Rosenfeld Review Podcast

Unleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges with Surya Vanka

Surya Vanka, speaker at the upcoming Design at Scale conference, joins Lou to discuss “Design Swarms,” which he’ll also cover during his conference presentation. Surya shares his experiences working to solve major social problems like gender discrimination and the opioid crisis through design thinking exercises. He also discusses ways leaders can step back to create more value from the “swarm.”
Surya recommends:
Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change by Victor Papanek https://www.amazon.com/Design-Real-World-Ecology-Social/dp/0897331532
About Surya’s talk at Design at Scale 2021: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/
Enterprises, even those with mature design practices, find it difficult to tap into the creativity of all of its workforce. Yet unleashing that broad creativity is now needed more than ever as success of teams depends on having the nimbleness of an ant farm to adapt and find their way around obstacles. Enterprise design processes, systems and ops are often tied to old top-down command/control organizational models. Design Swarms is an approach that has been used and adopted by teams within companies like Amazon, Amgen, Autodesk, Callison, Deutsche Bank, Lilly, T-Mobile, Microsoft, and REI to unleash swarm creativity at scale.
About Surya:
Surya Vanka is a transdisciplinary designer who has worked at the leading edge of physical and digital experiences. He is founder of Authentic Design, was president of the Seattle Design Festival, chair of Interaction Week 2019 and chair of 50th anniversary International Design Conference of IDSA. Surya was director of user experience at Microsoft, a tenured professor of design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Study. He is creator of Design Swarms method, a light weight design technique used in business, non-profit and education worldwide. Surya won the Microsoft Engineering Best Practice Awards twice, Ohio State University 50th Anniversary Distinguished Design Alumnus Award, Microsoft Achievement Award, Accessibility Achievement Award, World Brand Congress Leadership Award and several other industry recognitions. He has been consultant to companies like Amazon, Amgen, Autodesk, Callison, Lilly, Microsoft and REI. He frequently keynotes speeches at the most prestigious conferences and has won top speaker awards three times. His work has appeared in numerous publications and news programs, including TEDx, Form, I.D., Design Council, WIRED, Interactions, the BBC and National Public Radio. Surya is the author of two books on design, several publications, and has taught design on every continent but Antarctica.

“Could you make it worse?” Redesigning HealthCare.gov

A self-described “failed architect,” Sha Hwang joins Lou to discuss the challenges of scale when merging two companies, and his journey from Trulia and Stamen Design to being part of the team that rescued Healthcare.gov and, subsequently, founding Nava, a public benefit corporation formed during those efforts.
Sha Recommends:
• Civic Technologists Practice Guide https://www.amazon.com/Civic-Technologists-Practice-Guide/dp/1735286508
Sha will be speaking at Design at Scale 2021 this June 9-11. https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/sessions/the-lost-year/
About Sha’s talk, The Lost Year: The pandemic made it painfully clear that the failure of critical public services causes real harm, both physical and financial. Our healthcare system is being overwhelmed, millions are pouring onto unemployment, and we’ve seen an unprecedented number of people trying to access government programs. It has never been more important for government services to be simple, effective, and accessible to all, yet we’re far from that vision today. In this talk, Sha Hwang, co-founder and chief operating officer of Nava Public Benefit Corporation, will discuss the opportunities designers have to build government services that prioritize equity and resiliency—and the responsibility that comes with designing systems that serve millions of people.
About Sha:
Sha Hwang is the COO and co-founder of Nava, a public benefit corporation formed during efforts to help fix HealthCare.gov. Nava partners with government agencies to improve critical public services, and now works across several projects in the US on programs including Medicare, Veterans Affairs, and unemployment benefits and paid family leave at the state level. Nava has helped tens of millions of people enroll in critical programs, streamlined processes to save decades of labor years, and saved government agencies hundreds of millions of dollars. A failed architect and accidental entrepreneur, Sha has worked with clients such as the New York Times, the Harvard Library Lab, MTV, Flickr, and Adobe. Previously, Sha worked at Stamen Design and later cofounded the company Movity, which was acquired by Trulia.

“Accessibility is the Oil Change” with Sheri Byrne-Haber

Sheri is the author of the upcoming book Giving a Damn about Accessibility, and a speaker at Design at Scale 2021 this June 9-11. In this latest Rosenfeld Review podcast, she discusses the critical importance of starting projects and products with a mindset of accessibility. Spoiler alert: it’s far more difficult to go back later.
VMWare, where Sheri is currently an Accessibility Architect, recently launched an Accessibility Champions program, increasing their hires with disabilities and those with interest in specialized training. She and Lou talk through the program and other ways you can scale accessibility—even while acquiring new companies, as Sheri has experienced (more than ten in two years!)
Interested in learning more? Check out Sheri’s presentation at DAS2021: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/sessions/accessibility-at-scale/
Sheri recommends:
Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School https://habengirma.com/
Lily Zheng, DEI Consultant https://lilyzheng.co/
Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global subject matter expert in the fields of disability and accessibility. She is best known for launching digital accessibility programs at multiple Fortune 200 companies, including McDonald’s, Albertsons, and VMware, as well as consulting on government and education accessibility.
Sheri’s award-winning Medium blog summarizes legal cases and issues facing people implementing accessibility programs, with over 300,000 readers since its launch. Sheri is a frequent panelist and speaker at accessibility related conferences and an active member of several accessibility committees and non-profits, helping drive and communicate the evolution of accessibility standards.

