Design Meets Business

Christian: Jennifer, it is such a pleasure to have you on design this business. Welcome. You have built a career at this fascinating intersection of design and leadership and technology helping teams in a few complex spaces like healthcare and enterprise software. And I've been following your writing for a while.

You explore a lot of interesting topics like how AI is reshaping design, how culture sustAIns craft, and how curiosity and good arguments can make for stronger teams. And today, I would love to dive deeper into these topics with you, but maybe before we go into all of that, maybe we can start a little bit at the beginning as a quick warmup.

How did you find your way into design and what's kept you curious about it all of these years?

Jennifer: First thank you so much for inviting me on your show. I appreciate it so much. So currently I head up design for Oracle Health, who recently acquired a healthcare company called Cerner which is an EHR company owns the health record hundreds and hundreds of different healthcare modules and applications for just under $30 billion. We're in the middle of re-imagining the entire health experience from the ground up. So that's what I'm currently doing. But like most designers, my path has been very non-linear to get here, to say the least.

So I started out in journalism and I thought I was gonna be a broadcast journalist when I was in my teens, and I went to one of the best programs that I could find at the time, the University of Oregon. But once I got in, I realized that I needed to pivot a bit and discover design. So I took the leap and switched and started to.

Understand and dive into design. And since then I've had the experience to work across a whole bunch of different types of organizations and businesses and industries, from big tech to startups, to agencies leading innovation for brands such as Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, Google, Nike , and I've been developing a kind of a point of view or craft through all the years of stumbling and fAIling and succeeding and switching.

And just exploring and trying to hone in on what is my position and what is the lens that I bring my craft and my work through, and all of that work in my practice has been through the lens of three kind of pillars : beauty, meaning and wellness. Beauty being very important to the craft. And the practice that I do is not about just how something looks, but I define beauty in how something behaves and how it makes somebody feel.

How does it make you feel when you experience this thing that has been created by me, by teams, by a whole collection of people? How does it make you feel? And so that is the emotional resonance is one of the pillar, and it's gotta be beautiful as well. Meaning is another one. I meet with so many designers going through portfolios and listening to them explAIn their work.

And there's so many times where the designers are unable to really articulate what the meaning is behind their work. That is something that I think is extremely important. We don't just design for design's sake. We design to solve real problems and bring real solutions to real people in ways that resonate.

How do you take all the inputs that we receive across, technical constrAInts and what people need and um, user goals and the product requirements. How do you take all of these different inputs and interpret them back in a very meaningful way? And then the third pillar is around wellness.

So this one is just very personal to me. There are so many problems that each of us as designers can go solve in this world. So for me, I kind of use the filter of picking the things that will lead to greater wellness, whether it's health, whether it's making somebody feel better or more connected to their community or their loved ones, or if it's even about emotional and mental health.

That idea of wellness and bringing that aspect of making you feel good and bringing joy to your life is really um, important to me. So that's also one of the ways that I've been filtering what to focus on, what problems to solve what projects to take, what innovations do I wanna focus my time and energy on through that lens.

And now, now I'm here putting my skills into trying to change healthcare. I'm trying to make a positive impact in the world towards a completely broken industry before I croak and run outta time.

Christian: It's nice. I love that. I love that you have this lens or this yeah, these three lenses that you're looking at, the challenges that you're gonna spend your time tackling for you it was beauty, meaning, and wellness. I think it'll be nice to talk about especially meaning I really like that one. Uh, 'Cause I think wellness for you is, is very personal, right?

So for you, b wellness for some other people might be financial sectors 'cause that's what they're passionate about. So I guess that one is perhaps the one closest to what you inside feel that you're passionate about. But I think beauty and meaning perhaps can be a bit more universal. Especially Especially meaning is there any meaning behind your work?

So, I love that. Um, But you sAId something interesting there in the beginning that I'd really like to pull on a little bit. Uh, You sAId I started as a journalist. I thought I was gonna be a broadcaster, and then I felt that I needed to pivot and discover design. Where did that come from? It is not something I've heard before.

Jennifer: Yeah. my background, my family I've had the opportunity to grow up with a lot of creative people who are taking the leap to try to make a living out of being a creative person. Which is hard. It takes a lot of courage to do that. I have my father and my brother and my mother, all of them have been taking that creative journey all through their lives. And I grew up with a full workshop, being able to build any kind of woodworking, anything made out of woods, ceramics, pAInting, drawing. I lived and grew up in sort of this studio and making environment.

And at one point my decided to take the leap and become a full-time bronze sculptor for years and years. So I followed him through that journey of what it takes and the bravery it takes to be creative. And I just have that in my blood. And when I started out in journalism, it was interesting at first, but I found that it was a lot of writing, which ironically I've been doing a lot lately. So it's funny how things come full circle. But it was a lot of writing and I wanted to roll up my sleeves and get my hands into materials and solve problems more with my hands.

Like, how do you craft a product? How do you build a product? How do you prototype a physical object? How do you create a pAInting? How do you express an idea through something that's visual? I started to get curious about that and started to investigate , what are the kinds of things I could do to learn about this?

And I had no, I had no idea about design. I didn't know what it was about. I didn't know all the different areas that you can go into design. So I started taking pAInting classes and drawing classes and ceramics classes and all of the fine arts classes, which then led me into learning about design.

How do you take a problem that a user is having with a particular experience and take all of your, problem solving skills and take all the materials and use design thinking. How do you take all the collection of those skills and solve for those problems and create a new solution whether it's digital, physical or whatnot to solve that, that user, and that really sparked something in me.

And I have I haven't looked back since

Christian: Yeah. That's great. You did say it was very non-linear that you got into design, which I guess a lot of us did.

