The worldviews we build with: Why good design starts in the spirit

My name is Elina Ashimbayeva. Great pronunciation, Ben. Thank you. Oh, great sound.

Okay, I'm really excited to chat to you about this today. The world views we're built with. Why good design starts in the spirit. It's a very much evolving topic for myself, I guess.

Something that I've been reflecting on and learning about. So I'm excited to learn together with you today. I've included a bunch of some of my favorite pieces of like art in the presentation and I will tell you a little bit about this one.

Okay. This one is by Lynn Margulis, a sort of evolutionary biologist who had a theory that all of evolution happens on the cellular level, not because of genetic mutations, but because of core evolution. There's this notion of organisms that's supposed to kill each other, but actually evolve together. And this sort of part of the painting of this, I guess, bunch of organisms on the, you know, bacterias and part of cells that end up coexisting together, creating complex life forms.

I don't know. I feel like it's a beautiful metaphor for like us co-creating things together versus killing each other. Or random genetic mutations. There's some beauty in that.

I'm thinking that we coexist.

I'm from New Zealand. So we start all of our things with karakia. Karakia is a non sort of religious prayer. And I wanted to include it here to invite you to do that with me.

I will read the karakia, but if you can take a breath and close your eyes. And it's sort of an invitation to arrive into the space that indigenous people use. Back home. So, if you want to take a breath with me, close your eyes, and I will read the karakia.

Cease the winds from the west, Cease the winds from the south. Let the breeze blow over the land, Let the breeze blow over the sea. Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened edge, A touch of frost, a promise of a glorious day. Behold, the breath of life!

Welcome. Thank you so much. Okay. So, I thought I'll introduce myself first, but I'll start with the fun facts, instead of like work things.

There's a few pictures on the screen. The first one is on the top left. Left. Is I've lived in New Zealand for half of my life.

And this is the path that I take with my mom to go to the grocery store. And I just wanted to show you what the beautiful freaking country that is. It's on the left is sea and we're walking on the stone path next to the, I guess, like cliffs. And you can see my mom in the front and me and my little brother holding hands in the photo.

The other photo is me in Kazakhstan, where I was born, where I'm originally from. Also beautiful country with some cool nature. You can see water behind me or one of the biggest lakes in the world, in deepest lakes and some pine trees. Then there's a photo.

A photo of Thomas and I. Thomas is one of the co-founders, facilitators, things of this beautiful event. I interviewed Thomas for my podcast, Making Good Money. It's about how do we make money and impact and talk about capitalism in a way that is different.

So I want to include he's not with us. He's in Dallas, I believe. Somewhere. And then a random three things.

A photo of me. The photo at the bottom of me is me with mayonnaise, because I love mayonnaise. I thought I'll include that. It's the best food group.

My first two degrees were in biomedical science, so the next photo of me in the lab coat. I studied zebrafish and immunology in cancer lab. Pretty much we were giving cancer to fish and then trying drugs on them and see what works. I know it sounds brutal, but how else do you develop drugs for cancer?

That's the way it is. And then the last photo is me on the stage. I've been reading lots of poetry recently. It's been a highly creative year.

And highly... I guess... creativity comes from all different places. The joys and the sorrows.

So that's me in the last year. Okay, so some of the professional background and where my talk today is coming from is I worked in Health New Zealand or Te Whātua back home. It's a health care system in New Zealand. It's all national.

So every hospital in New Zealand is united and it's a bit different. It's free health care, I know. Shocker. But that means that the waiting times are really long.

And so I worked in service design and innovation studio. Working on products, digital services, building new wings of the hospitals or making videos for cardiovascular teams. Because post-COVID they were really sad. They were like, can you make a video about our team?

So a lot of my knowledge comes from there. I also am a founder of storytelling platform where I've interviewed 200 people in New Zealand on different topics like domestic violence, being a migrant, being a refugee, sexual health. And so a lot of the work for me personally has been learning from people that I've interviewed. As you can imagine, people share some wonderful stuff and you get to learn a lot from them.

And then kind of uniting both of those things is... a work I did on how do we create equitable products and technologies. So how do we... Sort of teaching tools to people, to product managers and developers and software analysts and testers.

What are the actual tools to bring into a checklist and the way to do user research to make your products more inclusive and equitable. And I guess through all this work, the question that sort of stood out to me that I was asking myself, a lot is what is required of us and our teams to create a more diverse, inclusive, ethical technology space and space in general. And this topic today is a little bit less...

What's the right word?

It's not abstract, but it could be seen as a little bit abstract. And I'm going to try and make it less abstract, hopefully. Because I feel like it's something that I've learned a lot from my work. Back in New Zealand and coming here.

