So this is my friend Janson, who lives in Los Angeles.

And Janson and I are, are text message buddies.

So we're constantly texting each other.

Basically trying to make each other laugh.

And we get in to these sessions and we, it's like, it's like tennis.

It's like back and forth, volleying back and forth.

And so we were doing this one day, and we hit a point

in the text message conversation where something changed and it was, you know,

it may have been that one person had to take a phone call, it could have been that

one person was trying to make the other and it just didn't quite land right.

Something was happening.

So, my friend sent me this message which he was trying to describe,

you know that feeling you get when someone says something off beat in a text message?

And it kind of throws of the entire rhythm of the conversation.

And so, you know, sometimes all you can do is send an Emoji response, right?

Or and he's like, we need a good German word for this.

There's got to be a word.

So of course, you know, I got on my phone, looked on Google, found a good list of

German words and, you know, [FOREIGN] all those, all those words.

And I came to the end of the list, and I found this one word which.

I'm gonna slaughter the pronunciation.

Is there any German speakers who, who'll give this a shot.

>> [FOREIGN] >> Thank you.

[LAUGH] So, you know I think my friend was hitting on something here.

So, [FOREIGN] oh.

>> Zugzwang. >> So that's the pronunciation.

So this is German for compulsion to move.

So it describes this situation in a chess game, where one player must make a move,

but there is really no good move that he can make.

So they are sort of stuck in this situation where they are like oh,

I've got to do something but anything I do is not gonna it's not gonna work out so

well for me.

So his example was to, well, maybe we just respond with an Emoji or an emoticon, so

this is the shruggie, I am sure, how many people have seen the shruggie or

use the shruggie, perhaps you use it several times a day,

because the world calls for that several times a day sometimes

[BLANK_AUDIO]

But, what he hit on was this idea of, you know?

When someone says something offbeat.

Now, this is not a high stakes thing.

We're just trying to make each other laugh.

And, in fact, in the moment when we were kind of stuck, you know?

It wasn't that important that it, that it threw things off.

But there was a flow going.

And there was something happening before this offbeat moment.

And, and we'll call this positivity resonance.

So what this means is that,

you know, there was something positive happening between the two of us.

So where does this word come from?

So, positivity resonance,

is a term that was coined by Barbara Fredrickson, who is a, a professor and

researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

So, not far from here.

And she is the principal investigator in a lab that studies.

Positivity and sort of, sort of how that, how that affects our well-being.

So she defines positivity resonance when three things are occurring.

Two people or more people are sharing 2, or more positive emotions.

Their biochemistry and behaviors are synchronized.

And this doesn't just have to happen in person, so this may be happening with my

friend in LA, we may be experiencing some of the biochemical and

behavioral things, we're laughing, we're, we're,

we're releasing oxytocin, things are happening at the same time for us.

And we have a, we're motivated to invest in each other's well being, so

we're doing this, we're having this thing happening between us.

That we both know will benefit the other person.

So in her book, so she has this book out that came out recently called, Love 2.0.

And she describes love in a way that, that many of us don't think of love.

So, so we hear love in, in,

in the fiction that we read, in the songs that we listen to.

The movies we watch especially.

That is this description of this long term romantic relationships or

familial relationships.

What's you're learning is that by studying.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Bodies and our physical well-being is that love,

we should actually think of love more as these micro-moments of connection.

And so, this actually opens up love to more than what we think of

it as traditionally.

So that means that we could have moments of love with complete strangers,

and we can increase the moments of love that we have with the people in our lives.

So what's happening during that offbeat moment?

So probably anxiety.

Now for my friend and I it's not hug anxiety, but

there is something that changed what was going on.

So, your brain on anxiety.

When your brain is experiencing one of these moments,

cortisol production increases, which is the stress hormone, and oxytocin,

which is sort of the, the drug we have in ourselves that, that have to,

that is released when we have good experiences but that decreases.

And cortisol increases have a tremendous effect on the vagus nerve,

which cont, which interfaces with our parasympathetic nervous system.

And that effect affects inflammation in our bodies.

