something that has also become a buzz, but there's a reason why it's a buzz because it sort of speaks for itself as a truth. We have to fail. We have to fail a lot to learn from our mistakes, to come back again, stand back again and continue with these failures as rewards for bigger success in the future. And I'm a little bit of a history nerd and when it comes to ancient Roman history, I believe it's full of these like stories of like failures and how they are turning into successes, especially in the military stories. So there is this battle of Arosio, the defeat of ancient Roman Empire against the German tribes. And, you know, this is one of the ancient Rome's like biggest, biggest defeat in its history, but it was also a very big like turning point in world history where, you know, due to like series of like unpredictable weather conditions, uncertain outcomes and ambushes, the military not being big enough sort of like stretched out a little like too thin across the board, Romans lost. But during this loss, they used this failure as a way to also reorganize, sort of see where they were losing and see like, you know, the weather conditions and prepare themselves for the future even better. And apart from all these, this defeat also gave Roman one of the biggest generals of its history, which is Maximus, maybe you guys know from the movie too. So, you know, the struggles and outcomes, these are all like sound familiar, right? Like we also face these like struggles along the way in our work too. But at the end, you know, the software design journey, software development journey will always be like that. Lots of fails, lots of mistakes, but always staying resilient at the end and continue moving on. So anybody remember this little guy? Right? Right? Now this is like a touring test for millennials in the room. But, you know, when it first came out, it was very successful. I mean, let's be real, it was game changing. It was popping up when, even when you didn't know you needed it, it was always there for you. Like, hey, like you want me to, you know, help you with this Word document? Like, is there something that you are confused about? And then over time, it starts to get a little annoying, right? Like, it starts to get a little too disruptive, always sort of like injecting itself in the experience when you don't need sometimes. And then now, you start to see it's becoming cool again. Everybody is trying to build the next Clippy. Maybe in the AI form, maybe in the artificial intelligence form, maybe it's in the bot form, maybe it's in the chat slash comment form, whatever it is. Everybody is working on the next form of intelligence. So the way we came to this is also through all these, like, mistakes. Like, yes, like Clippy was great, and then it failed. But it sort of paved the ground for all of us now to build that foundation for digital assistance. And now you see these traces, even in Cortana, too, in Microsoft's artificial intelligence today, where Cortana anticipates the user's needs and semantically analyzing all this data across your agenda, across your email and your calendar and everything and try to help you navigating all these complex systems of data and understanding experiences. So, you know, thanks to these lessons of cool, uncool, cool, oh, wait, uncool again, oh, cool again. Now we are constantly revolutionizing the way we look at intelligence and algorithms and technologies around us. Alright, let's continue more about, you know, this is where things get a little, like, interesting because we're going to talk a little about our brains now and how we are evolved to be this way. But unfortunately, we have creative biases. It's quite, like, ironic because when you ask companies or creative institutions, they always want to have creativity, right? Like, creativity is always an asset for them. But guess what? They're also very scared of creativity because outside of the box thinking always bring risks. Even on the education level, like, teachers are not always comfortable with the kids that think outside the box because they are disrupting the class. They are always asking questions that other kids don't sometimes like think about and then all of a sudden the conversation in the class is totally, like, changing in another direction and then teachers secretly, unconsciously are, the research is also showing that too, are feeling uncomfortable around these creative things, creative kids. So, you know, why this is the case? But, you know, the challenge is not ending here, like, chemically and evolution, evolutionary speaking, our brains why you're to be that way. Our brains are one of the most, like, complex organs in our body that actually consumes the biggest energy. And to preserve energy, brain is always constantly looking for shortcuts. Shortcuts in terms of what is familiar, what is known, what is comfortable so that the brain can save all that energy and go to the outcome without thinking, without consuming itself too much. So, you know, this is crazy, right? Like, we are all craving to be creative, but the society that we are living in and, you know, even our body is working against us. And it doesn't end over here. Our challenges is not just this. Also, the world is going nuts, right? I just show you the orange man. I mean, we can get into a nuclear war. There is the, you know, the crime rate is going all, like, crazy high. There is the scarcity of resources. Now, you know, who knows, we might be running out of bacon soon. I mean, that's the end of the world to me. So, you know, when all these things are happening, when things are quite uncertain for us, it's hard to be creative, right? It's hard to sort of release ourselves from all these, like, stress. And, again, like, I'm having a really hard time understanding this, right? Because we came such a long way from, you know, all these, like, times, like 19th century was the industrial economy. 