And this is kind of... I saw this graph somewhere. A really simple one, but it talks about... We talk a lot about our products and we sort of talk about tools and how do we make products and buildings and the stable better and more inclusive and more accessible.

And the idea a lot that we learned, especially with indigenous teams back home, and that's what I'm going to base some of my talk about, is that how do we start with ourselves? And then our teams? And then our products? And I put a little thing here saying power of microcultures, because a lot of the times when I did work in the hospital or with tech teams, they're like, oh, but no, no, I am a good person.

I am progressive and I believe in accessibility and inclusivity. It's my bosses who don't. And then therefore I can't do anything. So, duh.

And I guess for what I've sort of been learning is about power of microculture. Like what is what can we do in our little field of influence, including ourselves? And we can do a lot. And because otherwise it feels like it's too big and someone else has, you know.

Responsibility or accountability for changing things. And so we will really focus on studying with ourselves here in this topic and this talk. And it's especially I feel important for people that identify, you know, as progressives or like I am the good person. I know what, you know, I have good values.

And I feel like actually we all have, we can all challenge ourselves because we all live in this world and we all hold, you know, principles and values that might not be like inherently ours. We've just absorbed them. And so how do we actually question ourselves and do better? Okay.

So theory of change. Fancy word. This is...

This is what we used back at home. This is a diagram on the slide from Emerge Institute. It shows an iceberg model. And at the top of the iceberg is results and symptoms and then structures.

But if we dive deeper underneath, it's paradigms, trauma and life force. And life force kind of being at the bottom of it all. And indigenous thinking from New Zealand specifically, but it's quite common in most indigenous cultures. Sort of the well-being is very much relational.

It's not, it's... We need to talk about healing and restoration as part of changing the systems and practices and not just changing system and practices. The specific diagram is by Luis Mara, again from Emerge Institute. The idea here is that when humanitarian efforts, whether it's digital accessibility, whether it's equitable, you know, policymaking and stuff, sort of if the efforts are undertaken without a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of the problems, that we, without a corresponding commitment to change the underlying causes, we sort of fail to produce meaningful results and over and over produce very not lasting transformation of the work.

So we would put some stuff on the top to fix the top and not really question the bottom and then the stuff at the top fails and we're like, oh, fuck.

Whenever I say fuck, people laugh. It's really funny. You all say fuck, I know you. So I guess here is if we think about like AI now, right?

And if we think about if the underlying paradigm of our modern society is seeped into like efficiency is core, we need to make things efficient and faster and better, then AI was always going to be the outcome because humans are the most inefficient things ever. And so I guess I feel like now with technology and AI is making us realize like what is human and propelling us to think more about like what is underneath all of this.

So how do we, you know, in the same sense, if efficiency and growth is the core of everything we are building, then excluding people with disabilities, excluding vulnerable people, like is enough. And so how do we question the underlying causes of what we do? So example here is, this is again, next slide. It's the same sort of very simplified iceberg model at the very bottom.

It has mental models, then it gets structures, trends and results. It's a similar thing of the previous one, just a bit more, I don't know, fancier words that we made for people who don't like to see life force on the slide.

And at the top, you know, example here would be, let's say a result is like a customer isn't able to use your website because it's not compatible with a screen reader. It's simple, like, you know, isolated listen or symptom. And the pattern could be, well, actually, we have no current users of our product that can, you know, or employees that work in our product teams who have access needs. And the needs, the structures could be, well, actually, we have no tools or practices or policies around testing our products accessibility or we don't hire or we don't provide tools.

And the office or our office isn't accessible. And at the bottom, it could be, well, actually, as a company, we value that it's more important to invest in growth at the beginning and sacrifices of everything else than building something for inclusion. You know, you can replace whatever you want at the top. And if you go back to the bottom, there will be similar things.

So I guess the idea here is like, actually, okay. So what I wanted to do today is not to talk about usually what I would do because people are really interested and want to talk about it. I want to talk about the results and how do we change the systems. And I want to talk more on the mental models.

And we're going to do a little exercise game on that. I don't know if you can call it a game. Sure, game. What I wanted to do first is sort of show some examples of the results.

And I realized that usually when I give presentations, I would show negative examples of like, here's all the things that could be done better. And I'm like, I feel like we have enough of that. So I'm going to show only positive examples of inclusive things just to show you. And then positive examples of structures.

And then we're going to go to mental models. But if you want to imagine negative, you can. They're everywhere around us. You don't need much imagination for that.

There's some examples of like really simple things. I was sitting around and I was like, okay, let me find all the things, like just random, do my random day to see like what is inclusive from different perspectives. So this is like Air New Zealand website when I was booking, when I was booking a flight to New York. They have so many dropdown menus, asking for special assistance for meal variations, for assistance at the airport, assistance at the plane, the chair width and leg room and everything.