So, uh, yeah, it sounds like it was you sAId that in one of your articles something that I think a lot of us can really relate to these days, that design used to be about making things beautiful and functional, but it's becoming about making things intentional.

And I'm wondering if we could unpack that a little bit and also from a practical perspective, as a designer, how does that show up in, in a day to day if what's really important now is to make something intentional on top of beautiful and functional.

Jennifer: Absolutely. I mean, there's a, a famous term form follows function. I think that still holds true, and, And that is um, deeply foundational to the practice of all designers. But I think now when we're entering this age of AI and we are now surrounded with all of this automation and intelligence and all of this complexity with our experiences we have, we're in and out of different software experiences that are connected, disconnected, and all this intelligence behind it, it starts to evolve who we are as designers.

And it's no longer about taking a piece of software and creating kind of a linear click through a linear experience where a user has to come in and learn the navigation and we guide the user through in a certain path or a certain set of paths, and we have to make it beautiful and visually appealing and usable, things like that.

It's no longer about that anymore. And our role as designers is very quickly evolving. designers we're always thinking about how to solve problems and improve our experiences for the, that we're creating, but we're also constantly looking inward and doing that with our own discipline itself.

And right now we're growing and we're trying on many different hats. And there are a lot of different hats that we are starting to evolve into. Like, For example. We're now strategists, right? Design is shifting left into the earliest stages of business and product strategy. So as opposed to having a business say, Hey, here is a particular business goal and an outcome, let's translate that into a product strategy and then hand it off to design.

We're now being part of the discussion and influencing what that business strategy is along with the product strategy. We're really starting to move from thinking about our craft as a set of outputs. Like we're gonna create a product demo that's gonna describe a vision, and then a set of specs that development's gonna go built towards a set of outcomes. So really around what is the intent of this experience? How can we look at what the business goal is, what the customer goal is and what the end user goal is. And if you're in an industry like enterprise, there's often those three tiers of goals and they don't always align.

So that, that's one sort of hat that we are now starting to wear more broadly. And we're getting deeper and deeper into being able to collaborate at higher and higher levels in the C-suite, for example to be part of the discussion, to shape strategy um, not just solutioning.

The other hat that we are wearing as well as we evolve is we're now moment makers. We're no longer designing, these standard workflows. We're no longer designing for screens. We are shaping and crafting moments. Everything's changing constantly. Life is in motion. Our experiences we have with software is constantly in motion.

We have to think as designers, not about static screens, but how do these moments adapt? How are they context aware? How can we respond to the user intent? How can we predict what they want and respond? How can we make an experience feel emotionally resonant? And that doesn't mean, oh, I feel good.

Being emotionally resident is solving a problem so well that makes it easy for a user to go achieve that. And then at the end they're like, wow, that was easy. Wow. That really was no problem for me to finish that task. And then time, there's an element of time. We often talk in healthcare, a lot of the um, healthcare roles their tasks shift dramatically from the beginning of the day to the middle of the day to the end of the day.

So there's this element of time that also we have to consider. And I think as designers, we have to develop skills and tools and methods that allow us to really lean into the idea that we are shaping moments, not screens. The other piece of that is that with intelligence we are truly entering into this era of invisible and visible the tangible and intangible, right?

So when we're moving in and out of our experiences, whether we're picking up a physical phone using digital and invisible software, if we are using a touch interface versus audio and voice interface that you can't see, we have to think about moving ourselves, the people who we're solving for through these invisible and visible spaces.

And so all of that kind of ladders up to this idea of moment makers. So that's a shift, it's a reframing of how we think about and go tackle the problem as designers. Another that we are evolving towards is I talk a little bit about the evolving role of leadership and design leadership, and part of that is, we first took complexity and made sense of it through a vision and then use that vision to work across the organization to go realize.

And I think that vision implies that it's not gonna change. And right now everything is changing at the speed of light, practically. And agAIn, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, we have to think about how can we be adaptive, context aware, respond to intent, intent at any given moment.

So. As designers and design leaders, we don't just create vision. We are now moving to a place where we have to figure out how to hold space. We have to hold space for organizations to realize it. We are orchestrators. That's the hat we're wearing. So how do we become conductors where we're working across an entire organization and really bringing out the best in every skill needed so that everyone is working towards realizing this vision and shaping it and crafting it in real time together.

Christian: Yeah. So all of these different hats that you're talking about, do you think we're now in a place where we need to wear these hats because of the advent of AI? Or was that always going to be the natural evolution of the design or which over the past 10, 15 years has indeed moved away from just make the screen look good to, you know, we have product strategists, UX strategists, whatever they're called now.

We, designers do research. They kind of work across the whole spectrum. So is that because of AI or maybe AI has just accelerated it, or was that always going to happen sooner or later?

Jennifer: I think that this is the trajectory where design is heading in general . We're seeing more and more designers take higher and higher level seats at the table. A decade ago there weren't chief creative officers, chief design officers, sVPs and design we're gAIning credibility at the business level and we're we're starting to ease into the C-suite. And so that whether there's AI or not, that is the evolution of design is heading towards that orchestration and that shifting, I think AI is accelerating it exponentially. So now not only do we need, to do that if in AI we're no longer designing screens, we're designing moments.

It's really about the designers defining, in collaboration with our partners, the rules of engagement.

Christian: And in this new world that you're pAInting of design expanding and taking even more ownership. What are some of the different skills that you think are gonna be required that maybe until now we didn't necessarily have to worry about? Or maybe it was a bit of a niche. Some designers had them, but they were not necessary. What's becoming really necessary now going forward?

Jennifer: Yeah. So we talk about that a lot across my peers and folks who have fancier titles than me. The roles are blurring to start with. I think where we're heading is no longer gonna be the traditional types of roles. Like you've gotta use a researcher, you've got a design strategist, you have a visual designer, a motion designer.