20th century was the consumer economy. And you want 21st century to be the creative economy, right? But, so, you know, how can we pass all these, like, challenges and truly apply our knowledge, our creativity towards innovation? So, to be able to get there, we have to embrace this, novelty and this way of thinking as a company. These are sort of like the principles that we put together at Foursquare, for example. It took us a lot of time to get to this point, but it helped us a lot, even on an unconscious level, to repeat ourselves. We are here to invent the future. We are here to make things that are delightful, that are exciting, that are engaging for our users. We are proud, but we are always continuing to fight. And all of these, like, great principles end. We also made sure they were visible everywhere. Because the way, the more tangible you make things for people, the more faith that you create in everybody, because you sit there, you see it. You are in a meeting, you look at that at the wall, and, you know, it starts to encourage people to feel more safe around creativity. And it's really, really important, any organization that designs a system will inevitably produce a design, whose structure is also a copy of that organization's communication structure. So, you want to build great products, build a great future, great culture in your company first, and then other things will obviously follow. So, this is where I start to talk and nerd a lot about how to give the design seat at the table. We talk a lot about this, but design is the discipline that is fearless compared to other disciplines, where we talk about this, like, energizing creative culture for the users. And as Kaume's law already puts it so clearly, a well-designed system will open up the gates for great products, and it's that simple. Well, now let's also talk about the human side of our companies. As I said, building that culture in your companies is more important than the technology, so champion the people before you champion your technology. And how do we get there? Little things add to your philosophy. At Foursquare, for example, again, like, super nerdy, but we have this plus-plus contributions every Friday, which we also call it like a good karma. So, we give little shout-outs to people, from sales, to support, to engineering, to product management, to designers, whatever they do. You crush your support tickets today. You did an amazing job with that sales. You've sold this, like, edge case that we haven't really thought of before. So, all these little good karma, while the idea is basically just, like, giving shout-out to people, making feel good about themselves, good about their work that contribute to the overall culture. And, you know, this is one of my biggest drives in my career now, diversity and inclusion. And this is what we do at Foursquare, too. We used to do, I mean, they still have it, but I'm not a part of it, unfortunately. But a diversity group, a diversity working group, where we worked to cultivate a diverse culture and inclusive culture. We also recruit diverse talents for the company and also help shape the future of the STEM, also in the city, too, in New York City. We did fellowships with the mayor. We had children be brought in, high school students to our company where we taught them how to code, how to design. So we were trying to reach out to, you know, organizations, institutions, not working only internally in our company but outside, just to spread the consciousness for how diversity is a great asset for innovation. So, you know, you have to put this in your mind, in your heart, and make sure you build this culture that is knitted in the DNA of the city, the company, the country, because this is how we shape a good future for everybody. And at Microsoft, we have a similar initiative, too. We have a diversity channel, for example, on Slack, where we talk about how to make workplace safe, fun, and engaging for everybody. Because we know that company priorities are important, but the first priority is the people. And, you know, we are designing software products that are reaching out to millions and millions of people. So if you don't appreciate the multiple, the various perspectives of people in your company, how are you going to build products that care about other people that serve for millions of people out there? So the way should always be keep your people engaged, motivated, appreciated, and valued to be able to learn, grow, and lead as a company. So these were sort of like the anecdotes and my experiences within companies. But now I kind of want to take a deep breath. Maybe we can all do, because now we're going to jump to the second chapter, where we talk about how to do the right thing, how to talk-to-talk, walk-to-walk, as a design team. And, you know, we all want to be a good agent of change, right? So we also have our own priorities, too. We should have our own priorities as a design team. So let's start with designing for trust. So like I said in the beginning, we all want to build these remarkable products that build long-term relationships with their users. And as we want to achieve this long-term relationship, it should start with earning trust. Well, trust can be a magical word. I mean, we use that in our relationships, too, right? I want you to trust me. You should be able to trust me. I want to trust you. You know, all these, like, human relationships, we use this a lot. But it's also from a brain-processing perspective. Like, trust is not easy to process, right? It's not like looking at somebody's mathematical capability and say, like, yes, you are great at maths. But, you know, you cannot measure if somebody's trustworthy that easily. So that kind of decision should also be made in your decision-making when you're purchasing a service, when you're experiencing a product, a service, too. And, you know, interestingly, the way brain processes trust or create that, like, reaction to trust is also interesting. It's a complex process, but it also hits the pleasure center of people's brains. So when you find somebody or something that is trustworthy, you're also automatically happy. So build trustworthy products. You also hit the jackpot because your users will take pleasure out of that product, too. And, you know, bottom line for Wunderlist, which is a to-do list-making productivity app. For us, the bottom line for this to evoke