February 12, 2023 • 61 mins
Irene Au has been building bridges between technology and creativity her whole life. From being the child of Chinese immigrants in South Carolina who wanted to study design and dance (but chose engineering) to being the voice of user centric design at tech companies who thought design was the result of complex calculations, she has developed a fascinating way of projecting her power and expertise in the world in the form of values based design in ways that are both practical and transcendent.
Irene has led User Experience at Netscape, Yahoo, Google and Khosla Ventures and has led Human Experience in Yoga, Meditation, Art, Raising a Family and Being Irene Au.
Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bill Duane (00:01):
Hi, welcome to the heart of innovation Podcast. I'm
Bill Duane former Googleengineering executive and
Superintendent of wellbeing andcourage consultant and speaker
on innovation strategy. We'regoing to be diving deep into the
internal innovation that unlocksexternal innovation, and the
surprisingly practical ways wecan become better innovators
will be in conversation withinnovators from many different
(00:23):
backgrounds and contextsincluding business, science,
social change and technology andnot only benefit from their
expertise, but also theirpersonal stories of their
innovation journey.
Today, we get to spend time withmy friend Irene out Irene has
been building bridges betweentechnology and creativity her
whole life for being the childof Chinese immigrants in South
(00:43):
Carolina who wanted to studydesign and dance but chose
engineering to being the voiceof user centric design at tech
companies. We thought design wasthe result of complex
calculations. In bothsituations, he's developed a way
of projecting her power andexpertise in the world in the
form of values based design inways that are both practical and
transcendent. She's led userexperience at Netscape, Yahoo,
(01:05):
Google and Khosla ventures andhas led human experience and
yoga meditation, art, raising afamily and being a renown. So
welcome, Irene. It's verywonderful to have you. I've been
looking forward to this chat fora while.
Irene Au (01:20):
Thank you for having me.
Bill Duane (01:22):
You're very welcome.
And so that we jump in in theusual way we jump in an anchor
and like this word innovation,what does it mean for you? Or
how does it show up for you inyour life?
Irene Au (01:36):
More broadly, I guess, innovation is, is about making
something new.
And from a career perspective, Iguess, I've spent my energies
bringing new technologies to themasses, to to, to large consumer
(02:02):
audiences. And I think in my ownpersonal practice, it's an it's
about an endeavor to always lookat things with a beginner's mind
and see things as new. Becauseit's through different and fresh
perspectives that we're able tocultivate creativity and come up
(02:29):
with new solutions to oldproblems.
Bill Duane (02:35):
So I love that idea of beginner's mind. And to be
honest, it's something I have atough time with. So I'd love to
know more about it on the onehand, as I have a lot of
impostor syndrome, and so, asengineers slash smarty pants,
it's like, I'll be I'll be safefrom ridicule. Or, like, if I
(02:55):
can only know enough, then I'llbe safe. And so for me, and I
think a lot of people like me,this idea of beginner's mind
seems a little a littledangerous, or maybe, or maybe
counterintuitive. What's yourrelationship with with
beginner's mind? Is that is thata hurdle you've had to overcome?
Or how have you developed thisability to look afresh at
(03:19):
something that's been in frontof your eyes, maybe many times.
Irene Au (03:25):
It's interesting, like, I think, like the need to
know and to be right, comes froma place of not wanting to be
wrong, and not wanting to bewrong comes from a place of self
criticism, or fear of failure orfear of being perceived in a
(03:47):
certain way. And so I think allof those things are emotions
that have to be confronted, inorder to be comfortable with
cultivating a beginner's mindand to come in with like a, I
don't know, and, and to be okaywith making mistakes, and to be
okay with not knowing and thatthat in itself is not a failure,
(04:09):
or a defect or a problem. It'san opportunity. But, I mean, I
think the way we are raised andthe way we are as a society,
it's, you know, like, if youfail, or if you make mistakes,
you you might be a loser, or youmight be doing something wrong
(04:32):
or bad. So, you know, in mydaily life, I tried to see it as
just, you know, trying like, toquote my boss, Vinod, he always
says, like, it's better to tryand fail than to fail to try.
And so like this whole notion ofyour relationship with failure,
(04:56):
and how you see yourself and andhow you treat yourself like, do
you treat yourself with kindnessand compassion when things don't
work out? You know, it's likewhen a toddler is learning how
to walk, we don't say that thetoddler is failing to walk,
we're saying that the toddler islearning how to walk. And so I
think that that shift in mindsetis really key. Because it
(05:19):
changes the conversation youhave with yourself.
Bill Duane (05:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, part of the reasonwhy I did my career change from
engineering towards innovationand personal development is to,
you know, test him testify thatit's possible to make that
shift, I definitely have you my,you know, early middle age
onward work as going from a fearand shame engine is very
(05:45):
powerful, requires a lot ofbourbon and cheeseburgers to
keep it running, in myexperience, puts out a lot of
exhaust to a love and serviceengine. So you know, thank God,
this is something that you canchoose to get better at. But I'm
curious, were you always likethis? Or did you have to find
your own way towards that senseof strength through
(06:07):
vulnerability is the way it'slanding with me.
Irene Au (06:18):
You know, it's interesting. I mean, as a child,
I was not allowed to in, I wasnot allowed to engage in
creative endeavors. We, as achild of immigrant parents, we
did not have a lot of disposableincome to spend on Hobbies, or
lessons, dance lessons, or artlessons, or music lessons. And
(06:38):
so my father not only did nothave the resources, he did not
want to spend what resources wehave in that way. And he also
felt like they were kind of awaste of time. And even just a
couple of years ago, I had lunchwith my parents, and I asked
them, Is there anything that youregret in the way that you
raised me and my brother, and mymom said, Oh, I wish we could
(07:03):
have allowed you to engage inmore enrichment activities. And
my dad was like, well, actually,that wasn't such a bad thing,
after all, because you wouldn'thave had the career that you've
had if you had engaged in, youknow, like, art and dance and
music. So it kind of reflectslike the mindset that he held
(07:26):
then. And now, I guess. So myfocus as a child was very much
on math and science, which isvery quantitative, there's a
right and a wrong answer. Andmaybe I naturally gravitated to
that. Or maybe that was just howI saw the world, because that's
where the focus was. And so yes,certainly, as I, as I matured,
(07:54):
and also entered into a fieldthat is very creative
profession, I definitely had tochange my relationship with
that. And, and, you know, Ialways really loved the
ambiguous nature of design, likethis notion that there is never
(08:17):
really a definitive right orwrong answer. It's always very
context dependent. And I loveseeing the problem through a
whole system. Like it's, it's,it's not a B testing, but it's
like a lot of variables at playwith each other. And then seeing
how everything isinterconnected. is always
(08:39):
something that really intriguedme and something that I was
drawn to. So in a world likethat, there is there is never a
right or wrong. And I think asa, as a child, I also had to
cultivate the ability to seemultiple perspectives because I
(09:01):
grew up in an environment wheremy peers had very different
family backgrounds andupbringings from the environment
I was raised in, I grew up inSouth Carolina, as a child of
Chinese immigrants. And in SouthCarolina, the church is the
center of the social universe,and we did not belong to one
(09:22):
because my father is profoundlyatheist. So and people had very
different worldviews, verydifferent political views. And
so at almost as a survivalmechanism, I had to cultivate
the ability to see otherperspectives and think about
things through their eyes. Andso I think that has also
(09:45):
informed my belief that thingsare not black and white and, and
just to have more tolerance forthe unknown and the ambiguous
and the gray So I think thatthose qualities definitely
(10:05):
helped shape the way that Ientered in my profession and
kind of endeavored in the workthat I took on.
Bill Duane (10:17):
Oh, that's amazing, right? So what I'm hearing you
say is, if someone were to comein with a more black and white
view of right and wrong, thenthe demarcation point is
actually more dramatic, andmaybe more, maybe maybe more
fraught, but what you're talkingabout is coming up in an
(10:39):
environment where, and I likethe term that you use as as a
matter of survival tounderstand. So I'm now here to
I'm now hearing two things thatare really standing out to me.
One is that you're obviously anintensely creative person who
was dissuaded from that yetstill stood the course, right,
(11:02):
you took a math and sciencebackground, and then made a
beeline for the most directconnection between math and
science, and creativity, whichis the user experience part of
it. And I think a lot of peoplewould not have turned that into,
(11:24):
like, turn that into creativepower, like like the tension
being like driving, like, likebeing juicy. And then that
second part is being in thisenvironment, I can imagine both
of those situations shuttingsomeone down. So I'm curious,
I've just been hearing likethese stories of these two
stories of going into a gnarlysituation and being invigorated
(11:48):
by it and having it feed yourcreativity, right. I mean, you
earlier you talked aboutempathy. You know, one of the
biggest ticket items is empathyis to have empathy for people
that are very different fromyou. And you just listed off a
whole bunch of different onesabout, you know, religion,
culture, geography, probablylanguage, also a portion in
(12:09):
there. So that's, that's, that'samazing to me.
Irene Au (12:14):
Yeah, I often joke that growing up as a petite
Chinese woman in the south fullyprepared me as the, for career
as a woman in tech, andespecially as a designer in
tech. Well, yeah, feels that Ibuilt up like, like, you know, I
grew up in an environment whereI had no social status, or
(12:36):
power, or authority or control.
And as a designer, in theseengineering driven companies
that I've been with, like,there's no like automatic power
or authority bestowed upon me,you know, coming in as a
designer, like, you know, it'snot it was never like, oh, the
engineers have to implementwhatever the designer says. I
had to summon all of my skillsin listening and empathy and
(13:00):
being able to see differentperspectives and negotiation and
also like more subtler arts,like getting people to think
that it was their idea. Youknow, how to bring people along?
And make them feel like they'restill the ones in power and have
(13:22):
control because that would neverbe given to me. in those
contexts. So useful skills.
Yeah, for sure.
Bill Duane (13:33):
Yeah, absolutely. So it's really notable I'll, I'll
share a story that I have fromthe deep within the bowels of
engineering heard. So we joinedGoogle at about the same time in
2005, very different parts ofthe organization. One of the
teams sort of in myorganizational area had T shirts
that said, we make the thingthat makes the thing that makes
(13:55):
the thing sort of the oppositeof the of the backhoe you know,
of the of the of the front endstuff. But even then, I had
heard a story about one of thevery first designers who arrived
there, I think before before wedid who was just disgusted. So
one of the things that madeGoogle really great was this
real data based decision making.
