#13: Microsoft Design Director, Kat Holmes, on the importance of designing for "one-size-fits-one"

hey welcome to high resolution in my name is Bobby Jo Jo and I'm Jarrod Iranian we sit down with 25 masters of the design industry and if you're new to the show here's what we do we find the best people to talk about their processes on how they approach communicate and deploy design and for the last few weeks since we launched this show you guys have been reaching out to us with your feedback and your comments and your your questions please continue to do that we love that we need that in this episode we're speaking with Katt Holmes that is the principal director of inclusive design at Microsoft she'll focus on what is inclusive design how her team operates is a special ops unit and how to deploy a human centered process we'll get to the show right after this quick message from our partner so stick around thanks to Squarespace for their support whether you need a domain a website or an online store make your next move with Squarespace visit squarespace.com and enter the code high-resolution one word for 10% off your first purchase [Music] cat thanks for joining us thank you thanks for having me awesome so the first question for you what's one thing about design that's clear to you that you don't feel like so clear to other people gosh one thing that's clear about design no I think for me the interactions that happen between human beings the relationships that we build the ways that we understand kind of intuitively or culturally what's appropriate for each other those kind of interactions that that is actually a incredible source of inspiration insight for how to think about human-computer interaction and there's a lot of different areas where that could probably apply but I spend most my time thinking about computers and so you know as things get more complex that it's not about having to conjure up things from thin air it's really like how well do I understand how we relate to my my family or how do I you know live the interaction between two people they're meeting for the first time being able to take that dynamic and understand the interaction and apply that to our design our the principal the little nuances that make something human and humane but that resource is rich and there's a lot of places where we can bring that to design as a analog and as a model to think about better interactions do you think that observation happens before you decide to solve a problem or do you feel like the problem arises once you observe the thing um it's a good question our welfare chicken and egg kind of happenings in the iteration I definitely think it takes a shift in mindset like it takes a shift in what observations we make and that shift usually comes from taking it down to like the micro interaction between people you know we think about micro interactions and they user interface and all the little steps but when you start to think about micro interactions between people and you start to think oh what role could display you know just if you think about a bodyguard and a client you know and you're trying to design a security based interface is there something you can learn about those micro interactions all steps of how you my bodyguard Sampat there's a consideration that happens and so once you try to play with that you know like what does that role of that technology and at one of those micro interactions that have between people I think it starts to show up you can't unsee it you start to see it in many places in the world that you interact with people and it's interesting because The Bodyguard example is it's like because human beings have been protecting other human beings far longer than technology has been protecting - like you've got millennia of reference material to go back to call one of your parents right yeah yeah there's a lot a lot to work with there and that's some of the things that we've you know played with is if we've been thinking about you know security is a very very big important topic coming up but are you creating like a Airport border control system like just recreating even into our studio with every little step and you know bringing engineers and designers through that but you know in some places we have like don't make any I like a border agent doesn't like any eye contact with you but there's asking you for your most personal information it's essentially what we do with technology at times like welcome give me all the information and move down to the next step hope for the best yeah and so you know when someone kind of makes that correlation oh man least a little eye contact would have made it a moment where I could know who I was giving my information to then you know you could really understand that viscerally and apply that you remember that when you're thinking about the design of a system so talking about the design of a system design is oftentimes seen as a Department frame yes but you see it as a way of working yes and I'm really curious I'm really curious to hear like I want you to expand on that idea really because um it's pretty neat a lot of people yes it's um controversial I find replaces two because there's a lot of expertise and training of designers right so it's not to diminish that at all but thinking about design as a verb rather than a noun or title has really shifted I think the relationship that non designers have to the discipline and there's been a lot of conversations of course about design thinking make you seen the residence of that because it people feel like access into the design mindset but when you really talk about the practice of design and what it takes to you know iterate and frame a problem through a human lens those the things that every one who creates a product for people should know how to do and in my experience the the things that have made the biggest difference is that the industry is changing you know again I work in technology specifically so the pure graphic design industrial design and disciplines are a fundamental skill but what I do today there was no there was no degree for that when I was in school there is no degree for interaction experience design at the system level so really a lot of this is drawing from those disciplines and trying to bring together the new things that need to we need to know like you know cognitive behavior and human factors combined with psychology and and art visual arts like how do you bring all those together we have a huge amount of work that goes into thinking about holographic mixed reality experiences like where were you supposed to learn that you know when I was in school X number of years ago so that that part of design as a verb I think that the way the industry is changing really I've pushed that to the to the front of how we we have to all be learning at the same time and we have to draw in new disciplines to do that I think also then from a role of the designer the important shift is to point of leadership and you know it's not it's not for everyone just you know and everybody feels comfortable stepping into like I'm a designer I therefore having a responsibility to help bring this design a method to other disciplines but you know it is about stepping into the leadership of that we want to you know lead with design then we need to be the leaders that can do that for our organizations and you know that takes the tick's we'll work on ourselves you know how we communicate you know becoming a translator across the languages of business and engineering and the creative arts so I think it's an exciting space I think it's something that you know is it's inevitable if we are growing design into all these other areas of experiences so you know stepping into that verb just seem to transform designers careers but also people who didn't consider themselves designers for a long time and really stepped into my gosh yeah yeah what I'm doing that yeah I'm thinking about all these pieces that I am I am designing right now you know so in a sense design designers kind of become a steward for this bird with the new business there's definitely a stewardship is a huge part of it I think the again holding the integrity of what is entailed and that like what that entails and also the facilitation of that and you know my team is a combination of a lot of different design backgrounds people come from a lot of different places but one thing we all had to learn to do and it was a hard moment first of all because it's not always a place of comfort it was to become that facilitator to think about how am i drawing out the best thinking in this room for people to really diverse points of view how am I moving us towards an outcome what's the balance of structure and flexibility to get there those skills you know those are all things we can also learn some facilitation and education but that stewardship is both quiet in the background and sometimes it means being in the front of the room and guiding the conversation I want to talk a little bit about what you do at Microsoft today we tend not to spend a whole lot of time on like existing titles