Entrepreneurship by Design: Bringing Creative New Ideas to Life [Katie Kirsch]

So our guest today, Katie, is a designer, engineer, and social entrepreneur. After earning a product design engineering degree from Stanford, she spent 3 years at IDEO in a mix of marketing, business strategy, and product development roles. Along the way, Katie co-founded a nonprofit empowering girls to step up as leaders of social change through design thinking. Over the past 5 years, Katie and her team have launched a 14-week-long cross-country road trip for girls empowerment, physical and digital teaching toolkits, training programs, and a summer camp, collectively reaching hundreds of educators and thousands of girls across 15 countries. Katie now works at Designer Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that invests in design-driven founders and startups. Katie, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for the introduction, and excited Yeah, thank you for joining.

The floor is yours. Feel free to share your screen.

Awesome. Can everyone see this?

Yeah, it looks good.

Great.

And Katie, we'll hold off the questions to the end, or would you— is that okay?

Perfect.

Great.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Great.

So I realize many of us may be calling in from different locations and time zones. So actually, before diving in, I wanted to take a moment just to hear how everyone's doing. If everyone wants to share in the Zoom chat just one word about how you're doing today, I'd love to learn a little bit more.

Excited.

Doing well.

Good.

Fabulous. Love it. Calm.

Great.

Cold here.

Good.

Awesome.

It's fun.

Usually, you know, in these speaking conversations, we can all be in a room together, and I can maybe see how you all are doing, but it's nice just to get a little sense from the Zoom. Cool. And while we're at it, I've got one more question for you, which is, what are you building? And you may have a clear-cut answer to this, like an app that connects homebuyers with real estate owners, or this may be a little broader for you, like a new way of transacting money online. Or perhaps you aren't actively building something right now, but you want to be. And if that's the case, feel free to share what you want to build. So I'd love to see— yeah, just hear in the next minute or so a few things that you're building or hoping to build. A high school girls scholarship program. Awesome, Michelle. Excited to hear more about that. Dashboard. An audio storytelling platform. A way to connect more African young entrepreneurs to real money. Awesome. Sustainable buildings. These are great. We're all building something. Off-grid water purification remote monitoring. Cool. A rocket ship. Workforce development. This is great. I love the diversity of things that you're all working on. I'll let you continue to share in the chat, but to keep things moving, you know, I asked this question because, you know, in essence, this talk is about building things, entrepreneurship by design. And, you You know, building has been at the heart of my career, but it wasn't exactly where I started. I grew up going to a small all-girls school where we did a lot of this: reading, studying in the library, memorizing things. And let's just say I wasn't the coolest girl in school. This is me in middle school. I had glasses and braces and tiger stripe highlights in my hair. But what I struggled with most was the need to be perfect. You know, I memorized exactly and only what my teachers required. I triple-checked all of my work. I wrote my essays first in pencil and then over again in pen, erasing out all the pencil marks from underneath to present the neatest possible assignment. And recently I found a quote that I think sums it up perfectly, which is, we're raising our girls to be perfect and our boys to be brave. Can anyone relate to this? Feel free to share it in the Zoom chat. I'm curious if this resonates. And to show you what I mean, you know, boys run around at school, they tackle each other on the playground, they come home sometimes with scrapes on their knees, and their parents say, ah, today must have been so fun. How fast did you run? How high did you jump? Who, who ran the fastest? Right? But when girls come home with a little dirt on their shoulder and their hair is undone, the response can often sound more like, Are you okay? Did you get hurt? You know, did someone push you? In other words, you know, many girls are being raised to always color in the lines and be polite and follow the rules and never talk back. In other words, we're raising our girls to be perfect and our boys to be brave. And I didn't personally realize this until college when I took my first class in Stanford's d.school. And this is where we learned. This vibrant makerspace with moving whiteboards and walls covered in Post-its, scribbles, and ideas. And this is what we learned, a 5-step process for human-centered design, otherwise known as design thinking. And at a high level, it's the process of first empathizing with users' needs, defining the problem statement, ideating solutions, prototyping them, and then testing those prototypes with real people to get feedback. But beneath this process was a mindset that really flipped my world upside down. For the first time, I found myself challenged to surface questions rather than answers, to embrace ambiguity over a tried-and-true approach. And as a recovering perfectionist, you know, my intrigue really turned to wide-eyed wonder when my professor asked our class to actually stand up, throw our hands up into the air, and cheer, I failed! You know, after years of carefully coloring inside the lines, I was finally being given the permission and the freedom to paint bold strokes on a canvas of my own. And I couldn't stop thinking, if only I had learned this back in middle school. And I realized I wanted to help other girls escape this trap of perfectionism and become the kind of bold, risk-taking innovators and leaders that I knew our world so desperately needed more of. And I saw that design thinking could be a pathway there. It could help younger girls in the same way that this mindset and process had helped me, to kind of break free and realize you can create, do, and build anything. So at Stanford, I teamed up with 3 other students, and we came up with a design thinking and leadership curriculum for middle school girls. And we started teaching it at local middle schools. And one school led to the next, and over time, our curriculum started to gain momentum, which inspired us to think a little bit bigger? Like, what if we could bring this workshop to girls in other cities? What about other states? What about, I don't know, the country? So we launched a Kickstarter campaign and raised enough money to do this, which is hop in an RV and spend 14 weeks driving across the US teaching our workshops for girls. This was our route. So in 14 weeks on the road, we reached about 1,500 girls across 32 states. From Girl Scout troops to Boys and Girls Clubs and so forth. And we made it back to the Bay Area at the end of the summer to start exploring ways we could expand this impact. And today we're no longer working and living out of an RV. But we've built this series of teaching toolkits that we now ship out to schools, educators, passionate moms and dads, so that they can bring our workshop to a community of their own. And we've also translated our curriculum into a week-long summer program. So in the summer of 2018, we brought together 50 girls together on Stanford's campus for a superhero-themed leadership camp filled with fun exercises, games, team challenges, and more. In other words, we've spent the past few years doing a lot of building. And along the way, I graduated from Stanford and headed to IDEO, which is a global innovation firm focused on creating disproportionate impact through design. And I spent about 3 and a half years at IDEO in a mix of roles, in marketing, business development, and design. And through this, I learned the business value of design, how it can be used to transform not just products and services, but also companies, business models, and cultures at a higher level. And now I'm at Designer Fund, which is a VC based in San Francisco that invests in design-driven founders and companies. And we firmly believe in this power of bringing design and business together, and that when you lead through a design and a business lens, a creative and a strategic outlook, it's when amazing things start to happen. And typically my focus is helping designers grow as business leaders, but today I'm excited to be doing a little bit of the opposite, just helping business leaders like you grow as designers. So with that, Let's dive in. So in this session, we'll kind of break down each of the 5 stages of design thinking in a way that I hope makes it accessible to you and the work that you're doing, some of the questions you might be tackling in your own work, whether you're interested in starting something, currently building out a startup or company that's related to some of the challenges you shared earlier in the chat, or working at a company right now that's a bit farther along but looking to stay innovative. And this process starts with empathy. And empathy arguably is the most important stage of the design process. We call it human-centered design because this process directly revolves around people's needs. And when it comes to understanding our users, many of us think of something like this. Like, oh, let's run a survey. And surveys can be great for gathering quantitative data that describes your users at a high level. But asking questions like, did you find our platform useful, yes or no? Or how healthy do you eat on a scale of 1 to 5? You know, isn't going to tell us the full story. You know, there's so many important insights that even the best surveys never uncover. So relying exclusively on survey data can be misleading. I mean, after all, our users aren't data points. They're people. They're illogical. They're emotional. They're human. So to give an example, let's say that you wanted to break into the food industry or improve your existing food product or brand. So you want to learn everything you can about people's food preferences and behaviors.

