Bonus Episode: Design As Research

During this panel, we talked about the value and the challenges of conducting design research in large corporations. We also talked about finding the why, which is at the core of understanding what our customer’s needs are, what we care about, the people we serve, but also how we can serve them better.

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In this bonus episode of Design As you’ll hear Lee Moreau in conversation with Jadlia (Jada) Britto, Mahsa Ershadi, and Susan Fabry discussing: What is a working definition, and a potential role, for design research, or research through design, in the business context? How can universities, research centers, companies and other organizations partner to shape meaningful, viable, sustainable, and socially relevant innovation?

This audio was recorded live at the Design Research Society 2024 Conference hosted in Boston in June 2024.

Transcript

Lee Moreau Welcome to Design As a show that’s intended to speculate on the future of design from a range of different perspectives. I’m Lee Moreau. This season, we’re bringing you six new episodes with six new keywords to interrogate. This episode is the second of our two bonus episodes where we’re sharing exclusive access to some of the panels from the Design Research Society Conference, where we recorded the season. I moderated this panel you’re about to hear called Design Research Leadership. You’ve already heard from one of our panelists, Jada Britto, head of Design North America for Colgate-Palmolive on our Design As Care episode earlier this season. The other panelists you’ll hear are Susan Fabry, VP of Design Research and Experience at Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, and Mahsa Ershadi, from Microsoft’s UX Research Team. And you’ll hear from them in next week’s episode as well when I got to sit down with them individually for our roundtables. During this panel, we talked about the value and the challenges of conducting design research in large corporations. We also talked about finding the why, which is at the core of understanding both what our customer’s needs are, what we care about, the people we serve, but also how we can serve them better. We talked about the differences in the tensions between academic research and corporate research, how those worlds are running in parallel and at times colliding. And I think, broadly speaking, there’s an appreciation for how far we’ve come as a discipline. How far design has changed over the past couple of decades. And now here’s my conversation with Jada Britto, Susan Fabry, and Mahsa Ershai. 

Lee Moreau Thank you all for joining us. And let’s give a warm round of applause to all of our panelists /applause/ and we’ll see where this goes. So this is the first day of the conference, and I’m pretty sure that over the next few days, we’re going to see many examples of sort of different examples of design research and sort of to level set with everyone — can you provide a working definition of design research for you? And I’ll start with Mahsa. 

Mahsa Ershadi That’s a great question. So I would say design research in the area that I work in, at Microsoft AI, I we focus mainly —I mean, we’re obviously working on the forefront of technology and so design research for us is making sure that the populations that we recruit from are representative of large audiences, because the technologies that we’re creating are meant to be technologies that apply to everyone. So in a weird way, we’re designing for everyone and trying to avoid simultaneously not designing for anyone. So that’s part of what we do at Microsoft. 

Lee Moreau Jada? 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto For me, I would say how we look at design research is more about just making sure that we’re putting people at the center, focusing on how we’re making the experience, we’re solving the right problems, thinking about innovative solutions that are not about our hypotheses, but actually real actual issues and problems. And I think what makes design research so fascinating for me is that it’s the little things. It’s not always the most complicated or big solves. It’s the little things that we do to improve the every day. 

Susan Fabry I think I’m I’m slightly in a different area because at Fidelity, I don’t work for our larger UX group. I work for a much smaller group that is meant to be on the forefront. So FCAT — Fidelity’s Center for Applied Technology, we’re small in quotes, we’re only 500 people, but we’re really meant to be that future looking, making sure that we’re ready for what’s next. So design research is all about really making sure that there is this connective tissue that’s happening between desirability, viability, and feasibility, and we switch hit all the time. Like sometimes it feels like we don’t know what we’re doing because we have so many different hats on. But it’s always in service of trying to make sure that all of those pieces are working together to create something that is going to be future facing, that is going to be of a need and an aspiration for the people to come. And we’re making sure that that Fidelity, as the bigger ship of the corporation, is ready for that next innovation. 

Lee Moreau Can you talk more about the sort of increasing desire to engage consumers that’s happening in the work that you do? 

Susan Fabry And yeah, I mean, I think I think we’re we’re so lucky. I feel that in my my career, which has, you know, I graduated first with a degree in psychology and then I went back to school and I graduated with a degree in industrial design. And when I graduated from industrial design, there was very little about ethnographic research. There was, and that was in the 90s, and yes, I’m quite old /laughs/. So in the 90s people really weren’t doing that the first time the term was, you know, psychonomics, was really coming into play. And you know, we had to do a lot of convincing people this is really important to talk to people about their needs and their aspirations. We’re there now. I was listening to a podcast of the founder of Discord, and he was talking about how he listens in all the chat rooms to listen to people’s real problems. So it’s it’s such an exciting time, but that also means that the need is faster, faster, faster, faster. So we’re really working on understanding our process and understanding for us internally how we can turn around these ten minute interviews that are-that are virtual, they’re online, we record them, we can throw it ideas, we can throw out hypotheses and get back answers within, you know, just a couple of days, really a couple of hours. But we need to process that information before we just throw it back out there. You know, garbage in, garbage out. So it’s the speed and the demand is there. It’s just us figuring out how we can make sure that it’s quality, that we don’t want to just throw things back out because it’s there, but we want to make sure there’s a quality to it. 

Lee Moreau So Jada — and I think we’re going to get into the ping pong mode fairly soon here in terms of questions. But when I first met you, you were at-n the oral care group at Colgate-Palmolive, and then you were at Hill’s, which is pet care —. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Correct. 