and roles and stuff but you have a very interesting title yeah you're the director of inclusive design and what is inclusive design what does that mean oh good I'll try to be short you know honestly I'm learning I'm learning everyday the the best definition is inclusive design I've come across so far is is designing a diversity of ways for people to participate in an experience so they all have a sense of belonging in that space but it starts with the inclusion of people who are most excluded from an experience so that starting point is you know we've talked a lot about the heritage of accessibility which is often an afterthought and a lot of engineering and design schools you know the heritage of universal design which you know with curb cut on the sidewalk is the quintessential example of you know as design increasing access to challenge with universal design I guess the way that the the way the interval of universal design has been a difficult to apply to the digital space is it's more it's been more of a one-size-fits-all kind of thinking with these principles of every contingency in every possible human circumstance that could occur so you think about that curb cut right and you've got sure the transition down to the street but the moment that that was created anyone who's blind then suddenly lost that indicator I'm moving them into moving traffic right now did he explain the people with the curb curb cut is yes yeah so the sidewalks that we have in a lot of urban embarrassedly places was created ramp down to the street level so the easy transition for with people who use wheelchairs but also people who are riding a bike or pulling a like a suitcase or pushing a stroller all benefit even an elderly person right like walking the lima calm down exaggerated yeah it's great it exactly cool yeah and then what becomes a challenge then is how to then give an indicator to someone who has low vision or is blind but there's now a transition into the road and so you see the the texturing on the I'm a curb and then you hear the you know the chirping of the crosswalk and so there's all these kind of augmentations that you add on to to make sure it works well for everybody that's in my mind that's Universal Design is that corner where you've got to make sure everybody can pass through safely but it requires a lot of augmentation the the thing that's unique about inclusive design is it's more of a one pipe it's one it's about creating something that can fit to your personal it adapts and fits to your personal needs it changes as your body changes as your context changes so it's deeply personalized but it's also malleable and plastic and can change with you so that's that's one long version of inclusive design and the thing that is most important above all other things is the inclusion of people in that process and we've been learning a lot about what that looks like with them but the one that really stands out that I have really hadn't worked with in other areas of design is the expertise like the human expertise you know we're talking earlier about the relationship the bodyguard or the personal assistant and how they their expertise and training experience is something we can use when we design technology but in the same way with inclusive design for trying to create experiences for someone who's in a car right and whatever we design us have the low cognitive like it has to not be demanding for your attention and you can't use your eyes right your eyes are occupied well those people have been interacting with technology without the use of vision or you know through their voice and for a long time through assistive technology and screen readers and so it's about learning from spending time drawing from the strengths and the expertise of people who interact with technology in a lot of different ways today and that expertise most often comes from people who consider the disability or ability community it was there's plenty to work with to improve experiences specifically for people with disabilities but the real shift with inclusive design is about bringing designers with a range of abilities and disabilities into the process after a conversation about designing you know someone who's been using a screen reader for you know 20 years to code to write programs they're going to have a lot of insight into ways to really navigate and make that experience work well for someone who's maybe trying to code in a a small device or a limited visual environment your screen goes dead can you still you know can you still code so people can yeah yeah so since then to achieve inclusive design you have inclusion stakeholders like people who actually partake yes yeah and to them learn from that expertise they bring as a part of the design process early often but short short short of not if they're people listening now that are thinking well how do I find people that have maybe been shortchanged by the design industry so far with experiences that could actually make the design of our products better it's hard it might be hard to find them right so short of that is the answer then to just spend more time with folks that are disabled or like how like how would you frame that how would you think about that um yes on all fronts like it's some kind of thing I've noticed is the starting assumption the most people have completely I've done workshops marking some workshops with 4,000 people in the last year I was topic so we've been recruiting and finding people with a range of abilities and what has always blown me away is it's not that far removed from you you think you wanna mean like it if you don't if you're not the person you know someone that's right you know someone and you don't know you know so like maybe or are you doing that you hadn't thought about the relationship between again the design that you're doing and then hello expertise exists in your own network so it is about I think committing first to that being part of the design the way you design and then knowing what kind of interactions are important to what you're making you know and want to think about multiple contact I want to think about you know how my product will work well in a crowded bar so you know havoc spent time learning understanding in my community you know what already organizations already exist how much time have I spent going to an event an ASL only event and if I put myself in that place to understand the language difference if I'm the only person who doesn't sign ASL at an event for everybody else does so it's seeking it out once you once you commit yourself and there's endless ways to engage and find people with a range of abilities and disabilities it's blown away and it's it is the first whether its concern or people feel as and like designers will feel as an obstacle like all two obstacles usually it's how do I meet someone and and to be honest you know that's a part of why we've worked on the toolkit is to make some kind of starting points available to people with a much broader scale such as you don't have to maybe access or resources so just having some starting place to share stories from people who are longtime experts in accessibility and disability but then also we'll take you through some of the extraordinary things they do in very ordinary things they do in their lives you know and that second piece rely designers is a concern about lowest-common-denominator like gosh if I to design something that works well for all of the iterations of colorblindness that are out there like I'm not going to end up with something that's just blue and yellow remember that's all I can work with and and I'm you know that those two things that how do I meet people and then like what happens if I end up with something that works for everyone but no one loves and I think just debunk we've been debunking both of those you have community you just need to go ask and then also if you think about that breadth of different consider rate like type of considerations for color as an example from the beginning then you will have it built into your process early you can then use it as a creative constraint as opposed to a legal requirement that you're working with and the toolkit you're referring to is the Microsoft inclusive design toolkit yeah she works on yes which is up for an award up for the world I thought this will make you major awards before so before we get to the toolkit which i think is going to be awesome for the audience the shift from one size fits all to one size fits one yeah is really really powerful yeah it's a major mental shift though right um I would love to hear at least one or two examples of what is a one size fits one brought up their solution mm-hmm so I'll pick what I'll pick an easy one something that I love working with and not everybody's familiar with this product and I also try to tell people so they can check it out it's free it's perfect we have three cameras staring you down right now Mira miss if I didn't know the reason was so when one note the product was been around a long time and it's not the one that comes to front of mine for a lot of people but