Agree.

Let's say you've already conducted a survey that's given you some initial data points, like people try to eat healthy whenever they can, people like to eat organic foods, people like to spend between X and Y amount of money on food each week. Things like that. But you have a sense there's more to the story, so you decide to stretch beyond the survey and conduct some more in-depth research. And first up, you interview users in their homes. And maybe it's here that you hear stories about how difficult it can be to find and cook food that satisfies a family of 5, including 3 kids that are all under the age of 10. Maybe you will learn about how difficult it can be to manage people's different allergies. And keep track of who's eaten and who hasn't.

Um.

Or let's say you shop alongside a handful of people in a grocery store. You opt to be a fly on the wall as they explore the store and fill up their shopping carts. And through this, you start to observe the kinds of brands that people really like and trust. On the flip side, you watch them literally shake their heads or roll their eyes at other brands. And while shopping alongside them, you ask why, and you learn about what your users really value in a food brand. You observe how people weigh one product over another, like 2 different kinds of milk. You know, where does price come in, if at all? Where does the nutritional info come in, if at all, and why? You learn answers to all these questions and more, first through observation, and then again through asking questions along the way. And every now and then you observe something that's a little bit different than what your survey picked up. You know, for example, maybe people in your survey said they only shop organic, or that they care more about protein and fat content versus the price, but you observe things differently. Finally, you might even immerse in people's shoes by cooking and enjoying a meal with them. You learn— you might learn that they hate to follow a recipe, and instead they value improvising with the fresh ingredients they've got. You might learn that their fridge is filled with leftovers that nobody has eaten because nobody's sure exactly how old things are and if they're still safe to eat. And these are all insights that can help you better understand the full user experience, right? What's working, what's not, where there are opportunities for improvement, and based on all of that, what you want to build to meet your users where they're at. And while I was starting this nonprofit at Stanford, we used these same research techniques to step inside the shoes of our users, who were middle school girls. We followed the same Instagram accounts, we listened to their favorite songs and artists, We went to the movie theater or the places where they hung out with their friends. We interviewed them and their teachers, sometimes their parents, and more to ultimately create a curriculum that would meet middle school girls where they were at. And not all of us have, you know, the time, the resources to conduct tons of interviews, to always carefully observe our users and immerse in their shoes for every project we're working on. But doing these exercises every now and then can be incredibly eye-opening, especially if you're early on in your building process.

