20 Jul 2022 · 35 min
In this episode of Conscious Design, host Ian Peterman interviews Karsten Rowe, Director of Product Design for Real‑Time Operations at Axon. Rowe outlines Axon’s origins—born from a desire to replace lethal force with Tasers—and its evolution into a hardware‑software ecosystem that includes body‑cameras, dispatch platforms, telematics, drones, and data integrations. He explains why he moved into public‑safety tech, describing the moral complexity of designing for law enforcement and his motivation to create tools that protect both officers and civilians. The conversation dives into design challenges: measuring success by time‑on‑task and clicks, surfacing the right information to officers in high‑stress moments, and leveraging abundant sensor data (GPS, gun‑fire signals, device telemetry) to aid dispatchers. Rowe discusses automation opportunities such as predictive crime placement, rapid 911 data pre‑population via RapidSOS, and ShotSpotter‑triggered drone deployments. He describes Axon’s product roadmap process—balancing sales pressure, field research, ethical limits (e.g., facial‑recognition), and modular product strategy to accommodate agencies of vastly different sizes, from small towns to large metropolitan forces like London Met. The interview also touches on cross‑regional differences (US vs UK public acceptance of body‑cameras), scaling UI for thousands of units, testing in high‑crime environments, and the need for incremental adoption and extensive training. Throughout, Rowe emphasizes a “design saves lives” ethos, the importance of empathy with end‑users, and the responsibility of designers to engage with difficult societal problems rather than ignore them.
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Hello, welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm Ian Peterman, your host and author of the book Conscious Design. And with me today, I have Karsten Rowe, Director of Product Design for Real-Time Operations at Axon. Welcome to the show.
Thanks so much, Ian. It's great to be here.
Yeah, so Tell us the short version of what Axon is, and then would love to hear you share about how you got involved and what— we had a little bit of a conversation about that before— and what really sparked you wanting to get into this. Awesome.
Yeah, absolutely. So Axon started about 30 years ago. We're the company behind the Taser. That was our first big or successful product. Basically, the CEO Had a tragic incident that happened at college. 2 of his friends were shot. And he just thought this— there needs to be a better way. Like, why are we shooting, like, lead bullets at each other? There needs to be more of a humane way. And if somebody is, like, innocent or guilty, they still get to tell their story after that event happens. So I think that's where the company started. 30 years later, we have hardware and software. We have cameras, we have dispatch software. live streaming and a whole ecosystem of things that all serve public safety. So that's the space that I'm working in right now.
Got it. And you jumped over because you've worked in design for a while. So when you jumped over, what really got you to jump over and kind of what is product design for real-time operations? That's it.
Yeah, no, that's a good question. So yeah, I've been a designer. That's the only thing I've ever known. I graduated when I was 21, moved to London, worked for 10 years in London, and then came to the West Coast. I was in San Francisco and now Seattle. So I've always designed products. That was just a geek growing up. That's what I just enjoyed. That's what I was somewhat good at. So I was lucky in that way that I've only ever kind of been a designer. That's the only industry or the only skill set I really know. So I think once you get deeper into your career, you start to think about where do I want to apply my skill set or this experience that I have? Or, you know, I'm not really motivated to build this, this product that doesn't really put good back into the world. So when I started talking to Axon and the things that we were building here, it just felt like the right move. And it is controversial, a controversial space. It's a hard space to work in terms of being a white male building technology for law enforcement, right? A lot of people ask you hard questions about that, and there is a lot of polar opinions on that topic too. So, but I think as soon as I started talking to the company and met the leadership and understood that their heart was in the right place and they have integrity and they want to kind of make products for a better world, and it works two ways. So like the other thing The other big product that we've got at the moment is obviously the body camera. And so the body camera is to protect both sides. So on the cop side, it's, hey, I don't want to be falsely accused of this thing that I did not do, right? Video is very transparent. You get to the truth. And then on the other side, there's a lot of reports of excessive force and unnecessary force used by law enforcement. And therefore the cop will can't get away with that either. So I think that's why it's such an interesting space to design around problems, those problems. And I think for me, it was like every day is like I'm hugely motivated to chase and get after those problems. And even if I can't solve those problems, having a voice in that conversation, being able to influence what that conversation looks like.
