Tech’s Feminine Side w. Avani Miriyala Jain

If you are a creator in technology, you have a massive responsibility to be doing good with what you create because you can manipulate so easily. When you are able to understand people's feelings, reverse engineer, and create something like this, that this— every time I open this thing, it releases a chemical in my brain.

This is— my entire world is changing right now. It's like, you know everything, but But it's, it's just an app, right?

No.

Hey there and welcome back. I am Bunny Young, serial entrepreneur, retired stuntwoman, mother of 3 beautiful kids, and builder of a life I don't need to escape from. This season, we're diving even deeper with incredible women who are breaking barriers, building empires, and designing lives and companies their way. That's why today I have brought on my friend and fellow female in tech, Avani. Avani is a serial entrepreneur, UX consultant, and founder of AMSD, a UX product design agency specializing in consumer-facing tech products. She's dedicated to helping agency owners work less and earn more, all while running her own successful design agency. Avani also shares her expertise through courses, workshops, and her podcast, Unsubscribe, where she empowers freelancers to scale their business. And live fulfilling lives. I love that mission, and I cannot wait to get even deeper into this. As a female in tech, I know that this conversation is going to be incredible. And without further ado, Avani, it's great to see you and welcome to the Yes And podcast.

So excited to be here. Oh my goodness, this topic is gonna be so much fun. I feel like we are gonna have so much to talk about. Thank you for having me today.

Yes, I This has been amazing 'cause we get to continue the conversations that we, we're having in private and we get to bring them and share some of it. We're gonna keep some of it private. One of those conversations that you had shared about was your company.

Mm-hmm.

And as I was listening to this, I was like, we need to have more conversations about women in tech. Like, we need to open this up. Let me just start at the beginning. What's been your experience as a woman in tech? Has it even been a thing for you or is it just for me?

You know, it's interesting that you ask that question because I think I've had such an interesting relationship with tech being a woman, and I've seen different sides of it. Like sometimes I feel like, oh, it is an obstacle, and sometimes like I don't even notice it. So yeah, it's really interesting. And now I feel like in some ways I'm not fully immersed in that world. I, I have an agency, we design for tech companies, but I'm also thinking about so many other things now. But going back in time, 10+ years ago, I started out in true tech companies, like tech companies that people would love, love to work for. I worked at Google, I worked at Orbitz, I worked at RetailMeNot here in Austin, and a startup called Favor. So true tech companies, meaning they were venture-backed. We had a giant engineering team. I was the UX designer, one of, or in my last company I was the only UX designer. And it's so interesting because it took me a while in some cases to realize that I worked primarily with men, like 90%, 95, maybe even 99, honestly. My last job, we had a startup. It was a giant engineering team of like 15 engineers 'cause it was a startup, so giant for a startup. And one other designer, he was a product designer and I was a UX designer. We sat in this area together and like, you look at this and look at the percentage of it, all of them are male developers. Then it's me. And sometimes when you look at that, you're like, whoa, what a stark difference. But there's so many aspects to that. It's a matter of, you know, we create empathy for the people we work with. So I was really good at doing that since I was literally a user experience designer. So there was part of it of me fitting in, which I think put me in the hyper-masculine for a long time. And then part of it was me realizing, actually, no, I didn't fit in. And there were so many differences that came out of it, and it eventually became a career path that, like traditional technology in corporate, that wasn't good for me anymore, that wasn't right for me anymore.

Yeah, I love that you say that. And I think you weren't meant to fit in. And this is one of the reasons that I am on the team that I'm on with our tech platform with Coaches HQ is because the more that I've gotten into tech and the more that I— I mean, I'm working— last year I put 8 and a half months directly with our developer team. And so you're talking like coding. I figured out how to make a freaking carousel, all of this kind of stuff that I should never actually have had to do. But it was once I got into it, I realized that in between the zeros and ones and the coding and all of that kind of stuff, which I think coding is, is art, to be honest with you, having a background in psychology, because coding is art, because UX is art, because UI is art, when we don't have that feminine input, I think that the experience changes and the experience shifts, and that shows at the end user. And if you look at apps from 10 years ago and you look at the interface that we were using from 10 years ago versus today, I can see so much of your work and so much of your influence in basically everything with how you think about it. Coming from being a psychology background, I can see how you actually develop things to create psychological safety with the user to encourage them to continue using the apps and feel comfortable with that company. I think this is kind of the mic drop moment where I'm like, I think tech is actually pretty feminine. And there's another reason for that, but I want to hear your thoughts first.

