January 14, 2025
Design As Care
Care is all around us. And that’s really here what these voices and these perspectives will help to further for us.
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On this episode of Design As you’ll hear from:
Jadalia Britto is the Head of Design for North America at Colgate-Palmolive. She also teaches Design Leadership in the Master’s Program at Georgetown University.
Rachael Dietkus is a social worker and the founder of Social Workers Who Design.
Sofie Hodara is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University.
Care is central to the topic of design. In this episode of Design As Care our roundtable speaks to the many facets of where care and design intersect constantly, and consistently — in a home, a professional practice, the classroom, and within a body.
Jadalia Britto, Head of Design for North America at Colgate-Palmolive, addresses the importance of research in creating the products people use to take care of themselves and their space:
When you're talking about things people are using to put on their bodies, things that people are using to clean their homes, things that you use to take care of the things you wear. It's fascinating. And then when you talk about even from your body odor, how you're protecting and gauging the elements, it's just fascinating about for me how much science is at the center of that. But again, the research is how you're changing that messaging.
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The work of Rachael Dietkus, founder of Social Workers who Design, focuses on the care work needed for designers to be able to be their true selves as the design for others:
We need to talk about the impact of what it really looks like to practice as a designer and to be really doing amazing work. But to be doing that in a capacity that is your false self, it is not your true self. You know, your true self is not being like your authentic self is not being, you know, bringing your whole self to work. It isn't that philosophy. It is really making sure that you're not suppressing the parts of you that deserve to be nurtured and need to have attention.
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Sofie Hodara, Assistant Teacher Professor at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media, and Design, speaks about fostering the classroom as a space to show students how they can care in their design practice:
I want my students to feel like they are working in a world that they can relate to and see the impact. And so making their world tangible to us or to people outside of it.
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And information designer Giorgia Lupi shares her work at the intersection of care of data collection, within her own self, and her philosophy of data humanism:
Data humanism is my way of reminding people that ultimately data is or are human made, because even if they come from a sensor, a human being designed the sensor and decided what to collect and what to leave out.
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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. This season, we’re bringing you six new episodes with six new keywords to interrogate. In this episode, you’ll be hearing four different design voices speak to the idea of design as care. I’m Lee Moreau, host of The Futures Archive from Design Observer, Founding Director of Other Tomorrows, and Professor of Practice and Design at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design, which hosted the 2024 Design Research Society conference earlier this year. There, I got the chance to sit down with various guests, leaders and speakers who are attending the conference, and we’ve compiled some of their voices into this episode about design as care. It’s a roundtable in four parts. On this episode, you’ll hear from Jadalia Britto,
Jadalia Britto When you’re designing for humans or you’re talking to a person, you have to connect to them on a more personal level. And the emotion, that emotive side is where I think research or design research in particular really starts to change the way you engage.
Lee Moreau Rachael Dietkus,
Rachael Dietkus I just come from this philosophy that if-if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we are not taking care of one another, then we fundamentally cannot do the work. We just can’t.
Lee Moreau Sofie Hodara,
Sofie Hodara I think there’s a lot of conversation that can be had about how we recover as a community, as a city, as individuals from this huge disruption, this rupture, caused by COVID-19 in 2020.
Lee Moreau And Giorgia Lupi,
Giorgia Lupi Because I’m a data person, what do I do as soon as I start to feel sick and having the symptoms? I start to collect data. So, you know, for four years I’ve been collecting data on the different kind of symptoms that I’ve been experiencing.
Lee Moreau The topic of care is central to design, and it’s become clear to me both as a-as a teacher and as a practitioner, that if you were only thinking about the work that we’re doing in isolation from both the world around us and also from the humans that help to shape it and bring it life and give a direction— that if we’re not thinking about the broader impact that that has on us as professionals, on us, as people, that we’re not actually doing our job very well, that it’s- the process and the outcomes are so intertwined and care has to be central to all of that. If not, we’re probably not either doing our best work or may not be doing work that really is benefiting the communities that we are trying to support. And so for this reason, I think care and we’re going to hear this in this episode starts to take many, many different directions. Care is all around us. And that’s really here what some of these voices and some of these perspectives will help to further for us. And it’s wonderful that we’re both having these conversations and also listening and thinking deeply about them.
Lee Moreau We’re here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Harvard. I’m here with Jada Britto- Jadlaia Britto. Very excited. We just yesterday we had a panel discussion. You were killing it.