Inflammation in our bodies, then, makes us more prone to certain types of disease.

If we have, you know, prolonged periods of that inflammation.

so, so these kinds of experiences are increasing the number of

positive experiences, can have a really profound impact on our well being.

Conversely, having tons of moments of anxiety and

cortisol production, really can adversely effect your well being.

So what are the other, ways in which we experience anxiety?

Especially with the tools we're using and

the software we're using, the apps we're using.

Read receipts, right, to emails, text messages, messages in Facebook messages in

other apps like dating apps, and things like that.

So you know, you get some information either that you

don't see your read receipts so it's like why aren't they reading the message I sent

them are they ignoring me or were they in an accident, like what's going on?

Like you're filling these gaps in information.

There's something called the typing awareness indicator.

[LAUGH] Does everyone know what that is?

So the three lots, right?

So if you think about something like iMessage.

And there was an article in The New York Times a couple weeks ago that talked about

this very thing.

Bubbles carry a lotta weight.

Texting anxiety caused by these little bubbles.

So this, this writer Jessica Bennet, describes how her

therapist ordered her to disable this indicator on her phone,

because it was causing her too much anxiety.

We also have anxiety from what I'm gonna call the everything is awesome syndrome.

So, you know, the song, the Tegan and Sara song from The Lego Movie.

You know, their, people post things on Facebook, Instagram, wherever.

Whether it's photos, posts, videos, etc.

And, and often they're trying to tell the story of their lives,

the great parts about their lives.

They're either doing it because they just wanna express it,

they wanna get it out there, they want you to feel good.

It lifts your spirits.

The, the, gener, generally most people have a, have good reasons for doing it.

But there are gaps in that information and

you know, there's an article in the Atlantic called, a long time ago call,

about a year ago, is Facebook making us lonely?

Like are there certain people who are prone to depression, who are prone to

loneliness, for whom when they see these things, they fill in the gaps.

And they don't necessarily fill in the gaps with the story, of the ups and

down that all of us experience, the light and dark of our lives.

They're only seeing the positive.

There was also a study, a study recently that said,

you know, someone posting lots of pictures of their partner,

their new boyfriend, their girlfriend, the husband, their wife, etc.

That for some people, if there's a lot of that, and

we call kind of known when it kind of goes beyond that limit,

that it may indicate some self-esteem issues in the person that's posting it.

But we're all like, but I post pictures of, I, in the past, I've post pictures.

Do I have self-esteem issues?

Like, what's going on?

You know, there, so there are different, different ways of looking at this.

You know, here's an app.

It's an app called Secret.

Some of you may be aware of it.

It's gotten a lot of bad press, kind of the mean girl app.

For some people but so, so

we need an app where we can go express the truth of what we're feeling,

and I can't imagine the person who posted this was having a lot of oxytocin being

produced when they were writing this or when they were thinking about it, right?

[LAUGH] And the other person hates sleeping alone, so.

So there's so much good, right?

We have so much data.

Either that we're producing data by taking photos, by writing things.

Or we're measuring data on ourselves, you know?

We're, we're, we're quantifying ourselves.

We are bio hacking.

And this data.

These data produce opportunities for action, right?

So, so we have all these opportunities.

We have buttons, we have, we have swipes, we have things to do that can be,

you know, opportunities for action for good and bad or in between.

But there's a lot of risks too, right?

So we got data, we have gaps in data, we have.

Opportunities for action.

We also have a lot of opportunities, opportunities for anxiety.

Or opportunities for inaction, right?

[SOUND] You know, like, I, I give up.

The, you know, this is the nihilism.

So this is a conference for

designers, developers and, and the people who love them, right?

So, so what can we do to help, right?

So, I believe that we should design & make things to help save us from ourselves.

And so, you know, the Libertarians among you will be like, well,

this is a nanny state kind of thing.

Like, whatever.

I don't mean that we should force people to do anything.

But what I mean is that we are building products,

traditionally, to help people satisfy certain goals, certain needs.

They're in certain situations.

We have design techniques and, and, and a design process.

Many different, different ways of helping people achieve their goals.