Yeah.

Because ultimately, they show us this: the differences in what our users say, do, think, and feel. Because while a survey can tell us what people say, when we observe, interview, and immerse, we fill out the rest of this framework. I'll give you one more example. At IDEO, one of our healthcare teams was conducting research on how people take pills, especially focused on people over the age of 60. The team conducted a survey where one question asked if you had any trouble opening up your pill bottle, to which almost everyone replied, not at all. We went into people's homes to learn more, and people repeated the same thing. We have no problem opening up our pill bottles. Our IDEO team then asked, can you show us? And this is what we saw. Folks would bring out knives, can openers, even a meat cleaver in one instance to physically break open the pill bottle. Again, the survey is not telling us the full story. And coming back to our chart, you know, people said they had no problem opening up their pill bottle. What people do is they were physically breaking open the pill bottles using household objects and things they could find around the kitchen. And when it comes to think and feel, you know, that's where we move from what we've observed and heard to what we then infer as designers. Were they confident in their abilities to open up the pill bottle? Did they think they were opening it up in a way that totally made sense? Did they— you know, what else was going through their mind as they were opening up these pill bottles every morning to take their medication? And this is just one framework we can use to synthesize our research. You know, another one we can use is what we call a journey map, which looks a little bit like this. It's more of a visual way of exploring the highs and lows of the user experience as we map it out from start to finish. And those lows we often refer to as pain points to design around. So that's what we target. We know what's working well, but those pain points are often the ripest opportunities for design. So coming back to the projects and products and ideas you're working on, I'm curious, what's one way you might step into your users' shoes? You know, what would you want to observe? Who would you want to interview? Where or how could you step into their shoes and immerse? So I'd love to hear any ideas that come to mind in the Zoom chat. I'll give you all a minute to think about it. There's no right or wrong answer. Many ways to learn about our users. Cool. Visit blood donor drives. Awesome. Be there in person to see the full experience. Meeting users where they spend time. Where do they gather? Follow their routines. Awesome. Listening and being with them. Sometimes simply spending time with them, right? Often surprised by what you can learn. Shopping with them. Awesome. We'll keep it going. You know, through all of this, what you'll discover is what people need. And clearly identifying and articulating the needs that you're meeting or fulfilling as a company is critical. You know, many people think of needs as being physical objects or stuff, kind of like this. You know, I need food. I need a case to hold my glasses. I need shoes. I need a smartphone. I need a fitness tracking device. But at the d.school, we learned to frame needs a little bit differently. Now, looking at this photo, what would you say that this child needs? Maybe share in the Zoom chat. One or two words come to mind. What would you say this child needs? Cereal.

Cereal.

Great. Yeah, it looks like she's reaching for some cereal. What does she need? To feel full. A stool. A stool.

Great.