Just we didn't know each otherback then. But I had a bumper
(14:24):
sticker I had a sticker on mylaptop that said, Fuck you. I
have charts and graphs to backme up. And that was, that was
the ethos. And so I had heard astory that the very first
designer so first of all, Googlehad told itself a story. That
data was the best way to dodesign, and you would do a B
testing. And you would do allthese little micro tests to see
(14:47):
who clicked on what, and thatthe aggregate of all those tiny
decisions, because they're allmathematically and calculable
would lead to Good design, andthat person that just quit and
disgust at trying to get peopleto understand or to hew to this,
and then not too long later, youcome in as the Global Head of,
(15:13):
of user experience, right? Andthen, and then you're using
those tools you met you, youmanaged made that eventually
work, maybe through a differentset, I wonder, you know, seems
like somebody came in and triedto
Irene Au (15:33):
clarify the story, I know exactly who you're talking
about. And that was actuallyafter I joined, he was on my
team. And this was circa2007 2008. And what I was trying
to do was to create a commonlook and feel for all of Google,
because there wasn't any, andthere was like the search
(15:53):
fiefdom, and then the the GoogleApps fiefdom, and then there was
ads. So we had like threedifferent worlds that were all
doing their own thing. And itwas not scalable or sustainable.
And also, like, it was reallyhard to pass the UI Review
Committee, especially in theworld of search. And it was
unclear to people what the ruleswere, what was the intention,
(16:15):
what were people optimizing for?
So I sought to work with theleaders over there to create a
common look and feel. But whatwe found was that what works
from a design perspective forsearch was actually completely
opposed to what worked anddesigned for Google Apps,
because they're differentinterfaces. You know, in Gmail,
for example, everything isclickable, everything in the
(16:38):
interface is clickable. Sowhereas in search, we knew from
a B testing that if youunderline links, like that gets
people to the answer thatthey're looking for a lot
faster. But if you if you createthis hardline consistent rule,
that everything that's clickableneeds to be underlined, then
that doesn't work for GoogleApps, and then the interface
breaks there. And so this iswhat I mean about how there's no
(17:00):
black or white, right or wronganswer. So context dependent,
but the prevailing thinking atthat time was like, Oh, 99% of
our traffic into Google wascoming in through search,
therefore, whatever worked froman interface perspective for
search should apply to the restof Google, like that should
dictate the rules, the interfacerules for the rest of Google,
(17:22):
like, that's what thisparticular executive argued for.
And so we tried to unify just,you know, identify a link color,
you know, what should be theshade of blue for the link
color, because that in itselfwas different in Google Apps
than it was in search. And soMarissa said, Well, we can
calculate all the 40 Shades ofBlue, and we can a B, test all
(17:44):
of them and see which oneperforms the better and best and
whichever performs the best.
That should be the default forall of Google. And, you know,
again, like I think this iswhere having some empathy and
perspective is really helpfulhere, because Google has been
highly criticized, I mean,during that period, for the
(18:06):
whole 40 shades of blue thing,you know, I mean, like, anytime
I spoke at a conference, I getasked about it. But you have to
understand that like, and Iknow, you know, this, Google's
interface is very fragile. Andthis is true for all search
interfaces, because I worked atYahoo. And we saw this in any
testing we did at Yahoo as well.
Any slight change, whether it'slike the letting, which is like
(18:27):
the space between the lines, youknow, in on the on the page,
like how much space you allowbetween one line versus the
other, whether you bullet thissearch results, or number them
or leave them blank, whether youpresent the search results in a
serif, or sans serif font, allof these subtle changes have
dramatic impact on userperformance and user happiness,
(18:51):
and various other successmetrics that were used
internally. And so you could seelike, Marissa was the executive
who was responsible forprotecting search and
safeguarding search and ensuringits success, along with all
those metrics. So from herperspective, she was perfectly
(19:12):
reasonable and rational. And youknow, from the perspective of
the designers and the folksworking on apps, you know, there
was also a very good rationalefor not having all the interface
rules being dictated by search.
So there was an impasse. Andactually, I mean, it even
escalated to to Eric Schmidt atsome point, and everybody ended
(19:36):
up voting on the one Google bar,the navigation bar across the
top because they were likereligious wars against what
worked and I was very contextdependent again. So you know, I
don't need to get into thedetails around the interpersonal
issues that led to this designerleaving but I will just say that
(19:59):
like They could not forge aworking relationship with each
other, that would carve a pathforward. And it was really
unfortunate, but there was a lotof ego there on both on both
sides and and, you know,ultimately what paved the path
(20:22):
forward was changes to executiveleadership. When Larry became
CEO, he was the one, only theCEO could bust through all of
these organizational challenges.
And so when, when what precededmaterial was actually Kennedy,
when that was created. And thatwas like a vision for what a
(20:46):
unified look and feel could be.
And even though it was unified,there were still exceptions made
for search. And Gmail, like ifthere was a way we could
rationalize why and how theinterface would be different,
even across Google, and still beconsistent, like different but
consistent. He was the one whobrought all the VPs in and said,
(21:10):
we're going to do this. And he'sthe only one who could have done
it. And even when he did it, allof the like a lot of the piece
didn't believe him. Google hadsuch a checkered history with
efforts like these. Right. But Iwish I could take credit for it.
I was just the intermediary thatjust kind of made sure
(21:30):
everything happened the rightway. And but yeah, it was this
is tough.
Bill Duane (21:38):
Oh, so you say you are just the intermediary. But I
will draw your attention to yourprevious comment where you noted
that the kind of power that wassuccessful in this environment
was that soft power of thebuilding of coalitions of
perhaps tricking people intothinking it was their ideas,
right. So it sounds like, Imean, again, looking at it from
(22:02):
very much the outside andseveral degrees is what I'm when
I'm, when I'm listening to you,I'm like, Oh, this is the this
is the power of bending and notbreaking. Yeah,
Irene Au (22:13):
you know, it was it was amazing, was like, so this
was kind of jujitsu, we openedup a Google Doc. And we started
cataloging, we starteddocumenting all the rationale in
every single UI reviewcommittee. With search, anytime
anything was approved orrejected, we documented the
rationale. And we reverseengineered how the executives
thought about. And I translatedthat into Google UI design
(22:38):
principles. And I popped it up alevel where I talked about the
intention, like this is actuallythe intention behind the UI
review feedback. This is whythings got shut down. And so as
you design the interface, thisis what you should be thinking
about. So for example, there wasthis rule that like no gray text
(22:59):
was allowed, or there was thisother Oh, when Google News first
launched, people were mystifiedbecause they would come through
UI review committee every week.
And like that, the only feedbackthey would get was a number like
the you know, the executivewould just say, 1411, nine,
nobody knows what's going on.
(23:21):
And it turns out like, this wasdeveloped during a time when
people were mostly on desktopcomputers, and they weren't used
to scrolling. And so your viewof what was happening in the
world that day came from thefirst at a glance view of what
popped up on Google News on thedesktop. And so it's everything
was like above the fold. We werevery concerned about the fold
(23:41):
back then, these days, I don'teven know if designers
understand what a fold is. Whatwhat the executive was doing,
she was counting the number ofheadlines that she could see
above the fold. And all thedesigners could figure out was
that the higher the number, thebetter, but they didn't
understand why. And so this isan example where like, I had to
translate this into a designprinciple that was like, Look,
(24:03):
Google is all about speed, likewe care about creating a fast
experience. This is not onlyabout the amount of capital that
was laid out for building, youknow, you know, web site, you
know, like the infrastructure tomake Google Search run fast.
This is about the interface, thestreamlined interface, the
reason why we use Sans Seriffonts, because we know from
(24:25):
human interface research thatpeople read more quickly on with
sans serif text online. Like thewhole point is to create a fast
experience. And so like ifpeople can get the fastest at a
glance view of what's happeningin the world, above the fold,
like that is the designintention. And that is what
constitutes a successful design.
And this is why Google'sinterface like circa 2006 2007,
(24:48):
was perceived as looking verycluttered, like there was a lot
of stuff, you know, but that'sbecause we knew people didn't
scroll and people wanted like asmuch information as they could
at a glance. And so then whathappened when Larry does kind of
pushed for elevating the lookand feel is that we said, the
design principles stand the testof time, like the principles
(25:10):
themselves have not changed. Butour interpretation and execution
of those principles havechanged. And there was even a
TGIF, all company, all hands,that I led with Larry, around
this time when he got up onstage. And he said, Don't
underestimate the importance ofwhitespace. Because sometimes
it's the whitespace, that getsyou to the thing that you're
(25:33):
looking for a lot faster. Andthis was like profound and
revolutionary, because before weissued whitespace, like that was
considered bad. That was like apoor design element. And all of
this is true, if you understandthe intention, it's just that
the interpretation could evolve,because suddenly, we had
smartphones and things likethat. And so this is what I mean
(25:54):
about holding space for theambiguous, being able to see
different perspectives, beingable to, you know, kind of,
like, help people understandwhat's the higher level purpose
or intention, rather thangetting stuck in the weeds and
sticking with rules and theblack and white, it's like, you
know, there is room in theirspace for the gray matter for
(26:15):
the gray area. And, and, youknow, I think that's, that's
kind of the, the magic.
Bill Duane (26:25):
Wow. So this makes me think of something that we've
spoken about previously. And Iknow what you've spoken about
publicly. And maybe I've notthought of it in this way, but
it presents so we were justreally talking about the
benefits of emotional,intellectual cognitive,
suppleness, of bending withoutbreaking and how your background
(26:49):
really trained you to do thatreally well. But I'll read to
you a quote that you wroteabout, because then at the same
time, now, you're also talkingabout the importance of
anchoring in something butyou're not anchoring in
something that's brittle, butyou're anchoring essentially in
values and virtues. Right. Andso I think it's a very interest.
(27:11):
But let me let me read to youfor the sake of the of the folks
listening. I really love thisquote from you. Any creative
endeavor is an expression of thehuman spirit. When we create
something, we create an outwardexpression of who we are, and
the values and virtues that wehave internalized, what we make
(27:31):
embodies our values and virtuesand becomes a tangible
expression of our self self witha with a capital S. So at the
same time, it seems like thepart of your recipe for success
is this combination of beingvery firm. But also curious
mean, I should say, reasonablyfirm about about your values and
(27:53):
virtues while at the same timereally explore using that as a
well, let me know if this istrue as a way then to explore
ambiguity, in grayness to lookto see what what options might
be available that aren'tobvious.
Irene Au (28:07):
Yeah, and I think as a designer, and for anyone who's
making like, it's reallyimportant to be clear about your
intentions. And so it's onething to hold values and
principles, but like, your yourintentions are, how you make
choices. I mean, you'rechoosing, you're choosing along
(28:28):
a line of principles and thingsthat you believe in that are
important. But it also comesback to like, what is it that
you're trying to achieve? So ifyou don't really, if you're not
clear on the intention, then thethe outcome or the execution
becomes more murky? Because youdon't know what criteria trying
to satisfy. You don't know whoyou're designing for, you don't
(28:50):
know what success looks like. Solike when we, when we, when we
encounter well designed productsor experiences, we perceive them
to be well designed, because theintention comes through in such
a crystal clear way. And thereason why it does is because
(29:10):
all the decisions and choicesalong the way, in the making of
that thing. We're arbitrated bya clear set of values and
principles.