But are we really helping people save themselves, from themselves?

So how do we typically save ourselves from ourselves?

We seek and follow good advice.

Right?

Or maybe we don't know we need it.

And someone kind in our lives, whether that's a mentor or a friend or

a family member or

the smart uncle, the wise uncle, whatever, they give us good advice.

And they typically give it to us when they see that we need it the most.

So what I'm proposing is, that we should understand the best advice,

on the subject matter of the problems we're trying to solve.

Let me clarify, I don't mean the best design advice, of course we need to

follow the best design advice, there are a lot of talks at this conference and other

conferences, and publications and books, and things about good design advice,

of course we need to follow that and not just design principles.

So, design principle are a really good way for an organization or

a company to express what they believe in,

and how those beliefs and those values express themselves in the design.

What I'm talking about is the best advice for the human.

So, let's look at the traditional kinds of design principles.

So, at Facebook, they, you know, wanna make sure their designs are universal,

human, clean, consistent, useful, fast and transparent.

And they have a paragraph or two or

whatever for each of these items that really describe what that means.

So, that's all extremely helpful, and you can see that expressed in their products.

So, Google recently released the material design principles.

We challenged ourselves to create a visual language for our users that synthesizes,

the classic principles of good design with the innovation and

possibility of technologies and science.

Which means material is a metaphor.

It's bold, graphic, intentional.

And motion provides meaning.

So they're really, really thinking about how the interaction and

the micro-interactions, affect.

The overall design.

So with this new approach that I'm, and it's not really new.

I think people are generally doing this, but, but

I'm talking about really bringing to the forefront of the process.

Can we improve the products we use everyday?

Especially the ones where we current, always lament what's going on with them.

Like I said, all these articles in these.

Really good magazines and things like The New York Times talking about our

collective anxiety about the anxiety we're experiencing.

Can we discover new features for the products we have, and

can we come up with whole new products based on this way of thinking.

So how many of you have seen the movie, her?

All of you.

Okay. So if you haven't, I highly recommend it.

Some people, some of my friends hated it, some people loved it.

It's great, the screenplay is wonderful, the acting's great.

Joaquin Phoenix is, is the main character along with a voice of an OS, or

an operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johanson.

This was directed by Spike Jonze.

I wrote an article about this movie, it had such a profound impact on me,

for Print Magazine, the online version, not long after the film came out.

And so, what we see in this film is we see a guy who has separated from his wife,

he is in a future time, this is sort of science fiction.

And he installs an operating system that begins talking to him and

interacting with him.

It sounds, you know, sorta like SIRI.

But, sort of a artificial intelligence version of SIRI that is, that is,

that is able to have emotion.

And express emotion and interact with him.

So, he starts experiencing this positivity resonance with this operating system.

And so going back to Barbara Fredrickson, the researcher at UNC,

she mentions in her book studies where they've looked at,

you know, positivity resonance happening between people.

One person hearing someone telling a story,

a prerecorded version, and they measure the brain activity of

the person telling the story at some point in the past.

And the person listening to it now, and that same kinda resonance is

happening even though it's not happening in real time.

So it's realistic that an operating system, in its interactions with you,

could create positivity resonance.

So that part of the film actually is, is fairly real.

Some other parts and

the, the kind of relationship they develop, maybe not so much.

But, the rest of this movie has all these interesting interactions where, you know,

people aren't staring into their smartphones.

And, and you know, with the latest Apple watch announcement,

you know that kind of thing also, where we're not necessarily dealing with

the issues of, of, of sort of not connecting with people.

Not being face to face with people.

Like those things are coming, and

those things are expressed in the film very well.

The problem I had with the film and

the gut feeling, it wasn't really about the film,

but it was about the motion that I had when I saw the film was just like.

We are manufacturing so

much of the dramas of our relationships, and the fact of the machine, an O.,

an artificial intelligence thing.

Can also manufacture those relationships, just tells me more,

and more that our brains can manufacture those same types of situations.

So, this movie's about love.

A man in love with his OS.

And, thinking about this good advice method, this way of designing.

Well, how would we apply this to designing for love?

