Nathan Isaacs (3:54)

I think the complaining might be the role of all dads out there. I'm really good at that. Anyway, for people who don't know, can you describe what is human centered design?

Sarah Fortier (4:11)

Yeah, yeah. So human centered design is really a methodology or process that is about how to solve problems related mostly to products and services. So products often in the realm of digital products like apps and, you know, websites, portals, that kind of thing, services could be, you know, going to get your driver's license renewed or something. And so human centered design just puts humans people at the center of that, which means that you're talking to them, you're interviewing them, you're trying to understand their challenges, their motivations, you know, what's bothering them about whatever the experience is. And so you do that research and then you kind of define the problem a little bit better than what it was when you initially kind of went into it. And then you make sense of all the data and define the problem and then you go into the fun kind of design and recreating of whatever the solution is. And that's where the prototyping and testing comes in. So we're a user testing would come into that process.

Nathan Isaacs (5:19)

You've built a leading UX service design staffing business work with giants like Apple and Microsoft, and helped shape hundreds of design teams. With that background in mind, can you tell us why human centered design is more essential than ever in today's AI powered world?

Sarah Fortier (5:37)

Yeah, I mean, I think that AI is really great, as we know, for making things faster, for the mechanics of different processes and Optimizing stuff. But you know, if we want to make great products and services, which we still want to in an AI powered world, they have to meet the needs of the users and the people that interact with those products and services. And AI is never going to be empathetic. Right. It's never going to also understand the complexities of human nature or why, you know, it can be hard sometimes to align stakeholders. You know, AI machines aren't going to be able to do that. So really that's going to be designers, researchers still conducting human centered design, still going out, reaching out to users, hearing them out. I think that's why that part of it will never go away. We'll just change a little bit. Right. So it's going to be maybe less of the recruiting, you know, doing that hands on recruiting or hands on data analysis. Although there's still, it's still not great there, but it will get better. So I think it's the, the empathy and the complexity piece and then I. So, you know, AI is really objective driven. Right. So it has a task and it goes after the objective that you give it. But sometimes you don't know what the objectives are. And so that's why you need to do research, you need to figure out what's bothering people, what are they frustrated by. And human centered design and discovery research really allows you to explore that and to come up with more innovative opportunities. So, so yeah, that's what I would say.

Nathan Isaacs (7:18)

Well, you know, I was just having a conversation earlier with another Canadian, Ross Simmons, who's a big time marketer up there, and I think you both have answered this question. There were two different questions, but kind of the same.

Sarah Fortier (7:32)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (7:33)

And in the sense of, and what he says, like AI is really going to allow you the time to do that sort of discovery. Right? Yeah, we're only going to have better products, better processes, better whatever, if we can explore and understand what our audiences really need. And AI is going to allow us the time to do all the stuff that kind of gets in the way of doing all that. Right? Yeah. Go out and Synthesize, you know, 2,000 survey questions and find out, you know, what the trends were so that you can ask good follow up questions later on or help you find an audience globally to go out and, you know, interview rather than spending three weeks trying to set up an interview.

Sarah Fortier (8:22)

Yeah, you know, yeah, totally. And I, you know, in our world, like stuff that takes a really long time, that makes discovery research, which is one of the harder things to pitch to stakeholders because it's something that could take six months. Right. But that's because, oh, you're recruiting users and that was used to be, and not so much anymore, but used to be super manual. Like all the scheduling, you know, the scheduling backups and reaching out to people, finding pools of people to connect with that used to take a really long time. And then the setting up the research plan and the entry protocol and all of these different steps that were a part of the research process are, can be now much faster because of the AI. But you still have a human there interviewing another human and making that connection, connection and drawing the nuances like from within let's say the interview, the interviewer can ebb and flow and, and probe deeper and ask why and, and then they get out of that, you know, a bunch of data that then now AI can also make them faster at analyzing that. Right. So, so yeah, I think it's really, it's a tool and it's going to make us faster and better and it'll be easier for us to convince stakeholders to do research because they want to spend as much time there. So, so I think it's, it's a really great thing. But then also just being mindful not to lose the fact that we still need users. Like this idea of synthetic users is not great. And so, you know, where do we draw the line there?

