S10E6: Richard Ting

Richard Ting is the Vice President of Design for Revenue at Twitter and the former Chief Experience Officer at R/GA, an award-winning innovation consultancy

After almost two decades on the agency side, Richard talked about his decision to move in-house and carry forward design as a strategic imperative:

There is still a little bit of muscle memory in the world or a perception of design as a discipline that’s really focused on how things look, how the pixels are rearranged. And, obviously they’re still a part of that that’s extremely necessary. As designers, we still have to craft the experiences, design the interfaces, make sure things look beautiful and work well. But being strategic as a designer is so important. Putting the customer at the center of all conversations is really, really important. Advocating for the customer, identifying their needs, and then taking all of those insights and driving the conversations to do conceptual exploration — those are the types of things that I’ve seen up close and personal, both on the agency side, but then also on in-house side as well.

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TRANSCRIPT

Kevin Bethune

Welcome to The Design of Business,

Dana Arnett
The Business of Design.

Kevin Bethune
Where we talk with leaders in their fields,

Dana Arnett
About how innovation, access, and curiosity are redesigning their worlds. I’m Dana Arnett.

Kevin Bethune
And I’m Kevin Bethune.

Dana Arnett
This episode of The Design of Business | The Business of Design is brought to you by Morningstar.

Kevin Bethune
People don’t just want financial information. They need to be able to understand it, and use it. At Morningstar, great design transforms the way investors interact with financial data, deeper insights, more personalized strategies, broader definitions of success. Start your journey at Morningstar.com.

Dana Arnett
On today’s episode — connections, through kicks and with communities.

Richard Ting
If the next generation is consuming content a certain way, that’s going to impact how we strategize and how we envision new products for consumers. So it’s really important to be in touch with culture.

Kevin Bethune
Richard Ting is the Vice President of Design for Revenue at Twitter and the former Chief Experience Officer at R/GA, an award winning innovation consultancy.

Dana Arnett
Richard is also co-founder and board member of Laaunch, a nonprofit created to combat anti-Asian hate crimes and to increase Asian representation.

Kevin Bethune
Richard, welcome to the podcast.

Richard Ting
Thank you both for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be on the show.

Dana Arnett
Nice to be with you, Richard.

Kevin Bethune
So no surprise, Richard— you and I both met through Dana when he arranged the Design Business Symposium at an AIGA conference several years ago, where we both got a chance to share our experiences. I think we, if I remember correctly, we both had Jordans in our presentation and a friendship was born. And speaking of sneakers, let’s talk through a bit of your your professional history. During your time at R/GA, I understand you were on the original team that was all things Nike+.

Richard Ting
Yep.

Kevin Bethune
You really helped to get it going. And I think that was connecting the early physical chip within footwear with the Nike+ app on our iPods and then eventually iPhones and then eventually Apple Watch. And you seem to me as being one that’s been long focused on creating digital experiences and communities at the same time. Can you talk more about that project and how finding or building a community like say, Just Do It Sunday was a part of it?

Richard Ting
Yeah, absolutely. That project was an amazing project for myself, an amazing project for R/GA, also an amazing project for Nike and Apple to do that partnership and to to have that foresight. I think even before Nike+ was created back in 2007, I was actually working on Nike running on the agency side, and we had a tool that we created for the running community called the Training Log. And the Training Log was basically a flash app. This is back when websites were built and Flash and the Training Log was in place for at the time hard core runners to be able to log their runs and their miles in this flash app. So runners back then would go for a run, write down their information, go back to the flash website and input the data. And we had, I know a few thousand people that were using the app and they were hardcore runners, but it was really hard to scale that product because you had to do a lot of the the data entry manually. But we, you know, we had an insight there that runners liked collecting their data, they like tracking their data. And then, of course, fast forward a couple of years, there was a moment that was on campus out in Beaverton, and there was a guy who was working at Nike at the time in their tech lab. And this gentleman by the name of Michael Chow, who’s currently at Apple. And I still remember the meeting where Michael Chow showed us the chip, the Nike+ chip, and he described as a chip that would go in your shoe. And the more interesting thing about the chip was that the chip would allow us to to track run data. So based off of a runner running, we can measure their gait, how far they went and then, of course, calculate their time as well. And that was the beginning of the conversation that turns to Nike+. And we said, well, if we had this data, we could start to do a lot of things around just letting runners capture their time, their distance, but then also to form a community online as well. And there are a lot of things that we talked about in terms of the community around Nike+. And I remember there was one conversation where we actually talked a lot about college football helmets. And I don’t know if you remember back in the day, college football players used to get stickers that they would put on their helmets for making like, a big play.