So, first of all what is loss?

Let's go back to the researcher Barbara, Barbara Fredrickson, so

the love you crave lies within momentary experiences of connection, and

this ties you in and, and what's key here is your body, and your brain, so

that the, the impact on your health is what's really important here.

Connects you to the social fabric, to those in your midst.

So it doesn't just have to the people, to be the people you,

you tell the story of being in love with.

It really can be anyones', so the opportunity is huge.

So who do we turn to?

Right? So who has the best advi, advice on love?

You know, artists and writers,

but sometimes they write really sappy songs that are kinda depressing and, and

maybe, you know, maybe, maybe they don't but some, some of them do.

Psychoanalyst, Vice Columnist, there are some great folks out there who,

who we all read and enjoy listening to their podcast.

Wise relatives and friends, but

the neuroscientist, we really should be looking at the neuroscientist.

Technologist, I crossed this off but I don't believe that's true.

But I'm saying we can get better at this.

So writers on love. So this is a quote from Iris Murdoch.

It's; "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than

one's self is real".

So this is sort of necessary to create positivity resonance,

is to recognize that and

to see that in, in all the people that are out there in the world.

So what are the products that are effecting our lives of love?

So, what products would this apply to?

So we have social networks, we have apps and

websites that, you know, help me find dates.

OkCupid, Match.com, things like that Tinder.

We have financial and accounting software, right?

So I'm not just talking about things like social media and

like dating apps, I'm really talking about anything, you know, the financial and

accounting software you use may, may help you.

Care for your family over time, right, and plan for your retirement.

Things like that.

Communication tools, email, text message, etc.

And then increasingly, wearables and devices in the internet of things.

So, you know, the current,

some of the current Android watches as well as the, the Apple watch that.

It, it's coming. The idea of, of, of the,

the haptic experience of feeling the heartbeat of someone else, right.

So that's positivity resonance, you know, a very real version of that.

You could be also, be talking with them on the, on the phone.

You know, the, the call with them, et cetera, at the same time.

So let's start with the other good advice.

So this is one of the best pieces of advice I think I've ever heard.

On love, and the ideas do not create fiction to fill gaps in information.

So we all sometimes think about other's motivations.

Why isn't that person texting me back right away?

What's going on?

How are they feeling?

What's, what are they thinking?

What's my boss thinking?

So we, we create these,

these, these fictional, these stories of what's happening.

And what we see another's motivation or intention is not always accurate.

Doesn't mean we have to be naive, right?

But certainly, we need to stop telling ourselves stories.

So we've seen some folks start to do this.

This is an upgrade to iOS, in the last version,

I think, that, you know, it let's you, okay.

You didn't answer a call.

Well, it gives you the opportunity to fill the gaps of information with,

why you didn't answer.

So, the person,

you're relieving some of that anxiety from the person on the other end.

Or maybe you're creating more anxiety.

So, again, these tools can be used in different ways.

Anyone recognize this?

This is fairly new in Facebook, right?

So it's, like.

You are interested in someone or

you have a friend, did they break up with that person or not, did they get divorced,

I haven't seen them since high school, some of you are just interested.

So you go here and like, okay, well, ask them, okay, well, all right,

so how many people have used this and

everyone can close their eyes and you can just raise your hand.

so.

What happens when you click this button?

I haven't, I haven't clicked this button,

because honestly I'm a little scared I have anxiety about whats gonna happen.

The possibilities are that there's going to be a modal, or something that allows me

to write a message to them and craft the way to ask them.

Could be that it's, that they've, they've listed their relationship status, and

it's automatically gonna give it to me.

Or it could be that it just sends them a automated message and

then they're able to reply whenever they want.

I don't know.

Does anyone, does anyone know how this actually works?

Is everyone afraid to, you know how it works?

[LAUGH].

>> Okay [INAUDIBLE].

>> Oh yeah?

[LAUGH] I'm not, so I'm not criticizing it.

I'm saying like,

that the motivation is there to relieve a gap in information, right?

To relieve anxiety.

But just, the question of, if we're, maybe if we thought about the good

advice about this, maybe it would help change the way we might design it.