Lee Moreau And now you’ve got the whole North America portfolio. And so you’ve seen a lot of different examples of this. But when you’re trying to actually uncover an insight and use that and shepherd it within an organization, how does that really work? 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Very loaded question. I would say patience and consistency. What I’ve learned is it’s not about speed. It’s just about staying the course and keep reinforcing the why. What I’ve learned through my career, and I’ve been in this industry some time is that I might not succeed the first time around. It might take ten times or 20 times for me to sort of help my peers sink in, why this is a better option or why this is going to actually solve a greater need. A lot of times you have to take people on that journey. So for me, I think coming from oral care, toothbrush and devices where we’re trying to help people understand so much starts with your mouth when you’re talking about your overall body and care, especially as we’re looking at different types of technology and devices helping us be better versions of ourselves and keeping us healthy; same way that we’re looking at microbiome and the human side. On the pet side, we’re looking at microbiome as well. And for your pets, where they can’t speak and you have to watch their behavior, it’s pretty critical. So you start to see these synergies because at the end of the day, it starts with, I think the trends that we’re seeing with people and the burnout and the stress and the mental incapability to kind of process all these things. So the research is more critical because you don’t have much time to sort of interact with products and brands anymore. Either people love him or hate them. They either serve or need or they don’t, or they become a part of a TikTok trend these days, right,  you’re finding different ways to sort of build brand love and affinity. But if it’s not solving or addressing a certain need, there’s no point. So for me, I’ve seen from oral care even now focusing on 12 different brands for North America, for a company that’s in 238 countries, watching culture is so critical, understanding how small the world is becoming, especially after a virus, right, I think the different things that people are paying attention to and the importance of research and the different degrees of research are more critical than ever. 

Lee Moreau Mahsa, you were nodding as Jada was saying that. 

Mahsa Ershadi Yeah, I think one thing that really struck me in-in Jada’s response is how iterative we have to be with research. And so it’s not a one and done and situation. We constantly at Microsoft are flighting and shipping products, but sometimes we’ll sunset products as well. And many of you have probably experienced that. So we’ll-we’ll ship a product that we think works out. We’ve done research for and we just see that it doesn’t necessarily perform how we were wishing that it would perform in the market. And so we, you know, take strategic decisions to sunset certain products and go back through the cycle. So it’s never done. 

Susan Fabry I just wanted to double down on the why as well. 

Lee Moreau Yep. 

Susan Fabry You know, it’s I think probably everybody at my group is tired of me talking about the why. But we work with so many flashy products because we have all these incubators that are really on the cutting edge of technology. And if you don’t understand the why, you can really get mesmerized by the shiny new thing and the how and the what. But it doesn’t matter at the end of the day if you don’t have the why down. So I really resonate with that idea. And then the iterative process, like that’s why I’m into the five minute, ten minute —like you constantly need to throw out new ideas and get that kind of feedback that you need to iterate. 

Mahsa Ershadi I think — can I just to follow up on that?

Lee Moreau Yep. 

Mahsa Ershadi I also think part of it is to take a longer term approach to our products. It’s really easy to be myopic about things and just look at like revenue and like the first quarter or like the second half. And you know, even though we are for profit companies, we want to make sure that the products we’re creating are evergreen as much as as possible. And so that is part of the iteration and making sure that we have like a really long runway for our customers. 

Susan Fabry I would just call that future proofing as well. 

Mahsa Ershadi Yeah, exactly

Jadalia (Jada) Britto And just to build on that as well, I think going back to the fundamentals of incremental innovation is more critical than ever. I think with speed, we’ve sort of lost a little bit of that. And so in order to be innovative and sort of come back and sort of learn and then progress, I think it is critical to sort of stay to those fundamentals of the learn and the progression because then it will start to connect and then you sort of get even richer data. 

Mahsa Ershadi I think it’s also really easy, I think for all three of us in our industries, even though they’re very different industries, to get caught up with the competition. And so in AI specifically, it’s easy for us to focus on like what’s Google doing, what’s Meta doing? And if we do that, we’re going to take the wrong path. And so we do competitive analysis all the time to understand the landscape. But ultimately, we have to take a step back to decide whether what’s happening in the field aligns with like our vision and our ethics. And if it doesn’t, we won’t take that path just to match them where they are, because we don’t want to ultimately have a race to the bottom with these other companies. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Which is why you keep people first. 

Lee Moreau So I’m hearing a lot of really nice stories about how research percolates up and maybe helps to influence things, and maybe you have to work extra hard to get it. On, take a few rounds at it so that people can catch up. And I’m, you know, telling a little story here. But there’s also like a negative impact, which might be leadership reaching down to the design research, saying: What can it do for me now? What- how can I make this impact me? What are — talk about that pressure that’s happening from both directions, if that’s in fact true. 

