Hello and welcome to another episode of the AIGA Design
Podcast. My name is Li Shan Huang, Senior
Director of Learning and Programs here at AIGA, the
professional association for design.
On the show this season, we are exploring the theme of design
and performance through different facets of those words.
And so we are looking forward to having you explore that with us.
And we are wherever you get your podcast.
But also you can watch the video version on YouTube at a IGA
design. If you haven't seen us there,
you can check out our guests and see our faces there as well.
Hi everyone, I'm Julia Nathaniel, Design Competitions
and Events Manager at AIGA. Hello everyone, I'm Sahar Chow.
I am an Associate Director of US Research for Multiplayer AUS
Agency and I am located in the GC metropolitan area.
Thank you very much, Sahar, for being here and accepting our
invitation. We're excited to learn more
about you and also share with our listeners.
Sahar, so I know you hold bachelor degree in Fine Arts
with a minor in Korean studies. Very interesting, surprising.
And then after that you pursued a masters in UX.
We are curious to learn more about you, if you can walk us
through your motivations that led you to this path and your
journey as a professional, as a designer in your career so far.
And how have the Korean studies, in a way, inspired your path?
Yeah, it is an interesting background, my education
background, but I think the the best like kind of way to
describe it is my first ever job while I was in underhand was at
NASA. I was a intern at NASA.
I was a what we call a NASA contractor and that job though
not called US because they don't really use that especially back
then. It was a they especially like a
service design information architecture role.
And I don't know, it was set the stage even when I worked as a
rapid designer after under, I tended to were in roles that
were very related to service design and information
architecture like throughout my career.
And so my second job kind of at while I was still in undergrad
was also as a media researcher, which is a lot more on the desk
research side where I'm like and trying to Google people and
understand like who works at what outlet and what's their
background. And so that was also like a
really funny thing to look back on and be like, oh, I was
literally doing what we called just research as a researcher
now. But yeah, I think what what kind
of drew me to the US side was just looking back on my career
and looking at like, I love package design.
I love illustration. What else do I enjoy about the
work that I do? And, and I found that, you know,
I have been doing so much service design and I'm put it at
it because my brain is very like process oriented.
I'm like, I love to like figure out like a process for, for
people and make sure it's usable.
And so that was kind of the reason I, I went into my masters
in US was to kind of formalize my education around that, that
area. And yeah, I, I've like fell in
love with like the research aspect of US.
And so that was kind of like my my journey.
But I think with the Korean studies also, it was really.
So I had the chance to study abroad in Seoul, South Korea.
I've visited many other times after that.
I just love it. And I think that is really
helpful to have kind of this global perspective of not just
like was designed in America as like our world is more
globalized because of the Internet and everything.
It has been really helpful to have like this answer of life,
what is designed the place in Korea or Asia or wherever else.
It just was like a really helpful experience to like open
my mind a little bit in that way.
Wow, lovely. Very, very cool.
I love it. And you mentioned that you're
very passionate about illustration and how that is
connected to the beginning of your practice.
How do you think this is intertwined your fine Fine Arts
training with being a researcher in practice?
Yeah, Yeah. I think that that's such a tough
question because I feel first of all like one of my main cross
functional partners as a researcher is designers.
And so having a design background isn't that common.
It's not that uncommon either for researchers, but I find that
it helps me really understand what their holes, motivations
like, what their needs are. And so being able to partner
really closely with my design counterparts has been much more
seamless. I would say like one of my last
jobs where I was for a cybersecurity company, the very
small U.S. team, and I was the only researcher.
They had two designers and the director of US.
And what was really cool about having a design bathroom was I
would just put in there and be like playing around with like
wireframes and like such gym fans out with them based off of
the research that I had, you know, conducted and what the
insights were telling us. And that was like a whole thing
to be able to like go into an ideation phase with them as a
partner and not have to say like hand off, have fun, but more be
able to be in it and collaborate with them.
So that was really, really awesome.
We used to do design for chiefs, like place to be.
And I would be able to say like from a visual design
perspective, I, I do have like some ideas for, for what you are
working on. And so that was really cool.
I think another fun thing with illustration, I did a bit of
like 6 month research bath persona project while I was at
that company and we had to kind of deliver these personas in a
way that was usable. Of course, I don't want to be
like, here's a lot of tests to have fun trying to fill it out
with these people. So I've really spent time on the
visual design of like how to present them.
And I made these like cards and I illustrated instead of using
like free photos off of like unslashed, I illustrated
different people that might be that persona.
