The Ambiguous Words of Design, Three Years Later

Professional Life

Apr 12

Three Years Later

How Far We’ve Come

It’s been three years since I wrote the original article, and I’m still proud of it; It’s added at the end of this blog post, if you’re interested. It centers around how to answer the questions us creatives get too often:

“Oh, so you make, like, their websites and stuff?”

— Most people after you tell them you're a designer.

I stand by all my insights, and think it set up a foundation that put me in the right mindset to build and foster relationships. It allowed me to be open to test and iterate my strategies over time. I’m thankful for my younger self for being passionate about elevating design to be an advisor with presence, authority, and respect.

*My father, 2019. He still has no idea what it is that I do.*

As someone looking backwards at what has turned into a wild journey, I’m pretty happy with how far I’ve come so far. Since writing the original article, I’ve become the design lead for one of two multi-year, multi-million dollar innovation efforts that affect my company’s core product. Although my team supports both of these efforts and nothing that I do is done in an echo chamber, I am responsible for the success of the user experience for the oldest one that’s both in production and in development. It’s been a fun, crazy ride that I do not take lightly.

What fills me with joy, though, is reflecting on all those people that were non-believers… until they met me. Their words of support and thankfulness empower me to keep carrying on. They validate that the girl who started three years ago had her heart in the right place. They also validate that everything I do today to maintain and foster relationships, including disambiguating design and our language, is worthwhile.

My favorite redeemed-offender is someone who I truly hope to work with again in the future. He was the hardest person I’ve ever had to win over: It took me a little under a year. I say that, knowing fully well it took me over two years to win over someone else. His case was just different. He had worked very closely with my team for many years, and just didn’t care. He has no idea that I get emotional thinking about the day he told me that my efforts had made the difference in his book. I also know that I didn’t just tip the scale by single digits… I tipped it so much so, that he was willing to go to bat for me on a big personal matter.

I had done the impossible.

My Answer to, “Who are you? What do you do?”

The original article ends asking the reader what is it that we do, in order to introduce ourselves.

Three years later, this is my answer:

My name is Denise Hurtado, and I am the project design lead on an effort dedicated to saving lives by lowering distracted driving. I am responsible for ensuring that what we create and deliver to you, your family, and your friends, can actually help you make it home safer.

This usually results in a “woah…” with a bunch of follow up questions. I am happy to then tell a curated story of how this actually happens that sounds something like:

That’s a great question! It’s a process that takes months, sometimes years, but generally I partner with the business owner, who owns the overall success of the program, and our IT development leads to then design the experiences, make sure they adhere to all sorts of standards, actually build them, and then deliver them to our customers. Some days it’s a screen in an app, other times it’s website, but most times it’s something that doesn’t result in either. How cool is that?!

Not too bad, if I say so myself.

Lessons I’ve Learned

People respond to value that they can relate to.
Every action has a reaction.

Lesson 1: People respond to value that they can relate to.

If something falls outside of a person’s circle of familiarity, it’s too easy to be desensitized to it and brush it off. Life experiences shape that circle of familiarity, and that in turns affects what people prioritize. The funny thing about humanity though, is that no matter where you’re from, there are common things that thread us together. At the end of the day, what a boy from the corn fields of a town with 14k people cares about, is the same stuff that a girl from a concrete jungle filled with 20.1 million residents cares about. I would know – We’re as married as we can be without getting the government involved.

Death. Freedom. Money. Respect. Family. Love. Compassion. Understanding. Community. The list can go on and on for a while. These are things that connect us all, and when you’re trying to relate with people that are not familiar with your world, this the level that you need to go to connect: A very human level.

Notice that in my first response I communicated value by addressing…

…death:

My name is Denise Hurtado, and I am the project design lead on an effort dedicated to saving lives by lowering distracted driving. I am responsible for ensuring that what we create and deliver to you, your family, and your friends, can actually help you make it home safer.

…and family and community:

My name is Denise Hurtado, and I am the project design lead on an effort dedicated to saving lives by lowering distracted driving. I am responsible for ensuring that what we create and deliver to you, your family, and your friends, can actually help you make it home safer.

…and compassion and understanding:

I do not simply say I make screens or an app or websites. In my opinion, that would fail to communicate the value of the work that I do. In one fell swoop, my intent is to answer their immediate question (What do I do?) and also tell them why they should care about what I do.