trust in our users was the technology, the fact that we can hold your data with high security, and you know that your data will always be available, will be synced across all these devices. So you can jump from your mobile phone to your tablet to your desktop. Your data will always be there because we got your back. So within the technology, within the sync advanced technology, we tried to create that trust relationship between us and our user base. And for, you know, for Wunderlist, it was a technology. So the trust was driven by the content. So now I'm going to talk to you guys more about the challenges with the content. When I say content, I mean more like the tips, ratings. So when you're looking at a restaurant page, when you're looking at a venue page, we had a lot of problems around, like, people always thinking, like, is this review legit, or is it written by, like, somebody for like five cents somewhere across the world where they were not even at that place. Or the owner of the place has opened up all these, like, fake accounts, and then they are writing good reviews about themselves. So we had to overcome that challenge of trust, or, like, lack of trust. And in this way, we start to think, as, like, designers, engineers, product managers, we start to think about this, like, communication channel. Okay, how can we create this, this, like, legitimacy around this review? So we came up with the rating system. So, you know, people can rate things, give them thumbs up, thumbs down, so that you will understand there are people supporting that content. So now you look at the tip, and it has, you know, X number of likes, then you start to understand, like, okay, other people's eyes and ears and hearts have touched on that content that kind of gives this, like, genuine feeling, that, like, legit feeling on that tip. So, you know, through the content type, through the communication channel and supporting the system, we were able to overcome that. All right, so now it's, again, like, getting, getting more, like, exciting, where we talk a little bit about getting out of our comfort zone and poking the bear. So what I mean by that. Now, design, you know, everybody, everybody's looked at us and talks about, oh, you guys are, like, pushing pixels, making things pretty, you make things beautiful, but it's much more than that, right? Moving from aesthetics to more designing the society and thinking more about ethics and ethical challenges. So we need to realize, you know, there's a huge ethical component in what we do. And, you know, ethics for us shouldn't be just a hustle, site hustle. Mike Monterio talks really beautifully about this, like, you know, it shouldn't be just, like, us helping nonprofits on our weekend or on our, like, free time, Miko, and do all these, like, volunteer work. No, ethics also start in your day-to-day job too. It should be a part of how you push your pixel, it should be a part of how you draw your user flows, you think about your interaction stories. So, you know, we need to think, like, ethically about our jobs and recognize, you know, our, like, processes. We should start building empathy for our users and design for inclusion and for good. So, you know, I will talk more about that too, but there are certain things that, as designers, we don't take into account. Like what? Like accessibility. It has been such an uncool notion for us, concept for us. Even I, like, embarrassingly thinking when I look back at my career, I didn't think much about accessibility. I was mostly focusing on, yes, that color looks really amazing on my interface, and I'm going to go with that color. But is it, does it have the right contrast ratio for visually disabled people or disabled people with certain disabilities? And, you know, now I want to talk about a couple of different stories. So, this is Sakip Shaik. So, he lost his sight when he was seven. And last year, he teamed up with a group of designers and engineers at Microsoft to build an app that tells you who and what's around you. So, what it does, it's based on Microsoft Intelligence API, where they translate faces, emotions around you, and it reads out all those emotions and faces out in text. So, with this advanced technology and design, the experience is becoming indistinguishable from magic. So, seriously, it's becoming just like Arthur C. Clarke used to describe, you know, like, good advanced technology should be indistinguishable from magic. So, this is where our passion to design inclusive experiences, delightful and beautiful experiences transform into a mission to improve people's life. So, when we are enjoying these pixels, we should also enjoy that pure pleasure of helping people that are in need. So, our label, our labor, our work, will always have repercussions. From the color choices that we make to the keyboard interactions that we create, our labor will always touch on human life, and it will touch in remarkably intimate ways. And, you know, when we have so much power in our hands, and as you can guess, great power comes great responsibility, we should take all these things into account and design our guidelines, design the way we look at work and try to be universal. So, at Microsoft, while we were designing to do, which is, again, a productivity tool where you can keep track of your achievements, we wanted to make sure, as the designers, we were the gatekeepers for responsible inclusive products to spread the love for accessibility and inspire also other teams while they are executing on delivering this promise of designing for millions. And, again, before we touched any pixel, as a design team, we sat down and talked about, why are we here? What's our mission? What do we want to change in the world? And we start to come up with all these principles and these values and, again, we print it all out, post it all across our office just to inspire us throughout the day. And John Mayada puts it in a very beautiful way, again, like, designers' role will be to support the social conscious of the product. So, we might be working with people in position of authority that might not want to just, that might not want to slow the process by