Smashing Meets: Web Design

    2:46PM Jun 18, 2024

    Speakers:

    Keywords:

    design

    potentially

    brand

    work

    users

    designers

    biases

    feel

    experience

    southeast asia

    talk

    facebook

    fascinating

    jay

    general

    app

    company

    world

    called

    inclusive

    A new adventure. Well, it's not really new.

    Web Design has been a thing for a while.

    It's been always interesting to see. We've been doing this thing, design, web design, maybe some of us who used to be called webmaster, please write in the chat if you have been called webmaster at least once in a lifetime. Well, I know I was maybe 62 times or so. I don't know. So this brings back memories, but then when we're talking about things where we are today, like web design or design, or product design, or UI design, UX design, all of the things that kind of really evolved massively over the years, right? And so it's really see where we have come and what are the next steps for us. And so welcome everyone. It's fantastic to have you all here. My name is bitterly. It's not it's the same story.

    It's not fiddly.

    It's kind of just bitterly, really, to be honest. So feel free to think about it. This is like somebody who's coming from Italy and then just a pants a V next to it. Dogs agree. Cats agree. I agree that this is a much better way to pronounce the name than just fiddly. And believe me, here in Berlin and Germany, there is quite a few fiddleries I hear every now and again. And it's not it doesn't hurt, but it does at least a little bit, at least a little bit inside. Now,

    dear friends,

    we also have kentos. If you look at the live stream, right underneath there is this little button saying live caption. If you click on it, you actually follow along with captions. And as it always is, I can see care is being called webmaster, probably not for a while, though, I hope so. At least what we also have, of course, is this platform, this kind of we do this sort of meet us. We do this sort of get togethers, not only to be connected with wonderful people like yourself, but also to just explore and just figure out things and learn things and figure out what we fail, where we succeed, and things like that. This is always a journey that we take, and that often means that we need to kind of fail a struggle along the way. So obviously, we all try to highlight some of the things that don't work, just as we're highlighting things that do work, and the way it works is always the same. There is a talk, there is a Q A, there is a talk, there is a Q A. We could go like this in a loop for like the next 45 or 45 hours, but we're going to go for just two hours, two and a half hours, but an important part of it is you being able to ask your questions. I think it's really important, and I want to emphasise just enough and stress and emphasise and highlight and italicise. It's important to see your questions in there, because ultimately this is for, not just for us to hang out, but this is also for for you to be able to answer your questions, to ask the questions that are bothering you, or anything else that might for you at this point as well. We also take notes together. This is very common for everything that we're doing, be it smashing conferences, which you highly encourage to join in as well, and also smashing workshops, which are also highly encouraged to join, and also wonderful meetups like this, which are obviously also very much encouraged to join. And I think, I think there will be

    where there will be a link dropping in the Google doc to the Google doc

    in the chat. I think it already happened, where you can actually find all the fine details and can actually take notes together. Many of us will be taking notes anyway. That's an opportunity for all of us to take notes together, because of web design,

    all right? And we also have a hashtag. I don't know how to use a hashtag anymore.

    Well, Twitter, not really Mastodon, maybe, right? So if you want to follow along on any platform of your choice, please use a hashtag, smashing conf on Smash conferences and everywhere else, pretty much so people who are happen to be kind of in the same space, like in smashing events, they feel connected as well. This is kind of a new way to stay connected. We also have a Slack channel. So if you want to stay connected, even beyond the scope of this get together that we have for the next two hours, please join us on smash that by stack. It's I know, I know, I know. It's another Slack channel, but it's a good one. It's a friendly one. So if you go to smash that by slash slack and go to meet people, really help each other, to get maybe some feedback, just quick opinion from somebody, this is kind of a nice place to be. So it's always kind of the same start for us, because I always throw a lot of information here, but I'm just curious where is everybody coming from now? We have now for what I can see, 18 six, maybe 90 people and joining us. So could you just drop in the address where you're currently at Google Maps link or Apple Maps or anything? It doesn't have to be that specific, but maybe just a city or even a country would be more than enough. So feel free to drop it in in the chat to see where we all are coming from. Personally, I'm connecting right now from Berlin, and I know that Jarin and carries are probably connecting from the Netherlands, and Amanda, I think is connecting from Bristol. So this will be probably kind of where we are coming from, right? So please drop it in. Greg doesn't move to you. You just don't move. Greg, ever Pittsburgh, Miami, wonderful. Wonderful to see you all here and welcome. Just before you're wondering, will it be recorded? Maybe you need to leave earlier, maybe you just arrived a little bit late. Yes, everything is being recorded, and we're recording the videos. We'll make them available. Watch out for the email that we'll send out to you shortly after this. And also, we're collecting slides, so you'll get everything whether you want it or not, right? And as we are going through this adventure, already started chatting this opportunity for us to acknowledge just how awesome we are, right? Because when I look at you and I don't see you, but I can sense you miles away, I can sense you. You're a very cool person, so let's keep it this way. You have a very simple code of conduct, which means, well, everybody's welcome, people, as you can see from all over coming in and so please be friendly and be cool and smashing to each other.

    All right. Now moving along to the content of

    this wonderful meetup. Here, we have two wonderful speakers, plus we have Jay and Rachel. And we'll start with Jay, and I think it's really interesting, because when we're speaking about designing today, one of the major conversations and have is, you know what they're going to do with AI and what are we going to do with all this wonderful, powerful tools that we have in our disposal? How are things going to change? What will be the role of a designer? How do we include ethics? How do we include, well, basically, sensible considerations about humanity and about the professionalism in our work. How does it work? Now, very often you see these conversations happening where you would hear things, well, technology is neutral. We're just designing these buttons. We're just designing pixels on the screen. We're not these pixels don't hurt, and I disagree, pixels can hurt a lot, because in the end, every time we're building anything, we're designing, anything we're putting something out in the world. We're also embedding a part of us into it. But we always have our own biases. We always have our own maybe stereotypes a way of thinking. Very often they're unconscious. And so whether we want it or not, kind of add or integrate in some way biases into our work. How do we avoid or maybe minimise biases as far as we could? Well, that's exactly what our wonderful first speaker is going to speak about. Jay will dive right into that just before I go further. Jay, are you in the house?

    Hey, yes. Hello,

    Jay. Hey.

    How you doing?

    Oh, my hands, I feel like the only

    thing I'm missing is more

    cats. Do you feel like sometimes you wake Do you wake up one day and think more cats?

    More cats. I'm more of a dog person, but I love cats too. So more cats, please.

    Okay, well, more dogs is perfectly fine as well. I don't find dogs

    that's perfectly fine. Very happy to have you with us, Jay. Thank you so much for joining in. Jay has been around for a while, working over 10 years with New York City, San Francisco, Singapore, China and currently Australia, working for Canva. And warm greetings to wonderful Canva team as well. He's also been working on Twitter, Pinterest, Yahoo and grab and many, many, many, many others. And hey, like again,

    looking back at what I've been covering previously, what I've been kind of diving into previously,

    Jay, is there a way to design

    without bias altogether? I

    think it's pretty difficult to be honest. I think it's just

    a matter of just checking yourself. But I'll go into that into detail more more so with my presentation. Well, I can't wait already. And dear friends, please don't forget,

    whenever you have a question or so, please drop it in the chat and I'm going to bring it up in the end for Q A for like 10 minutes or so. But in the meantime, Jake,

    do you have a favourite fruit?

