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Heather Desurvire | Designing for Diversity & Inclusion

A Life Economy
A Life Economy

155 plays · Sep 26, 2021

Heather Desurvire, Founder of User Research Behavioristics [http://www.userbehavioristics.com/], pioneered the field of user experience research and design for video games, websites, and apps. She's currently the Lead Equity and Inclusion UXR Platforms & Ecosystems at Google.   What we discuss with Heather Desurvire: * What UX research taught her about human behavior. * How UX contributes to creating a better world. * The relationship between software design and creating for the built environment.   We're excited to attend to Meet Delic [Meetdelic.com], a psychedelic wellness event on November 6-7 in Las Vegas! Save 20% with code “alifeeconomynaut”. --- ⭐️ 🌈 👽 🌍 😎 Enjoying this show? Please leave a review here [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-life-economy/id1469556430].  Subscribe on iTunes Follow us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/alifeeconomy/] Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/alifeeconomy/] Follow us on Twitter [https://twitter.com/alifeeconomy] Subscribe on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDfeqpXg7H1y-oqCwbNhaw]

Transcript

Speaker: Hello, I'm Cosmo Scharf and you're listening to a life economy dedicated to exploring the intersection of technology, consciousness and personal transformation.

Speaker: Summer and I just got back from the seventh annual biohacking conference, which was started by Dave Asprey and his phenomenal team.

Speaker: We had a really amazing time connecting with a variety of really cutting edge next gen health and wellness technology platforms, businesses and products, as well as listening to a variety of speakers.

Speaker: And we just had a really fun time.

Speaker: all around and you can look forward to some interviews and content from the conference coming out in the next few weeks.

Speaker: Another announcement will be at the Meet Delic Psychedelic Wellness event on November 6th and 7th in Las Vegas.

Speaker: I am very much looking forward to that for a few reasons.

Speaker: One, I'm a big proponent of psychedelic medicine as a tool to help alleviate suffering like PTSD and addiction.

Speaker: And there's some really compelling research around new ways of using

Speaker: psychedelic compounds like psilocybin and ketamine to heal various traumas.

Speaker: I'm also looking forward to connecting with Duncan Trussell, Jason Silva, Aubrey Marcus, and Luke Story, who will be speaking at the event.

Speaker: And the third is the event will be hosted at a place called Area 15, which is a really amazing immersive art experience created by a company called Meow Wolf.

Speaker: I had the good fortune of

Speaker: visiting Area 15 about a month ago, and it's a really beautiful and cool space.

Speaker: If you'd like to learn more about Meat Delic, go to MeatDelic.com.

Speaker: That's M-E-E-T-D-E-L-I-C.com.

Speaker: The link will be in the description.

Speaker: And you can also save 20% by using the code ALIFEECONOMYNOT.

Speaker: That's not as in astronaut.

Speaker: The code will also be in the description.

Speaker: Today's episode, we're featuring Heather Dejrevere, who is both a former teacher and colleague of mine.

Speaker: I was her student at USC, where she taught user research and UX.

Speaker: And we also worked together at my startup mind show.

Speaker: She is the founder of user research behavioristics, which is one of the pioneering companies that developed the whole field and industry of user research.

Speaker: And she's currently the UX manager at Google, where she's working on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Speaker: Some of the topics we covered in this episode include how and what UX research taught her about human behavior, how it contributes to creating a better world and how UX applies to the built environment.

Speaker: It's a really fascinating conversation, and I'm so grateful for Heather for joining me here today.

Speaker: If you're enjoying the podcast, definitely leave us a review on iTunes or share this episode with a friend.

Speaker: Okay, that's all for now.

Speaker: Enjoy the episode.

Speaker: What heroics are, they're a set of principles or guidelines.

Speaker: It's really, the words are very interchangeable, actually.

Speaker: So principles, truths,

Speaker: I've never liked to call them laws because rules or rules.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: I think you probably remember in class, I said from the very beginning, these are not meant to be rules.

Speaker: They, these heuristics guidelines are meant to potentially be broken.

Speaker: And they're, they're just guidelines.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: The term was coin heuristics early on.