Kevin Bethune
Yes.

Richard Ting
And it was it was a bit of a reward for having a great game. And we talked about how do we actually weave in experiences like that into the Nike+ community where like if you go for a run, the platform actually recognizes that and starts rewarding you. And of course, there are lots of other conversations for Nike+ that were centered around community, things like building out a leaderboard so you could track your progress against other runners within the community, setting up challenges where you could actually challenge other runners to different types of things, like first person to 50 miles or first person to to break 45 minutes in a tank run. So at the very early stages of Nike+, a lot of the conversation around the features that we wanted in the product were focused around community building. And then, of course, the product launch, there was a chip in the shoe and that chip in the shoe. It was the first iteration of product, and it validated that Nike+ was a real thing. And then over the years, the product evolved based off of the technology that was available to us, and it then evolved into the Nike Plus GPS app. When the iPhone first launched and then over the years, that experience evolved into the Apple Watch experience. And then, of course, there are a number of different events and activities that the team worked on to help foster customer acquisition and growth. One example that you mentioned before was the Just Do It Sunday, and that project was all about getting people to run on Sundays. And the insight that we had going into that project was that when runners run on Sunday, they’re much more likely to run on other days throughout the week. So the goal was to get runners out on Sunday. Yeah, so that was those are just some of the activations that we did to drive the community. And the Nike Run Club is still out there. I still use it multiple times per week. And that product actually is one of the main reasons I’m still a runner. So it’s actually turned me into a runner for life.

Kevin Bethune
And that’s amazing. I was a full time Nike employee at the time when the chip was introduced, and so it was definitely an exciting time internally when we were getting the chance to try the product.

Dana Arnett
So Richard, whether it’s Nike+, smart phones, IoT devices like Aware, you’ve made a name for yourself. And a big part of that was your R/GA experience. And you’ve often told me about how R/GA approach projects and certainly how they married and embraced advanced territories that mirrored the physical and digital worlds. Could you talk a little bit about how design became the great integrator or differentiator not only in your product solutions, but also within the culture of the agency?

Richard Ting
Yeah, absolutely. So I spent 19 years of my professional career working at R/GA, and I started at R/GA when I was still in grad school. And I think one thing that attracted me to the company was that I’ve always had this vision of merging design and technology, art and science. I think if agencies or companies overindex just on science and technology, you lose a little bit of the emotion that should be baked into products. You lose a little bit of like the visual finesse that should be applied to products. And if companies overindex just on art and design, they can’t always like push the experiences forward. And I remember when I first joined R/GA, I looked at some of the work, there was always like this blending of art and science. And I took that as like, you know, the marching orders for me as a young designer, like everything that I wanted to work on, I wanted to like push the customer experience, base off of where technology was heading and where consumer behavior was heading. So a lot of my early work at R/GA was focus on mobile. And, you know, when I got there in 2002 I would say mobile was still starting to pick up. People still had their flip phones. And I was doing a lot of experimentation around mobile. And there was one project that we worked on for Nike I.D. Where you could call into the Times Square sign and then once you connected to the sign — and the sign was basically a 23 story billboard on the side of this gigantic skyscraper — but we let users connect to the sign with their cell phones by calling a phone number. And once you were connected to the sign, you could customize a shoe by using the keypad on your phone, and you would see your Nike customized on the side of this 23 story billboard. And that was such a fun project. But at the time, I imagine R/GA as probably like one of the only places where you could do that type of work. So R/GA definitely still holds a very special place in my heart in terms of how I go about my business and my current role. And I think this blend of art and science, it’s is true for anyone getting into this business today. It’s like you have to be able to balance the two.

Dana Arnett
Amen.

Kevin Bethune
Amen indeed. In 2020, you moved from R/GA, where you had been for almost 20 years prior, to Twitter.

Richard Ting
Yep.

Kevin Bethune
How did the relationship with Twitter come about and what was that move like for you?