It's interesting that you say that. I think there is such a big feminine side in and I'm coming at it from a UX background. I've done this for— I can't even count now, like over a decade. And when you're a UX designer or in user experience or building something for people and you want to do it really well, you talk to those people and you understand at their core what drives them, what makes them crumble, what makes them cry, what makes them elated. And you really tap into those feelings. If you can truly tap into those feelings, understand them, know what creates them, you can reverse engineer and say, okay, these are the ways we can either help them feel more of those high moments or feel fewer of those low moments in whatever task they're trying to do. You can take this and put this into any context, like calling a rideshare car, ordering something for delivery, shopping online and checking out with a coupon code. You can apply this to any sort of tech experience or platform. And so when you're able to tap into the feelings, the emotions at a deeper level, you will get to this level of creating in technology that a lot of people are not able to access. And that's, I believe, where the success can happen and where you're able to solve something for someone that they actually want to use that becomes sticky. And it's not easy to do because most people just sweep all of this under the rug. They're like, ah, whatever, we have some kind of new grad, new UX designer out of college, which I was once. But sometimes that person doesn't have enough experience or enough know-how to do the right thing for an established company that has funding. And so they sweep it under the rug. They're like, we check the box. The thing is you need to understand that there is so much more to the interface, to like a wireframe. Or any of that. It is underneath. What is it that makes your users tick? What is it that makes them stay up at night? And when you can unlock that, that is a feminine practice. That's exactly like—

that leads directly into my number 2, is because to me, when I'm working with clients and we're developing a business, I often talk about like the riverbanks where the masculine is that framework. It's the riverbanks. The feminine is the flow. It's the energy. And so to me, UX is such a flow because it keeps me engaged with the company, it keeps me engaged with the app. And so that's where I'm like, I feel like that part of technology specifically is very nurturing. It's very compassionate, it's very empathetic. And people that are listening are probably like, wow, I've never ever thought about technology being empathetic. And yeah, I can tell you, like, you're just— the user experience and the coding is just a tool for— one of many tools for compassion. But when you're building a piece of tech like an app or a user interface on a platform or on a desktop, you do really want to make sure that that consumer feels cared about and seen and held and compassionate. And so that, that was my argument in the court of the Yes And podcast that tech is feminine.

Yeah, I love that. It's the truth. No one has ever talked about this in my experience, and so I love that you're bringing that up. It's just helping me unravel things that I haven't gotten a chance to sit with, which is so cool. The other thing I wanted to mention is that all this creation side of technology, it is a creative act. Creative acts are very feminine inherently. When human life is created, that is a— the most feminine act one can experience or partake in and sit with. And that's the same thing we're doing here. We're doing this massive creative act. And that's another way that this whole thing plugs into femininity. And masculine is so important. Like, I'm a systems girl through and through. I love systems. I'm obsessed with systems. I talk about them all the time. But that's just the foundation for that flow to be created. Like you said, the banks and the, the flow of the river. And it has to both have to exist for everything to click into place and work beautifully because there can be that creative chaos, but it needs something to sit on top of and be held by.