Speaker: I think MITRE Corporation, I'll quote the appropriate references, the MITRE Corporation, in I think it was 1981, came up with 200 heuristics for user interface or usability at the time, we called it.

Speaker: And Jacob Nielsen, Rolf Malich, developed 10 guidelines that were more simple to use and really comprised the most important ones.

Speaker: And they're still in use today.

Speaker: And although they've been, the languaging has been modified.

Speaker: So does that help answer?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, I'm curious though, about like, um, like a specific example though, of, of one of them, like what would that mean or look like?

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: So there are different kinds of heuristics.

Speaker: And when I develop heuristics for, Ooh, I have to take something to drink.

Speaker: When I developed heuristics for, or guidelines, or principles for playability, they were specific to playability.

Speaker: And when I developed gap principles, excuse me, gap principles, game approachability principles, those were based on new player experience and specific to being a new player in a game.

Speaker: So those were principles specific to those.

Speaker: And then the VR play, which developed when we worked together at Mindshow, those were based on virtual reality principles.

Speaker: So an example of going back to here is to keep valuation based on the Nielsen-Molich guidelines.

Speaker: Those were, for example, very basic usability, such as use the user's language.

Speaker: use language that the user of the product is going to understand.

Speaker: That's not as much of a problem these days, although we still see it, but especially back when usability was really a really nescient area.

Speaker: there were engineers who really designed everything.

Speaker: There really weren't interaction designers or UX designers.

Speaker: There were really more just engineers developing.

Speaker: So they would use engineering kind of language that users didn't understand.

Speaker: And that still happens to today because maybe someone is within the context of being, I don't know, let me come up with an example.

Speaker: Let's see, a pilot

Speaker: Um, and the people who are going to be, say it's a pilot who's developing a game for flight simulation, people who are playing the game aren't going to be pilots.

Speaker: Um, and it might be cool to use the language of a pilot, but it's not understandable.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: Makes sense.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So yeah, there's some interesting things that you shared earlier about like your, you know, history of, uh, being an actor or actress and, um,

Speaker: the empathy that that required.

Speaker: And I see how that's connected to what you're doing now with UX research, which is you're really putting yourself in the shoes of the player or the user to understand what's going on in their mind so that you can make the experience as comfortable and accessible as possible.

Speaker: Um, what has your research taught you about human behavior?

Speaker: Cause you're talking about social sciences and that was like, you know, interest in psychology and all of that, but you've, you've had probably countless hours to observe people engaging with certain software products and other experiences.

Speaker: Um, what, what does that look like for you?

Speaker: That's a really broad question.

Speaker: I don't think I have a simple answer for that, but I can just broadly conceptually say that there's some truths I think most of us know intuitively.

Speaker: But for example, as a designer, as a designer, we may not think of them all when we're designing as a researcher evaluator.

Speaker: We may not think of all those things when we're evaluating.

Speaker: And just having that knowledge, that awareness helps us to really think about all those parameters.

Speaker: That's one way to look at it.

Speaker: Another lens to look at it is that human behavior, it can be really specific to a type of representation of a type of user and very specific to certain groups.

Speaker: But at the same token, there are generalities that we can make about human behavior, which is why principles come into play.

Speaker: Then we get to specifics when we do user testing.

Speaker: But there are generalities about human behavior that we know, which is why the heuristic evaluation or heuristics, usability work and playability, et cetera, the things we know about gamers in general that we

Speaker: can say are generally truths.

Speaker: And then we get more specific with user testing for those specifics and the differentiation.

Speaker: So I think as a general statement, I think that's awesome.

Speaker: Yeah, it is a bit of a broad question, but yeah.

Speaker: So I typically think of UX when it, I would say the common conception of what most people think of in their minds when they hear about UX is

Speaker: as it applies to software or games.

Speaker: And I know that you've had a lot of experience working with those kinds of formats.

Speaker: But another thing that is important to me that's also relevant is UX in the physical world, in the built environment, whether it comes to how we construct our buildings or

Speaker: rooms or streets.

Speaker: Is that something that you have much experience with or have thought about?