Another piece of good advice, still the mind.

So I've studied Lyengar Yoga for the last over 15 years.

And this something I, I keep coming back to.

Where it's the physical practice.

But ultimately, everything is about steeling the mind.

And, and Puchandra Lee in the Yoga Sutras wrote, and

I'm gonna, I'm gonna slaughter the Sanskrit here, too.

So I'm not gonna even try to say it.

But this, this means the, the stilling of the turnings of the mind, or

the modifications of the mind.

So what this means, and, and they, they talk about how,

how the source of all human suffering are the turnings of the mind.

And I don't just mean like bad memories, or anxiety, or bad thoughts.

This could be good memories.

It's anything that keeps us from being in the moment, and, and anything that

keeps us from being in the moment ultimately keeps us from connecting and

having these in the moment momentary experiences and positive resonance.

Positive resonance.

So, I recently received this device.

I, I pre-ordered it, this is the inter axon used and

I actually have it right here, so

this is a head band, that you put on your head and it measures your brainwaves.

It looks kind of dorky, so they want you to,

people be able to start walking around, going to the coffee shop with this on.

It's Google Glass like, in that way,

I don't necessarily think it's going to happen.

Some people may do it, maybe everyone will start doing it at some point.

They only have one app right now.

They're, they're carefully controlling how this works but

the possibilities are endless, and I actually am interested in this.

So, so you could use it for meditation, you could use it for learning, you could

use it to control games, perhaps, sort of mind, you know, mind control of games.

My interest was using it for, for something called Yoga Nidra,

which is a practice of deep.

A conscious relaxation is you're awake but you're relaxed in your body.

Which has, has numerous health bene, benefit.

But the, the wave your brain are in, in that, your brain is in during,

during Yoga, Nidra.

It, it's a combination of delta and theta waves.

Which is very different than even meditation, or wakefulness, or

REM sleep, or, or deep sleep.

So, we have the potential to build apps, and to do things with devices like this.

To, to help with our overall well-being, and especially stilling the mind.

So gaming.

So, I read an article recently in Wired.

I don't know if any you saw this.

Where this guy was talking about using Oculus Rift.

While playing Alien Isolation.

And what he found was that, it wasn't just hey, cool this is virtual reality.

This is awesome. It was like oh my God,

I am so scared because I can peer around and actually feel like I'm

in that experience and he said other testers where they like ripped it off and

ran out of the room screaming so.

So if, if games and the, and the devices we, we use to play those games, maybe,

could they produce PTSD, right?

So maybe we're gonna need to start developing and

designing solutions, where maybe we need brain training.

Using techniques that we know or, or, or work for things like healing PTSD.

Maybe you, you, you have to sort of power your use of the game,

by doing exercises like this, with a device like this.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Another piece of good advice.

And this comes from a psychologist,

a psychoanalyst in Maryland named Gordon Livingston.

He was a close friend of Elizabeth Edwards.

He's written several books.

They all have kind of self-helpy-sounding titles.

They are self-help.

He's written, he wrote one called Too Soon Old, Too Late Fast, which is really good.

But he wrote another book called How to Love, and you'd think this is like, oh,

this is what you, how you need to be and

the type of person you need to be and to attract and all these kinds of things.

But, the first half of the book is who, who you should avoid.

And you know, who is worthy of our trust, recognize those who are worthy, and

steer clear of those who aren't.

We're gonna waste our time, we're gonna break our hearts and spirits.

So he goes through and

enumerates almost every personality disorder you can think of.

And, it's a little raw because you will think oh my God I've dated this person.

You start seeing this pattern.

As you're reading you start thinking well I've done things

like that in my past am I narcissistic am I, you know, [LAUGH] am I a sociopath?

Probably not.

But, I think we have the reality of the people and

sure there are certain people we should avoid.

But we also need to recognize that there are people in our lives,

who have some of these issues and have personality disorders.

And we ourselves have personality dis, personality disorders or

some attributes that, that are, are like personality disorders.

So I heard this story on NPR.

There's gonna be a lot of NPR stuff in here and public radio in general.