Richard Ting
Yeah. So at the time there was a chief design officer there. He was building out that Twitter design team and, you know, had a conversation with them. And I, I really loved the vision that he shared with me. He was building an extremely talented and diverse design team there, and he was really passionate about the upcoming product roadmap that Twitter was working on. So he sold me on the vision. He sold me on the approach, he sold me on the culture. For me, moving from agency side to in-house, it was always something that I thought about. Plenty of people that I worked with over the years at R/GA had made the move in-house, and there are quite a few that have been very successful working in-house, leading product teams. So me going into Twitter, I heard all the stories of the adjustments that I would have to make. And for me, I wanted to go to Twitter to work inside of a tech company deeper within the product. One of the things about working on product on the agency side is that sometimes working on strategy, you’re working on visioning, you’re providing concepts. And that 30,000 foot view is, is fantastic. And sometimes you get to bring the work down and you get to maybe work at the 15,000 foot level, in some cases, you might be able to like actually implement and execute. But I think on the agency side and the consultancy side, the opportunity to execute at a detail level was probably not the same in the year 2020 as it was in the year 2012. So going to Twitter and working in-house — yeah, my, my day to day is I work extremely closely with the product design teams, the product managers, the teams, and we’re shipping product. And, you know, I love being on the front lines, working with teams to push product out into the world. At the same time, there’s still a lot of opportunity for a high level strategy there. There’s still a lot of opportunity for for vision. And, you know, I think what agency folks and consultants are extremely good at, are understanding of the big picture and being strategic in terms of how they work as designers. And I think that’s that’s something that I’ve seen agency folks come in, be very successful in terms of how they integrate. So I think it’s been a bit a little bit of a learning curve, but I think a lot of the skills that I had on the agency side are a really good match in terms of what’s needed on the Twitter side right now.

Dana Arnett
So keeping with that in-house theme and-and your role at arguably one of the most ubiquitous content channels in the world, has the experience at Twitter so far expanded your sense of where design can go and what it can do?

Richard Ting
Yes, absolutely. I think I’ve had conversations with you both in the past about design as a strategic discipline, right. And I think depending upon who you talk to, there is still a little bit of like muscle memory in the world or a perception of design as a discipline that’s really focused on like how things look, how the pixels are rearranged. And, you know, obviously they’re still a part of that that’s extremely necessary. As designers, we still have to like craft the experiences, design the interfaces, make sure things look beautiful and work well. But being strategic as a designer is so important, right? Putting the customer at the center of all conversations is really, really important. Advocating for the customer, identifying their needs, and then taking all of that those insights and driving the conversations to do conceptual exploration. Those are the types of things that I’ve seen up close and personal, both on the agency side, but then also on in-house side as well. So I have a lot of confidence that, you know, design as a discipline will continue to grow as a strategic discipline. And, you know, that’s the power of like, you know, design just kind of trickling into every industry and being extremely important.

Kevin Bethune
So just in general, we often bump into each other online as friends with shared interests around kicks, hip hop culture, and art.

Richard Ting
Yep.

Kevin Bethune
How are you allowing those different passions in those areas to actually influence your professional, creative process?

Richard Ting
Yeah, I think especially as a design leader in this day and age, it’s really important to stay connected to culture. I think as culture moves, consumer behavior moves, consumers adoptions, adoption of technology moves as well. So it’s really important to stay connected and to culture. For me, the things that I love, like you mentioned, are sneakers, hip hop, basketball. And yeah, I spend a lot of time looking at what are the latest collaborations that are being launched when it comes to like sneakers? What are the new materials that are being introduced, what are the new colorways that are being introduced? And, you know, those are the things that influence how I think about, say, for instance, some of the shopping experiences that we’re trying to push on Twitter. Of course, like sneakerheads love buying sneakers online and there’s a big culture around how they acquire the sneakers, how the sneakers are dropped. And, you know, some of those insights I’ll bring back into my job at Twitter. I’ll share those insights with the team that’s working directly on the product. So I think it’s important to stay in touch with culture because even just like the little insight of how sneaker heads are in tune with these drops, that type of drop culture has infiltrated not just like the sneaker world, it’s also infiltrated other vertical industries as well. So that’s definitely something that, you know, inspires some of the thinking that I have at work as well. But I think even like basketball, right? I watch a lot of basketball. Sometimes I watch full games, sometimes I watch clips. And nowadays the way the clips are shared, as soon as the games are finished, you know, we are creating this culture of like I call it, highlight culture where like some of these basketball fans today, they’re less likely to watch an entire game, but they’re much more likely to consume like 20 highlight clips the day after the games are played. And that’s an insight that as a designer, I have to bring back into my work. Like, if the next generation is consuming content a certain way, that’s going to impact how we strategize and how we envision new products for consumers. So it’s really important to be in touch with culture because that’s the stuff that really drives the insights that influence the work that eventually turns into product.