    I do like

    bananas and dragon fruit. Okay, so I think a dear friend, this is a challenge for you

    find the closest emoji that would be s. I don't know if there is a dragon fruit emoji. I don't think there is, but if you find a related emoji, anything that's close enough, please use a warm greeting. Welcome to the stage. Keck,

    I think you'll be expecting a wall of dragon fruit

    related emoji, I guess. And it's a sign that the stage is all yours. Bring it in. Thank you so much

    again. And shout to Smashing

    Magazine for inviting me to speak. So I'll start thanks for vitally for introducing me today. I'll be talking about designing without bias. That can mean many things, but I'll go into that a little bit into detail. So a little bit about me. I know vitally dropped all the few companies I worked at, but I worked in Silicon Valley for around eight years. I also taught at California College of College in San Francisco. I was an adjunct professor, and I also taught in China for ACG multiple at multiple universities and high schools as well. I'm a concert photographer on the side, and lately, I've actually been picking up shoe making, which is something that came from covid, when I was locked down and just had nothing to do. Currently, like Vidalia said, I am at Canva. I had a very long journey internationally, coming from the west, and now I'm out here in Australia. So before I started right, I went to Singapore from the States, and that's when I had a lot of questions in my mind before I started at this job, right? So for me, right? What comes to mind when you think about Southeast Asia? And I asked this from, you know, from the perspective of the biases that most people would have. So for me, the reason why I moved to Singapore, not just for the job, but as a Filipino, American, I won't give back to Southeast Asia, but I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. As I obviously, you know, had different thoughts about what entailed in Southeast Asia, right? So in general, right? Most people would answer, Well, when I think about Southeast Asia, I think, which is the rice paddies, the temples and probably the food, actually a lot more going on going there than I expected in general. So what's actually happening in Southeast Asia right now? Well,

    the tech industry is

    growing amid

    although, obviously covid slowing down. A lot of the growth. A lot of companies are taking it seriously. And why is that? Why is Southeast Asia a region that people should probably start thinking about? There's 655 million people in the region that's larger than the European Union, almost larger than North America. 90% of the internet users in the region are connecting primarily through their mobile phone, still using web and obviously through mobile, right? So that's that's a lot of people coming online from a region as that many people, and around 2030 it's potentially going to be the fourth largest economy in the world. So it's a very fascinating region in that and the company I went to is called Crab. So if you ever been to Southeast Asia, you probably use grab. Grab is very similar Uber, where you can actually call a ride or a taxi. You can order food. You can also send deliveries as well. It's a super app. I was given an amazing opportunity to work on products from zero to one, and I was happy to help out on the consumer side as a lead building the grab food, which is very similar to eats or delivery wherever you are in the world, very similar to those food apps from the from the ground up. But I had my own biases, right? So biases I talk about, right, designing with the inclusivity. I had a lot of Western biases, right? And for someone that's obviously born raised in America, it's very different when you have to work in a different culture and different mindset. So before I start, I'm going to play this clip and we'll I'll talk more about it. Yeah, please.

    What do you want to know for me? Ask me, well,

    how is it? Oh, no, without face, this is not Pad Thai at all. It's not panai No papaya. Have to be sweet, sour and salty. I think that doesn't taste too bad.

    It's not perfect for you, but not for me. So, so I love this clip.

    So this is Gordon Ramsay, and you know, a lot of memes from Gordon Ramsay, right? He's usually throwing F bombs, cursing at people on Hell's Kitchen, but you can see he's in a different environment. He's in Thailand in this clip, and he's in the Thai chef's kitchen, right? He and Gordon Ramsay has just made Pad Thai, and obviously a Thai chef is not impressed. And if you actually listen to the chef's words, right, maybe it's good for you, but not for me, right? And so these are things that you know we I encourage you all to have, like, a more discerning eye when you're designing, right? Not, but designs aren't just good for you, it's for the people, the users that are utilising web, mobile, whatever it is, right? And so do I What do I mean by that one, when you have to discern, do you know the age you're designing for, the gender, nationality, education, zip code, language, these things do matter. I think, for someone that has primarily in my beginning of the career, designed products in the West, primarily in English, having that culture shock of design for multiple languages in Southeast Asia is pretty difficult, and I'll get into that more detail later, but you have to be a little bit aware of potentially how that could impact your designs, but also how your design scales right, not just on an app, but how it potentially scales to the web. So identify, like how unconscious and you know, potentially systematic biases show up every day, and you need to just build empathy and understand. You know, this is an non exhaustive list, but in general, just understand who you're designing for. And I apologise for this, you know, obviously loud screen, but the book radical candour, one thing that a lot of designers tend not to talk about is also working with potential stakeholders, right? So for me, coming from the west, there's a there's a focus on being the loudest voice in the room, potentially, and especially in in New York, in California, uh, also debating a lot. But working in Asia, you had to align. You had to come together. And that seems like it's common sense, but it's more of a collective nature. Not everyone is so aggressive or loud in the room. So for me, I had to learn how to really my language change how I had worked and how I actually told the story of how design impacts the the user, and obviously impacts the usability that and obviously how it impacts the business as well. So some things for for me that I had to adjust right that shock for sure, when it went, when I worked internationally,

    the thing right in life situations on the ground, I think we tend to forget that

    not a lot of people have access to technology, right? So there are going to be restaurants, sometimes in Southeast Asia, India or even Africa that may, you know, actually have the money to afford a revolute or square set up in their restaurant, right? Then it's pre digital. But then, of course, we have these folks that work food carts that still have access to older Android devices and still take cash, right? So you have to think holistically of how your design scales. I've been in many, many meetings where we tested these applications or even web designs, and they look very poor and older Android devices, right? They break, whether it's just how slow they are or potentially how how bad the Wi Fi is in the area. So these things do have to you do have to think about potential anchor interactions and how offline mode may work on some of these mobile web designs or apps. So I think you have to be aware of potentially, how your design may impact people in general. And it's fascinating, right? And when I was living in China for a little bit, there is a food service called elema, and in China, they've done an amazing job of actually servicing their users. Now they actually are their drivers, and as a group of drivers right a square radius around the city, and they that in that square radius, the drivers actually go to the same restaurant. They go to the same people pretty much every day. And for some people, that may be uncomfortable that but on another level, if you think about on the service design level, right, these drivers actually creating relationships with the restaurants. They're actually creating relationships with the people that deliver to you. Have this sense of familiarity with this driver, and the driver also obviously knows how to get through the city faster in these square radiuses around the city. So think about how your designs actually not just impact the user, but also potentially the drivers involved as well, like other third parties, I guess is what I'm trying to, you know, tell you just be inclusive, and not just focusing on one stream, but also thinking about other streams that may impact your design flows, right? Obviously,

    I'm not a die hard Apple fanboy bun, and I know a lot of designers

    are iPhone and Android. This has always been a competition in general, but when you look at the market share around the world, Android is pretty heavy, especially in the use so it's around 71% that are pretty much Android, right? And everyone else around 27% iOS, iPhone, right? But in Asia, androids around 80% which is crazy, if you think about it, right? So how do your designs, you know, impact that, especially if a lot of folks still have old Android, older Android devices. I keep saying that, and I'll get to that in a little bit, but I tell people, right? No dynamic island that we're so stoked about is coming to potentially, Asia or India very quickly, right? Android's still king. And maybe for some folks, that's bad news, but I think this is some things that you do have to think about. And it's funny, because obviously we have biases for larger companies, right? But when we look at Amazon, who struggled to keep up with the market, especially servicing e commerce, whether it's in Asia, India and some other parts of the world, right? They've struggled, and you have local competitors, like here shopee, that have actually taken advantage of that. And whether it's because they are working with regulators more, whether they actually understand the market and they localise and contextualise for those users, that's something that is shown, and it's shown actually in the success of shopee overthrowing Amazon in Asia, which is fascinating, and it's funny to me, because you see all these articles saying AR VR on the Amazon side, people will start adopting e commerce. But that's not necessarily true. Again, when you look at people much socioeconomic status, not a lot of people can still afford AR or VR devices, especially in Asia. When you think about folks that could potentially evolve, you know, afford it, it's probably China, Japan and Korea, but the rest of Southeast Asia probably may not, right? So you have to think about that in general, right? So another case, right? When you look at like web design, I think a lot of us may be overwhelmed by how shopee looks and has all these items here, right, with a lot of detail, with a lot of stuff going on in the page, versus Amazon, where it's a little bit cleaner and nicer, maybe we're used to that, but we have to realise that there's actually a lot of different use cases out there, especially users and their wants and needs are very different in different parts of the world. I'll get into more detail again later on and talk more about this, because I think a lot of us, especially designers, we are so attached to this modern, clean aesthetic, which is fine, but there's a different aesthetic out there that obviously the business needs and also serves the users in different parts of the world. So a tip, don't