Those are all gonna be blurred. And I think as we blur that and head towards creating these different types of team makeup which is really going to be around the aptitudes of the individuals what kind of skills and aptitudes do each of these people have? And let's put a smaller team and the right folks to go tackle, X, Y, Z problem.

And when you shift into aptitudes, then it opens up the need of different types of skills. And one of them, I think I, mentioned this in the intro is I meet with a lot of designers who present their work and they go through these use cases and these examples of these projects that they've done.

And more often than not, the designers struggle with how to articulate the intent. They struggle with how to articulate the problem that they're solving, and they struggle with how to articulate why their solution is the best solution that meets that problem. And also the user. what does the user need?

Who are we designing for and what are the needs and problems that we're trying to solve? That articulation and being able to tell a story around that that is going to be one of the most critical skills that we're gonna need. So it's that critical thinking. So I think we're gonna end up shifting away from just execution skills.

'cause a lot of that can be not fully replaced, but accelerated by these AI tools that are rapidly evolving. And what's really gonna be needed across all these roles. I don't care if you're called a strategist or a developer, or a PM or what your title is today, that critical thinking and the ability to take all the complexity and inputs and clearly articulate that back.

Here's the problem here's the user the person at the center of this problem or the collection of people. Here's the problem that we're trying to solve, and here is why we're solving it. And that is a skill that it's a soft skill. It takes time to develop that.

We need to develop that skill in the community. We need to bring it into our education for design. We need to really lean into that because that is what's going to keep us in the era of AI. It's going to help us keep these AI driven experiences human. And we've gotta have that critical thinking.

Christian: Let's go on this tangent of critical thinking. If it's such an important skill to have and you've mentioned it takes time, it's one of those soft skill that takes time to build.

And in this world that you're pAInting where roles matter less or rather, titles matter less and what matters more are the skills that each individual has if critical think is so important, but it at the same time takes such a long time to build. How do we fit into this if we don't have that?

If there are some people out there who are earlier in their career is there still a space for us there until we manage to develop that skill?

Jennifer: We have to make that space. And it starts now. And I think a lot of it is about modeling, If as a design leader or a project leader or a even a peer who is partnering up with another designer. If you start modeling that, others will start learning it, right? And starting now. Just start now.

Don't wAIt. And then the other thing I think it's really important as an organization is to actively create that space. In the team that we have in our broader organization, broader design organization at Oracle, we are building a culture of growth mindset and also the space to allow people to learn.

So, And you have to build that into the practice. And it's hard, right? You have to make that a core value of the culture that you wanna build? Because in, especially in big tech right now, there are so many pressures people are wanting to accelerate development timelines.

We're working under really complex problems that we're trying to solve. It's really easy to get distracted, but if you have a core value that you're aligned on organizationally, then you make space. And that's something that we actively do is help and teach and uplift the folks who are learning, create space for them to try things new and create kind of a a safety net.

So if people are taking risks, they should be able to fall and stumble to learn. Like when a toddler's learning to walk, you don't hold them up the whole time. They need a chance to fall and get up and fall and get up. And so you have to, create that space. And it's really the responsibility of the design community, especially design leaders to make that a value and put that investment into teams. I have met the most intelligent systems thinker. In this design field everyone is very smart and excited about what they're doing and passionate. And so if you create that space, everyone's gonna step up and learn.

Christian: you're saying that you're building a culture of growth, where you leave space for everyone in the team to learn in practice, what does that mean? How do you as a design leader, if there's someone out there, another design leader who thinks I'm going to work tomorrow and I wanna start putting the foundations of this culture of, growth. What does that look like in practice?

Jennifer: it is it starts, you know, with the starts with me. So faced with a problem that we know how to solve yet, it's important as a leader to say, Hey, you guys, we're gonna go figure this problem out. I don't know how solve it, but we're gonna solve it together.

just by saying that vulnerable, to be to saying, I don't know. up this culture of um, right? It, up the uh, for designers to like they're in a safe environment where we're gonna try and it's okay if we don't get it right the first time. We're gonna keep trying.

So that's the first thing, is to be open, to say, Hey, we don't know how to solve this. Let's go figure it out together and let's try a couple things. Let's try it, and we'll be able to iterate and, and, um, there. So it's language that you're using to set up uh, a whole initiative helps open up that door.

The other of it is on in individual basis, making that each designer. Um, goal, right? Everyone has goals in their projects. Everyone has goals in their careers. somebody who's interested in learning a new skill, like let's say um, getting public speaking.

important to create the space to allow them to start building that skill. Okay, so let's Fred, I don't have a Fred on my team, but let's say Fred wants to learn to be a better communicator and. And better storyteller present in a better way. So then put Fred on a project that has regular cadence where he's getting in front of people to present and starting out with, okay, why don't we start presenting in front of your peers so we can help, help you shape and articulate a stronger argument or a stronger story.

Then let's put you in front of your product partners, and now let's put you in front of leadership and go from there. So if you create on an individual basis as well, those moments where people can learn um, and that they, have your support, that also creates kind of this open um, that allows people to feel safe enough to take those risks.

Christian: Yeah, and I, you sAId there that it comes from leadership. That's where it starts from. But I'm wondering whether there's also a world in which it's also a little bit the responsibility of the individual to say, rAIse their head. Fred. Fred also needs to rAIse his hand and say, I want to get better at storytelling.

So it's also Fred's responsibility or any other individual to say, here are the things that I wanna be better at. And then leadership can figure out a way to, to give that person those opportunities. Isn't it?