She needs a stepping stool, right? Well, we could reframe— high heels. We could reframe this a little bit and say, actually, she needs a way to reach the top shelf. This may seem totally obvious. We all knew that, and that's why we said a stool. That's why we said high heels or a big brother to lift her up, right? But we went straight to solutions. What she needs is really a way, some way to reach the top shelf. And when we flip the way we frame the need, lots of new opportunities surface. Does she need a claw? Yeah, I love this, Michelle. How about we move it down? Is it— is there an opportunity to take the drawer and bring it down to her? Right? And this is just one example. You know, how about our need to connect with others? You could say Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are helping to resolve that need. So are mentorship programs. So are webinars like these. Or how about our need to be healthy? You know, there are gyms and personal fitness coaches and Apple Watches and Fitbits and nutritional apps, heart rate monitors. The list goes on, but they all tie back not to our need for a Fitbit, but our need to feel and be healthy. And many of us are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which starts at the bottom with Our baseline needs, right, food, water, shelter, and so forth, goes all the way up to self-actualization. And these are the kinds of needs that every human can relate to on a certain extent. And companies profit off their ability to serve these needs. When we zoom into these layers, additional values surface, right? Our needs for security, for validation, for creativity, for cognition. These are really different from our needs For a stepping stool or a ladder, right? Like these are timeless human needs we can all relate to. So remembering this format of framing needs as verbs and not nouns, I'm curious what needs are you looking to fulfill? We'll take another minute just to hear some ideas in the chat. And this could be as simple as the need to connect with others or to feel loved, or as focused as the need to quickly and easily find a home online that I can move into next week, you know. So Well, I'll wait a minute just to see if we've got anything, and if not, we'll keep going. Feeling safe and productive. Also the need to be valued. I like that. The need to raise $2 million. Yes. Awesome. And with that, let's move on to define. You know, we've started defining the needs we want to solve for, but just as important is the key question we want to answer through building our product, our service, or venture. And at the d.school, creativity expert Tina Seelig would often give the example of a birthday party. So let's say we asked, How might we host a great birthday party? What, again, what ideas come to mind? Share them in the Zoom chat. How might we host a great birthday party? I'm thinking balloons, cake. I like this question. Who is it for? Let's say it's for, it's for this boy in the photo. Maybe toys, a piñata, I don't know, cupcakes. I like this. What does he like to do? Yeah, these are the kinds of questions that would help us host a really great birthday party for him, right? If we change the question a little bit and ask instead, how might we celebrate another year of life? This question feels and looks really different. This could include Oh, I like this. Create a theme around his favorite activity. We celebrate another year of life. This could include a scrapbook of the many highlights from his past 7 or 8 years of being on Earth. It could include the kinds of learnings that he's had over his years. It could include some of his notes from his teachers. It could include a variety of things that we may not have come up with if we had started with the question of, how might we host a great birthday party, right? So the ideas we generate, again, are all baked into the question we ask. And the trick is not, you know, to brainstorm till we're blue, but it's to start with a question that really facilitates the kind of ideas we might want to build. And you may have noticed there's kind of a structure to the questions we just asked, and they start with, how might we? And each word here is, is very intentional. The how emphasizes doing. It's not what or where, but how. You know, the might optimistically assumes we will be able to do it, but it doesn't lock us into one solution yet. It's not will we do this because we're not making a plan yet. It's how might we, right? And finally, the we means that we're doing it together. This isn't one person's problem to solve. This is a process that involves many diverse voices and people so that we can get to the best possible solution. And I've used this format of How Might We in my work. You know, for our nonprofit, we asked and started with the question, how might we empower girls to step up as leaders of social change? And this question has led to all kinds of solutions, to teach workshops around the country, to send teaching toolkits to educators, to to organize a superhero-themed summer camp and so forth. If we had started with a question that was narrower, like, you know, how might we empower girls to use design thinking to come up with a specific project, you know, and so forth, we would have narrowly moved in one direction versus empowering girls to step up as leaders opens up to many possible avenues forward. And in my current work at Designer Fund, one question we're asking is, how might we equip designers to grow as business leaders? And again, this specific but still broad enough to explore kind of question has led to in-person workshops and mentorship programs. It's led to speaker events, digital curricula, and much more. So maybe for this one we won't quite share in the Zoom chat, but just to think about for your work, you know, what, what, how might we question are you exploring? And this brings us to the 3rd stage, which is ideate. And for many people, this is their favorite part of the design process. It's where all the great ideas come from. And in a non-COVID world at IDEO, we would do our best ideation by propping up, major or massive poster boards on the walls and filling them with Post-its and clustering them based on theme. And then we'd place colored dots on various ideas to vote for them. We call that dot voting. And instead of just voting for the ideas we like the most, we'd often vote in types of categories. So for example, yellow dots are ideas that feel like low-hanging fruit. They're kind of must-dos and must-do quickly. It's low-hanging fruit for the project we're working on. Maybe purple dots, and I'm making up these colors, right? Purple dots could be a future goal. It's not now, but someday, when we have the resources, when we have the funding, when we have the fill in the blank, this is an idea that we'll want to prioritize in the future. Another color could be, we're not sure yet, but we're curious to explore. Maybe this, ideas that catch our attention, but are the least defined, they feel the most ambiguous. You know, how would we categorize those? And even going through a process like this with your team to see what— I did this recently at Designer Fund where some ideas that I categorized as a future goal, what if someone else had categorized that as low-hanging fruit, right? That starts a conversation around what should we be prioritizing, what ideas can we move forward on, what resources would it require to bring that to life. So forth. But in our COVID world, you know, and back when even when we're in person, it's still so fruitful to do this kind of ideation remotely as well. So here's an example of what a brainstorm might look like on a tool like Figma or Mural, where people can place digital Post-its, arrows leading from one idea to the next, and As you can see, Matthew's in here, Emily's in here sharing ideas live. It creates an environment and kind of a safe space for people to write and share anything digitally. And however you get together with your team, virtually or in person, the same brainstorm rules apply. So these are IDEO's 7 rules for brainstorming. And one that I want to call out here is defer judgment. Has anyone here ever heard an idea and felt that voice in the back of your head go, nope, that would never work, or nope, we don't have enough money for that, or nope, that's going to take way too much time? Feel free to share in the Zoom chat if that's something that you've ever heard in your head. I've definitely had a voice that's, that said those kinds of things, and I think, you know, while these concerns Are super valid, it's best to keep them to yourself during the brainstorm itself so you can create a safe space where all ideas are valid, and then bring in these concerns or constraints later. And the reason is, if you're constantly thinking about and bringing up these concerns in the moment, it's difficult to get anywhere interesting while you're together. You know, it makes other people want to censor themselves rather than openly explore new trains of thought. And chances are, some ideas that seem infeasible might actually plant the seed for an idea that's, that is feasible tomorrow, or the same idea that feels really big right now could be scaled back, right? So it's not that idea sounds crazy or out there, but there's a stepping stone that we can take to get to that idea that could be quite fruitful.