    let new technology ideals or even big brands dictate

    your actual needs and wants, or even cloud your judgement right. Equalise your designs and contextualise for your users. Understand the users in their real world situations or scenarios. So how can

    you analyse, right? So a lot of us, we have a

    lot of assumptions in regard to these traits, of whether they speak English, whether you know, it's male dominated in some cultures, the age. How do these assumptions pretty much affect your design, your usage or decision making, right? Who are your users? These folks may not be Westerners. They may not be high class. Think about their socioeconomic situations, right? In the features that you design or potentially put together, who are you excluding from this experience? How might this feature actually support or create a bias system and what success are being used? The defined, you know, how successful this product is. So think about that in a way. I think a good example of this is a lot of us were so used to potentially going to the bank or going online and signing up for potentially a bank account. You know, here like a chase. They have a fancy setup. Sometimes they have folks to, you know, sit there and talk to us and walk us through signing up for a bank account, which is very different when you go to Asia, it's I know this is also something that you see in India and Africa. I'm going to specifically talk about Indonesia, but there's some parallels, right? So in Indonesia, there's more than six in 10 people that are unbanked. Only 17% of the transactions are cashless, and there's a massive opportunity, right? And this is here, right? And the issue is historic. A lot of folks in Indonesia don't trust the government. They actually have to drive two, three hours just to get to a bank. Even in Jakarta, the the traffic is really bad, mega city, and takes maybe 233, hours just to get to a bank because the traffic's so bad. So a lot of people refuse to drive to the bank. They refuse to even fill out paperwork. Some of them actually struggle to read as well. And like I said, they don't trust the government as well and these financial institutions. But who they trust? Well, they trust the local shopkeeper down the street, local shoe keeper, potentially, or the guy that runs the bodega or deli, right? These folks, because they're pretty much trust, trusted through family hearsay, for the community, through the neighbourhood, right? The store owner could, pretty much you could deposit money with the store owner. They could give you back money if you wanted to withdraw. It's fascinating. You know, for a Westerner like me or anyone else, we'd be shocked and probably wouldn't trust this guy with our money, because we're so used to the financial institutions or potentially the experiences that we grew up with. But these folks right, especially in India and Indonesia or Africa, this is very common to think of in terms of what

    opportunities lie in in your experience that you

    could potentially take advantage, and not just, you know, in the western mindset, but potentially internationally as well. And it's fascinating, because I think a lot of us as designers, we sit with our labs, but for me, I got, I got the blessing, and it felt very angry Danish to actually sit down break bread with some users. We did eight to nine. It was not just at restaurants, as you can see here, but we also came to pieces. We ordered food. And I actually had just a chat with folks about their usage of how they ordered food in general. So for for this clip or not clip, sorry, this photo, these folks actually hated ordering online. They would the restaurant. They would rather, you know, feel that ambiance, with the movement, with the food, talking

    to the waiter. But if you think about it, questions that we asked them, right, how they order food, how they how

    we perceived, was fascinating. So the little tidbits and nuggets of like textual solutions came up through conversation. So when they talked to the waiter, they were like, oh, what's the chef's recommendation for day? What promotion deals do you have, or what's what's like the meal that most people would get? So for that, turning it around and actually potentially using it as carousels in potentially a web design or even the app, especially on an E commerce site, and labelling it a section, calling it chef's recommendations for this restaurant, or potentially also labelling it as motions and discounts. Those nuggets, right? That helped a lot in terms of figuring out what people would want and when they're ordering. So it's fascinating, learning from those physical interactions, and not just, you know, talking to people in labs. It's a big difference. Big difference maker, for sure, and it's fascinating. So I usually tell people this,

    so Uber does not exist in Southeast Asia anymore.

    They actually failed in 2019 and Uber spent 200 million annually just to take on grab, which is the company I was working at, just to, you know, invest in Southeast Asia. And they failed. It's not to say that they tried, but I think there's a lot of reasons. Actually comes back down to pretty much being inclusive in their designs, right the way that people still use cash. They didn't have that payment method in their experience, which was a big killer as well. They didn't really localise their content, and that was something that they had a large content team in different languages, from Thai to Indonesian Bahasa to Vietnamese, and they localise. And we can, well, we localise in size. And Uber really failed their users in that regard. So just make sure that you're actually, again localising and actually contextualising who you're designing for. And it's, it is odd seeing Uber not existing in southeast it does not exist anymore. So if you ever go in Southeast Asia, don't expect an Uber to pick you up. So like saying before when we looked at Amazon's website versus shopee, there are different jobs to be done. So I'm I'm going to flip it and look at how people pretty much order, especially on E commerce. And I'm just going to use an app as an example. So this is Instacart, and people in the states are probably familiar with this, right? It's easy to add items with a large plus button, and you can notice that there's a very, you know, clean save $1 to show that they're, you know, the user can save on this item. But you know, when you look at jobs to be done in Southeast Asia, for a lot of us, like I said, we could be overwhelmed for using the needs and wants they want, right? They actually want to understand how their membership to potentially ticky, as just for example here, is impacting their items that they're ordering. So they actually want to see their the discounts potentially free shipping, obviously, and all this stuff thrown at them. And it's funny, says, if I go back here, we actually designed a very similar screen to this on grab food. And people were saying, and in Vietnam, they were saying that this screen was too rich for them, too rich for them, which is very interesting, right? They thought it was too wealthy for them, and they would rather have something like this. Again,

    our biases got the best of us.

    It's just assuming that this modern, clean design, you know, fire was probably we thought it was the best one. But turns out, our user needs and jobs to be done are completely different in Southeast Asia. So great designs create valuable businesses, right? Great designs does equal modern. I know that's a hot take, but it for for me that has now internationally. I can tell you that some people just want things very simple and and then it may be loud, but those designs are creating

    valuable businesses for the business that obviously

    you work for in general.

    So ideation.