Dana Arnett
The Design of Business | The Business of Design is brought to you by Morningstar — investment research, data, and strategies to empower long term investor success.

Jill Axline
I’m Jill Axline. I’m in Chicago and I have been with Morningstar for about four years, and I lead our portfolio marketing efforts.

Kevin Bethune
Jill uses her background in storytelling and design to further Morningstar’s mission.

Jill Axline
Design at Morningstar is the baseline that we build everything on top of. So you don’t really think about data and telling a story of data and integrating design as part of that story. But it was a huge part of it. You know, much of what we do is take really complex ideas and try to convey them with simplicity. Not only do we use design within so that we can make sure data can talk to each other and that they’re labeled correctly, but we also are very concerned with how we project that data then back out into the world so that it can be easily understood and we can avoid conflation. I mean, we are very mission driven. So empowering investor success is really at the core of the ethos, but we do that really by providing a lot of transparency around the data and insights that we’re providing. Part of our really our ethos is that design piece. And so how can we take something complex and really convey it in almost a visual heuristic that will help people really understand it quickly. I think what’s special about design at Morningstar is really that it’s fundamental, it’s part of the fabric. And I think that that has found its way into everything, including the environment that we sit in, the way that we communicate with clients, and even how employees interact.

Dana Arnett
Morningstar design. Providing clarity and perspective at the intersection of design and investing. Find out more at Morningstar.com slash careers.

Kevin Bethune
So you’ve clearly carried design as a strategic imperative for any leadership role you’ve taken on, and very much you’ve pioneered it in many respects. But you also, at the same time appreciate the technical craft, the ingenuity, the systems, the data orientation, the capabilities that inspire the art of what’s possible. And as I reflect on the stories that you’re sharing, it seems there’s all sorts of ways we can now show up for people and hopefully on their terms.

Richard Ting
Yep.

Kevin Bethune
And so in your mind, where is our typical person finding themselves on the Internet today and where will they be tomorrow and how might we show up for them differently?

Richard Ting
Yeah, that’s an extremely great question. You know, Internet culture just moves quickly, changes quickly. And for me, I always think about how much I don’t know. And in most situations, I don’t know much. So it’s really, really important that as you’re building out these design teams, that you’re bringing in designers from all different walks of life, right. Having teams that are diverse, having teams that are representative of the user base that you’re designing for. Like, for me, I am who I am. I’m not going to quite understand what’s happening in other parts of Internet culture. But I think having representation across the board, it just allows for more holistic thinking when it comes to like concept, exploration, strategy. So I do think, you know, to move forward, having teams that are diverse will definitely help solve problems better. I think the other part of your question that you had was where people heading within the Internet. That’s such a big question. I’ve been you know, for me, I love thinking about all the new tech that’s coming out. And, you know, the buzzword right now is like Web3. And, you know, Web3 can mean a lot of different things, right? But it’s the next evolution of the Internet that will, you know, hopefully distribute power and access more evenly, but then also redistribute some of the wealth more evenly as well. So I feel like that’s something that I’ve been paying attention to. So there’s a lot of questions in that space, but you have to take a minute to pause and think about what are the ramifications of these new technologies and how they’re going to eventually impact the Internet in the future.

Dana Arnett
Yeah. In addition to your day job at Twitter, you continued your legacy of activism by co-founding Launch and that’s L-double A-U-N-C-H or laaunch dot org. Can you tell our listeners about this important new endeavor?