And so it was like fun to bring like the illustration side into
the research side. That's awesome.
I'd love to jump back in time a little bit.
You mentioned being a contractor at NASA earlier in your career,
which is very cool. My partner's actually doing a
PhD at an aerospace group at MIT at the moment too.
And I actually had the chance to visit the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in 2019 when we had our AIGA conference there and
gave a guest lecture there. But anyway, yeah, I'm curious
about you. Like, can you share a little bit
more about that experience? You were saying that they didn't
really have UX as like a label as a job function then.
So what was the role of design while you were there at NASA,
and how did you fit in as a designer, even if they didn't
officially have that UX label? Yeah, it's so interesting
because I think a lot of times when they think about NASA,
we're like, oh, the loho. It's so I haunted or you know,
there is like this like aspect of NASA where we think about
like design that like retros is like space vibe.
Yeah. All these things that really
were like pioneered by by NASA or influenced by NASA.
But it was really interesting. NASA is a federal agency.
It's huge. Things are heavy slow.
It's weird because there's this kind of juxtaposition of NASA as
like this huge innovator in the science life space, you know,
science and math and like the the way that they're kind of
like always innovative on that end.
And then on the other side, we have kind of like the business
side of NASA and that tends to be a little bit slower in how
they're adopting new, new technology.
I remember one of my, this is my second internship with NASA.
I, my whole job was basically an information architect.
I looked at this library for a specific type of satellite and
the library was a literal room with file folder.
Like it was like file habits Manila folders from 1968 until
2000 whenever like early 2000 when I had the internship.
And it was just like paper. It was just like so much paper.
And they were like Ruhana digitize all of this and they
were like, OK, but it was really cool because there was no
process. It was new for them to save
Ruhana Digitizes and make this available but so here on like a
shared drive for everyone. Totally.
So that was like a new thing at the time.
And this was like before SharePoint even.
So I can imagine. But it was a really cool thing
to be like, on the one hand, very manual doing through every
paper. It was like we are building this
process as we have. But then on the other hand, it
was like cool to be able to like innovate a little bit around how
we were going to tackle the problem.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's like this weird, like balance of like there is
like opportunity to innovate. It just might sound like to some
people the most boring thing in the world.
And to me I'm like, oh, how are you?
Have a lot of it, you know? Yeah, yeah.
What's the folder you know I? Feel like a lot of that is like
the innovation that happens maybe in the background or it's
less sexy than like the literal rocket launch or or even like
the logo as you're talking about.
I think this is a a big debate in the design world.
So I'd love your take on this. Sahar, Are you Team Meatball or
Team Worm when it comes to the NASA logos?
It am teen worm. I just find it to be so like
classic, clean, lovely. I used to hate the people.
I will say head back now. I don't hate anymore.
I say it is very reminiscent of my but the 90s.
It feels so 90s like a little bit like the sans serif and
like, I mean, sorry, the serif font and then like put all that
like detail in the back and you're like, I can't even look
like this. But I think it is really a
hotter now. And like, I think there's a
special place for both by and and team Worm.
Yeah, and team. Worm as well.
There's just something very like mid century retrofuturist about
it, but the minimalism I think works, especially if it's going
to be on a uniform or on a spacecraft kind of thing.
Yeah, absolutely. Very.
Cool. You know, you mentioned that
earlier when you started your career, the naming of the role
wasn't even UX research or UX then.
I'm also curious to hear more from you.
How do you think are the key differences when it comes to
research and how this the naming has changed?
So we started customer research, consumer, user and now
experienced research over the last decades.
What are the major, the major shifts that you see in the
agenda setting when it comes to to research and where do you see
this going? So what's the evolution of of
this field like? What's the future?
What are the trends that you see?
Yeah, I think that it's so interesting because I still see
a lot of differences in in like these job titles depending on
the organization, honestly. So we'll sometimes see like
customer research and that they'll you know, and or will
haul it that even if the research is for employees like
so it's not really a customer in the traditional science, but
that's what they haul it. I see like user research, I see
UF research, I see design research where you're like
really researching for as like a partner to the design part of
the world. And I feel it all depends.
That part of it at this point feels very like it just depends
on the the different or what their focus is.
Sometimes there might be a question to the like the US
maturity of a company, but I honestly feel it sometimes just
depends on the orb chart and like where research is sitting.
I know that in my past experiences, research has that
under the product team it sat on the design, like design was its
own function and it was just there by, you know, their
engineering. I've I've seen it, you know,
where researchers under engineering.