    So how do you ideate to make sure

    that you're not creating these biases? So a lot of people will assume that you know, double diamond is potentially a silver bullet, maybe it's o, u, x. So shout out to severe Prater, who's also come out with this. They're they're great, and I encourage everyone to look at them as frameworks. But they're not really silver, silver bullets when you have design internationally, or even, you know, taking into account your potential, your biases, right? So what's a more human way that I usually tell people? And it may be very hippy ish, but what I tell people is treat as if they're your grandmother. And why do I say that? Right? So let's say you just dropped your grandmother off at home, and she needs to get them from the car to her bedroom, so you want that journey from point A to point B,

    how she, you know,

    puts her hand on, potentially,

    on the railing to and you have, she can see where she puts her foot to go into the house. She wants to make sure that she can see, flip the switch to turn on the lights, and obviously, you know, making sure that the lighting and everything is safe for her to get to her final destination. So, obviously, right? It is very human, but I think it's a very tangible thing about training your users and making sure that they have a safe journey from beginning to end. And, you know, I just a lot of designers like, Who are you IDing with? Because I do see a lot of designers like, oh, I don't want to talk to product people. They they're messing up the designs. Are they just too opinionated? But I think we also those as designers, when if we design with just design right, we need to make sure that we have a different, diverse, different and I know that's hard for a lot of designers, especially when they have to debate. And it's not, it's not very right. And I think we go through these issues with different people, but having the specifics, having those different potential metrics that are set, having those potentially different visions out there and putting it together, I think that creates more valuable design, to be honest, and you can see that with these folks that I'm about to show, right? So for Facebook, they ideated around actually localising. So they did a good job at actually taking poor Wi Fi in different areas of the world. So this 2g or Facebook Lite. It was designed for 2g for Indonesia, but also in India as well. And obviously the core functionality is completely different, right? So there's no high res images here, autoplay and videos. It's actually pretty respectful to the Wi Fi. How you potentially use the web in general? Obviously, you know the the new Facebook interface has, has autoplay, high res buttons and smaller buttons as well, which is fascinating, right? And you can and in ideating, right? Ideating and making sure that you're serving these different cases is actually a great case of how Facebook's trying to localise in general. Netflix also does that and making sure that it scales their design and scales for for different parts of the world, right? So maybe in Southeast Asia, this is specifically in Singapore, right? Potentially, they have movies that are more focused on Singapore. You see, if you're in America, the designs and everything else will scale for anything retro Americana in terms of entertainment, which is wonderful. What's not great, though, is if for someone that has potentially accents or hyphens in their name. Sometimes it's really a pain in the butt to do taxes internationally. How much? How many of my friends have complained about this? It's really, really sad, because a lot of people are excluded, and they're super frustrated enough to pay X amount more just to, you know, get their names at least so

    in these forms, potentially for tax, right? And yes,

    there are companies out there and potentially, you know, correct course, correct that right on the web. But this is pretty unfortunate that we haven't thought about this. And for me, I've actually struggled with this, even with payments. As someone that sometimes pays via credit card or from my card internationally for potentially on merits, I get rejected a lot because I don't use my American card for a lot of things. So it's frustrating, but it's yes, it's maybe a minor detail, but for maybe someone that doesn't have the privilege that I have to have American card, it's sort of a bummer, right? So some things to think out of who you're excluding your experience. So how do you be objective?

    How do you make sure that there's pretty much no bias?

    That's pretty difficult, as I mentioned earlier, right? So I love showing this illustration. There's always going to be one person that's, you know,

    the tightrope of the experience,

    but everyone else is pretty much

    not wanting to cross that bridge, which is pun intended, right? But if you make that experience more, I guess, inclusive and more safe, like, as I mentioned before, guiding these folks from point A to B safely, these people will feel more comfortable within that experience. So there's some bad, objective designs that are out there that have been known about in general, and I'm talking more from AD design perspective. So in Japan, this is also true. In the 70s and 80s, they would just use Caucasian people to showcase that this is a premium product, whether it's for photography, boot, century ads,

    it's unfortunate, but that's something that tends to happen

    out in the world, especially in Asia, and I love that this older article from the Shopify designer, where she talks about it isn't really inclusive, right? This, this just excludes more people. You're just colouring them purple, instead of showing, you know, the diversity of real people. So making sure that this is this should be more diverse. This is a bad example. You know, inclusion. Another thing that I struggled with as a real story was actually designing an icon for the grab food product that I worked on,

    the assumption for most people is like, oh, chopsticks. Everyone in Asia

    uses chopsticks. That's not necessarily true, especially in Southeast Asia, where people still may use hand spoons and whatnot. So for me, I had to illustrate the famous dish in Southeast Asia instead of just using chopsticks. So again, very biassed, right? So making sure that the dish represented all of Southeast Asia, which is tricky, but we figured it out over the course of time. So again, check devices, right? So what are good examples of not places in design? So lemony does a great job of potentially showing if you're single partner, partnering kids, or your if you have kids, or just my kids, right, or other. And there's no biases here. It's just using toothbrushes, which is wonderful. It's very smart. Another good example is actually making sure that your design system is actually inclusive, right? Making sure that it actually entails different languages, different currencies, how your designs, you know, up in terms of height or width. These are things that we tend to forget about. And like I said earlier, like I was so used to designing for English, I totally forgot there are other languages. And that was like maybe aeons ago. But now I always think about how my design system scaling, which is all the time. So when I usually do this presentation, most people ask the impact of inclusion. So the impact of inclusion it? Well, let's talk about that. Let me play this clip really quickly. I

    I feel like this happens to a lot of designers, right? We are fully confident about the designs, the experience and obviously the amazing drop shadows or grants or whatever, but then when we get into a stakeholder meeting, you're punched and dropped down, just like Kevin here. So I think one thing we have to remember

    being inclusive, right? Is influence is with our stakeholders. It doesn't start with our design tools.

    So a lot of us, right? We think that our influence comes from our designs, which is partly true, but it's also influencing our stakeholders. And I get it. A lot of us, especially designers that I know are introverts. Some of us just hate the back to back meetings. Those are very human aspect that we need to take into account, especially as designers, as we grow right? And I'll get to that in a second, and at so many companies, startups or even agencies, right, the leading problem aren't technical problems, they're human problems. What Right? Which is very, very hard to fix. So what do you do in these cases? How do you be inclusive? So instead of having empathy map for your users, why don't you flip it and again, I don't ask. I'm not asking you do a workshop and with your team, but maybe do your own homework and take notes of who you're emphasising with, right? With your stakeholders, especially what they do,

    what they hear, what do they think? Well, right? And why do I say this? This is, this is very important, especially as you scale

    up as a designer and grow in your career, right? So Mia Bloom, she is an amazing design leader. She actually put together this management gradient in general, but you can see here, from an IC to manager to executive, right, you're just through your designs. It's not through the tools, actually talking and working with other people. It's all about the relationships, right at the end of the day. So be frank, design inclusion isn't just about your users. It's about being inclusive to your stakeholders and bringing value as a partner, like most of designers here, right?

    What story are you telling to your stakeholders,

    and what do I mean by that? So I've interviewed a lot of designers. I've seen many portfolios, and usually the story goes like this, the designer has designed an amazing checkout system here, right? It's easy for the user to add items. Want to double check their personal details, and it was pretty clear for the user to check out. And I made this neat animation at the end to make sure that the user is verified to pay. But when you present this in front of different stakeholders, this is not inclusive. This may be inclusive for potentially designers and maybe users understand it, but you're presenting in front of your you're trying to get buy in. You're trying to show how the value of design, right? So what potentially your partners want to hear, right? And I'll go through this pretty quick. I don't know everything, but obviously if you're going to present it, you probably want to use words like retention rate, obviously increasing the GMV users 10 times faster. In this design increases customer satisfaction. So you can see the change of words. It changes obviously the story that you're telling. But you know what language do your stakeholders speak? Right? It's not just about your users, but it's also how you portray your designs.

    And there are real world cases this, right?