And there's so many options as you can see, you know, it says blind passenger, blind passenger traveling with a guide dog, certified service dog, deaf passenger, wheelchair, unable to walk long distances, can use stairs and walk to seat, many more other options. As an example of like, oh my God, it's pretty cool. Not many airlines. Well, I've noticed that some, most of the American airlines don't do that.

So like, okay, Air New Zealand. This is a famous example probably, as you might know, you recognize this Spotify. You know what I'm going to talk about? The green, the little dot at the bottom of the shuffle list.

So initially it's a white interface. And when you click on it, it's green. But if you're color blind, green and white makes no difference. So they add a little dot at the bottom.

For people who are color blind, they can see the difference when it's clicked. Simple digital screen tool. This is from Louvre. This is tactile images that are specially designed to represent the visual content of exhibitions.

And some museums are adopting that. So it's not just access by wheelchairs to museums, but actually access to experience art in ways that is different. So this picture here is a bunch of paintings that were recreated as sculptures that are tactile from different materials. And people can come and feel them and sort of can feel the art, I guess, in different way.

This is Woolworth, which is Australia, New Zealand, and I think maybe UK now too. Supermarket chain. They recently implemented a bunch of accessibility things in their stores. I have some examples here.

A visual alarm system for emergencies. Contrasting colors for doors. Reduce natural light in the entry area to avoid glare. Aisles have been designed to provide space for wheelchairs, mobility scooters, and prams.

Teams have been educated, trained, in supporting people with different access needs. Wide mobility car parks. Dedicated mobility scooter parking. And we also have quiet hours.

I haven't actually noticed, I was trying to see supermarkets here. I mean, it's New York. But we have quiet hours in New Zealand. So I think on particular days, particular times, there's no music playing and there's no light.

And it's like very minimal input so people can shop. People who have needs around too much. What's the word? You all whispered it and it's all blended.

Oversimulation. Thank you so much. I was like, oh no. I'm oversimulating.

Sorry? Yes. That's the one. That's the one.

And this is another example of when you might have... This is not accessibility. This is a more gender bias. But this was in music, in orchestra.

When I was working for a music education app, we were looking about like, how come all of our users are men? And people were like, well, that's just how it is. Music, electronic music are just preferred by men. I'm like, hmm.

Let me look at history of that. And this is an example in orchestra when they would do... What's the word? Auditions.

Yes. For orchestra, they started putting the blind in between the judges, I guess, and the people who are auditioning. And they noticed increase in women being auditioned for the orchestra. So I'm like, oh, interesting.

And then they noticed that they actually made everyone wear soft shoes. Because the sound of heels would bias people against the performer. And the soft shoes helped, again, to have more women be in orchestra. So it just shows that there are all these different things we can do to reduce bias.

Whether it's, you know, the slide here says, what systems can do me better? Hiring, promotion, team dynamics, team education, web accessibility, product marketing, testing your product, success metrics, data cycle analysis, so many. Like literally everything can be done better. And here's some examples of better.

You can think about examples that can be bad. We use this, this is a lot of things on the slide here, but this is, we used for user research in the hospital. We had like quite an intense framework of checking, checking for like, is our user research inclusive? And so we would look at like, you know, when and where you were doing it.

Like literally, are you doing it at, you know, 12 p.m. on a weekday? And also who comes to that? Who has access to not leave work?

Is it held, for example, at religious? A lot of the times people hold things in the hospitals. Also hospitals. Oh my God.

Churches or church halls that excludes queer population, for example, coming in, depending on their organization. Is there trust? What kind of venue you use? Do you assume that someone has digital access?

Do you assume that someone has Internet speed? To access particular websites? It's quite an intense, like, you know, thing. And it was really helpful for us to make it really inclusive for user research.

A few of my friends and I afterwards designed this tool called Hello Access, where we hired people with disabilities to do user testing for companies. So a company would submit their website, and people with disabilities would like live go through it and record videos of it. And with AI, it would summarize it. And it would say, okay, here's your backlog.

And here's your roadmap. And here's top five things you can do based on the experience of people using it. And people could actually watch, you know, some sort of can go and watch people trying to use a website and succeed or not. And the last one is checklist, like, you know, marketing.

Again, Internet speed moderation. A lot of times we have built really fancy things. Is it accessible in countries? Are places or homes with low Internet connection?

Jargon we use, inclusive images we use, and so forth. So again, there are so many systems and so many tools and products. So I wanted to kind of go through it and then be like, okay, let's look deeper though, please. Let's go come back again to, let's come back at this model of the iceberg at the very, at the very bottom.