Jennifer: Absolutely. I a hundred percent agree. And, everyone is on their own timeline, and you can't make somebody wanna do something when they're not ready . If somebody is facing an addiction for example, you can't make them stop and make them heal until they're ready. They have to want it.

They have to be in that mindset. So not everyone is gonna be on the same timetable. And you have to be aware and open about that and always encouraging. But you also have to allow people to arrive to when, when they think it's the time to do whatever goal it is that they have to set out.

'Cause Fred might, a year before Fred wanted to get better at at public speaking and presenting and storytelling, maybe a year before he wanted to get better at I don't know, motion design or something like that. It's really meeting the individual where they're at and being patient and open to their timing as well.

But you're absolutely right. It's really the responsibility of each individual to manage their career, manage their skills. I can't force anything as a leader. You have to be open and willing and ready to learn and define the goals that you want on a personal level and what you want for your career and be open to learn.

Christian: We were talking earlier AI and how AI is accelerating all of these different parts of a business and the expectations from designers. I've read one of the things you wrote proposing this framework of um, what AI can do and only AI can do, or maybe AI is better, that what only humans can do.

And then the third part of that was what AI and humans can do together. When we now look at the world that's that's expanding very rapidly in front of us, how would it help us to look at it from the perspective of that model that you're proposing?

Jennifer: Yes. Now I can't take credit for coming up with that model that came out of a discussion across design leadership. I do think that's a really important way of framing AI. On one hand, there are things that just AI can do only on the other hand, there are things that only a human can do.

And what's really interesting is if you think about it as a Venn diagram where they overlap, there's a very unique opportunity to start crafting and shaping what happens when you merge those. What can humans do only with AI? How can AI make humans almost give them super superhuman power? And there's different, there's different aspects to that.

There is taking the design process itself. So how can you take different AI tools and help accelerate some of the design processes and evolve those design processes in themselves? So for example, if you're, if you're trying to articulate the user, try to create some way of storytelling and expressing through the perspective of the user, there are all of these AI tools now that can help you do that in an hour.

You can write up a persona. You can craft a whole video of the person capturing the different nuances and characteristics that you think that will make up that persona. That's an example of using the AI tools to accelerate and help with better storytelling. And then there's also the other side of it where AI is changing our very experiences themselves.

Like in healthcare, we're integrating AI all through the entire health experience to be almost like a a physician in residence who's working side by side with a clinician and curating information, curating recommendations, and working on behalf of that user to make it faster for that doctor or nurse or whomever role you, you have in the healthcare to make faster and safer and better clinical decisions towards their patient.

And so that, that's a whole other way of looking at leveraging AI to almost make people super human, right? So you have to think about the two lenses the process in which you're building things, the processes in which teams are working, and then how you can leverage it in the very experiences we're creating.

Christian: One of the interesting ideas that I stumbled upon is when you're now looking at the future of design and we are wondering how are we gonna differentiate ourselves and what is it uh, something that is still very special that we only can bring to the table. There's this idea of a personal database, something each of us carries with us, the lived experiences that we have, that we then pour or draw from whenever we design experiences.

And that's something that AI can't access, AI doesn't have in the first place. So how should designers tap a bit more into that to create a bit more meaningful work if that's the right thing that you're going for, right? How can you tap into that a bit more into those lived experiences that you have?

Jennifer: I think that's the very crux of what's gonna help us keep our AI driven experiences human. AI by itself is only as good as the data it's connected to, So if AI is referencing a set of data, that's gonna be the limitations of what any output is gonna be with AI . And he was talking specifically, if we bring in things like the health record in context of healthcare, now all of a sudden we, we have all of this extra data that then allows that AI to be more productive across the history of a person's health. The more data that we can collect unify globally is great, but at the end of the day. AI is never going to have access to the different life experiences that we have that will never be in a database.

So for example, that the feeling of your first kiss or having a goal to run your first 8k and what it was like to cross that finish line and what it was, what was that whole experience getting there, or the feeling of your kid making a goal in soccer for the first time.

Right? None of that is in any database and all of those examples is what makes us very human. Those are human experiences. It's not always about transactions, So that right there is what us as designers, us as developers, us as product managers, us as humans, we have to hold onto that as a society and as we're becoming more productive 'cause AI is taking care of a lot of the mundane stuff. That gives us a chance to really lean back into that core that your intuition, your life experiences the things that lead to sense making that AI is never gonna have. Right? Sense making and taste making AI is not gonna know how to correctly apply the best expression of brand or a value, So I think that question you ask hits the very core of what we as a society, what we as designers, we have to go define. How do we embrace that and tap into that, those elements that make us human so that we can keep AI and all of our AI experiences human.

Christian: The reason I've asked this is because I've been uh, thinking about this recently as I'm building a, an app just for myself with AI and um, as anyone who has tried to vibe code as it's called now knows, you give a prompt once, especially when it gets a bit more complex and it doesn't work and you give the same prompt agAIn or something slightly different.

You try to express it in a different way and it still doesn't work, doesn't code the right thing, and you do it a third, fourth time and at some point interesting enough. You get a little bit frustrated and then you let that frustration come through to the prompt that you give back to AI. And if you look at the way it's thinking, quote unquote, 'cause you can see the thinking, it even starts by the user is being frustrated right now. That's a moment in which the expectation is that the AI would handle the situation differently and would respond differently because we all know how it is to be frustrated, but the AI doesn't know how it is to be frustrated and therefore the answer is always exactly the same whether you're frustrated, whether you're happy with the result of the LLM whatever.

The answer is exactly the same, when in fact if you and I would be talking, my answer would differ based on your state and the other way around. And I think that's one of the things that, that could differentiate or that will differentiate is that the AI might never understand how it is to sit and be frustrated 'cause a, a thing is not working.