>> It occurred to me a couple of years ago that monitoring speech

patterns would be a really powerful way, to devise some kind of

an approach to have the ability to predict when an episode is imminent.

>> McInnis says that researchers have known for

some time that people with bipolar disorder speak differently.

>> Someone who is depressed speaks very slow and the individual.

Has a number of pauses and you're sitting on the edge of your seat.

Often wanting to drag the words, out of their mouth.

Whereas in manic speech it's going so fast you can almost yell at them.

And the person is just going and

they're like jumping from one topic to the next, and

all over the place and here and there and then this level and then you see the bird.

And then they saw the, the flirt, the bird flirts and.

You know and turtles.

And, you know, and then they're going on, and on, and

on about all these different things.

And you just become exhausted listening to them.

And you find that you cannot, get a word in edgewise.

>> McGinnis wondered if he could pick up hints of these altered speech patterns in

people being treated for bipolar disorder.

When they weren't having a full blown episode, but might be on the verge of one.

So he and some computer science colleagues invented a smartphone app.

The idea is doctors would give patients the app.

And the app would record whenever they made a phone call.

Once a day, the phone would send the recorded speech to a computer in

the doctors office.

And the computer would analyze it for

such qualities as speed, energy, and inflection.

>> So, if we have the potential.

And that's, that's listening to someone's voice and the calls they make.

But what about the text messages we write, or the emails we write?

If we could start detecting some of these qualities that may indicate that

we're verging towards this pattern, or maybe we should talk to someone or,

or be connected with someone.

Or maybe someone in our family should know.

Those could be really helpful.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So, Gordon Livingston also writes about, well, whom should we draw close?

Those who accept us as we are, give us the benefit of the doubt,

care what we think, and assume we will act generously.

Does anyone recognize this?

This is the cloud score, right?

So, you know, there are ways to gain this probably.

But what if we had a score for, for sort of how we were doing on other measures of,

of our ability to connect.

And our, our and, and, how productive we are in our relationships with people,

and it doesn't necessarily have to be something we advertise to everyone.

But what if this is feedback to ourselves?

A way of quantifying this for ourselves.

So this is a message from OkCupid.

They, they have a match percentage.

And it's true they have some of these qualities in the,

in their questions and in their matching.

But they ran an experiment where they flipped the percentages, and for

people who were highly matched, they told them they weren't very highly matched and

the opposite.

I'm not gonna go into this too much, but it raises some concerns.

I feel like they, they may be confusing, you know,

doing A-B testing on the website with things like.

You know, psychological research and

[LAUGH] psychological testing, which isn't quite the same.

Another piece of advice, remain open.

So, some, some,

some researchers in Europe really looked at the folks that trusted people and

had lots of face-to-face interactions, they rated their well-being more highly.

So, the idea of openness as something that affects your well-being is,

is, is, is starting to be, to be noted.

So, you know, wearables.

We have them.

We're, we're gonna have more of them.

What if you had things or an, an, the data that all your wearables and

all your, your actions online and on apps.

It's collected and we're able to get feedback on how open you are,

how vulnerable you're being.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So here's another thing from the Love 2.0 book which I highly recommend you read.

It's a great resource.

She talks about a practice.

Where at the end of every day,

you pick your three longest social interactions from that day.

So I'd love for

all of you to do this tonight, to think about the interactions you had maybe from

a conference member you just met, or a co-worker that you're here with, or

it could be the phone call you had with a loved one or a friend or a family member.

And, and ask the question, how true are these statements?

I felt in tune with the person around me, and I felt close to the person.

So, they did a study.

There were some scientists who did a study on this.

And what they found, they had two groups doing this.

And one group was also practicing a form of meditation.

And the group that didn't have the med, both groups experienced.

Extremely positive increases in, in well being, in the, in the, the, the,

the health of their vagus nerve, for instance which I, I said, you know, le,

you know, the controls are, interacts with it, the person [UNKNOWN] nervous system.

So, and it wasn't about the qualities of those interactions and, and, and

whether they were positive or negative, it was just considering them.