Bill Duane (29:21):
And the other thing that jumps out in the beginning,
when we when we startedchatting, you mentioned that
you're designing for the masses,and your career has really been
operating at a scale that mostpeople have difficulty
cognizing. And some of theexamples you gave, really speak
to that of the I mean, Iremember just even again, from a
(29:43):
distance, how fraught thosediscussions about the Google
front page was about adding anytiny thing so we're really
dealing with this idea of almosthaving this, this massive
megaphone in front of ouramplifier in front of you design
decisions. But at the same time,you know, what you're talking
(30:06):
about when I've heard you talkabout this is this, this
tangible expression of our self,which means that there's a
relation, that there's aninwardness to identifying those
values and virtues. And then Idon't know if I'm curious what
you think of it, there's somesort of like a translation by
which the other sometimesbillion others get involved in
(30:29):
that in that design process. Sowhat's the maybe the busted into
the big, gnarly topic? To whatextent like I know that personal
development, personal growth,meditation, yoga has been a huge
part of of who you are? I mean,it's, it's really, it's when I
think of you, that's probablyone of the two biggest things,
(30:53):
how, how is how was thiscultivation of self become a
part of that design process ofpersonal development? Or has it
been a part of that process?
Irene Au (31:04):
I think it happens at so many levels, like, at a, you
know, like, when it helped,first of all, it helps cultivate
skills, for designers, like, theability to empathize, like those
pathways in the brain areaugmentive, through
contemplative practices, beingable to be creative and flexible
(31:28):
in your thinking, being able togenerate a lot of different
ideas, all of those skills areaugmented through contemplative
practices, being able to workwell with others, like all the
EQ skills, being able tonegotiate to communicate to see
clearly, all of that, andthere's a lot of brain research
that supports that those skillsare improved through meditation,
(31:53):
and yoga. So that's at onelevel, it's just like, the
interpersonal skills and theskills to that are essential for
becoming a good maker. And thenat another level, there's kind
of a quality around attention,that is so important for makers
(32:18):
because like when we, again,when we encounter something
that's well designed, it'sdesigned, well, not only because
there's a clear intention, butalso the details matter, like
design is all about the details.
But what does it take forsomeone to actually understand
those details, and to come upwith the right solution, at that
(32:41):
level of granularity takesincredible attention, and
observation, and refinement, andcraft, patience, these are all
qualities that are cultivatedthrough a contemplative
practice. Now, there are manypeople who don't practice yoga
and meditation actively, youknow, as, as we understand what
(33:04):
it looks like, and they aregreat designers, actually, but a
lot of the designers that I'veencountered actually do have
some kind of there's some waythat they practice a
conversation with themselves.
(33:25):
And, and slow themselves down.
So that they can be better attheir craft. And, you know, so
it doesn't necessarily have tolook like sitting on a cushion
for a couple hours a day. But,you know, those skills are
definitely cultivated andimproved through yoga and
(33:47):
meditation, and are essentialfor making well. The other thing
I will say is, like, you know,when we, like design is also
like an act of love. Becauseyou're you're loving, you have
to love the thing that you'remaking, in order for it to, in
(34:08):
order for the output to be good,you have to care about it. You
also have to care about thepeople who are going to receive
this, you know, I mean, you canmake something and make it for
yourself and just make it forthe sake of making something
good. But that might beconsidered, you know, that might
be like, art or whatever. Butlike if you're designing
something that other people aremeant to consume, you are loving
(34:30):
them, because you have to seethem, you have to care about
them. You have to understandwhat are their issues and needs
and problems. And then you haveto care enough to come up with
solutions for those. And thenfor something to be done well,
you have to take great care andattention to execute that well.
So good design is an act oflove. And if you don't love the
work or you don't love therecipient, or you don't love
(34:54):
yourself, like all that's goingto come through in the design
like If the user interface orthe user experience like design
is like a canary in a coal mine,like, all the dysfunction that
might exist in the act of makingor creating, will manifest
itself in the UI. And you seethat in an organization, like
how many interfaces do weencounter, where you can see,
(35:17):
like, the organizational linesof the company drawn out in the
interface, or like, you know,interfaces that are, you know,
not honest, or are kind oftilted in a one particular
direction, that's notnecessarily for the benefit of
(35:37):
the user, you know, or aninterface that has too many
features, and can't besimplified, like, all of those
are manifestations of some kindof dysfunction, maybe it's like,
lack of strategy, poor talent,inability to execute, maybe it
comes down to more spiritualissues around greed, or
attachment. Fear, you know, solike, when we see poorly
(36:01):
designed things, they aremanifestations of those, that
als in some way, and it's lackof love. That, that, and that's
why it's kind of offensive, whenwe encounter something that's
not well designed, it's like,it's like, these people were
careless, or they werethoughtless, both are offensive,
(36:23):
because they didn't care aboutme, or about society, or about
the environment, or whatever itis, you know, that's offensive,
and, and that slows us downmakes us sad, it erodes our
goodwill towards others. Andthen conversely, good design,
preserves goodwill, it lifts usup and gives us more energy to
(36:45):
propagate kindness, love,generosity to other people. And
this, to me is the ultimatereason why design is so
important. It's not frivolous,it's not about aesthetics. It's
really about the energy thatwe're putting out into the world
and receiving.
Bill Duane (37:09):
In, in hearing, that, what's jumping out at me
is, is when this nature of theway that dysfunction shows up.
And to somebody who's not anexpert, you know, it shows up
almost as if someone is speakingin different tones of voice, or
different accents within withinthe same conversation. And, and,
(37:34):
and yet, I'm also thinking, youknow, and in particular, the way
that design particularly in inorganizations is a group
endeavor. And one of the bigbenefits of diversity and
inclusion is bringing morepoints of view to the table. And
(37:56):
I've seen that in, in my ownexperience of that, leading to
what's called in the researchthat cognitive abrasion that
leads to, but when there'scognitive abrasion, with
wholesome intentions andsurrounded in love, then that's
actually that's an that's anelevator, right, versus that
(38:16):
same amount of disagreement. Ifit's allowed to not be trans
mortified, or if it's not transmortified by that design
process, it will show up as ancohesive or fragmented. So I'd
love to know if you have anythoughts about that? Yeah.
Because it sounds like I mean,I'm seeing I'm seeing a thread
(38:39):
where you wade into situationsthat could have been
destructive. And instead theybecome generative.
Irene Au (38:48):
Yes. And I think that's really important to
understand. Because when I saydesign is an act of love, and
about caring for users andthings like that, that doesn't
mean that you cannot makedifficult choices. Sometimes the
difficult choices that are madeare acts of compassion, or
kindness or love. Because again,it comes back to the intention,
(39:11):
and then the ability to deliversuccessfully on that intention.
So maybe it helps if I give someexamples. I'll see one example
might be so I worked at Udacity.
We were the first online massiveopen online courseware MOOC at
the time, that's what it'scalled. It was founded by our
(39:32):
former colleague, SebastianThrun. And the main competitors
for Udacity. Around the timewhen I was there were Coursera
Udemy, you know, mostlyCoursera. And the conventional
wisdom was that the main successmetric for MOOC was like course
completion rate. So how manywhat percentage of users that
(39:52):
are taking your class actuallyfinished the class? And we knew
from our data that But likepeople who took the class as a
cohort, so for example, thosewho started on the same date and
then move through the courses atthe same pace, and they were on
the same schedule, when whencourses were set up like that
there was a higher completionrate. And yet, the Sebastian
(40:14):
really felt strongly that hewanted to create a company, an
offering that supported peoplewho could learn at their own
pace, you know, becauseeverybody learns at a different
rate, everybody has differentdemands on their time, he wanted
to offer a service that couldsupport like somebody who wanted
(40:36):
to do a mid career switch andwas working, you know, a job and
then taking these classes atnight and had a family and you
know, maybe they can't move asquickly through classes,
somebody, some, some 20 yearold, you know, who, who has more
time on their hands, or, youknow, supplementing their
college education or whatever.
And so this led to very huge hotdebates within the company,
(41:01):
because product decisions, werehinging on this. On this
conflict, we wanted to makeproduct decisions that would
optimize for course completionrate, because that was a success
metric. And yet the founder ofthe company wanted this other
experience. And so actually, thekind, compassionate thing was to
(41:23):
say, you know, we're just goingto change his definition of
success. Forget about thesuccess metric, of course
completion rate, we're going toinvent other success metrics
that are going to be morereflective of what we value. And
so you know, that that was thatwas that was that unlocked
everything and allowed us tocreate a more clear vision for
(41:46):
the experience, which translatedinto a much more successful
product. I'll give anotherexample. Just contrasting Yahoo,
and Google. So like, at Yahoo,we were trying to appeal to the
broadest audience possible. Andthat meant designing our
websites for all the oldbrowsers. This was before we had
(42:08):
like chrome auto update. Like ifyou need to update your browser,
you had to like go to thewebsite and download the update
and reinstall like who knew howto do that. And but so we were
hamstrung, because we weredesigning for the lowest common
denominator. But that made uslook, really, we were not able
to innovate as a result. Becausewe were hamstrung. And so then
(42:32):
as, as new web technologies,like DHTML, came out. And, you
know, Gmail launched and hadkeyboard shortcuts. And we
couldn't do any stuff like that,because we were still designing
for like, Netscape 3.0. Andthere was like this. I mean, I
(42:54):
guess you could say, we weretrying to be nice to everyone.
But in the end, that did notserve the business and ended up
serving no one. And in contrast,Google was very clear, even
before the world of auto updatefor web browsers, Larry and
Sergey were very clear about whothey were designing for, they
said, if this person is going tobe like, early adopter on the
(43:17):
forefront of technology, youknow, always has the latest and
greatest web browser. And thedesign team just had a heyday
about this, because it's like,oh, we're alienating all these
users. If we're doing that, youknow, it's such a small sliver.
But actually, it was a real actof compassion and kindness to be
that crystal clear and to be tomake such a hard choice as
leaders, for the rest of thecompany to give that kind of
(43:39):
direction. Because then it wascrystal clear how we're going to
move forward, we are going to beseen as innovators. I mean,
Gmail was like, you know, thatwas like the best email account
to have, because like, if youhad AOL, like you're really
behind the time, if your GmailHey, your, your, you know,
something, you know, that wasthe brand that it became. And
that's because Larry and Sergeywere like, we're not going to
(44:02):
worry about designing foreveryone, we're going to focus
on the early adopters, becauseour belief is that along the
way, everyone else is going tocome along. And they are going
to eventually learn all thisstuff. But, you know, we don't
want to ever be hamstrung bythis old technology that's going
to hamper us from innovation.
So, you know, on one hand, youcould say, oh, that's so mean.
(44:27):
They excluded all these people.
But I actually think it was aprofound act of clarity and
vision, which, in turn, wascompassionate and kind, because
it allowed us it allowed thecompany to have a more clear
vision for its user experience.
Bill Duane (44:52):
So you just gave two examples of a process by He said
reminds me of a thing I havebeen trainer used to say about
creating the physics of thesituation. And something I think
Google did extraordinarily well,was to think ahead of time about
(45:15):
the physics of the situation.