Jadalia Britto Thank you. Lee.
Lee Moreau Jada Britto is head of design for North America at Colgate-Palmolive. She also teaches design leadership in the master’s program at Georgetown University. And she was one of our subject matter experts on the second ever episode of The Futures Archive — all about the toothbrush, that was back in 2021. So time really does fly, right?
Jadalia Britto Yeah, love our toothbrushes.
Lee Moreau I love the tooth— We love the toothbrushes. But at that time, that was really your central role. You’re in oral care at that point, right?
Jadalia Britto Correct. I was the head of toothbrush and devices and kids in devices for oral care at Colgate-Palmolive, and since then, I’ve had an amazing journey. I got to work on innovation at Hill’s-
Lee Moreau Remind me..?
Jadalia Britto Hill’s Pet Nutrition in Topeka, Kansas, an amazing brand. Most people are introduced to Hill’s when normally their pet has a problem. But we do so much more than that. We support pet parents with their every day care. We work heavily with the veterinary profession. In a lot of the brands at Colgate, we start with the profession first. So just fascinating the amount of things that are baked in data which brings us full circle, why I’m even here talking about the role of design research and just data in our everyday. And it was really nice to kind of share what I’m seeing and how I’m being brought further upstream. I think that was something that really resonated with the audience yesterday about normally design research is the afterthought or used to be an afterthought or more happening toward the end of the journey, more so the end of the process. If you had ten steps, it’s sort of like step eight. Research is critical, but the type of research is changing and the creative mind is being brought earlier and earlier into the process. And for me, that’s such a win for us, a win to, I think just to see how people are processing what they’re learning or how it’s going into solving the right problems or finding the right things, piquing people’s curiosity, especially now when how you interact with a thing or how you build love with a brand has changed.
Lee Moreau Why do you think that shift is taking place, like with research kind of being brought in earlier in the conversation? I’m certainly thrilled to hear this, but-but tell us why.
Jadalia Britto It’s a simple answer for me. The emotion, right? It’s the emotional side. When you think about products, when you think about science, sometimes it could be so functional and how you’re talking to it or or how you’re going about it. But when you’re designing for humans or you’re talking to a person, you have to connect to them on a more personal level. And the emotion, that emotive side is where I think research or design research in particular really starts to change the way you engage.
Lee Moreau Now your portfolio is much bigger than pet food or oral care—
Jadalia Britto Yes. So I support home care, personal care, and Tom’s of Maine for North America. So that’s 11 brands.
Lee Moreau And research throughout all that portfolio.
Jadalia Britto Yes, especially when you’re talking about things people are using to put on their bodies, things that people are using to, you know, clean their homes, things that you use to take care of the things you wear. It’s fascinating. And then when you talk about even from your body odor, how you’re protecting and gauging the elements, it’s just fascinating about for me how much science is at the center of that. But again, the research is how you’re changing that messaging.
Lee Moreau I mean, these are very personal. I have very personal opinions about how I smell or don’t smell or stink or like depending on the day and the time, you know, it’s super intimate. So research must be also intimate.
Jadalia Britto And I would say, what’s to me, the part that we really focus on cracking a lot is you’re the many versions of yourself. That’s the that’s the one, right? Because there’s an abundance of choice. And so a lot of times in that deselection process, when you’re choosing what’s right for you, and if you’re a care taker, you’re a parent, or buying for more than just yourself, you’re trying to find either the items that will do the best job or you’ll find the items for each individual.
Lee Moreau Mhm.
Jadalia Britto And you’re most of the time tapping that to their personality or the confidence the way that they want to feel. It’s really fascinating, and something that we use every day or engage with every day can really change your mood, evoke confidence, help you relax, make you feel like you did a great job. You’re doing good. When your home smells good, you feel like you’ve accomplished a lot. There’s a sense of pride, right? When you’re looking at like getting clean and how you feel when you come out of the shower or when you want to unwind and take a bath. Like those moments matter. And so now working on brands where I’m tapping into those everyday interactions and moments of self-care, it’s quite fascinating.
Lee Moreau What I’m talking about — this came up yesterday in the panel — other situations where you’re the only one in the room?
Jadalia Britto Yes.
Lee Moreau Can you talk more about that kind of balancing the balancing between what you represent as a as a practitioner, but also balancing that with the community that you’re trying to observe and support? How do you juggle- how do you manage those? All of these multiple things and these multiple inputs?