All right.

So finally, not all great ideas come from a classic brainstorm. You know, many of us are in the shower, walking our dog, cooking breakfast when a good idea pops into our heads. So one reflection question for you as you move forward is, how do you get inspired to come up with new ideas? And finally, we're at the last 2 stages around prototyping, testing, and iterating. So we've got a few ideas to explore. Now's our chance to start building kind of a simple, low-fidelity version of our idea to test it and make sure we're on the right track before we invest in building out the real thing. And I've lumped these 2 stages of design thinking together because they really feed off each other. Prototyping goes hand in hand with testing, iteration, prototyping again. And some of you might know that IDEO helped create the first Apple and Microsoft mouse. back around 1980, which was the result of dozens, if not hundreds, of prototypes. This photo on the right, where you can see a bunch of the mouse prototypes, they look like foam mockups in the container here. That was actually in our Palo Alto studio for years. So when we'd lead tours and everyone wanted to see the first prototype of like, how did the mouse come to be? And many of them asked that, like, how did you come up with the idea for how the mouse should or could be designed. And the original inspiration didn't come from, as you can imagine, spreadsheets or data or research. It came from normal household items. Does anyone know what those items were? Actually, you bounce the apple across the ledge, you rest it down, you pull back, you pick up the apple. So designers actually drew inspiration for the rolling ball technique from roll-on deodorant. And the shape from a butter dish. Right. So these are items that many of us have in our bathrooms right now, in our kitchens, right? Inspiration in some ways is everywhere. And I also share this because many people think that prototypes need to be fancy and refined. And if you're a recovering perfectionist like I am, you know, part of you wants your ideas too to be perfect before you share them with anyone to get feedback. But I've learned that the best prototypes are the roughest. You know, they're just high enough fidelity to show you the form and function, but not so polished that you start looking at things like the exact color, the exact texture and material, and so forth. Like here in this backpack, for example, your mind naturally, you ignore the tape, you ignore the color. You know that this prototype isn't trying to tell you the backpack's going to have 3 pieces of tape on the right side and 2 on the left, and that it's going to attach that way, or that it's going to be this brown or manila color. You just get a feel for the shape and the size. You know, another example is to think about a speech. If you're writing a speech and you wanted to get feedback on the structure and content, you wouldn't write the whole speech and then ask for feedback. At that point, you might get feedback on the grammar. The maybe cutting out one or two words here to help it flow a little bit more smoothly. What you wouldn't get feedback on is probably the thing you were taught, like the content, the topic, the goal, and whether or not you were achieving that through your speech. But if you give someone rough talking points in bullet note form, they assume that your ideas are low enough fidelity that it's okay to give feedback like, I think you're talking about the wrong thing. Right? So feedback can look and feel really differently depending on that fidelity in which we share. And again, just as an example of prototyping materials being all around you, you know, just like the butter dish and deodorant that IDEO used to prototype the mouse, you could use pens, clippers, tape, magnets, paper clips, etc., you know, to play with your concepts and bring them to life. And digital prototyping can be done in a scrappy, low-fidelity way too. When IDEO's PlayLab was designing a mobile app for kids called Elmo Calls, instead of building out all the screens and wireframes and bringing in engineers to code the thing and launching it on the App Store and then getting feedback, what they did was this: they printed out a massive poster board with an image of an iPhone they physically cut out the middle. They had someone stand behind the poster and pretend to be, you know, act as if they were the app. So when you— and then recorded a video that showed people how the app might work if they were to move ahead and code the thing. And so when you pretended to press a button or double-click here or swipe right or swipe left or up, the person standing behind the iPhone printout would do movements to show you what would happen, right? He would make a face, he could do a dance. Remember, this is a kids app to show you how the app would work. And going back to the nonprofit that I started for girls, and I mentioned earlier that we taught workshops around the country while on an RV road trip, and this was also a journey that we prototyped. So we rented out an RV. And we spent our spring break in college living and working in the motorhome. We practiced emptying out the sewage, driving it, parking it, trying to make U-turns, sleeping in it, storing our teacher— teaching materials inside it, and so forth. And we learned a lot. You know, we learned what worked and what didn't. So by the time we embarked on our 14-week-long road trip, we already had a lot of those questions answered. We knew that we were going to make it, that we could drive this thing. We could get it across the country. We were way more prepared to hit the road physically in terms of maneuvering this vehicle, but also as a team, knowing how we would communicate on the road, what it was like to live and work in a 27-foot-long