Speaker: Because I would imagine that a lot of the heuristics that you're describing would be applicable to how we engage with the physical environment.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: I love that question.

Speaker: That's a whole other really field, but I think in fact, I was just having a conversation with someone this morning about

Speaker: you know, what is it that I do?

Speaker: And if you could put it into like just a few phrases into this kind of area of expertise and what brought me to doing user research is that it's almost like there are a couple things.

Speaker: One is being really sensitized to efficiency and experience.

Speaker: And I think I'll just put from a personal level, I think I've always looked at

Speaker: how do we make the tedium of life as simple and as easy and as efficient as possible so we have plenty of time to do the things of why we're alive all the enjoyment and happiness so that we can get rid of like the you know the awkward you know routes in the house where you have to turn around five times to get to all the different things in the kitchen for example or

Speaker: you know, the way the walls are constructed or the rooms are constructed.

Speaker: So I think not professionally, but certainly personally, those are things I've always been attuned to and almost to a little bit of an OCD.

Speaker: Myself like, oh, I should have designed it where I can have to turn around to get more forks and then the stuff gets a little ridiculous.

Speaker: But it's something that I think that I've always been attuned to

Speaker: And then I think also the part of that is also the visual beauty of how that can be.

Speaker: So I think that's a whole other field.

Speaker: I have no professional experience in that area.

Speaker: I haven't thought about principles in that area, but it certainly is an area that's very adjunct to

Speaker: Uh, interactive media.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think it's easy to take good design for granted.

Speaker: Uh, cause it's sort of seamless, right?

Speaker: It blends into the background, which is kind of the highest ideal that, um, you know, Apple would be an example.

Speaker: right.

Speaker: It's like kind of what they're always going on about, right.

Speaker: They want their, their technology and platforms to be invisible.

Speaker: Um, but it gets highlighted when, or rather the, the, the, the role of design in our lives gets highlighted when I encounter bad or frustrating experiences, whether they're virtual or they're physical.

Speaker: And one example, um,

Speaker: It's like, you know, when you walk into a door and it's like a, it's a push door, but it has like a handle.

Speaker: So it's like, you think you're supposed to pull it, but it's push or there's no sign or label.

Speaker: That's a common one.

Speaker: That's like so frustrating.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: There's a really amazing cartoon by Pixar.

Speaker: And oh, that's right.

Speaker: It's called Lift.

Speaker: And it has a great example of the UFO.

Speaker: Yeah, it's the UFO.

Speaker: It's all about affordances.

Speaker: And it's a really cute description of incorrect affordances.

Speaker: It's like the

Speaker: The guy that's supposed to be in charge of trying to get the human into the UFO has this array of all the same levers and has to know how to handle everything.

Speaker: And his boss is looking over his neck, breathing down his neck.

Speaker: And the guy is sweating.

Speaker: It's a wonderful description of...

Speaker: uh, confusing affordances.

Speaker: That's funny.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's a, I, it's been a while since I've seen that, but I think I know what you're talking about.

Speaker: And it's funny to consider, uh, Pixar movies as examples of UX research, um, for, for people that aren't familiar with affordances, what does that mean?

Speaker: Affordances.

Speaker: And I, it'd be good to actually look up, look up the official definition, but an affordance is something actually, let me look up an official

Speaker: description so that I'm not giving this the wrong definition.

Speaker: So let me do that.

Speaker: Well, while you're, while you're looking at that, like an example would be, you know, a teacup has a particular handle on it that suggests to somebody looking at it without having to be familiar with a teacup, how to engage with it.

Speaker: So it's, it's making it simple and easy for someone to understand how to use something before they actually use it.

Speaker: Really well said.

Speaker: I don't even need to look up the definition.

Speaker: Cool.

Speaker: Wonderful.

Speaker: Just two lines here that I'll read.

Speaker: Affordances are determined by both environmental and the animal, or more specifically, action capabilities of the animal.

Speaker: For instance, a chair affords sitting to animals having certain bodies.

Speaker: In other words, for such animals, it is eatable.

Speaker: So, interesting.

