Michael, thank you so much for joining me today, and to talk about user experience. We're really thrilled to learn about your experience over your career, and how you've used user experience in your work. So I'm gonna start by asking you to tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this field. >> Sure. I'm actually a design researcher, which basically means that. Well, I come from the field of anthropology, so I took my first anthro class in high school, and just understood immediately that. Understanding the way that people go through, and experience their world, is fascinating to me, because it's different than the way I see it. And the more I can understand the way other people are living their lives, and not just how they move through their environments but the way they interpret what's going on. The way they add value or perceive value in services, products, environments. That whole context. Is just an enriching experience for me. And I always wanted to understand how I might think about them. When we design a product or a service. How can we make sure that what we are doing is actually giving back the proper need that they're looking for and interpreting it that way. But I found design really accidentally. Right. I really wish I had actually known there was this thing called design much earlier in my life. I'm a classically trained anthropologist, academically trained, I've done work with a lot of marginalized sub cultures, gangs, homelessness. Which sort of led me into, what I thought was gonna be more of like a nonprofit sort of strategy work. But I ended up getting hired by ELab, which was an early sort of, research and innovation company that got bought by Sapient. But I basically found myself straddling a more traditional market research world, and a little bit of design. But then I got hired by IDEO, where I went, wow, I can actually not just understand people and learn about people but I can begin to make something that could be impactful in their lives as well. That was not short. >> That was great. That was great. Michael, can you share some of the types of products you have designed? Using your user experience research skills. >> Yeah the nice thing about, I think as a researcher, and I'm very biased. Being a researcher, is you can apply your research, or you can apply the philosophy of research across a variety of products and services. So, currently I'm actually working on something that has to do with diabetes management. Which is a mixture of a product and a service. Digital as well as physical and then a service. But it really runs the gamut. So the understand people from their perspective, it doesn't really matter whether it's something as medical and serious diabetes or something as perhaps not as serious in a health way, to understand why people purchase tires for their car. Which was a project I did previously. >> Okay. >> But I've also done stuff for understanding the way people think about banking. I think like an interesting example using that was PNC's Virtual Wallet. Which I don't know if you're familiar with that. >> Please explain. >> But basically it's if you go online, or it's a mobile tool now. But it was originally designed for how younger people just out of school might think about banking, and helping them save, and helping them look towards the future. But where design thinking and user experience comes into play is, they asked us what does banking look for it was GenX at the time. You know, and unlike a typical design firm, which might go in and say, okay, well what does a checking account look like and how do we digitalize that and make it neat and fun, right? What we wanted to do was go in and really talk to people who are just out of school, understanding what they were struggling with. What does it mean to be an adult with money? Or to be on their way to being an adult with money? What are the pitfalls? Right and by going and talking to people and going to their homes. And like there is one woman who is great she was probably in her mid 20's. And she did the old fashion, young tech savvy, but did the old fashion method of enveloping, which actually I happen to do as well. Great but it was basically that entails at the beginning of a month pulling out a lot of cash and literally putting parts of cash in envelopes and labeling it. This is for fun, this is for rent, this is, and so it forces you to be on a budget. So we're able to look at information like that and say so, people want to do well, but they have a hard time allocating, especially when you're that age and have a very flexible social life. How do you actually make sure that you can afford enough to be at the end of the month as well as the beginning of the month? Right? Or, someone else that we spoke with, it was a really interesting experience, the client was with us. And the guy was getting text messages all the time, right? In the middle of the interview. It's like hold on, text, talk to us, hold on, text. And when we left and the client said wow, what a waste of an interview, like all he did was pay attention to his text messages. So we said, wait a minute, actually this is really important, right? Not only was he multitasking, but think about the way he's now communicating with people. This was probably seven or eight years ago, right, so he was putting it into direct context. So it's understanding that he actually want to do things on the fly, and he wants these micro interactions. Part of user experience isn't what we think would be pretty or nice or