Richard Ting
Yes. So Laaunch is actually an acronym which stands for Leading Asian Americans Unite for Change. And, you know, we have three reasons that we exist. One is to fight the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. One is to hopefully increase Asian representation at, I guess, the highest levels of academia, corporate America, media. The last reason we exist is to create resources so that Asian-Americans, allies, and non-Asians can just learn about the Asian-American experience in the United States. So that nonprofit started, I would say, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I was with my cousin having dinner with him, and we were talking about the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. And, you know, we both wanted to do something about it. And, you know, my cousin had a group of friends that he already was talking to about doing something. And he recruited me into the group, and we basically launched the nonprofit. And I wasn’t planning to become an activist when the pandemic started. So I like to call myself an accidental activist. I kind of walked into it, but I did feel like there was a need to just take a moment and just try to evaluate what was happening with this rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. And, you know, we as a group felt that the best way to figure out what was happening there was to to study the situation a bit. And there’s a report that the group has published two years in a row, and the report is called the Staatus index,.

Dana Arnett
Right.

Richard Ting
So Staatus being S-T-A-A-T-U-S, Staatus index. And that’s actually also an acronym, which is social tracking of Asian-Americans in the U.S.. Our CEO, he has a thing for acronyms, and he’s really good at creating them. But the Staaus Index is the largest study of American perceptions around Asian-Americans in the last 20 years. So the largest study, I actually think it might be the largest study in the history of the United States around Asian-American perceptions. So we actually went out and we surveyed several thousand respondents and we asked them a series of questions. And, you know, we worked with the market research company, we work with a series of academics in different universities to to make the study right, to make the study a professional study. And some of the results that came back were really, really interesting. You know, one thing that we noticed in the second year of the study was that, you know, one in three Americans were still unaware of the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. And anti-Asian hate crimes in the last year have gone up 340% across the United States. So there definitely was a rise, but there was-wasn’t enough media coverage for everyone to realize that it was actually happening. And then in the survey, one other thing that we saw that stood out was that 43% of non-Asian Americans agree that Asian-Americans are more loyal to their perceived country of origin than to the US. So in the Asian-American community there is this feeling of folks that live here are still being considered like the perpetual foreigner. And, you know, for myself, I’m born and raised in New York City. And there’s still moments when I travel around the country where I still feel like I’m treated as a foreigner in this country. And I’m born and raised — I’m as American as you could imagine. And, you know, these are interesting statistics that came out of the study. And, you know, one thing that we realized was that face off at this data, there really needs to be more education around the Asian-American history. I think as more people understand the Asian-American experience, they can empathize and they can actually start to understand that, hey, Asians that are born here are Americans. Right, so I think, you know, the report hopefully is driving awareness around some of our challenges, growing awareness and then leading people to create, you know, educational curriculum around our experiences. And one thing that we’re really proud of is like since we launched this nonprofit, I think there’s like seven states that have confirmed that they’re going to start to integrate more Asian-American curriculum into their history programs. And that’s a good thing. I think the more people know about each other, the less question marks or animosity people will have towards each other. So I think education is the first step. And, you know, that’s one one thing that we’ve been proud of. And hopefully our report has been influential in getting those states to adopt more of the Asian-American history into their curriculums.

Kevin Bethune
Absolutely. And when we think about overt acts of hate and ignorance, it definitely translates to a lot of the covert stuff that we experience, especially in spaces where we spend a lot of time. You mentioned the impact on academia that’s happening already. But when we think about perhaps the importance of representation, as you reflect on your personal, professional, lived experience as an Asian-American designer and leader, I definitely am inspired by your your pioneering strides, representing your community, your culture. How do you hope to use your voice, your specific voice moving forward?