And that in that moment, you might wanna respond differently, although now that I'm saying it, perhaps that is something you can program into it, right? You can code into it to say when the user is frustrated, think about it differently. But I don't know if you had had any thoughts about that.

Jennifer: Yeah I think that's really interesting. There's two pieces that are really interesting to that. I think the ability to trAIn AI to understand the nuances of human emotion is really, really interesting. Although we have to make sure we put guardrAIls around that. There's a lot of that going on in telemetry and like call centers kind of thing where there's the ability to detect if someone's got, getting like a heightened emotion or maybe is starting to become angry, and then that is then reflected in the software to give the person a heads up, Hey, this customer might be heading towards becoming pretty angry and frustrated.

Across the industry, there's a lot that is being explored in that area, but what you sAId in your question is the more interesting one. At the beginning of your question, you sAId, It's not giving me the right output. And that is something that you can't trAIn AI.

Your conclusion that whatever AI produced isn't right comes from your deep well of intuition and experience. You are the one who's judging if it's right or wrong, and that's the thing that it can't be replaced. And so my team, we we're running a bunch of experiments, just getting our hands into as many AI tools as we can.

Um, We were running a couple of experiments with Figma MCP and Make and just seeing, what will it output? And, if we craft different prompts, will that change the output? And an interesting experiment was we're in healthcare, right? We're re-imagining these healthcare experiences.

So we, we did this really complicated prompt explAIning in great detAIl giving great detAIl instructions on creating an app for doctors in ambulatory space. So that's your, like a primary care doctor in a clinic, create an app that is organized around what a doctor needs to see. And we put all of this input into the prompt and it spit out in seconds it spit out this application design.

Okay? Wasn't good, it wasn't right, but it spit something out. So then we ran another experiment and didn't put any input into the prompt and just sAId produce an app for a primary care doctor, one sentence. And it ended up spitting out the same layout, same exact layout, and it was all kind of gray scale.

And it, it was just, it didn't have any brand, it wasn't structured correctly. It didn't have any ability to understand the really the intent and mindset of the user. So the content wasn't organized, right? So then we're like this is completely missing any kind of brand expression. So then we ran a couple experiments saying, okay, here's an input of brand.

Here's values, the core tenets, here's all the look and feel. And then we sAId recreate this app with the appropriate brand expression. So then it pumped out this application design, same layout. It just took the buttons and changed the button color from to whatever colors in the color palette of the brand.

And then it changed a couple of the titles to the different colors. So it didn't actually understand the core foundation of the brand itself, the values, and be able to creatively interpret that as an expression inside of the product experience. It just added a couple colors here and there. So I think that's where the designers will always be tapping into knowing what's right and what's not right.

And that's part of the taste making, it's part of taking all that intuition and all of that experience and all that knowledge that is not in some database that AI has access to and making sure that we're applying that to whatever output.

Christian: And keeping that in mind, how do we need to think about this fear of replacement, which I guess it's everywhere, then start leading AI? So it's shifting a bit more from a perspective of a, of defense, of a defensive stance, let's call it, to one of creative control.

Jennifer: It's it's really easy when there's something new and something that's gonna lead to change. It's basic human nature to be scared of that, even though the only thing constant in life is change. It's really easy to be scared of that. And so the first emotional response to this is fear.

But I if we step back and we look at this a little bit more objectively and designers are very well positioned to do this. 'cause this is what we do all day long, is we look at all these different inputs and we see opportunities. So I think there is an enormous opportunity here that we're in the middle of, because at the end of the day, AI isn't meeting the promise. It's we're in this hype cycle, we're at the peak hype cycle. And when we're applying it to applications and experiences, it's getting things wrong. Dirty input, dirty output. it's referencing the wrong data.

It's getting something wrong. It's producing a really poorly designed app. So it's not gonna replace us right off the bat. But what it is gonna do is it's going to force us to think about how we wanna evolve our practice and how we wanna evolve, not just as designers, but any of the roles that will leverage AI.

And I think that instead of being scared of it, we should really embrace it. Okay, let's look at this as an opportunity. We've gotta get ahead. We gotta start getting our hands dirty in the tools, understand the constrAInts, where the potential is, where the opportunity is, and then start shaping and evolving, be open to adapting and evolving our discipline that instead of being teams of humans, we're now teams of humans and AI agents. So we have to really think about how do we design in this era of human and machine collaboration and embrace it.

Christian: Have you heard of the EM dash discussion going around these days where because AI uses EM dashes a lot when it writes now it's one of the things that people pick up on when a text is written and it has em dashes, they all think, oh, that's AI. But that's so interesting because. I used personally, em dashes before AI was even on someone's table.

It's just how I've learned to to write. So off the back of that, now I need to retrAIn myself to stop writing with em dashes, because then if I don't, it'll make it look like AI. And it's not AI. So I'm wondering as AI becomes more capable over the time, do you think that imperfection or sort of having changed your input and the way you do things will become a deliberate, let's call it signal, a deliberate signal that it's a bit imperfect, it's human?

Jennifer: First off, I love em dashes. I will use them all day long and I don't care if AI loves 'em too, I'm gonna use 'em anyway. But yeah, I think it goes back to what the earlier discussion around being adaptive. I think it's going to be really interesting to continue to learn what the natural personality is of AI.

And I think we have to answer the question each of us individually. Do we wanna differentiate ourselves from it or embrace it and be a collaborator? I don't think there's a right or wrong answer right now. I think there's nothing wrong with using AI as a collaborator to accelerate your work and to give you back time, making you more productive so that you have more time to focus on the real creative human type of elements, So the EM dash is great. I love it. I love that AI loves it. I don't care. But I think it's gonna be a personal opinion and a personal choice of whether embrace or differentiate. It'll be interesting to see what's kind of trending, where people tend to go.