engaging. It's understanding the way people are actually working and navigating their world and then designing to that. >> Interesting. So thank you, those are excellent examples. So you go out and you meet with people, it sounds like in context. Where they work, where they play, you're not bringing them into focus groups necessarily. You're really going out to them. You come back with all this data. What do you do with it when you come back. >> [LAUGH] Try not to drown. >> [LAUGH] >> Then we go into synthesis, which is a couple of steps. Even before we get back, depending on where we are, but probably the most important thing is to debrief right away. Get out of your head what you heard. I will do that in a car with post it notes. I don't take notes when I'm in the field. I can't take notes, and listen well enough. Plus, I want to give my undivided attention. I want them to perceive that I'm giving my undivided attention. So, in the car, immediately jot down. But then, my first filter is storytelling. So it's just getting back with the team, whether it's in the office, or at the hotel, or over dinner. And it's just, what did you learn today? What was it exciting? Not that that should be the end all, be all. But there's a natural filter as designers, and intuition, and just going and doing in a field work, that if something's resonating with you or it's in your gut. Resonating positively or negatively, you wanna pay attention to it. So then after we kind of tell the stories, then we'll maybe go back and look at the notes that somebody else took, or really all the detail, did we lose anything out. But that's really just about kind of getting the information out there so everybody is aware of it. But then.- >> Can you think of an example? I'm picturing you in your car with post it notes. Can you think of an example of a recent observation that you had and situation, in which you were in the car and had a conversation with one of your colleagues? >> The ones that come to mind most was, I was working on a project dealing with mental health in Miami. We were in Florida for several weeks at a time. And we were spending time at homeless shelters and mental institutions, at camps, like day camps. And so we'd interview people, but sometimes multiple people at a time. But because the people that we were interviewing also typically had some sort of severe mental illness. The conversations weren't necessarily as linear or as cognizant as they typically would be in a normal interview that we might have. And so it was really important to kind of get everything out right away because the interviews themselves were quite meandering. See, it's like Amy and I, Amy Schwartz, another research here and I. Yeah. We would sit in the car together. Sometimes we researched together and it's like talk about what we saw. But like in the car write down something we remembered them hearing. And we're not always right, word for word. We're not trying to necessarily get the quote down. But we were interviewing this one woman. And she said something to us that really resonated, we wanted to write it down right away, but the way we had remembered it was she knows how someone's doing from hello, or know from hello actually became one of our insights. Essentially what that means is if you're working with people in this particular community. No matter what they are presenting, if you know them well enough, you know what their baseline is. And by the time that door closes when you first enter into a room, you know if they're doing okay or not, right? So literally you know from hello if they're having a good day or bad day. >> Interesting. >> You don't need to be a trained psychiatrist, or social worker, if you're just a good friend. So we wrote that down, but then when we went back and reviewed our notes, she never actually used those words. She actually had a very long story about it, but we sort of distilled that out of it. And so that's what we want to get down. The gut reaction, this is the intent, but you want to go back and review when you have a little bit more space, and a little bit more time, to make sure you don't ever miss hear, or misconstrue something. >> I understand. Interesting. Excellent story. I wanna step back for a moment and ask about, actually, your favorite user experiences. So as you're out there, imagine you can't help but think about what are your favorite and your least favorite user experiences. >> It's a tough question. Mostly because, on the project I'm on right now. I'm trying to remember what the context was. But so it's hard to have a most or least favorite. It's kind of like, what's your most or least favorite book, or movie. They're all special in their own way. >> Okay, which one? >> You get so caught up in it, that it's hard to be surprised. Everything is just normal when you're talking to somebody, because you're trying to really understand their life. And so nothing is shocking, cuz unless it's shocking to them, why would it be shocking to you. It's like one of my coworkers, I don't remember what someone said to me. And I just sort of was like okay, yeah. That makes total sense, get going with it. Corporate was like, what? That's so bizarre. What makes a good interview is less the content area and more did somebody feel like they really worked with me, to open up and let me be a guest into their life, right? So I've had some interviews where, sort of data speaking wise, they're very successful. They're very rich in information, their sharingness. But you didn't leave