I've also, I haven't experienced this myself, but I know a lot of
people who as researchers have been like, yeah, my research, US
research is under Marshall because it is connected to
Marshall research, even though it's not the same function, but
there's overlap. And so I think, yeah, it really
just depends on like how companies are set up.
So some of it is close back to that.
I think this the evolution, however, from AUS standpoint, US
started and it was very like that's so doing everything.
They might be a generalist, they might be doing some research and
some design and some strategy and then all these niches kind
of threw out of that over time. I was like, the field matured
right now with kind of the way the research field is moving.
You know, there have been a lot of layoffs in tech in the last
like 2 years and they're still, you know, we're still seeing
some happening even now what I, you know, the, the talk on the
street. So this is that research is kind
of evolving as like more of a strategic partner.
And so instead of saying like here are my insights, it's now
up to you. It's more like let me map my
insights to like business holes and team holes and department
holes and really understand like the how far reaching the
insights can be and what the impact of them might be.
And then over time, you didn't actually measure the impact of
those sales, but that is kind of what we're seeing.
A lot of the conversation is around right now.
And I feel a bit of her that is like, you know, the layoffs, but
it kind of almost allowed everyone to like take a moment
to be like what? How can they be that like a
value to our partners and our stakeholders.
So yeah, that's the bit of the bit humble right now.
Awesome. Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for your your perspective on the the current trends.
Yeah. You also mentioned in the
beginning of our conversation that you're more of a process
oriented person. And I'm, I'm curious to to learn
more how is a standard project or like a routine project that
you have experienced in from a research point of view.
So what's the so from the beginning until the end?
So how you know, how do you engage with the stakeholders
involved? How do you build that flow with
your team? Yeah, it's, it's a really hard
question. I think that everyone kind of
has their own way of tackling that.
And of course, depending on like what type of project it is like
the, but like many heard of it might change.
But for me, I definitely have like my like here's like kind of
the beats that I want to hit in this project.
And the most important to me is holding into any project with
what I wholly have problems hoping exercise or alignment
half off. And So what I would do is I
bring like all my house social partners if I, if they're
available ideally into one room, usually still online, it might
be in Zoom room, but we'll all hit into one space.
We'll all hit into one food jam together and I have kind of a a
workshop that I leave that helps me understand all the contests.
I need to know what they also try to do with that is be very
problem 1st and not solution first.
So I don't, you know, they might help my partner might help me, a
product manager might say, hey, I think we need to add this
feature and that is a solution. So what I'll do is I'll be like,
OK, let's do that and let's understand why do we think that
that feature is needed? We'll find it backwards and
understand what is the problem we're trying to understand
better so that we can move forward with, with actually
making a decision about a solution.
And so, yeah, in that alignment medium, you know, we'll, we'll
slope down the problem. We'll write a, you know, I'll
write a refined problem statement based off of it.
But the other thing I like about it is we also will write down
everyone's assumptions, everyone's biases.
What questions do I need more? If the people in that room don't
have the answer, I'll write down all the questions I need to hold
Dave more into with other stakeholders.
And usually the people that are with me will be able to put me
in the right direction if I don't know who to hit up.
But what I think that really sets like a high foundation for
any project because you really like, let's all take a moment.
Let's like rewind, Let's all really understand where we're
starting from so we can move forward really nephotically.
It'll help me figure out what methodologies to use because
it's depending on what the, you know, whatever the problem is
that we're trying to understand better will help me write
research questions or holes and then questions.
And then, you know, you kind of like hold this like waterfall,
like OK, now I know that and I haven't feel out what
methodology is. The other big thing is I'll
understand like constraints, whether that is time or budget.
Sometimes, sometimes it's like technical constraints when you
go hungry, technical projects, it's like how, what can I, what
is even possible here in this space?
So I think that's the big one. But I'm like that will set the
stage. As for the actual like project
moving forward, depending on the methodologies, everything will
be different. But my big thing is I will
always have a touch point with my personal team.
So whether that's like the holy sale, we can all just be like,
here's where we're at, here's what I'm learning, here's what
I'm doing. Has anything changed like or,
or, you know, sometimes a positive timeline is going to
change. Like you just don't know.
So having that like close touch point is really important.
And then from there, because I have these like check insurance,
I'm not like way down for like this aha moment at the end.
I, I'm bringing them along with me so that it feels very
collaborative. I think that's really, really
important. I say this all the time, and I'm
going to say it here, a bit of her being a US researcher is
relationship building. It is like understanding you
know the pain points of the you know your house, social team and
and like your stakeholders. Because you're going to be able
to do your best with when you're, you have that full
picture. And so, yeah.