motorhome 24/7 with the same people, and so forth. So I'll leave you with some Some kind of final tips for prototyping and testing that have helped me a lot in my work and that I hope help you, which are to prototype early and often. Don't wait until things are perfect, just get them out there. To build prototypes of the right fidelity. So again, thinking about the speech and the talking points, thinking about the backpack and the materials you're using, you know, what kind of feedback are you looking for? And based on that, what's the right fidelity at which you should build your prototype and share it with others? Another one I include in here is watch and learn. This goes back to the IDEO healthcare example where if you want to see— everyone's telling you the pill bottles are easy to open. If you want to know the full and real story, ask them to show you, right? Watch and learn how they do it, which may elicit insights that wouldn't have come in just a survey alone. And asking users to talk aloud as they go. So it'd be for if you had a mobile app design or a product design that's a little bit farther along and your hunch is that they're going to know where to click. Your hunch is that they're going to swipe right and then scroll down and click the navigation to get to X, Y, and Z. You may notice when people stumble upon your website, your app, et cetera, for the first time, they don't know where to click. And you can watch them all day long, but hearing their narrative, you know, we often ask people before we get started with a feedback session, please, you know, share with us your inner monologue. Everyone has it going as they're, especially as they're exploring something new. Hmm, I wonder if I should click here. Oh, this makes me think that I should do this. Oh, this image is bigger than I expected. There are things that are going through their mind that, going back to the say, do, think, feel, Right, you're getting into the think. You're allowing them to, to give you a glimpse into their brain as they're kind of interpreting what you've built. Another one is to let them be the expert. Many of us will go into interviews and out of our own bias, we'll want to say, oh, well, you should— wouldn't you want to click there? Or wouldn't you want to use this when you're walking your dog? Or wouldn't you? Because we think that we know best, and often we're wrong. And that people have specific reasons for why they do or don't do certain things, and letting them be the expert and even explain to you some of their thinking and motivation can help us design a product that meets them closer to where they're at. Asking open questions. This is another reason why surveys don't— aren't always the best, or certainly not the only way to learn from folks, is that it's really hard to ask really meaningful open-ended questions in a survey. We can ask for ratings and we can ask some for some free-form questions, but when we get into an interview format and ask not would you click here or there, how would you rate this 1 to 5, but how do you feel when you use this product, you know, these are things that are really hard. They can be hard to pick up in a survey but are things that we might notice and be able to use in an interview. To guide us in the right direction. And this last piece is not to get defensive. If you're, again, a recovering perfectionist like me, you want everyone to love your product the first time they use it. You have a bias that, that it's been done right, the right way. And, and there can sometimes be the moment of if someone's like, I hate this, I would never use this, it can be easy to get defensive. So I encourage you to, in those moments, Take everything with a grain of salt, but also don't be afraid for the moment where someone tells you, this is what I don't like, but this is what would make it awesome for me, and that— what that conversation might look like for your product. So a reflection question for you, you know, what's one way you can start prototyping and testing Your idea. And there you have it. You know, we went through all 5 stages together, sharing a few tips, tools, stories, and frameworks along the way that I hope are useful for the work that you're doing. And while this 5-step process may look clean, simple, go from this to that, you know, in reality, it sometimes feels like this, like you're looping back and forth and, oh, I think we need to go back to research, or Oh, are we prototyping too late? Maybe we should spend another week just prototyping. We— and sometimes we, we circle back, right? So in those moments, kind of take a deep breath. Remember to have faith in this process that you're going to create something really fruitful and meaningful. It will just take sometimes a few iterations through this cycle, right? Not moving through each step one by one, but being open to these twists and turns along the way that may guide you in a direction that you didn't expect, but that was even more fruitful than where you thought you were headed. So thank you so much for your time, and looking forward to continuing the conversation if you have any questions I can help answer.

Wow, Katie, thank you so much. That was really great. I personally enjoyed it so much. It reminds me of the Einstein quote, if you have an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes asking questions and 5 minutes Working on the solution. So it's all about asking the questions. That's really awesome. We also have a link to your presentation, which we'll share with the participants shortly. Maybe to help us, to help some of the entrepreneurs on the call, sometimes we suffer from like idea paralysis and so many ideas. What's like some tips to just choose one idea and get started if you're building a software? A mobile app, for example?