Christian: Yeah, and I think it's uh, just like in this example, it is sort of a, a behavior change that I'm making. Maybe I should stop. Maybe like you said, who cares? Maybe I should continue using them just 'cause I love them. But anyway we're talking a lot about how AI is changing our world. By our world, meaning the design world, that probably also means that it's gonna change our world outside of design.

It's gonna influence our behavior outside of design. And I think in society you can already see it happening. So it's a big open canvas.

So a lot can

happen

and

Jennifer: West as they say.

Christian: it is the Wild West. Yes. And we're part of it. It reminds me of that saying that nobody thinks that they're living in the golden age right now. It's always like, oh, the golden age was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, whatever. But those people back then, they didn't think they were living in a golden age either.

So I, right now we're Yeah. Or maybe the golden agent. We just don't know. I wanna move a little bit away from AI and talk about humans a bit more specifically about building a culture for humans. It's something that I know you are spending a lot of time doing, which is building this, culture of excellence.

And you say that excellence doesn't really happen by chance. It grows from this so-called invisible scaffolding that teams put together, or design leadership or leadership in general puts together. Let's talk a little bit about that. What is that scaffolding and how does that look like in practice when you're trying to build it?

Jennifer: It's a great question. again, I think some of the points I made earlier around moving beyond vision, toward now holding space, that right there is the result of creating the scaffolding, right? How do you build a team and lead a team and work within a team where you're holding space and it's not just top down, it's bottoms up and it's sideways especially in the design community, right?

Design is all about discovery and seeing opportunity and trying something new and failing fast and fAIling early and learning from that. And that really requires creating an extremely safe place where people can feel vulnerable. Choosing to be a designer it's scary 'cause you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable and open.

You have to put your ideas out there when some people might not like them. Some of them might not be baked enough, but you have to be open enough to show it earlier, to get input, to help shape them. It's a very vulnerable space, and in order for you to succeed and be vulnerable, you have to feel safe.

You have to feel like people are hearing you. You have a voice, you have a safety net. If you try, if you do something and it doesn't work, everyone's like, oh, that was a great experiment. it didn't work, but here's what, here are the insights out of that. Here's what did work. Why don't we try that over here?

So it's really about creating this culture and giving people the language to make people feel heard, allow people to have that sense of v vulnerability and safety. And that really, it comes down to the core values in, in the team. Not every organization is ready for that. So you, you have to create that space, the holding space, and that allows all of the teams who are collaborating towards.

Solving the problems and creating these experiences to shine. Everyone has their skill. Everyone has their strengths and that's what you wanna bring out, not the weaknesses.

Christian: So how do we go from, we've built a culture where every of culture of excellence, as you've called it a culture where the output is excellent. The way we collaborate with each other is excellent. The product we put out there is excellent. Our rituals are. Whatever a culture of excellence means, how do you go from, okay, we've built this scaffolding to here's the whole building.

Jennifer: Uh, You just start putting it into practice and you don't give up. That's as easy as that. You just keep going. I think part of it also is to make sure you have. The right sponsors across the organization. Again, like not every organization is ready. You have to have an organization who is ready for this kind of culture, who is providing the level of support that is needed.

It can't just come from the design community, because the design designers are not the only ones who are creating these experiences. You have to partner with engineering, you have to partner with product. You have to partner with the C-suite and, you know, in senior leadership and a whole bunch of variety of other roles.

And so at an organizational level you've gotta have the right sponsorship across the team to also support that as a cultural value.

Christian: And when we're talking about design and designers and what's in the hands of. Design because it's not always possible to control the desires of the goals or some of the other um, parts of the organization. But if we can focus a bit inwards, we can control that. By inwards, I mean us in the design community.

So I think one of the things you've done before is you've described design leaders and probably leaders in general as gardeners . Tending the soil to allow the creativity to flourish. Is that also what you were talking about earlier with making space for everyone to, to feel safe, bring their ideas forward, maybe um, have some rituals or habits around around reflection and critique or reviews, whatever we wanna call them.

Is that what you're talking about? Or is there anything else there that I'm missing?

Jennifer: Absolutely. The holding space is creating an environment where you can cultivate, and whether you wanna use the metaphor of gardening or if you wanna use the metaphor of being a conductor in an orchestra it's all about nurturing, right? And providing that room and space for people to try new things to really leverage the strengths.

Christian: The last thing I want to ask on this is, again, we're going back to excellence and how do you foster that and how do you let it grow? I think one of the things that you've um, talked about before is that excellence compounds when reflection I assume this means the reflection of the work or maybe the way we're working becomes a rhythm.

So it's something that we do all the time rather than, an afterthought. How do you make that rhythm part of a team's everyday routine?

Jennifer: Yeah. You have to have reflection. You also have to have very often reviews and have very positive structured critiques as well. We used to call them critiques. We're starting to move away from that word because there's so many connotations to that. And soon as somebody hears critique, they get scared.

But I think there, there's like working sessions or review sessions where reviews are positive, they're constructive, the feedback is constructive, and it's not getting personal and it's not shutting down anybody's idea without really, or at all.

It's trying to tease out the seeds in those ideas to make good ideas great. And that's something I talk about a lot in a lot of the reviews. How do we go from this good idea to make it great? You're not starting in a negative place. You don't have language that leads to negativity.

It's It's positive. And then also I found that it helps if you have a framework where everyone knows their role, So if you're, if you're in a review where you're sharing something, you're debating something, you're making a proposition \, you can assign roles to everyone.

So there can be the debater, the person who's making the case, the facilitator of the meeting who's keeping it productive. Okay. You said this over here. You said that, let's move on to this topic. You have the audience who evaluates and decide and decides, and whomever else that you need as a role. And what I found is making those even more productive if you can make those roles clear.