I want to pick up on the point you made earlier about
relationships. You we talked about your
experience at NASA earlier on in your career.
Since then, you've worked in a variety of fields from the game
industry to cybersecurity. So as a designer, we often have
to work in a lot of work with people from very different
industries and disciplines, right, that are different from
our own. So how do you engage in these
highly technical subjects like cybersecurity or even the game
industry where you're collaborating with subject
matter experts who maybe don't know design or quite different
from designers? Like how do you become enough of
an expert in the process to engage while also working with
experts in their respective fields?
Yeah, it is like a really funny thing because I personally am
like, oh, like really complex industries.
I like, I love it like more of that.
And I think this because as a researcher and and like, you
know, service designer and like the background, I'm always just
like I want to do around and understand this like area that I
might not know that well. But I think the best thing is
like when I started in cyber society, I have never worked in
cyber society before. I have worked at NASA, which had
very stringent security policies.
So I was aware of it from a high user perspective.
I'm like, I don't know how it works maybe, but I do know like
what I have to be very mindful of, right?
And I remember my manager at the time was like, I highly love
that you don't have a cyber society background because you
have less bias. Like you're just humming in
fresh. You're looking at the space like
with new fresh eyes. And so I went into that really
like looking to learn, but also knowing that I'm not going to be
the expert in the room. And even now, like I worked
there almost 2 years, I, I still have all this like safety
knowledge in my brain, but I'm not asked for.
I know that like other people know any of it.
But what was really helpful was when you're preparing to talk to
a highly technical person like a society admin or a chief
information security officer, you just want to know that
you're going to hoe into it. Like I'm doing a user interview
with this type of light user. You just know that you're going
to probably say words that you don't understand, and that's OK.
And it's also OK to say, hey, could you describe that to me?
Or imagine I'm like a third lawyer and you're explaining
that back to me like a little bit more simply.
It's OK to do that. It's also OK to be like, I don't
have time to do any of that. So just depending on what, what
the situation holds for. I think the other thing was I'm
back to what, you know, the relationship building aspect
that we, we were talking about. Like I relied on my, my team,
my, my, the company, everyone across the company to be my kind
of like technical partners in trying to understand.
First of all, our product was super technical itself.
So learning that was a, a whole family.
It's a village to help me understand it really well, but
also just understanding a lot of the Jorhain, a lot of like the
the different like cyber superior tasks that might be out
there. Like just understanding that the
landscape of the field was really, really, really helps by
having really hard relationships and building those
relationships. I think one whole example was I
did this information architecture project while I was
there. There were features in the
product that were like Tahoes, you could Tahoe on and off like,
do I want to have this sat down turned on?
And I was like, I don't know what this is.
And so part of my initial like desk research was like, let me
meet up with a bunch of stakeholders and figure out what
each part of this product is. Like what do they mean?
Because a lot of the product had been built and and the like
labels and the US writing have been done by the engineers over
the years and they understand the real technical and maybe
like and not everyone is going to understand it the same way.
And so it was very helpful to like hurry around and kind of
sleuth and and figure it out. But but it all hang down to the
relationships when like people being happy and willing to help.
The husband had that collaborative back and forth
already. That's great.
I love that you brought that. They valued the fact that you
didn't know much about cybersecurity to bring this new
perspective to the table and probably ask questions that they
did not think about. Yeah.
I think it has a lot to do with bringing a diverse team to the
table. And I think based on what you
mentioned earlier that you're very interested on bringing this
global understanding multicultural approach to your
practice starting from your Korean studies interest.
I'm curious to learn more from you what what exactly what types
of methods that you create with your team when you're choosing
what path to follow in the research process that you
understand it's inclusive and generating sites that are
applicable for a wider audience. So take into account this
multicultural context. Yeah.
I think that this thing with kind of embracing like diversity
and inclusivity as the US professional, whether design or
research, it's, it's one of the funnestones of like how we want
to especially in research. I think as we through users for
our studies, we want to make sure that we're avoiding like
any inherent bias. So an example is like for that
cyber security company, I don't want to only talk to chief
information security officers that are men because like, I
know that there are women out there who do this, you know, do
this role, even if they're not the majority.
And so that was a big part of, you know, I did this big
personal project with them. And it was it was also like
making sure there was, you know, diversity from all vectors.
