[00:00:06] Welcome to another episode of Digital Noir presents Humans aren’t Robots. And my guest on today’s episode lives in a hopefully where we want to go in the future. Laura Ryan is the studio strategy director at Mentally Friendly. She calls herself a designer even though she can’t draw, but she works at an exciting design and innovation studio with a human-centred approach. We had a long talk about well-being in the workplace and about design and what design means in the modern world and the thought that designers have a responsibility when it comes to marrying profit with empathy and ensuring that what we produce as designers doesn’t cause distress or concern to users. We talk a lot internally here at Digital Noir about design impacting and influencing everything we do. People often think of design has just being what a graphic designer does or what a visual communicator does. But every object you look at, every product we use, every service has been designed, everything has been designed.
[00:03:15] So I’m really interested, what does wellbeing mean to you?
[00:03:22] Oh, wellbeing means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, which I assume is why you’re asking the question. So wellbeing for me and for the work that I do is about making sure that we can create outcomes for people that benefit their wellbeing, like mindfully like their mind it might be physical. It’s about happiness as well. So it’s a complex concept wellbeing, in that to some people, it might mean yoga, you know, whereas what I’m talking about is, yeah, look it might include yoga, but it’s also like the outcomes that are delivered as a result of the product or service.
[00:04:09] Because there’s a lot of talk, I suppose, about GDP or growth or economic growth, not being able to measure human happiness. And I mean, how do you measure human happiness or how do you define or quantify wellbeing, let’s say, in the workplace, which is sort of where you play? I mean, it’s quite a difficult thing to quantify, isn’t it?
[00:04:28] It’s so hard to do. And I suspect that’s why we’ve been historically quite poor doing it. And I think, the good news is that governments now are actually starting to take a stab at it.
[00:05:07] But let’s go back five, ten years like culture was this thing that maybe tech startups talked about. But then the bigger corporate world wasn’t really talked about and then it sort of came in that something was top down and defined, OK, we need to define a culture. So let’s bring in some experts and how do we force the culture onto our people. But in my experience, that’s definitely not how culture grows.
[00:05:46] Oh, definitely. I think, like to your earlier point as well, around the measurement, like how do you actually measure the human value of the products and services or the policies that you’re actually creating for people? I don’t necessarily have a perfect answer to that. But I think where you actually need to begin is understanding what are the indicators of the wellbeing outcome that you seek to deliver. So, if the wellbeing outcome that you seek to deliver is to improve the mental health of Australians, as an example, then the indicators around that could be things like resilience, confidence, agency, these types of things. You’ll never understand human value without talking to humans. And I think that’s probably another really big difference between the way that we currently measure progress and the way that we need to in the future. It’s not just the financial measurement, but it’s the methodology as well.To measure financial progress it’s data, it’s numbers, it’s quite binary, actually. You don’t need to speak to humans to get that understanding, but to really understand wellbeing outcomes, you have to do that. It’s costly to do that. It takes more time. It’s less binary. It’s more open to interpretation. And I expect that that’s why we haven’t really done such a great job of it historically, because it’s difficult. It is hard. The wellbeing economy is super complex, but so are people. People are complex. You can’t expect to reduce the progress of our society to GDP and get the insight or value that we seek to find and achieve.
[00:07:54] How do you go about, one, giving the team the tools so that they can hopefully feel happy and empowered in their work and then quantify that on the other side.
[00:08:25] I think, well-being in work comes from meaning. So if you do what is meaningful to you, then that will give you a level of wellbeing that you wouldn’t otherwise discover. So, I’m really lucky because I have been able to use my skills as a designer to deliver wellbeing outcomes probably on a smaller scale potentially than people who have skills in other areas. But regardless, that gives me well-being because I’m able to use my skills to deliver wellbeing to individuals and communities. And that comes back to having meaning in my work.
[00:09:13] So there are real parallels between using design thinking, and using design overall to problems and to businesses and being, I suppose, a bit more creative around how we’re actually facing problems, whatever they might be. And then that flowing through into an empowered team that’s happy and feels like they’re actually doing work that they’re passionate about.
[00:09:56] 100 percent, there is profit in wellbeing. So the sooner businesses are able to realise that by delivering wellbeing outcomes to their customers, they can actually be more profitable doing that. So you need to be empathetic and you need to be entrepreneurial. You need to be both of those things to be successful, I believe, in delivering a wellbeing outcome.
[00:10:53] I think it is almost a redefining of what capitalism is, because there is, I suppose, a historical viewpoint of capitalism, of being sort of a top down make as much money at whatever cost, but that’s not sort of not the world we live in today. And as resources get more scarce and I suppose human value goes up globally, then we need to look at it differently.
[00:11:22] Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m not an economist either. So, this is something two people talking about something that we’re sort of passionate about. But there are market mechanics at play. It’s probably less about capitalism and more about acknowledging that we can use those market mechanics to our advantage and not think that making a profit is dirty. Making a profit actually means that you have a sustainable business and in order to provide wellbeing outcomes, the people that are best placed to do that are the sustainable businesses, right? Because if all you have is compassion and empathy, you are making promises to people that you cannot fulfill long term. And that is actually irresponsible and damaging, it’s as bad as the opposite. Right. And the opposite, obviously, is I create a shit ton of products and services and I make a whole heap of coin, but I never positively impact people’s lives. Both sides are dangerous if you are myopic enough to only focus on one of them.