Jadalia Britto I would say on a scale of being a woman and being a minority, that already holds a separate weight because I have to read the room and I have to be really mindful of the audience and I have to kind of do my research going into even that conversation. Here we go, talking about research. You have to know what they’re looking for. You have to know like, what each person’s tick is. So I have to make sure that in that moment that I have five, maybe 15 minutes of their undivided attention, that I’m going to say something meaningful, that when they leave that room, it at least piques their curiosity. Another trick I do is I try to repeat maybe a couple of times, hey, like I’m so happy to follow up. If you want to ask a few more questions, I’m really happy to follow up and schedule a one on one so we can kind of unpack if you really want to understand, I saw you were interested in that. I keep tapping just to say I’m here. I’m game. If you want to, you know, learn a little bit more or I can take some time, like off to the side and kind of take you through. But I just need to make sure that I hit the things that matter to them, not just me. I think that’s the hardest part when you-you come into an organization, you have to realize that their decisions are so much bigger than what you’re bringing to the table. And at times, the decisions that they’re faced with, they’re like hundreds of people coming to them. And they can only probably make five.
Lee Moreau Right.
Jadalia Britto Right. Or they have the resources for five. So you have to make the compelling argument or be consistent in making sure that in every opportunity you have, you bring it back full circle the best you can.
Lee Moreau Okay.
Jadalia Britto A lot of times you are the only subject matter expert in the room. A lot of times when the bigger conversations are happening, they choose one from each area. So you have to represent all, all or nothing. And sometimes that’s a lot to carry. So those conversations are- I don’t take them lightly because I know that the fact that I was even invited to the table to have the conversations, what that- what comes with that. I want to be invited back.
Lee Moreau And let’s face it, CPG, consumer packaged goods, right, it’s it’s not an easy game.
Jadalia Britto Not at all. /laughs/ And it’s moving faster and faster. And I think that’s the-that’s the challenge. Right. It’s just fascinating to see how our industry is just evolving.
Lee Moreau It’s been a pleasure talking to you and collaborating the last couple of days.
Jadalia Britto Agreed.
Lee Moreau Let’s do more of it.
Jadalia Britto Thanks Lee
Lee Moreau Thank you.
Lee Moreau I’m here with Rachael Dietkus at Northeastern’s recording studio on June 26th. Hi, Rachel.
Rachael Dietkus Hi Lee.
Lee Moreau Rachael Dietkus is a social worker and a designer, the founder of Social Workers who Design, and she’s a leader in the field of trauma informed design. Many of our listeners are well informed in design, but they might not know what trauma informed design is. Can you explain that to me?
Rachael Dietkus Yeah, I think a brief way of describing what trauma informed design is, is that there is this consideration, that trauma is prevalent, that it may be present in the types of work that we’re doing and the types of things that we are studying and trying to understand. And the very participants that we are collaborating with, inviting into the design research process, as well as the designers and the researchers themselves, that there that these may be things that they have also experience that they’ve encountered before they were ever designer or the effect that they have from the types of typically social impact, but not always just social impact work. It’s a bi-directional approach to really acknowledging that both the people that we are often researching with and hopefully not researching at as well as us as designers that this is part of the human condition. You know, I very much focus on these trauma informed and trauma responsive practices. I come at design as a social worker first, a designer second. I really try to think of the two disciplines as one, though, so not even uniquely distinct or separate from one another. When I talk with students and I have a number of students who reach out and just say like: Hey, I am thinking about studying this particular thing and there is an element of trauma that’s involved. Or, do you have some advice on care practices that I can maybe integrate into what I’m doing? These are coming from students who are undergrad students and design master’s students and PhD students and design, you know, really from all parts of the world, not just in the U.S., which is just fascinating. So for me, it is really just being present with those conversations. And, you know, I have the work that I care deeply about, that I’m very passionate about. And I can see where that the interest, especially in trauma informed practices, is really it has just significantly grown from my lens over the past four years.
Lee Moreau So this isn’t necessarily trauma that’s coming from, you know, some car accident or long standing oppression from one peoples to another peoples. This could be just from interactions that we have in doing the work-
Rachael Dietkus Mhm.
Lee Moreau -as designers. So this is highly personal. What are what’s a workshop on that? Like, what’s the room like?