It's not just like, you know, you know, male, non binary, but
it was also by looking at, you know, different races of people
who work on these roles and not trying to pigeonhole myself into
just one area. I fail.
And so as a researcher, we're always trying to make sure that
we have a very high representative sample and that
we're not just default seems like the easy to find, you know,
needs. And so it does come down to when
whenever we get food for users, for any study, we'll always
write a Screener. And it really comes down to like
making that very inclusive. And so you might be like, oh,
it's just a Screener. It's easy.
And it it's like, yeah, it is. But you want to make sure that
it isn't accidentally leaving out certain groups of people.
And so there's that aspect of it that is really important.
I think there's also, you know, we have, I've worked on projects
that have a horrible audience and knowing that if people
aren't just American, then I shouldn't only do the research
with Americans because then you're really pigeonholing.
But those insights are very, very skewed to one part of the
user base. So you just want to make sure
that whatever research you're doing has like that
representation in the actual, you know, processes and stuff.
Yeah. I.
Want to pick up on this global point that you made about
diversity, which is very much like under attack right now.
But the reality for business, regardless of your politics, is
that especially for service based tech companies, right?
For UX research, we have to consider users from diverse
cultures, geographic backgrounds, but also just like,
you know, who's live in different bodies, right?
So how do you ensure that those methods are actually inclusive?
You said a little bit about it already in terms of including
different kinds of research subjects and collaborators, but
yeah, how do we encompass that into our research methods and
also in the insights part of it and gathering insights And yeah,
could you maybe give examples in the context of a project?
Yeah. I think that one of the the
difference is like, you know, I've been our US research team
of one as in like I was the only researcher.
I had a lot of companies. When you have other researchers,
it becomes so much more helpful because you're able to like
bounce stuff off of each other and be like and my and my other
path here. And then the diversity of your
team helps with that, right, where people are all hunting in
with their own diverse perspectives.
You know, my team now is quite diverse and a little bit larger.
And so they have like that, that nice synergy of being able to
like do that with each other. But you know, even in, you know,
at like a couple of my last companies where I was the only
researcher, but I work with designers, they're also still
there as their partners. And they are also there to be a
kind of diverse like thought partners in the world.
And so I think that the best thing is understanding best
practices is really important here.
You don't have to hold alone. You don't have to like to hurry
out from scratch. Like there are going to be hood
practices for how to and you can kind of do around online and
like with different, you know, thought leaders in the space,
but you know there will be other practices around like that
inclusivity and like making sure that there is diverse
representation. I think also when you present
the insights like you mentioned at the end of kind of your
question, I for example, that persona project where I
illustrated the different. So I have 3 personas at the end
of the sixth month research that project, I, you know,
interviewed 30 people and we hopped down to like, these are
the, the segments, these are the free personas.
And what we kind of saw was like, it was like a really cool
thing like that. They weren't like the people
I've talked to within each of those personas was very diverse
from all different vectors. And so when I did the
illustrations, I really made sure to say like, you know, like
different groups were represented for each.
I did 3 drawings for each persona as like her visit.
Because I think when you do a persona and personas are always
a little bit of a hot topic like that.
But when you do personas, often you'll see one visual
representation of what that persona is, right?
It'll be like one person, a giant or an image of her photo.
And it's kind of like to help people empathize as like this is
who it is. My manager who was the director
of the US, we actually talked a lot about like, let's not do
that and let's try to represent each persona as three different
versions of who they might be because a persona is not one
person. It's like have a group that is
helping define and understand a group of people, right?
Totally. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And so I really made sure to say
there's a lot of representation that this one persona that saves
a life might actually be represented by very different
people in other aspects of their life.
They might not be very similar, but in the way that they about
their work they are the same, if that makes sense.
Totally, yeah. And I think just personas in
general, you know, I feel like there's a, there's a lot of
caveats to them in terms of just taking them with a grain of
salt. And again, like the
representation, it's like it's not a real person, but there's
still something helpful about them.
I think they're controversial too, right?
Like some people, like, are like, let's not do personas
anymore. But even if you use real people,
there's still, there's always going to be some sort of
selection bias of like, who are these real people that you
selected to feature, right. Whereas A persona might be a way
to make some generalizations, which we always have to do when
we're designing at scale. Yeah.
Absolutely. So Sahar, I know you've been
very involved and supportive in the UX community through events
and mentorship. And yeah, I'm curious to to hear
more from you in terms of advice that you can share with with our
listeners. Interested in starting a career
in UX or UX research or making a transition from another career
to this space. What are your recommendations
and what what are the transferable skills you think
folks might bring from other fields?