them feeling like you didn't make a connection. And to me, I think at the end, I need that information, but I need that connection to make sense of that information. So I was interviewing someone a couple of days ago, and half way through. Again about diabetes. It's also by the way, really easy to get trapped into what you're working on now, because you become. And half way through, she was do people normally talk this much? I feel like this is a therapy session. Nobody knows this stuff about me. And that's when it feels really good, of like I've cracked open enough trust to be able to actually interpret what you're saying, right? I think that's probably a really important part of doing user experience research. Is you're never going to be able to get through all of the questions that you wanna get through. And you're never going to be able to understand the totality of somebody. But if at the end of an interview, and a couple of days later, and we're coming up with ideas or synthesizing something. If I feel like I know them well enough that I can say, I think I know how they would answer this question. Then I feel like I've done a good job of representing who they are. If I go I have no idea what they would say to this, then I feel like I probably did not actually go deep enough in my interview with them. >> So what advice do you give to people that, first timers, who are doing user experience? Cuz it sounds like it takes a lot of trust building and.- >> Yeah I guess.- >> and connection. >> There's a couple pieces of advice. The first is find what interests you because if you're not interested people will know. All right you can't fake interest in something and it may not be the actual topic that the client wants, right? But it could be part of that topic. So diabetes itself is really interesting, but also understanding adherence or understanding the emotional issues that people go through coping with diabetes. Like, all of those are equally interesting, so you can't fake that passion. The second thing is, and this sounds really superficial, but being nonjudgemental, positive or negative. And that actually is a skill that you have to practice. One of my coworkers was doing an interview, but not a researcher. You know we all go on research together, right, and so she asked a question. This is back to the mental health project. And this man had said he had recently gotten a promotion. He worked at a pinata factory. And she said, oh congratulations that must be great. And he was sort of quiet, and sort of, just like okay, and kind of talking a little bit. And later I asked him, you seemed hesitant. Reading body language is really important as a researcher. She said you seemed hesitant. Tell me a little bit about why you didn't sort of say yes this was a really positive thing. And he said well actually, having a promotion means I'm gonna be working more hours. And there's gonna be more, I have more status because I have more responsibility, which adds stress. What if I fail? What happens if I can't handle this? What if it pushes me over? And so it's really quite simple to be non judgement and negative, and not show emotion when something seems obviously perhaps negative, but you have to be careful about the positive side as well. But I think the single most important thing about being a researcher is being fascinated by that person for those 90 minutes, however long you were with them. I want to know everything about you. I joke a lot about, or some of my coworkers, about how much I like people, or don't like people, right? And I will ingest, I actually don't like people very much. I find people fascinating. Right, so I don't want to be your best friend, but I want to know everything there is to know about you. And obviously I'm a nice person. I do like people. I don't want people to not like me. And I want to be friendly with people. But more than anything else, in my professional life. I want to understand what makes you as an individual and you as a representative of a group, what makes you tick? Like how do you interpret the world? And I think if you bring that fascination and that curiosity, and a little bit of to go a little bit deeper and push beyond what makes people feel just comfortable. >> How do you do that? How do you push beyond? Politely I hope. >> [LAUGH] Do you have a phrase you use or is there a time you know to push a bit. >> No, I think the trick is, it's not a secret if you do research, but people wanna talk about themselves and they want to really express themselves. And so the trick to going beyond is just to let them actually take themselves beyond what they normally would answer. So whether it's a moment of silence so they're reflective. Or whether, I'm really big on my own body language. So it's just like that straight eye contact and like the you have permission to keep going, tends to go pretty far. But also just very politely, but to bring up, humans are complex creatures. So to say like, earlier you mentioned that you never drink coffee after ten because it makes you too jittery in the afternoon, but I noticed that you just got up and got a cup of coffee. What makes this different? And so I give them an out to explain what makes it different, but I'm also going to be pretty obvious. I just called you out on saying one thing and doing something else. But that's okay because people do that. >> People do that. Well, do you ever have the experience when you're in an interview, you're doing observation, of wanting to solve a problem right then and