You know how a little bit about how my brain works because like I'm always thinking about the, the woo and the strategy, the energy and the strategy. And I think that's because being a third generation entrepreneur, I have grown up in business. Having 14 companies, seen a lot of businesses, and then working in other people's companies. And I went to school to be a therapist. And so like the way the brain ticks and human psychology is really what drives me. And so as you're saying this, like I'm going deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole. And for most of us out there that my— their brains don't work like mine, I have a proposal for you, an indecent proposal. Like to launch on you right now. Are you willing to break down an app that we use like on a daily basis and always give it the personality from like your perspective and why we do that? I was thinking about maybe even a compare and contrast between Instagram and Twitter or X, because I feel like they're encouraging their very different behavior. Isn't you down for that?

I'm down, so down. I love this. This is actually funny that you say this because this is a strategy we use for client acquisition at Mata Design Labs, which is my design agency. We do UX reviews and we send them to people and say, hey, these are the things we found that you can improve on your app. This is the severity from a UX standpoint, and if you want help on how to really solve these problems, let us know. I love this.

Okay, so wait, let's start at the very beginning here. My phone doesn't have Instagram colored.

Really?

I do this. I keep my phone in black and white sometimes because then I'm less enticed to use it. And from a UX perspective and psychologically, I've always said, okay, if it doesn't have the color, it's less exciting for me to use it. Is that true?

Absolutely. And I will show you what my phone looks like because I haven't turned on the color Changing.

Yes.

App experience. And it has the Instagram app in bold, bright colors, and it's literally a rainbow. The Instagram app is a rainbow. So it is really, really enticing to click on. It stands out amongst other apps and the brain is just trained. And I'm sure you've experienced this maybe more before you went black and white on your phone, but we are just subconsciously programmed to go get that hit. And it is a dopamine circuit, we can talk about that, but we are just literally programmed to tap on that and go in there to find that thing that's going to make us feel like, oh, that was interesting, and I'm feeling satisfied, and then, and then come back. And because we're so addicted to it, our brain has incorporated it to feel good, and it subconsciously is something that we do and we go towards. One of the things I think is really important to just note in this entire conversation is that If you are a creator in technology, you have a massive responsibility to be doing good with what you create because you can manipulate so easily when you are able to understand people's feelings, reverse engineer, and create something like this. That this— every time I open this thing, it releases a chemical in my brain.

I can't even continue with this podcast interview because now I'm just like so fascinated, just sitting here. I'm like drooling, being like This is— my entire world is changing right now. It's like, you know everything, but it's, it's just an app, right? No.

Ooh.

Like, ah, all right, I'm gonna wipe my drool off and we're gonna open the Rainbow app. I, I'm dying to ask a question about this, and you're the perfect person to ask. Where did the double tap come from versus like, here's, here's a heart, right? Like I can press that heart. Like there's Logan. Should she? She just had her license plate changed. But yeah. So where did the double tap come from?

I think it came from, we have double click on the mouse. So when that was, the reason that was created was because there's different ways to click and it was really limited with the mouse where you have one, when mouse, mouses, mice, whatever they're called, had buttons, you had a left and a right. Yes. And so how do you get more actions out of this simple interface? You have a double tap or even a triple tap. And so they move that same type of paradigm into touch. So now I can tap something once, I can long press, or I can double tap. I don't think anyone uses triple tap. That, that's not a pattern that I've seen a lot, but these, and then swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down. So it's this idea of how can I get as many actions as possible from one surface? And yeah, of course you can click on icons too, but double tap is ingrained from our computer days. So that's why it came into the Instagram.

It's so interesting because now I'm sitting here and I'm like, well, I can't— oh no, I can swipe right. And then it's a, it's a story and up and down and yeah. Oh, well there's Natalie. Hi Natalie. You can also, for those of us playing at home, give me a screenshot of your Instagram and I will psychoanalyze you until the cows come home. It's driven by our behavior. And so what we see when we open the app tells us a lot about ourselves.