Yeah, it's a really hard question because there are a lot
of transferable sales. So I think the first thing I'll
say is, you know, I mentioned earlier, you know US and just
test are going through a little bit of a rough patch, but that
doesn't mean like you can't pivot and you can't transition
into a career in like USI think you just have to be kind of
thoughtful about how you feel about it.
So my big fail is, you know what your current role is or your
history or your experience that you've had in your career.
What's that through the US lens? So what I mean by that is like,
as you're learning, whether it's self-taught or if you're in a
program, if you're learning about US understand now kind of
like what the role is, what are the keywords that you kind of
need to understand? What are the the methodologies
that you should be familiar with all that.
And then I always tell people to like look back like the slides,
almost like do a workshop with yourself on big Jam if it's
helpful and say, you know, if this is like the methodology or
the thought process or the still needed in this field.
Do any of my jobs have areas where I was doing that and it
just wasn't called that? I think a really good example is
like healthcare, you know, because I'm like people that
were in healthcare, whatever their role.
I've, I've mentored people who were artificial therapists or,
you know, people who were like, you know, nurses and they wanted
to like transition into US research.
They have this ability, the House of their role, to ask
questions to the heart of someones pinpoints, right?
You're building rapport with your patients and you're trying
to understand where they're coming from, and you're having
empathy for them so that you can treat them better.
Are they written how a US researcher might write them?
Probably not. But I think that it's such a
hard foundation of like having those skills already and then
you just build off of them. I think another field that
really does move well into US is like education, because Iran,
you're, you're helping people learn.
And a lot of what you do in the US is figure out how to help
people use, learn how to use films more easily.
So it's like, how do I make this usable?
How do I make this learnable for someone?
That is even a method that sometimes people even try to
measure is like the learnability of a product.
Is it? And I put this in front of
someone, how much hand holding do they need before they can
actually use it by themselves without me having to be there
with them or without customer support.
And so I think that handling education had really light
transferable. So it really is so many fields.
I'll even say one of my jobs when I was in college was I
worked for the Herons hair brand Aveda.
And Aveda had this really specific way of how you talk to
the the customers. They held them the last that
were hum in, but the customers were hum in.
And you know, they're why I need new shampoo.
And you don't just ask them yes or no questions.
They've always said ask open-ended questions like tell
me about your hair. Tell me what problems you our
face down with your hair hair currently.
Tell me about your current routine with your hair, whatever
it is. And that is all but US research
kind of way of looking out writing questions for a user
interview is like open-ended. Don't ask yes or no questions.
So I know what people, because you don't know, but yes or no is
gonna be such a small, narrow view of what the actual bit
picture is. Allow them to kind of paint the
picture for you. And that was just like her
retail job. But I always tell all that story
because I'm like, it was kind of cool.
I was like giving you that research without I was learning
the the best practices without even being a researcher yet.
And now what you brought about the transferable skills for,
for, for for folks who are working with education.
That's the point that I had not thought about when it comes to
designing new products and how learnable that product can be.
And bringing this skill to the table is very.
Yeah, it's very relevant, yeah. Yeah, I think that connects well
with the theme of the podcast and also of our conference this
season. And for folks listening,
watching to this, the AIGA Design Conference of 2025 is
October 9th through 11th in Los Angeles, CA.
We'll post a link to this, but we'd love to see you there.
But for Sahar, the theme is design and performance.
And you've already alluded to a little bit of this in terms of
building relationships, but also your experience working at Aveda
and asking these open-ended questions with the guests, with
the customers here. And so just ask all of our
guests this season to riff on this theme of design and
performance, right, Because as researchers, you are preparing a
script, but you're also an improviser because something
interesting could happen during the interview, during the site
visit, however you're conducting that research.
I'd love to have you. Yeah, reflect on that and refund
the theme of how you see performing your role as a
researcher. Yeah, I love the same.
And I think there's a few different ways it really shows
up as a researcher. One of them is like you said,
like when you're in a user interview, you're in a usability
test that is moderated, you're in there with the user.
Sometimes it's, it's not gonna hold the way you think and
that's a hot thing. I think those are like the
really like interesting knowledge of information come
from. So when best practices write
those open-ended questions, we always have to just hush and
hide and we prepare. But I always, and this is the
thing that I, I teach my team too, is I always have follow up
questions underneath every question where I'm like, here's
a big theme that I know like they're really open-ended.