I think this is important because design is at a disadvantage when compared to other professions who’s value is already part of our lexicon. For example, when someone says that they are a lawyer, you instantly have an idea of the value they provide society. The notion of law and it’s attached professions (lawyer, judge, police officer, etc) is easily understood by everyone. Design isn’t there, and therefore, there’s more to it than just screens.

This pattern of sneaking in more than what they’re immediately asking can also be helpful in a work setting, when speaking to stakeholders or just general networking. The people you interact with, all have individual sets of values but if you can figure out what it is that they care about, then you can craft a narrative that speaks to them.

I’ve found that this can be done in two levels: By speaking to the individual’s personal values, or values attributed to the field. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been quite successful with the latter. However, connecting on a personal level is something I’ve started to consider my fail-safe.

People who are friends, tend to actually listen to each other. I do not believe in being friend friends with your coworkers, but being on very good terms is definitely encouraged. When I have trouble with someone, and nothing else works, I pay attention to how they interact with other people around them. Do they like to be alone? Do they speak differently to certain people? Do they read as uncertain or intimidated? Etc.

Essentially, the goal is to identify two patterns of communication:

The pattern of communication they’ve set with you and others that are of the same social distance to them
The pattern of communication they’ve set with their closest confidants

When you’ve figured this out, then you can compare them and identify similarities and differences. With this in mind, you then can start thinking about how to better your position in their world. The goal is not to be their closest confidant; It’s just to get in a better position than wherever you are today.

In retrospect, the people I’ve really struggled with, have turned out to be my most favorite people at work. It comes to show that you never really know who you’re dealing with unless you put in the time and effort to discover and connect.

Lesson 2: Every action has a reaction.

Now, you may be thinking… aren’t you exaggerating? Is what you guys do really saving lives? Sounds like baloney.

Well, are we doctors or paramedics actively saving lives? Absolutely not.

Are we creating conditions that encourage and enable safer driving habits? Yes.

Do you have reports that some drivers actually drive safer while enrolled? Yes.

What is driving safer? Reducing your risk of being in or causing an road accident.

Can people die from road accidents? Yes, unfortunately.

At no point am I condoning lying or overselling with malicious intent.

But in my situation, you can not dismiss the possibility that there is a connection between encouraging people to drive safer, and them actually driving safer. It is possible that our program lit the spark that set off the chain reaction that helped a driver avoid an accident that could have resulted in injury or death. While what we do is incomparable to the hands of paramedics at the scene of an accident, we could’ve encouraged a driver to not respond to an incoming text; This text could’ve caused the driver to take their eyes off the road for an average of 4 seconds, potentially resulting in a crash.

In my book, setting off the chain reaction to maintain safety is one of the biggest values we can provide someone, so that is what I chose to highlight. I made a conscious choice to exclude the monetary rewards this program provides it’s participants, because I think it’s less important. You may disagree, and that’s fine! All that means is that in your book, you’ll tell the story how you want to.

I also made a choice to make it punchy to invite a follow up. I know that I can’t explain in detail everything that I do in a sentence; I need a conversation. By being a bit clickbait-y, I’m encouraging the person who asked me this question to follow up and dig deeper. This creates an environment where they are likely to entertain a longer discussion about design.

Takeaways For You

I hope that you can start connecting the dots about how to use my lessons learned in your everyday. I’ve teased up some highlights that I think are important. Let me know in the comments if there are others that you think are more important – It’d be interesting to see what we all value.

Identify the true value that you bring to consumers of your work. Do not disregard how your work fits into the larger picture. (What does it help people accomplish?)
When speaking to people, speak to their value. (What do they care about? What is the value that my work provides them?)
Curate a narrative that serves you and your audience. (What do I care about talking about? What should others care about?)
Consider your approach, and the likely outcome, (What approach will get me the result I want?)

Good luck in your relationship building.

Remember, at the end of the day, there’s always wine or the embrace of a loved one to make it all go away.