Mm-hmm.
Is like hugely motivating. And, you know, it's, uh, I, I don't want anybody to think that everybody works at Axon is like super pro-police or pro-cop, and that's what our goal is. That is not what the goal is. Our goal is to make a safer world and serve the public. And, um, I think that's, that's where we've got like a PR problem, or that's what people miss. Um, they just see technology for cops, and that's, that's the only thing they they kind of see when you say that you work at Axon.
Right. But yeah, there's a— just to say that it's controversial is a very nice way of putting it. Putting it is definitely, definitely a hard space to work in. But it is, it's not— as much as people want to defund police, they're not going to disappear. So, and, you know, creating technology that way is definitely a Huge component. And so you mentioned working, you know, with the cameras. So body cameras are a huge, huge piece, especially now everybody, you know, knows they want that. That's something that police commissioners, cities, states, they're all, they're all very much for. Is that— obviously that's growing. And so is it kind of— how are you looking at technology moving forward? forward from there in helping, like you're saying, technology that makes it so that both sides are protected. There's not as much as technology will, and humans are humans. You can't make everybody make a good decision every single time. But what is the frame of design thinking that you approach this with, with knowing that there's 2 sometimes very aggressive sides meeting, meeting together with neither side having good intentions. In some cases, like, that's, that sounds like a very interesting design approach to even kind of get in that headspace of, I know what this product is going to go into, that, into that zone.
Yeah. So just to like back up a little bit, you mentioned like defunding the police and that movement. I'm obviously well aware and with everything that went on. I think, you know, what I would ask people is to, you know, you're not always going to get the opportunity, but just have a little bit of empathy there. Like, I live in the customer's shoes. The great thing about being a designer at Axon, you're going to get a lot of customer time. You know, I'm, I'm not from a law enforcement background. I don't know what a cop or dispatcher or call taker, a chief, a captain need from technology. So I have to go and like learn that piece. So I spend a lot of time on site and, you know, We're lucky we work in the tech world. We have these glamorous offices, all these perks, all these nice snacks and drinks and stuff. Their world is different than that. And I would actually flip that on its head and say they actually need more funding. And why do I say that? It's 'cause cops don't get paid to train. You know, we work in tech, we have LinkedIn Learning, we go to conferences, you know, we have a budget of like personal or professional development like that. We're so privileged to have that. A cop goes through their training at the start of their career, and that is near enough all they get. And they're not paid to train. So if they want to level up and become a detective, for example, they actually have to take time out of their day and actually almost take a drop in pay because they're doing training. So the incentive there is not there. And I think there's like an education piece there. You know, a lot of these cities and a lot of the cities that we go to with like very, very high crime rates, they're just trying to stay above water. Do you know what I mean? Like a dispatcher in the call center taking your 911 call, they're just trying to stay afloat in terms of the volume of calls that are coming in. So how do we kind of use technology to maybe automate some of those tasks that they have to do? How do we— and then you kind of touched on measuring design. So a lot of the— we always get asked this question in design land, you know, how do you know that design's good enough? And so it's not about aesthetics. It's not about this shiny new component. It's not about all this cool new pattern that this other app are using. It's more about like time on task. How quickly can they do this task? How quickly can get get through this workflow? How intuitive can we make it so that the training of a dispatcher or call taker is actually really reduced in terms of number of hours of training before they can start accepting or taking on? Some of that volume of calls, and how do we like prioritize what to dispatch and in what order? So a P zero is a shooting, right? How do we get the right unit to that location as quickly as possible with the right skill set, with the right equipment? So there's there's so much to do on that side in terms of how we measure design and time on task, number of clicks, thing like situational awareness when the officer is driving to the event, the in-car experience. What should we be surfacing? when he's driving maybe 80 miles per hour, 90 miles per hour in a really stressful situation. Like the UI and the experience can't be like super cluttered with all this data. We need to like surface the right information at the right time. So he goes into the event with as much knowledge as he can to make the right decisions, right?
Mm-hmm.
So I think there's that bit of like how we approach design. And then there's like some of the automation side. Like, so we have all these devices and signals out in the field. We have guns, we have tasers, we have body cameras, We have vehicles, we have drones, helicopters, boats, all of these things.
