 One of the key traits of design is empathy, right? So if you want to understand the customer's problems, you need empathy with them and then you need to give them the real, deeper insights about what exactly goes on with them and what exactly is the problem that they kind of need to focus on and solve that right in real innovation. So that's one of the key ways of women. To be honest with you, the team that I'm working with there are four researchers out there who are women. They give lots of qualities for what they do because they can be patient with the people whom they are doing research with. Patients and in synchronized being able to gather all data and then consider all data for us, designers too. And they're also very successful in building long standing relationships with key stakeholders in the business. So this is the team that I'm working with. They have a great influence across the business. And one, a specific example that I put in here is an example of the SPP of a specific system where I come from. Her name is Captain Ferreira. She has established a team of founded designers in the span of four years and she's grown all the way from manager to director to senior VP. We've been working in the span of three years. That's a remarkable achievement which has kind of inspired me to think about why we have more such stories in the industry out there. So that forms the team of the span of I'm going to let the panelists introduce themselves and as the introduction is briefed, I'd like them to share their question on what do you think about this topic? Let's ask the subject. Okay, thanks. Man first with this panel. So hi everyone. I'm Samir Chavuxwar. I'm from huge designs, I'm the CEO of huge designs. And I've been working in the user experience design for about a quarter of 15, 17 years now. We formed the user designs about six years back and since then we've never looked back. In fact, even today we have about 50 persons, women and 50 persons in our organizations. The perspective that I'd like to bring is we were talking yesterday and a lot of people probably feel that women and designers of topic is itself introducing gender bias. It's not so. So my perspective about this topic here is that it's like a celebration. In India, we celebrate the power of women, the power of Shakti at Navaratri, which is just next week. And so it's the tradition of celebrating that Shakti, the origin of women. And I think this great topic kind of brings that out just in the context of design. And if you look at the nine different authors, they bring in one larger topic is the victory of good over evil. So good design versus bad design. And then all of the other authors kind of represent simplicity, efficiency, purity, knowledge, wealth, in different contexts. And I think all those can be seen in the design field or as required in the design field. So I'd like to start with that perspective. That is okay. Can you go to Deepav? Hi everyone, my name is Deepav Achu. I should be great if we have the house lights on so we can actually see folks and not get blinded. Please turn on the lights, please. At least in the main area. You could have the house lights on. So my name is Deepav Achu. I've about 20 years of experience with the most people with my nationality on startup. I do everything that goes into building a product. I started off as an engineer. I learned to be a designer on the job and then did product management and strategy. So I'd like to think of myself as a creator. About two months ago, I took a sponge from corporate and started my own company with a friend. It's called Pensar. Don't try Googling us and don't even have a website to start yet. It's the idea is really to foster design leadership. As a designer, I believe a big part of my job is to evangelize design. And I wish that there were more people that were sensitive to design. So what I'm trying to do is really create a company that can then foster design thinkers and design leaders by co-creating. Co-creating is a concept that we all as designers understand but in the industry it's very less understood. How do you really reimagine product experiences? How do you create that unexpected delight and that emotion for the customer that people can't imagine going back to their old way of doing things? I definitely have a technology bias that experiences are just generally what you experience. It's very, very general. So I hope to talk with you today about my perspective about women. I work in an industry, a software industry that's mostly men. At best, there's 70% of men and 30% women. And as you make more and more career progression, that ratio starts to pin down. You know, a lot of meanings, I find that I'm the only woman in the room. And for the most part, I don't even notice it anymore. And I want to step back and think, gosh, you know, I love my job. I love the people that work with me. Is there really a problem? But I now know that there is. It's important to have a diverse set of team working with you because why? Diversity allows innovative ideas. Diversity allows them that unexpected to life. And I personally very respectfully disagree. I don't think women are better with empathy than men. It's just that we bring in that sense of diversity. And diversity is really, really important and essential ingredient for disruptive innovation. If you wanted to do incremental innovation, it's fine. You can have everyone in the same cookie cutter more. But if you don't really come up with disruptive experiences, if you want to come up with an unexpected delight, then you really need a diverse set of people. And gender diversity is an obvious place that you can start. I think India, we