there's a set of tools that this team created called learning tools and they the project started by you know this team works with students with different types of dyslexia and teachers who lead classrooms with lots of different learning levels learning abilities in that classroom at any one time I am amazed at the thought that goes into making sure that you know you can reach every student with such a diverse environment so from working with both those students and teachers the OneNote team develops these learning tools that take any text in you know now you can take a scan of something printed or it could be something on the web and display it visually in different ways you can adjust the spacing of the letters you can adjust the font you can add the kind of syllable elements that break it out you can call our different notes of grammar which I would have loved when I was little today it's not great a grammar and then at the same time you also can it can highlight and read to you while visually kind of moving through the paragraph what's on the page and the all of those practices are out of you know long studied you know well researched methods of working with students with different forms of dyslexia but bringing it into a digital environment where a student has the control over the visual presentation of that that reading material and that seeing and hearing at the same time so reinforcement because there's no one form of dyslexia and there's no one form of learning and there's no one form of retaining what you read but we find if you can adjust in and make those things work well for you then there's a whole nother level of retention that's possible so something like that works we've seen it we make it a free tool for what comes through with OneNote so but it's made a difference in reading retention and rate of reading for four children and then also for anyone who's learning a language for the first time so you're learning our English for the first time complex grammatical and spelling challenges in our language so have especially the American English right so we find that the the biggest kind of audiences for for the students and then also anyone who's learning like you know English for the first time and you wouldn't have always connected those because to audiences together and thinking about the designing something so that's one where it candy can I just say something like this this this strikes me as such a Microsoft thing like the philosophy of Microsoft from the early days has been about I think this is it right yeah it's all about owning or configuring a product to you yeah it isn't the one computer where everything's locked in is you can open it and that's right you can move stuff around and you can make it faster or slower yeah but you design it for yourself and this strikes me is very similar to how Microsoft philosophy has been throughout it this is a really great observation yeah it's one of the things that you know we started to work on inclusive design we actually first asked ourselves what's our design agenda and and that's something that you know they think about anyone in any company or any you know small startup where you're first trying to burly bring design to the forefront is act like what's the agenda that design I have the design brings to the business you know what's that unique vantage point and the priorities that you have and for us one of them was really reconciling a company that makes products for millions if not billions of people with that long heritage of personal computing it's really it was all about like a customizer than any way you want so a lot of us all right yeah tension between what the universal and personal design in the same space I think that's where the inclusive design is helping us navigate make sense of that this is the same time you still want to make you want to be able to use all those options you don't want to go to the basement of your operating system and have to flip a bunch of switches every time you change something so how do you make that fluid and fit into your environment fit to your learning style you know you might be reading a you know cook book versus a you know Alexei Tolstoy but like you know some some very you know what else okay I don't know what I've hopped up but you know really in-depth fiction or literature you know you even you might just even want any of us might want to have different ways of engaging with that material so that it is you're right there is a real DNA there but at the same time trying to make it work well a lot of different learning styles the school example struck me because I mean I'm left-handed and I remember in school like yeah you know we always had those tables where like you had the arm of the right I was like a one kid yeah I love always down and I always try to ask my teacher like there has to be like and they're like like I'm sure they make them but they're not here and then that's when I learned about the whole 90 percent 10% back now I realize okay because I'm the minority in this percentage like I'm not service that's right and that was a prime example of one size fits all that's like it was terrible no that's right and it has that element of like that messed up the average was a great great book called the end of average by Todd Rose which I highly recommend for anyone interested in this topic and just for just any designer in general because it really gets to where that norm and that average came from the idea of a sort of the normal didn't always exist there was a moment that it was designed was a moment it was constructed and embedded not thinking that they're always the thing called normal that became the ideal and then it became now you should be above average our relationships to what normal is that book is a really wasn't it was making like marketing publishes I think I would like read the stories to self loads or something at a specific I don't have a lot of normalization that happened like down Allegra your buttons yeah button is on your shirt like this concept like men button themselves but woman our button by other people market right a button there's a lot going on in there right I could give you a real quick example of that you know I think a lot of it actually came out of industrialization and mass production but one of the early examples that I love is from the Air Force and the first flight deck right so the first flight deck cockpit flight deck fighter planes were designed by taking my body measurements of 2000 pallets right and they averaged every single dimension of their body and you know I think they probably all right handed so they took all that information and then they averaged it and they took the number right in the middle that must be the perfect pilot so we're going to design this flight deck to fit that perfect pilot right and everything was fixed in place and what they found is there were a lot of a lot of failures a lot of crashes they couldn't attribute to mechanical failure or to pilot error and they quite found who were just running out of pilots towards the end of World War two and in the preparation for the Korean War they really had to go back and take a hard look at what that design what was not working about that design and they measured again all their pilots and found that nobody actually fit all of those dimensions you know so no human being perfectly has all the right lengths and shapes and sizes and investments that normal was everyone and then no one and that led to a lot of advancement innovation and adjustable controls adjustable seat see if you can move the seat it's like three inches this way like eight times more people could be qualified to be pilot you know chin strap a lot of our automotive you know cars and safety features and they're come from was early early advancement so that idea of normal I'd love to push on it because we've been kind of as engineers designers conditioned to think about 80/20 a bell curve but like the 80/20 and it's it's a bit confronting sometimes it's a there is no normal there is no 80/20 there is only diverse bodies and diverse yes people I mean just everybody's different so then what do you do and that's where we've really leaned on we're really lean on thinking about exclusion right like just what is it you're trying to design right now and who is going to be unable to use that who is most unable to use that you know swing set in your backyard or the prosthetic arm that you're designing or the the desk the student sits in who is most unable to use that and then think about what is actually going to serve and adapt that personal fit to someone so are these things some of the things that were captured in the Microsoft inclusive design toolkit yeah yeah some of them there we really focused on trying to keep the fundamentals and they're like make it a starting point for people of course we're experimenting exploring in lots of different spaces with a lot of different partners but that toolkit really asserts some fundamental principles and one of them is the heart of it really is the definitely testing that definition of disability