 Hi everybody! I didn't expect so many people to come. Good. Okay. So I'm here today to talk about new perspectives for design thinking and tell you the ten best ways to fail as the designer designing for other people. Now there's a bit of a content warning. There's a really bad German accent involved and some coarse language. Very good. So I'm Heike. I'm a producer and UX designer for Sparks Interactive and I'm also the product owner for the sector Drupal Distribution which happens to be nominated for today's awards. I just thought I'd drop this in. I'm also known as Minow Freitag. I am an artist, a sculptor, painter, printmaker. I do absolutely everything and because life should never be boring. I also write post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy science fiction novels under the same name and have published my first book in 2022. Now, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate that this is a somewhat strange talk with no Drupal in it. So that was it for Drupal. The talk also somewhat evolved. When I submitted the talk three months ago, I had just returned from a two-year sabbatical just doing art and writing and life was really good. Then I came back to work. My old boss took me back on. He hasn't learned his lesson yet and I thought like, oh my god, all the crazy has just gone so much more crazy after the pandemic. So I just blame the pandemic for everything now. So in the three months since I really have to say, I calmed down somewhat. So this talk actually meanders between despair and hope, between cynicism and civil linings and I tried for a happy ending. So my career has been somewhat nomadic. I've been an architect. I actually studied it and I have a diploma. I've been an interior designer, an illustrator, a graphic designer, a game designer and developer, a multimedia and interaction designer and content creator. In short, I've been the person designing for other people for more than 30 years. And as I said, I've come here to tell you a cautionary tale about how to fail at it. I will link all the ways to fail back to UX design. But if you want to try any of those, they will allow you to fail in whatever creative endeavor you want to pursue. When I'm talking about failure here, I'm not talking about the kind of failure that is so celebrated today. You know, you fail, you grow, you succeed, right? I see this more cynical and it's actually not, I'm not so jaded about it. But what happens is you fail, you grow, rinse and repeat. Because what success is, you define for yourself. And growth is actually a really good success factor. So, but I'm not even talking about this kind of failure. I'm talking about the soul-crushing realization that the project you just have pouring your life into and a bit of insanity now is a washed out compromise that makes mediocrity look brilliant. You will not show it to any of your friends and you will not list it on your CV until it's good for name dropping. So, as you might have noticed, designers can be somewhat dramatic. If design is anything, design is an emotional occupation. You can learn how to deal with your emotions but you can't send them away. Designing for other people requires empathy and without emotions, there's no empathy. It just doesn't work. But let's start at the beginning. So, precisely how to ensure failure before you even commit to a project. You can do so by ignoring the three out of five rule. Let me tell you a story about a famous architecture and a city council. This story might be an urban mass. Everybody knew it when I was an architecture student but I could actually not find any reference to it online. But then the internet was like so big at the time, so it might be true. It went something like this. In the 1990s, a German city council invited Tatau Ando to discuss a very prestigious project. The world famous architect flew all the way from Japan, halfway around the world, arrived with his entourage, listened to the council for five minutes, then spoke to the translator, stood and left. The translator looked somewhat apologetic and said that the architect felt that this was not a project for him. Even as students we all wanted to be Tatau Ando when we grew up. The creative industries are highly competitive. Walking away from a project is not always possible or wise. By taking on a project that does just not feel right from the start is even a higher risk. So my suggestion is to make a list of five things that you value most in any project and ignore the three out of five rules at your own risk. So the items on this list will very widely from person to person. That is something that is really important to you. There might be your career on it or something like that or internet fame or whatever. Whatever is important to you. These are the things that are important to me. So project should allow me to grow as a designer, artist or writer or just as a person. You know like it might not be very interesting but you might be able to learn shit loads. So just go for it. To me it's also important to work with people I feel comfortable with and that I can bring something to the project that allows me to contribute in some kind of meaningful way. Money for me is not such a priority but I feel that reasonable reimbursement for my time should be on the table as well. However if this would be the first time I wouldn't write or do art. The last question I asked myself is does the project seem feasible? Have these people already set them up for failure? Can I do something? Can I turn this around? And what are the consequences if you say no? There is a good reason to say yes to something. If there is something you can work out with these people and it turns into something bigger. Finding projects that take five out of my three is actually not as easy as it seems. It depends on how much money you need or on how much you need the money or the job. But a project that doesn't take three out of five you can and maybe should walk away from. Another good way to fail is to lose sight of your audiences. Let me tell you the story about the presentation that never happened. So in the 1990s again the German car manufacturers decided that to sell car they needed to sell the experience of buying the car. And the first autostart was born. It was a V-dub scene park. If you have ever seen it just imagine Disney World with cars. It's absolutely I think crazy. So in the mid 1990s the Bavarian competitor realized that they needed to do something about this. So people actually came to Wolfsburg to pick up their car. So they needed to do something about it. So the marketing team