Speaker: Totally.

Speaker: I thought your description was actually a little bit better.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: So zooming out a little bit, um, about like the, I want to understand the context of, or really the value and relevancy of UX research, um, in, in the broader world at large.

Speaker: Um, what,

Speaker: What about it is helping create a better society?

Speaker: Like why do you invest so much time into perfecting the art of UX?

Speaker: Ah, that is such a good deep question and speaks to very much the work that I'm currently doing with Google right now.

Speaker: I've had a long career in games still

Speaker: associating and attached to games always, of course.

Speaker: And at the same time, I'm also branching into another area where, okay, let me, let me back up a little bit.

Speaker: I'll tell you about the area in a minute, but let me start with how it makes it a better world.

Speaker: I think when I was talking about efficiency, I think ultimately the,

Speaker: you know, interactive devices like our iPhones or Androids or whatever kind of phones we have, computers are very much pervasive in a lot of people's lives and especially mobile phones.

Speaker: I don't know the numbers now, but it's pervasive in all the world.

Speaker: Yeah, more phones than people.

Speaker: Right, exactly.

Speaker: So the experiences can have a great impact

Speaker: on what your experience is in the day, you know, in your daily life.

Speaker: And they're ideally supposed to make your life easier, but when it can cause frustration, it can impact all kinds of things, your mood, your day, your ability to get funds, for example, a lot of different examples of how it can negatively impact you.

Speaker: So, of course, doing social good means...

Speaker: from the usability or user experience for products.

Speaker: It means creating more of a seamless experience.

Speaker: And again, I think I look at it always as, you know, wanting to be embody others and creating an experience that works for them in a way that's seamless so that they then have time to do all the other things that are probably more important in life than

Speaker: you know, then fumbling around or fumbling around.

Speaker: Anyways, that's a whole other conversation.

Speaker: But, and then in games, we look at games.

Speaker: I think my philosophy about games is always about creating an experience where people are having fun, having fun and learning are pretty much similar.

Speaker: Theoretically, you're building your skills and,

Speaker: And as you build skills, challenges building and you're in that flow state.

Speaker: So for optimal learning, that's fun, both learning educationally and learning in game and building challenge.

Speaker: It's all about that.

Speaker: That flow state is what my philosophy is.

Speaker: So creating optimal player experience is all about eliminating all the barriers to making that happen.

Speaker: and creating elements that create more engagement and fun, such as the intermediary goals and the overarching goals being clear, and also the user interface being clear so that the game and the mechanics come out and are really the focus of the game and not figuring out how to play.

Speaker: Right, absolutely.

Speaker: So that's my philosophy there.

Speaker: Now, getting to the current work that I'm doing, and I just started doing this work,

Speaker: is also using research to create impact from an equity point of view and from an inclusion point of view.

Speaker: So that looking at all types of users, all types of people, so people do not feel left out or people do not feel that their experience is not being understood and it's counter to their experiences.

Speaker: Let me give you an example.

Speaker: For example, there are several examples from, let's say, Facebook, where this man, an example of this man who unfortunately lost his daughter and posted on Facebook for his friends to know

Speaker: that this happened and he won't be in communication for a while.

Speaker: He didn't want to have to talk to all his friends about it.

Speaker: He just wanted to express this is what happened.

Speaker: Um, so everyone would understand where he was at.

Speaker: And, and, uh, and there was this feature on which you probably, people have probably experienced where it comes back with the memory, with the confetti.

Speaker: Oh God.

Speaker: Oh, here.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So here's the celebrate.

Speaker: Here's the anniversary.

Speaker: Bad timing.

Speaker: Really bad timing.

Speaker: You know, just on a other scale to on a other type of scale looking at, you know, I don't mean to pick on Facebook, but there's

Speaker: uh, say, you know, memories, you know, the photo memories, or this is Apple actually, um, and Apple, and I think Facebook does this too.

Speaker: Um, oh, let's just say the Facebook where it's your friendversary and you were, you've been now friends for five years and perhaps during that year, say it's a, you know, a boyfriend, girlfriend, and there was a breakup and then, you know, you've been friends.