Nathan Isaacs (9:56)

Yeah, well, I think we'll talk about that more in a bit. The you, you spoke at Can UX about stakeholder buying. You were just speaking about, you know, getting buying. How do you convince skeptics that human centered design isn't just a nice to have?

Sarah Fortier (10:13)

Yeah. And you know, it's funny, in the earlier in my career and kind of before I understood, let's say, the ways of the world, I thought that I could just talk about process and deliverables and these pretty things that we make like customer journey maps and Personas and wireframes and, and I thought that that would be enough to get people excited. And, and obviously I realized that that's not what stakeholders all they care about results and, and so you know, I started to really kind of listen to more about how do they talk, what are the words that they use. I dropped a lot of the jargon that I would use. And when you're coming up in design, it's almost part of your training is to talk like that to make yourself sound like an expert. But then you get into the real world where people don't know what design is or research is and they don't care they just sort of want to know, can you make it so there's less customer churn? So I think I've learned now you know how to speak more like stakeholders so that they start listening and they resonate. But also it's really about identifying the pain. So anytime you're selling something and that's like, I'm a business owner, right, So I have to do the sales piece too. But it's just about trying to hear them out and ask them questions enough so you can really get to the core of the pain of the problem that they're having and then give them a solution. And that solution could be, did you know that if we talk to your users, we might be able to uncover like where they're dropping off and why that's happening? And then we could fix it with, you know, great design and then you get them more excited about it and bought in. So I think there's this one piece of like aligning your language and also speaking to them in a way that resonates, but then listening to them, which is great. All researchers should be great listeners anyway. And then I think there's another part of it which is this idea of being trustworthy and building trust, which doesn't come overnight, right? So I mean, sometimes there has to be. If you're like an in house designer, in house researcher, and you're trying to convince stakeholders, it's best if you actually start from, you know, what's in it for them? How can I show them value? How can I build this trust with them so that when I do make a recommendation, they're listening to me? Because if you think your friend recommends something to you, well, you're going to listen to them because you trust them, right? Maybe in this one area you trust them, whatever. They're recommending a wine to you and they're a wine connoisseur, right? So it's sort of about how do you build that trust with your stakeholders? And it can be as simple as like being organized, being responsive, you know, starting with small projects and um, and building that over time. And then eventually, you know, when you come to them and you say, I really think that we should dig in here and we should, you know, do a research project, you know, following the human centered methodology, they're more inclined to listen to you and actually give you a shot at it. And then when you're given the shot to do a really, really good job and not squander the opportunity, because I think that can be another piece of it is like you're not often given the chance sometimes to do the discovery research. But if you, if you don't do a good job when it's to you, then you might not get the chance again.

Nathan Isaacs (13:27)

Yeah, it's, it's. Well, I think, you know, doing that sort of discovery research, you often find many things.

Sarah Fortier (13:37)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (13:37)

You know, it's like, I don't, I don't know if you have this. I have a problem. When I start working on organizing my garage. I find eight other projects that I need to kind of get started on. And then I started get. I, you know, I lose my focus and, you know, I'm not, you know, and, and at the end of the weekend, my wife says, what did you do? Right? You just made more of a mess. But instead keep focused on the one thing you needed to do, deliver that, and then come back and say, if you're ready to move forward, we have these other three projects we can kind.

Sarah Fortier (14:10)

Of dig deeper into. Yeah, that's such a great point because you are right. You do, you do uncover so much stuff, and then sometimes you can fall in love with the stuff. You're like, oh, my God, we could do so much. We could fix this here. This year, all this is coming out. I've got new ideas and, you know, we're creative people and so our brains are just lit up with it. And then your stakeholders are there listening, like, what's the point? Get to the point. You know, I don't care about all this other stuff. This isn't what the project was about. So I think it's combining this business acumen and, like, really understanding what the business needs are and making sure that what you're doing is aligned to the business needs so that your stakeholders are there. Being like, they did, listened to me and look, they uncovered the thing, the exact thing that I needed them to uncover. And great. There's future research and future projects that we can have that are at the end, you know, as an appendix or something. So I think keeping that focus is, as you say, very important, too.