and for me the moment that really cracked my breaking open was the World Health Organization defined disability in 2001 and this was a it was a dramatic redefinition to a mismatch and interaction between the features of a person's body and the features of the environment in which they live and that could be a product that can be thoughtful that could be in a room that mismatch and interaction you know really stood out as a concept that we hadn't really thought about as designers before and anyone you consider yourself an experienced designer and interaction designer like whose job is it if it's not yours or mine to raise and lower those those barriers of mismatches and interaction so in that kinds everyone has a disability everyone experiences it yeah and I think you know again it's important to recognize there the word again words and matter right the word disability has a very important connotation to disability rights movements to communities but there's something to also taking the idea of understand that we all experience and because whether it's permanent temporary or situational disability we can't interact or use with a place where we don't fit with the product or environment that we're in we all experience that but also we are all on you know Aging curved lines there are there's a time when we couldn't you know reach the doorknob and there will be another time when we are unable to reach the doorknob because our bodies change the time and I think that back to that breaking down that idea is normal the most fundamental way to address bias is to take a close look at our own ability bias now I'm designing something that I can see and I design something assuming that you know the right-handed person using this product that bait vessel in those basic kind of biases we have it's like okay how do we really challenge and think about the multiple ways that people interact with this in different environments and over time in their life thanks again to Squarespace for supporting the show Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to get a domain create a website or build an online store they have beautiful award-winning designer templates and 24/7 customer service our project high resolution is on Squarespace we chose it because it just made sense we had a lot of research writing preparation for our interviews and travelling to do we just didn't have the time to waste figuring out how to style or build our site so 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my full vision for a design and this helps cut down a lot of back-and-forth invision makes all of this really easy you can rapidly prototype your designs and collaborate across every stage of your project taking your ideas from concept to code it simplifies virtually every aspect of the design workflow it makes collaboration a core part of the process for everyone from project managers to designers developers and writers teams that build digital products are at a serious advantage when they use envision suite of prototyping and collaboration tools it's the best way to get everyone on board visit envision ascom last high resolution for three months free so there was a moment where you and current head of design at Pinterest August Reyes you and him work together mm-hmm at Microsoft yes there was a moment where you guys had this breakthrough of inclusive design hmm and I could see why it's a fascinating idea but it it is it's not an immediately graphical concept to most people and it's very curious how some of those first meetings went when you bring you guys decided to bring it to the CEO and and other people in the company how did you socialize it because now it's really I have a manifesto in the company this is the way you want to design moving forward so this was a breakthrough for the company not just for you right so how did you socialize this and how did you get Microsoft excited about it this is the fun part before I tell you all the subversive things that [Laughter] you know so you know there's there's a large design community at Microsoft and there's to your point earlier I've been a DNA for a long time has been a culture of real personal experiences and the passion good thing the moment that really shifted is when we started talking about that design agenda that reason like what makes a designer or a Microsoft designer and so we started really with the design community and asking that question and I think by learning and really actually being curious about what makes it unique it helped us shape something that hadn't really existed for the digital space before so you know inclusive design is a term that's been around for a long time it's a practice that's been around but the but it often was used interchangeably with universal design and so what we I think the thing I'm most proud of is trying to get a real sharp definition of what it means in the digital age in the digital environment to practice inclusion so you know early on it actually had more to do with designing the language with communication in the taxonomy and what do we mean when we talk about disability and what do we mean when we talk about inclusion a lot of these the words that we take is taken for a long time at face value I thought diversity I know it yeah I know what diversity is that's when I think about women and people of different languages and ethnicities I really wanted to test that and we want to push them that like that paradigm came from a demographic what kind of marketing mindset that haven't really challenged and rethought in a long time so what would it be if we thought about diversity from in a human ability standpoint you know we all experience ever-changing diversity of abilities right so things like that playing with what do we mean when we say inclusion accessibility diversity and so with the toolkit is really a design it's a design artifact that process it's having I think making accessibility accessible to designers is about putting forth something as visual and verbal to try to describe this concept and so you know we did that early work on a toolkit it was about you know bringing that out to the design world even beyond Microsoft first before we had done any kind of executive reviews or anything like put it out in the world and if there's a resonance back sometimes that helps reinforce to your executive leadership even more so than you trying to like you know beat the drum yourself and really we believe this is important so we extended out to you know August has an amazing network of people in the design community yet you know I've come to really appreciate the universities that isn't became out the space the academia in the space so going out and saying okay there's there's a they're there and now let's bring this back with the extra reinforcement to leadership inside of inside of the company you know and then having real tactical product examples when we've put it into practice and you know we try to principle that we outline and toolkit are really drawn from doing this with dozens and dozens of different products inside and outside of Microsoft there's a one great example that August I love when they tell the story and maybe you'll get it to you she has adopted lowest topic I hope but you know he really challenged himself he was the director of Xbox at the time to say you know how would I how hard can I get in this particular game without the use of my headset I'm doing social gaming right like Xbox Live is a social experience but it requires a headset and requires a microphone and for the human it requires the ability to hear and it requires the ability to speak so he pleased some you know quite a few games without his headset and found that he couldn't progress past certain levels or certain the controls like a question I don't know anything about video game I'm a I'll get left lighting up the audience but no you couldn't he seemed to make progress because this thing that required cooperations about require cooperation required that headset yeah and so it you know what he did is and he and I partners with his team to just social gaming exclusion looks like and in that sprint we met with people you know different degrees of hearing loss people who are deaf but we also met with students and kids who are gamers her autism and their parents nonverbal autistic and people had limited uses their hands so thinking about different elements of participation like where you would be excluded and something that was highly verbal and highly auditory so in that process on the other side of that sprint was thinking the the team came to you know how do we think about signifying socially to other gamers you know that you're looking to play without headset like you know how do you indicate but without having to self-identify you know it's a real concern in at you know cough identifying as a particular gender or self identifying or someone with particular disability could you say you know this is a gamer looking to play but not having to talk about it or you know okay and so Xbox has a couple of concepts looking for groups and clubs are two products that team has been