Speaker: So, you know, things like that, that end up being quite insensitive.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: On another point of view, we can look at the example from Kodak where Kodak had traditionally utilized people who were in their immediate environment to calibrate lighting and skin tone and nuance with the photos, photo system.

Speaker: So Kodak developed film and also created the framework for all the

Speaker: photo labs throughout the world that did the developing in those days based on, they called her Shirley and they took a picture of one of their people who worked with them.

Speaker: Her name was Shirley and she was your average, you know, American white female, skin tone, everything.

Speaker: So anybody who had darker skin or eyes that were different, those were not recognized and, and,

Speaker: muted and blurred out.

Speaker: So, um, those are kind of systemic types of ways where there's not, there's inequity and non-inclusion in the design based on the framework.

Speaker: So the people designing them having a small vision.

Speaker: So what we're doing at Google is we're creating frameworks in our different product areas.

Speaker: And I'm focusing,

Speaker: on platforms and ecosystems, which is a broad area, which is very exciting and developing frameworks to help our teams think about broader ways in which to be inclusive and create equity for those people who are typically not thought of and more marginalized populations.

Speaker: So design is really for everyone, which frankly it really is.

Speaker: now.

Speaker: So that's a way research can really have a huge impact.

Speaker: And of course that reverberates throughout, you know, industry, throughout people's lives, throughout the world.

Speaker: And it becomes really quite pervasive when you're dealing with a company like Google or Facebook or Apple.

Speaker: So this is a really important area in which a lot of companies are

Speaker: at least starting to focus on.

Speaker: And I like to believe, and I truly believe that Google, I don't, I can't speak for other companies, but I know Google really putting a lot of attention and focus on creating that.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Very cool.

Speaker: It's really exciting and inspiring opportunity that you have to make an impact in a related but different sense of what you've been doing in games.

Speaker: And I'm very familiar with...

Speaker: you know, the efforts made by big tech like Apple, Facebook, Google to make their products more accessible.

Speaker: You know, Apple in particular is always coming out with new features and tools to make their products more easily accessible by, you know, for example, people with...

Speaker: um you know uh worse vision or blind people or hard of hearing people or people that you know are missing limbs for example and i'm also familiar with uh google having an update to android somewhat recently that was um addressing the the challenge of the

Speaker: the photos or the, like the algorithm not really being tuned for people with darker skin tones.

Speaker: So I thought that was a really interesting example of, you know, the efforts that are being made by some of the bigger companies to make their products more inclusive.

Speaker: So those are some examples, but you know, I'm familiar with like this concept of diversity and, and, you know,

Speaker: wanting more perspectives and people from different backgrounds to be part of an organization.

Speaker: But from an app perspective, how does that really apply?

Speaker: I mean, we kind of shared some examples, but what does it mean to make an app more inclusive?

Speaker: I think it's the same thing, really.

Speaker: We're talking about who are the users and who do you want the users to be if you want the users to be just like you.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: and you're coming from that mindset, then those will be the users.

Speaker: But if you want to be inclusive, the idea of inclusivity and diversity, and also creating the ability for people who are more underrepresented, for example, people who are in India and may are creating small businesses and

Speaker: when your user testing includes just the U.S. or just the Occidental Western countries, you may not be taking into account some of the cultural language, all kinds of elements that might go into dealing with other countries that are less thought of.

Speaker: So I really think it doesn't matter if it's an app

Speaker: It's a product, an interactive, you know, products like Android phones or iPhones or software such as Microsoft documents or Google Chrome.

Speaker: It's really the same concept as far as I see it.

Speaker: It's just looking for the users and making sure that you're creating the diversity and including...

Speaker: a sense that it's not just that everybody belongs when they're using it.

Speaker: You're thinking of all the different possibilities such as race, gender.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: There's lots of different kinds of people.

Speaker: I think it's, it's easy to kind of as an American, you know, kind of think about like the rest of the world is sort of similar, like other, other Americans, or it's like, you know, at least the role that America plays in the kind of the world stage.