Original Article on Linkedin

“Oh, so you make, like, their websites and stuff?” —The Ambiguous Words of Design (Oct 16, 2017)

I saw this great meme on Instagram one morning that categorizes my usual response of, “yes” perfectly: “Sometimes I just agree with people so that they can stop talking”… and then I read Bret Stephens’s speech, “The Dying Art of Disagreement” that he gave a few weekends ago.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not one to waiver from intelligent discourse. I’m also not one to disengage because my audience simply just “wouldn’t get it”, you know, due to those stereotypical naïve feelings of superiority that inherently come from being young and overly confident (*insert smirking emoji here*). Trust me, if anything, those feelings empower me to challenge perspectives and educate those who I converse with (and ultimately, myself).

The problem lies in that design happens to enjoy living in an echo chamber. It makes sense: like-minded people can talk about topics with an understanding that others in opposing fields probably have no interest in taking up. So, ironically, when the design community gets asked one of the most common questions in American culture, ”What do you do?”, we are at a loss for the right words. We don’t have an elevator pitch, so we gravitate to nomenclature that is usually indigestible by the general public. Industry terms like “User Interface Designer” or “ Experience Architect” are not translatable, and we forget that — or sometimes we don’t forget that, and simply choose to take the easy way out.

In my case, I’ll let you in on a family secret: No one has a clue on what the hell it is that I do. It’s also a not-so secret that my friends, as lovely as they are, have no idea what I do. Everyone agrees that I’m a “designer”, but the understanding ends there.

Unfortunately, I see this interaction unravel every day, and the consequential dismissal of our beloved field of study. A lack of understanding of those outside the design silo is the catalyst. And, as the number of designers out in the world (read: wild) grows, and the echo chambers we’re used to living in are shattered at paces that the community cannot keep up with, we are left at a loss for understandable words.

Granted, sometimes, it truly is the right time and place to educate on the spot, but even then, is an impromptu ten-minute lecture on the philosophies of user-centered design or the frameworks of experiential design fair when it comes to explaining what it is that we do? This often brings me to question whose responsibility is it to expand that understanding, is it designs’ or others’?

I’m here to argue that it’s our responsibility.

We have to be conscious that as respect for design grows, it’s entering spaces that it’s never been before. We have to be conscious that the individuals that live there have a superficial understanding of our world. We cannot forget that we are entering their world, and in their immediate world, we haven’t earned the stripes to make it our* world yet...

Companies can make sweeping movements to effect change, to adopt human centered design mentalities, but true change begins at the lowest level, human to human; Adoption doesn't work top-down, but bottom-up. It begins with explaining what we do to our business counterparts at team dinners, explaining the experiential implications of technical decisions at workshops, and by including those quiet voices in the room that, perhaps, may be confused, intimidated, or overwhelmed. The point is to always maintaining empathy for who we are speaking with — We’re not here to throw sticks and stones for not speaking our language, we’re here to translate it, so both worlds can start creating a new one, a common one.

I truly believe this positive exchange of language starts with the creation of an elevator pitch; A few sentences that the random person who happens to sit next to you on the plane can digest. Whatever we as a design community decide it to be, it can help us lay the foundation to be better communicators and reach audiences beyond the tiers of privilege and education. Using this as an avenue to earn respect and establish a rapport, sets the groundwork for positive interactions in the future for our community.

This is our responsibility, as designers living in the wild, to define the ambiguous for others. It’s is our field, and it’s time we took some power back — So we’re all faced with the question of, how do we package what we do, and essentially what makes us who we are, in a form that makes sense to all?

I don’t have an answer for that; I don’t even have an educated guess for that…

But I know in order to understand how to package something, we have to understand what we’re packaging. No matter whom you ask, everyone will have a different, albeit eloquent, answer. In full transparency, my understanding of what design is, is an ever-growing convoluted mess of what I’ve learned at school, what I’ve understood others to say, and my personal beliefs.

So here goes my digression:

Design is an avenue for elevating the human experience. It’s a series of methods for discovering the right questions, and challenging them by perpetually asking “Why?” to define their purpose and, “What’s next?” to see the future. These think tanks that we call the design community, are capturing the fundamental human drive for a better life; A basic human need that is slowly unbuckling it’s access to include those who cannot afford it.