Right.
So, they all have a GPS location, right? And they all have signals. We can feed those signals back into the command center. So, if an officer is going 90 miles per hour, put that telematics back into the call center and let the dispatcher know what's going on, what's their ETA. Don't distract them via the radio if it's It's not necessary. We know when they touch their gun, we know when they unholster their taser and fire the taser. Those signals come back into the call center or the command center so that better decisions can be made. And there's more like awareness of what's actually happening on the ground. So I think that's where we're heading. But I think, as I kind of alluded to at the start, Axon are doing so many different things. Every tech company says it, but There is so many little elements and so many improvements that we can make in so many areas. It's hard to like boil that down into like a couple of minutes.
Right, right. Well, and it kind of sounds like there's already a lot of data, right? There's a lot of info. Like you said, we have GPS and practically everything at this point. We have Wi-Fi or some sort of digital connectivity. relaying information in. So you mentioned kind of the systems level, that automation. Is it, from your perspective, is it more of just there's a lot of unused data and it's kind of, it's really just there's a lot of raw data that we have or, you know, could be accessible to, like you're saying, a dispatcher, and there's just not been a really efficient way to serve that up and allow them to even make it, make a decision? Because I would imagine if there's all that data and you're trying to figure out what it is, you're, you're going to be struggling and spending time figuring out what it is before you can even make a decision on anything.
Yeah, I, I, I think you, you're right in terms of what you're poking at, in terms of like, it's easy to collect this data, how do you make it useful, right? And I think a lot of Product or technology companies have that problem, right? They just have this lake of data and like this is great, this is so valuable. But why? What decisions is it helping you make? And I think when people look at data and they say, oh, this is interesting, that's always like a huge red flag to me. Like loads of data is interesting, but like how is it going to help you make a decision? So I'm always looking at from that angle. I think there's like a couple of things that I kind of want to speak on. Is like, how do we get to us— like, the real, like, zen place is where we can start predicting where crime is going to happen before it's happened based on historical data. So like, I don't know, position that unit or that vehicle like at this corner store on 3 Fridays out of the month because we know like there's just on average there's just going to be an event there. And if we're parked there, the likeness that something bad is going to happen is probably like reduces massively. So there's that piece. And I think there's just a lot of like fragmented systems, meaning all the integrations that we have to build.
That's huge.
So when somebody calls 911, right, from a smartphone, we know what that phone number is, right? But the dispatcher still has to type it in. So there's like a company called RapidSOS we've got a partnership with, we're working on an integration with them. And it's just like, just pre-populate that phone number. Like, why do we have to ask them where, where are they? We know that from the phone, right? And what's their number? We know that from the phone. And we know all their medical history and a bunch of other, other things, right? So we already have that. It's about building that integration. And then things like Shot Stopper. So in high-crime neighborhoods, there is microphones and CCTV on a lot of buildings. So there is products out there that actually alert law enforcement when they detect the sounds of gunfire. And so that they can listen to that, confirm it. And that would actually, you know, you could use that to actually automatically create an event. And then rather than sending a human there, send a drone there to see, is there actually an event? Do we need humans, you know, out in the field at that event? And just sending a drone there, the drone isn't there to like fix the problem and de-escalate the event. The drone is there to like, because it's going to get there a lot quicker and you might not actually have units available. They can just get a lay of the land. Like, do we actually need to send humans to this event or is it a non-event? Right?
Right. Was it, was it a car backfiring?
Yeah, exactly. So I think, yeah, they're the things that kind of in a nice way keep me up at night. And that's why I'm like excited about the stuff that we're building because there's just so many ways we can apply our technology design brain to public safety, which have at times been a bit slow to adopt technology at times.
Yeah, I think that's putting it nicely. There's— I've grown up, I've lived in some towns that had 30-year-old equipment was the newest they had. So knowing that that's a thing that That's definitely— they're missing out on a lot of data or useful information. So when you guys are looking at new products or how you move forward, is there— what's your assessment process of going, okay, this is— because as you said, there are so many things to fix, especially in systems like this where it's been slow to keep up with technology. Uh, where, you know, I, I have free— there's free CRM tools that'll auto-populate a phone number for me. So I mean, that's, that, that's the reality I live in, is, is my CRM tool is better than a dispatcher's tool. So how, how do you start to assess though, what, what are really the best next steps in, in building out a solution to, to solve something of Really, it's kind of like epic proportions that you're trying to dive into.