Speaker: But,

Speaker: What you're describing is really going the extra, making the extra effort to make a product, um, more easily usable by people of all kinds of other nationalities and genders and races, et cetera.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And abilities, um, even about, um, educationally, um, challenged, uh, like dyslexia, for example.

Speaker: someone who doesn't have the ability to type into their phone, you know, words or, you know, looking up like affordances for the definition of the ability to speak to the phone.

Speaker: For example, I know Android's got this really wonderful feature that you can easily speak in and you'll get what you need.

Speaker: I mean, I know Siri's supposed to do that too, but Siri doesn't.

Speaker: Yeah, not as good.

Speaker: As an iPhone user, I agree.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, no joke on Apple.

Speaker: It's not professional.

Speaker: But what's interesting, like I remember I did this project for King a few years ago, and it was all about developing.

Speaker: They were developing games for different countries and smaller

Speaker: countries that weren't as known or not, they weren't, you know, people weren't used to creating games for those countries.

Speaker: So the project that I did was develop cultural principles for each country that designers needed to look out for.

Speaker: Like, for example, certain things.

Speaker: Finger expressions or hand expressions had a negative connotation in one country and a positive in another.

Speaker: So to be really careful about that.

Speaker: Also, there were specifics about eye shape or body composition that were really varied between countries and cultures.

Speaker: And then also iconography.

Speaker: had some really negative connotations that were actually banned.

Speaker: Oh boy.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: Interesting.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Those kinds of things are super important.

Speaker: That's a part of that kind of work when you're really thinking about ensuring that you're not, that someone who has an experience with whatever you're creating in an interactive world, that they're not going to have just like an offensive experience.

Speaker: or a negative experience.

Speaker: There's one example that I've been listening to this really great book called Technically Wrong.

Speaker: It's by Sarah Waller Boat, I think.

Speaker: I'm sure I'm not pronouncing her name correctly or spelling correctly at the moment.

Speaker: but it's called Technically Wrong.

Speaker: And she talks about this one experience I thought it's really interesting where the advertisement is asking for, is saying, oh, so it was Valentine's Day advertisement.

Speaker: So to this, to a female person, a recipient of the ad, it said, oh, get your, be sure to get him

Speaker: something that he'll love.

Speaker: Why don't you try these socks and ties will be wonderful for him.

Speaker: And didn't take into account that this person could be gay and partner could be female or a male.

Speaker: So in a similar way, just not taking into account all the variety and variability of people's experience and being really quite offensive and

Speaker: to certain groups of people.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: It's a great example.

Speaker: And I'm reminded of what I was just sharing about, you know, it's like easy to think, to get caught up in like the American perspective, but more so just to think in a way that everyone else is

Speaker: like you or similar to you, but there's really so much variation in the kinds of things that people care about and mentally, as well as the way that people, you know, appear physically and want to be seen by others.

Speaker: So I suppose the value of being,

Speaker: the work that you're doing is really putting yourselves and putting yourself into the shoes of the world effectively, which is not an easy task to design for seven, almost 8 billion people.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And I think the other part of it too is, you know, we can also talk about not even maybe physically people would be different.

Speaker: Um, but also, um,

Speaker: you know, look at, you know, religion, different religions or different cultures, different expectations.

Speaker: And I think the other thing is that we're also talking about trying to, you know, the people that have been forgotten, commonly forgotten.

Speaker: Those are the people that we really want to be sure to include in

Speaker: and are part of that discussion or part of that research or part of that design are people that are often not represented.

Speaker: And those are people that we're aiming to prioritize also.

Speaker: So that it becomes, it's not like we have to prioritize these people.

Speaker: Oh, you know, we have to think about it's that that just becomes,

Speaker: the norm.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It just included in the design process as opposed to like an afterthought.

Speaker: It's really reframing the idea of who we're designing for.

Speaker: And I think there's a big push to prioritize people we're not usually thinking of so that ultimately that was a normal way of design.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I have, um,

Speaker: I guess a bit more of like a tricky question that I'm curious to get your perspective on.

Speaker: And the example is, um, when I was visiting New York a few months ago, I, it was a pride month, I believe.