As technology advances, and the standard of living rises, the threshold between the analog and digital world is leveling out. I believe we’re getting to the cusp of not understanding the difference between those two worlds, where the transition is seamless. As time goes on, users are increasingly expecting smarter, more meaningful interactions, full of experiential context regardless of whether or not the platform lives in the analog or digital spheres. In short, to elevate the human experience, is to facilitate the integration of context to our designs and begin to attend to users’ emotional needs. The goal is to begin to configure systems, both in technical structure and business models, which understand and respond to the entire human condition. A series of integrated systems, for example, should take into account the factor of time; the way a system communicates with a user at 2pm should be different than at 2am, but also, the way a system communicates with a user that’s has been its friend for 10 years, should be different than with a user that’s only played with it for 10 hours.

Adding this factor of understandability to the more conservative description of design, means creating systems with the illusion of choice. An extraordinary, well-orchestrated, responsive system will carry that illusion through the end, without raising awareness of itself to the user — An organic, original interaction, the result of a humanized artifact. In these scenarios, for example, the user is never made aware of the underpinning mechanics that make their experience run. Sure, we might have to fake it until we have integrated systems that can do this, but it’s this magic trick that designers can pull off, that is the catalyst for the creation of a seduction that is memorable, the difference between extraordinary experiences and those that are just “good”.

Extraordinary experiences don’t stop the moment a user exits an artifact. They loop over and over again. They wander into the subconscious, and live there until it’s time for them to resurface. They become alive again in conversations whether it be in recommendations or story telling, and more importantly, in moments of need. They transcend just being memories; They are experiences that users come back to.

It’s these experiences that designers create, while it be in the form of a book, an app, or anything in-between, that our jobs relish. It’s our empathy, and sometimes sympathy, that makes us great at what we do — Our hunger to understand those that we do not; accumulating hundreds of perspectives, so we can design better by designing for all.

So, to circle back, how do we package that in a few sentences? I don’t have the darndest clue… but perhaps it starts with broadening the minds of our audiences on the meaning of design, or showing how design, business, and technology, are all equally interdependent for the creation of extraordinary experiences…

But in my digression, I see an ironic fact. There’s an empathy that we use every day to do our jobs, however, we forget to apply it to our everyday lives. We care so much for our end users, but why don’t we see the real people that we engage with in the same light? We should be channeling this empathy to communicate consciously. Instead, we tend to put up a wall without realizing it, that earns us an attitude of frustration and willful ignorance. Because, dammit, why don’t they understand what I’m trying to get at? It's right there in the journey map!

I ask all of you to entertain my point of view. Yes, I’m refining as I go; It’s a lesson I admit I’m still learning. I must’ve missed it in the rush to grow up: that you don’t settle your debts by talking “at”, you settle by talking “with”. And if I’m at an impasse, it’s probably because I’m not listening with empathy and speaking the right language. (Or not speaking to the right person, but that's a whole other can of worms.)

I’ll side step a little right now, and address a thought that may float in the minds of those who have a more intimate relationship with me: Yes, I am fully aware that where I completed my undergrad had to coat my viewing lens with layers of naïve privilege in ways that ought to make me blind. Please trust that advocating for change with all the fired up willpower of the loud and proud youth from the top of that mountain is not my goal here. I am fully aware that the real world is not an echo chamber of liberalism, it’s a melting pot of all the above. From what I gather, the goal at school was always to learn how to start conversations, but there was no lesson on how to finish them outside our comfort zone... That second part is up to us to learn on our own.

For those who need some context, I’ve had the humbling privilege to see both ends of the class system through multiple lenses, mostly due to academia and romance, and have managed to be a successful imposter time and time again. But even after seeing all the ignorance from the entire spectrum, I still see a world full of hope for boundless improvement. Because in that ignorance, I see a lack of a common, empathetic language, one that has the potential to help us designate a common space to effect change.

To effect change, I believe, is to create an impact by empowering the unspoken with the right language. It’s about playing the game, knowing where to push, when to pull, and when to let live. As designers, we need to start getting out of our own heads, to start listening, thinking, and speaking with empathy. I’m learning that instead of barking at what’s wrong, I want to begin a journey of progress with the simple goal of setting a stronger stage for working communities in the future. I like to think I can start being a small cog in the machine by making an effort to not allow the ambiguous words of design overshadow the conversation — I want to begin to use words that deepen the conversation.

And I want to encourage the design community to start there, considering it as a whole, and then as individuals, to see where it takes us. Hopefully, only good places...

So, ask me again, what do I do?

Denise Hurtado