investing in accessibility because accessibility will come with certain amount of resources, time, people, processes, tech cost, right? I love that terminology, tech cost. But this is important. This is, like, start seeing human diversity as a resource, too. Not just your technology or your backend structure as your resource for better products. But as designers, if we don't care about the people, if we don't see human diversity as an asset, nobody else will. So, it will start with us continuing to poke the bear and make sure others are poking the bear, too, and continue thinking above and beyond. So, all right, let's also talk about how to be our own bosses and own our discipline. And we should also all know that our product represents ourselves. So, it also reflects our team's character. We should be open-ated. If we want our company to reach a certain design maturity, we also need to own our discipline. We have to be strong in our voice and make sure sometimes we are saying no to things. We cannot say yes to every request, every CEO question, priority or everything on our roadmap. Right? We should first question if it's really worth doing it and sometimes it comes with certain challenging conversations where we have to say no. Do I have any Fight Club fans in the room? Anybody? All right. Do you guys remember this scene? Yeah. Right? It's that like legendary porch scene where well, let's talk more about this. You know, it's so there is this part where we experience a lot this terminology. We use future creep, right? Everybody comes and asks like, we need this. Data is showing that. We are lacking that. We have to do this. We have to do that. And then all of a sudden you're like okay, but can you please give me some context before you ask me to design this or what is the underlying purpose? Can we talk about that? So, to avoid future creep the folks from like 37 singles puts it in a very beautiful way. Like it should be like Fight Club. It should be like that porch scene where each future should be willing to stand on our porch for three days to be able to be stay in the product. So, people like products that say no. People like products because our products don't try to do everything all at once. And it should never be one size fits all. They lack our products because we don't try to please everybody and we know when to say no to things. And yeah, we are getting closer to this chapter, but also let's talk more about something a little more like tactical. So, there are times, you know, design teams bring their A-game. They are pushing their boundaries for creativity. They are doing all these like great work exploring new frameworks. Putting a new design philosophy out there like fluent design that we did with Microsoft this past year. And then there are times where like design team just executes. Like have you also been there where you fixed your layers in your sketch file like three days straight. Like maybe before you go on vacation you want to make sure you're not embarrassed with your sketch files before you pass it to your co-worker. So, you just sit down and fix every type or every layer. So, there will be times when you're cranking on you're on top of your like creativity and doing doing things for long term. And then there are things where you just sit down and fix your sketch files because that's what you have to do at that point and you start to become thinking more in tactical terms. So, yes, there will be times a sense of urgency will sink in and then you will be producing style guides, component libraries and things like that. But, you know that it is a part of the process because you know that you invest in your future by doing this execution by doing this production too. So, it should be in the hands of the designer to have that judgment call like when to invest in long term when to invest in short term. And it's just like kitchen. I'm also a little bit of a sucker when it comes to food shows. I love watching all these like chefs doing their thing. And I see that in like Michelin star chefs do like some days they get together with their crew and they design that like signature dish that blows everybody's freaking mind. And then sometimes they just spend like 20 hours cutting onions and potatoes in the kitchen. So, it's pretty much what we do too in our design team. So, alright, the last but not least, how to drive that change and drive for the good value as a designer. I'm going to share a few of my personal journeys with you guys. So, curiosity. Curiosity enables us to continue our evolutionary path. Like it really makes us ask why, right? We are here today because we constantly ask why and all the great inventions always start with that why. And Frank Gary, I have my architect friend with me. She might like it. So, Frank Gary says puts it in a really great way. Like your creativity starts with whether you're curious or not. So, it is our jet fuel for curiosity. It drives success, innovation. It helps us move into these uncertain unknown territories. We get out of our comfort zone. We are always unsettled because we are curious to see if we have more, if there are new things out there that are waiting for us. If there are new territories, we continue to explore new things around us. We never settle for default. We always go for out of the box because we are the creative kids that teachers used to be scared of, right? So, this behavior actually shows itself, manifests itself in so many different ways. And any explorer or safari browsers in the room? I'm going to offend you guys a little bit, but please bear with me. According to Adam Grant, the author of Originals, according to him, we can predict your job performance and your commitment by knowing which web browser you use. I'm not kidding. So, there is good evidence that shows, bear with me, Firefox and Chrome users significantly outperform people that use Explorer and Safari. Because what is in common with Safari and Explorer? Because they come by default. So, apparently, people using Firefox and Chrome, they stay in their jobs 15% longer. And even all these browsers have the same speed capability, the same technological possibilities. Explorer