Yeah, I want to be realistic here as well. I don't want to walk us down a road that I don't think is fair. So we are like another product company, right? It comes from loads of different angles. Like, so let's take the easy ones first. Sales team are saying, oh, like if you produce this feature or ship this feature by this quarter, That'll unblock these sales, right? So we have the sales team out in the field. They are obviously like fueling our roadmap to a certain degree. As I said, design and research team spend a lot of time on site along with the PMs and engineers. So we use our own intuition of what we think we should be building. And then there's like the ethics side of it, meaning there's lots of AI and facial recognition stuff out there. We've just said it's too early. Like, I don't think, I don't think the public are ready for that. I don't think that it's going to go over well, right? I don't think they'll accept that.
I would agree with that assessment.
So it's like, it's, it's, we're challenging ourselves to like be smart and help, but like not cross these lines and these boundaries that are like, you know, but on the other side, I want to be really progressive. Like nobody wanted to use a credit card online. Right? Like 20 years ago, nobody would. They everybody thought it was a fraud, right? But now we do it every day. Nobody wanted the body camera in this country. They were just like, "I don't want people watching what I do," right? But now it's become accepted, and every near the majority of police departments do want cameras, and the public are actually okay with it. And depending on your location, like in the UK, there was never that. There was never a big pushback or big problem. Problem with cops having body cameras. It was kind of like, yeah, I like it, protects you, protects me, like, good job. But over here, it was like, it was, it was pretty controversial and, you know, pretty slow off the mark. But I think now the time has come that people are going to accept it and they see the value in it. So, so many things go into that melting pot. Also, we have an awesome CEO, Rick Smith, He's such a visionary. So he's always thinking about the future and he's very creative. And so he'll obviously stir the pot and say, why don't we do this? And let's build a little team to tackle that problem. So it comes from all over the place. I would like to say where it's not just top-down at Axon for sure. Like the designers and researchers go out in the field, they bring back data, they bring back insights. And, you know, that all goes into the melting pot for our annual roadmap planning, which is pretty extensive.
Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on conscious design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Right. Well, yeah, it's never— usually never just from one spot. It's always a blend of inputs, and then you collectively figure out a good output. Uh, you mentioned really briefly the difference between UK, right, and US, or the public's reaction to cameras. Is I want to kind of dive down this a little bit because your perspective isn't just the American West Coast perspective. So how, how is that bringing in, you know, multiple backgrounds to it, to a scenario like, like this? Is it— do you find an advantage to it? Are there, are there areas where you're able to pull in experience from other countries and how they've adjusted to this huge kind of shift in, in this field? Like, how, how does that interact?
Yeah, it makes it more complex because, um, this— both the UK and the US, uh, law enforcement systems are structured and work completely differently. Um, And what the public will accept is different. So I think it makes it harder to make decisions, probably. And there's more configuration that the products need to do to fit that market or that agency. And then, like, and then there's just the size of something like London Met, right? So London Met's absolutely huge. I don't have a clue what the actual Office account is, but I'm just gonna— let's just guess. Let's just say it's 20,000, 30,000. So when you have 30,000 dots on a map, it doesn't work very well, right? Finding the right thing, all those signals and notifications coming in, you know, your product, once you have all that data displayed in an interface, it's like, well, some agencies small, that's going to work great. But this bigger agency, you're going to have to have all this more advanced filtering and search and permissions and roles and everything. So I think it's the right move in terms of the longer-term goal we have at Axon. But in the short term, it's like sometimes harder because the needs of all these different sizes and shapes of police departments is different.
Yeah, it's a good— I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, 20,000 dots on a map gets really, really busy fairly quickly compared to some smaller town ones. Is that— when you're, when you're looking at that scale, is there typically a sweet spot in size where it's big enough to really utilize? Because I'd imagine that at a certain point you'd hit, you know, if there's only 3 cops in a town and maybe 5 firefighters that are mostly volunteer, it kind of breaks down in terms of— how useful an automation is. So where, where are you guys seeing that from a usability standpoint? Like, where, where does it start to break down and a different system would need to be in place, basically?