    So let's look at Airbnbs redesign that happened maybe a few years ago, right? And I guarantee, well, I don't want to guarantee, because I don't want to assume that Airbnb went and went through this, but there is a site that actually tracks all the changes that Airbnb does, which is fascinating, right? So you're not just designing for users. You're designed to get buy in from your stakeholders. So how the presentation probably went is like, Hey, we're trying to increase engagement by 10% and make it easy for people to book, especially when you know, through those things, a lot of people probably get a lot of details, especially for the photo, right? So to pretty much experiment and look at different phases of listings, and also be there's a lot of PR backlash for our host. Our mission for Airbnb is belong anywhere. So we took out the photo of the host and just made it all about the listing, right? And the vision is the current experience where users are want to book a listing based on location, post judged by their listing and not their background or photo. Design already

    up with and obviously they thought about holistically impacted

    the web. Impacted their mobile app as well. But there are a few things that you can take away as designer from this, right? Their design strategy impact on long tail revenue bring, you know, obviously bringing people to smaller cities, communities. And why is that? Why did people want to go to these smaller cities? Well, it put pressure on hosts to up their game, right? To have better photos in general, but also have better bios on the Airbnb, better details, right? And if you're you know, scouring for Airbnbs, you're probably going to get drawn, potentially to also awesome categories that they potentially have as well, right? These long term changes in travel actually impacted a lot of the travel industry, right? So the lesson is, how small the design changes can impact people behave. And Airbnb obviously did a great job with the redesign, and this actually changed how people are designing or how

    privileged to work on an app, sorry, a feature

    called Audio protect. It's very similar to Uber, where you can actually record your ride as a passenger or even driver. And for a lot of us on the west, we are freaked out by our rise potentially being monitored. But in Southeast Asia, a lot of women, especially, murdered, raped, or even worse, right? So I got the privilege to work on audio protect, but there was a lot of people that were scared of launching this product, actually to the region, because a lot of people were actually, you know, obviously wary of the data and what companies do with it. So the marketing team came up to me video where I actually had all this sleep in the car, and she safely got to her destination. It was, it was fascinating, because on top of that, we launched this video on International Women's Day, and people emphasise, and they emphasise with, you know, obviously the drama, the the cases that were happening in Southeast Asia, with all these potentially murder,

    what can emphasise with the story that we were telling right and that

    brought value to the

    feature and the design and the experience? So something to think about, right, not just selling it to your stakeholders, but also how you market it to your real users. So how do you want to be valued as a designer? So as I wrap up, we're going through a lot. I think the design industry, especially designers, are struggling right now, right so there are a lot of layoffs that are happening currently, and I'm not going to say that will be the end of it, because it we're in a transition stage right now, but I feel like layoffs are less of a wave, and it's more of a ripple in general, right? I don't think it's enough. There's this great article by Jacob Nielsen, you should look it up, that came out last year. It talks about the angst, right, the job openings that dropped, but also talks about how a lot of companies over hired during covid as well. So I think we're just going through a downturn. But on top of that, right? We're also scared, I think, by

    potentially taking our jobs, which is pretty scary, right?

    When you think about it, we're in a renaissance of AI. A lot of people are creating AI startups to do designs, do photos, do experiences, right? You know, we are freaked out by that, which is understandable, and they're interrupting, which is really frustrating. When you obviously go on social media and you read about this, it's it's really annoying. Let's take a step back. In 2017 Airbnb came out with this technology where you can actually draw sketch, and actually a programme would actually create the sketches for you and put it together 2017, now, I'm not saying that you should be freaked out or you should calm down. I think that would be very mean or sort of in in apathetic of me, right? But when you look at these designs, right, and when you look at how they're generated, there isn't places, when you think about it,

    right, there's a strategy. There's no getting folks aligned on the idea it's

    not actually going to the market, right? We were freaked out about web design ending. Didn't really did it. So I think we need to figure out as a design community to bring better stories and tell the impact, the value, and bring value to design through obviously our work, but also with our stakeholders and our teams in general. It's not just about having beautiful designs on dribble all the time, even though that's, I know that's a hot take, I encourage you to build inclusive mindset. So usually I ask people to put up their phones, and maybe if you have a friend or your mom or dad near you, right, I encourage you probably, to take their phone right and put it in your pocket. Now that's a little bit weird, yeah, taking your friend or mom's phone just putting in your pocket, right? But inclusive, if you think about it, right? But it's after you put photos, passwords and identity to that item that it's really awkward with that person's potentially life in your phone in your pocket, right as a one reality. That's actually inclusion, inclusion in terms of sitting with that uncomfortableness of another person, another person's identity in your pocket. Now I'm not telling you to go steal and feel uncomfortable like that, but I'm just telling you to be more aware and sit with those uncomfortable feelings when you have to design or potentially work with things in the in the industry, right? I encourage you, right, not just to look for voices or books in the west and minimal or modern. Right? Look for voices around South America, Central Asia or even Asia, right? There are some amazing things happening, not just but I guarantee there are probably amazing things happening, even Africa,

    right? So there's three things to take away from today, be aware of

    your privilege, design beyond the screens, and be ultra inclusive. That has taught around the world, and also, you know, been a role model. Think it's, it's great for the next generation to see that and representation, representation does matter. So I encourage you to get out ivory tower. And I'm not telling you to move out of states, but I'm telling you just to be more aware. So I challenge you like i When, when John made a challenge me back in 2015 he challenged me for today, design inclusively and think outside of the box, and what may be cool, but to design for what is right, and not just community, but for everyone around the world. Thanks, folks.

    Thank you for having me. Let's connect.

    Fantastic. Jay, well, then safe. I

    mean, I took so many

    notes. First of all, thank you so much for the

    for the talk, and everyone who is was watching or listening to us. Now, could you please give a round of applause to Jay for it. Couple of questions Jay and I actually want to, I probably have, like, a thing at this point that I want to bring up, and I think one issue that I struggle every now and again is this notion of making a strong case. So I kind of, I think, like, I got a little better over time, but almost every other time I feel like I'm sitting in the room and I'm trying desperately what inclusive design means and what accessibility means, and still, it's very often the case. And please, your friends who are kind of watching us now as well, please let me know if this is the case for you or not. Like sometimes it's loud

    and sometimes it's like sitting between the lines that, you know, an edge case. Just spend time and waste time on edge cases. We we don't have time for

    later. Why should we? I mean, we have a core audience. We need

    to focus on the core audience.

    Let's not let's keep the focus. This is what I hear. I accidentally anymore. Let's keep the focus of where we are and what our audience is and design for them and with

    let's not do the 20 things and then do them all wrong. Let's do one thing and do it right.

    How would you say,

    or what would you say is the most effective way to advocate for include

    these sort of environments like sometimes they can be very corporate. Sometimes they can be just very much, you know, we main case. Let's not look at edge cases for now and this for now. You know, remains always Well, there's two ways you can

    go about it, and there's the interpersonal

    way, interpersonal way, where you actually create relationships with other folks that may be passionate about right in the higher up understand, like what you're coming from and showing those solutions. So maybe feel political, but for for all honesty, I think you need those allies to actually help push designs forward in general, right? And like I said, a lot of designers, they don't like seeing the whole debates and these relationships, but they do matter, especially in large companies, or even if you're like a freelancer going into potentially a new type of corporate world and you're just there. So you have to find these relationships and create those relationships and create those relationships with people that you can trust and know that are going to be like an ally yourself for and then there's the other case where I think about is just designing a vision and not just showing them, well, showing them what they want, which is like, Hey, this is like phase one. Phase two. You have a dream of doing X, Y and Z. So starting off with potentially what they want, but also taking it further, I found that's actually been helpful. For me. It works for some people,

    it still doesn't work, because obviously some people,

    I think it's subjective, obviously, especially large corporations, as you're saying Vitaly, so it's not an easy answer I'm giving I answer this part about it No, because I don't it's an honest

    answer. So yeah, I don't think there is a wrong or right way,

    but for me, it has, what I found is creating relationships with the right people, but also having a nice vision and that that comes into what they want, but also pushing it further, these little, let's say, uh, designing,

    let's say an application that's supposed to go to all the different

    markets. That's supposed to go to Southeast Asia, it's supposed to go to India and so on. Now, as somebody who is maybe used to, you know, designing in a western world, let's say, has been designing for a while, applications, the websites, the landing pages, the e commerce website. Do you think

    it's even

    possible to design something,

    let's say Southeast Asian

    market is it

    feels like to me? Just maybe, let me roll back for a moment. Feels like, Yeah, somebody today to design a website as if it was, I don't know, crunchy 90s, late 90s sort of website. I think today, first of all, it would be very difficult for me, like, remember rainbow gifts and stuff like that. I probably would fail. And I feel like maybe in many ways, if you actually have a very different approach to design, both in terms of, like, what should be, where, and the white space and the colours, you know, everything, then it might be remarkably

    challenging, maybe even impossible, to actually be good at it.