have such huge cultural diversity just within our country. And it's wonderful that a place like Bangalore just automatically attracts people from different cultures and backgrounds. And I think we need to celebrate that and allow that to happen versus saying, you know, this is not good, but that's not good. So I think gender diversity is really important. I for one would love to see more women in the room where I'm at, so my voice doesn't get, you know, I'm looking for it. Suppressed? Suppressed, thank you, I was like, surprised. But I'd love to sort of chat more and it's great to see a diverse group here. Although I'm a woman and I do speak about in women forums, it's great to see that there's a diverse crowd here and not just women. So that's a great place to start. Thank you. Thank you Deepa. I'm Gayna Williams and I'm from Seattle, Washington. And my background is I come from a user experience background with mostly focused in research. So my career started at Microsoft where I spent most of my time growing user experience and the cool part was when I joined the company, what was design and usability was just a very, very small part of the product experience. And so I spent a lot of my career just pushing the agenda of user experience. And I think anyone that actually started in user experience that long ago has the same experiences, like we were the minority discipline among so many engineers. It's still pretty much the case though, as we've been talking about and celebrating here, it's like designers really stepped up and the demand went up because consumers expect it and it's profitability that they get interested in. And so for most of my career, I was really focused on not, it wasn't being just the only woman in the room. It was being the only person with a customer perspective in the room. And so I really learned to push the agenda and it wasn't until a lot later in my career that I suddenly realized that at the leadership level, there really weren't many female regardless of job discipline. And so I was super passionate about user experience, always, always loved it. And then I started to look more broadly at the leadership and what was happening. And I also have two daughters and it was the realization of the importance of role models, we'd go see different movies. And one time we went to see the movie Madagascar which they fund movie, lots of animals in it, it's great fun. And when my husband asked my daughter who was her favorite character, she said, the hippopotamus. And it was like, we couldn't remember the hippopotamus. And the reason why she had said it was it was the only female character in the lineup. And then that really was an eye opener to the influences for children is there's so much media that helps start to set the expectations. And the more you dig in, in America, in Hollywood, when they make family films deliberately targeted at children, less than 20% of the speaking characters are women. A fraction of those women are represented as holding jobs. It is so not representative of the world that we live in. And yet it sets expectations of any of the women that are demonstrated as working, none of them, virtually none of them come from a technology, a science, technology, career background. You'll find them as nurses or teachers or supportive functions. And suddenly you realize that as they're growing up, their whole influence is not seeing women as leaders and as equals. And I looked at my calendar, the year is 2015. It's desperately disappointing where everything is. So my agenda isn't just within design. It's within leadership at large. So when I moved on from Microsoft a few years ago, I actually now work as a career coach and leadership training for women. A lot of the work I do is actually with women in user experience because that's the strength of my background as well. But it's really important that we start to help grow leadership. And the main reason, like why businesses should care is because it means money for them. As we've heard mentioned, like diversity leads to, like more creative outcomes and diversity leads to more creative outcomes that have profit. It's, that is what will make a change happen. It's not just a social issue. You can have companies really focus on it. It's like, it's an imperative if they want to be successful, they actually do need to move to a more diverse workforce. And so that's one of the things that I'm highly supportive of. And change has to happen. And I think it's awesome that this conference has chosen to have a women in design track. Really, like it's super important because by calling it out, it then, I'm sure it helped the organization then really focus on trying to get more women as presenters at the event. If you don't call it out, it kind of just get, you know, it falls off the table. But by calling it out, it actually encourages us to take action on it. So I think it's great that the conference actually decided to embrace it this year. I'm Neha Modgil. I'm a co-founder of TechWave Consulting. And so I love the topic women in design when Babu introduced this topic to me last, some years ago. My first thought was that, you know, why women in design? Why not men in design? You know, why should women be segregated? And we had discussions around that. And like someone said, and I somewhere agree that it's about celebration. It's about years of perhaps oppression, which is now turning around. So it's probably celebration of that. In fact, just yesterday, I got a lovely WhatsApp message, which I thought a line of that I'm going to share here. It said that, And that's the power of women. We don't even have an inflate on the house, on the main door of the