It helps people focus. Okay, now, my role in this particular discussion is to facilitate and keep the discussion productive and we switch it up, right? So in the next review, my role is to evaluate whether this is a viable solution or not. And maybe in the case of, in some cases, in especially in a complex environment like enterprise and healthcare, there's different criteria to evaluate.

There's does it meet the goal of the customer? Does it meet the goal of the end user? Does it meet the business goal? And sometimes those are all different.

Christian: That is a very uh, nifty trick there, how to run reviews in a different way. I've never heard that one before. Do you assign these roles for every single review? Do you always have them, they're always the same roles, just a different person takes that specific role? Or is it depending on what we need in that specific review?

We might have different roles than we had in the one last week and different than the one, two weeks ago.

Jennifer: It's more the latter. I did try, I think a couple years ago we tried to uh, we did an experiment where we're hosting very structured critiques across the organization. One, it can give visibility cross team and cross initiative visibility into what's going on and progress there.

And in that case it was very structured. We assigned roles. We had assets that they had to prepare and it was very facilitated, but we found that doing that level of rigor takes so much time. So what we did is we took the best of that and we more intuitively apply it to all of our daily reviews.

We're constantly in reviews every single day, sometimes multiple reviews within a day. 'cause there's so much AIr cover we're covering across health. And I think people are falling into the natural roles based on what's being presented and the stage in which that particular idea is within the project.

And so I think we naturally fall into those roles, and those roles switch almost on an hourly basis when we are moving from one review to the next. 'cause you have to think about the life cycle of the design process. Not all projects are in the same phase. Some of them are in a discovery phase, some of them are in early design others are in more on the executional side.

So the level of feedback switches and is different across the roles. But I think going back to your question having some structure and what I was mentioning earlier is providing language to the team that leads to positive reviews. Not feeling attacked or where people feel heard, listened to, and we're pulling out the seed of the good idea and focusing on that . Providing that language and structure has, it leads to best practice and excellence. It leads to great culture. And then having those regular reviews gets people to become more and more comfortable with showing work early and often, and moving the work into more and more a collaborative work, getting used to presenting ideas, articulating those, debating them in a very productive way.

And then I do like, um, what you said earlier is having moments where you can reflect, which we do often. We usually do it on an annual basis or after major milestones. What did we do?

Look at what we've accomplished, you guys. Let's pause for a second. Look at all the things that we've accomplished. Let's go through those big wins. Let's remind ourselves and let's talk about here's what's worked, here's what we can do better at. Those are often on an individual basis, we go through annual coaching discussions where we sit down and we reflect and we say um, Fred, here are all the things that you did really well throughout your projects with very specific example. And here's what the next set of activities that you're gonna do. Here's how you can make them also just as successful or even more successful. So again, it's like developing that language where it's leaning into positivity and pulling out the best in people, having the regular reviews and taking that same approach, reflecting.

And we don't just do this with design and all the design disciplines. This is with our product partners as well. So we have engineering, we have product and leadership. So this isn't just limited to one discipline. This is a embedded cultural direction we wanna head as an organization.

Christian: I guess this is the thing that I was trying to draw out a bit earlier when I was asking, how do you go from this safe space to that we've built the scaffolding to a culture of excellence and in practice one of the things that you're doing, I'm sure there are many more, is this rhythm of, we, we review, that way.

We try to sort of in the, at the micro level, a daily day, on a daily basis, get the work to be better. At a macro level, after a year or after a big milestone, we look back what has gone well, a performance review. And that way it's that culture of growth and growth mindset that you're talking about, which is impossible to do without constantly reviewing what you've done in the past and where you've perhaps fallen short and where you've done really well.

Um, that's sort of the loop there that I was trying to draw out.

Jennifer: Yes. And I think that's one aspect of it as well. And I think that also has to be tied to the business. This is commercial design, right? We are in service of the businesses that we work for and with. So we really drive a human-centric process, but at the end of the day, it has to lead to outcomes.

It has to help achieve the business goals it has to meet the customer goals and the end user goals. And so how do you also, you can't just review and, say, Hey, this is a cool design. This looks great. This meets the need of the end user. We can't stop there because that end user feeds into a business that we're trying to run.

So we also can't forget about setting the appropriate metrics. And that's what you use also to measure if something is good or not. Did it succeed here or did it. Did it lead to higher customer satisfaction?

Did it lead to a certain percentage of increased adoption? Did it lead to the customer calling us and saying, oh my gosh, what an amazing experience this was. Not only is the product looking good, but I love how we're engaging with you. Those are different metrics that also need to be looked at and measured against and in when we're in the age of AI as well, that's another discussion we're having at the leadership level and in within design is, what do those metrics look like now?

Are those something else? And that's something we need to define together as a, as a, discipline.

Christian: Yeah. Again, an open canvas for the future. A lot of things to figure out. There is one more topic that I'd like to tackle with you before we get to the end here, and that is a topic of arguments or debating or whatever you want to call it . You wrote an interesting article about that about debates and how to put good arguments forward.

And I think it was based on a book, if I'm not mistaken. The reality is that we're generally not being taught how to debate and argue. And when I say we, I don't mean us designers, I just mean us in general, people .School doesn't really teach you how to debate and argue, and I think this framework that you've spoken about could come in handy.

So I'd love to explore that in more detAIl if that's okay with you. What's this thesis all about? What's this framework?

Jennifer: Oh yes. So again, it comes back to, as a designer or any discipline, if you have an idea and you put forth that idea to an audience. And you don't come to the table with a clear argument, how are you ever gonna sell that to the audience? The discipline of design is more, is also, we're not only designers, but we're also salespeople.