And then if they don't talk about this aspect, I'm going to
nudge them on that, you know, And so it's just like having
these little follow-ups to help hide films, but also allow the
user to take you, you know, where they want to take you in
their answer. Because if that's what they care
about, that's important. You know that that is definitely
there's like that aspect of like it's like a structured.
I'm sure sometimes the questions will come in a different order
than you thought. Like they want to answer 2
questions in one. So just being really like on
your feet and ready to like move and be fluid and move with it.
I think it's really helpful. I also love that you said the
word improv because I really feel like like I haven't taken
an improv class. I'm like, should I?
Because I feel like it would be such a like relevant title to
like patches in that way because you just just have to be able to
like, like pivot and move with the flow and the height of him
as a researcher. And that is also true when
you're presenting information. I found presenting anything as
anyone, not just a researcher is a performance.
You are a performer now. I always try to right now
actually on my team, he started the same every studio I saw.
Tell me why someone has to sign up and present something for 10
minutes and kind of provide feedback.
We ask questions because there isn't always opportunity for
everyone, especially like intermediate, like mid level and
lower to present their insights to our clients because they're
not, you know, usually that's going to be like the senior
person on the team. So I want them to have that
practice still. And so I'm like present
anything. It doesn't have to be current
worth definitely whatever, but do you want to say about this as
a story and not just I did this, I learned this, this is my
recognition, but that Noah hears, but that's so boring.
Yeah. But even as a researcher, my
eyes will blaze over if I'm in a presentation that's just like
chronologically, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I've done it. I've done it too as an
intermediate like I was, I don't know.
This is how I I want them to know the words I did.
No one hears about. They don't know what those words
are like. You know, when I say like I did
this methodology, I don't know what that is.
So just know your audience, like be able to speak to your
audience. If you're talking to product
team, what do they hear about? If you're talking to like the
whole company, you're going to want to be more generalized.
You want to speak to multiple different people within, you
know, the same presentation. So it's just about like, like
figuring out that flow. I will say it also, I feel like
people who play Dungeons and Dragons would be really.
Yeah. That is improv ultimately,
right? But you're in the moment, you're
playing a character, you're figuring out how to respond in
real time to different things that pop up.
And I do love G&G so I any chance I can like talk about it
in anything I like? But yeah, it's funny you
mentioned both of those things because I've been doing improv
for the last almost two years now, actually just started
teaching it or being a teaching assistant for it here in
Providence. But recently I went to a show
where it was Dungeons and Dragons improv.
So they had comedians like do a live show of DND, like a single,
like one shot, you know, rather than a campaign.
And it very much is like improv adjacent.
Yeah, You know, certainly doing this show is like this too,
right? Like Julie and I have questions
prepared, but we're also just riffing with you, connecting
with you in the moment for follow up and stuff like that.
So I recommend it to any designer, any researcher,
because it's even if you never perform for the public in an
improv show or if you don't think you're funny, there's
still skills there that just help you be in the moment and
improvise in your own job or even prepare you for public
speaking. Because if I think for most
people like memorizing your speech and trying to give it or
reading off cue cards, like they, they all have their own
kind of issues of being like kind of robotic or like, you
know, sometimes the audience just responds to different
things. And you, you have to know your
stuff well enough to be able to riff in the moment, right?
Especially with a live audience. So.
True. I also tell people when I I used
to mentor a lot more when I had my bandwidth for that, which was
really awesome. But whenever I mentioned people
that were trying to like pivot into, you know, US research and
they had like questions about like interviewing, I'm like,
it's improv. Like, yeah, yeah, job interview
is improv. You don't know what questions
they're going to ask necessarily.
You can prepare as much as you can, but you have to be ready to
like a bit and a little bit. And so I think improv is just
like such a good thing to home. Yeah, I love that.
So cool that you are teaching it now.
So like they're, they're awesome.
Very cool. Yeah, Sahara, I know that in
2023 you and Taryn Lambert Co founded Confetti Q&A.
And I'm curious to learn more about what are the initiatives
that you've been engaged with this organization and what
motivated you to create? Yeah, I so Karen was my manager
in my last role and they were both laid off at the same time,
as many people have just been in the last two years.
So at the end of 2023 we were laid off and we just loved
working together so much. We were like, I still want to
talk to you every day. So once may have a reason to do
that. And so we were like, well, you
know it. There are things that are feels
closed through as a community, as a collective.
Why don't we just try hosting like panel webinar style combos
around these films? And his listeners used to still
hang out a lot. But then also it's something
that like if it's a topic that's coming up a lot for the field,
why not like people are probably all talking about it.