there? >> That's something I try never to do. >> Okay. When I am interviewing somebody, I wanna be really wrapped up in the moment. >> In the moment. >> That's not to say I'm not thinking about what they're saying and thinking about, how that might relate to the next question, but synthesis should not happen then. It's too hard, at least for me. I wanna be wrapped up in what they're talking about. Now there are actual problems that people have that you might wanna solve, but very functional problems. Engineers are probably the worst researchers of this. >> [LAUGH] >> Because they wanna fix the thing. My computer doesn't work, and they're like, well all you have to do is, no, no, you've gotta see how they're gonna solve that problem. No, the only time I've actually ever- >> Why do you have to see? Can you be explicit? Why do you have to see, as opposed to fix it for them? Can you be explicit about that? >> Oh, because if we weren't there and they had this problem, what would they do to actually solve the problem? So my job is to not solve the problem. My job is to not be a sales person for a particular item or company or product or service. My job is to understand how people live their lives, and then synthesize it to create a solution that will solve that problem. So if somebody is saying, I really struggle with choosing the right tire, I don't know which one to get, and I jump in and say, oh, well here, obviously, this tire does this and this does that, I don't understand, really, what was going through their mind. How would they have made that solution? At some point they would have purchased a tire, but I just biased the result. So I want to stay removed from that. >> That makes sense. And then how do you bring this information back to the design team, the engineers who want to solve the problem? >> So, a couple of things. So bringing the information back for the team is two-fold. One is the team should be with me. So I might lead the research because I understand how to talk to people. But my interpretation, and an engineer, or a designer, or even other researcher's interpretation, might not be the same. And having multiple eyes who have multiple ways of interpreting, or even what they find interesting to look at, is really, really helpful. >> Okay. >> The other aspect to that, to bringing the designers or engineers along with me is they feel the empathy as well, and so they're not designing for something abstract on a page. They are also picturing, but then when we get back to the space, we're going to synthesis. So it's really putting up all of our notes, all our very, hopefully at that point, fairly straight forward, here's what we saw, then some of our interpretation. But then it's a lot of moving Post-it notes around. This and this seem like they're kind of similar, they may not on paper look similar, so I test because I am worried, sorry, I test for diabetes because I'm worried about losing my eyesight. And I test for diabetes because my mom had diabetes and I saw what happened to her. So those might look different, but you might say, actually, if you go to an interpretive level it's both about fear of the future and what might happen. And there's multiple ways that you can cut and slice and dice the information. So you kinda keep doing it until it's not only relevant information, but it's useful information. It's something that the design team can rally around and say, okay, this is now actionable information. So if it's about the future, then a designer might think, how can we help people think about what that future state might be in the current state of design? So is it, for example, letting a family member record a voice memo that gets played back every time that you test, which might be a little bit heavy-handed. But then you begin to take that information and do something with it. And that's probably the biggest difference between designer research and user experience design and market research. >> Okay, which is? >> Is we want the information that we learn to not only be insightful, but to actually have action taken because of it. >> How would you define market research? >> Market research, there are two types of market research. There's sort of more of the quantitative, here's an exploration of what is happening. There's also more ethnographic in nature, which is where I was coming from, of why it's happening. But then it's really interesting, it can be very deep information, and really nuanced about the why, but it's up to somebody else to figure out what they want to do with that. >> Okay. >> Whereas design research may not go down every nook and cranny, but what we do present is something that we can have a clear point of view about what problem needs to be solved. So we try to create some sort of hierarchy for our clients cuz it may not be all the problems that we've discovered, but it's the ones that we think are gonna be the most important to solve first and here's how you can do it. >> Okay, interesting. Do you come out with frameworks, journey maps, what state does this synthesis come out in? >> All kinds. >> Okay. >> So when we're synthesizing, I'd say a lot of frameworks and a lot of journeys get you internally to help us think through our ideas, and it may not make it all the way to a final presentation. >> Sure. >> But I think of journeys, frameworks, even boundary object concepts, so early concepts that we put out to just to sort of test the waters and see how far we can push someone's experiences. >> Can you give me an example of a boundary