Nathan Isaacs (15:07)

Yeah, yeah. And. And just prioritize that addendum stuff. Right. And if you're, if you're going to do more, here's what you can do and here's how we prioritize it along the business needs. Right. The highest return on that investment for the quickest time to see value for anything.

Sarah Fortier (15:25)

Yeah, exactly. And we would often do, you know, like a validation workshop with users, you know, towards the end, once we've come up with all the opportunities and you kind of workshop it with them to make that priority list and you can bring your stakeholders in there so they're really bought in and you pull out, as you say, the highest priority items as part of that that go into, you know, your report or whatever your next steps.

Nathan Isaacs (15:49)

Are you. We talked briefly about synthetic users and when you're talking about synthetic users or we like to use the language of AI simulated users or something like that, and there are nuances there, what do you see are the advantages or disadvantages? How should we approach. What are your thoughts on that?

Sarah Fortier (16:14)

Yeah, and to be fair, I haven't used like too many of them. I've more kind of researched and seen what's out there. But I, where I feel like they could be very useful is if you have done quite a bit of research already like on the discovery side and you, you have actually talked to real people, you know, you've gotten that data and you feed, you know, the synthetic users with that data and then you probe it with questions. And how would that sort of synthetic user who's almost a Persona made up of all of this real qualitative data. So not just the quantitative data that comes from social media posts and reviews and things like that, but actually where there's qualitative data that fed the synthetic user then I think that can be really powerful because it can speed things up. And as you're, you've got a small bite size thing about, you know, product feature and you want some feedback on then I think there's a lot of power there. And also I know, you know, and this can be controversial, but researchers might have a big problem with that. Right. Because it's like coming for their jobs and stuff. But actually that frees them up to do the really juicy, creative kind of discovery research project that everyone wants to do versus the usability testing can sometimes get like monotonous because you're doing it over and over again. You're just testing small features, small changes. So I think synthetic users have a lot of power there. And then, you know, as you can probably imagine, what I'm going to say is like, you know, you don't want to be using them when you haven't done all of that data or all that research and gather the qualitative data. So you don't want to be using them to explore ideas or higher level concepts or trying to ask them what their challenges are or things like that. Right. So I think you feed it first with as much data as you can get.

Nathan Isaacs (18:07)

Yeah, it goes back to the old ADAGE you know, garbage in, garbage out. Right, right. You know, so if you're just using something you, you know, find online and you're like, oh, you imagine you are a marketer, what are you, what are your five pain points? And you're just going to get some random stuff that is generated somewhere else and it just, it's, it's, it's been trained on somebody's blog post on that, right?

Sarah Fortier (18:30)

Oh yeah, exactly. And it still lies. I mean, I was just asking a question the other day, like, hey, could you help me with something? And it just, just fabricated an entire story. And I was like, of course I'm reading it and I can see that it's a lie. But if you're asking it those questions about somebody else and how that other person might feel like it can still lie to you.

Nathan Isaacs (18:49)

Yeah, I use it in my work in podcasting and I can just feed these interviews in there and I can get the main points out of it and stuff like that. But I've, I've trained it on that one interview and if you could do that with 10 interviews or 20 or whatever it might be, then all of a sudden you're creating a Persona or synthetic user that it has some sort of knowledge about.

Sarah Fortier (19:12)

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Nathan Isaacs (19:14)

I am not a researcher, so.

Sarah Fortier (19:16)

But no, I agree. I think that's the idea.

Nathan Isaacs (19:19)

Do not, you know, follow my advice on anything. I think the, I'm, I'm wondering what's one mistake you see organizations make make when they over rely on AI tools, especially when it comes to human centered design.