Susan Fabry Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, for the last good 20 years, the IDEO design thinking model has percolated all the way up and it’s causing a lot of problems because you’re then slotted into this like empathy one place, you should be here, You’re being empathetic. It’s like, no, design research is so much more. That’s why I was saying it’s the connective tissue that’s bringing all of these pieces together. It’s so much more than that one phase. And when you isolate in that place, you’re going to miss all of the goodness that happens along all of the other places. So it’s a lot of also helping people understand like design thinkings not wrong. It had a place and a time and it was amazing, but it’s maybe not our strongest tool that we’re using right now. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto I was just going to build on that. I double down on that. And I think it’s become a checklist. And it’s it’s the-it’s the quality that the lackluster, I think. We’re testing the heck— like we test everything. And I’m more pushing the methodology of the why and the methodology of what we’re doing and and what we’re serving and the problems. And I think if you just make sure that you understand what what you actually what success looks like and you make sure that you evaluate everything that you’re doing so that you will keep people focused. I think the thing that I struggle with the most or I push my team the most to do is make sure that we are coming in with a point of view, make sure that we have criterias for success of what we’re actually trying to solve. What is the role of design in solving this issue, problem or this new innovation? And let that be your voice. But I agree, design thinking has sort of like run its course. It’s just it’s become a checklist. And I think the people who know it best aren’t the ones closest to it. It’s everyone else who is now just using it as their means of saying that they’re- they considered a person, or they love the framework. It’s so much more than a framework. 

Lee Moreau So that I’ve heard the word checklist twice and that seems terrifying. And I’m sure for a lot of people from an academic conference context, not not suggesting that everyone here is from that context, but this notion of design research being merely a checklist is a little frightening, right? So to kind of be pushing back against that is a huge challenge. 

Mahsa Ershadi I will say when I first started in this industry, I approached it that way. I thought every like, you know, leadership idea that came to me, needed to be tested, needed research, needed my support, and that it was my responsibility to provide that service and serve as a service. I don’t do that anymore. I now, when asks come from me, from whoever they come from. You know, I feel like I I’m in a position now to be able to determine whether or not that is an ask that needs research. And also I, I do try to drive a research team where we don’t validate ideas. That’s not meant to be research. I come from an academic background and so we try to maintain that rigor in our research so that what we’re doing is I mean, it’s nowhere near, you know, the peer review process, but we try to maintain that rigor so that it’s not just a service to validate ideas for revenue, but, you know, having, again, a longer term future proofing perspective on it. We’re like we’re always representing that-the consumer in the room, in the boardroom. Yeah. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Just to add to that, I think it’s so challenging because in my industry, fast moving consumer goods, even my retail partners now have tasks that they want us to sort of put our products in to get a read. And even with that, we have to spend a lot more time sort of guiding them to understand how to use their own data. So that’s why I said these checklists are forever growing. And you you definitely have to have conviction and resilience, I’m going to say that in a very polite way, resilience. It does pay off. But I think the pro is we’re happy people are testing. There was a time where you had to sort of beg for things to be vetted out or to unpack or to be iterative. I think it’s just being smarter about do we actually need-do we already have enough data? What is what are we adding to the equation? What are we still trying to solve for? I think you just have to dive a little bit deeper and ask more grounding questions of unpacking the need. And I always think cost and time sort of can help you as well because you still want to be efficient. You don’t want to put your eggs all in one basket. You want to sort of just make sure that this is making sense. So that goes to the feasibility and the viability aspect. 

Lee Moreau So I’m hearing you don’t want unlimited budgets for research  /laughs/ because that’s going that’s they’re all hearing that. So just FYI.

Susan Fabry No, no right, there’s a reality check that she’s talking about. So yeah, and I would say the why is not just a why for the consumer, it’s a why for the person who’s who’s going to be using the research as well. So we’ll have specific requests for like, can you— put it this way: just recently had a request for AB testing. It’s like: Well, why?Why — what is it that you want to get out of this? And we will help you find the right tool so that you can get the results that are going to be meaningful so that you’re hearing the why on their end and we’re hearing the why on the internal end. So that that gets back to this kind of connective tissue, right, like trying to I feel that ‘veI spent a lot of — I’m first generation so I feel like I spend a lot of time translating English to English — and so I feel like I still do that a lot in the role that I play because we have a lot of highly technical people and they’re brilliant. I mean, it’s like one of the most brilliant group of people I’ve ever worked with, but they’re master of being able to articulate their what they need is maybe on a little bit of the lower end. So you have to do a little bit of translation. You know, like they have very specific needss. How do you translate that into what you can provide in a meaningful result? 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto I have a question for you —AB testing is the new design thinking, and I hate to say that and it don’t don’t say that out of this room,. 

Susan Fabry /laughs. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto But with speed that’s the — 

Lee Moreau Can you repeat the question? 

Susan Fabry A B testing is something that’s been popping up. It’s it’s buzzy you know, like just do an AB test is to do a proper AB test is is insanely— 

Lee Moreau So as a request from a leader saying like just run run the tests on that. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Like the new gut check. 

Lee Moreau Yeah. Okay, great. 

Susan Fabry Let’s let the people tell you what they want, let’s- they’ll do it. Like why? Like what are you hoping to get out of this? What stage or in do you understand to have significant results? That has to be a very large data set. Like we have tools that we can run and get you an answer. Probably not that though, but so it’s just being able to understand it and understand like how can we and then I work with some also another group of people within Fidelity who have really mastered like: Okay, they want to be test, but they don’t have like the 5000 hits that they need to get. We got a solution for that. Like we can manipulate— we’re constantly manipulating our tools to be able to satisfy the needs depending on the size, the the time frame, the size of the group of people. It’s probably — I feel bad, like I feel like it’s not going to meet your /laughs/ your standards. But, you know, we do much more of like generative research where we don’t have necessarily the standards that that Mahsa is talking about because we’re really just we’re trying to get ideas on a fairly quick basis. 