And you know, in the case of theof the online learning, the
change, like the the designprocess led to attention by
which said, Well, we actuallyneed to look at what we're
optimizing for. And to make itmore complex, but then also more
true to life. And then settingin the tension of the design
(45:37):
process was resolved by ashifting of the goals, which
then led to a result that wasactually easier to design for.
And then in the second case,it's this idea of how much are
you anchored? By the past, ifyou're anchored towards
servicing, especially in fastgrowing technology, every
(46:00):
iteration of the technology, itgets harder and harder to
operate, I'm currently workingwith a client. And the way we
describe it is that the gravityof their planet is like two or
three times as heavy as Earth,because there's all this weight
of all these decisions that camebefore. So what you were just
mentioning, then is in order. Soin order to get that value of
(46:23):
the light, and good design andusability, there actually needs
to be difficult decisions madeto create the physics of the
situation that will like that,that will make that result more
likely. In this case, it's like,Wouldn't it be nice to use any
of the web standards that havebeen designed in the last nine
(46:44):
years? Because there's sobecause there's so much if I'm
hearing you, right, so it'sinteresting that, and this may
be speaks to your point aboutdesign, not just being surfacey,
and aesthetics. But if you'redoing it, right, so we were
talking about this idea ofmaking room for gray, and seeing
design as something bigger,which then, and then launching
(47:09):
into these deeply gray spaces,which I think if you put all
that together, it creates a veryinteresting tool for analysis
that can say like, well, maybewe need to rethink either a
bottom up physics of thesituation of which can resolve
we which can involve somedifficult compassion, maybe
(47:31):
another example that I use whenI'm training or coaching new
managers is it's notcompassionate to leave a
dysfunctional situation intact.
Even if it's the mostheartbreaking of those of when
someone is struggling in a role,and they're not going, it's in,
(47:52):
they're not going to be able tolearn their way out of it. It's
a fit issue. It's notcompassionate to leave them in
that even though it's a veryuncomfortable situation, it's
certainly not compassionate tothe people around them. So it's
an interesting definition, avery nuanced view of definition,
about being clear about yourvalues, and then creating the
physics of the situation. Sothat it's more likely to get you
(48:14):
to that wise outcome that was astruggle to get to,
Irene Au (48:17):
is such an engineering way of describing it. You know,
just to clarify the Googlething, it's not just about like
letting go of the past, I thinklike more, it's really about
being able to make a harddecision that alienates a huge
population, potentially, youknow, it's like, when you when
(48:38):
you choose to focus onsomething, it means you're not
focusing on something else. Andthat's what's emotionally
difficult, because we tend to beattached to, you know, widest
audience possible, you know, wedon't want to alienate anybody,
especially, you know, for ayoung company, or whatever. And
so it takes a lot of emotionalfortitude, to be able to say,
(48:59):
we're going to focus on this.
And that means we're not goingto do that. So many companies
don't know how to say no tothings. And that's what kills
them. And so let's even like ata product level, when you see,
like, a lot of features arewhere you go into preferences.
And there's like, all thesepreferences, like one of my
mentors, one of my early mentorssaid, Yeah, you know, like,
preferences are just like a wayof shoving down, like all the
(49:20):
indecision, all the things thatthe team couldn't decide on.
They would just shove the thingsthey couldn't agree on into
preferences. So like when wewhen we see feature bloat, like
that is a lack of discipline,that's like two, that's that's
attachment that you're seeingright there. The failure to
simplify is a consequence ofgreed and attachment. And so
(49:45):
those are spiritual, thatspiritual work that the team
needs to do or the leadershipneeds to do to be able to make
those tough calls. Like I oftenalso refer to like, what
happened when Steve Jobsreturned to Apple as CEO After
he, you know, he was kicked outand then eventually came back.
And the first thing he did washe streamlined the whole product
line. Like if you can findprobably Google these charts
(50:08):
that show like what the line ofApple products looked like,
before he became CEO, and thenhe just slashed all these,
because it was unsustainable tohave so many different products.
And, you know, some people say,Oh, he was so mean, he laid off
these people, he killed theseproducts that were being
developed and things like that,but actually, it was a, it was a
moment of extreme vision andclarity that came through and
(50:32):
then also emotional fortitude,to be able to say, you know,
what, we're not going to dothese things. And it's for the
benefit of these other efforts.
And, and, and to be able toexecute more clearly on these
intentions.
Bill Duane (50:54):
So I'm, I'm thinking about as a leader, you know, we
were just talking about, on thepositive side, intentions, and
values. And then also husbandinga process shepherding a process
(51:16):
through by which it willencounter the fear. People
making decisions from a place offear, or impostor syndrome, or
defending territory or heartfeltideas about that would have a
negative net effect of slowingdown. As a leader, how, how have
(51:40):
you been able to or what haveyou found effective in helping
people negotiate those rapids?
Irene Au (51:47):
Yeah, I think self awareness is the first step.
Because if people don'tunderstand the dynamics at play,
you know, then there's no way toresolve it. Like if we can't see
like, oh, the reason why we'relogged jammed here is because we
have like, these politicalissues, or someone doesn't trust
somebody else, or the incentivesare wrong, like this person is
(52:11):
pushing for this, because theirbonus depends on success with
that metric. But then it's indirect opposition with this
other organization or whatever,like the first step, the leader,
I think needs to be aware of thesituation and the forces that
are driving these behaviors thatcause conflict, or things that
(52:31):
get in the way of good design.
And, and then as a leader, theyhave to be able to step in and
arbitrate. And too often, thatdoesn't happen, for whatever
reason, it does take incrediblecourage to intervene. Because it
may mean, it often meansdisappointing somebody, or
changing something that's reallyhard. But that's what leadership
(52:54):
is, is to be able to come in andsay, like, make these hard
decisions, change the successmetrics, if you have to remove
someone that's a roadblock inthe organization, or reorganize
the team so that everybody'saligned in the same direction.
Like those are difficult choicesto make and even more difficult
to execute. But so much of ithinges on the leader and their
(53:18):
ability to be self aware, besocially aware, and to have the
leadership skills to kind ofsort these things through and
resolve them. And I don't wantto pin it all on the leader, but
it does mean the organizationand the product and the outcomes
all do reflect the leader. But Ithink the more that the leader
(53:41):
can create the right kind ofculture. The hopefully these
issues get surfaced morequickly, more readily and get
resolved more quickly andreadily with the right kind of
culture. When that'stransparent, where people trust
each other. It's not politicaland it's not about backstabbing
and and when that's morecollaborative it takes a lot of
(54:05):
work to build that trust youknow it takes transparency and
communication and and a leadersown kind of emotional
sensitivity towards others.
Bill Duane (54:22):
It you bring up an interesting paradox I don't know
did you ever run into Marklesser he was one of the folks
who was one of the earlydesigners and prime movers in
the Search Inside Yourself Class
Irene Au (54:34):
No
Bill Duane (54:36):
well, he has a book that I really like so he wrote a
book on paradox coming from aZen point of view and I always
so it's very engineering thingto say I was hated paradox
because they don't they don'tmake any sense. They're not very
resolvable. But his book onparadox that really helped
explain it for me is called KnowYourself, forget yourself. And
(54:58):
so when I'm listening to you,I'm Hearing this deep self
knowledge and introspection, inservice of then making it about
much more than you, I mean, andmaybe is that that thread
between the deeply personal, youknow what you mentioned, as, you
know, what we make becomes atangible expression of ourself,
(55:21):
but then to not have that beself centered, that know
yourself as it sounds like froma leadership perspective, it's
having a deep knowledge ofyourself such that then you can
then reach into that process,and shepherd it through those,
those rapids that other peoplemight be going through.
Irene Au (55:40):
Absolutely. When I refer to the self, it's not
about ego, or accolades, or, youknow, things like that, it's,
it's really about the innerrealms of who you are as a human
being. Yeah.
Bill Duane (56:01):
I have a constant sense of gratitude and pleasant
surprise that this is the kindof thing that that one can work
on. And I mentioned for me, Iused to be really bad at this.
And, you know, in particular,switching over from a fear and
shame engine to a love andservice engine is something you
(56:22):
can set your mind to. And forme, I'm always a little hesitant
in, in my own leadershipcapacities to recommend specific
methods to people becausethey're, they're deeply
personal, although I willobviously readily say that
mindfulness meditation, therapy,work on trauma, if that's part
(56:42):
of, of one's background,relationship with the physical
body and Cymatics. So it seemslike your role is really as a as
a catalyst, what are ways thatyou have seen other people find
their way more from thatorientation of creating and
(57:03):
designing from more negative tomore wholesome areas, either for
yourself or another people thatyou've observed?
Irene Au (57:19):
I mean, I think the if the first step is to be loving
and kind to oneself, you know.
And this is where I think likeengaging in creative efforts,
whether it's playing music, ormovement, or the visual arts is
so important, because that's howour soul manifests. First of
all, that's our Spirit comingthrough. But also, like a
(57:42):
teacher says, so many valuablelessons for life. In these, you
know, those kinds of endeavorsdon't have a right or wrong. And
to do those things, well, youhave to practice and maybe
generate a million bad ideas inorder to get a good idea, at
(58:09):
least 100. And so they'repractices that cultivate grit,
and resilience, anddetermination. And just like,
the journey, it's all about thejourney, it's not about the
ultimate thing that you make,it's about the process for
getting there. So I mean, Ithink those endeavors teach you
(58:31):
all those valuable lessons. Andyou can you can learn those
lessons through, you know, othermeans and not doing that work.
But creative work. I think it'ssuch a great conduit for
teaching people, those valuablelessons. Again, like this notion
of the not that you're failing,but you're trying, you know, and
(58:51):
that is something to becelebrated instead of something
to be chastised for. And if Imean, I don't mean to say it's
that easy, because I think wecan be very self critical when
it comes to the act of doing anykind of increases like, Oh, I'm
such a bad artist, I can't drawstraight line, like, I will say
(59:12):
that, you know, so, it but but,you know, you, you can start to
watch yourself, do that, likeyou, you can observe the
conversation that you're havingwith yourself when you're going
through those endeavors. Andthat's when it's like, oh, this
is how I'm talking to myself.
(59:35):
Hmm, maybe I should have adifferent kind of conversation
with myself. And through thatprocessing, hopefully, you start
to cultivate a kinder, gentlerrelationship with yourself,
which then permeates into howyou interact with the rest of
the world and maybe set a betterexample for other people.
Bill Duane (01:00:01):
I can't imagine a better way to stick that
landing. Exactly, exactly thatthat was just that was just
beautiful. So, I mean, thank youso much for sharing your wisdom
and your journey I, you know, itwas a real delight to hear I see
(01:00:22):
this. You know that thatcharacter of love and care first
as it relates to one's ownexperience, but then as a method
for then broadcasting that outto the world. And if particular
if if our form of innovationtakes the form of design, and I
(01:00:44):
think it always does, whether itbe the formal design versus this
idea of making difficultchoices, I see this through line
from someone who grew up in whatsounds like really challenging
circumstances, and made friendswith that ambiguity. And at the
(01:01:05):
same time really had the valuesthat took you towards this deep
place of creativity and growthand the way that you've been
able to share that with otherpeople. And now you've shared it
with a few more people. So,
Irene Au (01:01:17):
thank you for having me. It's been so fun to talk to
Bill Duane (01:01:20):
you. My great pleasure. Take care. You too.