working on and we added the element of how do you think about that if you are trying to connect with other deaf gamers or if you want to pair up with someone who you can then you know supply those different skills in terms of you know learning so you have just left behind your brought along and you know fully participate in belonging in that game the specific product examples of part of that bringing bringing it to life showing it not just talking about it and then you know the most fortuitous low it was when Sachi I became CEO Microsoft I mean that along with the number of leaders who were passion the spacing executives who were but watch it really took it to heart and here's one of the first thing he's the first CEO to visit a design studio and kind of take the tour and you know get to know how we worked in the space and in that visit he you saw it was August and I and other leaders from our team and really we talked about inclusive design as not just a not the 20% edge case kind of thing but this is the core of how we create new product how we think about innovating on experiences and he said he just blew me out of the water because the he was right there in the next step and adding on building to it with you know so if we think about you know an operating system or something like you know a digital assistant like Cortana or Siri like how do we design that if we were to start how we designed that digital assistant if we just start by understanding how someone who's blind is going to interact with that digital assistant to all areas of their life so him adding that in was um it was exhilarating because it's a again it's that design verb yeah you know that he was that verb he's being that verb he's been that kind of leader and making that conversation helping it move forward I'm guessing too by making it a conversation and by being added to the initial what the the groundwork the framework that you guys were putting together for inclusive design that what that probably gave you is permission to think even bigger as the ultimate buy-in yes it does yeah it gives that when it's built into the way that you see I was talking about the role of your company in the world is to empower every individual and he specifically with the leadership team specifically fit every person in every organization on the planet like they did this like on the planet like yeah all your you know mission centers really specific but to do that well and to do that with us you know integrity is a long game that's not something you flip the switch and suddenly at all you know works beautifully it's a lot of time and work to get there so that that what that does do is create I think they unified purpose for all of the employees in one company and that you can tie that purpose to a specific methodology and you can show products that demonstrate that methodology and practice like that's a really amazing kind of combination and a great place to be a designer as well and help again facilitate and be a steward of that you know how does that look in practice well you have to do it to figure it out takes time so we want to hear about the kind of work you're doing today at Microsoft right so you know inclusivity as a subject as a methodology was introduced you had the buying of the CEO and you have your team right and your team is pretty unconventional I think you describe it as more of a special ops group than a department right like going around and like stewarding and facilitating this design as a verb yeah right and you've had the opportunity to work with teams like Windows Cortana xbox hololens still mind-blowing to me but why was that team formed that's exactly how does it operate I want to really get to this concept of like special ops yeah honey our name at first though is so I let me some expectations before I tell you what our neighbors the the thing that because we are such a large team such a large company but I think it also just comes to summer fill it up size but how many different things are happening at any one so Anna's billions of lines of code inside a product like head like like a Windows thousands of people working on something like Cortana alone so the thing that that really i've always adds a like a great opportunity to work on and how like asking that question of why there's so much to implement so much to get done but really being there with all these different teams and asking that question of why we do what we do and usually that was in the form of incubation new projects and I worked on allotted things we see now I was working on them three to five years ago but what I found in every little incubation project at work tom is like methodology like was was hard to connect and so we just honestly invested like we just said okay how do we put this into some practice that we can articulate and repeat and demonstrate so the very first name of my team was activation actually so it was like this and of course nobody knew what that meant at the time but it was actually drawn more from like media companies where you're taking a type of like a reason to exist and connecting it with how you're going to implement that in the world with a content or two product and you got to activate someone you got to be an activist for that you have to you know understand what activation looks like and so you know the early stages are really about what our role is to understand what those activation techniques are but also to fit and be with these different strategic elements with just strategic places in our product in places where customers really need us to work quickly to figure out how to improve particular experiences and then activate and kind of quickly some ways to put that into that inclusion into practice and you know the thing I've always tried to steer away from as being the envisioning team or you know there are great envisioning teams but for for what we've been doing the inclusive design wasn't about imagining the future it was about applying you weren't a blue sky guy not blue sky yeah and it's kind of I think we have this in a lot of IP and a lot of different companies you know who who gets to do the ideas and who have to do the implementation or who's the front-end team ajussi you know production team and what I'd love is a lot of thats working down is a lot of especially you know smaller startups or saying or a lot of a hats so you got to get a lot of different things done so I think a bit more is trying to bring that culture to lots of different areas of the product and having a criteria or a way as in partnership of the executive team to think about which areas are most important start with so when I say special ops you know it's that activation kind of element and then it's literally will and we'll partner with office you know you know the team that owns the first time you sign into office or the team that works on the social gaming features will partner and embed ourselves for sometimes three days and sometimes three months whatever it takes to bring that through to the other side so we're a small or small team inside and we're ten people and the mighty is like that you can you can do so much when you have a clarity of purpose and you have focused way that you bring that and I'm really happy yeah the feels and then you have a whole community of people who bought in and supportive and like come across the company you know not not easy to invite somebody else into your project and you know cuz you're not the expert you're not the expert on the problem and you are the expert on the process that's right so what point so can we take up the hollow end as an example like at what point did they engage you at what point did you guys parachute in and what did you bring to the table that they needed at that time it's a great it's a great example so because hololens is is out is out there I mean it's here but is that what it is it blows your mind and that's what you tried it but um so you know there's so I worked on hololens and some very very early early stages early days again there's a lot of people who did but I was like five years ago and some of that early thinking was purely about you know human ability like we've been designing in flat screen you know two dimensions forever how do we actually think about physics and of light and physics of space and movement in something that's you know the virtual object here but I virtually push it off the table it's all threatened and a break incredible right and so you know out Hitman and and his whole talented amazing building a team of creative and technical skill like it was a lot of it was talking about empathy you know when you can virtually kind of be in a room with another person not just face to face you know screen times that like was actually in you know Chris Jarrett and this was where he's sitting even if he's actually halfway across the country what kind of elements you know that mode emotional connection is important and having an out of you embody you know for to make an avatar of Jared but how does that how to make that human but at the same time not trying to just replicate the Union so