Rachael Dietkus That’s a good question. I typically try to start with some fundamentals. You know, there are many different definitions of trauma. There are a lot of very clinical definitions, very medical, medically driven definitions. I really take a social model approach to understanding trauma, and so I talk about it in the context of what does this actually mean? What are some potential examples of what this might look like? And then also including the aspects of secondary and vicarious trauma, which I believe also include these aspects of moral injury, which is typically coming up quite often for students and for professional researchers. So just having this foundation, this level setting of what do some of these words mean, what do they mean in the context of design and design research, and the practice that we do. And then talking through what have become some of our most traditional ways of doing design research and really examining them and understanding if what we have been doing and what we maybe have been taught, if that is the most ethical and responsible and thoughtful way to do this work. So I personally, you know, again, I’m coming at this as- with this with this very strong social work lens. And so I almost like I, I don’t miss a single word. You know, when someone asks me like: Hey, Rachael, can you look at this research plan and can you just give some feedback? And sometimes I just assume that, like this person who has reached out like they like they’re not going to need any feedback. They are such a thoughtful and ethical designer. And then, you know, I get to literally sometimes like the first sentence and I start just wondering like, well, why-why are you phrasing it this way and why are you may be asking this question? Have you considered asking this question first as opposed to that question? Are you asking questions because you really want to know an answer or that you feel like you need to know and it would actually influence maybe improving someone’s life. So just I take a very-I try to take a very, like, non-judgmental approach, like working with and understanding why people are setting up the work way the way that they do.
Lee Moreau In my teaching her at Northeastern, I address a lot of-I’m working with a lot of first year undergraduate students and they come in and they’ve-there’s design in their life somewhere, whether it’s the sneakers they love or the musicians they follow, etc. And it’s partly my job to have them understand and appreciate that we kind of like cherish that there’s design there and one day you may do that, you may not. That’s fine. But where you’re talking about what you’re talking about is about the care of the person as well.
Rachael Dietkus Mhm.
Lee Moreau And I think those two things are mirrored, and I think our students both need that and also demand it, too. They want to be recognized as having design in their lives, but also the fact that if I’m going to have design in my life, I’m a designer. I have to take care of myself. With that in mind. This feels like it’s the world is coming to you right now, Rachael.
Rachael Dietkus I mean I- you know what I hear as you’re sharing that is that there’s this desire to be seen and acknowledged. And again, these are like foundational human beings that we deserve to have. I come from a background even before I was ever a social worker. So I’ve been a social worker for almost 15 years at this point. But I had a whole career within the nonprofit sector before that. And I just come from this philosophy that if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we are not taking care of one another, then we fundamentally cannot do the work. We just can’t. We can’t do-we can’t do the work in a way that will be sustainable and that will be healthy for both for us and for those that we that we profess to be helping.
Lee Moreau I think there’s something fascinating also, and I’m not an expert in this field, but we spent so much time pushing collaboration in the design world and we just assumed that collaboration was going to yield like kumbaya, everything works out shiny, happy. And actually a lot of damage was being done as we were pushing people to collaborate. People who may not have wanted to be around other people for all various reasons. Is this a kind of a correction, partly, Rachael?
Rachael Dietkus In some ways I think it is. Again, I can’t help but hear what you’re saying and kind of put it through this, like this social work filter. The the thing that is standing out the most to me is that, you know, if we have historically been pushed into collaboration, having to work with other people, like sometimes, like without having that choice and without having that autonomy and being able to exercise that agency, then it’s- it does something to us. You know, sometimes we can work with people who we may not philosophically agree with or who just may not be like the kindest or the most welcoming of peers and colleagues. At the same time, what is truly happening is this suppression of our own needs and of our own emotions. And I think if we get into a pattern of doing that over and over and over again, we start to forget who we are. And, you know, I’m thinking back on this training, I won’t say who it was with, but it was with a group of designers who are very seasoned, very talented, and in the prep for ultimately training them on some trauma informed design practices. I intentionally wanted to have several conversations with them, just informal conversations, just, you know, let’s talk about some things, like — what’s coming up in the work? What are the types of things that you maybe want to hone in on? What are those very specific things that you’re actually concerned about? I also had them complete a survey, and that’s where there was just like this next layer, like layers of things that people were sharing. So it was much more intimate: things like, I don’t have anyone to go to when I have concerns or when I have problems with my work. You know, many people sharing, like, I have a history of PTSD. I am a survivor of sexual assault and no one knows this and this affects me. And this-this is truly it drives how and why I design. And so I’ve been very fortunate and privileged to receive, and I think I’ll also say at this point, I have the ability to to hold some of those stories that people share. And I just with this particular group, I said we need to talk about the impact of what it really looks like to practice as a designer and to be, you know, really doing amazing work. But to be doing that in a capacity that is your false self, it is not your true self. You know, your true self is not being like your authentic self is not being, you know, bringing your whole self to work. It isn’t that philosophy. It’s it is really making sure that you’re not suppressing the parts of you that deserve to be nurtured and need to have attention. And so just spending some time talking about that, it’s like I could see- I could see this fundamental shift in like we’ve never talked about that. I’ve never talked about this in a design program. This has never come up in work. I’ve never even heard of some of these phrases like, I don’t even know what you mean by true self and false self. So some of these are like your social work or psychology concepts from many decades ago. But I think that these things are I see these things are so ever present with designers and especially with researchers who want to do a good job, who are doing a fantastic job and feel like they have to almost like abandon a bit of themselves in order to do that work. I I’m coming from a place of, you know, we don’t have to do that, but we do need to add some additional skills to protect ourselves as well as protect others that we are bringing into this process. And there are 101 different ways that we can do that.