Yeah, that's a good point. I think there's 2 things that immediately come to mind is you build like specific scaling features. So we had a for example, supporting the Super Bowl, right? So, you have all of these cops, all of these personnel on a map, and you can livestream and tap into all the cameras and stuff like that. So, we did like this scaling feature on the map and in the list to kind of allow that to be a little bit more manageable so they could actually get to the important stuff and it wasn't just like a billion dots on a map.
Right.
So, there's like certain things that you can turn on in the product Right? And I think having an admin portal and having the system be more configurable is something that we know we need to level up on as we add more customers. And then I think the other thing I was thinking about was we, we are trying to test our products out in hard environments. What do I mean by that is So our dispatch product, right, it's mission critical. You've got to, you know, lives are at stake. Literally seconds and minutes cost lives. And that's why we use like design saves lives. That's like one of our taglines because it's true. It is actually true. If they can do this thing quickly and like across thousands of dispatches, that time really adds up. So we try and actually deploy some of our products in really high volume or high crime rate cities so that we know that they're going to work in, in for that level of volume. And then it's going to be a lot easier to make it serve like a really nice town with not a lot of crime rate. So you really want to like try and test those products out in really hot areas for crime. And I think that's, that's part of the strategy to build the right thing.
Right. Well, yeah, you're putting, you're putting it through the rough experience of having to really, really test it out. And then anything slower than that pace is—
When I say, when I say I'm going on a business trip, everyone's like, oh, that's cool. Like, you're always going on business trips. That sounds really like nice. I'm like, well, yeah, I have to go to this like location or this city that's really not that nice. And then you're spending the whole night riding around with cops, so you're seeing all the worst things. So it's like, I love traveling for business. I love spending time with the customer. I think it makes me help, you know, definitely helps make better decisions. But it's really funny when people are like, oh, you go all these business trips, that must be really nice. I'm like, I'm not going to any nice places. I'm really not.
Right. I'm not going to the vacation spot. This is where you don't vacation.
Exactly.
Oh, well, when you're, when you're going through that, right, so you have multiple products and obviously, you know, deployables, you have also the system, system side thing that you mentioned, like the dispatch.
Mm-hmm.
And are you mostly focused— is one area or the other a bigger focus of impact, or is it, is it more of something where you have to build both together because you need the ecosystem of on-in-situation products combined with, you know, what you're talking about, the dispatch system and things like that, that are then allowing people to connect all that together.
Yeah, I think like definitely we're, uh, again, business product strategy is more like better together. So the more Axon products you buy, they're gonna work better, you're gonna get more data, you're gonna get more signals, more notifications, those kind of things. And it's going to feel like more of a seamless experience, a bit like Microsoft or Google or Apple or whatever. It's the same kind of play.
Right.
Um, but I do see a future where our dispatch product is closer to our, like, devices or live streaming product, and it's more feels like one. But why we don't want to do that and just have that approach is that it kind of like— some people will just want to buy this thing over here and other, other agencies will want this thing over there. So we don't want to say, well, here's a huge price tag, you have to buy everything at once. So you have to have it more modular. You have to have these standalone products that work really well on their own but are better together. And I think we're really aware of that. I do see, just from like a design perspective, I do see a future where it's like one big platform and everything's there and it works really well. But when you look at those mega products, I don't know what you would call them, I would call them a mega product where there's loads of products all in one, designing and making intuitive, super hard to do. So if you look at a product like Salesforce, near enough does everything ever and has an integration with everybody. But it's a really hard system to use and get familiar with, and you almost need like a Salesforce expert at your company just to like work the thing out.
Um, I think it's one of those ones that you need— it requires basically special training. You have to— you, you actually want to use their training service to like get to— if you want to maximize what you get out of it, you can't, can't stumble through systems like that. But yeah, what you're saying is So true. It becomes a— it's an ecosystem that you're trying to learn without any point of reference because you're not using anything familiar inside of it.
I think the other part on that point is our expectations of how quickly agencies and the public are going to adopt and adapt to this change or to this technology. Like, it is going to be incremental, right? And if you gave this complete game-changing hardware and software to an agency, it'd just be too much. They only can take a certain amount of time away from the field, away from the day jobs to train the folks on the systems and the devices.