Oh, so true. Oh my gosh. Like the circles that show up first and this, the content that's showing up, the ads that are showing up. And something I wanna talk about in this app is the way these are designed, specifically Instagram, but social media, even TikTok is like this. They are really feeding off of the novelty loop that is in our brain. So when we go, the reason humans like to travel is because it's new, it's novelty. I'm having a new experience that feels entertaining for my brain. It's like, woo! And so let's say I go travel and I'm staying somewhere for a month. Maybe I'm staying at like a cute European town. The first time I walk down the street, I hear the birds, I see everything, and I stumble upon this cute coffee shop. The dopamine in my brain goes crazy. It's like so excited. Oh my gosh, they have matcha. I wonder if it's good. I try the matcha. It's actually really good. It's actually green, vibrant, brand, delicious matcha, the latte is on point. I feel so great. And I was like, I'm so excited, I'm gonna come here every single day. The next time I come, the dopamine hits a little smaller because it's not new to me anymore. It's not novelty anymore. I kind of know what to expect. The next time I come, it's even smaller. The next time I come, it's even smaller. By the end of that month that I'm staying in this cute European town, it's like a tiny little tap. I still like it. It's like really nice and beautiful, and it becomes my favorite coffee shop in that place. But it's not as strong, and the brain wants that big hit. Now, what social media apps have done, Instagram in particular, is it's playing off of that. So what it does, it will show content, and sometimes it'll even show like content from people you've seen a lot, and then it will show something new that it thinks that you're gonna really like, and then you dive into that piece of content even more. But it'll often like intentionally bury that because it knows that you'll have a bigger hit if you have to search for it a little bit. So sometimes that's why sometimes stories that you really want to watch are buried a little bit like further down, like 5 or 6 or 7. Like if you're really into Natalie Elsa's story right now and you love watching her story, sometimes it doesn't always show up in the front. It's like a few down. You're like, oh my gosh, she had like 10 new stories today. I totally missed all of them. Because Instagram wants you to search for them because it gives you a higher dopamine hit when you do that. The next time you come in, you're gonna wanna scroll more because if you scroll more, that means you're going to have that experience of that I'm looking around for a coffee shop and now I hit this new novelty thing and that's the dopamine hit again.

This is fascinating and I'm also appalled and wanna delete the entire app once I step outta the behavior, right? So we could keep going on Instagram and something completely— I feel like the opposite of a lot of what you had shared about Instagram or an app that went completely in the separate direction opposite of rainbow is X. It's a black and white logo. Is it black and white on your phone or is it just black and white on mine?

It is black and white on my phone.

Okay. So what's driving your behavior with the UX? How is the UX designed to drive what behavior with X and how has that changed as well from Twitter to X?

So two things. First thing I want to mention is Instagram users, unless this has changed dramatically, which it might have, but I am pretty sure it's majority women and X users lean a little bit more on the male side. Now, I don't think this is overwhelmingly the fact, but What I am seeing from people I talk to, people who use the app, is, um, people in their masculine a lot tend to gravitate towards Twitter, and then people in their feminine a lot tend to gravitate towards Instagram. Now, that could be why the rainbow versus the black and white color X exists, maybe. Now, before X used to be X, it used to be Twitter, which was a blue app with a bird on it. So my thought here is that they're actually leaning into who their user base is. Now it's interesting because I actually at the agency design a lot for crypto and Web3 companies. So a lot of my Twitter is crypto and Web3, and that's like my persona on Twitter is I'm a Web3 agency owner and my persona on Instagram is, is different. Like I have a podcast about unsubscribing to the beliefs that don't serve you anymore. And so it's funny how like the feminine version of me and the masculine version of me exists in these two different spaces as well. So, There's a few different aspects to that. We can dive into them a little bit more, but I wanted to bring that up.

I, I love the multiple personalities. I mean, from a therapy standpoint, we could talk further about that if you want to, but keep going.

