The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with Cyd Harrell, a product, service design, and user research leader focused on the civic/government space.

Cyd brings a very thoughtful approach to designing institutional systems, which must serve their purposes over the long term. Producing long-lived systems requires that designers delve beneath the surface (e.g. screen-level design) to deeper strata such as the values that inform them. Cyd highlighted one such value during our conversation, respect:

Respect is for me a really important value in almost every design, but also in particular for government, where whatever the government agency is, it’s interacting with someone who is perhaps an owner because they’re part of a democracy, or who certainly is someone whose dignity is protected in foundational documents like the Constitution and so forth.

If we start to imagine, the easy one for most people is, what if you went to the DMV and it was a respectful experience? What would it be like if I’m getting a business permit or even something simple like signing your kid up for a class at the library? What if that respected your time and your dignity and your abilities in full?

You can start to get even more speculative. What if we came up with a way to make arrests as respectful as possible of the person experiencing them? Why don’t we do that? What would that imply about every feature of a design?

Let’s do something a little bit less critical, say applying for public benefits. What if we took the processes and made sure that they were respectful of the time and the needs and the abilities of our fellow citizens who are experiencing difficulty and need our collective help? These things don’t fit very title and to an AB test, and they don’t necessarily fit very tightly into a sprint.

In 2019 I had the opportunity to collaborate with Cyd and her team on a project, and saw firsthand how she modeled and infused respect and mindfulness in the work. The world would be better if more designers adopted these values as part of their work — whether it be in the civic or commercial realms. Our conversation is a good primer; I encourage you to listen.

The Informed Life Episode 27: Cyd Harrell on Design for the Long-term

The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with my friend Andrew Hinton. Over the last two decades, Andrew has brought great depth to the information architecture community. He’s one of the founders of the (late, alas) Information Architecture Institute and author of Understanding Context, an essential text for anyone who wants to understand how people make sense of the environments they operate in. (It’s a must-read for designers.)

Our conversation delved into the foundations of information architecture and how language and environment relate to each other. I was especially taken by how Andrew makes these (potentially) complex subjects engaging and actionable to his students and colleagues:

If I get people to get out of abstract-head and out of information-head, the way that we typically think of information and start with, how do we understand our physical environment and interact with it in the same way lizards and spiders interact with their environment. The principles are basically the same. And then build from there. That’s how I can teach this.

Now, if I’m working with just colleagues on the fly in the middle of a project, or I’m talking to my colleagues here at work, I don’t go into all that. I mean, I’ve been here six months and I have yet to go into all that. But what I do is try to slip in this grounding and kind of draw on the whiteboard. Here’s a person. Here’s some things that they’re interacting with. Here’s how that might change over time. I’m always trying to locate it into like, you’ve got a human in an environment doing stuff.

Because ultimately that’s what user experience brings to the table. There’s a human being, and we have to make all this other stuff we’re making compatible with that human being. So we’re creating new parts of their environment that we want them to use and understand.

Andrew’s work has greatly influenced my thinking about the role of information architecture. If you enjoy my blog, you’ll likely find this conversation inspiring. (If it does, then do yourself a favor and read Understanding Context — it will change how you think about your work and your world.)

The Informed Life Episode 26: Andrew Hinton on Language and Environments

The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with linguist Mary Parks. For almost twenty years, Mary has worked as a voice user interface designer for several digital technology companies, including some of the field’s leaders. Our conversation focused on what it takes for digital systems to parse, understand, and generate speech.

One fascinating aspect of voice recognition systems is how they separate the audio signal of an utterance from the content it carries — it’s “text.” For example, as Mary put it, the system doesn’t know if you’re yelling at it, only what you’re saying. But this audio signal carries with it a lot of important information as well:

The moment we open our mouths, a massive amount of identifying information is in the speech utterance, in the first two seconds of the utterance. Whenever we talk, there’s a ton of information there. You hear things in the in the sound of the voice that tell you who the person is, elements of their identity, including perhaps the region they’re from. You know, there’s just all kinds of things that come up. And if you know the person, then your brain goes, “Oh, I know this voice.” Like you can hear only just to the two seconds of a voice, and if it’s somebody you really know, you’ll know who it is right away with pretty high confidence as a person. And so just identity and language are deeply tied.

I wish Mary and I had talked longer — there was much in our conversation I wanted to follow up on. I hope you get as much value from this episode as I did.

(By the way, in case you missed it: the show is now available on Google Play Music. This should make it easier for folks who use Android devices to listen.)

The Informed Life Episode 25: Mary Parks on Voice User Interfaces

The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with Michael J. Metts. Alongside co-author Andy Welfle, Michael has written a new book, called Writing is Designing: Words and the User Experience, and in this show we discussed their thesis:

if you think about any sort of experience that you interact with, like a mobile app, that’s the one we use as an example right in the beginning of the book. Your mobile app, if you open it up and you start tapping through it, you start looking at it, you start to see words everywhere. You’re interacting with language just as much as you’re interacting with visual elements like menu items and buttons and all those other things.