a lot of that early on you know whether you want to call it who's the designer just kind of thinking about human factors and human behavior or in Holland did they have the technology they just didn't understand half the know-how on how to humanize it is that I think they it was emerging at the same time and yeah there was and there's I guess I've described it as for something that was we didn't know what it was going to be or how it could work and that was really again kind of to white purpose to what outcome would this be important what difference we want us to make in the world and now that you know the technology is in the hands of a lot of customers and developers and people are using in different environments from education to retail you know now talking about again that question of exclusion like who okay so who's excluded today like it's just an ongoing thing okay so if I have see if I'm blind what is the value of hololens to my experience well does it it's about multi-dimensional space right like it's about the audio the soundscape the emotional kind of relationship to that sound in that environment you know how can hololens help us think about that depth and that connection it isn't just about the visual representation if I you know and deaf you know how does it how can the visualization as something like music you know help me learn an instrument or enjoy you know theatrical production right like and so this is where once you have that technology kind of platform in place we start to think that all those different ways those experiences become possible when you think it's definitely the ones in inclusion so there's different stages of it cool so your special ops team let's just call that okay we've already given the analogy parachutes into these teams and different moment moment's notice and helps them actuate some of the design principles that you guys are trying to push within the company right what our audience is probably going to be most curious about our examples of the processes that you actually deploy once you land alright so imagining there whether it's Windows or Cortana or whatever you land day one looks the conversation that you're having with that project leader and what are the things that you're actually having them do while you're with them mm-hmm alright boots on the ground so yeah you know it's funny so the way that projects we have so many products we can work on it at any moment so the way the project's come in or often like accessibility like hair on fire like I you know we have this problem we need to fix some helpers think about this or exactly there are some that are you know we we know we have something we have to work on so in something that's reactive you know that often the first thing we do is is actually any team that we work with we require anything so any team that we work with we require that they meet kind of the fundamentals of Microsoft accessibility standards it was a very clear set of requirements for accessibility that's like the baseline integrity kind of and that that's also like brushing your teeth that's all there's always something you have to kind of stay on top of and be working on to make sure that your accessibility is solid but once that is there then we're having them around a conversation about okay so what is the role of this feature or this product you know something like the first time you sign into Windows something has been playing with and you know the role of that feature is let's say like you know the first time you're meeting someone at a store and so what are the important interactions they don't happen those are the kind of questions they're asking like what are the important interactions the first time you meet someone okay well you you got to exchange certain types of information and you you know you need to kind of let people know what's going to happen so all of these things we start to frame with a team okay these are important moments that interaction now we're not gonna get to solving that yet we're not going to jump to okay and then that means we need to create these kinds of flows you know interaction flows first we want to do is ask ourselves who's excluded today from completing those interactions you know who is unable to do that independently who's going to feel excluded in that process so you know maybe someone who is low vision or who uses a screen reader because they're blind or they use speech or speech dragon because they don't have use of their hands in the keyboard okay so let's go and meet with people from all these different abilities and disabilities but then the conversation I have is not purely I tell me how to make sure that this works for your screen reader the question you want to ask is you know what what are the different kind of workarounds that you have today to you know sign into your computer but also when you go into a store for the first time in the real world and how do you get acquainted with the people there and space there and what are the questions you need to know what's important and by doing that and having those conversations with now sometimes 10 to 15 people it's about give you a good solid kind of representation you learn things like I have this important functional information like I need to get my bearings and I need to know where the you know the product is at the payment system I also want to know what kind of environment is like I want to know the emotional information as well I want to know what sort of a crowded in here or is it you know an old cold you know a modern concrete room because I mean I hear different sounds you know it give me some emotional information will help me get acquainted and feel comfortable in that space so learning that first before we ever set into creating solutions help ground people about the functional and the emotional things to think about and it's also you know the steps that a human being goes through to get comfortable in the space then it's okay now that's kind of our we call that like the recognizing exclusion phase the second stage is really about you know thinking about those mismatches in interactions okay so where did somebody want to pay for their music the real world like in the physical world pay for something but the payment system was a touchscreen not a human being so there was no one to talk to there was no physical kind of cue on how to interact with ya know affordance so you know then okay that's a mismatch in interaction you know so then what are the things that you can start to resolve around that mismatch okay providing some kind of affordance is what we're about to do here's my information where is it going and how am I going to get there you know those things then become you think about some emotional or physical lens of the same emotional lens at the same time so the mismatch and then the last piece is really if we do like as you would with any kind of design next question like this lots of different ways you could solve that and then the last stage is really think about what will solve a problem know will solve something from one person you know one of the subject matter experts that you met you know who experiences exclusion solve for that one person what's also going to work for anybody who's got a situational or temporary mismatch or disability as well so doing that drawing up that's the part that adding the real magic comes in because it's it's having to take a moment to pay for someone who you know is again signing into Windows for the first time it might be they might be blind so about making sure that experience is efficient and comfortable and and respectful but said also for someone who is you know trying to do this sign-in in a very crowded noisy lots of stuff going on like you're trying to find this in and you've got a lot of other responsibilities having at the same time you may only have partial pieces of information and or partial attention you can give to it or you can't always be sitting here doing this right so in that environment it might also be helpful to be able to use your voice to navigate through and to have your computer telling you where it is in the process so sticking that like to what you're really trying to choose is bring you somebody into your product for the first time with a sense of belonging and independence and we've got that motivation that's going to stretch across designing it well for those when you're excluded but then also the people who temporarily are unable to see or use their hands or also might be in a situation where they're unable to use those modes of interacting with the computer so those steps of recognizing exclusion learning about those mismatches and the diversity of those and then like drawing that we call a persona spectrum so you know we're trying to evolve we try to think about what personas have value but they also have limitations and we're finding if you think about that continuum across ability then that persona spectrum helps you think about the related ways that people will benefit from experience that we think is designed from one person what actually goes on to benefit many