Mahsa Ershadi There are different altitudes of that research depending on the need of the product and the stakeholders involved. I would say that the thing that you really have to be good at as a researcher in industry is to be agile and to adapt to the needs of those stakeholders, whoever they are. And there’s this notion that user research always has to be primary research. So like we always have to run new research and that’s a— I mean, in terms of the return on investment, it’s always not the best thing to do. So secondary research, tapping into like literature reviews from peer reviewed academic journals is always incredibly beneficial. And it’s what I encourage my team to do when appropriate, when we start off. 

Susan Fabry 100% 

Mahsa Ershadi Right? Yeah. Go ahead—

Jadalia (Jada) Britto No, I was saying we’re actually running funnels to make sure that there’s this central location so that we are making sure we have access to the latest and greatest data. So absolutely.

Mahsa Ershadi  We also like within Microsoft, we work with our own librarians, right. Who are this is literally what they do for work is help us with lit reviews to make sure that we’re on top of the current literature. And then I’d also say that what we really rely on certain stakeholders for. So I’ve current- like in my team right now, we’ve onboarded more data scientists and even project managers, because what we’re looking for now is analysis of the current telemetry, right? And so it’s not necessarily going out to ask new users in, you know, a an experimental lab environment what they think of the products. But to tap into the telemetry of, you know, what is happening in the market right now without AB testing and then seeing what we can do with that. 

Susan Fabry And what’s happening in adjacent fields. Right? So how can you take what’s happening in an adjacency that’s maybe more mature and apply that to what you’re doing now? But I completely agree. Like we are constantly making sure that we’re not recreating the wheel. 

Mahsa Ershadi Yeah. 

Susan Fabry That doesn’t make sense to do research that was already done. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto I was just going to add, I think for for my industry, what’s really challenging because it’s so grounded in behavior and sort of something that I launched a year ago based on the change in your environment, your need — life. You had a child, you got married, you got a dog. We have to pay attention to every little tidbit. I have to make sure I have something for you, if you have a lot of space. I have to make sure I have something for you, if you don’t have a lot of space. All of these assumptions going in can be challenging. I think what we start to do is just try to make sure that what is the right amount and volume that’s going to move the needle, because I could stay here forever thinking about the many different ways or the many different needs. Can’t get all your needs states. But I can watch the trends and the behaviors. And so I love when you said listening to the conversations or I think a few weeks ago when we talked, that was like, why was Elmo asking if everyone was okay, was so powerful, went viral? I mean, we find research in the most uncommon areas and ways. It’s not always a cost associated, right, we’ve gotten a little more clever with how we’re we’re learning and looking at human needs and behaviors. But I think, again, it’s an interesting time, especially with technology, because we’re now talking about being power smart. The smart aspect of AI, that’s the new coined phrase for us. I think being really truthful of how we’re using A.I. is also starting to influence, I think, what we’re doing. But with the behavior side, I was kind of curious how is that working when it comes to like, human behavior? 

Susan Fabry And we’re really pushing towards understanding not AI as a generic term, that it’s it’s been a bandaid for the last year. Like everything. like sprinkle some AI on it and everything will be fine. But it’s like, well, what does it actually mean? Why, you know why-why is it going to be used? And then talking about, well, how does it actually express itself, right? So that it’s not just AI will fix it magically. And because we work with so many technologists, we’re like, we understand the back end is not an easy place. 

Mahsa Ershadi Can you clarify your question, sorry? 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto So when I was talking about AI for us, even though we were using AI, when we talk when you were talking about being more agile for for us, we were there’s a tension there, right? When people are just like, just just throw it in an AI test, throw it in a test, throw it here. Let’s, let’s use ChatGPT,  let’s get a gauge,  let’s do all these different things. I was kind of just curious, like when we’re now talking about smart or being responsible with AI. What are you seeing in Microsoft that is helping with the being a little more smart? 

Lee Moreau And I think part of the question is you make the danm stuff. 

Mahsa Ershadi Yeah. 

Lee Moreau So, like, you know. 

Mahsa Ershadi Yeah. Well, just as a disclaimer, I’ll say Microsoft genuinely, I’m not saying this is like a plug because I work there, obviously, but we genuinely take responsible artificial intelligence very, very seriously. We have we have a vision for AI that— 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Can I just clarify that? But a lot of people don’t realize that GenAI not all this is being used smart or it’s being used on the right platforms or with the right protections. So that’s why I’m asking this question. It’s it’s really critical because even where you get your information when you’re using AI, for us, it’s so critical. So that that’s why I was asking the question. 

Mahsa Ershadi Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah. So we we have many of you might know that Microsoft has a new CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, who has a vision for where he wants the AI to go and takes responsibile AI very seriously to the point that, you know, he’s involved in having onboarding governments internationally on to making sure that AI is conducted in a way or trained in a way that it is responsible. In terms of user research, it’s this weird kind of Russian doll model because like we we use AI for much of our research, but we also are studying AI simultaneously. So it’s almost like the brain studying itself in a way. But what we do is, you know, we do run a lot of like ethnographic research. We run, we run research, as I had said, like at the beginning of the talk, we want to make sure that we can understand the entire population because we’re trying to serve everyone across a demographic. And so oftentimes the platforms that we use that the issue with the caveat in using those platforms is that you’re testing almost like professional test takers, right? Like they’ve signed up to be a part of these platforms, then you’re testing them. And while there’s value there, it’s also not like an organic experience. So it’s not like running ethnographic research where like you’re out in, you know, in the middle of a city just grabbing someone and asking them like what apps they have on their phone and what they use it for, and just having a much more organic conversation with them. So we run both, you know, behavioral research that’s on the ground, and then we use AI to study AI as well, yeah, our own AI. 