Sarah Fortier (19:37)

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's kind of what we're talking about is that they're just going straight to these tools that claim, hey, we'll make you some Personas out of nothing, you know, out of quantitative data or which is the age old argument that in, in my field we have all the time it's sort of quantitative versus qualitative and what's the difference? And we often get stakeholders asking us, well, you know, how can I put any stock in what 20 inter people have said versus 2000 people? Right. And we're, we always talk about, well, it's really about, you know, the quality of what they're saying and you know, you get to their motivations and the deeper why and then you bolster it with some quantitative data. So you, the two work well together. Right. So I think AI has a lot of power on the quantitative side and can, you know, pull a lot of data. It could analyze quantitative data probably better than it could qualitative data. So, so yeah, I think it's, it's this idea of like, don't just rely on that. You also need the qualitative real humans talking to real human data. And, and so not to rely too much on the synthetic users or these, these apps that say they'll, they'll create Personas for you with, with no real research behind it.

Nathan Isaacs (21:02)

Yeah, yeah. Be careful what you ask for or you know, if it's, if it's too good to be true, then it probably is not true. Right, right.

Sarah Fortier (21:13)

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Nathan Isaacs (21:15)

The, and going back to the conversations, what we've already said is like use it where you can use it. Find ways to, and challenge your research team, challenge your designers on, you know, how can they use AI to speed up bits of their job that it should be helping speed up. Right. And yeah, so that, and then with that theoretical free time, the magical free time that we all seek, how would they use that? Right. I can do, you know, if I get an extra hour a week, I can do this or.

Sarah Fortier (21:51)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And another thing to think about is, you know, so we know that it can help with recruiting like I talked about. It can help with summarizing transcripts, it can help with theming even part of your research planning and all this and, and even a B testing and it can help with so many different things. Right. But then the, the parts where I would say, you know, organizations should be careful is like how high risk is the thing that they're testing or that they want information on? Like how critical is that to the business? And if it's a higher risk, more critical piece to the business, then humans should be involved both on both sides. Like you should talk to real users and you should have humans analyzing and researching and uncovering the insights and kind of making those connections to what the business needs. So yeah, I would say that's another thing to kind of look at is how important is it to the business the thing that you're studying.

Nathan Isaacs (22:50)

Yeah, absolutely. I often, well, complain in my dad role but also in my professional role, like if, if, if this contact is worth, you know, whatever your average selling price is ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars. Why are you only spending 25 cents to try and get them, you know.

Sarah Fortier (23:16)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (23:16)

You know, have somebody spend an extra hour to review that AI generated RFP or whatever it might be.

Sarah Fortier (23:24)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (23:24)

Make sure that it's accurate, you know, anyway, same goes.

Sarah Fortier (23:29)

Yeah, exactly the.

Nathan Isaacs (23:32)

You've mentored so many emerging professionals throughout Whitley Academy. You have a Soon to be published book on mastering design research. What's your advice for the next generation of designers who are trying to make sense of where they fit in an AI centric world?

Sarah Fortier (23:49)