house, and we spend our lifetime decorating and looking after that house. And that selflessness, that concern, and that empathy is what makes women not superior, but at least equal. And that's what I think women in design and women in design and women in design not superior, but at least equivalent to men in this field of design is what I feel. In fact, if you go back and look at your households, you will see your mothers have been so concerned about what is the dish that you love? What is it that they should make for their husbands, for their father-in-laws, for their mother-in-laws? They will customize their behaviors according to everybody in the house. And that's exactly what a UX designer needs to know. And that's exactly how they need to behave, right? So culturally, it's in our DNA to be like that. And hence, I think women just become better, if I can say, UX designers. And in fact, when I started this, and I started employing, since I was a co-founder, we were recruiting people, we were growing our team, somehow the recruitment just skewed towards having more women. And then we got together and we decided, we need men. I mean, there's no spice in the office with no men. So then we consciously started getting men in the office. And I remember one of the discussions, there are these two women, one man, and we were sitting and discussing something and the discussion got very heated and this man used a word he shouldn't have used in front of women, shouldn't have, you know. So, and this girl said, how can you say that in front of women? He said, oh, I didn't realize I'm sitting with women. And I thought that was wonderful. I mean, when we stopped realizing that we're sitting with men, we're sitting with women, is when you actually overcome the bias. And that is what we should all aim towards, you know, not look at each other as a man or a woman, but, you know, we together make things happen, is how I look at it. Great. So, going right to the point that we were discussing again yesterday, I think there is something that has to be a thought through from the grassroots level, because there is something, if you want to influence and shape women into leaders of the future, there should be some influence and then there should be some conversations around what needs to be done. Is there anything that we could do to influence or not necessarily improve? I'm not asking for, like, we need to change the education system and stuff, but then to inculcate these values into education system, so that because UX India is a platform wherein we try to bring all three aspects of the industry, like education and industry and also governance to some extent, I would like to briefly touch upon all three aspects and bring women in design on par with what exactly we're doing, right? So, can we have a brief perspective on what needs to be done all the way from the grassroots level, which is education and then how it can translate through your career when we as design managers recruit women designers and then how we can help them grow, right? So... Okay, so what we had been talking about earlier was when you're in school, we often see men and women participate in design and in research classes and in all lots of aspects of education. And then the entry-level positions is men and women have hired almost equally into those positions. The challenges come as you start to move up in role because that's often when it's less about specific skills and measurable skills and being able to grow and move to the higher levels, it becomes dependent on a slightly different set of skills and connections. And one of the challenges, and again, I always thought it was just really interesting how some of the challenges I saw for women are also the ones that user experience has had as well in terms of lack of sponsorship at the top, lack of executive representation. It's so much easier when the executive in a company, it has had the job lower down in the company that you have because they really have so much sympathy and they know how to grow that individual and bring them on up in the company. And user experience has struggled with this and it's starting to change as in corporations, you're starting to see executives at that level. And that's also the challenge that women often face is having somebody at a higher level in the company that can help bring along and one be a role model so you can see it, but also sponsorship for somebody that reaches down and helps to train and pull a person further and forward in the company. So, but there's two parts, there's one is how do we get, become successful in the way the world is today and it takes a lot, it does take effort and it takes investment of your own time to really take risks, take chances to move on up and then it also requires people who are at the senior levels to really open their minds to embracing diversity. When I became, first time when I became a manager, the easiest mistake to make as a manager when you first going from an individual to becoming a manager is hiring more people like you. And it's really easy to do because you just want more of you to get more jobs done, to get more work done and best way to do that would be just to multiply yourself. And for me, I learned my lesson when I ended up having mergers of teams and so I ended up having more teams brought to me that I hadn't hired the individuals and it was learning that there were really smart people coming from these other teams, but they weren't like me, they were very, very different. And it was just realizing that I had to take time to appreciate the diversity of what they were bringing and it took time and effort on my part as a manager to really