Lee Moreau That’s pretty meta. Okay. At this point, I want to open it up to the audience. Does anyone have a question for the panelists? Raise your hand. There you go. 

Audience Member #1 Hi. Thanks. Can you hear me? 

Lee Moreau Yes. 

Audience Member #1 Okay. 

Lee Moreau Yes. 

Audience Member #1 Thanks very much for these perspectives. I think it’s great to have all three of you on stage with the perspectives that you do. This is like an academic question. As a design researcher I’m curious generally, like, how do you use academic research in  your industry based design research? And then more specifically, do you use like design research, like the stuff that the people in this audience would write? Or is it research from other fields? 

Mahsa Ershadi I’ll go. Yeah, I’ll start. So both we use both design research, but very much research from other fields depending on what the research question is. And so I’ll say myself, I guess my strong bias as a psychologist myself, as we do look a lot at the psychology of behavior to understand why people are making the choices that they’re making. But we don’t limit ourselves to psychological research. We’re looking at anthropological research, and we’ll look at design research depending again on the research question. In terms of how we use academic research, it depends on the scope of the project. So sometimes we’ll have foundational studies that we run. I can say this — I’m currently studying the impact of AI on mental health dependencies with the Office of Responsibility at Microsoft. And so that’s a really rigorous study we’re hoping to publish in Nature. And so you can imagine the level of that work. But then we also run usability studies, and so we’re testing stuff. I can’t say— I’m like stopping myself /laugh/, you know, we’re testing we’re testing our AI at a usability level, so it’s much more lower altitude, which is less academic, but we have to balance both of those scopes. Yeah. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Absolutely. We partner doing academic research, I would say, across the board, especially with clinicals, with a global organization, in order to get that reach, we have to work with I would say universities, work with students. I would say especially in innovation. I mean, I know we partnered — I can’t always say a little bit, but we’ve partnered with MIT on a few initiatives as well, Stanford the list goes on. I think no school is off limits at this point, but 100%, I would say with design research, it is growing, especially on design teams. I would say within the past 15 years, you there’s been a surge in not just the insights team, but insights being embedded in the actual design department. I would also say a lot of the design agencies that I work with around the world, 20 years ago didn’t have research as a part of one of their skill sets. Now research is a fundamental and embedded. I actually will not hire a design agency if they do not have that capability. So hands down, I would just say it is something that’s changed. You will definitely be hired by us in the future. I would say this industry is so needed. This is the fundamentals. This is this is the critical. Not everyone understands, but the data —they they value the data. They don’t know how to read the data, but they value the data. 

Susan Fabry Yeah. And I would say we just finished a six month partnership with a behavioral scientist to make sure that we put rigor around the models that we put together. So we’re constantly inventing for ourselves because we do more in that innovation and generative research versus the the true kind of design research. But we definitely are constantly surveying and scanning and understanding how the industry is changing and how much we can pull in tools. So we’re we’re looking for tools all the time. 

Lee Moreau And — I just want to like. So thank you for your question. I think there is probably a subtext to the question, which is that there’s probably a sense that what’s happening up here on stage is not exactly what’s happening in the audience necessarily. And that’s an interesting phenomenon. There does, I think, because I straddle a little bit of this world, there does seem to be very different things happening in each of these domains. And we’re probably not actually communicating as much as we ought to be, which is a little bit reflective of the composition of this conference, right. This is an academic conference over here. We have one industry panel over here. You know, let’s we need to do better work. But anyway, thank you so much, because it was a brave question. I appreciate it. Is there another question?

Mahsa Ershadi Can I just mentioned to that question? There’s also I think the thing to keep in mind — so when you gave my introduction about going from a high school teacher to the Brookings Institution to Microsoft AI. 

Lee Moreau Badass. 

Mahsa Ershadi Right. It just it feels like — thank you. But it also feels like strange. Whether or not you’re a design researcher or a psychologist or an architect, you know, at the end of the day, you’re learning a way of thinking. And that’s what we’re looking for in industry. If you’re interested in escaping academia, right? So like that’s, that’s what we’re looking for is like a certain way of thinking that you’re a problem solver. You have systems thinking. And so it’s not necessary that we would focus on like your the title of your background. Otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am, right? And so it’s just what are those skills. So Lee and I were talking earlier today about, you know, how do I still implement what I’ve learned about pedagogy from teachers college and my work and I implement it every day, apply it every day with my stakeholders who are non researchers who I have to communicate research to. I’m teaching them, you know, And so for yourselves, I would say, don’t, don’t hang up on that like title. Yeah. 

Audience Member #2 Thank you. Thank you for for these insights. I think they are great. And I think most of us in the audience are scholars or faculty or doctoral students and so on. And we are always thinking, I mean, I am always thinking about what literature should I write, to cater practitioner. It is a very generic question, but do you have any ideas what you need? 

Lee Moreau Looking for a book deal here, I think. Yes. 