Yeah, I think the obvious one is like, be AI literate and also work on your business acumen. Because there is an, an exceeding pressure on UX teams to be able to prove the ROI of what they're doing. And that's not something that traditionally I would say UX teams are very good at, given that their staff is a bunch of creative people who have never gone to business school, never, you know, been. We've always been kind of protected, I would say, because we're these creative unicorns that people find really fascinating because we can design something so beautiful. And so it would always be like, no, no, don't bug the designers, you know, but now, you know, that SHIELD has come down and we really do have to stand up for our work and the value of it. So I think the business acumen part is people need to, they actually need to understand it and be able to talk about it because I think we'll, we'll sort of become more like architects, right? In terms of which are the tools that we're using, when to bring in AI, what is the overall process and like, where are we pulling the different levers of AI, let's say in that and also then bringing it together. So I think there's, there's that piece and then the other piece that I, I talk to my team about and I talk to, you know, any designers that I'm mentoring is about soft skills. And we for a really long time focused on hard skills. Like, could you, were you an excellent designer? Could the, where are the screens? Beautiful? Are the flows really easy to use? Like, are you really good? Do you know your research stuff? Right. But now there's, there's so much more that we need to be, we need to have that. So the pressure's on, right? We need to have that, the good hard skills. Although AI is now going to take some of that pressure off because it will get better at like actually designing screens and stuff like that. But there's the soft skill side, which is like, you know, are you empathetic and emotionally intelligent? Can you have a community? You know, can you communicate with your stakeholders and really understand where they're coming from and then present solutions, ways of doing things back to them? So this idea of stakeholder management is really important, I think. Can you also be strategic so bringing in that business acumen side to the insights and you know, what you're hearing from your users and being able to combine those into something that's really valuable and really actionable for the business. And then also, are you a great storyteller? Right. Like, we always have to be proving what our design decisions are. And when we have a research report and we're telling stakeholders about how the users are feeling, you have to be able to build a report, build, you know, a presentation in the way that is this immersive story to bring your stakeholders along and make them get goosebumps and think, whoa, if I could change that, if I could do this, you know, as fix some broken experience, like how much better it would be. Like you show them that vision through your storytelling. I think those are skills that are really important now because again, AI is not going to be able to do that stuff. It might help you, right? It might help you with framing and phrasing and all of that, but how you connect to someone emotionally and get them excited about a change, that's human.

Nathan Isaacs (27:21)

Yeah. Oh man, that's such great advice. Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of human centered design? And where do you hope to see your work and the industry evolve over the next five to ten years?

Sarah Fortier (27:34)

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm most excited about a service design, I think getting a bigger foothold in organizations because as I said, the UX teams now are going to have to be more strategic and that naturally lends itself to service design, which is really looking at the end to end customer experience, let's say. Right. And UX being one piece of that. Right. So how an app behaves or works is the UX part, but service design is sort of the broader end to end. So I think that will naturally start to have a bigger place and it already is, and people are using that word more. So I think that's exciting. I'm excited also for, Yeah, I think for our industry to go through a bit of a change and to, as I said, like wake up and talk about the business needs and not just about how fun the research is. I think, you know, it's. We're kind of maybe in this state of flux right now because AI is a bit scary. A lot of people are worried about their jobs. Companies are kind of going through hiring freezes where they're not sure if they're going to expand their UX team right now. And it's legitimately scary. You know, like you're worried about, am I going to be able to continue in this career? But I am optimistic, as I said at the beginning. And I feel like there's only going to be more interactions with technology because of AI. And so how are we going to get creative about being the people there that can act as this bridge between technology and humans? Like that's really human centered design and UX design. That's what our role is. So there's just going to be more and more of that, but I think we'll go through a bit of a change before we reach that point. And then for me, you know, I, as a, as someone who's growing a staffing business, I'm excited about kind of raising the bar for talent and outcomes and growing a really strong UX community and building some connective tissue between design leaders who are hiring and also the people who are looking for, for jobs and opportunities.

Nathan Isaacs (29:45)

Yeah, I, you know, and going back, I, I think you, it really touches on all three points you were making there, is that using the AI to kind of help you prioritize how you can quickly help the company. Right. Don't think about big projects, think about small projects, think about bite size, little improvements so that your, your stakeholders can believe.

Sarah Fortier (30:14)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (30:14)

In you.

Sarah Fortier (30:15)

Right.

Nathan Isaacs (30:16)

And give you the license to do more work.