So then there is the heavy photo-centric approach that Instagram has taken, and then the text-centric approach that Twitter has taken. What is interesting is now Instagram has wanting, been wanting to tap into that too with Threads. Because they're realizing there is this audience that they haven't captured that probably X is capturing, and they needed to capture that. They need to create a space for them, and that's why Threads has been created. So that's another thing I want to mention, is like, they, they know that they're alienating some portion of their audience and they're going to Twitter. Now the difficulty there is Twitter already has this giant network effect. Twitter is also really deeply connected with the news, so you'll see that pop up a lot, but Twitter will also— I say Twitter, I should probably be saying X because that's not what— now what it's called. X is also using the same kind of dopamine circuit that I told you about on Instagram. So that's one of the reasons ads are not always the first thing you see. You see them a little bit further down and it's a novelty. People actually really love ads these days. There was a time when people are like, I don't like ads, but I'm telling you, my husband loves ads. He's like, the targeting here is on point. And we have like random things show up at our doorstep that Instagram sold to him. So I'm like, this thing works. And they know that you're looking for that dopamine hit, that novelty. Like I just scrolled down 3 spaces and I saw taro protein. I love taro. I love boba tea. I'm gonna add this to the cart and check out. The same things are happening on these social media platforms.

I do have to go back for a second when you were saying Twitter is now X. I had a Kanye moment where I was like, Kanye is now Ye and I feel like either Kanye pulled a Twitter or Twitter pulled a Kanye, whichever, however you want to look at that. That is my very immature brain going, hmm, yeah, it's— and then pretty soon it'll be the app formerly known as Twitter.

It's so interesting that like they're going through an identity shift. We're watching this identity shift happen in real time. Humans go through that. Yeah, so can companies. And obviously they got purchased, they got taken over by completely new leadership and their strategy is changing. And so you're seeing that take effect not just in what is created, the conversation that's created, but also the actual experience in the app itself, which is really interesting.

To take that one step further, when something, anything that is a part of your daily activity and you have a habit and you have a relationship with it, and you have an expectation of how it will perform and how you will engage with it. When a company that has a user base that has those kinds of habits and rituals around it starts to shift their identity, you actually see a shift in society as well. And that's what you were talking about with how powerful and the responsibility of some of these companies and these apps are.

Absolutely. The other piece to it is we cannot be blind to the fact that they are serving us content. They're serving us the content they want us to see. So there is an element of manipulation here. Now we can go on the like politics level for this or whatever, like conspiracies, but at the base level it could also just be simple as they want you to participate in consumerism more. So they're serving you the like Amazon influencers clean out their cars every day. Oh my gosh, so cute, I need to buy this, add to cart, add to cart, add to cart, which I have fallen prey to. So we have that level of, we need to understand that our identity can, if we are not careful, be dictated by that identity shift or what these content platforms are saying we should be watching or listening to. And for that reason, I think there's a really valuable change we can make in our behavior. Where instead of just by default scrolling and watching or hearing or reading what the feed says we should read or experience, you can actually go curate your own experience and think about the top 5 creators you're interested in right now and use the search bar to find them, go to their profile and watch. Because what we put into our brains is the start of and the foundation of anything in our lives. And that inner reality creates our outer reality. So what I have started to do more often than not in my phone, I use the swipe down to search. And then in my apps, social media apps, I'm just searching for individual people. So I just have like a list of my past searches and I click the search bar and I click on each one of them and watch their content rather than being arbitrarily fed what an app wants me to read or watch because that doesn't feel good to me. And sometimes I get into these like weird places, especially on TikTok, and like I'm watching this video, it's like really sad, really video about her mom talking about something that happened to her son. I'm like, oh my gosh, like I this is not energy I was signing up for today. And it's, uh, you know, 9:00 PM and I don't want to go to sleep like this.

Yeah.

So just want to leave that there, food for thought for everyone.