Susan Fabry I think that that the it’s important to to be able to show how it connects from the academic portion to how it connects to people again. Because it’s always about people at the end of the day. And so that’s what we’re always looking at. Like people don’t change. We’re still the same people we were hundreds of years ago, right? We have different aspirations, but at the root of us, we’re all the same. So how do we get to that kind of that that emotional piece that’s going to connect? Because at the end of the day, I don’t want to be putting things into a landfill. I don’t want to be creating experiences that aren’t meaningful. I want to be creating experiences that are going to enrich people’s lives. So when you connect the-the frameworks and and I’m a framework junkie, so like my my coworker here in the audience is laughing at me because I am like quite the framework junkie. So if you connect your the work that you’re doing to humans, it’s going to be useful. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto And I was just going to add at Colgate-Palmolive, we serve the profession as well as consumer facing. So for oral care, we work with the dentists, for the skin health group, we work with estheticians, we work with veterinarians. So when it comes to, as you said, you’re saying you’re scholars or you’re looking at medical professionals, there’s a different way that you have to communicate, interact and provide data for the profession. It’s very different than consumer facing when you’re when they’re interacting with patients, there’s a different way that they need to provide that data and articulate that data. So from an academic perspective, that information is critical for us. So that’s just bring you back to the gentleman’s question back there. Like so critical, especially when we’re talking about on the professional side. Now add that we’re doing that again, global organization. So from a compliance standpoint, what I may do in North America is very different than what I will do in Europe, right? From the legal standpoint, what I may do in Europe is very different than what I would do in Africa, Eurasia, right? I have to think about solving for my five big regions. I can’t just solve for one place. So when you’re connecting that information, make sure that you look at it on a global scale. Show the nuancing and the complexity and the other considerations that may happen because the company that you’re helping, especially if it is a global organization, has to sell that product, that service support, that needs support the profession and more than just the United States. So that’s that’s just something to think about, to really show that you’re thinking and understanding the complexity. 

Mahsa Ershadi Also I just want to piggyback on that. I find your question really worrisome /laughs/ to be honest, I’ve been just thinking about it. And I think I mean, I’d like to hear more from you, we can do this after the panel, but I’m —I think that the beauty of academic research is that you don’t necessarily focus on like what’s needed right now for product development. And a lot of what we do is we focus on seminal research. So like a lot of what I do in my research for AI is I’ll tap into research that was done in the, you know, in the 60s and that like, you know, a long time ago, I shouldn’t say a long time ago, but, you know, like that was done a while ago /laughs/. You know, we tap into that type of research to understand going back to what Susan was saying, just like the the underlying, you know, facets of human behavior. So I’ll just I’ll give you an example. One of the things I’m doing right now with my team looking at AI is we’re looking at how AI can recognize emotion. And so in order to do that, we’re tapping into Paul Ekman and James Russell’s research on the circumplex- on the affects circumplex and facial expression of emotion. And so when Paul and Jim were putting together this research, they were doing it as academics. They weren’t focused on how it would, you know, apply to industry. So, I mean, I’m I’m just curious to hear more about your your question later because I don’t think academic should be focused on like, how can we make this relevant to industry, in my opinion. 

Lee Moreau So there’s a question here, I think. 

Audience Member #3 Hi. Thank you for that. I have one foot in academia and one in industry, and I really agree with you on the aspect of why, like dig down into why. But I’ve been noticing both in academia and industry that people have found way to respond to the why. So my question is how do you evaluate whether that response is rich enough and good enough to push your teams to find more depth? How do you know whether that is an acceptable answer? What do you do next? Just curious to hear from each of your perspectives. 

Susan Fabry I mean, I think a lot of times how masquerades as why. And so I think that that’s that to me is unpacking that and really understanding. Are you really saying, a how are you really are you really getting to the why. And and it’s gets back to how how fundamental is this? How can I apply this in and across a wide swath of people and different experiences? And how how essential is it? Like if you can express it in five words, you probably got the why, not the how. You-you need to get that granular in in a way and I think I’ve been looking more at all of the research that we’ve been doing as a step in a journey. And so it helps you get away from that how. 

Lee Moreau The first conversation we had as a group a couple of weeks ago, the number one takeaway I had from that conversation was how desperate these three women were to like learn. Like there’s — Jada I think you said, like there’s so much to learn. And there was a desperate feeling of like, you know, where does it end? So I think understanding where it ends and then what do you do with it is really a critical thing and a little bit on the top of mind, no?

Jadalia (Jada) Britto And just to build a little bit on what Susan’s saying, I think, you know, when you’ve you’ve gone far enough based on how many nods you have in the room. When everyone is still not sure we haven’t solved. And if it takes to your point, if you can’t summarize it but so many words and really understand what it is, we haven’t solved the problem. We need to go back and unpack it. And so I that’s why I mentioned before, success criteria is so critical. What is the job of design and or the design research in this in our hypotheses or in even in the discovery, right. As we’re sort of unpacking and trying to learn and understand if we don’t bring that gauge back and if we don’t all have that level set it, you can’t steer the conversation. Everyone’s going to have a different opinion. You have to keep that level set. And I think that’s the hardest discipline as you’re going through these I call it the great debates, the many great debates. You have to—I, I’ll speak for myself. I’m not going to speak for my team. I latch on to critical facts in the data. I will comb through and latch on to critical facts and I will use that as my I call it my great three or fives to use that as my basis of evaluation. And I will use that as my argument because we will have great debates. But that that would be my my argument of here’s why I’m still pushing because I don’t feel we’ve quite hit this, this and that. For these reasons based on this, this and that. And I just keep bringing it back and I call it if you haven’t said it a hundred times, get used to it. Like you-you guys know you’re going to say it 100 times. You’re going to say it 200 times. That’s okay. But it’s going to take that many times for it to sink in. Every day we same thing. And I just I just keep doubling down. 