Lee Moreau So when you look towards the future of design, right, when some of the students you have now are out leading teams 10 or 15 years from now, maybe sooner. What do you see? What’s the future of design?
Rachael Dietkus You know, taking a futures lens to trauma work is something that I’ve been exploring a little bit on the side. So I’ve been thinking about the type of ways that students want to engage in this work now. And another element that I see as coming is how do we-how do we get savvy enough and comfortable enough in doing the work that is present right in front of us? And at the same time, how do we build this very solid, true resilience to be able to anticipate future trauma? You know, I’d like to be able to say that we could mitigate all of that and we will have no future trauma. Like, how fantastic would that be? But I’m a bit too much of a realist and just know that there are future situations and disasters and catastrophes that we need to be preparing for and thinking about now. So students are not the ones who are behind. /laughs/ When I interact with students, it’s like they I feel like I’m speaking with someone who fully understands what I’m talking about. And it’s not to say that design educators are opposite of that, but I think the design curriculum as a whole and the accreditation of that curriculum is definitely behind, I could say the same for social work as well.
Lee Moreau Rachael, thank you so much for spending time with us.
Rachael Dietkus Thanks, Lee.
Lee Moreau Design As is a podcast from Design Observer. Did you know about their newsletters? Here’s editor in chief Ellen McGirt.
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Lee Moreau I’m here with Sofie Hodara in Northeastern’s recording studio on June 24th. Hi, Sofie. How are you?
Sofie Hodara I’m doing really well. I’m excited to be here with you right now.
Lee Moreau Sofie Hodara is an assistant teaching professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University.
Sofie Hodara Yeah, And I teach— I primarily teach classes in interaction design and in immersive media, or what we call immersive media here, which is essentially virtual reality, augmented reality.
Lee Moreau Sofie— so we used to share an office on Northeastern campus and we’ve since moved. And I’m wondering what you’ve been working on recently.
Sofie Hodara I’ve been working on trying to rewrite my teaching philosophy. Like, what is the role of community? And maybe I realized that for me, it’s actually I mean, that word is really big. It can mean a lot of things.
Lee Moreau It’s huge.
Sofie Hodara And for me, I realized that it’s about I want my students to feel like they are working in a world that they can relate to and like see the impact. And so making their world tangible to us or to people outside of it.
Lee Moreau Well, how does it happen in the classroom? I mean, it makes sense. And but I’m wondering in a very technical sense, how do you create that environment in the classroom to engender that?
Sofie Hodara So there’s a couple things. This is this is such like such a bullshit answer. But I think you just show up as yourself as an educator, right, ss the leader. I think you do that. I think you just sort of you show up and you’re very transparent about where you are and what your intentions are, and that sets an example. But also, I think that the evidence that I uses is actually in the projects that I design. So, for example, you know, we did like a I mean, this is a like intro, you know, intro class, but like we did a redesign of the Covid wellness check.
Lee Moreau Mhm.
Sofie Hodara And, you know, that was I realized that was really important that the students I think that was sort of the first one I did where I was like, I want my students to work on projects for Northeastern students. So we did other projects for helping freshmen get oriented at Northeastern, and we did a project. Also a lot of the projects I write, like I’m writing, I’m realizing have it’s like we’re right here at Ruggles Station. Like, how do we take advantage of making work for this space? Yeah. So I think, you know, making things very relatable and proximate, local.