    What do you think?

    Yeah, I think there are some challenges,

    regardless, wherever you, you're you're coming from, especially trying to design for a new region. That's not to say, though, I know there are a lot of people from south when I talk about this, they're like, oh, wow, South America is very similar to how users react shopping on E commerce, there is a segment of users that are very similar out there, so it's just not a matter of finding that target audience that will potentially, what's the word that will come and actually designed right? So it's just a matter. I mean, it's very similar to, like, running a startup, you're gonna have to find the right target audience and scale up. I think that's the hardest part, especially if you're joining a startup in Southeast Asia there, they just focus on Southeast Asia. They're not trying to go into the states. They're going to focus on what they're good on. So it's just a matter of making sure you're designing for something that their company is focused on. But also you you know your your target user in general. Okay, Okay, excellent.

    Well, Claire asked, also, it's a bit

    more technical at this point. Have any recommendations or resources for testing on all the devices or in low bandwidth regions? It's a sort of an extension that supports the type of testing. Unfortunately, I don't have access to user testing, so looking for other options

    in the southwest USA and Navajo Nation, where internet service is very limited. Yeah, that's a good question. I think I'm you can get, like, older phones, older devices on, actually, on eBay, if

    you wanted. I know that's very possible. So for like, 20, $30 from, from what I've seen. So start there, look for those cheap devices where you can potentially look at, because those older devices are pretty damn slow, and I obviously had the privilege to have those devices of where I work, but you can pretty much get those devices for cheap. I'm pretty sure, eBay or Facebook marketing, Facebook market in general. So start there. Start with those older devices, and if you have access to older laptops, even better, right? Because then you can how your designs actually are impacting or scaling on different devices. So that would be my recommendation. Just 112, ads, just

    because it's really

    resonated with me so well, because when

    you mentioned the notion of contextualising, right? I think in many ways, anything like any, any user flow, any customer journey or anything, it is actually quite common for us to see it as a sort of a linear path. So you start here and have another dashboard, another dashboard, and then off you go, and then basically bought something, or you completed the task, or whatever. This is kind of what what happens, but and can anyways. It's

    just really not representing reality most of the time. Because if we think about, if

    I think about the customer journey, very often people jump between different things. They would be so there might be one customer journey for one persona, if you like, and there's another customer journey for another person, then very often, people just change the four often, people just change their thoughts, change opinions. They work on also, when you look at what is happening, you know, very often the experience starts before the first official touch point, being

    a covid 19, and I don't know, in SMS, WhatsApp and whatnot,

    and doesn't still end where it ends. So I'm just thinking, what would you say is the best way to capture, maybe actually user experience? Or, I know it's probably quite difficult question at this point, but I couldn't find didn't find it yet.

    So I think in my way, in my way, I'm still operating

    with customer journey maps and jobs to be done and all the things, but when you're working anything really like what is maybe, I know we don't have that much time. Could you maybe describe what are some of the things that help you to reduce that bias, or metals

    or frameworks or templates or toolkits? I think one thing that we used to do, and I I know we still do

    at my current company, is actually life scenario. So I'll just use my past company as an example where, let's say we reenacted like a scenario. If someone was a dry

    potential cases of like real, real situations that would

    actually happen. So we were role playing, whether it's in a car or even a room. It's just very fascinating, like the little things that you could actually take away from reenacting scenarios, because you wouldn't think about it at that point in time, right? So, and a real, a real did test is we were testing something that had to deal with voice activation on an older device, and that was very tricky, but in Thailand and we had to convert it, convert, obviously the voice, trans voice assistant to Thai, that was very difficult, but actually testing it and how drivers reacted to it in their car is like, a totally different experience, because then you start figuring out, like, oh, their phones. How do they look at the phone? Where they usually place their phone? How do bikers now, like, communicate with their phone? So there's, like, all these little things that you don't think of. So

    usually I or find a situation, or find people that

    are willing to, like, try it with you. Obviously, if it's like, I don't encourage you to like do something like that, but those cases helped a lot, especially when you have to think holistically. So that's fascinating. I never thought about this way. If anything, I would be

    maybe thinking about storyboarding. This is this is great. This is fantastic. Well, I think we'll speak for ours.

    But thank you so much, Jay for your

    wonderful insights and dear friends. I hope I didn't miss any questions that came up in here so far. So please give a wonderful round of fruit Apple emoji.

    Are you okay with apples? Jay, apples, agree. Okay, excellent. So I have the difference please throw, not throw. We don't want to throw apples as you maybe

    add politely and kind

    you accept any colour, really, in the chat as a kind thank you

    to Jay for the wonderful presentation and the experience and insights with us.

    Thank you so much, Jay.

    Thank you all right. Oh, wow. This was, this was exciting

    and really insightful. I think, I think I can hear knocking on the door. I think, is it? Is it maybe? Is it maybe it carries is it Sarah, or is it

    I think it's maybe

    Rachel, if I'm not mistaken, Hi, yes. Hello, Rachel. How are you doing today? I'm doing well.

    I think I'm on the other time

    zone, not where Jay was, but I'm starting my day in San Francisco. That's excellent. Well, Rachel, I have to say

    I was deeply was looking up at your bio and everything. I mean. First of all, I'm really impressed that one person can do all of that. That was very impressive. And, on the other hand, also having, you know,

    serious brands. So dear friends, there

    are a few things that you need

    to know about Rachel. And I have to read it out. I usually don't, but this is so impressive. Rachel has been working on launching tutorial publications from scratch, leading organisation design efforts, designing TV show pitch decks. I'll have a lot of questions about that for influential public figures. We probably can't say who, but that

    can ask in the chat, maybe, maybe, maybe it will show up so during digital experiences,

    and also building brand systems and all of that is just Rachel, and I'm very happy to have you with us. That's fascinating. I think in many ways, when I think about brands and I think about branding, I think there is one significant

    change that has happened over the last maybe decade or

    so, where, in the past, it felt like brands can be neutral. Again, very similar we spoke about, like technology being neutral. Think to

    brands don't label politics, they don't speak up, they

    just do what they do. And

    but this has shifted massively. I think at this point, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that if a brand doesn't have a voice and doesn't stand and stand behind then this brand is very difficult for people to connect to and be loyal with and then it's also very difficult to be to kind of find that

    people often need even, you know, it's something that seems to be so borderless,

    and so, you know, ambition, and this is so abstract, like a brand. And so I'm very curious what it means to be, kind of to have a brand today, and how do we future proof brands? And this, I think, is going to speak about so dear friends, exactly. Rachel, do you have like a favourite ice cream flavour?

    You like ice cream? Oh, um, yes, I do like ice cream. It's quite boring.

    I enjoy vanilla.

    That's okay. That's okay.

    That's a that's a fair answer.

    So you to your friends who are watching or listening to us. Now, any vanilla related emoji would be accepted as a warm got cold, but warm greeting to Rachel Goyal, so Rachel, please take over the stage is all yours. Thank you so much.