So just considering your social, that these, these, these, these instances.

Can greatly increase your health probably because over time you notice more how

you interact with people, and improve the quality of interaction from day to day.

So try this tonight, and hopefully every night.

I'm certainly gonna keep doing it.

So, another good piece of advice, and this come from, Jason Isbell.

Does anyone know who this is?

He used to be in the Drive By Truckers.

If you haven't listened to the,

he has an an album that came out called Southeastern, that is, is incredible.

It's a, it's a, an incredible work of art, it's brilliant.

And he was talking with Anna Sale, who,

who has a podcast on WNYC called Death, Sex and Money.

Has anyone heard of that?

Also highly recommended.

It's a great podcast, it's very new.

[MUSIC]

>> How would you describe this first year of marriage that you've had together?

>> I think they did a great job.

We got along for, for a large part of it.

And you know, we don't have the same arguments at the end of the first year,

that we had at the beginning of the first year.

And I think that's important.

I think for anything to be successful,

your problems have to become different problems, over time.

>> He was talking about his marriage to Amanda Shire, who is another musician so

your problems have to become different problems over time.

Anyone recognize this?

So this is the Facebook end of the year movie,

you can actually generate one of these for your entire history of Facebook.

What if we had an end of the year review, or even in the medium review.

You know, as you're about to write an e-mail or send an e-mail.

That's certainly at the end of the year, almost like an annual review of, of,

you know, how much you've changed in the things.

Are you repeating the problems and, and

showing the same behaviors that aren't helpful for you over and over again.

Okay, so let's move away from love for a little bit.

We're going to close love.

What other aspects of life benefit, benefit from good advice, in general?

So, so forget technology for a second.

And this is a small list.

It, it's really everything, right?

Anything you can think of, play, life long learning, educating children,

wanderlust, traveling, lone reading, community, entrepreneurship, any of this.

And then what other products support these aspects of our lives, and

now let's think about the technology.

There's another approach to this where you can take a specific product like

Facebook or whatever, and it may impact several aspects of life.

So love, friendships how your employer sees you and

say look up your Facebook account, all kinds of things.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So let's get into the practical part, the really tactical stuff.

Like, how does this fit into the design process that I use right now?

So maybe you're using LEAN UX.

Maybe you're using Agile.

Maybe you're using behavioral design techniques.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So, personas, right?

So how many of you are using personas, in your work?

'Kay, so a lot of you.

So these are fictional representations of real people, archetypes that you use to,

to, to really empathize with your users, and understand their goals.

But, lets gain the empathy of someone who would give your users good advice.

So I recommend that you envision the person,

who's the advice giver to the end user of your product.

So, it's like creating a persona of an advice-giver in addition to your personas.

Find those real people.

So, you're gonna interview and maybe find the real users of your product.

Also find and talk to the people who would give them good advice.

And those people may be different for each of your personas.

So, the best advice giver for one person may be different than the other.

So NPR, right?

So let's go back to love for a second, right?

So not only love of people and inter, interpersonal communication, but, but

people also love NPR, right?

So they love the product that I'm working on.

I'm also right now working with NPR music.

I'm redesigning their,

their homepage, right now as part of our responsive web project.

So this is the last part of the overall NPR.org universe to be,

to be made responsive.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So, Stephen Thompson from the NPR music team, he's also one of the co-hosts of

a podcast called the pop culture happy hour with Linda Holmes.

And so it just happened that a few days ago, I'd already started thinking about

this method, and writing about this method and I'm working on NPR music.

And I hear this.

He's talking to Petra Maher, who's on the NPR Books Team, and she's talking about

how her musical taste, tastes have not changed since she was in college.

And when she listened to WHFS,

the old station that's no longer exists in Washington, D.C. And

she talks about how her musical tastes seem to be trapped in amber.

I think she saw this playlist where she listens to the church.

The Church's Under the Milky Way Tonight,

which is a great song, but it's a little old.

>> In terms of general advice like, this isn't necessarily directed straight at

you, but I wrote down just like a few pieces of advice that I wanted to give in.

Some of this is advice I give to myself, and one of them.