Peter Merholz: Design at Scale is People!

Design at scale is perhaps the most interesting challenge facing the design industry right now. How do you maintain quality and not get bogged down as your team grows? Much of the discussion focuses on systems and processes, but that starting with systems runs exactly contrary to the true value that design brings to companies, which is a humanistic and creative problem-framing and problem-solving approach. In other words, this focus on systems could ironically undercut design’s potential within organizations— in other words, “Design at Scale” is humanism at scale, and share what’s needed to keep people at the center of this work.
Peter Merholz will be both a speaker and a workshop instructor during this year’s Design at Scale conference! Here, Lou and Peter muse over stories from the early days of information architecture before meandering their way to contrasting UX in the public versus private sectors. They also discuss a preview of Peter’s talk at the conference, Design at Scale is People!
More about Peter’s workshop, Design Your Design Organization: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale-2021/cohorts/design-your-design-organization/
Peter recommends: HmntyCntrd https://hmntycntrd.com/
More about Peter
Peter Merholz has been active in digital design and product for 25 years, most notably in building premier user experience consultancy Adaptive Path, and now advising teams on design organizations and leadership. Recent clients include The New York Times, Wells Fargo Bank, Cloudflare, and Zendesk. He co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs (O’Reilly), the first book focused on the organizational, managerial, and operational challenges of building in-house design teams. https://www.petermerholz.com/about-peter/

Jim Ottaviani: Nuclear Engineer to Graphic Novelist

Jim and Lou go way back - to when they still called it “library school!” Thirty years later, Jim is a NY Times bestselling author who specializes in science-themed graphic novels on subjects ranging from Jane Goodall to Alan Turing.
Here, Lou and Jim discuss the evolution of cartoon and graphic novels,how their audiences have changed over time, and the role of storyboarding in their respective crafts.
About Jim
Jim is the author of fourteen (and counting) graphic novels about scientists. His most recent books include Naturalist (with E.O. Wilson), Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier, Hawking, about the famous cosmologist; The Imitation Game, a biography of Alan Turing; Primates, about Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas; and Feynman, a book about the Nobel-prize winning physicist, bongo-playing artist, and raconteur Richard Feynman. His books are New York Times bestsellers, have been translated into over a dozen languages, and have received praise from publications ranging from Nature and Physics World to Entertainment Weekly and Variety. Jim lives in Michigan and comes to comics via careers in nuclear engineering and librarianship.
Jim recommends:
"Ologies" podcast with Alie Ward
"99% Invisible" podcast with Roman Mars
826: 826national.org/, which provides writing and tutoring support for kids across the U.S. (Jim has tutored and taught for 836michigan for over a decade.)
The Sirens of Mars by Sarah Stewart Johnson
Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars by Kate Greene

Conversations with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice

Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe first crossed paths on a Slack channel back in 2018, where they were seeking out colleagues who might know a thing or two about conversation design.. Fast forward to 2021, and their new book on conversation design is finished and available for preorder! Conversations with Things teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, ethical, and human-centered—because everyone deserves to be understood, especially you. In this episode, they chat with Lou about writing the book, the ethics of voice design, and more.
Diana recommends:
• AmberNechole Hart’s Why does Siri sound white? https://slideslive.com/38925092/why-does-siri-sound-white?ref=tag-33116-latest
• We Should Get Together by Kat Vellos https://weshouldgettogether.com/books
Becca recommends
• Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need By Sasha Costanza-Chock https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-justice
• Design Justice Network https://designjustice.org/

Writing About Writing: Steve Krug returns to the Rosenfeld Review Podcast

Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think, and Rocket Surgery Made Easy, is back for a third appearance on the Rosenfeld Review Podcast! Here, he shares some details with Lou about his book in the works, Writing Made Slightly Easier, and his perspective on the process of writing in general (and why he might advise against it!).
Check our Steve’s previous two appearances:
How To Get Usability Testing Right: https://soundcloud.com/rosenfeld-media/how-to-get-usability-testing-right-steve-krug
Life with the Apple Watch and other wearables: https://soundcloud.com/rosenfeld-media/conversation-with-steve-krug-life-with-the-apple-watch-and-other-wearables
Steve’s wise words for writers:
Don’t be afraid to always start at the beginning. Always assume that your reader knows less rather than more.
Steve recommends:
Follow Laura Klein on Twitter https://twitter.com/lauraklein
More about Steve Krug: https://sensible.com/

The Power of Care: From Human-Centered Research to Humanity-Centered Leadership

What is the role of care in user research? Why is care a user researcher's greatest superpower—not only in how we do our work but how we lead? In her talk at Advancing Research 2021, Etienne Fang, Principal Researcher at Amazon Search, will discuss the importance of inclusive leadership and share lessons on leading through care, helping researchers leverage their research strengths for leadership as individual contributors, team leads, and people managers alike.
Etienne Fang is a human-centered research and strategy leader passionate about people and the power of their stories to create inclusive experiences for all. She is currently a Principal Researcher at Amazon focused on inclusion and has previously led research teams at Uber, Method Products, and The Clorox Company. She is the founder of Redefining Having It All, a non-profit organization that supports female empowerment through stories of women’s ambition.