    Well, thank you so much for having me. I am

    Rachel gojele. My pronouns are she her? And you may not tell because I don't have much of an accent, but I actually am from Paris, France, Creative Director, designer, educator and speaker. And as I just mentioned, I'm based in sandwich night is just starting. I just want to say similar to Jay, thank you so much to the smashing mag team for having me, and I'm here to share some personal stories and experiences on the topic of future proofing brands that hopefully will spark shift.

    So let's get started, and when talking about future proofing, brands,

    obviously sharing learnings, staying ahead of the curve, but it's worth noting and really being honest about what future proofing actually mean, talk should really have an asterisk in the title, and really the subhead should for staying ahead of the curve

    most of the time, because, as we all know,

    nothing is truly future proof, because there are a million unknowns, brands, businesses or projects aren't guaranteed to survive for of reasons, but embracing new technologies and ways of thinking keep brands relevant in times of transition, and that's what I'm here to talk about today.

    So to kick us off, I'd actually love

    to see a show of hands in the chat. The first question is

    design industry based on current, emerging tech

    and innovation. So raise your burden if you're if you're feeling pessimistic or you're not sure, maybe you're in between

    awesome. And then what about who is optimistic?

    Again, raise your virtual hand if you're if you're optimistic about the design industry based on current emerging technology and innovation, and obviously based on where you are, that may mean something different.

    But thanks so much for sharing how you're feeling. Again,

    I think it's important to kind of get a sense of feeling in the virtual room. But on my end, I would say that I'm more of an optimist. I believe that there's no better time to actually be doing what we're doing. We're living in a time when it is more critical than ever

    before, and what they're here to do, and

    as you just alluded to a moment ago, in kind of setting me up for that all brands are passing the test right now, but I do think that people are demanding more from companies than at any other time in history. That is actually really exciting to me. So for me, there's been a new design Renaissance happening these days. Maybe it means leveraging emerging technology to not only democratise but question art, filmmaking, advertising, design and many creative pieces beyond our wildest imaginations, and it's moving really quickly, but I'm optimistic about the potential of our industry, the world of digital, product, visual design. I did want to acknowledge while we're on this topic, I recently saw its narrative

    documentary on Brian Eno. I highly recommend

    it. I don't want to spoil it, but check it. It's leveraging just amazing new technology to essentially question more traditional forms of filmmaking and documentary. Thing, if you don't know who Gary hustlet is. He also directed Helvetica, objectified, etc, but really, brands are taking

    more risks and taking stands in

    order to be remembered. They're expected to communicate something in the band that will help consumers make a difference in their lives. It does have to be authentic, because consumers have a strong bullshit metre. A brand should be the reflection of its company, vision, principles and values and being worked in products, and, you know, building brands over the years, product experience is one's brand experience, and the more power are leveraging brands to create more memorable experiences, to reach people wherever they are. For example, one of the examples here on the right is runway ml, if you're less aware of this particular tool, they specialise in generative artificial intelligence research and technologies, especially in video generation. But they create a limited edition printed magazine called telescope, which goes to show just the love of print still remains and how people are longing, still, for tangible, physical artefacts. And this is, again, like a

    tool that is thinking about how to reach

    their audience and innovate, you know, despite kind of living digitally, but creating something that is physical. So I've been so inspired

    what I've observed in our field over the last few years that I actually

    decided to take the two solopreneur

    2020 I decided to leave my last

    full time job at Godfrey data partners, which is a small design studio headquartered in the base to become my own boss and build out a solo venture. And like many creative leaders during this time, I journey to understand how to manage teams remotely, but now with the added challenge of also being an independent contractor. Now I thought I took the scene by sharing a little bit more about my background, career journey and why I'm here. So let's start off with some personal fun. Don't get into the professional background just yet, but just to set the scene, this is an illustrated version of me with slightly shorter hair. Currently, I live with my wife, Susanna, back home in San Francisco, but I was in in Paris, France, I was there until going to university with bangs and to set the scene. You know, since

    the 90s, this is one of my favourite movies.

    My first CD was by Alanis Morissette. But most importantly, in my little day, I was surrounded by typography and art, and I've always been to mixed media and collage. I've been a design and typography nerd who loves vintage magazines, bold graphics packaging. I even owned a Blackberry phone, pre iPhone release. And it's worth noting that I love art that tends to highlight really of female liberation, such as this example by Tamara de lempica. And then lastly, thinking back to living in Europe as a teenager, I was often communicating with friends using aim, MSN, ICQ, obviously all the acronyms, but more importantly, the Photoshop icon was still was exploring design. So speaking of design tools and art,

    playful type colour blocking and art that

    really holds more deep, meaningful, layered messages I did from uni from a University in Philadelphia called the University of Pennsylvania, in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts and fine arts and major in communication design and a minor in anthropology. It's worth noting again that at the time, there was no official design major, and I was one of only two people graduating with a major in communication design by you and for anyone observing or affected by the full job market right now, I understand what it's like, because there was a recession in the United States when I was looking for a job, it was really hard to get one, and my skills and Early internships didn't matter. No one was hiring, but a lot has changed since then, and of my career journey since so while I may have left uni without a job lined up

    agency side and some brands that you may

    recognise here are GQ, The New York Times, Facebook, now, meta partners, studio that I mentioned based in the departures magazine, Airbnb and Dropbox. But beyond this, I've sought to influence the next creative generation as a design educator at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, coincidentally, the same school that Jay mentioned he used to be an adjunct at. And I've also been on board. I am a mentor on a few global platforms, such as ADP list, if you want to find me there. But in looking back at my career journey, what's kind of most relevant to why I'm here, and this talk is actually mapping it to this rise and dominance of an entire era of digital design, full commerce apps for the first generation of the iPhone to navigating how to advertise on the album, prices and everything in between. You see, I became a designer post internet and email boom, and have had to navigate new technology bridging throughout my whole career, essentially democratising Design for All. And the pandemic has only accelerated this kind of digital transformation. I will note, though that I don't consider myself an early adopter, but I've always been an early observer, which means that I tend to wait a beat for things, figuring out what feels like it's worth learning so that I can help my employers or clients navigate these big, seismic shifts in culture due to emerging technology. Finally, I'll admit that since 2020 I basically live in figma and a few AI tools such as anthropics Claude. And while my formal training is in graphic design, I have influenced many exciting projects for my clients, from shaping or

    location pitch decks, I know you mentioned earlier in my intro

    for TV shows and things like that. But everything in between, I find my brand with a big focus on technology and culture, recently, I enjoy saying or I think what feels most relevant is I really enjoy designing how people work, so it's not always a tangible design artefact. And as a fractional design executive and really manager, I often dedicate my time to fostering spaces that unlock human potential. I would quickly highlight a few of these projects next. So I'm going to focus on launching a cover to cover AR magazine. When I GQ, I'm going to hint at the building New York Times' T brand studios in product, native ads. I also reimagined a legacy lifestyle publication,

    and I helped create very

    complex visual systems for the Facebook app. So let's dig into each of these GQ so for those of you less familiar with GQ, GQ has actually always been ahead of the curve in terms of content innovation. My job was to rethink the quality of the advertising or advertorials and really disrupt the editorial industry. September, 2012 hook to get our loyal subscribers back to the actual newsstands. This is when you could, you know, or people would buy more. You know, print publications on the newsstand but I had the opportunity to launch a print to mobile, amended reality app called GQ Live, which essentially bought the printed September 2012 issue to life cover to cover, which meant that you basically hovered your phone over pages and then something would happen for personalising the iPad experience for GQ readers with a special app called My GQ this peak time for what was called interactive print. So again, set the scene. The iPad was relatively new the iPhone out there, but this was something that people were really excited about. We actually earned a mobile Excellence Award back in the day. But to give you a quick sounding has changed even on laptops. If anyone remembers this, Esquire cover, this was only in 2009 but if you just take a minute to read what's on the screen here on the side, in terms of the instructions of how to get started. You know, with core, you needed to make sure that your webcam for this to even happen. So there was no, you know, dependency on your mobile phone. Just yet, you were still, you know, installing