They would love to like be more involved in this kind of like
community activity. And so they had our first panel,
it was in January 2024, and it was about layoffs.
And it was like about navigating and trying to feel empowered
while, you know, when you hope for something like that, it's
really just hard now. It feels not great.
And so we had a couple of our folks who had been laid off on
the panel with us and they just prepared some questions.
And you're kind of similar to what what we were just saying.
Like we talked, we let the humble move like the flow.
We had audience members asking us questions that we would then
like answer in real time. And it was just like very, we
didn't want it to be really formal and like we just wanted
to feel like like helpful to people.
And afterwards we didn't impromptu little like like, I
don't know, after party, it was all online, but they, they like
opened up a whole meet and there was like whoever wants to hum,
hum. And then they had like these
more like deep kind of humbles between people who are hauling
through the same bill. And it was just really lovely.
It felt like, I don't know, right now was just the the
madness of the world and how everything's really just holding
1,000,000 miles an hour. It feels really helpful to have
these outlets of honey and giggy and where you're from with other
people who are not all like, oh, rainbows and roses and
butterfly. It's like, no, sometimes things
suck and it helps to just be like, it's tough together.
And maybe they don't have an answer for it, but at least we
have each other. And so we've done a couple
others. We did two other talks last
year. One of them was about like the
state of hiring and TAFE and US specifically.
And then we did a the third one that was about like the future
of worth. And what do we say like worth is
like in the future. We have our next panel coming
out and it's all about uncertainty will be fun.
Yeah, yeah. Well, do share that with us.
Yeah, well, we're not sure when this is going to be published,
but we we'll figure it out. Yeah, there'll.
Be a video. There'll be a video so you can
always share it, but it'll be, I think it's really helpful
because I, I know I am feeling uncertain all the time.
Yeah. I mean, like, I mean, there's a
lot of particular uncertainties, but even in sort of maybe more
certain times, there's always an uncertainty, right, in terms of
trying to have a career and, and do all of that, especially in
this industry. So we're unfortunately starting
to wrap up our time together. But I've really enjoyed this
conversation, this hangout. So Sahar, we love to wrap up
asking all of our guests about inspiration.
Do you have something that you would like to recommend to our
listeners, our viewers? So it could be a book, a show, a
movie, any piece of media to recommend to our community here.
And then you can also end with a call to action for where folks
can follow up and connect with your work as well.
Awesome, yeah I made a hold straight back to my DND The
loyal hall out the house. If you haven't watched Fantasy
High it is a live play on dropout.tv.
They have this like kind of series called Dimension 20 and
they do all kinds of different DND shows.
Fantasy High is one of my favorite shows.
I'm rewatching it for the 4th time right now from the start.
But it's a tabletop role-playing.
They played DND. It's kind of this fun coming of
age, John Hughes High School, but with, you know, elves and
Orffs and hobblins and, you know, Yeah.
And it's really fun. It's funny.
I think there's a lot of cool. First of all, I've learned how
to play DND from this. So they've never played DND.
It's a great place to start because all the players, almost
all of them have never played until this campaign.
They are all comedians and people who with improv
backgrounds. Yeah, I think that it's a
perfect layer wrap up because we talked about improv earlier and
and GND and I think it's a really cool, fun show.
How you recommend it? First season fully free on
YouTube. Amazing.
Yeah, amazing. Thank you for that.
And then what about your work and how folks can connect with
you? Yeah, I mean I'm always
available to connect on LinkedIn and I'll, you know, share the
link with everyone. Just search for my name.
You'll find I'm the only one, the only the hotel.
So it will be easier to find me and then my website, I have a
blog where sometimes I'll, I'll post stuff on LinkedIn and I'm
like, you know what, I'm going to do this some more.
So I'll post on my blog. It's www.sahara.com/blog and you
can find all my, all my thoughts over there.
Hopefully a newsletter having seen, I haven't set that up yet,
but it's on my mind. And then Confetti Q&A is also on
LinkedIn and we do all of our panels live on LinkedIn.
So if you saw it was there, you'll always know what's going
on with us. Awesome.
Yeah, Cool. Well, thanks again for hanging
out with us and chatting, Sahar. So on behalf of the AIG Design
Podcast, thanks again. And thank you to our viewers or
listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you in another
episode or at our design conference this fall in Los
Angeles. Thank you so much, it was so fun
hanging out with those of you same.
Here, Thank you so much. Bye everyone.