Mahsa Ershadi I mean, I was just also going to say that — part of I think part of the misunderstanding of what researchers do is that we work independent of our other stakeholders. So like the entire research process, not only is iterative, but it’s also collaborative, right? So it’s not that the the ones, you know, project manager or designer comes to me with a research ask, I run it and then give them the deliverable. The entire thing is collaborative, right, so just yesterday I sent a research proposal that I planned based on a discussion that I had had with a team, and I want their input on this before I launch because what I don’t want is to launch and have them be like: That’s not exactly what we’re looking for, or now we have to apply this in a way that’s not as actionable as we were hoping. And then part of it is also that once I, you know, give them that deliverable, I also have to babysit those findings in a way. So I have to kind of chase around those stakeholders to make sure that the findings are applied in the way that they ought to be applied and that they’re not just using research as a front for being able to misapply, you know, some of our our work. And all of that has to do with having really good relationships with your stakeholders, you know. So I’d suggest that when you do go into industry, if you’re an industry that you work very hard on building those relationships. 

Susan Fabry I mean, I would say one of the-one of the hardest things I find is that we’re in kind of an emotionally charged industry, right. Like, I mean, I’m trying to help people with financial wellbeing. That’s crazy. It’s- it’s so emotional. But we also have to not be emotional because when you get emotional, then you get you get into the what and the how and you get into like, well, but I do it this way and I do it that way. It’s when you, when you really get to the, the, the aspiration and the need, it’s it’s really fundamental. And yes, you need to be emotionally invested, but you can’t be emotional about it. And that the difference between being invested in something and being emotional about something is all the difference between being able to show the value and not and not being taken seriously, unfortunately. 

Lee Moreau Another question, a really tough question that we might deflect due to our NDAs. So who’s got…?

Audience Member #4 I’m actually —

Lee Moreau Okay, great.

Audience Member #4 Yes, Thank you. And this is going to be a tough question. Well,. 

Lee Moreau Thank you. 

Audience Member #3 So thank you. First of all, very accomplished panel. And I really admire all your work and also your your investment, all that. We’ve talked very much about design research on a product level. I wonder in the times and days that we are in and we’re talking a lot, especially also in design of all different kinds of paradigms and economic paradigms and sustainable paradigms. And and I have several questions for you, but maybe you pick your —it’s the general questions like how do you feel about design research having any role in your organization beyond making these products more consumer friendly? But do you feel like there’s a or do you do you see a role for design research in the organizational re-orientation and maybe also into intervening in these kind of challenges and then making a contribution to that, because that seemed to me like this panel, if we just take it on the surface, we could have had the same conversation ten years ago and it would have been a similar kind of conversation. But I would imagine that this also weighs heavily in your in your work. And I would like to learn more about that. 

Lee Moreau That’s a good one. Thank you. 

Susan Fabry Yeah, I mean, I would say we’re we’re constantly thinking about what’s the impact on the environment. You know, thinking about how you can use blockchain to be more efficient and get to more people and offer more people financial well-being because you’re lowering the cost of the actual product through the innovations of technology. So how-how do you use design research along with technology to address the global needs that are so great within the financial industry? 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto I would say for where I work, Colgate-Palmolive, we’re all about democratization. The reason that we’re in 238 countries is because we think about people who can either purchase products for their families or can only purchase it on an individual level. We think about and this is it’s all the data and the insights and the research that’s allowing us to be able to understand how it’s filling needs or how we can have multi-uses. We own Tom’s of Maine, which is hands down all about sustainability at its forefront, talking about doing good and not caring about everything else. We recently did the sustainable tube, because we know that if government doesn’t mandate something, if you don’t sort of build alliances and sort of push things in, they’re not going to happen. So we we didn’t sue people if they used our patent, right, for the recyclable tube, which we rolled around the world and worked with our competition. So I do think it’s the research, it’s the accountability and learning different ways to drive that impact, putting at times profit aside. 

Lee Moreau But I’m going to push you on that because it was a great question, but you could say: That’s a Halo product or project and you’re just, you know, you’re trying to use that story to elevate the brand and that’s so convenient. Take that on. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Tom’s—. 

Lee Moreau Right. I mean, well? 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto But I would say that,. 

Susan Fabry I will take that on too but you go first. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto I would just say with toothpaste, you could say that. But Tom’s you can’t. That’s its origin story. And in order for us to stay true to the origins, especially when you take on a brand, it’s the things we do in the community. It’s the laws and the boards that we sort of get on. I think for me, especially because it’s under my portfolio, it’s probably one of the brands besides Hills, so don’t tell anyone else on oral care side. 

Lee Moreau Which is pet care. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto Pet care. 

Lee Moreau Yep. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto That I loved working with the most because it wasn’t about just the profit. Right. We we use we work with shelters on Hills, right, we work with shelters. And we help canines and felines that may never get the care that they need. Right. We work with the veterinary community to help them, sort of, I would say, just expand their knowledge and research on just what’s happening with like cancer or I was working with recently on like feeding tubes. Like that, that has nothing to do with profit at the end of the day, when you’re donating your time, your resources, and you’re making them a part of your clinicals to do better. Clinicals are very, as you guys know, very, very, very expensive. But who we select and partner with is where the value comes. So I think when it when it came back to the academic side, that’s where we’re funding. We’re funding the future because as it was said before, you’re not thinking about the cost, you’re not thinking about the boardroom, you’re not thinking about the competition. You’re thinking about addressing and learning and solving the problem. So that is the best data and it’s also the most genuine when we’re really actually making an impact. So for me, like it is a no bullshit industry on that side when it comes to that, because that’s where my as you hear, the passion is starting to come out because I’ve done amazing things on that side because I actually see the impact of helping someone or helping a person or expanding a life. So that, like, I do think that’s something that is different that is happening in our industry more than it was before, beyond just profit. 