Like I mentioned before, sort of looking at this deeper levels is essential, but it feels that, it feels people feel a bit detached or that it's abstract or that it's not actionable or that it's not, you know, from like everyday life. And so what I want to do for myself and what I wanted to do in my work is how do we sort of call ourselves to reflect more deeply on who we are, the inherent sort of capacities and qualities we possess, and the purpose that gives direction to this work.

So I don't want this to work to be misunderstood as like passive or intangible or removed. Instead, it's like actually at the bottom of literally everything. There's a piece of art by my friend, Kaisha Young. It's a Chinese calligraphy inspired by jazz music that she does.

She actually lives in New York and paints these beautiful things. I want to read this quote. For when we look more closely, every system we seek to reform, whether political, economic or social, is at its core an expression of human qualities, our integrity or lack of it, our capacity for cooperation or inclination toward domination, our relationship with truth and our attachment to power. Without some degree of transformation at that level, it becomes difficult to imagine how the systems themselves could meaningfully change, as they will inevitably continue to reflect underlying patterns.

So let's do a little bit of a hands up game exercise.

I wanted to put a bunch of values and stories on the slide. And if you feel like you personally, or your team or organization, whoever you want to think about, have either thought this way or like relate to this at some point, and not like, oh yes, I believe this value is true. It's more like that has affected my work or my life. I would love for you to put your hand up.

Um, let's try.

Money is a proxy for human value. Have you thought that way? Has that come up in your work or in your organization's work, in your team's work?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's like maybe five hands.

Okay. Okay. Shy five hands. Like, oh, I don't think that way.

But how does that affect how we live our lives? Yes. Privacy is a reasonable trade-off as a consumer or as a creator. Okay.

10, 15, 30% people putting their hands up. Okay. A bit more. Yeah.

I mean, give me that $20 reward and supermarket and I will give you all of my data. Um, and as always, as a company, how often do we like, I've worked in companies where they would hide privacy statements and they'd be like, yeah, of course we hide because we want people to say, yes, I'm okay with giving you data. User attention is the essential gateway to growth.

Yes. Okay. Like 70% people. Mm-hmm.

Time is scarce. It runs out.

80% hands. Actually, almost everyone. Yeah. Yeah.

There's only a finite amount of money and energy in every transaction. Someone wins, someone loses. I love seeing people's faces. Okay.

Loss of relationships or depth is just what happens when you scale.

Yeah. 50% of people. Mm-hmm. And I guess like the reflection here is like, again, it doesn't have to be, I believe this.

It's like something, this has come up for me at some point in my life, in my work. I can make money first and ethics wash later by donating or giving back. Okay. Okay.

30% people. Yeah. I feel like it's a very common thing, right? And especially in corporate America and honestly, New Zealand is like, yeah, I'll just make money and then I'll figure out how to make, how to give it away.

I mean, our biggest philanthropy, literally every fricking fund for arts is based on literally this, right? Then you find out how they all fund it and you're like, oh, the Rockefellers are everywhere. I'm working hard primarily. I'm working hard temporarily so I can eventually stop working.

Okay. Almost everyone.

My goal is to escape discomfort. Things should come easily. Okay. Yeah.

50%. Thank you. I believe compromising my values is inevitable to make big money.

Okay. That is just like 20% of people. Okay. I want to talk to the rest of you.

We just need to give people what they want. Whatever is in demand is valuable to humanity.

Maybe if you had a little bit more time, you can give them 10%. Yeah. This is a classic idea behind social media and everything. Right?

It's like people want it. People are using it. Let's give them more. Amazon, people are buying.

Let's give them more. People are consuming. Let's give them more. We are not.

We are not rational. We are hijacking our lizard's brain. We should see the impact of our work and our timeline, hopefully in our lifetime.

Yeah. Yeah. 50% of people.

Metrics and money are how I measure my impact and value.

Yeah. 30%. Thank you, folks. Freedom means being untethered to people, place, and responsibility.

If you share hands, five people, six people. Yeah. Yeah. I had that a little bit.

I don't know. I'm an oldest migrant daughter with responsibilities. I'm an oldest migrant daughter. I had moments in life when I felt like, oh, one day, when I will have no responsibilities, I will be free.

I wanted to reflect on a few a bit more. How much time do we have, Ben?

Five, ten minutes? Five, seven, eight? Okay, cool. Efficiency is the highest good.

I feel like that's one of the most prominent values that exist in our society. And I kind of wanted to reflect on that. And for us, just quietly, what structures gets built on that when we think that efficiency is the highest good? What other beliefs are associated with that?