and Safari come installed. The others, they are all handed to you. But Chrome and Firefox, you doubt. You look for something better. Even when it's not better, at least you go through the journey of looking for it. So, it's not just a part of your personality where curiosity makes an impact on your performance, but this defines who you are and, at the end, makes an impact on the work to search better to look for something unique. And, as I said, I'm coming from an industrial design background, so I have a super big crush on Dieter Rums. Again, German bonus over there, both industrial designer and German, and it fits with my background so perfectly now. So, yes, this legendary Dieter Rums German designer always says, nothing works without the details. They are everything, the baseline of quality. Good design is thorough down to the last detail. And, you know, nothing really should feel arbitrary in your work. Nothing should be left to chance. So, do you want to show respect for your users and put the care and accuracy and refine your work in your process? I'm assuming the answer is yes. So, we should pay attention to every little detail because all these little details are the design, actually. Let's talk about, for example, the power of words and language. It's funny, you know, all these years now we have copywriting departments in our companies. Now, words are becoming even more powerful. What it makes me sad when I see Lorem Ipsum in designs, we can do much, much better than that, right? And, when language is also a piece of technology, like Mark Pagel says, it's also a tool for us to empower our users through the power of words and language. So, interesting study. According to this economist, Keith Chen, languages that don't have tenses like Mandarin and Finnish that have only present tense, that cover also both present and future tense. Look at the present and the future equally from a language perspective because of the lack of tenses. We have the present, we have the future. And, interestingly, future tense, according to the study, future tense puts a distance between us and today, and it reflects on our money-saving activities. So, people interestingly save more money in China and in Finland because they think the future is right around the corner, because future is today actually. But in English-speaking countries, future, oh, the future stays months ahead of us. So, who cares about saving the money, right? Let's just live the day. It's so, so weird when you look at the power of words and language changing the way you live your life, changing the way you save your money, the way you save your finances, your economy. Why don't we design the language also? Just like we design our experiences, just like we pick the right color palace to write like typography. So, we should care about that detail too, because actually, guess what? It's not a detail anymore. It's so strong in the experience. In to do, Microsoft to do, it's maybe cheesy, but our mission is to make, it's to help people become better versions of themselves. And every little detail from how you name a list, how you name, how you position a folder, all the naming conventions make an impact on the user's productivity and their achievements. So, we see that in our experiments too. So, we start to call the very main experience my day, just to put more focus on people's minds around the day. How do you describe the day? My day is 24 hours, but most of that day you're sleeping, so there's 14 hours of that day is left. So, you start to become more conscious when we start to use the day around how much you can do, how much you can accomplish. And we saw that in our experiments that when we start to, when we are using the my day, people are much more aware of what they can put in the list because they know, wait, I have only this many hours in the day so I cannot just dump everything. So, we saw that people are achieving more things because they are in this mind day mindset and at the end they are feeling much more productive because it's not a long list of 30 tasks and at the end you are doing only two. You are putting two or four and you're doing all of those things during the day too. So, the product is making you happy too at the end. And another detail, another way of looking at technology. So, I love this experiment that they do at Facebook, they call it 2G Tuesdays, where they create more empathy within the company where every employee switches to 2G networking to build that empathy with their users that are in developing countries. So, most of the time we make all these beautiful animations, right? We make all these beautiful interfaces, we put beautiful images but do we think about the loading? Do we think about the latency performance? Do we think about networking? Do we think about the connection? Do we think about the location of our users? So, maybe it feels like a very small detail but again, like at the end Facebook designers were able to see the pain their users were going through and started to build more conscious and delightful experiences for these loading states or start to think more about latency. All right. So, let's talk about now design being a little bit different. So, we are all in the middle of art, science and technology. So, we are all like open-ated gutsy individuals, just like artists, right? We are also like true alchemists. We put all these like creative thoughts sometimes in the art form and turn them into something more tangible. But at the same time we are also very scientists, science heavy people who implement these like technological novelties. So, we sit right in the intersection of all these various disciplines and you see that in some companies quite clearly like Pixar, right? They are true scientists that is blended with true art. Like you look at the water reflection in a movie like Finding Nemo and you see all these like details and then you watch some like TED talk of some scientist or designer who designed that animation and she talks about three months of work that goes into that little water reflection animation. So, that's pure science. So, how can we bring that science into our design, into