Susan Fabry Thank you. Susan. 

Susan Fabry And I would say it’s I mean, Fidelity is an easy target, right? We’re a brokerage that supports individuals. But I’m extremely proud of the leadership under Abby Johnson. She’s amazing. She actually has one of the largest charitable organizations that is not under her name. So she’s doing tons of work that you’ll never hear about that is from her that’s being sponsored by the profits from Fidelity. But we also have a patent program. I was lucky enough to receive the 300th patent. But the patent program is all about being able to create new technology and actually share it. So the reason that everyone has an online brokerage is because Fidelity opened their patent to everyone. They didn’t lock it down. They said everyone, if every brokerage goes online, we’ll all be better off. So they actually didn’t lock it down. They’re not making a penny off of Schwab having an online brokerage. They patented the technology. You can look it up. It’s under Fidelity. But they did not lock it down. And that that’s about being able to be part of a community and make sure that you’re actually giving as much as you’re taking. And I think that that’s essential in a lot of the work that happens that you never know about and you’ll never see. 

Mahsa Ershadi I think similarly what Microsoft does in terms of AI, as we can all imagine, the consequences of not being responsible with it, AI could be quite negative. And so we are trying to set standards so that our AI models are trained in ways that are ultimately going to be safe for humankind. And we’re willing to kind of we’re willing to do that cost benefit analysis of giving up certain aspects of our revenue, our profits. If we don’t think that we can make sure that what we’re doing or with our models are going to end up being safe for society and set the standards for other companies. And as I said at the beginning, we don’t just chase what our competitors are doing for the sake of revenue. We make sure that we follow what our vision is, you know, in terms of the product and ethically as well. But I’ll say that a lot of the research we conduct is also not just for the product, right? So as I said, that paper that we’re trying to publish, you know, about mental health dependencies with AI, we’re publishing that in an academic journal. It’s meant to be out there for anybody to use, including our competitors, because we want them to use it. And so I’d say that’s our our attempt to make sure that we’re not just focused on design research for product development. 

Jadalia (Jada) Britto I just want to add two more things just to build awareness. If you guys don’t know Colgate-Palmolive, does the women games, which is for our high school students and giving them scholarships and helping them to compete. They do bright smiles bright futures, which is also around the world where they go to schools to sort of help teach kids about oral health, which is so critical. We believe confidence starts with a smile. So at a very young age, if you can sort of help a child, just understand how to take care of their smile, which is we feel this part of your superpower — the list goes on. There’s a lot of initiative. And I think Colgate was one of the companies who, similarly it depends on your CEO, comes from an old era that you don’t sort of brag. So we weren’t as transparent about a lot of the initiatives that we were doing. I think more and more we’re now because of social media, because you have to sort of show you can’t you can’t just hide. You have to be more transparent. I think more organizations are sharing these amazing initiatives that they’re doing. And a lot of times people didn’t even know that we were connected. Another initiative that we’re doing around the world is about making sure people wear sunscreen because we’re trying to dispel myths about putting on sunscreen every day and we’re giving out sunscreen. We’re teaching people proper application, and now we’re also doing it where it can work with different shades of skin, because one of the barriers of people putting on sunscreen is about the cast. So now you’re seeing all these campaigns about having sunscreen that doesn’t leave a cast, right. So when you hear that, when you talk about diseases and you start looking at the statistics of diseases or prevent what we call preventatives, things that could have been prevented, prevented by brushing your teeth or just putting on sunscreen, how many people would still be here or not be sick? It just doesn’t make sense to us. So I do I am sort of proud of where my company is going. I would say it’s things that we sort of take for granted. And when we start seeing the actual impact and I, I think too what my peers here are saying it, there is a shift happening and there’s there’s a different level of social responsibility because of the transparency. 

Susan Fabry I would just add one last thing. I don’t think design research is the same as it was ten years ago. I actually, I apologize, I’m coughing a bit. I’m recovering from pneumonia. I was last time I had pneumonia, I was in Indonesia and we were doing design research and the company had no idea what was going on with the people that they were actually serving. And it was amazingly novel to them and a breakthrough for them. It’s-that that would not exist today. Like we we are in a different world now, and some of that has to do with technology and a lot of it has to do with awareness and a lot of it has to do with the work that’s happening in academia. So I just disagree with the fundamental premise. /laughs/

Lee Moreau Please, A warm round of applause for our panelists. /appluase/ Thank you very much. 

Lee Moreau Design As is a podcast from Design Observer. For transcript and show notes, you can visit our website at Design Observer dot com slash Design As. You can always find Design As on any podcaster of your choice. And if you like this episode, please let us know, write us a review, share it with a friend, and keep up with us on social media at Design Observer. We’d love to give you a seat at our roundtable however we can. Special thanks to Maxine Philavong at the Northeastern Recording Studio and Design Observer’s editor in chief, Ellen McGirt. This episode was mixed by Judybelle Camangyan. Design As is produced by Adina Karp.