Sarah Fortier (30:18)

Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's like there's, I talk about, you know, small wins, especially if the maturity of the organization isn't fully there yet. It's like any opportunity you have to do a bit of research, bring in AI, show them that you are AI friendly, that you are thinking about how to optimize things. I even had, you know, a client of mine mention, you know, I'm not sure how to measure AI and the impact it has on our productivity. And, and you know, one thing that we did recently was we conducted an internal project with design leaders to, you know, understand their challenges and things like that. And, and the designer on it kind of measured her number of hours that she takes to usually do a project and how many hours it sort of saved her using AI. And then she was able to say, well, you know, I probably saved it 40 hours in total on this project because I used AI at different points. So if you can then bring to your higher ups, hey, like I saved 40 hours out of a six week project. Will you just save them like one week out of six weeks? Weeks. That's a lot of money. Right? But as designers or researchers, we're not thinking about that. And that's just going to show them like this person is adaptive. You know, they are willing to learn, they've got a growth mindset. They're bringing value to the organization. Plus, you still get to do the good work and you'll get to do more of the interesting work that you like.

Nathan Isaacs (31:45)

I think you got to be cautious. Right. The nervous person in me is like, I showed my boss how I can save that one week and now they, they, they've just added more.

Sarah Fortier (31:56)

Right, right.

Nathan Isaacs (31:57)

So you so come to them and say, I saved you this one week and with that time I did this.

Sarah Fortier (32:03)

Yes. Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (32:04)

And, and, and show them like, I did this big discovery project.

Sarah Fortier (32:08)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (32:08)

With, with this time and we're able to. Now we'll be able to get 10x y turn on that investment. Whereas before they would just say, well, create another podcast. Right?

Sarah Fortier (32:20)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, you could have done 10 to twice the number of projects in that time then, or something.

Nathan Isaacs (32:25)

Yeah, I like, so make sure that you have a bigger, you know, like, you're. It's more rewarding, I guess.

Sarah Fortier (32:30)

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think. And I, I always, I'm like, oh, I'm thinking from the consultants mindset, you know. Okay, great. That, that does mean we can shorten, you know, how much time it takes us and we can take on another project sooner. Or I'm like overlapping workloads and stuff. But you're also right that other folks could look at that and say, well, you know, I, you know, I don't need you as much then, or, or something. So. Yeah, no, I love the, the piece of like, use that week to add more value and bring it back to them. Right. Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (33:04)

And be proactive, lead that. Right. Don't wait for them to kind of try. They don't have time to think about how they're going to utilize you. Right. They got, they got other teams they're trying to manage. They got other, you know, business issues going on. So if you can come back to them and just say, hey, we saved the week doing this and we invested that week doing that.

Sarah Fortier (33:26)

Yes.

Nathan Isaacs (33:27)

And, and we think this is going to have this return because in that one on one I had with you, you identified these three pain points that you're dealing with. And I think this research can solve that.

Sarah Fortier (33:39)

Yeah, totally. Like, I was even just thinking for that project, the Design leaders project, we there a lot of times at the end of a design a discovery project, you don't have time to kind of do workshops and integrate the findings. Right. But actually now it gives you more time. Right. So that is something we were setting up is to like, work with each department to then bring the findings to make them more actionable. So thinking of the things that you don't usually have the luxury to do because you run out of time and then doing those too.

Nathan Isaacs (34:12)

Yeah. All that research. Yeah. And if nobody's taking any action on it.

Sarah Fortier (34:16)

Exactly.

Nathan Isaacs (34:17)

It's no good. Right. But now you have the time to go out and talk to all these stakeholder teams just in a brown bag or whatever it might be.

Sarah Fortier (34:23)

Yeah.

Nathan Isaacs (34:24)

Sarah, I really appreciate your time today being on the show. How does someone learn more about you, your new book, your thought leadership and the work you and the team are doing at Outwitly?

Sarah Fortier (34:36)

Yeah. So you can definitely find us@outwitly.com and actually we are rebranding. So there's a new site coming in November which will be exciting, but outwittly.com is there and then you can also follow me on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn/Sarah Forzier, I guess. And for the book. So design researchmastery.com is coming in the first fall and you can pre order it on Amazon in the UK. But if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll get all the updates for the North American launch in the spring.

Nathan Isaacs (35:10)

Excellent. Well, thank you again. I appreciate it.

Sarah Fortier (35:14)

Yeah. Thank you.

Podcast Host / UserTesting Announcer (35:16)

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