Hi, welcome to the heart of innovation Podcast. I'm
Bill Duane former Googleengineering executive and
Superintendent of wellbeing andcourage consultant and speaker
on innovation strategy. We'regoing to be diving deep into the
internal innovation that unlocksexternal innovation, and the
surprisingly practical ways wecan become better innovators
will be in conversation withinnovators from many different
(00:23):
backgrounds and contextsincluding business, science,
social change and technology andnot only benefit from their
expertise, but also theirpersonal stories of their
innovation journey.
Today, we get to spend time withmy friend Irene out Irene has
been building bridges betweentechnology and creativity her
whole life for being the childof Chinese immigrants in South
(00:43):
Carolina who wanted to studydesign and dance but chose
engineering to being the voiceof user centric design at tech
companies. We thought design wasthe result of complex
calculations. In bothsituations, he's developed a way
of projecting her power andexpertise in the world in the
form of values based design inways that are both practical and
transcendent. She's led userexperience at Netscape, Yahoo,
(01:05):
Google and Khosla ventures andhas led human experience and
yoga meditation, art, raising afamily and being a renown. So
welcome, Irene. It's verywonderful to have you. I've been
looking forward to this chat fora while.
Irene Au (01:20):
Thank you for having me.
Bill Duane (01:22):
You're very welcome.
And so that we jump in in theusual way we jump in an anchor
and like this word innovation,what does it mean for you? Or
how does it show up for you inyour life?
Irene Au (01:36):
More broadly, I guess, innovation is, is about making
something new.
And from a career perspective, Iguess, I've spent my energies
bringing new technologies to themasses, to to, to large consumer
(02:02):
audiences. And I think in my ownpersonal practice, it's an it's
about an endeavor to always lookat things with a beginner's mind
and see things as new. Becauseit's through different and fresh
perspectives that we're able tocultivate creativity and come up
(02:29):
with new solutions to oldproblems.
Bill Duane (02:35):
So I love that idea of beginner's mind. And to be
honest, it's something I have atough time with. So I'd love to
know more about it on the onehand, as I have a lot of
impostor syndrome, and so, asengineers slash smarty pants,
it's like, I'll be I'll be safefrom ridicule. Or, like, if I
(02:55):
can only know enough, then I'llbe safe. And so for me, and I
think a lot of people like me,this idea of beginner's mind
seems a little a littledangerous, or maybe, or maybe
counterintuitive. What's yourrelationship with with
beginner's mind? Is that is thata hurdle you've had to overcome?
Or how have you developed thisability to look afresh at
(03:19):
something that's been in frontof your eyes, maybe many times.
Irene Au (03:25):
It's interesting, like, I think, like the need to
know and to be right, comes froma place of not wanting to be
wrong, and not wanting to bewrong comes from a place of self
criticism, or fear of failure orfear of being perceived in a
(03:47):
certain way. And so I think allof those things are emotions
that have to be confronted, inorder to be comfortable with
cultivating a beginner's mindand to come in with like a, I
don't know, and, and to be okaywith making mistakes, and to be
okay with not knowing and thatthat in itself is not a failure,
(04:09):
or a defect or a problem. It'san opportunity. But, I mean, I
think the way we are raised andthe way we are as a society,
it's, you know, like, if youfail, or if you make mistakes,
you you might be a loser, or youmight be doing something wrong
(04:32):
or bad. So, you know, in mydaily life, I tried to see it as
just, you know, trying like, toquote my boss, Vinod, he always
says, like, it's better to tryand fail than to fail to try.
And so like this whole notion ofyour relationship with failure,
(04:56):
and how you see yourself and andhow you treat yourself like, do
you treat yourself with kindnessand compassion when things don't
work out? You know, it's likewhen a toddler is learning how
to walk, we don't say that thetoddler is failing to walk,
we're saying that the toddler islearning how to walk. And so I
think that that shift in mindsetis really key. Because it
(05:19):
changes the conversation youhave with yourself.
Bill Duane (05:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, part of the reasonwhy I did my career change from
engineering towards innovationand personal development is to,
you know, test him testify thatit's possible to make that
shift, I definitely have you my,you know, early middle age
onward work as going from a fearand shame engine is very
(05:45):
powerful, requires a lot ofbourbon and cheeseburgers to
keep it running, in myexperience, puts out a lot of
exhaust to a love and serviceengine. So you know, thank God,
this is something that you canchoose to get better at. But I'm
curious, were you always likethis? Or did you have to find
your own way towards that senseof strength through
(06:07):
vulnerability is the way it'slanding with me.
Irene Au (06:18):
You know, it's interesting. I mean, as a child,
I was not allowed to in, I wasnot allowed to engage in
creative endeavors. We, as achild of immigrant parents, we
did not have a lot of disposableincome to spend on Hobbies, or
lessons, dance lessons, or artlessons, or music lessons. And
(06:38):
so my father not only did nothave the resources, he did not
want to spend what resources wehave in that way. And he also
felt like they were kind of awaste of time. And even just a
couple of years ago, I had lunchwith my parents, and I asked
them, Is there anything that youregret in the way that you
raised me and my brother, and mymom said, Oh, I wish we could
(07:03):
have allowed you to engage inmore enrichment activities. And
my dad was like, well, actually,that wasn't such a bad thing,
after all, because you wouldn'thave had the career that you've
had if you had engaged in, youknow, like, art and dance and
music. So it kind of reflectslike the mindset that he held
(07:26):
then. And now, I guess. So myfocus as a child was very much
on math and science, which isvery quantitative, there's a
right and a wrong answer. Andmaybe I naturally gravitated to
that. Or maybe that was just howI saw the world, because that's
where the focus was. And so yes,certainly, as I, as I matured,
(07:54):
and also entered into a fieldthat is very creative
profession, I definitely had tochange my relationship with
that. And, and, you know, Ialways really loved the
ambiguous nature of design, likethis notion that there is never
(08:17):
really a definitive right orwrong answer. It's always very
context dependent. And I loveseeing the problem through a
whole system. Like it's, it's,it's not a B testing, but it's
like a lot of variables at playwith each other. And then seeing
how everything isinterconnected. is always
(08:39):
something that really intriguedme and something that I was
drawn to. So in a world likethat, there is there is never a
right or wrong. And I think asa, as a child, I also had to
cultivate the ability to seemultiple perspectives because I
(09:01):
grew up in an environment wheremy peers had very different
family backgrounds andupbringings from the environment
I was raised in, I grew up inSouth Carolina, as a child of
Chinese immigrants. And in SouthCarolina, the church is the
center of the social universe,and we did not belong to one
(09:22):
because my father is profoundlyatheist. So and people had very
different worldviews, verydifferent political views. And
so at almost as a survivalmechanism, I had to cultivate
the ability to see otherperspectives and think about
things through their eyes. Andso I think that has also
(09:45):
informed my belief that thingsare not black and white and, and
just to have more tolerance forthe unknown and the ambiguous
and the gray So I think thatthose qualities definitely
(10:05):
helped shape the way that Ientered in my profession and
kind of endeavored in the workthat I took on.
Bill Duane (10:17):
Oh, that's amazing, right? So what I'm hearing you
say is, if someone were to comein with a more black and white
view of right and wrong, thenthe demarcation point is
actually more dramatic, andmaybe more, maybe maybe more
fraught, but what you're talkingabout is coming up in an
(10:39):
environment where, and I likethe term that you use as as a
matter of survival tounderstand. So I'm now here to
I'm now hearing two things thatare really standing out to me.
One is that you're obviously anintensely creative person who
was dissuaded from that yetstill stood the course, right,
(11:02):
you took a math and sciencebackground, and then made a
beeline for the most directconnection between math and
science, and creativity, whichis the user experience part of
it. And I think a lot of peoplewould not have turned that into,
(11:24):
like, turn that into creativepower, like like the tension
being like driving, like, likebeing juicy. And then that
second part is being in thisenvironment, I can imagine both
of those situations shuttingsomeone down. So I'm curious,
I've just been hearing likethese stories of these two
stories of going into a gnarlysituation and being invigorated
(11:48):
by it and having it feed yourcreativity, right. I mean, you
earlier you talked aboutempathy. You know, one of the
biggest ticket items is empathyis to have empathy for people
that are very different fromyou. And you just listed off a
whole bunch of different onesabout, you know, religion,
culture, geography, probablylanguage, also a portion in
(12:09):
there. So that's, that's, that'samazing to me.
Irene Au (12:14):
Yeah, I often joke that growing up as a petite
Chinese woman in the south fullyprepared me as the, for career
as a woman in tech, andespecially as a designer in
tech. Well, yeah, feels that Ibuilt up like, like, you know, I
grew up in an environment whereI had no social status, or
(12:36):
power, or authority or control.
And as a designer, in theseengineering driven companies
that I've been with, like,there's no like automatic power
or authority bestowed upon me,you know, coming in as a
designer, like, you know, it'snot it was never like, oh, the
engineers have to implementwhatever the designer says. I
had to summon all of my skillsin listening and empathy and
(13:00):
being able to see differentperspectives and negotiation and
also like more subtler arts,like getting people to think
that it was their idea. Youknow, how to bring people along?
And make them feel like they'restill the ones in power and have
(13:22):
control because that would neverbe given to me. in those
contexts. So useful skills.
Yeah, for sure.
Bill Duane (13:33):
Yeah, absolutely. So it's really notable I'll, I'll
share a story that I have fromthe deep within the bowels of
engineering heard. So we joinedGoogle at about the same time in
2005, very different parts ofthe organization. One of the
teams sort of in myorganizational area had T shirts
that said, we make the thingthat makes the thing that makes
(13:55):
the thing sort of the oppositeof the of the backhoe you know,
of the of the of the front endstuff. But even then, I had
heard a story about one of thevery first designers who arrived
there, I think before before wedid who was just disgusted. So
one of the things that madeGoogle really great was this
real data based decision making.
Just we didn't know each otherback then. But I had a bumper
(14:24):
sticker I had a sticker on mylaptop that said, Fuck you. I
have charts and graphs to backme up. And that was, that was
the ethos. And so I had heard astory that the very first
designer so first of all, Googlehad told itself a story. That
data was the best way to dodesign, and you would do a B
testing. And you would do allthese little micro tests to see
(14:47):
who clicked on what, and thatthe aggregate of all those tiny
decisions, because they're allmathematically and calculable
would lead to Good design, andthat person that just quit and
disgust at trying to get peopleto understand or to hew to this,
and then not too long later, youcome in as the Global Head of,
(15:13):
of user experience, right? Andthen, and then you're using
those tools you met you, youmanaged made that eventually
work, maybe through a differentset, I wonder, you know, seems
like somebody came in and triedto
Irene Au (15:33):
clarify the story, I know exactly who you're talking
about. And that was actuallyafter I joined, he was on my
team. And this was circa2007 2008. And what I was trying
to do was to create a commonlook and feel for all of Google,
because there wasn't any, andthere was like the search
(15:53):
fiefdom, and then the the GoogleApps fiefdom, and then there was
ads. So we had like threedifferent worlds that were all
doing their own thing. And itwas not scalable or sustainable.