Lee Moreau Sofie if I want you to tell me about a project that you think you should share with our listeners and why it’s important.
Sofie Hodara Me and Ann McDonald, another colleague of Lee and mine from Northeastern. Yeah, me and Ann, we just found out this morning that we’re going to the same artist residency program, Design Inquiry, in Poland at the end of July. So we’re going to be in Warsaw drinking, making screen prints together. Like so this is — I’m going to talk I’m going to tell you about a project that I haven’t started yet. So who knows?
Lee Moreau Brilliant. Okay.
Sofie Hodara So the theme of this residency is Rupture and Repair. And they start by asking, you know, the application, which is very informal, starts by just asking you about a time in your life where you- rupture or repair played a role. And so I thought about a body of work that I made, hence this is why I’m using this to answer your question, where during Covid, I left my marriage and I left Boston and I moved to New York. And then I proceeded to make a body of work kind of about the distance. And I took photos from a telescope very high up from a skyscraper. I use my iPhone to take these these pictures and videos. And I really keep coming back to this work because for me, it was like a form of repair. So it’s a form of practice and making based practice that, you know, I guess allowed me to reflect and on my distance from the rest of the world, which I think was really relatable at that time, we were all isolating. And so I’m going to go to Poland with this project in mind, and I want to see, I don’t know, hopefully I can learn what other people were doing during— how are people recovering from the pandemic. That’s kind of a jump, but. I hear my students talk about the pandemic and they-they’re like, it’s over. Like, that was, I took class with you. It was the beginning of the pandemic or the end of the pandemic, but it’s actually still there. And I think it was really traumatic. Even if you didn’t lose your marriage or change your location.
Lee Moreau Or lose a loved one, I mean yeah.
Sofie Hodara There’s there’s so much. And I think that we’re like, really, I think there’s a lot there that we’re not addressing. And so I don’t know, I guess I think there’s a lot of conversation that can be had about how we recover as a community, as a city, as individuals from this huge disruption, this rupture caused by COVID-19 in 2020. And so I guess I’m like kind of curious, like, what are other people doing or what are the other conversations people are having about about this.
Lee Moreau I’m curious to and I hope we hear more about that this week, so. Sofie, thank you so much for being here with us. Have a great conference.
Sofie Hodara Thank you so much.
Lee Moreau I’m with Giorgia Lupi at Northeastern’s recording Studio. It’s June 25th, 2024. Giorgia Lupi is an information designer, a partner at Pentagram. So much more. How would you describe yourself Giorgia?
Giorgia Lupi Yeah Lee definitely. I am an information designer. That means that every day I work with data actually data that can be qualitative or quantitative, and that together with my team, we translate into visual experiences of any kind. I’m a partner at Pentagram, and since I joined Pentagram quite a few years ago, I also started to work on more traditional branding projects. And I think that as much as data visualization and brand identity look very separate as field, I think lately I’ve been really thinking that what brings them together is the aspect of stories. With data visualization, I usually tell different stories where data is the pretext to again think about facts and quantity and qualitative details. But really also if you think about what a brand is, a brand is a story that through different visual devices, logos, typography, photography can be at the same time what the company wants to express and hopefully what the customers or clients actually want to relate to. So that’s how I’m thinking about the two disciplines within design connecting.
Lee Moreau In preparation for your keynote tonight, I’ve been doing a lot of research on your work and as a consultant, I’ve seen the worlds of data science and design consulting, design generally trying to come together and you just describe them as separate things. But in you, in your person, in your body, they’re one. That’s a unique position.
Giorgia Lupi I think so. Yeah, I really feel that they are one. So I’m from Italy originally and one think that I like Massimo Vignelli that he used to say so I’m going to quote him, that can be a little grandiose, but he said: If you can design one thing, you can design everything. And again, we may then disagree on the fact that you do have to have specific skills to, say, design a product that stands up and, you know, doesn’t like break itself for sure. But that’s where I think then you tap into different specific skill sets in your team if you’re lucky enough to work with the team. And I like to think that really like a design mindset and a real design way to thinking about process and planning and making can lead you to so many different avenues within design. And that’s very exciting.
Lee Moreau This evening you’re going to give your keynote in a session called Design in Recovery, or Design for Recovery, I believe. Talk about your experience with recovery and the project that I think you’re going to be featuring in that conversation and really where you plan to take it.