Richard Ting
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot more about I would say in the last 3 to 5 years. And, you know, to be honest, I would say earlier in my career, I was working a lot and in some cases my head was down, just getting stuff done, flying out to clients, making sure things were happening on the work front. And I think in the last 3 to 5 years, I’ve been really just looking at myself and just thinking about where I am in my career and what I’m capable of doing at this point in terms of like influencing change, both outside of my work environment, but then also hopefully inside my work environment. So I think, you know, creating spaces that are safe and inclusive, sponsoring folks to be able to like be their best selves, be their authentic selves in the workplace. I think those are really important things. You know, I think for me, like when I was working at R/GA, and I tell people this, Bob Greenberg was-was my sponsor from way back in the day, and he was an ally to me for all those years, but he was an ally when language like that didn’t even exists. So I look back on my experience there and I really, really appreciate what he did for me. And now I’m at that point in my career where I want to do the same thing for folks that are trying to break into the design world, folks that have come from historically, I guess, marginalized communities. You know, what can I do to, like, lift them up, show them support, show them sponsorship, help them along in their early careers as well. So those are the things that I would love to accomplish in the work environment. I think outside of the work environment, I had this Laaunch thing that’s been ongoing. I feel really proud of what’s been happening there. I hope that data and those reports that we produce to produce more enlightenment and more conversations that could not just influence the policymakers, but then also influence how, you know, Asians are looked at inside of the workforce as well. You know, we have, you know, stereotypes and stereotypes like the model minority myth that we have to get past, you know, things like the bamboo ceiling. Those are all things that, you know, we’re trying to get past. And hopefully that, you know, some of the work that I’m doing at Laaunch could help get us past that. So yeah, I think it’s really important that I start to give back and much more aware of that in my later stages of my career.

Dana Arnett
Well, you’re really fortunate to have such a great mentor and set of experiences that shaped you. And as we think about this next generation of designers and how they’re wrestling with new realities and navigating so many issues, whether it’s mental health or career issues or vectors of change — I’d love to hear what you tell young creatives. Is this next generation equipped to take on the world?

Richard Ting
Yeah, I think we all have to be careful not to put so much pressure on these young creatives right off the bat. You know, we all have had 25 years of experience to get to where we are and to be in a position where we can have impact and change on the world and expecting these young creators to just jump into the workforce and just change the world right off the bat. That’s a lot to ask some of these young creatives. But, you know, I have a lot of confidence and faith in what I’m seeing a lot of these young creatives, they care so much about what’s happening around them and they want to solve the complex problems that society is dealing with. But at the same time, I think we also have to realize that the last three years have been extremely different, right. And, you know, I feel it as someone who’s been in the industry for such a long time. Just imagine these young creatives just trying to adapt to this remote work environment, dealing with a pandemic. It’s not a easy transition. And I think in the workplace, you know, one thing that I have to do is I have to recognize that, you know, there’s the work, but then there’s everything around the work and you want to create the space. You want to create space for your young employees to be human, to like discuss what are the things that they’re dealing with that may not just be specific to work, right? Like sometimes I’ll be on Zoom calls and I have a young creative on my team and, you know, they’re they’re dealing with their kids, they’re dealing with their dog — there’s a lot happening there. We had to hold space for our team to manage our families, to take care of their mental health and, you know, allow them to do what they need to do so that they can show up and work in a in a good place. And I think ten years ago, we would all just show up in the office and everyone just thought about work. And I think that that type of mentality cannot exist in the year 2022, 2023 and beyond. We’re in a very different place, very different mindset, and we have to be extremely supportive of how these young creatives are dealing with all these challenges with the pandemic, yeah.

Dana Arnett
Well, here’s to more humanists and bosses like you. Richard, this has been a real inspiring dialoge, and we can’t thank you enough for taking time with us today.

Richard Ting
Absolutely.

Kevin Bethune
Richard, thank you so much.

Richard Ting
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to be on the show.

Kevin Bethune
The Design of Business | The Business of Design is a podcast from Design Observer. Our website is DBBD dot design observer dot com. There you can find more about our guest today, Richard Ting, plus, the complete archive from past guests and hosts. To listen, go to DBBD dot Design Observer dot com.

Dana Arnett
If you like what you heard today, please subscribe to the podcast. You can find The Design of Business | The Business of Design in Apple Podcasts, or however you listen to podcasts.

Kevin Bethune
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Dana Arnett
Thank you again to our partner Morningstar for making this conversation possible. Experience the intersection of design and investing at Morningstar.com. And between episodes you can keep up with Design Observer on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Kevin Bethune
Our producer is Adina Karp. Judybelle Camangyan edits the show. Betsy Vardell is Design Observer’s executive producer. Our theme music is by Mike Errico. Thanks as always to Design Observer founder Jessica Helfand, and other previous hosts Ellen McGirt and Michael Bierut.

Dana Arnett
See you next time.

Kevin Bethune
Talk to you then.