The one that kind of comes closest to your concern about your musical tastes being

cast in amber is try your damnedest.

Do not be one of those people, who laments the current state of anything in culture.

[LAUGH] Don't say, like, pop music today is terrible.

Don't say hip hop music today is terrible.

Or all hip hop is terrible or all reggae is terrible, I mean, and I've,

I've been guilty of, you know, various examples of this, you know,

wailing against some new technology or some new generation.

Try not to do that.

Try to check yourself every time that impulse comes up,

and find ways to force yourself to engage with the best in

something that you don't necessarily automatically grasp.

>> That makes sense to me.

>> So, we're working on this redesign, and we're wanting to capture these people.

We have different personas.

We have the, you know, the person who's,

who's the, really the music lover, the sharer, the person who wants to really.

You know? I, I called it.

They wanna, they wanna maintain their creds.

They want cred maintenance, from who they used to be.

The person who, who talked, you know, gave advice about what to listen to,

to all their friends.

And they, you know, they're getting a little older.

We have the accidental tourist.

The person who, who isn't a big music lover, but

may land on a, on a story about music, or the music homepage.

Because they, you know, some, someone posted something on Facebook.

So one of the things that Petra talked about was listening to WHFS and

really trusting the voice that was telling her what she should listen to.

And so, you know, in this world, we're, and this isn't the real design, or

what it'll look like.

This is an early design exercise.

What we're trying to convey, you know, this is a Porter Robinson song, he's a,

he's an electronic dance music.

artist, and, you know, someone may not,

some NPR user may not like or think they like electronic dance music.

But, you know, the song features a [UNKNOWN] from stars, you know,

so that's more like the indie spectrum.

And, and someone may take the advice of Jason Bentley, cuz they're familiar

with him, or they're familiar with KCRW, and we give them a little blurb about what

the song is, they can understand like how excited we are about it.

So it's not like Spotify and here' some songs you should listen to,

and you just have to go find them, right?

And it give a little more guidance in a trusted voice, and, and that could be

Steven's voice or it could be someone from, from one of these stations.

So, let's talk about LEAN UX, right?

So, I am not going to go into depth about Lean UX, and I highly recommend you learn

more about that if you don't already or you are not already using it.

But we are using it at NPR for our web projects, and the great

thing about Lean UX is you really focus on the problem statement first.

You really try to understand what you are trying to solve for,

what is the current state of the product.

When is it not doing well?

And then how might we improve the product, or

introduce features to improve it, or change features to improve it?

And you create assumptions, so, so

it's a very open process, an open design process where, where you don't really have

arguments because you're just laying out things as a, as assumptions.

And one assumption might be, counter another assumption and that's fine.

But you take those assumptions and you manipulate them.

And try to, try to articulate them.

And have everyone on the team,

developers, designers, product owners, subject matter experts.

Everyone, you know, bring information to the table.

So we could start writing problem statements,

that talk about how might we help these people follow good advice.

And I don't mean deliver them the good advice.

I mean build products, where they are driven to good advice.

Based on just using the product.

Our assumptions can be, this piece of good advice, is good advice for this persona.

And because it's an assumption,

we don't have to absolutely be certain that that is good advice yet, right?

So the next step, you know,

is really developing hypothesis from those assumptions.

It's plucking the assumptions that are the most important and, perhaps, the riskiest.

And turning those into hypotheses.

If we build this feature, then we expect this will happen.

And we need to test it, to make sure.

We need to prototype things.

And get in front of users with that very soon to test it to make sure that's true.

Proto personas, right?

So we talked about, this is kind of a prototype version of a persona.

Where you don't have a time.

Or you're really just trying to,

to, to figure out what kind of research you need to do.

Well proto personas, of these good advice givers.

Like, include that as part of the process.

Then the experiments.

How do we determine whether not this good advice, and

the way we've designed to follow this good advice, is working?

So the goal of this, overall, is let's get ourselves out of,

out of this world of not knowing what to do.

Or not having a good move to make.

>> [FOREIGN].

>> And let's try to use the shruggy a little less when it

comes to our lives of love.

Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]