Giorgia Lupi Sure. So I will be sharing a visual op-ed, so an opinion piece that I published in the New York Times last December. So December of 2023, there was a visual account of my experience with Long COVID. And Long COVID for who is not familiar with it, is a chronic illness that is similar to other post viral infections. So, you know, I think at this point in time in 2024 probably all of your listeners, maybe would have contracted an acute COVID infection. And the truth is, for most people, that really doesn’t have a lot of consequences. But for some of us, and we really don’t understand yet who and why some people get long term consequences, an acute infection and subsequent reinfections can start to lead to various very disparate health problems. And that has been the case for me and I’ve been struggling with different daily symptoms and limitations for the past four years. And, you know, again, because I’m a data person, what do I do ss soon as I start to feel sick and having those symptoms, I start to collect data. So, you know, for four years I’ve been collecting data on the different kind of symptoms that I’ve been experiencing and many other data points such as biometric from my smartwatch or, you know, every level of activities that I was doing, foods that I was eating, level of stress and so on, to really try and find correlations for myself and to present to the many different doctors that I was seeing, but also to be completely honest, to keep me sane and to give me a semblance of control in a moment of deep uncertainty. I published this piece and, you know, the whole thing it’s really like an interactive scrolling where people would see colored brushstrokes percolating, the piece, interacting with the text. And at some point you start to understand that the different colored brushes represent different symptoms. And at some point, like the culmination of the piece is really like a full calendar of my four years where readers will see really that there’s like very few days that are empty, like that look like a canvas, but instead everything is very filled with color brushes. And the reason what I really wanted to publish it is that when I was reading articles about long COVID, I could really just read the list of symptoms. And so, you know, fatigue, headaches, nausea. And what I really think is that perhaps healthy people would say: Well, sure, I’m tired after work as well, or I have headache, but I’ve never seen before. I published a piece, a thorough account of what it means to live with a chronic illness on a daily basis, something that I definitely didn’t know before it contracted long COVID. So I published the piece. I got an incredible response, and I think probably your listeners will ask: So why Design for Recovery? Well, I’m not fully recovered, but I’m doing better. And at some point in my journey after I published a piece, which for me was a little bit of my experience coming full circle, I’ve decided to stop tracking the things that were wrong with my body, and I started a different kind of scratch where I’m actually only tracking progress. The fact that I’m here in Boston with you and I’ll be speaking at a conference, it’s a win. It’s a victory for me being able to walk for, you know, a few minutes and then ten minutes and then a little more. It’s really like a victory and so on. And, you know, not to spoil it, but the really I think to me, the point of tonight will be to think about the data that we choose to look at, which are really the day that actually the data or stories, if we don’t want to call them data, the data that shapes our experience. So that was long winded answer.
Lee Moreau No, that’s a beautiful answer. Where to design research conference. And we hear a lot of thought leaders talking about and some of them are even in the tech industry saying talking about your data like you need to be in control of your data, but for you, your data is something completely different. You take the notion of your data, the sort of personalized notion of it to another level. What does that mean?
Giorgia Lupi Yeah, well, we all right, now I feel, you know, we all produce data. If we have a smartphone, we do produce data. And most of the times we sign up for applications and we scroll through the, you know, texts that is size four in points and just say, yes, okay, not-not really thinking about what data we give away. But that’s I think it’s okay because ultimately we get a benefit out of it and, you know, we just decide or maybe just not think about it too much. And this is this is a bit of the reality. And those areas are interesting. And I think there are interesting things that you can gather and analyze from there, especially if you’ll be able to then, you know, compare your personal data to like in your community to see where you fit. And I’m thinking about, you know, people that have devices where they track their running paths or, you know, their performance athletically. And all of these I don’t know whether it’s a Garmin, an Apple Watch, a WHOOP band, whatever it is, usually they have the community feature that’s, you know, kind of interesting. But if you are a little bit more obsessed in terms of, you know, really learning something about yourself, I think that the most insightful data are the one that you somehow craft, the one that starts with questions that you have as opposed to, you know, these devices tracking my steps and my heart rate variability on how I sleep and gives me a score. But what is really that interest you? And I think most of the time those are fundamental human questions. I’ve done many different projects over the years with obsessive data collection that I know it’s not for everybody, but, you know, sometimes I’d stop and think about, all right, I feel like I’m complaining too much, what if I for a week or two, I start to actually pay attention and track my complaints and understand are they necessary? And so thinking about the one unit of a complaint, which is a quantitative effort, as in I’ve complained this time, but then starting to ask qualitative question, which is, okay, what was it complain about? Who did I complaining to? Was it really necessary? What does it tell me about myself? And I mean, this is one example, but I feel that if we engage, you know, not maybe even for a long time, but for a little bit in this more active type of data collection, that’s where we unlock real insights. And I feel that, you know, more and more in the future, probably with the AI, with our ability to speak to our phones and then possibly generate visualizations or even a spreadsheet by what we log, that will be easier and easier.