decided to pitch the idea to the board. At the time I was working as an architect involved in the project and he knew that I was dabbling in the fledgling art of digital interaction and animation design and video architect and asked me to work on a presentation. So I went to the marketing company and the marketing team and we sat together. We made a storyboard and we built this thing. It was amazing. We also didn't sleep because at the time you needed to wait a night to render 10 seconds of video. Then on a day before the presentation we demoed the presentation to the board's advisor. He looked at it and said it was amazing. He had never seen anything like it. Which was the reason why he couldn't present it to the board in this form. He then continued to tell us we needed to do a text-only PowerPoint presentation instead. The silence in the room stretched to an uncomfortable length. So eventually the advisor finally broke my little heart by adding that we of course get paid. So what's the problem? From today's perspective I can see how stupid this was. We were so in love with all the digital tools and the possibilities and everything was just exploding around us. It was just a totally new world. But we weren't there to impress our peers. We had to do a presentation for a very large corporation where innovation happened in a basement not on a senior management level. Looking back the only thing I'm really surprised with instead of surprises me sorry is that the architect or that neither the architect nor the marketing company actually picked this up and gave us a warning. They wanted all the bells and whistles. However in the end they took this with professional grace. I didn't. So the same applies to Hickstein design today. Design is persuasion. Yes you need to work with your end users. You need to charm them and figure out what they need and what they want and what is the difference. But you also need to convince yourself, your team, your boss and whoever pays the bills. It's a good way to fail if you forget that. So another way to fail is to get attached to the bullshit. So we work in a relatively young industry. However if you would, if my dad would be here, he's 86, he would actually disagree. So it's really funny. My dad worked in the IT industry when there were still punch cards and when we have sometimes a chat he has encountered many of the same challenges I did in a way that is absolutely eerie. So however old the industry is, it is caught in a maelstrom of ever-changing technology. This is just what we have. It's just spinning and spinning and spinning. The world around us is changing and changing and changing. So our reaction is to throw methods and methodologies until it, until words become too big and too empty. And this happens in a highly competitive landscape forcing its inhabitants to work under the imperative to stay ahead at all costs. Or maybe it's just that. Software people like making six up and can't help themselves. To identify bullshit we actually need to look at it's anatomy and it's something that happens really easily. So somebody identifies a problem. They come up with an incredible clever solution that works in their specific content. Somebody puts a label on it. Then the solution is oversimplified as a marketable skill. Then somehow those solutions turn into belief systems and can no longer be questions. And somewhere in this process a disconnect between the problem, the context and the solution occurs. In short, an illusion of authority or expertise is created without providing meaningful substance or value, lacking assentities, sincerity or integrity. Just don't get hung up in it. Advocate for imperfect, for impactful change instead. Now sorry, I need to linger a tiny bit more on the bullshit topic because actually I wanted to stop here but things aren't as easy as that because sitting on a high house doesn't pay the bills either. So let me tell you a story about what's really going on much of the time. So in the early 2000s there was like the design and the development compartments. They were really angry at each other. Developers had to build stuff that was impossible to build and designers didn't get the shit done because it was impossible to be done. So a lot of methodologies come up to actually try to change the industry and the way we work. So it was behavior-driven development, data-driven development, test-driven development, user-driven development and then agile development. So a lively online exchange occurred when the exchange got a bit heated. Then in 2007 Scott Bakun joined in writing that if we are going to have dozens of models we might as well have some that are honest, however cynical, to what's really going on much of the time. And then he went on to current the term asshole-driven development. Any team where the biggest jerk makes all of the decisions, all wisdom, logic or processes goes out of the window when Mr. I added the Mrs. We want to be fair here. Asshole is in the room doing whatever idiotic selfish thing he thinks it's best. There are a couple of things in your life that you will never forget. I remember reading a fucking black post. I was sitting there and I thought I'm seeing somebody sees me. And I wanted to be Scott when I grew up. But in my experience nobody hires you to change the beliefs unless you're Scott. If you do it anyways, you really need to challenge your own beliefs first because you are full of biases as well. So be careful with that high horse. And if Mr. or Mrs. Asshole is in charge, practice serenity. Number five, it's also a really good way to fail, thinking that you're not a therapist. Let me tell you the story about my first day at the TV production company. So as a very, very green screen designer, I got a job on a series of edutainment cities. These round sinks with the mirrored surface. The series had won quite a few awards, as had the art director under whom I was going to work. I never understood how I got the job really. So on my first day, the script writer welcomed me and invited me to sit at a desk next to her. She told me how excited she was to work with me. She also warned me about the art director and told me not to listen to him. The art director walked in three hours later and told me that I needed to sit with the designers and not to listen to any single writer said. And he did all that before he said hello. I was trying to remember if he ever said hello. I don't think so. This story repeated itself so many times throughout my career and it's still going on. Even the job, you're really excited. This is going to be amazing. This will get you on the