many more people and doing that in an intentional and repeatable way is something that we do the team so sometimes that we've tried to convince that into a matter of four hours and that's pushing it because it just kind of told us you guys do all that in day one well we can spread it out we've done it in many different ways so we're playing with I mean in the early days it took us you know three weeks to get to that process as a team because it's like how how much is this we have to do in different laces we get another three weeks there's deliverables and then the week three week so there are prototypes yeah pretty quick it's yeah it's a big change but what's interesting is the more we do that in more places the more we can say okay this particular you start to recognize okay there's a team again we're talking about a team that's in a reactive place the fuse coming from like hey we you know have this new idea this new you know doesn't exist it hasn't existed anywhere before which concept okay where you don't necessarily need to go through all that same kind of process you can start maybe a little bit more with I let's just go learn from many different abilities and disabilities that people have over time and what they're going to encounter as they use this new experience so there's this ways I like to think of it more as modular and so we can take those Legos and we can okay you need like a and L but you know we just use those now it's going to help you down the path but we always try to start again with the foundation at least know your fundamentals of accessibility and then also know that you know these are the three things and recognize exclusion learn from human diversity and then like extend that from one to many people and because I'd rather have you come out of that knowing how to do that for yourself the LEGO pieces where you're referring not to the process right like picking and choosing what parts of the process because processes tend to be thought of as linear but they're hardly linear yes yeah that's certainly my experience and and I think that that's why I literally take a picture of the toolkit in my head works like this card in that card and sometimes it's like you have a finish you think you have finished kind of thing you're ready to ship out in the world we'll just take these two cards with home-like context mismatched cards like okay how well would that solution you you made work with someone who's alone on the bus or in a crowded you know with a group with a group of friends I don't and you guys pick these cards at random yeah yeah like we'll do it like a Wow yeah so we have thing Tomatoes oh that's awesome yeah it's like a meeting format come yeah we'll do it like a sprint or roll it's literally like well we just kind of ring them together and you know dedicate some time with the T and say it looks just like a most stress test do but by context you okay take this all out there to exercise or anything just like write them down on a flashcard and just try this it's amazing even just doing that PT on times like that who if someone's using the product that they can't see and they're in the snow like how do you go with make sure that it works I want to keep talking we got to go to community questions there this could be another hour i I wanted to get into I wanted to get into persona spectrums like I'm fascinated by that but let's get the community questions ready we reached out to the community and we asked them what's burning up inside you what do you want to know about right now okay we got a lot of ant a lot of questions back from them we pick five that's asking every guest these five questions okay so we're going to start okay with this first question well how do you explain the role of design to people in your business okay you're going to my mom sure actually that might be more interesting we might need to edit that how do you explain the design to your mom I like that kind of same conversation yeah see you know I had it I kind of gave up on having to explain it like I gave up on trying to explain it and more demonstrating in in the moment so if I tried to explain it I would I would say be human everybody can relate to an area in their life where they you know they're like who made like who wasn't thinking about a human being when they designed this card or or you know like this thing that keeps hitting me in the head every time I walk in out of my house like that's kind of the most fun I like the thinking about the human being in the choices that we make when we create environments that's that's my kind of most global definition of design when I describe it to my mom it's more you know Casey knowing how you hit like you open the car door and all the rain falls in okay that was a bad design but but the you know it wasn't because some person was like boy I'm really going to make sure that this door sucks and a lot watered fall it's because there's a lot of people that contributed to that door there's a lot of people that contributed to all the elements around that and the conversations between them aren't always aligned or healthy or exhibit and so you know I'd say my role is to facilitate that conversation the way that that aligns the purpose that aligns the requirements and the outcomes to make sure that that human being is considered that we're mindful of that human being and it's not just putting that human being in the center of the experience but making sure that they're in the lead they have a sense of control they have a sense of propriety and ownership in the product or the environment that they're that they're working in yeah yeah the next question is how is the design team organized at your business how's my well we can talk about the your team because we didn't really get into the design Amanda like design had Microsoft oh let's see yeah um there's the different business divisions they're all very large teams like you know the windows organization is a huge team and it encompasses Xbox and hololens and hardware teams so for every business there's a different structure there's a and I guess there's a hard structure there's a soft structure the hard structure is you know most the team's really pair with the engineering and the business kind of structures you know there's an engineering team that's disseminated will often have the design team kind of match that if there's a large central core engineering team we'll have a large central kind of design team look that goes with that as well but those those hard structures are always changing especially in a large company with a lot of different businesses so the soft structure ends up being more important over time and that's the relationships that leaders and designers from from all levels are working on relationships and the skills that they're bringing from one product you know what you learned an Xbox about behavior and you know stages of navigation is going to be useful you work on office and you know like finding those relationships and having a design community that understands all the products that are happening and how to cross pollinate that's that's the part I love it's you know I could do without the hard structure to see the human connections across that design community and you know the leadership role of design I think as a you know it's elevated inside of any team is to be able to be fluid in that way and to be able to think about a lot of different places a lot of different no matter what the organ vation is the structure so the next question a lot of people out there are either the only designer in their company or one of two or three designers in their company mm-hmm so put yourself in their shoes for a second mm-hmm how would someone like that convince the business of the value of design I know there's I think even inside of large organizations a lot of times where a designer will feel isolated and the I think the same is true there as it is for someone who maybe is in the company and the only design leader who design leader in that space and is that you know you're not alone and the reinforcement for the value is not alone not alone and I think it met a lot of designers who can want to carry that burden themselves like they I have to carry the flag up the hill and I want them you know that there's a table and I want to make sure I have a seat at the table like the mythical table and one of the things that I work with Albert Chung who's sound one of the VPS of design at Microsoft worked with him for a long time and the thing I always love that you said is like either a there is no table like you know it doesn't exist and so how do you as a lone actor in that team step into what about the business challenges and you know treat that as a design problem or you know the the if you feeling not included in the particular set of decisions like okay so you construct that as a design problem like what what's missing how would you reframe that what's the research you need to do to understand what would make a difference how would you design your just play with it right like make it a design problem that you can play with you know