    your computer, and this was only in 2009 so when in 2012

    idea of being able to just download an app and hover your phone over a printed page, you can imagine again, just how much excitement there was, or people were feeling like, you know, this idea of wanting to Be part of it. And while the app was for, let's say, three years or so, the only reason we launched it was because it mapped to the brand strategy q, you know, has always been known for being one of the first publications on the iPad, which came out in about 2010 or so. And so being the first to like this should be no different. We wanted at the time to and keep satisfying our community of readers who were and still are avid tech users. And the reality is, adding a GQ live little logo on ads and editorial definitely produce results sometimes in 2018

    by the time I left in GQ in 2014

    20,000 downloads of the app. We worked with 150 advertisers to activate their ads. And we you know, it was really interesting time when where we were experimenting with technology and other publications, as you can see here, followed through as the technology ended up getting white labelled by Conde Nast. So the New York time,

    if you didn't know this, paper and media brand or

    amazing brand, was born in the 1850s but now reading the times is part of many people's lifestyle and daily ritual, and it has been for decades. So I went in 2014 after I left GQ, just as the term native advertising was being coined, and this was a time when the New York Times innovation report was leaked. I don't know if anyone remembers that, but it really

    it and reimagine the newsroom model.

    It was made clear, I in joining the New York Times, I had to help build a multidisciplinary team of creatives really focused on quality advertising order to open up a potential revenue stream for the company. So at the time, their new CEO or not new anymore, but their current CEO, Meredith Levine, was my boss. That's really when key Brand Studio. So this in house Content Studio officially launched, and in just the span of a few months that same year, native native advertising started to account for 10% of the digital revenue, thanks to some 40 worked with us back then, and in 2015, 130 campaigns had launched since the studio's inception, and it just grew from there. I will note that it took a lot of time to gain the trust of the newsroom,

    more known better quality. It just felt like the New York Times

    again to set the scene in terms of design tools. This was also pre figma, one of my proudest achievements. Though, while there was new promoting throughout the times ecosystem that would drive people to our work. So just think about the traffic from the New York Times homepage. The key though was to create something that wouldn't confuse readers as being journalism and yet fit with the overall look and feel. You know, why should a promotional unit? Wouldn't that affect the brand, look, look and feel overall. You know, we didn't want to introduce, in fact, brand existing credibility and trust. And sometimes, you know, you assume that whatever is happening on advertising or marketing should feel different or less than but really, my goal was to make sure that it felt and would, in effect, could

    help it. This was also a time where I was having

    big discussions with other leaders about the New York Times brand role and how the changing landscape of advertising could fit within the larger picture. So since the times and is increasingly known for being on the cutting edge of innovation and technology, whether through virtual reality storytelling or their amazing interactive data visualisations. I was just trying to translate their brand strategy into visual outputs cross platform that not only could align with their values and deliver story driven experiences, but also, ultimately, could help them develop new revenue streams.

    All right, the third example, so imagine the pandemic

    as a backdrop. I was enlisted by an agency called giant spoon, who had just won this account through American Express to execute the overhaul.

    It's worth noting that departures had been around

    for almost 40 years, but with the pandemic as our backdrop, I started pushing for building brand identity and product design systems entirely in figma, which, as we all, or many of us may know, is a great collateral that's rising popularity. But they, they were my first client when going out on my own as an independent designer and creative lead American Express, as I said, really had been running this 40 year old brand. They started in 1984 a lifestyle publication focusing on luxury and child can express cardholders And historically, had been known to being really just in print. And so the goal here was to reimagine departures as a digital first publication. I was brought in as a fractional executive creative director. Saw a creative team of

    brand identity system, this

    generation of departures that embraced this digital first model, and this was the brand's first redesign in over a decade. And so to tell compelling stories, we devised key principles to guide and unify the creation and innovation of our product and partnership work streams all in one with the brand. At the core, I think part of having this small, nimble team, and also in my role, meant that I had oversight across all work streams, really unifying these, these work streams, through these key principles department, came a prism for you know, reflecting all facets of the human journey. I influenced the development of premium native ad formats alongside the new brand, the new brand identity and product design, and in just a few short months we delivered inspiration mixed with utility. We not only built the new brand future

    that informed the launch of the digital

    experience and newsletter product, proprietary ad solutions, and by this point, also reimagine, reimagine, excuse me, the publishing model by merging five distinct and distributed companies and establishing a one team culture, building one ecosystem despite kind of all living around the world again, we were building this amidst the pandemic as our backdrop. We weren't meeting in person. This was all done virtually. Our work did earn a Webby nomination in 2022 and other press record in the design industry and beyond. Unfortunately, American Express did decide to cease the beloved brands publication in January of this year. As we all know, again, as I said at the beginning of today's talk, you can imagine things to be future. Obviously, there are some unforeseen contexts and circumstances that make things

    not your experience. Now, most people here probably know

    the history of meta than Facebook, but if not, it launched in February four and exaggeration when I say that a lot has changed in 20 years in terms of the brand's perception around the world, especially in the Western world. For context, Zuckerberg was times Person of the Year in 2010 which is about when Facebook had its 500,000,000th user earlier that year. Maybe these were the glory days, I don't know. Obviously, the product has gone through a lot since then, to San Francisco, thanks to Facebook in 2016 when there were about only 16,000 employees or so, there was, you know, different types of press around the app and the product or the brand overall at the time, but being said, I think I joined at a very interesting time. We were developing Facebook's where they're

    through systems such as emojis, illustration, colour,

    icons, photography and reactions, the colourful backgrounds that you use to status. We used extensive component libraries and definitely embraced a fast paced working environment. You can imagine that building complex visual systems for now close to 3 billion users was challenging for me. It was about 2 billion users at the time, but it was also a great learning experience. So the reality is, Facebook realised it did. And when I was there, there was no brand strategy. They are a product and engineering led organisation, so brand important to them at the time, but as the user base grew, they realised that every interaction with the product influenced perception of the brand. I was in the room with executives as we were figuring I was also

    there when the Facebook app went from the top meeting. This exercise forced them to truly figure out

    who they were or who they are, before really investing in what they look like, or at least kind of what they should look

    figuring out the role of the in product. Brand voice

    really became a priority, which is what you know, how do we support our users without maybe being too loud in their feeds? How often should Facebook, the brand talk to their users in the app experience, or should we be more in the background? What is the right balance?

    Meta was also where I truly learned how to embrace

    discomfort. I had just left publishing, as I noted earlier, which was my comfort zone. That was where I started in my career. And imagine just joining a tech company like Facebook, moving across the United States, and I basically had to learn a new language, convincing engineers to buy into a creative concept. When I joined, for context, I was initially asked to manage a team of paper craft artists and develop culturally relevant images for the news feed. So you may be asking yourself, paper craft artist, what is that? So I am not kidding when I say that, literally, Facebook invested in hiring some of the best papercraft artists in the world. So literally, people who maybe have backgrounds in building theatre sets and really have amazing at the detail, but they were sitting at their desks in Silicon Valley building these different products that we would then shoot in a room with on camera and then place in people's digital feeds. So while papercraft is no longer their go to storytelling medium at Facebook time as a major rewarding experience. So what you see on the slide is an example of something we built by hand