do that. And again, I just happen to be a female manager, but it was diversity of work style that I was having to really make an effort to appreciate. And so that as people are moving into actually, show of hands of how many of you managers right now? Okay, and keep those hands up. How many of you want to be a manager at some point in your career? All right, good. Okay, so it's you who as you become managers you're the ones that are going to be setting the expectations and the rules for what comes. So really, really pay attention to diversity, whether it's gender or other aspects is going to be super important. Cool. If I may, I'd like to share a personal story. Yeah, sure. So I had just had my daughter and my husband and I were planning to have a second child. I think my daughter was about two. And a really interesting project came my way and I did have a sponsor and they recommended that recommended me to the job. I knew at the back of my mind that we were trying to have a second child. And in all honesty, I went into my manager, my sponsor actually and said, you know what, I need to pull my hat out of the ring for this. And they were really concerned and they said, well, why can you tell me a little bit about why? And I said, well, you know, we're thinking about having a second baby and I'm not sure that I'll be able to focus and give my best to this project. And so I'd like to throw my, you know, pull my hat out of the ring. And this individual and thank, you know, where's the soul said, asked me this question. He said, are you already pregnant? I know I'm not supposed to be asking this, but are you already pregnant? And I said, no, we're thinking about it. And so he said, well, from everything I know, it takes about nine months to conceive. I mean, nine months to conceive of a baby. And there's going to take some time to conceive. So you're at least nine to 12 months away from going on maternity. So why are you pulling your hat out of the ring? And that just, you know, struck me and I was like, oh shit, yeah, you know, I'm planning something. I'm a very loyal employee. And I was thinking about the company and saying, gosh, you know, I want to stay here. I want to see the project. And it's going to be at least a year. And you know, this sponsor of mine said, do you think the men that have thrown the hat in the ring are going to stay in this company for nine to 12 months? For sure. I said, I don't know. And he said, yeah, well, they don't know either. But they're not pulling their hat out of the ring. And so I shared that story because I think a lot of us women, and when I've shared the story, a lot of folks have, you know, related to it. And that's why I repeated. To say that I'm so glad I had that sponsor. Because if I didn't have that wonderful job to come back to, I don't know if I would have come back to that job. And you know, it would have been just a boring job that I was doing that wasn't pushing me to my limits. So it wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't really create that draw for me to come back. And if I had quit even before I had the opportunity, I'm just depriving myself of it. So I think the biggest thing that I share from this personal story is to be in the game and make it worthwhile. We're all making sacrifices, whether it's a woman or a man. But more so with women with children, there's a lot of guilt associated with, oh my god, my child is just three months old. I'm leaving my child behind. But what I say to other women is make it worth it. Make that guilt worth it. The guilt's going to be there. It's not going to go away. They didn't go away for me, but make it worth it. If you are leaving a three-month-old child to do just a boring monotonous job, it's not worth it. And I would probably quit. But thanks to the sponsor, I was rearing to get back and I got back in two months. I did have a lot of guilt associated with it, but you know what, I had the time of my life. And so I would say make it worth it. That's my biggest lesson that I'd like to share with other women as well. So Sameer, you run a design company basically, right? So I'm pretty sure that you have a team that is a mix of both women and men and all that, even a distributor. But can you share any success stories that involve women at any level of design life cycle that will help our audience? Sure, there's actually plenty of those. And you know, but we ask for a notice of one and a half years before you get pregnant. I'm just kidding. So one of the points I'd like to make is what you said, you have to make it worth your while. As managers and leaders in design, we understand that there are limitations just because of the gender. I cannot be pregnant, right? No man can, not yet at least. So we have to think about that and think about the long-term perspective in business. It's not just short-term three-monthly cycles or a yearly appraisal cycle. If there's a value of a person, irrespective of man or woman, especially for women, if you see the value in that person, you think about a long-term perspective, right? And then encourage that person to take leadership roles. So we have also said, you know, a lot of women say, you know, I'm having a child and after that I'm taking a break of six months. I don't know, I'm completely out of date. How I'm going to do that? We encourage them, actually, we also talk to their in-laws sometimes in saying that, you know, let her start working after let's say two or three months whenever she's ready to do that. And we've been having success stories like this, women leading from the front, multiple projects and multiple teams, in fact. And they've been very successful with the clients because