object that you've used? >> Sure, so I was working on helping redesign the graphical user interface for a CAT scan, so CTs. >> Okay. >> And one of the things that we learned early on was there's a lot of manipulation between the amount of resolution and the amount of radiation, right? And, so, obviously there's trade-off. And we found that a lot of technicians, not the radiologists, but the technicians, feel uncomfortable making some of those trade-offs because a patient's safety is at stake. >> Sure. >> So, we said, all right, we don't believe this to be true, but what if we got rid of all of the interaction? So basically someone sets it, and all you can do is hit the button. >> Is push a button. >> Knowing that that was probably never meant to be a viable solution, but what we wanted to know is how far can we push this lack of autonomy? >> Okay, okay. >> And we're actually surprised at how far people were willing to go. >> Okay. >> So the idea for a boundary object just kind of set the parameters of what's in and out of acceptability, knowing that the intent is never to be true. >> Okay, and how did you make that boundary object for the team you worked with? >> Literally, we can sketch on a napkin. I can verbally do it. How would you feel about, what if it did this for you? What if there was an interview where you could automatically rewind 30 seconds just by thinking about it? And they'd be like, oh that's really cool, okay, so now I can dig into why is re-winding is interesting when talking about editing. >> So you're not building a full working CAT scan? >> No, not at all. But at a certain- >> No, this is something you do in a couple of minutes. >> Oh, yeah. >> A couple of minutes, okay. >> And now we're doing a lot of digital building even early on, so we can actually do dynamic testing. >> So what do you mean by that? >> So the project that we're working on now, it's really kind of a fascinating time to go to be in digital interaction. So we created this interesting quasi work-around, but we're asking people to actually test their blood sugar for diabetes like they currently do. They're texting their number to a particular channel that we set up. We get that number, but then on the back end we built basically a program that will spit that number back to them in a fake app on a watch that then sends it, so it will send it back to them. It also sends it to Parse so we can see all the data, and it also sends it to Slack. >> Okay. >> So I'm able to actually see all of their data coming in, but I can also send them messages that look like it's coming from the app directly. But their reaction is now being captured on Parse so we can actually see what kind of interactions they're having. So that's not a boundary object, but that's very much interative at testing in the real world and really a dynamic design, which is a really fascinating place for us to be today. That didn't exist a couple of years ago. >> Right, so you can be modifying the design based on their reaction. >> Yeah, I don't have the photo of it here, but there's one downstairs on an earlier phase, where this was not in context, it was for an app. And I was in the room, I was in a focus group room with people, just so they could actually see the app. But in the pictures, me in the room with a respondent and in the back is the rest of the design team. And on their computers they have Flinto, Envision, Reflector, and then all of the coding opened up. And so they were actually making changes on the fly. I had two phones, so they could make changes on one while I was on the other one and push updates. So if somebody said, you know I'm not sure I understand why we do it this way. I think this way might be more interesting, like the development team would actually make that. And be like, you mean something like this, let's explain why this works better than that. And we could actually do live iterations in a really high fidelity, which was mind boggling to all of us. >> Wow. Prior, would you have done it on paper? >> Probably would have done it on paper. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So you would have made edits directly on the paper? >> Right. >> And asked what about this? >> Or to draw over something. >> Okay. >> Yeah so boundary objects though can kind of bring it back to a more simplistic form. Often times it's just a sketch. I mean one of the things that we want to do is not spend a lot of time on it because the intent is just to get there and then move away from it again. And is a conversation starter. All early prototyping is really meant to, the value of early prototyping is not meant to be right. It's meant to push a particular direction or evaluate a particular value or be a prompt for further conversation. So we don't want to get married to our designs. That is also probably one of the more challenging things to being a UX researcher in a design company. Is as a researcher I have to force myself to be divorced from the designs that I very well may have just helped have a hand in. Because I need to evaluate them very unbiasedly. It doesn't matter what I like or don't like. And so I can't bring my own sense of ownership to it. And, in fact I would say as a general rule of thumb, the designs that as a team we like most, or we're most excited about, are the ones that we are harshest to with our respondents. Because we want to make sure.- >> So bring this to life for us. Describe what this actually means. >> Sure. >> You go out with a.- >> So, so.