map and you meet the team and they are excited. Yay. Everything is going to be okay. Okay. And then you meet what I call now the shadows team and things might not be going so easy in this project. Now let me just clarify something. Let's go back to this art director. Yes, he was the Mr. A Scott Bakun was talking about. He came in late every day and he was stoned most of the days. He also was an incredibly talented digital designer and animator. One of the very rare people that made you a better designer just by being in the same room with him, which we usually try to avoid. And then there was the series producer. She had been working in the film industry for years and she had an area ability to work with all kinds of crazy while making everybody feel that they are the most important person in the room. And everything went like a well oiled machinery. And she did this every single day without being bitchy or disingenuous. This is a fucking art. We finished the project in six weeks. I came back for two more installments and learned more than maybe at any time other time of my life. Most I learned from her. If you facilitate or lead design projects and want to get anywhere, you need to run group therapy with anybody noticing it. This is our favorite. We all know this. Designing for people for who people want to be. This actually happens a bit maybe more in our own lives than in our professional lives. So there once was a couple that wanted a light filled minimalist studio apartment. They made mood beds and Pinterest, bought a one room apartment, hired an interior designer and they got it all done and it was beautiful. Then one of them unpacked their gamer stash. Three mega size displays, four blue blue led keyboards, 12 consoles and 300 kilometers of cables. And that I asked to lower the blinds because all the slide was too bright for the display. Now on the other end of the spectrum is the couple making a list of absolutely everything they own. They count their socks. They model everything They model everything in 3D and order the cupboards custom made to match their stuff. They live heavily after until the puppy arrives or the child or the cat or the new coffee maker that is now 10 centimeters higher and doesn't fit in that nice coffee niche anymore. We all learned those lessons or similar one in many aspects of our lives over and over again. You can come up with solutions. You can get a partner that matches your interior design. You can have a game pod. You can have all kinds of things. You can move into another apartment. You can leave all the stream stuff behind and actually get realistic by the two room apartment with the door to close. User interfaces are like these apartments. You need to assemble the past and plan for the future. You need to be you need to clear out and sort and label and shift stuff around and then you do it all over again in continuous improvements. Perfection is not going to help you in this process. Don't try to anticipate and design everything to the end's degree. Let it go. Watch from a distance and improve it over time. It's really hard. Designing for how you want people to be. That's even harder. Let me tell you a story about the right-wing politician and the close lines. In Italy, people traditionally dry their clothes on lines hanging between houses. Italians are very big on traditions. So when the people of Gino were told by a right-wing politician to bring in their clothes washing before a G8 summit because it crept her style, they reattaliated by hanging out even more and most of it was underwear. In urban planning, we often talk about desire lines, the pathways that people actually want to take, usually cutting across our amazing grass. Desire lines are often used as a metaphor in UX design and A-B testing when we aim to identify pathways the user prefers. Because on a screen, the user can't shortcut and trample down the grass, so we somehow need to narrow it down until we find an optimal path balancing user needs with business objectives. Dismantle your biases. Accept the close lines, find the desire lines, rinse, repeat. And the same applies, the same thing about perfectionism applies from the last slide. So you can do all of this, but if you never challenge the status quo, you will fail as well. Sorry, bear with me, a bit more garden design. I love the marionnering paths in Japanese gardens. For me and I make impatience and art form, these parts create the desire to be taken. I want to walk there, I want to listen, I want to breathe. So maybe your idea for a design, me and us along such a path. Maybe it's a path not taken before. If you want your users to come along to change behavior, you need to create an experience that invites that new behavior naturally. And maybe do a shortcut for people in a hurry, just in case. If you want to challenge perceptions, both users and clients, and bring something new, put in the work first and make sure that your idea is desirable, feasible and sustainable, then go for it. Ignoring the five-year rule. Let's assume you have done the best job you could in a given context. But the project as a whole goes down a path that your experience tells you is doomed. What do you do? Ask yourself if any of these matters in five years, or three, or one. We are working with shorter and shorter life cycles for design and products, and the cool new kit on a block is only half a block away on every and any single day. Ask yourself, will your project change people's lives in an impactful matter that has a lasting effort? If you can, if this is a case, and you can advocate to remove complexity and love for continuous improvements, if nobody is listening, be pragmatic, get it done, move on. Number 10, and I'm almost in time, thinking that everybody else has this all figured out. When we talk about imposter syndrome, we often talk about the inner critic telling us that we are not good enough. Behind this is a belief that everyone else has figured it out. There's not a single design school approach that has figured it all out. You are actually figuring it out every single day. There's not a single golden goose methodology. It yields perfect results all the time. Think about the software you are using regularly. How many of them bring you joy? How many websites do? And then how big are the teams they are working on? They're working on both sides. How much budget do they have? How much time? Design is scary. You might want to change the way people do things. People don't like change. Change is scary. Fear and doubt are contagious. You need to feel this fear, and then you need to be fearless.