What do we end up building? When it comes to AI now, right? Obviously, everyone's talking about AI everywhere.

Of course, if efficiency is the highest good, what else would we be using when it can be made faster? There's this beautiful play. I wish recently I want to mention it randomly. It was about Australian indigenous people.

And the play... Actually, they had it in New York. People were waiting in Australia. And the play was about the white people coming, the British people coming on the ships and Australians being like, what do we do?

Do we fight? Do we welcome them? And it was this kind of beautiful modern play about them, you know, discussing it. And one of them was like, but have you seen the tools?

Last time they came, they left the axe. Like, can you imagine how many more trees we can chop? And this elder was like, and what are we going to do with all the time we have? Do we want to chop more trees?

And I was like, that's such a good example of like, we constantly keep making things more efficient. And what are we doing with that time? Like, are we? Yeah.

So, scale is the ultimate measure of success. And how that affects our life. Like, who relates to that? Like, things need to scale.

I'm more efficient. I'm successful when things are bigger. The company should have more users. If I'm a musician, I want to have more listeners.

If I'm an artist, I want to have more people who buy my art. If more data, so many things. If I'm, if I'm earning, I'm working on the thing. If I'm earning more, I'm, you know, I'm more successful.

That's not just capitalist, like, sort of corporate, right? It's like, artists are affected by that. People in charities are affected by that. How many people are we affecting?

It's always the goal. What is measurable should be measured. Is another one. People would relate to that, maybe?

Some? Okay. Yeah. 20, 30%.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because the easiest things to measure are like, if you think about them, are not always the best things to be measured. Easiest thing to measure is the numbers, like how much money I make, how much likes I have on Instagram, how many users we have, how many people click on the button, how many people come to an event, versus how many people are affected by something.

Right. Harder to measure. I can't ask every single one of you. Oh, maybe I can.

Afterwards.

Attribution theory. Attribution theory. Yes. Welcome.

Oh, look at that. This is a piece of art by a friend who is in the audience. Layered glass. It's beautiful.

I wanted to add it here. I can talk about this later with, or Isaac can talk to you about it later. If you want to ask him. He's at the front being very shy.

What are we willing to embody and cultivate in order to create the world we need? Like, what are the values that we are working on? And I want to go through a few opposites. And that's kind of the end of the talk.

Really, we're going to reflect together. So this is the same way. If you can put your hand up, if it's something that you feel like you're aspiring to. Challenges refine me, deepen me, and build my capacity.

No bypassing. The heaviness of my work grounds me. Darkness makes me whole. Does someone relate?

Okay. Let's put more hands up. This is the opposite of discomfort. I want to escape discomfort.

I believe that money carries the energy of how I made it.

Okay. Fewer hands. They feel like, no. Yeah.

I believe that being obligated to each other relationally is what weaves communities together. Yeah. Most hands. Thank you.

I'm scaling in service of my purpose not to fund my escape from it. Yeah. This is sort of the opposite to, you know, I'm trying to work hard now so I can exit later. Constraints and endings are part of healthy cycles.

Some work cannot and should not be scaled.

When things end, companies close, projects die, products get, you know, we see them as a failure in the sort of capitalist world. But how do we see them as a natural cycle of healthy things ending? We are interconnected. If I'm thriving, you win.

And vice versa.

Yeah. Most hands. My goal is excellence. Rising to the demands of my asylum.

This is... I want to think of this here because I think sometimes people think if we live by this sort of Kumbaya values, we're like, I just want to do nothing and chill. It's like, no, no, no. There could be an aspirational goal of like, I want to do excellent work.

I think we all want to, you know, our talents and skills and capacities to contribute to something. It's not even bigger than us. It's not just like, I just want to do nothing. Like, it's not, I think what most people are inspired or aspire by.

So, oh, there's two more, one more. If I'm building work I want to finish in my lifetime, impacting those I want to meet in this lifetime.

It's a classic thing to think about all the biggest movements, like workers' rights, women's rights, anything. It hasn't happened in a lifetime in five years. Just because I started my company or team and I haven't finished it. And I feel like I've changed this thing doesn't mean that I haven't contributed to a huge change or about changing next lifetimes.

This is a painting by a friend called Andrew Tao. It's called The Blue Dot. It's inspired by the photo of Earth. Blue dot in space.

I guess to end, it's sort of the personal level. I feel like the response does not necessarily require grand or dramatic action. But rather quiet and ongoing.

It's more of an attentiveness to the way we do our work. It may involve noticing, reflecting, asking different questions. Sort of the ability to listen deeply, to collaborate across differences.

It's mostly, it is mostly a very sort of, noticing things without harshness in ourselves. And then seeing how small things can change. Whether it's noticing that you're feeling like you haven't done enough. In your week.