Speaker: And, um, there was a capital one bank, um, that was like all decked out in, in like rainbow.

Speaker: It was really beautiful, actually.

Speaker: It was like really cool looking.

Speaker: And definitely like I love rainbows and I'm a huge supporter of like Pride Month and all and all that.

Speaker: But it struck me as kind of like odd that like a bank is like out there like promote like.

Speaker: you know, so publicly promoting Pride Month.

Speaker: And so I'm curious, like where you see the line between like virtue signaling slash pandering to a particular audience, because it might be more profitable or you might be seen in a better light by people online or in person.

Speaker: and meaningful inclusivity that actually does something to change the world for the better?

Speaker: That is a brilliant question.

Speaker: And frankly, I think most of this types of work that's being done, like Capital One and the Pride and the Rainbow, I can't speak to them because I don't know what their ultimate intentions are.

Speaker: But a lot of

Speaker: a lot of the work in this area has been almost like a checkbox.

Speaker: Um, in fact, yeah, in fact, I, I heard about, um, many, uh, designs where they're, you know, they, the, the companies were asked to add, you know, more divisions of demographics, not your usual, but to add more so that it would be more inclusive of more types of people and,

Speaker: differentiations and they did that, but then it did go in the database.

Speaker: So, you know, it wasn't used.

Speaker: So I think that's a good metaphor for how a lot of companies are pandering to try to get more people to buy their stuff and virtually signaling weird, you know, Hey, I support this stuff.

Speaker: So, yeah, I mean, I think,

Speaker: in some ways they're, you know, maybe they're good intentions, but you really have to look at really, are they truly, are they grounded in actually making the change and really framing?

Speaker: And, uh, I, I believe I don't, you know, I can't say I know enough about what everyone's doing, but my guess is that a lot of it is that, but I, it's a really pivotal time right now where,

Speaker: we are our world, our country, I know our country, a lot of the world is very divisive right now.

Speaker: And through this huge trauma over the last year as a world, and we're all kind of in fear mode.

Speaker: And I think the worst thing we could do is be more divisive and try to split more.

Speaker: And I think the more we need is really unification and unity and

Speaker: And the way that we can create that is by ensuring from a foundational level, we really, you know, everybody is, it's all, you know, we are designing for all that people are not left out.

Speaker: Um, you know, then the whole concept of unification is really kind of the key word right now.

Speaker: Hmm.

Speaker: I love that.

Speaker: I think that's a great note to end on.

Speaker: I know we're coming up on our time here.

Speaker: Yeah, it's exciting to hear about the latest updates in your career and the possibilities for what the world could look like with software that has taken into consideration what it could look like and how it can be more useful and available for all kinds of people.

Speaker: Um, is there anything you'd like, you know, any last words you'd like to share or, you know, where, where can people find you online?

Speaker: Yeah, sure.

Speaker: Um, you can find me, uh, on LinkedIn under Heather Diservere.

Speaker: Um, you can email me at, uh, kind of a long term, but heather at userbehavioristics.com or easier heather3d at gmail.com.

Speaker: Um, I'm also, you can email me at Google at HWD.

Speaker: at Google, excuse me, at google.com.

Speaker: And let's see, I'm not active on Twitter.

Speaker: Instagram is totally just a personal place, but I'm at Heather3D.

Speaker: And yeah, please reach out if you'd like to talk more.

Speaker: And I also am on faculty at USC and teaching game research.

Speaker: And you can also reach me there.

Speaker: And let me see.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: And then I have a website.

Speaker: And I wish I had a little ticker tape that said how to spell it.

Speaker: But it's userbehavioristics.com in not the British spelling, but in the American spelling.

Speaker: We'll include a link to that.

Speaker: So you don't need to worry about spelling it.

Speaker: But yeah, thank you.

Speaker: Thank you so much for sharing about your work and your career and life.

Speaker: And for those listening still here, thank you for...

Speaker: joining us today.

Speaker: And definitely, if you're enjoying this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes or visit alifeeconomy.com to learn more and listen to other episodes.

Speaker: So until next time, and we'll see you soon.

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