our process and again blend in all those disciplines. And, oh wait, I actually had the sound for this one. Oh no. But, so at Wunderlist we play this like twinkling sound. Can we get that? I totally forget about that. But, so there's this like twinkling sound that we make when you check a task. So, when you complete something there's this like ding song and interestingly a fun fact that ding song is based on C major 7 chord and that C major 7 chord corresponds to a human emotional mood that is relaxing. But, also studies show that it creates a feeling. It creates this like pure joy in people's minds when they hear the C major 7. And, you know, in this case like the C accomplishment completing a task is partnered up with this with this little like sound with this little like science that brings that like happiness that brings this cheerful experience. So, science design altogether coming in and creating both a psychological effect on people while they are accomplishing something. Feeling more cheerful now? But, yeah, it was the, it was that cheer, it was that relaxation that we aimed for. And again like another like fun fact about that too. They also worked on the visual visual impact of that sound and people start to see, people were describing that sound as like, oh, I see children holding hands and running around. Like, how can you describe joy better than this? And, science things is also, you know, looking at human psychology, looking at cognitive science, looking at how people's brain reacts to things, right? Like, I've been talking about how our brain complex processes are also underlying reality behind our experiences and our design journey. So, for us, you know, at Microsoft one of the biggest promises that we make is productivity. Empowering the user to be productive, keeping them motivated, feeling them engaged, helping them boost their motivation and when we are looking at this type of like psychology, this type of place that we want to create for our users I get, I draw a lot of inspiration from this cognitive scientist, Mikhail Chiksenmihay, he has the best last name, by the way. A Hungarian psychologist recognized and named this psychological concept of flow. He calls it flow where it's this like, focused mental state of productivity. You can call it feeling in the groove, being in the zone. And this model that he created was one of the biggest inspirations for us as designers working in productivity. So, how can we get people into this flow, into this zone, and we start to call this like no bullshit model but where like you see there's highest engagement, where there is low challenge, where there's medium level challenge so finding that like perfect place, that like special sauce for our people, for our users in a real certain way so that we hit the right places for their productivity too and this is where that like science of psychology, cognition and user experience get together. So, as a successful designer we should also have a strong psychology, a strong mindset, right, because our journeys are always tough. We go through these like hard days where designers are still trying to prove itself, right? That's why I was talking about designer seed, let's give a seed at the table but what does that mean? So, we need to grow thick skins as designers too. At some point we have to separate ourselves from our work. I understand we all stay up so late to get things work, we sketch things out so many ideas and then most of the time, you know, some of them work, some of them don't but thick skin is important. Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it. I used to do it a lot in my agency days like I'm standing in front of a client I'm scared as shitless but I try to fake like I'm the bravest person in the room so that I sort of build this like different persona for myself so that I can present my work in a confident way so that I can stand behind my work but like sometimes you also have to embrace that doubt because like I said that doubt pushes us to be curious that curiosity pushes us to search for something and it's a part of the journey and the way I look at this is also 10 steps of you might call it misery but I think it's 10 steps of glory but it always starts like that we produce lots of ideas and then we think we are awesome and then 90% of those ideas turn out to be shit so I try to explain why you are the one designing that unlike not your PM or your engineer you should be the designer and then you go through all these like faces of like oh my god my work is great oh no my work is really bad oh no 100 ideas okay none of them are working and then at the end you find that solution and you see you know you crush that you turn that idea beginning into gold some innovation and then all of a sudden you are there and you feel proud of yourself and that's what we call being a designer is at the end too so do the work that you believe in but do it with professionalism do it with integrity and do it with competence and as Tim Brown says we cannot continue creating stories only we also have to create developments because the history is full of geniuses that fell on their faces multiple times on their path to success but they knew when to stand back they knew how to create revolutions through these mistakes and just like that like a famous old Japanese saying goes four seven times stand up eight so yes we are going to fail a lot we are going to go through that misery in our own way we will shake things up we will poke the bear here and there we are going to say we are going to have a lot of tough conversations we are going to say no sometimes but at the end we are all doing this for our users and at the end we have that responsibility to do the right thing because we have to do it or nobody else will and yes so thank you so much for having me it's time for questions is that a good sign or bad I think people are people are still thinking about the question so let's give two three minutes and then maybe thanks there's a lot to digest that's why I think people are still catching up so you have a lot of interest within design the nerdy stuff Dita Rams how do you find the time to do all of this