one thing is for sure, they understand people a lot. You know, in the context of our culture, especially that they have to, you know, once a woman gets married, she goes to a different culture altogether, right? She still lives with her husband and in-laws. So she needs to understand the people out there, right? From day one. And that power of that woman kind of comes into the workplace as well, where she is dealing with customers on one hand, her subordinates or teammates on one hand and the managers and leaders on the other hand. So, and that's a natural thing. Why wouldn't you, you know, kind of take advantage of that, right, and make her more capable and give them that freedom so that they can use that in the future? Thank you. So Neha, you made an interesting statement, right? So yours was predominantly a women-dominated company and then to add some spice to it, you had to kind of record men into it. So how do you think it has changed the ecosystem and then how is it working now? I mean, do you have any success stories to share about? Men. Women. Ha ha ha. Okay. So, you know, when we started getting men in, we all worked in our own way. Like we were women, we would have fun, we would hang around, we would party around. We were really having a nice time doing what we were doing. When we started getting men in, we thought, you know, would they understand how we behave, how we work? And, but nevertheless, we wanted to get some people in. And it was interesting. In fact, when I started Tech Wave about eight years ago, I was expecting my first baby and five years later, I gave birth to my second baby and believe me, men have been so supportive. There have been times when, in fact, I was working till one day before I delivered my second baby and I had a meeting the next day and this guy from my office called me. He said, I know that you're in the hospital and you've just delivered. Don't worry, I'm gonna be taking care of all this. And he went and he was just a fresher. I mean, one month is all that he'd worked for us and he went, handled all the client meetings. So I think it's not just women who support women. The world is completely changing. Men support women. They come out and show their support to women, which is wonderful. And in fact, we have women in our office who feel safer when they're out with men. They feel it's all right if he drops me home. So I think the entire perspective is changing, but more importantly, it's how the top management is handling that perspective. How is it from the top that it's trickling down to the bottom, which is very important? So like she said, if you're at the top or if you're wanting to be at the top, ensure that you trickle that perspective down to the bottom because it's you who can get that change and it's your thought which will change the organization and the way it functions. So be sensitive to women and their requirements. They do have certain different requirements. And if you've given them that kind of flexibility, you don't even know what wings you've given her to fly. So trust her and let her be. So just quickly from the panel out here, because if you have to think of one piece of advice for young women designers to succeed and excel in their career, what exactly is the one piece of advice that you can think of and then give to our audience is they can take away. So that will set them up in line to succeed in their careers and then. So this is one piece that relates to something that has already been said. And that is to your example of the assumption that you've already planned so far ahead. It's obviously not possible for you to take the job and anticipated and you said that you were a year early. I had somebody who worked for me who also came asking about work-life balance if they had children and they hadn't even met a partner at this point. So this person was fabulous at planning ahead which is what I needed on the team, right? But it was like, don't even worry about that. We'll figure that out later. But sort of one thing that advice for women and advice for leads and managers is if you are offered something and you want it, take it in the moment when it's offered to you the first time. Because so often women when asked and actually we're stumbling a bit up here talking about who's sympathetic and empathetic to users is the chances are that everybody in this room is more empathetic to users than perhaps some other job discipline types who are more mathematically based or something like that because it's just maybe not where their natural skills lie. They lie somewhere else. So empathy is something that many, many people can have. When in psychology they look at empathy as identified as more of a feminine trait. But we all have a mixture. I can be as aggressive and argumentative in a meeting as a guy, just put me in the right situation. That's considered more of a masculine trait. So we all have degrees of this experience. So sorry, back to the advice. So one, if you are offered, hey, you should go give a presentation. Oh, oh no, don't ask me. I'm not very good at presenting. I'll sign. Often women will like, if you ask them three times they'll finally say yes. They wanted to say yes the first time. But socially it was like no, I wanna do that. Or you know, actually when I left my job as director of user research I told, I was telling my team individually and I had several managers who worked for me. The guys were like, oh, that's a shame you're leaving. Who's getting your job? Right? And the woman when she came, she was like, oh no, you're leaving your job. What about my project? And what about this? And what about that? And like there was no immediacy in, I guess, can