So, our thesis really is just that you should treat those words as part of the design and that you should apply design techniques and practices to those words and how you get there, and not treat them as something that’s inconsequential or after the fact. So, we’ve done that in our own careers, and we’ve seen how vital it is to building a good experience, and we just want to share that with others.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know why I wanted to have Michael on the show. We discussed the relationship between writing and design, how to manage language, and what everybody — designer or not — can do to be a better writer. Hope you enjoy our conversation.

The Informed Life Episode 24: Michael J. Metts on Writing as Design

The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with Carol Smith. Carol is a user experience researcher at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Her focus is artificial intelligence, and prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, she worked for Uber’s Advanced Technology Group and IBM Watson.

Our conversation focused on the benefits and limitations of AI technologies:

I do take many precautions with making sure that my information as protected as possible, but at the same time, I love using a lot of the tools out there. So I love using chatbot that I have in my home. I really love being able to just ask it to play NPR, or asking it to turn on some lights, or whatever it is. I really enjoy these types of tools, and I really like the idea that my email can add something to my calendar. That’s really helpful. It doesn’t always add it the way I want it to, and I’d like more control in that sense. But I find these tools to be so helpful in my day to day life. I’ve got kids, and I teach a class, and I work and got soccer games and a million things going on on any given day. I can’t imagine having this busy of a life without these tools helping me day-to-day.

That being said, I’m very cognizant of all of the danger that is potential with these systems and how much of my personal information is out there. I’m very protective of my kids’ information and trying to keep them off of these systems for as long as possible. So it’s a balance. It’s a constant balance where I’m constantly trying to determine, is this still the system I want to be using? Should I be perhaps moving to a different system? Should I be not using the system that I believe to be more harmful? Trying to determine how to manage all that is a constant decision-making and evaluation process, and for people who are less familiar with these tools, I’m sure it’s much more frightening and difficult.

Our discussion is a good primer on the current state of AI and its implications for our day-to-day information management. I also share one of my AI “tales of woe.”

Unfortunately there were some audio glitches on my side of the line, which I couldn’t fix in post. They go away halfway through the show, but may be a bit annoying early on. Apologies for that. I’m still trying to figure out podcasting; there are so many things to track!

In any case, I enjoyed my conversation with Carol. I hope you find it valuable.

The Informed Life Episode 23: Carol Smith on Artificial Intelligence

The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features a conversation with design leader and coach Andrea Mignolo. Andrea is VP of Product and Design at Movable Ink, a marketing technology company based in New York. She’s also been posting insightful articles on Medium about the value of design. I referenced these two in particular in the show:

• Reflections on Business, Design, and Value
• Learning Through Worldmaking: The Design Way

These articles are what prompted me to schedule a conversation with her. The thesis is that design is useful for more than just making product and services; it’s also a particular way of being for organizations, one which emphasizes learning through making:

I think a lot of people talk about wanting design-driven companies, but I think that that’s maybe a little too much hubris. I think it’s really design helping facilitate and spread these activities ways of thinking ways of exploring into other departments as well or just creating a culture where this is part of the approach.

The first part of our conversation centered on this idea of “designerly ways of being.” I was especially keen to learn about the Experiential Learning Cycle; a model Andrea has been using to implement these ideas.

The second half of the interview took a fascinating turn: Andrea discussed her experience as a practitioner of integral coaching, which helps individuals and organizations find new ways of being in the world. I’m intrigued by these practices and left wanting to know more.

I hope you get as much value from this conversation as I did.

The Informed Life Episode 22: Andrea Mignolo on Designerly Ways of Being

The latest episode of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with Vanessa Foss. Vanessa has been planning and managing conferences for twenty-five years. She’s the founder and president of Kunverj, an event planning and managing company. Vanessa and her team run one of my favorite events of the year, the Information Architecture Conference. In our conversation, we discussed what it takes to organize and manage such an event.

The bottom line? Event planning is a relationship business, one that requires tuning in to the needs and capabilities of the people you’re working with — especially the conference chairs, who are ultimately responsible for the success of the event. Vanessa used a powerful analogy to describe her role in the process:

It’s like having a dinner party, but it’s just bigger. These people, they’re coming to your home, and you want to make sure that they have… You know, that everything is just right for them.

And so with all of the conferences — and it’s not just the IA Conference — all the conferences, that’s the type of participation that I like to have, where I feel like this is my home, and I’m trying to prepare the best meal and the best experience for everyone coming into my home. And you know, with the IA Conference, the Euro IA Conference, and the RDAP conference that I do, these are all people that I’ve been working with for a long time. And so there’s a sense of family there. There’s a sense of… I’m not an IA, but I have learned so much from this community, the IA community, especially from the IA Conference. I see people that are so great, and they show so much empathy towards each other, and you know, the want to mentor and to help is always there. It’s hard work, but it’s very rewarding when you get to see the better side of human beings.

The IA Conference is my “home” conference — the one I go to every year, drawn both by professional interests and long friendships. Vanessa and her team are a core part of the Conference. Every time I see them, they’re working hard to make sure things are going well for everyone involved. It was a pleasure to have her on the show and to be able to highlight her work.

The Informed Life Episode 21: Vanessa Foss on Event Planning