- >> [CROSSTALK] >> Projects? >> Right, so we've done some synthesis and we have some ideas about what we think we're trying to design, right? So we'll come up with.- >> Have you done some ideation in this process? >> Yeah, oh yeah, there might be some ideation. And some, oh, so we call them user looks. But that's kind of like putting them out in front of people, getting some ideas. We'll do some ideation, do some iteration, we'll do the brainstorm, kinda synthesis hope. These are all different ways of actually solving this problem. What makes the most sense. And a lot of that is based off of previous knowledge, based off of feasibility. Can we actually build this? >> Okay. >> Understanding that we don't want to be married to that concept because there's thousands of ways to skin a cat and we just happen to chose these four right. But then a lot of times as a team, we'll be excited about one of those four. And so we'll go out and say like in the team, we really think that there's something really interesting about on letting people take a picture of their food to create a food journal instead of having to write it all out, right? >> Okay. >> And maybe the first couple of people say, oh, that's great. First of all, just hearing that's great is not helpful to a researcher. We wanna know why. But if that's the idea that we thought was really interesting, we're mean to that idea. Really, wouldn't it be easier to just to do a voice memo. It's not really gonna tell you the right portion size if you do that. We'll poke as many holes as we can, so people think no, I don't care that I have to manually look this up later on. The picture's a great realization for later, or a great memory recall for later. Or so it's like okay, we threw everything we can to destroy this idea, and it's still floated to the top. Therefore there must be something there. So we're much harsher on the ideas that we like to try to avoid our own bias from tipping what direction we go forward with. >> And you often go with three or four, you said. >> It varies on what we're trying to accomplish. Well generally, we diverge a lot so we'll start fairly wide and it might. So like with boundary objects or even early ideation, it's the value that we're testing more than the idea itself. So we might have four or five values and once we kind of go, these values seem better, these values seem not so critical right now. Maybe we'll take those values and partner up. So we're converging the values, but diverging in now maybe seven or eight expressions of that value. Go through that very quickly we'll learn that there's a couple just we missed the mark on. There's no point, we've learned every thing we can from them, no point. >> No point. >> Right, so now we have a few, we'll converge, but then we'll synthesize. What about these seem to be right? Okay, can we merge them together? Can we actually throw those out? But take what was successful and create two or three new ones. And so we'll kind of keep diverging and converging until we land at something that we feel comfortable with. >> Okay. >> And I don't know if there's a set number. One of the things that we try to not do with our clients is promise we will have three concepts, or we will, because that's putting the cart before the horse. What we wanna do is solve the problem. It's not about number of concepts that you have. >> Okay. And what value do clients find in working with you and taking this user experience approach versus a technology driven approach for instance. >> I think there's two questions in what, two parts of the question about what do clients find valuable. So the first probably is the human centeredness. Should be the human center design. And so we never forget about technology, or the viability, the feasibility. Right? It has a business sense, and it has to be doable. But it doesn't really matter how doable, and how technologically capable, and how much money it might grow your business if no one wants the thing, right? >> Mm-hm. >> And so that's probably the most straight forward. Helping them understand. You gotta start with what people want. >> Do you have a quintessential example of that? Of you can make it, it's viable, but people don't want it. >> Not at IDEO, because we try not to go that route. >> [LAUGH] In the world, in the world. >> And I think in the world, you'll see lots of examples. And I think a great example now, where maybe technology and business is outpacing desirability. I think desirability will catch up, but is a connected home. Versus, say nest, as like a counter example. >> Okay, nest being the? >> Nest being the connected home thermostat. >> Thermostat. Yes. >> Now I don't know the true story of how nest started. Right? >> Okay. >> But regardless of how they came about it, it resonated really deeply with people. Right it was a simple interface, people got the value proposition. It felt very intuitive, so people liked it. On a technological stance, like if you go to a Home Depot or to a Best Buy, there's all kinds of connected home things. But people aren't really buying them very much because they don't resonate with people yet. So I think that's probably a pretty. No, I think in time people will begin to realize or companies will begin to realize how to design it to make it feel more intuitive and connect with people. >> Okay. >> But a lot of times it's companies are trying to solve a business problem and people trying to solve human problem. Right? And to the human problem, it isn't, or how do I get in to my home easier? The human problem, is I'm carrying a lot