And then noticing where that enough thing comes from. What is the value that sits underneath it? And being like, okay, if I wanna, is this that efficiency is the highest good? Is that productivity makes me valuable and worthy?

Is that scale is success? Do I believe that to be a value? What is the opposite of that? Maybe it's creativity.

Maybe it's rest is a form of, you know, liberation. Maybe it's something else. And so, in that quiet moments of reflections. Which seem like abstract and seem non-tangible.

Untangible. Intangible. I'll find the word. Intangible.

And seem small. And seem like they're not actually, you know, but they're probably the biggest work we can do. To shift that bottom... I don't know if I have a picture of an iceberg in it.

I guess. This is just some quotes. I'm sorry. This is the link to the model, the healing restoration model.

That solution we are not... Solution that we are searching for to change the systems that sit on top of it are not somewhere out there. But they're in here. And if we change those slight things, how does the system change?

Because if we are on a team all believe that we want to rise to our demand. We want to do excellent work. Efficiency isn't the biggest goal. Communities is most important things.

And being together relationally, we are obligated to each other. I don't owe anything to anyone. That's not a thing. I owe everything to everyone.

What system do I make? And then what product comes out of it will be quite different. And it feels like it's... Oops.

Sorry. Canva is asking me something. No, Canva. Don't ask me anything.

No. Okay. So that's kind of what I wanted to talk about is some of those models. And this is Kat Eghdamian.

She's a humanitarian person who sort of turned more spiritual during the beautiful Substack. I'm biased. She's a friend of mine. And if you want to listen to me talk about money and the same stuff I'm talking about now, but more about money and asking people how much money they make and how we can honestly talk about it without feeling shame and whatever else bullshit we feel about it, I have a podcast.

So, thank you so much.

Okay. Lina. Oh, hello. Was that me?

Nope. Thanks, Helena. We've got some good time for Q&A. I will kind of go back and forth between questions online and in the room.

Anybody got something in the room to start with? Or I can take an icebreaker from online. Yeah, just a sec.

Hi. I appreciate the behavioral science element that you incorporated because that's often left out in the accessibility piece. My question is, you know, going back to the scenario, right, where people would do the blame game of, oh, my boss. Or, oh, if only this policy or whatnot.

You know, since you're clearly taking a behavioral science lens, like, how do we use, you know, leverage that to work together, right? Because our superpower as a species is collaboration, but we often forget that. Yeah. I mean, I think there is, it's almost like sometimes I notice in my work, like, people need permission to do something in their own little way.

They don't need permission to do something in their own microculture or their own little bubble. And so what I've seen, at least personally, work is having those conversations and sort of shifting the accountability to like, hey, we don't need to change the entire company or your entire team. It's like, actually, what can I do in this, in my space? Because people often, there's this awesome person called Lily Zheng.

They do work around, like, diversity, equity, inclusion on neurodiversity and gender specifically. And they talk a lot about that, the behavior science of like how actually the culture changes from like small points in the company. And it feels like it's not. It feels like, oh, what's the rising tides, blah, blah, blah.

But actually that's how it works. In a small team, someone does something, they just literally, they're like, I'm just going to start. I'm a QA. My team doesn't give a bit.

I'm going to start implementing a checklist of something in my work for myself. No one asked me to do it. I'm just going to do it. And then slowly, slowly, slowly.

That actually gets like, someone notices it. Someone is curious. Someone asks a question. And that spreads and shifts.

And I feel like we can't underestimate the power of that, the microculture of like a personal responsibility. You don't have to get permission to do something. That's my little experience. Thank you.

One from online.

Big question. What is inclusive? Is it making tools to be more language? The tools we build will be more better.

Work better. The tools will be more better. The tools we build will work better if they are accessible in regional languages of individual users. So I guess the question...

I guess defining inclusivity. Yeah. How do we start? Right.

Is another thing. I think so. Yeah. Probably everyone has a different answer here.

I feel like everyone will have some good examples of that. I feel like from a personal perspective. I have some experience. I don't know about it as a destination.

Because there's just... It's impossible to... Not impossible, but it's just such a big thing if we think about how do we get there. It's more of a journey.

And so what I found personally is like whatever the team gets excited by the most first. We can start there. Whether it's... Okay.

We're noticing that our... In the my music education team. We had people who... People had to play instruments.

And then they would get an app. It'll get registered. People get a score. And we had a user reach out to us and said, I have one arm.

And I can never complete a score. Because I can play drums, but I can't do according to whatever you have in the game. And so showing that to the team was such an impact for the team. And they were like, oh, fuck.