because everything you said is true but in principle when there are projects there's people, there's users there's stakeholders do you have any tips on how you how you string it together I can see that you have a lot of interest and identify by struggle to string it together great question sleeping is overrated that's how I'm going to answer yeah partially I guess like it's also a personal technique that I think everybody should develop like how you use your time I struggled with that a lot in my own personal career in my professional career personal life but I found the magic use of calendar finally I also recommend you guys to try this too I block my time on my calendar even for thinking I go super organized when it comes to I'm going to block this chunk just for reading I'm going to block this chunk for just talking to my teams talking to my colleagues and even in the evening for outside of work hours these lists and reminders for myself this is the time you should check the news for this blog or whatever this is the time when they release updates during that day things like that so I try to be very organized on my calendar and you know it's a journey it's an experience you have to find what works for you I start to do meditation a lot that helps me a lot just to focus I used to struggle a lot with distraction because again so many thoughts you're a designer you're inspired by all these different things but meditation helps a lot to clear your thoughts and be much more focused I used to read the same article three times because of that distraction but it's helping me a lot so I would say caffeine in the morning meditation in the morning you know 6-8 hours sleep but be very very organized on your calendar make sure you're using your time wisely in the office it's so easy to again dive into some fountain the coffee machine talk but try to also use that for inspiration to bring some articles or share things with your coworkers and try to push people's buttons and try to learn from people too because yeah like my team always inspired me the people that I work with so yeah does that answer your question how can this side lose out I mean the side they already asked the question so there are more people this side you have a question you mentioned a lot you mentioned that you are very involved in diversity diversity so how do you go about handling conflicts in a diverse environment there are situations where some of your colleagues may come from different cultures yet when conflict arises some of them get very passive aggressive and don't really say anything until like it blows up so how will you actually go about handling that I think like the biggest part is listening so first creating a safe place for people so that they can speak openly honestly about their problems about the issues and then listening really carefully and making sure you are also being genuine towards people because now diversity is something that everybody talks about and sometimes you see the diversity efforts are just for sake of the effort not necessarily coming from the actual place but make sure you are showing that like value towards people like what we do for example at like Foursquare and at Microsoft too we have also hours where we just talk about this we rotate also also like issues like for example a couple of weeks ago we did an issue creating inclusion for people that are working remotely you know how it is when you are on a Skype call there are sometimes technical challenges there is sometimes delay or there is always a fear of cutting somebody off because you are not in the room so you are not necessarily getting the vibe, the energy in the room and it excludes people and we don't have enough empathy for people and when we talk about diversity it is also like diversity in you are remote I am not remote or you are using this technology I am using that technology like all these gaps so for that we make sure we have the acknowledgement we acknowledge the problem we get together, we talk about the problem and we create that space like for that hour this is just what we talk about and we are not going to leave this room until we have a solution for that and you know somebody taking notes somebody sharing the outcomes and we are taking this steps at the end too and we are talking about people like conflict on every level in every situation but it is about listening to each other there is this experiment they call it the green chair and the yellow chair so sometimes when you take yourself out of the equation each chair actually represents a different opinion green chair is somebody with one opinion and yellow chair is somebody with another opinion so you just give room and space so you are not a part of the scenario anymore so that kind of gives you the objectivity that you were lacking previously and then you start to analyze the situation without yourself in it so it gives you more perspective and more respect so those kind of techniques and the space and getting together and being open towards one another is really important so I think everybody should invest in a community like that people that are feeling passionate about the subject should get together even in a start up even in a small place because this is something that we should all care about and spare time for and make sure we also make the executive level listen to us to listen to what we care about because also research shows when you care more about diversity Hi, okay to stay on the topic of diversity and I have a question specifically about data because data is something that increasingly we try to use a lot but then when you try to use data in diversity you run into a big problem because diversity is always about minority groups, minority languages minority browsers or technology systems which actually may be related to socioeconomics and stuff like that as you mentioned and sometimes I find that a lot of perspectives that come out of an interest in diversity find it very difficult to take part in the conversation when there's data involved even I'm a PM and I have a role with my team if there's no data I'm not going to listen so find your data so what are some