And also, like, it was reallyhard to pass the UI Review
Committee, especially in theworld of search. And it was
unclear to people what the ruleswere, what was the intention,
(16:15):
what were people optimizing for?
So I sought to work with theleaders over there to create a
common look and feel. But whatwe found was that what works
from a design perspective forsearch was actually completely
opposed to what worked anddesigned for Google Apps,
because they're differentinterfaces. You know, in Gmail,
for example, everything isclickable, everything in the
(16:38):
interface is clickable. Sowhereas in search, we knew from
a B testing that if youunderline links, like that gets
people to the answer thatthey're looking for a lot
faster. But if you if you createthis hardline consistent rule,
that everything that's clickableneeds to be underlined, then
that doesn't work for GoogleApps, and then the interface
breaks there. And so this iswhat I mean about how there's no
(17:00):
black or white, right or wronganswer. So context dependent,
but the prevailing thinking atthat time was like, Oh, 99% of
our traffic into Google wascoming in through search,
therefore, whatever worked froman interface perspective for
search should apply to the restof Google, like that should
dictate the rules, the interfacerules for the rest of Google,
(17:22):
like, that's what thisparticular executive argued for.
And so we tried to unify just,you know, identify a link color,
you know, what should be theshade of blue for the link
color, because that in itselfwas different in Google Apps
than it was in search. And soMarissa said, Well, we can
calculate all the 40 Shades ofBlue, and we can a B, test all
(17:44):
of them and see which oneperforms the better and best and
whichever performs the best.
That should be the default forall of Google. And, you know,
again, like I think this iswhere having some empathy and
perspective is really helpfulhere, because Google has been
highly criticized, I mean,during that period, for the
(18:06):
whole 40 shades of blue thing,you know, I mean, like, anytime
I spoke at a conference, I getasked about it. But you have to
understand that like, and Iknow, you know, this, Google's
interface is very fragile. Andthis is true for all search
interfaces, because I worked atYahoo. And we saw this in any
testing we did at Yahoo as well.
Any slight change, whether it'slike the letting, which is like
(18:27):
the space between the lines, youknow, in on the on the page,
like how much space you allowbetween one line versus the
other, whether you bullet thissearch results, or number them
or leave them blank, whether youpresent the search results in a
serif, or sans serif font, allof these subtle changes have
dramatic impact on userperformance and user happiness,
(18:51):
and various other successmetrics that were used
internally. And so you could seelike, Marissa was the executive
who was responsible forprotecting search and
safeguarding search and ensuringits success, along with all
those metrics. So from herperspective, she was perfectly
(19:12):
reasonable and rational. And youknow, from the perspective of
the designers and the folksworking on apps, you know, there
was also a very good rationalefor not having all the interface
rules being dictated by search.
So there was an impasse. Andactually, I mean, it even
escalated to to Eric Schmidt atsome point, and everybody ended
(19:36):
up voting on the one Google bar,the navigation bar across the
top because they were likereligious wars against what
worked and I was very contextdependent again. So you know, I
don't need to get into thedetails around the interpersonal
issues that led to this designerleaving but I will just say that
(19:59):
like They could not forge aworking relationship with each
other, that would carve a pathforward. And it was really
unfortunate, but there was a lotof ego there on both on both
sides and and, you know,ultimately what paved the path
(20:22):
forward was changes to executiveleadership. When Larry became
CEO, he was the one, only theCEO could bust through all of
these organizational challenges.
And so when, when what precededmaterial was actually Kennedy,
when that was created. And thatwas like a vision for what a
(20:46):
unified look and feel could be.
And even though it was unified,there were still exceptions made
for search. And Gmail, like ifthere was a way we could
rationalize why and how theinterface would be different,
even across Google, and still beconsistent, like different but
consistent. He was the one whobrought all the VPs in and said,
(21:10):
we're going to do this. And he'sthe only one who could have done
it. And even when he did it, allof the like a lot of the piece
didn't believe him. Google hadsuch a checkered history with
efforts like these. Right. But Iwish I could take credit for it.
I was just the intermediary thatjust kind of made sure
(21:30):
everything happened the rightway. And but yeah, it was this
is tough.
Bill Duane (21:38):
Oh, so you say you are just the intermediary. But I
will draw your attention to yourprevious comment where you noted
that the kind of power that wassuccessful in this environment
was that soft power of thebuilding of coalitions of
perhaps tricking people intothinking it was their ideas,
right. So it sounds like, Imean, again, looking at it from
(22:02):
very much the outside andseveral degrees is what I'm when
I'm, when I'm listening to you,I'm like, Oh, this is the this
is the power of bending and notbreaking. Yeah,
Irene Au (22:13):
you know, it was it was amazing, was like, so this
was kind of jujitsu, we openedup a Google Doc. And we started
cataloging, we starteddocumenting all the rationale in
every single UI reviewcommittee. With search, anytime
anything was approved orrejected, we documented the
rationale. And we reverseengineered how the executives
thought about. And I translatedthat into Google UI design
(22:38):
principles. And I popped it up alevel where I talked about the
intention, like this is actuallythe intention behind the UI
review feedback. This is whythings got shut down. And so as
you design the interface, thisis what you should be thinking
about. So for example, there wasthis rule that like no gray text
(22:59):
was allowed, or there was thisother Oh, when Google News first
launched, people were mystifiedbecause they would come through
UI review committee every week.
And like that, the only feedbackthey would get was a number like
the you know, the executivewould just say, 1411, nine,
nobody knows what's going on.
(23:21):
And it turns out like, this wasdeveloped during a time when
people were mostly on desktopcomputers, and they weren't used
to scrolling. And so your viewof what was happening in the
world that day came from thefirst at a glance view of what
popped up on Google News on thedesktop. And so it's everything
was like above the fold. We werevery concerned about the fold
(23:41):
back then, these days, I don'teven know if designers
understand what a fold is. Whatwhat the executive was doing,
she was counting the number ofheadlines that she could see
above the fold. And all thedesigners could figure out was
that the higher the number, thebetter, but they didn't
understand why. And so this isan example where like, I had to
translate this into a designprinciple that was like, Look,
(24:03):
Google is all about speed, likewe care about creating a fast
experience. This is not onlyabout the amount of capital that
was laid out for building, youknow, you know, web site, you
know, like the infrastructure tomake Google Search run fast.
This is about the interface, thestreamlined interface, the
reason why we use Sans Seriffonts, because we know from
(24:25):
human interface research thatpeople read more quickly on with
sans serif text online. Like thewhole point is to create a fast
experience. And so like ifpeople can get the fastest at a
glance view of what's happeningin the world, above the fold,
like that is the designintention. And that is what
constitutes a successful design.
And this is why Google'sinterface like circa 2006 2007,
(24:48):
was perceived as looking verycluttered, like there was a lot
of stuff, you know, but that'sbecause we knew people didn't
scroll and people wanted like asmuch information as they could
at a glance. And so then whathappened when Larry does kind of
pushed for elevating the lookand feel is that we said, the
design principles stand the testof time, like the principles
(25:10):
themselves have not changed. Butour interpretation and execution
of those principles havechanged. And there was even a
TGIF, all company, all hands,that I led with Larry, around
this time when he got up onstage. And he said, Don't
underestimate the importance ofwhitespace. Because sometimes
it's the whitespace, that getsyou to the thing that you're
(25:33):
looking for a lot faster. Andthis was like profound and
revolutionary, because before weissued whitespace, like that was
considered bad. That was like apoor design element. And all of
this is true, if you understandthe intention, it's just that
the interpretation could evolve,because suddenly, we had
smartphones and things likethat. And so this is what I mean
(25:54):
about holding space for theambiguous, being able to see
different perspectives, beingable to, you know, kind of,
like, help people understandwhat's the higher level purpose
or intention, rather thangetting stuck in the weeds and
sticking with rules and theblack and white, it's like, you
know, there is room in theirspace for the gray matter for
(26:15):
the gray area. And, and, youknow, I think that's, that's
kind of the, the magic.
Bill Duane (26:25):
Wow. So this makes me think of something that we've
spoken about previously. And Iknow what you've spoken about
publicly. And maybe I've notthought of it in this way, but
it presents so we were justreally talking about the
benefits of emotional,intellectual cognitive,
suppleness, of bending withoutbreaking and how your background
(26:49):
really trained you to do thatreally well. But I'll read to
you a quote that you wroteabout, because then at the same
time, now, you're also talkingabout the importance of
anchoring in something butyou're not anchoring in
something that's brittle, butyou're anchoring essentially in
values and virtues. Right. Andso I think it's a very interest.
(27:11):
But let me let me read to youfor the sake of the of the folks
listening. I really love thisquote from you. Any creative
endeavor is an expression of thehuman spirit. When we create
something, we create an outwardexpression of who we are, and
the values and virtues that wehave internalized, what we make
(27:31):
embodies our values and virtuesand becomes a tangible
expression of our self self witha with a capital S. So at the
same time, it seems like thepart of your recipe for success
is this combination of beingvery firm. But also curious
mean, I should say, reasonablyfirm about about your values and
(27:53):
virtues while at the same timereally explore using that as a
well, let me know if this istrue as a way then to explore
ambiguity, in grayness to lookto see what what options might
be available that aren'tobvious.
Irene Au (28:07):
Yeah, and I think as a designer, and for anyone who's
making like, it's reallyimportant to be clear about your
intentions. And so it's onething to hold values and
principles, but like, your yourintentions are, how you make
choices. I mean, you'rechoosing, you're choosing along
(28:28):
a line of principles and thingsthat you believe in that are
important. But it also comesback to like, what is it that
you're trying to achieve? So ifyou don't really, if you're not
clear on the intention, then thethe outcome or the execution
becomes more murky? Because youdon't know what criteria trying
to satisfy. You don't know whoyou're designing for, you don't
(28:50):
know what success looks like. Solike when we, when we, when we
encounter well designed productsor experiences, we perceive them
to be well designed, because theintention comes through in such
a crystal clear way. And thereason why it does is because
(29:10):
all the decisions and choicesalong the way, in the making of
that thing. We're arbitrated bya clear set of values and
principles.