of keys or I want guests to come, and I don't wanna have to give them a copy of my key. Or I want to go on vacation but shoot I need my neighbor to come and take care of the dog. These are human issues. >> Yeah. >> Like the functionality is not a human issue. So part of our job is to help our clients understand or help our clients translate what they think is the problem to a human interpreter. As the problem. >> As the problem, that's nice. >> So I think that's probably the biggest. The second part that we have to do is a lot of our clients come to us with research already done. And this is something that IDO tends to be, we tend to have an unfair advantage over other design firms, because clients buy into our philosophy. And we don't do design without research, but a lot of design companies don't have that luxury. But we do always have to explain to our clients why it's important for us to do our research, and part of it is for the inspiration. Part of it is we see the world from a design lens, not just the what are people doing lens. And part of it is. And this is why I'm excited about user experience today, is I'm hoping and my personal belief is that user experience is bigger than it used to be. It's not just the interaction. User experience, where I'd like to see it go is a combination of the product and the service, digital or physical but also, the brand. How is it interpreted in the world? How is it communicated? How is it even, I don't wanna talk necessarily about an ad agency, but how is the message gotten out to people? The experience is holistic. And I think a user experience researcher can go in and influence all of that. Because we're learning about people not in isolation, we're learning about how a particular interest area that we're exploring fits into the rest of their life. And so I think user experience is going to eventually be the umbrella category for problem solving in general, for a client. >> So, I'm going to conclude with one question. What is your personal favorite user experience that involves all of these different touch points you just described? >> The one that I am perhaps most proud of has to do with the severe persistent mental illness project that I was on in Miami. Because this was a huge problem and I think, I'll get to your question in a second, right? But I think user experience and design tackling social issues, there's a lot of work that designers need to do to I think, be taken seriously in that realm. But there's such rich opportunity for design. I think designers need to respect a lot of the academic and really hard work that people living in the trenches are doing day to day. But once designers can understand and speak that language, and not reinvent the wheel. There is so much wrong with the world that pretty basic design principles can elevate pretty quickly. So, back to your question. One of the things that we learned in Miami and I guess this is actually now kind of in hindsight, or there's a lot of media coverage about this. But when you are fairly transient, and have a mental illness, and are poor keeping track of your belongings, especially something as simple as an ID card can be very, very difficult. You're moving a lot, in and out of hospitals. In and out of jails. In and out of shelters, right? And without an ID, almost nothing else becomes possible. With no ID you have no proof of citizenship, so you don't qualify for social security disability insurance. You don't qualify for Medicare Medicaid. You don't qualify for housing vouchers. You don't qualify for anything, essentially. You're a person non grata. And so one of the things that we're developing was an informal identification card. Obviously it could be used formally, but the idea was if it was well respected and given by institutions, that might be a good substitute. So we did some quick prototypes, but we actually built cards. But a few things that we did, is we did probably two things that were really interesting is, we took multiple photos of people, and let them choose a photo that they wanted on the card that best represented who they thought was better. The second thing that we did is ask them, here's your formal name, but what do you get called by? Who are you really? And allow them to put their nickname on the card. And what was interesting is we gave people cards, and these cards actually were accepted at a particular location throughout the Miami Dade area. If you have this card it meant you were participating in the program and you were a true member of the community. >> Mm-hm. >> But we came back a couple of months later and talked to a number of people. We gave out probably 120 and we didn't talk to everybody again. But other than three that we had like found again, they all still had their cards. During that same period, dozens of them had lost their IDs, they had moved to different places, but they kept onto those because this is actually making me a person, and I'm proud to have it. And that was something that felt like we really hit what was necessary and important to them, and created value. And at the end, that's what a researcher and a designer want to do, is add value to somebody's life. Big or small, but being additive and hopefully not superficial. And I think returning and seeing that this made such an impact to them, was one of those moments that as the team we said, wow. This feels good. This is why we became designers. >> Thank you, Michael, so much as this has been a real pleasure talking to you. >> Sure. Thanks. >> Take care.
