Brave UX: Erika Hall - Moving Past Design’s Pleasant Platitudes

Erika Hall reinforces the importance of being willing to be wrong 🙋, discusses how good user experiences can be bad 👾, and calls on designers to be honest with themselves 🪞.

Highlights include:

⭐ Do you ever wonder what it would be like to go in-house?
⭐ What’s the truth about designers becoming more influential in business?
⭐ Have designers made the world a worst place over the past 30 years?
⭐ What organisational conditions support a culture of ‘just enough research’?
⭐ Who benefits from design not having agreed standards and ethics?

#DesignLeadership #DesignEthics #JustEnoughResearch #MuleDesign #DesignResearch #UX #UXResearch #UXR #UserResearch #BraveUX

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Who is Erika Hall?

Erika is the Director of Strategy at Mule Design 🐴, the infamous design consultancy that she Co-Founded with Mike Monteiro, almost 21 years ago to the day.

And they certainly have pulled no punches in presenting their perspectives 🥊.

Erika’s ability to take challenging subjects and to wrap them in her own signature kooky, cohesive, and compelling style has given many designers plenty of practical ‘in-the-trenches’ training, as well as insightful 30,000 foot mind-food to chow down on 💡.

She is the author of “Just Enough Research” (now in it’s second edition) 📙, a distillation of her extensive experience in design research, into an easy-to-follow guidebook that helps designers to think more critically about research and to wield it more expertly.

Erika is also the author of “Conversational Design” 📕, a book that helps designers and technologists to make their systems and products feel less robotic and more human.

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Find Erika here:

LinkedIn:   / erikahall  
Twitter:   / mulegirl  
Website: https://www.muledesign.com/

📺 Designing for the Triple Storyline:
https://vimeo.com/351167991

Erika’s books:

Conversational Design:
📕 https://abookapart.com/products/conve...

Just Enough Research:
📙 https://abookapart.com/products/just-...

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00:00 Start
00:38 Erika’s introduction
02:31 Why do you hate talking on the phone?
04:42 Will Rupert be joining us for today’s conversation?
05:21 How does it feel to be running an independent design agency for 21 years?
07:19 Do you ever wonder what it would be like to go in-house?
08:58 Why do designers feel so icky when it comes to money?
13:55 Has money been intentionally left off the curriculum?
15:28 What’s the truth about designers becoming more influential in business?
17:37 How and why did the need to be right show up for you when you were younger?
19:53 What was the social price you paid from wanting to be right all of the time?
22:45 Being an expert, do you find you still have to fight the want to be right?
24:24 Why do we feel anxious when we don’t have the ‘right’ answer?
25:59 How do people react when you encourage people to ask more questions?
28:46 What organisational conditions support a culture of ‘just enough research’?
31:16 Why do business cultures that pitch people against each other persist?
34:22 What future are the designs of our enterprises currently optimising for?
36:21 Have designers made the world a worst place over the past 30 years?
40:50 Can you poke the Design Bear more painfully because you’re independent?
44:18 Who benefits from design not having agreed standards and ethics?
48:18 How might good user experiences be bad?
54:42 Who should be responsible for correcting systemically bad user experiences?
58:54 Part 1: How can designers really help to create a better world?
01:02:57 Part 2: How can designers make decisions that help to create a better world?
01:04:09 Part 3: How can designers really help to create a better world?
01:06:24 Part 4: How can designers really help to create a better world?
01:08:03 Closing out the show - Thanks, Erika!

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Hosted by Brendan Jarvis:

LinkedIn:   / brendanjarvis  
Website: https://thespaceinbetween.co.nz/
Twitter:   / brendanjarvis