Bill Duane (29:21):
And the other thing that jumps out in the beginning,
when we when we startedchatting, you mentioned that
you're designing for the masses,and your career has really been
operating at a scale that mostpeople have difficulty
cognizing. And some of theexamples you gave, really speak
to that of the I mean, Iremember just even again, from a
(29:43):
distance, how fraught thosediscussions about the Google
front page was about adding anytiny thing so we're really
dealing with this idea of almosthaving this, this massive
megaphone in front of ouramplifier in front of you design
decisions. But at the same time,you know, what you're talking
(30:06):
about when I've heard you talkabout this is this, this
tangible expression of our self,which means that there's a
relation, that there's aninwardness to identifying those
values and virtues. And then Idon't know if I'm curious what
you think of it, there's somesort of like a translation by
which the other sometimesbillion others get involved in
(30:29):
that in that design process. Sowhat's the maybe the busted into
the big, gnarly topic? To whatextent like I know that personal
development, personal growth,meditation, yoga has been a huge
part of of who you are? I mean,it's, it's really, it's when I
think of you, that's probablyone of the two biggest things,
(30:53):
how, how is how was thiscultivation of self become a
part of that design process ofpersonal development? Or has it
been a part of that process?
Irene Au (31:04):
I think it happens at so many levels, like, at a, you
know, like, when it helped,first of all, it helps cultivate
skills, for designers, like, theability to empathize, like those
pathways in the brain areaugmentive, through
contemplative practices, beingable to be creative and flexible
(31:28):
in your thinking, being able togenerate a lot of different
ideas, all of those skills areaugmented through contemplative
practices, being able to workwell with others, like all the
EQ skills, being able tonegotiate to communicate to see
clearly, all of that, andthere's a lot of brain research
that supports that those skillsare improved through meditation,
(31:53):
and yoga. So that's at onelevel, it's just like, the
interpersonal skills and theskills to that are essential for
becoming a good maker. And thenat another level, there's kind
of a quality around attention,that is so important for makers
(32:18):
because like when we, again,when we encounter something
that's well designed, it'sdesigned, well, not only because
there's a clear intention, butalso the details matter, like
design is all about the details.
But what does it take forsomeone to actually understand
those details, and to come upwith the right solution, at that
(32:41):
level of granularity takesincredible attention, and
observation, and refinement, andcraft, patience, these are all
qualities that are cultivatedthrough a contemplative
practice. Now, there are manypeople who don't practice yoga
and meditation actively, youknow, as, as we understand what
(33:04):
it looks like, and they aregreat designers, actually, but a
lot of the designers that I'veencountered actually do have
some kind of there's some waythat they practice a
conversation with themselves.
(33:25):
And, and slow themselves down.
So that they can be better attheir craft. And, you know, so
it doesn't necessarily have tolook like sitting on a cushion
for a couple hours a day. But,you know, those skills are
definitely cultivated andimproved through yoga and
(33:47):
meditation, and are essentialfor making well. The other thing
I will say is, like, you know,when we, like design is also
like an act of love. Becauseyou're you're loving, you have
to love the thing that you'remaking, in order for it to, in
(34:08):
order for the output to be good,you have to care about it. You
also have to care about thepeople who are going to receive
this, you know, I mean, you canmake something and make it for
yourself and just make it forthe sake of making something
good. But that might beconsidered, you know, that might
be like, art or whatever. Butlike if you're designing
something that other people aremeant to consume, you are loving
(34:30):
them, because you have to seethem, you have to care about
them. You have to understandwhat are their issues and needs
and problems. And then you haveto care enough to come up with
solutions for those. And thenfor something to be done well,
you have to take great care andattention to execute that well.
So good design is an act oflove. And if you don't love the
work or you don't love therecipient, or you don't love
(34:54):
yourself, like all that's goingto come through in the design
like If the user interface orthe user experience like design
is like a canary in a coal mine,like, all the dysfunction that
might exist in the act of makingor creating, will manifest
itself in the UI. And you seethat in an organization, like
how many interfaces do weencounter, where you can see,
(35:17):
like, the organizational linesof the company drawn out in the
interface, or like, you know,interfaces that are, you know,
not honest, or are kind oftilted in a one particular
direction, that's notnecessarily for the benefit of
(35:37):
the user, you know, or aninterface that has too many
features, and can't besimplified, like, all of those
are manifestations of some kindof dysfunction, maybe it's like,
lack of strategy, poor talent,inability to execute, maybe it
comes down to more spiritualissues around greed, or
attachment. Fear, you know, solike, when we see poorly
(36:01):
designed things, they aremanifestations of those, that
als in some way, and it's lackof love. That, that, and that's
why it's kind of offensive, whenwe encounter something that's
not well designed, it's like,it's like, these people were
careless, or they werethoughtless, both are offensive,
(36:23):
because they didn't care aboutme, or about society, or about
the environment, or whatever itis, you know, that's offensive,
and, and that slows us downmakes us sad, it erodes our
goodwill towards others. Andthen conversely, good design,
preserves goodwill, it lifts usup and gives us more energy to
(36:45):
propagate kindness, love,generosity to other people. And
this, to me is the ultimatereason why design is so
important. It's not frivolous,it's not about aesthetics. It's
really about the energy thatwe're putting out into the world
and receiving.
Bill Duane (37:09):
In, in hearing, that, what's jumping out at me
is, is when this nature of theway that dysfunction shows up.
And to somebody who's not anexpert, you know, it shows up
almost as if someone is speakingin different tones of voice, or
different accents within withinthe same conversation. And, and,
(37:34):
and yet, I'm also thinking, youknow, and in particular, the way
that design particularly in inorganizations is a group
endeavor. And one of the bigbenefits of diversity and
inclusion is bringing morepoints of view to the table. And
(37:56):
I've seen that in, in my ownexperience of that, leading to
what's called in the researchthat cognitive abrasion that
leads to, but when there'scognitive abrasion, with
wholesome intentions andsurrounded in love, then that's
actually that's an that's anelevator, right, versus that
(38:16):
same amount of disagreement. Ifit's allowed to not be trans
mortified, or if it's not transmortified by that design
process, it will show up as ancohesive or fragmented. So I'd
love to know if you have anythoughts about that? Yeah.
Because it sounds like I mean,I'm seeing I'm seeing a thread
(38:39):
where you wade into situationsthat could have been
destructive. And instead theybecome generative.
Irene Au (38:48):
Yes. And I think that's really important to
understand. Because when I saydesign is an act of love, and
about caring for users andthings like that, that doesn't
mean that you cannot makedifficult choices. Sometimes the
difficult choices that are madeare acts of compassion, or
kindness or love. Because again,it comes back to the intention,
(39:11):
and then the ability to deliversuccessfully on that intention.
So maybe it helps if I give someexamples. I'll see one example
might be so I worked at Udacity.
We were the first online massiveopen online courseware MOOC at
the time, that's what it'scalled. It was founded by our
(39:32):
former colleague, SebastianThrun. And the main competitors
for Udacity. Around the timewhen I was there were Coursera
Udemy, you know, mostlyCoursera. And the conventional
wisdom was that the main successmetric for MOOC was like course
completion rate. So how manywhat percentage of users that
(39:52):
are taking your class actuallyfinished the class? And we knew
from our data that But likepeople who took the class as a
cohort, so for example, thosewho started on the same date and
then move through the courses atthe same pace, and they were on
the same schedule, when whencourses were set up like that
there was a higher completionrate. And yet, the Sebastian
(40:14):
really felt strongly that hewanted to create a company, an
offering that supported peoplewho could learn at their own
pace, you know, becauseeverybody learns at a different
rate, everybody has differentdemands on their time, he wanted
to offer a service that couldsupport like somebody who wanted
(40:36):
to do a mid career switch andwas working, you know, a job and
then taking these classes atnight and had a family and you
know, maybe they can't move asquickly through classes,
somebody, some, some 20 yearold, you know, who, who has more
time on their hands, or, youknow, supplementing their
college education or whatever.
And so this led to very huge hotdebates within the company,
(41:01):
because product decisions, werehinging on this. On this
conflict, we wanted to makeproduct decisions that would
optimize for course completionrate, because that was a success
metric. And yet the founder ofthe company wanted this other
experience. And so actually, thekind, compassionate thing was to
(41:23):
say, you know, we're just goingto change his definition of
success. Forget about thesuccess metric, of course
completion rate, we're going toinvent other success metrics
that are going to be morereflective of what we value. And
so you know, that that was thatwas that was that unlocked
everything and allowed us tocreate a more clear vision for
(41:46):
the experience, which translatedinto a much more successful
product. I'll give anotherexample. Just contrasting Yahoo,
and Google. So like, at Yahoo,we were trying to appeal to the
broadest audience possible. Andthat meant designing our
websites for all the oldbrowsers. This was before we had
(42:08):
like chrome auto update. Like ifyou need to update your browser,
you had to like go to thewebsite and download the update
and reinstall like who knew howto do that. And but so we were
hamstrung, because we weredesigning for the lowest common
denominator. But that made uslook, really, we were not able
to innovate as a result. Becausewe were hamstrung. And so then
(42:32):
as, as new web technologies,like DHTML, came out. And, you
know, Gmail launched and hadkeyboard shortcuts. And we
couldn't do any stuff like that,because we were still designing
for like, Netscape 3.0. Andthere was like this. I mean, I
(42:54):
guess you could say, we weretrying to be nice to everyone.
But in the end, that did notserve the business and ended up
serving no one. And in contrast,Google was very clear, even
before the world of auto updatefor web browsers, Larry and
Sergey were very clear about whothey were designing for, they
said, if this person is going tobe like, early adopter on the
(43:17):
forefront of technology, youknow, always has the latest and
greatest web browser. And thedesign team just had a heyday
about this, because it's like,oh, we're alienating all these
users. If we're doing that, youknow, it's such a small sliver.
But actually, it was a real actof compassion and kindness to be
that crystal clear and to be tomake such a hard choice as
leaders, for the rest of thecompany to give that kind of
(43:39):
direction. Because then it wascrystal clear how we're going to
move forward, we are going to beseen as innovators. I mean,
Gmail was like, you know, thatwas like the best email account
to have, because like, if youhad AOL, like you're really
behind the time, if your GmailHey, your, your, you know,
something, you know, that wasthe brand that it became. And
that's because Larry and Sergeywere like, we're not going to
(44:02):
worry about designing foreveryone, we're going to focus
on the early adopters, becauseour belief is that along the
way, everyone else is going tocome along. And they are going
to eventually learn all thisstuff. But, you know, we don't
want to ever be hamstrung bythis old technology that's going
to hamper us from innovation.
So, you know, on one hand, youcould say, oh, that's so mean.
(44:27):
They excluded all these people.
But I actually think it was aprofound act of clarity and
vision, which, in turn, wascompassionate and kind, because
it allowed us it allowed thecompany to have a more clear
vision for its user experience.
Bill Duane (44:52):
So you just gave two examples of a process by He said
reminds me of a thing I havebeen trainer used to say about
creating the physics of thesituation. And something I think
Google did extraordinarily well,was to think ahead of time about
(45:15):
the physics of the situation.
And you know, in the case of theof the online learning, the
change, like the the designprocess led to attention by
which said, Well, we actuallyneed to look at what we're
optimizing for. And to make itmore complex, but then also more
true to life. And then settingin the tension of the design
(45:37):
process was resolved by ashifting of the goals, which
then led to a result that wasactually easier to design for.