Lee Moreau Is there something in particular that you would like to learn about yourself in the future?
Giorgia Lupi Well, at this point I think I’ve tracked and logged a ton, but as I move into what I hope is a bigger or more solid recovery from my chronic illness, one thing that I know that I don’t want to do, and then I’ll I’ll talk about data, is taking for granted anymore the beautiful things of life. Like right now, for example, for me being here in this trip to Boston is incredible. Being able to go out to dinner is great. Being able to book a vacation to Italy, my hometown, after three years that I haven’t been, it’s fantastic. Being able to enjoy, you know, the sun outside and not be cooped up in my apartment because I’ve been housebound for quite a while and this journey is great and I feel that what I really would like to do is through maybe some form of data collection, remind myself to never just really take these things for granted anymore. Because if there’s one thing that this illness has been teaching me is how much freedom to make a decision and do whatever you want without limitation of consequences is actually, to me, the most important thing in life.
Lee Moreau We’re so grateful that you’re here with us this week. I want to talk a little bit more about care in general, though, because that’s kind of, I think, fundamental to your practice, to your-you have a I don’t know if you call it a manifesto, but this is kind of framework on data humanism. And this perspective is really thoughtful and it takes something big and abstract, data, and reduces it down to the scale of the human being. And that seems like an incredibly caring act, a nurturing act. I think you did that for yourself. I think you’re doing it for other people. Can you talk about your role extending this philosophy?
Giorgia Lupi Yeah, I love the way you put it. I never necessarily thought about it in conjunction with the idea of care, but I think you really hit a point. So my idea of putting out this manifesto of data humanism was at some point in 2016 because I kind of felt that I needed to like have a red thread for my practice. I knew that I was really interested in context and detailing qualitative information together with anchoring everything in actual quantitative data points. And I knew that sometimes warm representation of data there, like also embracing imperfection, you know, made my audience relate more than in standard, very precise, you know, bar chart. And I mean, I don’t have anything against bar charts and pie charts, but I think sometimes our reality is so much more nuanced. And I also start to think about data visualization not as a way to simplify reality, because we wouldn’t want something that is complex and nuanced and articulated to just be dumbed down into those like ten points, BuzzFeed, you know, like you learn from this ten bullet point kind of a thing. And so I started to think about, you know, connecting data really to the human qualities that make all data what they are. And I like to think about data as plural sometimes because I feel that when we also say data is it speaks to an aggregated quantity as opposed to thinking about individual and granular data points. So long story short, I think the data humanism is my way of reminding people that ultimately data is or are human made, because even if they come from a sensor, a human being designed the sensor and decided what to collect and what to leave out. So I don’t think that there’s ever going to be true objectivity in data, even if we all think about data as the pure truth, because ultimately they’re all subjective and this is not bad, but I think we all have to acknowledge it together with, again, treating missing data, the data that we don’t necessarily have because we couldn’t collect them as data points and making our choices as designers or to present them very manifest and so on. So I put together these, you know, visual manifesto and how do I think it will extend to people’s work? Well, I’ve already seen it having a life of its own and people talking about data humanism as if it was like a real movement, even though it was actually just like a little paper that I published on Print magazine in 2016. And I feel that there has been other projects that I worked on that really then took a life of its own. And I think that that is when people take it on and experiment and change it and manipulate it in a way that makes sense for them. I think that it’s really one good things and beautiful explorative things can happen.
Lee Moreau I hope many more beautiful explorative things happen for us. Thank you so much for spending time with us.
Giorgia Lupi Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Lee Moreau Thank you again to Jadalia Britto, Rachael Dietkus, Sofie Hodara, and Giorgia Lupi for taking the time to sit down with me.
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 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.
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Observed
By Lee Moreau