Didn't... And so they... Like our learning team redesigned all the drum licks. Lessons with time to include options.

And so I feel like it's whatever team is like, oh, we won't address that. And then you start with that. There is no... It's really hard to be like, let's boil the sea.

There's many things. So I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure everyone has a different answer and different take on that.

But I just would have seen that as like, let's start one thing at a time. Nice. Other... Yeah.

Hey. I'm Kay. Hi, Alina. Thank you.

Okay. I'm thinking about how we reconcile. Like community values and obligation to one another inside of like an inherently capitalistic model where it's like, it's like me, me, me rise to the top. Hmm.

Who has an answer to that? How do we reconcile? Yeah. But I think maybe, maybe the answer isn't that sort of like, simple answer.

We're not eight people every day. Like, what does, what does it... It's a good question. Frankie, what do you think?

I'm thinking about how with capitalism, like, when we put money in a place to motivate people, like, Oh, if you don't recycle this thing, you'll get dinged or that, like, capitalism. People are motivated by what do I have to gain or what do I have to lose? And I'm wondering, I think we're talking about like, you know, like wealth or wealth. I'm wondering about how, I don't know, like how we can weave people's motivations towards supporting one another in the collective.

I feel like there's like so much movement already, especially, you know, moving to New York. I feel like I've seen so much of this kind of communities existing that they're trying to move to that different, like whether it's co-ops in terms of the like food co-ops or whether it's like living co-ops of communities. So there is, there is a saying that I like, that everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.

And it's like, everyone wants beautiful new worlds, but can someone else pay for it? And so I feel like it's this, again, the personal thing of like, actually, if I want to live in community, what can I start? Like rather than waiting for a friend of mine to come back and be like, let's build a community and I have a plan, be the person to have a plan. And like, so I don't know, that's kind of what I'm thinking.

It's like, actually, we can't just wait for someone else to come up with a solution. What can I do with my friends? Yeah. Did you have thoughts on that?

Should I add to that? Yes, please. Um, you said something before, I'm already so loud. Um, you said something before about the ease of a number, like it's very easy to, to measure.

And there's a book I've been reading that's been making me think that a lot of models, the why that you're solving for. Is money, right? Is the number, is that thing? And I, it made me start kind of asking this question of like, well, what if we switch out that why with something else?

Right. What if it is health? What if it is some sort of wellbeing? What if it is life force?

Right. And I think part of the answer to that question, right. Is, um, kind of actually having to change, you know, the models that we are basing a lot of things for, and that's a much bigger task and thing, but I think it's also very inherent. The way that we think about ourselves, because a lot of people are not doing well in the way that we're living now.

That was just my note on that. Yeah. Thank you. There is a thing in indigenous and New Zealand culture.

Um, it's called and it's when you don't, when you, the idea is that when we come together and we have to make a decision, it's not really democracy. So it's not like we talk about it and then we vote on it. Everyone has the same information. Yeah.

Cool. 60% voted. It's we don't leave the room until everyone agrees. And it's like, and you can imagine it takes poking forever.

Uh, so that's kind of the point. They're like, if everyone has the same information, we can all agree that like, someone must be like, oh, it's not the best decision I think, but I can see how it would be best based on the community. Um, it really annoys, uh, our West, our West sort of focused government when it's like, well, how long I wouldn't, wouldn't, you know, the roadmap needs to be planned.

And a lot of people are like, well, what is a roadmap? And so. That's kind of the thing, right? It's like, well, we kind of have to be uncomfortable and switch up and try.

I think there isn't like, this is the better way. It's like, let's, let's try do this way. Yeah. Iteration.

Exactly. Uh, one from online. Uh, what was the name of the play about the British people coming on the ships? It's The Visitors by Jane Harris.

Is it The Visitors by Jane Harrison? Oh, maybe it's visit visitors, maybe visitors. Uh, I can find it and send it link. It's some brilliant play.

I'd so recommend reading it slash watching it. I'm so sorry. I don't remember the name now. Don't worry.

Uh, cool. Cut it in.

It's funny and heartbreaking. Uh, I have to switch the camera and I'm not on the right place.

Um, Jennison Asuncion, of whom you might've heard, uh, posted on LinkedIn today. He reposted someone else. And the essence of what they said is that you. You have to decide not to care about certain things.

You can, you have to, in order to be, do the things you care about justice, you have to consciously not care about stuff. Can you comment on that? Oh, yes. I feel like it's such a, I mean, lifelong practice of deciding to not care about certain things.

It's, um, I think the numbers for me, a big thing, like, I don't know, one of the values was numbers. And I think I would be like, yes. Scale is not a thing and it's not about quantity, it's quality. And I literally have to check in myself every single time.