And then in the second case,it's this idea of how much are
you anchored? By the past, ifyou're anchored towards
servicing, especially in fastgrowing technology, every
(46:00):
iteration of the technology, itgets harder and harder to
operate, I'm currently workingwith a client. And the way we
describe it is that the gravityof their planet is like two or
three times as heavy as Earth,because there's all this weight
of all these decisions that camebefore. So what you were just
mentioning, then is in order. Soin order to get that value of
(46:23):
the light, and good design andusability, there actually needs
to be difficult decisions madeto create the physics of the
situation that will like that,that will make that result more
likely. In this case, it's like,Wouldn't it be nice to use any
of the web standards that havebeen designed in the last nine
(46:44):
years? Because there's sobecause there's so much if I'm
hearing you, right, so it'sinteresting that, and this may
be speaks to your point aboutdesign, not just being surfacey,
and aesthetics. But if you'redoing it, right, so we were
talking about this idea ofmaking room for gray, and seeing
design as something bigger,which then, and then launching
(47:09):
into these deeply gray spaces,which I think if you put all
that together, it creates a veryinteresting tool for analysis
that can say like, well, maybewe need to rethink either a
bottom up physics of thesituation of which can resolve
we which can involve somedifficult compassion, maybe
(47:31):
another example that I use whenI'm training or coaching new
managers is it's notcompassionate to leave a
dysfunctional situation intact.
Even if it's the mostheartbreaking of those of when
someone is struggling in a role,and they're not going, it's in,
(47:52):
they're not going to be able tolearn their way out of it. It's
a fit issue. It's notcompassionate to leave them in
that even though it's a veryuncomfortable situation, it's
certainly not compassionate tothe people around them. So it's
an interesting definition, avery nuanced view of definition,
about being clear about yourvalues, and then creating the
physics of the situation. Sothat it's more likely to get you
(48:14):
to that wise outcome that was astruggle to get to,
Irene Au (48:17):
is such an engineering way of describing it. You know,
just to clarify the Googlething, it's not just about like
letting go of the past, I thinklike more, it's really about
being able to make a harddecision that alienates a huge
population, potentially, youknow, it's like, when you when
(48:38):
you choose to focus onsomething, it means you're not
focusing on something else. Andthat's what's emotionally
difficult, because we tend to beattached to, you know, widest
audience possible, you know, wedon't want to alienate anybody,
especially, you know, for ayoung company, or whatever. And
so it takes a lot of emotionalfortitude, to be able to say,
(48:59):
we're going to focus on this.
And that means we're not goingto do that. So many companies
don't know how to say no tothings. And that's what kills
them. And so let's even like ata product level, when you see,
like, a lot of features arewhere you go into preferences.
And there's like, all thesepreferences, like one of my
mentors, one of my early mentorssaid, Yeah, you know, like,
preferences are just like a wayof shoving down, like all the
(49:20):
indecision, all the things thatthe team couldn't decide on.
They would just shove the thingsthey couldn't agree on into
preferences. So like when wewhen we see feature bloat, like
that is a lack of discipline,that's like two, that's that's
attachment that you're seeingright there. The failure to
simplify is a consequence ofgreed and attachment. And so
(49:45):
those are spiritual, thatspiritual work that the team
needs to do or the leadershipneeds to do to be able to make
those tough calls. Like I oftenalso refer to like, what
happened when Steve Jobsreturned to Apple as CEO After
he, you know, he was kicked outand then eventually came back.
And the first thing he did washe streamlined the whole product
line. Like if you can findprobably Google these charts
(50:08):
that show like what the line ofApple products looked like,
before he became CEO, and thenhe just slashed all these,
because it was unsustainable tohave so many different products.
And, you know, some people say,Oh, he was so mean, he laid off
these people, he killed theseproducts that were being
developed and things like that,but actually, it was a, it was a
moment of extreme vision andclarity that came through and
(50:32):
then also emotional fortitude,to be able to say, you know,
what, we're not going to dothese things. And it's for the
benefit of these other efforts.
And, and, and to be able toexecute more clearly on these
intentions.
Bill Duane (50:54):
So I'm, I'm thinking about as a leader, you know, we
were just talking about, on thepositive side, intentions, and
values. And then also husbandinga process shepherding a process
(51:16):
through by which it willencounter the fear. People
making decisions from a place offear, or impostor syndrome, or
defending territory or heartfeltideas about that would have a
negative net effect of slowingdown. As a leader, how, how have
(51:40):
you been able to or what haveyou found effective in helping
people negotiate those rapids?
Irene Au (51:47):
Yeah, I think self awareness is the first step.
Because if people don'tunderstand the dynamics at play,
you know, then there's no way toresolve it. Like if we can't see
like, oh, the reason why we'relogged jammed here is because we
have like, these politicalissues, or someone doesn't trust
somebody else, or the incentivesare wrong, like this person is
(52:11):
pushing for this, because theirbonus depends on success with
that metric. But then it's indirect opposition with this
other organization or whatever,like the first step, the leader,
I think needs to be aware of thesituation and the forces that
are driving these behaviors thatcause conflict, or things that
(52:31):
get in the way of good design.
And, and then as a leader, theyhave to be able to step in and
arbitrate. And too often, thatdoesn't happen, for whatever
reason, it does take incrediblecourage to intervene. Because it
may mean, it often meansdisappointing somebody, or
changing something that's reallyhard. But that's what leadership
(52:54):
is, is to be able to come in andsay, like, make these hard
decisions, change the successmetrics, if you have to remove
someone that's a roadblock inthe organization, or reorganize
the team so that everybody'saligned in the same direction.
Like those are difficult choicesto make and even more difficult
to execute. But so much of ithinges on the leader and their
(53:18):
ability to be self aware, besocially aware, and to have the
leadership skills to kind ofsort these things through and
resolve them. And I don't wantto pin it all on the leader, but
it does mean the organizationand the product and the outcomes
all do reflect the leader. But Ithink the more that the leader
(53:41):
can create the right kind ofculture. The hopefully these
issues get surfaced morequickly, more readily and get
resolved more quickly andreadily with the right kind of
culture. When that'stransparent, where people trust
each other. It's not politicaland it's not about backstabbing
and and when that's morecollaborative it takes a lot of
(54:05):
work to build that trust youknow it takes transparency and
communication and and a leadersown kind of emotional
sensitivity towards others.
Bill Duane (54:22):
It you bring up an interesting paradox I don't know
did you ever run into Marklesser he was one of the folks
who was one of the earlydesigners and prime movers in
the Search Inside Yourself Class
Irene Au (54:34):
No
Bill Duane (54:36):
well, he has a book that I really like so he wrote a
book on paradox coming from aZen point of view and I always
so it's very engineering thingto say I was hated paradox
because they don't they don'tmake any sense. They're not very
resolvable. But his book onparadox that really helped
explain it for me is called KnowYourself, forget yourself. And
(54:58):
so when I'm listening to you,I'm Hearing this deep self
knowledge and introspection, inservice of then making it about
much more than you, I mean, andmaybe is that that thread
between the deeply personal, youknow what you mentioned, as, you
know, what we make becomes atangible expression of ourself,
(55:21):
but then to not have that beself centered, that know
yourself as it sounds like froma leadership perspective, it's
having a deep knowledge ofyourself such that then you can
then reach into that process,and shepherd it through those,
those rapids that other peoplemight be going through.
Irene Au (55:40):
Absolutely. When I refer to the self, it's not
about ego, or accolades, or, youknow, things like that, it's,
it's really about the innerrealms of who you are as a human
being. Yeah.
Bill Duane (56:01):
I have a constant sense of gratitude and pleasant
surprise that this is the kindof thing that that one can work
on. And I mentioned for me, Iused to be really bad at this.
And, you know, in particular,switching over from a fear and
shame engine to a love andservice engine is something you
(56:22):
can set your mind to. And forme, I'm always a little hesitant
in, in my own leadershipcapacities to recommend specific
methods to people becausethey're, they're deeply
personal, although I willobviously readily say that
mindfulness meditation, therapy,work on trauma, if that's part
(56:42):
of, of one's background,relationship with the physical
body and Cymatics. So it seemslike your role is really as a as
a catalyst, what are ways thatyou have seen other people find
their way more from thatorientation of creating and
(57:03):
designing from more negative tomore wholesome areas, either for
yourself or another people thatyou've observed?
Irene Au (57:19):
I mean, I think the if the first step is to be loving
and kind to oneself, you know.
And this is where I think likeengaging in creative efforts,
whether it's playing music, ormovement, or the visual arts is
so important, because that's howour soul manifests. First of
all, that's our Spirit comingthrough. But also, like a
(57:42):
teacher says, so many valuablelessons for life. In these, you
know, those kinds of endeavorsdon't have a right or wrong. And
to do those things, well, youhave to practice and maybe
generate a million bad ideas inorder to get a good idea, at
(58:09):
least 100. And so they'repractices that cultivate grit,
and resilience, anddetermination. And just like,
the journey, it's all about thejourney, it's not about the
ultimate thing that you make,it's about the process for
getting there. So I mean, Ithink those endeavors teach you
(58:31):
all those valuable lessons. Andyou can you can learn those
lessons through, you know, othermeans and not doing that work.
But creative work. I think it'ssuch a great conduit for
teaching people, those valuablelessons. Again, like this notion
of the not that you're failing,but you're trying, you know, and
(58:51):
that is something to becelebrated instead of something
to be chastised for. And if Imean, I don't mean to say it's
that easy, because I think wecan be very self critical when
it comes to the act of doing anykind of increases like, Oh, I'm
such a bad artist, I can't drawstraight line, like, I will say
(59:12):
that, you know, so, it but but,you know, you, you can start to
watch yourself, do that, likeyou, you can observe the
conversation that you're havingwith yourself when you're going
through those endeavors. Andthat's when it's like, oh, this
is how I'm talking to myself.
(59:35):
Hmm, maybe I should have adifferent kind of conversation
with myself. And through thatprocessing, hopefully, you start
to cultivate a kinder, gentlerrelationship with yourself,
which then permeates into howyou interact with the rest of
the world and maybe set a betterexample for other people.
Bill Duane (01:00:01):
I can't imagine a better way to stick that
landing. Exactly, exactly thatthat was just that was just
beautiful. So, I mean, thank youso much for sharing your wisdom
and your journey I, you know, itwas a real delight to hear I see
(01:00:22):
this. You know that thatcharacter of love and care first
as it relates to one's ownexperience, but then as a method
for then broadcasting that outto the world. And if particular
if if our form of innovationtakes the form of design, and I
(01:00:44):
think it always does, whether itbe the formal design versus this
idea of making difficultchoices, I see this through line
from someone who grew up in whatsounds like really challenging
circumstances, and made friendswith that ambiguity. And at the
(01:01:05):
same time really had the valuesthat took you towards this deep
place of creativity and growthand the way that you've been
able to share that with otherpeople. And now you've shared it
with a few more people. So,
Irene Au (01:01:17):
thank you for having me. It's been so fun to talk to
Bill Duane (01:01:20):
you. My great pleasure. Take care. You too.
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