We have to be able to articulate how this solution is grounded in user reality. So that's the first kind of part or phase in this framework. How important is it? So what are the goals and what are the goals that we're achieving? And not all goals have the same level of criticality. So why is this goal the important goal or this problem, the important problem to solve today?

Be specific, be really clear on the issues. I've seen so many presentations where everything is vague. we want to go and we wanna solve this problem for this user to make it easier for them to get through the task. Okay, what is the task? What are they trying to do? And what are the pain points today that's keeping them from doing, doing those things that they need to do And just getting to that point and articulating it, it's hard. So being specific and then a aligning to shared target. Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna focus on solving this goal for these specific issues first, and that's our shared aim and trying to get alignment and articulate those four things.

It's very common, at least in the environments that I'm in, where the articulation of that is non-existent. There's some struggles around it. with really understanding the user, really understanding the needs and articulating it in a way that is understandable and not vague.

That's the key here. I've seen so many product requirement documents where it lists features and it lists problems, and they're just big swooping vague statements . How do you use that as design input? Because I don't know what I'm supposed to solve. Making something easier for someone is not a problem to solve, right?

You gotta get into the specifics and then aligning on that shared aim and every time. You either, whether you're a designer or a PM or an engineer, you come to the table and you present your idea. You've gotta ground it in those four things. Who's the user? What are the goals and what are the goals that you're solving today?

Not all of them. Be really specific on those issues what is the target or the aim for that particular proposal? Tell the story through the lens of the user. Make it human, make it relatable. And that's the thing that I see a lot of teams, I see a lot of people struggle with.

And if we can, if you can develop those skills, that allows you to strengthen your argument , and when you strengthen your argument, your ideas get in, they get built, they turn into code, they get out in the world. And so you've gotta be willing to build that argument, not argument for argument's sake, but to be able to make a case.

Christian: I think some of these are also assumed, so you might go into a review and you assume that everyone at the table understands that this is the problem we're solving and therefore you, I'm not gonna be talking about it. I'm not gonna waste anyone's time. Everyone knows what problem we're solving, but in there might be a, a case that not everyone is aware of the problem that we're solving here. Therefore, it's important to align everyone before we even show design work. Because otherwise you show design work and the feedback you're gonna get might not even be as relevant as you need it to be. So I think alignment that is that what you're talking about is in alignment through the real good storytelling.

And this framework um, I think it's called RISA isn't it?. So real important, specific and aligned.

Jennifer: That's right. That's right. And that happens so often where somebody will present an idea and the framing of that or re communicating the context or grounding it in where they are in the project, what specific user, what specific goal gets lost. I've sat in reviews where the, if this is missing the feedback and the discussion starts to shift towards the wrong user.

This is missing and that's missing. Well, that's for this other user, but we're talking about somebody totally different here. That happens often, and I think you're right. Part of the alignment is not only aligning on the outcome you want, but aligning on, here's the context of what I'm about to show you and making sure that it's really clear what they're gonna see and what they're not gonna see.

Christian: Jennifer at the end of the podcast. We have a little tradition where we ask we why do I, I only say we, and it's just me. There's no one else where I ask all the guests the same two questions. The first one is, where do you look for inspiration in your day to day?

Jennifer: Well, right now I look for inspiration with my family. I have two beautiful girls, my husband we have this cat who's taking over the whole house. And, um, I used

Christian: that's

what they do.

Jennifer: as cats do. Yes. And when I was younger, I used to, try to answer that question, in the way that I thought people wanted me to answer that and reference all these names of artists and designers.

And, but really where I'm at in my life is I find inspiration in the little moments with my family and with my friends and getting out there. We travel a lot. We like to do projects and renovate mid-century homes, so all of the experiences that we get to share together as a family. The little moments in there are extremely inspiring to me.

My 8-year-old might say something, a phrase, I'm like, oh I'm, I'm gonna use that at work. That's great. Or my husband might come up with an idea for a renovation that then leads me to go research it. And then I find you know, some really cool architecture and architects that inspire something.

Something that I'm working on currently. So it really starts for me, the root of what I value the most. And it's my family and my community, and that's, that's where I get my inspiration.

Christian: That's lovely. I think the best part about this question is that it's not really focused on design. I never said, where do you get your design inspiration from? E everyone, as quite a few people have answered sort of in the same lines that you have, which has nothing to do with design, it's just general.

And I've heard family quite a bit already, so that's great. The second and last question is, what's something that you believe AI will not be good at and therefore designers could or should double down on?

Jennifer: Taste making and sense making. AI is never gonna be good at really understanding the human experience ever. It never will be good at that, I don't think. I think I wrote an article about this. It's um, I think AI is gonna make human creativity even more foundational, even more important.

It's really gonna be up to us to keep things keep our experiences and where AI is gonna be applied to keep it human, to keep it emotionally resonant, to make sure that it's solving the right problems in the right way to your question earlier, and to always continue to lead us, at least through my lens towards beauty, wellness and meaning.

Christian: And that is a great note to end on. Jennifer, where can people find out what you are um, up to your writing?

Jennifer: You can find some thoughts on darmourdesign.com under the thought section. This is where I post anything that's going on in my head at the moment. And really it's about me trying to shape my own thoughts, getting it out in the community. I'd love to hear from you.

I'd love to hear if you agree with me or don't agree with me, or maybe I'm thinking of something in through the wrong lens, or I should think about this or think about that. It's really about me trying to get into the community. So I love to hear from folks and then you can find me on LinkedIn as well.

Christian: And to anyone listening, we will put all of that in the show notes. Jennifer's links will be easy to find. Jennifer, once again, thank you very much for being on Design Meets Business. This has been such a great conversation.

Thank you.