[00:13:16] I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to earn money. Like you said it before, we are a capitalist society. What I think is harder to abide by is if you are mindlessly sort of creating things that, intentionally or not, impact people’s wellbeing in a negative way. And I think the sooner we are conscious about, and I’m talking very specifically now from the position of a designer, recognising the impact that design can have on people’s wellbeing, the better we will be at designing products and services.
[00:14:12] But what does design actually mean? Because it doesn’t just mean painting pretty pictures or designing something in Photoshop.
[00:14:26] This is a super interesting question. Right, because I call myself a designer, OK? But I can’t draw or design in the way that you’re talking about, like I’m actually not a graphic designer. My background is research and strategy. But I call myself a designer because I’m involved in the process of designing products. I work in a cross disciplines team. I’m very fortunate to be able to work with people who are much better than I am at sort of like visualizing what this product or service will look like. My role in the design process is to provide the research and insights that we should use to make design decisions, and we do those things together. But, I think the lines are so blurred now. Now we’ve got lots of tools and methodologies we inherited from stuff like human-centred design practices to help us move away from that and actually design something which hopefully delivers a wellbeing outcome.
[00:16:12] Exactly. And I think getting the whole team involved in that design decision say, yeah, maybe a developer or someone early, even in the sales phase, I think that creates a better outcome.
[00:16:24] Yeah, I agree. And I think it’s very, very powerful to have all of those minds in the room right from the get-go. It’s very powerful to have that whole machine sort of working together right from the beginning.
[00:17:06] And I think developers are inherently problem solvers. That’s what they do. They can actually start looking at whatever the problem might be just from a different angle.
[00:17:21] Yeah, 100 percent. They are problem solvers, like you say. And so having that skill, having that talent, and also having someone to sort of just interrogate design decisions from a really different perspective. I mean, that’s why diversity of thinking is so critical.
[00:17:44] Yeah, definitely. I read the article you wrote about service design. User experience flows from offline to online, back to offline. It is that whole sort of journey, however, you take it, and looking at a product or service with that sort of viewpoint, like the Apple thing the Apple, the website might not be the thing, like it could be something after that or before that that actually kicks things off. So I think having that holistic approach is really important.
[00:18:19] Yeah, definitely. Can technology really replace humans? I mean, that’s a whole can of worms. That’s more than a five-minute conversation. I do truly believe that there is a time and place for a human-based guidance relationship. And technology, whilst exceptional, sometimes can’t solve those problems the way that we want them to. So to your point about the service kind of dipping in and out and how we use those tools, it’s like, yeah, don’t be blindsided by the fact that people aren’t using your piece of technology in a vacuum. The point of that piece of technology is that it should aid a person. It should help them. It should improve their well-being, even if the direction that that piece of technology gives you is to go and see a human being. Sometimes that is actually the best course of action.
[00:20:10] I think you can’t replace quality customer service. We are humans. I do believe that a lot of the services and things that we see can be improved by technology. I obviously believe that. But I do think as human beings, we do crave interaction with other human beings. And automation has been a very good thing in some ways, but in other ways, it has really obscured our control and it has really obscured our literacy and understanding of our decisions. I think automation is really, really great. However, the more we automate things, the more we have a responsibility as designers to ensure that we reinstate the control that we take away from people.
[00:21:42] And going back to the traditional sort of thought about wellness and mindfulness being next to that. It’s interesting that mindfulness in the West is becoming more and more popular as things get more automated and our lives become so distracted by all these shiny things around us. I think we’re sort of craving that actual step back to think about what am I doing? Why am I doing these things all day? Because you can get just trapped in an automated kind of day, right, when you go to sleep I mean, like, what did I do today?
[00:22:09] Yeah, absolutely. With very little consciousness to the decisions that you’ve made.
[00:22:13]The last 15 years have been so transformational, I suppose, from a technological point of view, but I think we’re sort of now going right or had how humans interact with that. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with AI, exciting things happening in the future.
[00:22:35] Yeah, 100 percent. I watch that keenly and eagerly.
[00:22:39] Last question then, I suppose. We’ll keep it positive. What excites you about the future?
[00:22:46] For me personally, what excites me is that I know that this is going to sound a bit mushy, but I’ve actually found something in my life that gives me purpose and meaning. The future really excites me because I know that I can use my skills to keep doing and creating products and services that help people, like that deliver some kind of wellbeing outcome. And that’s, as a mother now as well and I do have a younger daughter, so as a mother and a woman, that’s really important to me as well, to be able to tell my children that this is the work that I do and be proud of that. And to also show them that they can be part of that, too.
[00:23:48] That’s exciting, though, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s exciting to look forward to the future and think I have a place here where I can add value and hopefully help people.
[00:23:56] Yeah, it’s like finding your home.
[00:23:59] That’s awesome. I’m so happy that you found that. If people want to find you online, where can they look?
[00:24:05] Oh, yeah. LinkedIn, probably. Laura Ryan. You probably don’t really want to look elsewhere. It’s just a lot of pictures of me and my kids.