the other thing that then we also talked about maybe there is a table but you want to not just have a seat you want to be able to you know design what that table is fav of it is you want to be the slave setting and you want to write the menu for that table you know then then don't you don't need famous in a way that I hope is empowering because you don't need permission like you don't need permission and it's it's not just about the object in the artifact you delivering and trying to sell the value of that it's about the way you think and if you can communicate the way you think as an aspect is a valuable asset you know the way you plan that menu the way we get to that meal at the table like that itself helps transform how people think about you as a designer and your role and your valuing organization most people really in within the business world and the engineering world one of the greatest values that designer brings to help people think about how they think and it's not one yeah but it's like I think the word is metacognition metacognition but thinking about how we think about our business how we think about our engineering structure like you know how we think about our political structures our social structures like that's the magic of the magic feathers other people have not experienced it and so bring all that you know and work with your own role as a design challenge to you know how would you create that that space so the next question assuming that the designer has brought this way of thinking to a business yeah how do they measure and present the results of the decisions that come out of it of the lives of this way of this way of working and thinking because the challenge for a lot of people is so this thing we hear a lot of designers say is that they don't know how to measure success for themselves right they work on these interfaces they work on these designs mm-hmm and leadership is oftentimes looking for a numerical metric mm-hmm yeah maybe it doesn't always exist but like how can someone actually present some sort of such it's such a good question it's such a good question and I haven't seen one answer to that question you know okay so it comes up in the context of inclusive design come up in the context of accessibility for years as well and I think it's interesting that those two disciplines accessibility and design kind of have that same challenge because there's a real risk and being the team that does something that's nice to do or even the right thing to do you know being the team that's got to do the right thing for the customer you got to do the right thing for someone who is unable to eat the product and there's you can get far without that approach or that like framing but making what you do an economic imperative is really the it's the two hundred million dollar question right now right so what I've seen work is you have to again kind of draw the draw the spreads and explore those threads for inclusive design as an example you see something like you know the monthly active users or product satisfaction scores and things that I think it's easy to kind of get put off by it first but to really dive in and understand what's the design of that metric in the first place you know how is an NPS constructed a Net Promoter Score constructed and what does actually go into you know the way the framing from a financial and from a business standpoint of customer acquisition costs right getting into that and then like start to draw out what are the do your own research like what are the levers in the product what are the moments in the experience that affected that you know you think about them like Net Promoter Score and asking someone how likely you recommend this to friend you know there are ways that I've been playing with this and I'm learning right now but like really wasted n2o there are these moments in our experience when someone encountered that you know they upgraded to a new version of your application but once he did that you moved some feature or some element that they were familiar with to a new location we you nested it inside of something and then suddenly they weren't able to find something that was incredibly important to them and that had a tie Bakula kick to your net promoter score like get curious about where that metric what those metrics why your business cares about those metrics and then time use your design you know processing your design line to get to those moments in the experience then you start to get to okay how can we build some metrics around that experience outcomes you know what are the ways to know that when we make a particular change how well do we help people learn how to navigate and find that new feature or that new gave it a new name like how do we help people know that it was that know this those are the things where you can build out metrics I've seen and you know ways to start to do that that have a science-based relationship to a larger metric that may seem more abstract that's best of the answer that I'm on the question so I really love to hear some other folks as well cuz it is a real opportunity I think yeah it's also a real check where you hear from at least 25 people ok great 24 other people want to watch all of them yes I need some other ideas so we can we can end with this last question here as the function of design starts to evolve and it continues to evolve a husband like the last 15 20 years yes what are some of the roles and methodologies that you think will start to emerge over the next 5 years Oh 5 years what happens in five years what are some of the roles um I mean I was I would say so my first one that comes to mind is the role of designers facilitator and as leader and you know I think it's not just the Design Thinking thing if someone who builds products understands the thinking of the process of that product and can guide and you know be a Sherpa for anyone to you know summit that process so that that role of facilitation of conversation I think that's incredibly important especially to think about things that are more abstract and more system complexity real practically I mean it's you probably hear this from a lot of your interviews thinking about machine learning data-driven decision-making conversational interfaces and artificial intelligence all of those are there's no I don't know if there aren't like I don't think as many programs you graduate with a degree in conversational you know user interface right you in the design of artificial intelligence like you're today I'm more likely to look for people who have a skill in the background and cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology to think about the design of conversational interfaces or artificial intelligence so but we need design in those conversations you know we need design in we need designers in the decisions that are made around all those technologies think about artificial intelligence and exclusion you know just like yeah machine that's learning well who's it learning from and who designed it to learn in what way do they desire to learn in the way that they learn you know do they process with their own biases and to the design is that a high and so these are these are things that becomes more critical than ever I think to have designers in that conversation asking questions about the human being and human impact emotionally emotionally and also um how people actually practically use something it actually brings value to their to their lives well well thank you so much Pat thank you I appreciate great questions hey you made it to the end congratulations thanks for watching the episode I really really hope you liked it if you did like it please leave us a review on the iTunes Store and by the way if you have any questions that came up because of the content that we covered with our guests go on YouTube go on Twitter you can tweet us you can leave us a comment we'll get back to you we'll help you as much as possible at high res podcast that's the the screen name or the handle for Twitter for Instagram for Facebook find us talk to us we want to converse with you we're not going to leave here by the way without also thanking our friends at Sorrell video they've been an amazing partner on this entire project the sural video is a creative studio based out of Portland Oregon they've helped creative communities tell stories for over ten years they've done advertisements behind the scene footage and documentaries for companies like Google slack XOXO festival Adobe Intel they're incredible they've traveled with us through the entire country documentary stories with 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Channel: High Resolution

Views: 19,649

Rating: 4.951807 out of 5

Keywords: kat holmes, microsoft, hololens, xbox, cortana, inclusivity, inclusive design, universal design, design, design thinking, process, strategy, leadership, ui, ux, business, high resolution, podcast, education, startup, startups, university, design school, bobby ghoshal, jared erondu

Id: h42RThsvXxs

Length: 83min 0sec (4980 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2017