Hmm, that's a good question. I guess I would say not being afraid to run with one idea and know that choosing one idea doesn't mean not choosing the others. It means that you're simply prioritizing one to test and experiment with first. Often we, we don't even know if something's a good idea until we test it. And so choosing an idea isn't isn't choosing a concrete or defined path forward as much as it is choosing one area to explore first. I guess I would frame it maybe that way, if that's helpful.

And in terms of the validation of that idea, so after you're doing the user interviews, where does the validation come in?

Hmm. So interviews can certainly help validate a direction if you're starting to gather feedback that what you're building could be directly useful in people's lives. I mean, I think it's— and we talked about interviews in, in this context as being kind of the open-ended exploratory research, right? Like you're interested in learning about food behaviors broadly. Maybe you're not sure exactly which problem you want to solve. How would you conduct research to, to get there? And but these same techniques around interview, observation, immersion, etc., can be applied at any stage of how far along you might be with your idea. So when it comes to validation, right, I think I'm onto something, but is this going to be useful? You know, building it at a high enough fidelity that people can start using it, can start bringing it into whether it's an app they should use every morning, or it's a physical product you hope finds a home in their home and is useful to them on a regular basis, you know, continuing to gather. that feedback along the way and sharing enough prototypes with enough people within your target audience that you're able to gather that feedback. And kind of the term validation can be, is sometimes a tricky one too, because it assumes that we think we're on the right track, we just want to get the check, you know, from our users. And I think I personally try to frame the feedback gathering a little bit more openly, that perhaps we're never— we're either never or we're always validating. In some ways, we want to openly learn what our users think, feel, and desire. And that may look differently than validating one feature over another. It may— the feedback we gather may make us want to pivot in a totally different direction. Continuously being open to that can be difficult and frustrating, but also, again, incredibly rewarding if it ends up taking you down a path that you didn't expect, but is going to ultimately drive much more value into people's lives.

Great. So maybe before COVID there was some of this serendipitous discovery in the office. Andreas is asking, with COVID How has your process changed and how much can you do digitally? And you did recommend some tools. Are there any other recommendations you have?

So tough to be creative during— it can be. We've been using tools like Figma to digitally capture some of our ideas, but I find that I, especially coming out of an in-person office, office, type experience at IDEO. There's, um, I definitely miss being in an environment where we can just slap it on the wall and say, does this work? No, scratch it. You know, the, the act of, you know, crumpling Post-its and throwing them out is also, um, a kind of process that shows that we're making decisions along the way, that we're making progress. And sometimes in a digital world, it can be difficult to feel that. Um, As a, as a crutch, I've found Figma to be incredibly helpful and can certainly share other digital brainstorming and collaboration resources. But one thing that we've also found to be fruitful is doing warm-ups at the start of our calls. So when we hop on Zoom, instead of going right into the things that we're supposed to be doing, you know, we, for example, one of our meetings last week, we started by with a 5-minute activity where That surrounded the question of what does it mean to be authentic? You know, we want to build an authentic experience for users. Authenticity is a topic that we've been circling quite a bit. And so, but we had never taken 5 minutes to walk around our own homes and actually snap a picture of something that felt authentic to us. Then we pulled that into Figma. and talked about it. Everyone shared their photo. And even having a 5-minute warmup or break in our normal day-to-day crunching through to-dos and activities was such a nice change of pace and allowed us to take a step back as a team and have a conversation that would have maybe been natural in a non-COVID world as people are getting coffee and settling into their desk space and getting ready for the workday. Sometimes these conversations happen. But since they're— they can be harder to replicate on Zoom, taking a few minutes for a warm-up can be really helpful. So yeah, this is—

And those warm-ups, they all happen on Zoom typically, or is there another— Great.

And then I'll usually keep a pad of paper next to me. And so as, as if we were in person, you know, sketching things live on a poster together, I'll at least have a pad of paper near me at my own desk. So as things come up, I can show I'll just show up to the camera. I'm like, this is what I'm sketching. Is this similar to what's in your brain? You know, are we on the same page? Because sometimes those visuals can be a helpful gut check. So yeah, maybe those are— not that we figured it all out. I think we're all in this boat together, but those are a few hacks that have worked well for our team.

Sure. Maybe one question before some other participants ask a question live. Is there a difference between designing for your target versus the marketing persona? Hmm.

I think—

So like the end— yeah, go ahead.

I think the— when I think about designing for your target user, I guess I would say that the learning and the approach is different. Like while the user may be the same, the person that you want to design for and then market to may be the same person, the way you would approach it. I would say is quite different. I mean, by the time you're marketing to users, you've got a product that you know works and you want to spread the word. And so, and there are a series of marketing techniques that, and campaigns and tactics that can help you do that, that never would have come up in the design process. Um, versus, you know, designing for a target user, um, the focus is less on catching their attention and more on understanding what motivates them, who they are as people, their behaviors, their mindsets, their worldviews. And those are learnings that may not explicitly show up in marketing, but could inspire the way that you market to your users or personas down the road. So I'm not sure if that answers your question, but yeah, that's what comes to mind for me.