I get your job? So one, if something's offered and you want to take it if you also want something, ask for it. What can the best thing that can happen or the worst thing that can happen is that somebody will say no. So okay, now advice for leaders and managers. If you are offering something to someone who could be more empathetic to users, more shy, might be female, and they say, oh, I don't think so. Ask them again and then ask them again. Really double check because it's top, down, bottom, up. And I said, we really need the diversity period, right? So it's on both fronts to try and make this happen. So that's just sort of one piece of advice. Well, outside of make it worth it, I would say the second thing would be stay persistent and look for sponsors. I find that we've talked about as you progress your career, the diversity, the gender diversity thins out. And I think it's really important to get the support, like you were talking about Neha, with the men around you, the other folks around you. We were had, again, a quick personal story. We were talking about diversity of all topics and I was the only woman in the room with about 10 to 15 men. And I noticed something that I mentioned and right away, as soon as I said it, I got literally pounced on. And I said, okay, you know what? I'm just gonna let it go. But later, I found two of the folks that were in the meeting and said, hey, you know what? If this environment is really gonna be an inclusive environment, even if my idea is like the stupidest idea or my thoughts, the stupidest, at least it needs to be voiced and understood and reciprocated. Like, you know, at least note it down. And so, after that though, as soon as I said that, I found that every time we were in a meeting and there was a minority voice, they were helping represent it. They didn't necessarily agree with me and that wasn't what I was asking for, but just the voice to be heard. So I would say, get sponsors, get people that can support you around you, that just, you know, if you're in an environment where you're not quite the minority as a gender, it just helps multiply your voice and remember that you're being hired for that diverse perspective. So in my opinion, I wasn't doing my job if my perspective wasn't being heard. So it wasn't about me, but it was about doing a great job and the outcome for the company itself. And that really helps. So that's what I would pass on to everyone. Cool. In the interest of time, I think I'm going to have one last question for the panel out here. Maybe we can start with Samir. So what do you think UX India should be focusing on going forward with this kind of program? Because this year, we have launched this program to celebrate 10 years of UX and also celebrate the spirit of women in design. But as someone who has been interested and as someone who has been working with women, right? And in general, what do you think we should focus on year after year going forward as a part of this program? For this particular topic? For this particular segment, yeah. So I think we've talked about different aspects of the opportunities that women get or don't get and the diversity. I think we should encourage wherever it is possible to give opportunities to different women of all, maybe managers, maybe there are teams, to kind of showcase their expertise and knowledge in this particular forum. Which would kind of then make sure that the larger culture of design is influenced by that particular initiative. Which will also make sure in a way that women take that challenge. So women get inspired by women. That's what is required. We see a lot of this happening in larger industries like Kiran Majumdar Shah or Indranui or others. But in the design industry, I don't think there are enough women to inspire other women and other men as well. So that's what we need, I think. Any thoughts, Neha? I agree with Sameer because yesterday I'm talking at a women in design panel post-lunch. I had two ladies who came to me and said, you know, we want to hear you because we want to get inspired. We want to know how you achieved it and what is the path to success. So I think there are a lot of women there. In fact, even when we hire, we hear women after two months, they say we want to leave because my parents don't want me to work, my husband has a problem. We need to counsel them. We need to tell them that, you know, go back. This is exactly, we give them a script. This is exactly what you need to tell them. And then they come back and they say, oh, it worked. So it's important to be able to inspire. Maybe all of us here are lucky. We've had supportive parents, supportive in-laws, supportive families. So we need to be able to reach out to more women and tell them, you know, even if they're not supportive, this is how you get that support. So to be able to share these things is, I think, what we can contribute. And if we can have more of such discussions and reach out to not just women in UX design, but there are so many other design fields where women are excelling. There's fashion design, there's product design. If we can get all of them together, hear about how they made it happen, it'll just be such a wonderful forum. Great. So I'm glad that one of my assumptions that I had when I started with this session today was empathy is just a trait of women, but it's not so. We all are designers, I think we all need to be empathetic towards our customers, users that we talk to. So I think that's been a great of inaugural women in design session. I thank the audience in the first place for being so patient and then listening to your panelists. And thank you for our great panelists to be here on stage today.