strategies perhaps if you have them for bringing data into conversations about diversity actually even the fact that even the fact that there are more CEOs that have the name John than women CEOs in the world that's the data for you just to underline how big the problem is I think data is not the challenge, data is actually the biggest supportive in our argument just to make sure people are listening to us we have the voice in the room it's very drastic when you look at for example the the salary gap between men and women that's data for you that you have to use to contribute to your argument so I don't necessarily see that as like how to make sure these are like heard but it's actually like use the data on your advantage to make even a stronger point but I think now like data sciences we are doing a lot of these like studies inside and outside of big companies too I mean sometimes yes transparency is becoming an issue like Google for example didn't want to share the data with the salaries right but again the reality the fact that they were not sharing it was showcasing the problem on its own so I think that's already helping us to move forward with this agenda even with a stronger voice so I wouldn't be fearful of bringing data I would bring even more data Hi my name is Yvonne thank you for the inspiring talk I'm just curious because like we are all designers here and you're talking a lot about accessibility, diversity, inclusiveness but I am worried that we are like somehow in our own like echo chamber we are all very idealistic people so I'm wondering if you have any tips on how we can get other people outside of our circle to care more about this issue well like the main argument that I always make at Microsoft is like you are designing for these people so you have to be mindful of their pain points and bring in researchers bring in the data bring in the user insights also like help to just people just to make people aware of the situation so you know like accessibility is also an asset for companies to become much more known for within the industry because not every company is investing in it so I encourage companies to work in this field even more so that like don't you become don't you want to become the reference point don't you want to be that like example that everybody is like pointing out so like there is some beauty of working in this and being that company that invests in it because you will make you will create that like image for the company that is inclusive that is thoughtful that is strong so that this will contribute again like today or like success like yes it will take time but at the end not enough companies so when you do it you sort of stand out in the crowd and like that uniqueness that personality helps you build an identity for the company that sort of like helps them to be even like more successful so I sort of make that argument for the company to create that person and create that personality because companies care about their image maybe from a selfish perspective you know the day and if you want that image like you have to invest in this and again it will return to you as more users too so if you're talking to a CEO about this like hey give me more researchers give me more time and resources to invest in this just tell them that like two things your company will look much better in the industry because you know maybe that's a selfish incentive but we're going to look much better in the industry everybody will look up to us and second we will have more users because people with disabilities are looking for services out there like they are settling for such crappy experiences and they don't have to and when you design something good they will know you they will discover you and they will come after you so you speak to a larger audience and more users that's something every company would die for and I don't think companies should be interested in this but there's already so much data out there and so much like open source libraries for example to check your contrast ratio and your designs or you know how to enable like keyboard navigations sometimes all these also come like by default in the OS and operating system level so there is actually very little that you have to do from a technology implementation perspective and I think on the gentleman's question just now is there ever a situation where it's better to design for the minority than for the majority let's say for example features A shows that a lot of people want it and then you go feature B feature B doesn't show a lot of the data doesn't show that a lot of people need it would there be a situation where it's actually it's better for you to design feature B interesting well like actually the way I see the driverless cars that's the perfect use case like where you also design for the minority where people with disabilities can also easily take care of themselves without somebody else's support right like I was looking at this project from like Virginia Tech for example they built the whole technology for people with visual disabilities a car that the visually disabled people can actually drive to because the whole interface is designed with Heptic feedback there is like a Google Maps type of thing where the navigation is through air pipes so you kind of feel the topography on your hand so it kind of gives you the direction for where to go so like designing for a minority also unlocks like certain technologies like they had this the problem started with how can we create a navigation system for visually disabled and then they went after and found the right technologies right mediums right tools to design something so now you know they are writing scientific papers about it because that's an invention they did they I think they call it like air picks or something so yeah like when you were designing for the minority it also unlocks like new territories new technologies and like pushes us to the new territories to like new new advances new and advancements does it answer your question okay looks like there are no more questions so thanks a lot for so much energy after flying in all the way from Germany this morning yeah please