Yeah, no, yeah, definitely. That's kind of what I was thinking. We have a question from Naeem who wants to ask it live. Naeem, are you there? Sure.

Yeah, I'm here. First of all, thank you so much. This has been super interesting. I just have a question regarding the process itself. So we're talking about iteration, we're talking about pivoting, but do you have any tips on frameworks or tools we could use to know, like, should I continue to the next step or should I go back and iterate? Because with all the uncertainty that's going on recently, It becomes hard to know, like, should I go forward, or do I have a mistake, or should I go back? Do you have any kind of idea about this? I think in those— and thank you for your question and for being here today. I think in those decision-making moments, it can be sometimes helpful to enter this stage of design with some quantitative benchmarks. So, for example, if you may decide, you know, if we can, if we're able to prototype this in a way that most people describe it as engaging and valuable, and at least half of them want to share what we've built with someone else in their community, then we're going to keep moving, you know, then we think we're onto something versus— so yeah, you may just have like a cutoff in terms of your metrics and the kind of feedback that you're gathering that could help you make those decisions in advance, because sometimes in the moment you get there, you're like, oh, we're hearing good things, but also things that make us want to pivot, and where do we go? And setting those metrics in advance can, can help you put a stake in the ground around what's important. So yeah, it's something that I'd maybe be thinking about is, um, what does success look like to you, and what are some initial metrics that can for whatever you might be building that can help you decide if you're moving down the right path and kind of sticking to them as much as feels right so that you have something to lean on.

Great. We have the next question from Mimi. So I remember when I attended some of the workshops from Professor Jeremy at the D-Lab at the D School, he was talking about user interviews are really important and the least validation you can get Mimi's asking, what are maybe the best ways to conduct these user experience interviews over Zoom?

Oh, so tough, because there are things with interviews like body language, gestures, the way that— sometimes even the way that people lean in. You can tell when people are on the edge of their seat, excited to answer a question, versus when they feel a little bit uncomfortable around the topic or question you may have brought up. Make an in-person interview sometimes easier to navigate than interviews on Zoom. I would say asking similar questions as you would in an in-person interview, but just being extra sensitive to some of those moments, some of the body language that may be harder to pick up on Zoom than it is in person. We like to conduct interviews in pairs. So having one person on your team that is able to just look in the Zoom camera and be really present with the person you're talking to and having enough in the frame where you can use hand gestures, right? Like they can see how you're gesturing and communicating. So there's a little bit more of a human feel. And then having your interview partner there to take notes, or it could be vice versa. You could be the one taking notes while your interview partner is asking all the questions. But I think that role setting can be incredibly helpful. Many people are intimidated by the red recording Zoom button. They're like, oh, suddenly I have to say the exact right thing and this is going to go out to however many thousands of people, you know, people have this sense of the publicity versus privacy is definitely a balance that you want to strike on Zoom, so you may find that not recording the Zoom interview on Zoom but having a separate audio recorder like your phone or another device that helps you capture at least some from the interview if your interviewee is comfortable can help kind of ease them into the interview. And maybe one last suggestion or, or tip is at the end always leaving time for them to tell you what they wish they had had time to ask, any other things that come to mind for them, but definitely creating space at the end of the interview for them to take the floor And share something that this interview or conversation may have inspired that, that if you didn't ask the question might not have come up. So yeah, leaving that space at the end.

Awesome. In the last 3 minutes that we have, is there anything our community can do to help you? We did share the links to your website, your Twitter, LinkedIn. How can maybe if someone wants to support your nonprofit or other work you're doing?

Sure, we certainly, yeah, would love your eyes and feedback on what we're building. As with everything, it's a prototype. We're always learning and growing, evolving the work that we do. If you'd be interested in coaching workshops in your community, that's something we could certainly talk about. We are naturally, as a nonprofit, open to donations, but simply staying in touch. Yeah, I look forward to learning more about the things that you're all building, and thanks for taking the time to think about ways that design could fit into that process with me today.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much, Katie. There's been so many great comments and feedback. So we look forward to having you back again soon, and we learned so much from you today. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you for setting the—

Thank you, Katie.

Yeah, thank you, Robin. Thanks, everyone.

Really enjoyed it.

Thanks for your time. Looking forward to the slides.

Oh, the link is in the chat, Robin, if you didn't get it. Oh, good.

Sorry, I'm on my iPad, so like 2 fingers. Is it possible to email it as well to the attendees? Is that a problem?

Sure, maybe it's easier. You can just click the link now in the chat, but we'll email it.

Okay, thank you.