I look at like social media or like I have a podcast and I would get like one beautiful message from someone. Like, we'll say like, Hey, I've listened to this and really, you know, like, oh, this is so touching. And I will go and be like, but how many listens did I get? And get so upset over it and be like, oh, this is literally, I have to decide every single day to be like, wait, what do I care about?

Is that the comment and the info? Like, or is it just me? Is it the numbers? And so I feel like it's a, I bless you.

Um, I agree with that. It's a very conscious, lifelong thing, and I hope that it gets easier with time, but I'm only 32. So if someone older can tell me that they've fixed it, that would be great.

Uh, another online, how did a service design lens positively impact the New Zealand healthcare system for patients, for providers, for preventative health, community wellbeing? I love that. That was a big question. Um, yeah, it was, um, oh, I have bad news and good news.

We have a different government now that, that, yeah, they dismantled their entire fucking thing. Yeah. We're slightly familiar with that here. Yeah.

Inspired by your government, our government has decided to lay off like every improvement innovation design worker from healthcare system. Uh, but it's okay. Because we have election cycle that is shorter than yours and we're coming for them. Um, yeah, it's honestly, it was incredible to see like how much it took a while.

Human centered design took a while for the team, but we have a, we had a very small team that worked across literally everything. We had like 11 people for the, like Auckland, which is where I'm from the area. And it was like very, we literally, we worked, we did nothing that the classic bureaucratic government did. We would wrote no huge reports.

We did everything was like our team name and our team name. Everything was named after mushrooms. Actually, this photo here, um, is not by my boss. Um, oh, it's okay.

I'm going to go really fast and see if I can find it. Um, I, anyways, uh, the, the, the, the person, um, on the team, she's like a super enthusiast for like symbiotic and different relationships in nature. So everything we did was so like whimsical that initially all the doctors and like policy makers were like, oh, this classic design teams comes with their whimsy. And then we won over, they like would invite us and really like they, I mean.

You know, it's so much more enjoyable. And so it had a huge impact on how like healthcare, uh, it seems that we operated with, they loved it. They love the approach and sort of service nature-based like relation based. Yeah.

In the room. Nope. Got a hand.

Thank you. Um, I thought it was, first of all, thank you for the talk. Um, I thought it was interesting, especially when we were going through the second. Uh, I don't know, beliefs or whatever you would say.

Um, at least a lot of the things I was thinking was like, my mind was immediately going to one that's at least just in a work setting. That's a bold, like a really bold approach to take and also, uh, opposed to a lot of the things that were like tons of things that were being asked to do. And you know, the setting that we're in. Um, and another thing I was thought was what, um.

like my mind immediately went to like, oh, that would be really hard to like change or implement, which is kind of ironic because that's not, not what it's about, but how do you do that? At kind of like trust the process of yourself and really like stick to that personal, um, mindset and commitment without even in little ways, without getting like ahead of yourself and like thinking of bigger, bolder changes, more.

More people on board, you know, and building a culture. Yeah. Honestly, personally, recently what has helped, like, teachers, like other people who can really guide and help with that. I have a few sort of mentors that really embody, like Kat Eghdamian that I mentioned at the end.

She worked, she has like five degrees in the Oxfords and Highways and worked on the Human Rights Council and blah, blah, blah. And kind of came back to being like, man, I've been in the most rooms with humanitarian crisis and I just... I've just seen whatever we are doing, just, we're just repeating the same stuff. And so she kind of went, and so I've sort of asked her to mentor me, be like, hey, can I, can I spend time with you once in a while?

There's this person that came from, this wonderful teacher of a friend, a teacher, a friend who lives in India. He brought his teacher over to New Zealand and he gave this lecture to us. And it was this beautiful lecture about how we, and again, in a sort of cycle, a progressive circle of being like, I want to end the wars and change the world. And he was like, what about the war here?

Like, what about the judgment you have for yourself and for others? What about when you walk and you, the quick snappy judgment you have of a person on the street? Like, how do you fix, like, imagine what would happen if you, if you fix that. And so I think I'm just constantly trying to like, whenever I'm like spiraling, which is often, I would like, how do I have a teacher or person or something that has had more of that?

I don't know, you know, like juice from the universe to remind me. To like, oh, that's right, that's right. Small things, takes a while. So worthy, so valuable.

Thank you. The time got away from me. Great conversation. Unfortunately, that's all the time we've got for questions.

If folks online, I know there were a couple of questions that we didn't get to. How can they get in touch with you? Oh, that's a great question. Alternatively, we can also.

Just on the Accessibility NYC Slack. If you want to jump in there, folks can continue the conversation there as well. Yeah, then email, phone number.