Right.
And it's just going to feel like too big a jump and it's going to be too scary. So I think our ploy is to make incremental adoption of new technology, not like overnight, changes. I just don't see that as the right approach.
Right. Well, I think that's a good point because it's not even just a department, right? It's also the public has to be. So you're kind of, you have not just one, in most cases, it's, you know, one company could take on and make a decision and that's fine. But now you have, you almost have 2 customers that you're balancing because the public interacts and reacts and gets to decide how well the product gets used, or if at all, by any department. So it's a— yeah, I would imagine it's a little bit slower adoption rate than most other technology because you have that two sides of the coin at the same time.
Yeah, and it's really interesting to see different parts of America and different cities, right? Maybe I'm not going to name any names because I don't think that's appropriate. But being like on the East Coast, for example, doing a visit out there and how much effort some agencies will make building bridges with their public. And some agencies are like, oh no, it's us versus them. I, you know, I'm just here to deal with crime. And like, they don't make that extra effort to build that trust. And if there's more trust, there's more acceptance of these new things that are arriving in the world. And I think there is big differences how each police department work within their city or their town. And the engagement with the public can be very rough or very cool. Like, it can be really nice. You're doing a ride-along, like everybody's waving at you. Like they're like happy that there is actually law enforcement there and They appreciate the work that they do. And then in other cities where there's been like really bad, high-profile cases of excessive force or something, it's like you're a target and they don't want you in the neighborhood.
Right. Yeah, that would be, that would be very interesting to go from one ride-along to another and have that very stark difference. I'm sure even, even police officers don't You know, hop between different cities like that and experience different, different rides. I would imagine you're one of the few people that's actually doing, doing both kinds. You're actually sitting there experiencing kind of the rainbow of cop experience in a neighborhood.
Yeah, I think that's true. On the other side, like, They all talk to each other, especially like the chiefs and the captains and sergeants and stuff. They're, they're pretty small. It's a bit like the design industry. It's just like once you're in it and you've been in it for a while, like you kind of know a lot of folks or a lot of people. And I feel like in law enforcement it's the same. They go to— they have their conferences and they share notes. And I think if— So for example, if Axe did a deployment or sold a product to some agency and it didn't go well, every agency would know about it. Um, it is very like that. I, I believe that's my understanding. I might be wrong, but that's kind of why— what I see or what I feel.
Right. Well, don't, don't test it by having a bad deployment.
Yes, exactly. Awesome.
Awesome. Well, this has been— it's been great chatting to you, with you about this, uh, and diving into how, how you guys approach design in such an interesting area that has many different inputs and many different thoughts on. Uh, so I really appreciate you taking some time to share what Axon's doing and, and your guys' approach, which I think from what I've— our conversations, this is Sounds like the right approach to be taking to such a sensitive area that needs work, right? It's not an ignore it and it'll go away. We did that, but it clearly didn't work. So it's really been great talking about this.
Awesome, Ian. I appreciate it. I think the last thing I just kind of want to kind of land on is, yeah, it is a really dark space. And, you know, when you first find out designing for public safety or anything like that, it's like, nah, it's like, let's ignore that. Like, let's not do that. Let's not go there, right? It's the really gnarly, dark problems. And we can choose to keep ignoring them. Or we can try and do something about them. And as long as you believe in your own integrity, and your heart's in the right place, and you really want better for the world and better for everybody, You quickly get over that, the PR thing of like designing for cops or whatever that is. Like, you quickly get past that. And I just found it difficult when I took the job a couple years ago and some of the things that close friends and family said. I was like, no, like, you know me. Like, you know I want like the best, you know, to put good stuff back into the world. So thanks for listening. I enjoyed I enjoyed sharing some of the stuff we do, and hopefully this gives a little bit of exposure and a little bit more insight to what it's like to build technology for law enforcement.
Yeah, well, and hopefully people will see this and more people will take an approach of maybe it is something we can solve instead of trying to sweep it under the rug again and ignore it for another couple decades. So I appreciate, I appreciate you being able to share, share this. It's been, it's been great. Thanks for, thanks for being here.
Thank you, Ian. Take care, buddy.
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