No, I agree. I do a practice in our Defy group where every time you pick up your phone, you have to state out loud what it is that you're using your phone for, to try to break the habit of just like grabbing your phone and using it. And I do that also when I'm opening the app. So like when I open X, I'm like, I am going on the app to share this thought and then I'm logging off the app or I'm checking Hormozy's, like what he's, you know, saying because it's inspiring me for content. So I really, I love that train of thinking. And I'm divided right now because I want to ask you about crypto and I'm also like, that's a whole completely separate episode. And, you know, we've already we've already gone 30 minutes into this, so let's let it— let's just do a little icing of crypto. And then my commitment to my audience is if Avani will come back, we'll, we'll dive more into crypto. You tell me right, wrong, or indifferent, and I'm here for, for all of it. So with crypto and with Web3, I went deep and loved it, and it probably was a huge contributor to me starting a tech company. And then I got super Luna burned, as did I think a lot of people. And I was like, you know, just because it's new doesn't mean my investment rules change. And so I went with the same DCA strategy with Bitcoin and Ethereum and held on throughout the whole up and down. And obviously right now it's pretty good. So am I doing it wrong?

So I have to preface this as I do not give investment advice and this is not financial advice and I can only share some things from my experience and what I can share is, and please go talk to your financial advisor. There we go. All the disclaimer pieces.

Yes.

So NFA, this is, you guys just stop listening. This is just Ebony telling me what to do. So you guys are sharing experiences with me. So you guys just stop listening.

I really love that you are going back to your basics when it comes to investment and thinking about it in that way. I think we should approach crypto as we approach other investments. Come at it as if I'm going into it, I'm investing money, and this is like money that is— if it one day like poof disappears, I'd still be okay. I think that's like the first piece to it. Like, I have enough to live and feed myself and put a roof over my head and all those pieces. The long-term strategy is really interesting because I believe that fiat currency, which is the US dollar or whatever we use today in our currency, the bills that we're using today, fiat currency is on the out. It's just not here to stay. Like you can see the turbulence we've experienced the last 4 or 5 years with the dollar. Through the experience of the pandemic and them injecting money into the economy and what that created for the economy. So there's all of this happening in the background and there is inflation happening now. What's different about cryptocurrency is that you don't have one centralized place making the call on what happens on like things that are going to be printed or created. You just don't because no more Bitcoin can be made every day. Bitcoin is being burned as people lose their wallets, lose their keys, You don't know what happened to it. So the only thing that can happen is the value can go up and every day the mining capability of Bitcoin goes down as well. So there, if you, if you wanna think about it that way, there is some scarcity. So from an investment standpoint, that's interesting. But what the other piece that's interesting is that if you think about it as a long-term asset and it's something that's going to go beyond fiat and go into the years ahead, because today we're not, we're currencies operate as if we're not a global economy. But the thing is we are a global economy. And when you come into cryptocurrency, now you're looking at a global set of infrastructure, which is the web that is running global currency that can then contribute to a global economy. I think it's really wise to take the long-term approach to this and really wise to be responsible and invest the same way you might invest in other things. So that's the TL;DR of—

I think I believe that you're being smart. Hey, I'm going to take any excuse. And any compliment on my brilliance, especially from somebody as brilliant as you. So I definitely think we're going to continue this crypto conversation and we're going to come back for some more of the psychology and femininity. I appreciate you being here and I appreciate you sharing your brilliance. I appreciate the journey that you took in a primarily male-dominated industry and what you have built out of it. A super inspiration to me and I know to so many others. So thank you. Thank you, Bunny Young.

So great to be here with you today.

Yes. And for everybody, no matter where you were taking us and listening to us, if you're walking your dog on the beach or driving somewhere or just taking a mental health break from your day, no matter what app you use to listen to us, I hope that you have opened your minds and have a little bit different perspective. I love the conversations that we're able to have on this podcast. We will bring Avani back and have more crypto conversations because when I enjoy the conversation, we're just going to go deeper into that conversation. Let us know below what you thought of the show as well as share it with your friends. Share it on social. That means the world. You guys are voting with your attention. And if you've gotten this far in the show and you're listening to this part where I'm slowly walking you out of the episode, then hopefully you love us enough to be able to share this episode, follow. I'm gonna put all the links for Avani below this and go follow her on Instagram, all the apps, X. Give us a shout out. We'd love to say hi. I'll see you on the next episode of the Yes. And Podcast.