morning what does it mean to spend our
time well I spend a lot of my time
thinking about how to spend my time
probably too much I probably obsess over
my friends think I do
but I feel like I kind of have to
because these days it feels like little
bits of my time kind of slip away from
me and when that happens it feels like
parts of my life are slipping away
specifically it feels like little bits
of my time get it slipped away to
various things like this like technology
I check things I'll give you an example
if this email shows up how many of
you've gotten an email like this right
I've been tagged in a photo when this
appears I can't help but click on it
right now right because like what if the
a bad photo so I have to click it right
now but I'm not just going to click see
photo what I'm actually going to do is
spend the next 20 minutes but the worst
part is that I know that this is what's
going to happen and and even knowing
that that's what's going to happen
doesn't stop me from doing it again the
next time you know or I find myself in a
situation like this where I check my
email and I pull down to refresh right
but the thing is that in like 60 seconds
later I'll pull down to refresh again
like why am I doing this right this
doesn't make any sense
but I'll give you a hint
why this is happening what do you think
makes more money in the United States
then movies game parks and baseball
combined
slot machines how can slot machines make
all this money when we play with such
small amounts of money we play with
coins how is this possible well the
thing is my phone is a slot machine
every time I check my phone I'm playing
the slot machine to see what am I going
to get what am I going to get every time
I check my email I'm playing the slot
machine to say what am I going to get
every time I scroll a newsfeed I'm
playing the slot machine to see what am
I going to get next right and the thing
is that again knowing exactly how this
worked and I'm a designer I know exactly
how the psychology of this works I know
exactly what's going on but it doesn't
leave me with any choice I still just
get sucked into it so what are we going
to do because it leaves us with this
all-or-nothing relationship with
technology right you're either on and
you're connected and distracted all the
time or you're off but then you're
wondering that am I missing something
important in other words you're either
distracted or you have fear of missing
out right so we need we need to restore
choice we want to have a relationship
with technology that gives us back
choice about how we spend time with it
and we're going to need help from
designers because knowing this stuff
doesn't help we're going to need design
help so what would that look like so
let's take an example that we all face
chat text messaging so let's say there's
two people Nancy's on the left and she's
working on a document and John's on the
right and Jonathan Lee remembers I need
to ask Nancy for that document before I
forget right
so when he sends her that message it
blows away her attention
right and that's what we're doing all
the time we're bulldozing each other's
attention left and right and there's
serious cost to this because every time
we interrupt each other it takes us
about 23 minutes on average to refocus
our attention we actually cycle through
two different projects before we come
back to the original thing we were doing
this is Gloria Marc's research combined
with Microsoft research that showed this
and her research also shows that it
actually trains bad habits the more
interruptions we get externally it's
conditioning and training us to
interrupt ourselves we actually self
interrupt about every three and a half
minutes this is crazy
so how do we fix this because Nancy and
John are in this all-or-nothing
relationship Nancy might want to
disconnect but then she'd be worried
what if I'm missing something important
so design can fix this problem so let's
say you have Nancy again on the Left
John on the right and John remembers I
need to send Nancy that document except
this time
Nancy can mark that she's focused let's
say she dragged the slider and says I
want to be focused for 30 minutes so BAM
she's focused now when John wants to
message her he can get the thought off
of his mind because he has a need right
he has this thought and he needs to dump
it out before he forgets except in this
time
it holds the messages so that Nancy can
still focus but John can get the thought
off of his mind right but this only
works if one last thing is true which is
that Nancy needs to know that if
something is truly important that John
can still interrupt but instead of
having constant accidental or mindless
interruptions we're now only creating
conscious interruptions right so we're
doing two things here we're creating a
new choice for both Nancy and John but
there's a second subtle thing we're
doing here too and that's that we're
changing the question that we're
answering instead of the goal of chat
being let's design it so that it's easy
to send a message right that's the goal
of chat it should be really easy to send
message to someone we change the goal to
something deeper and a human value which
is let's create the highest possible
quality communication and relationship
between two people so we upgraded the
goal now do designers actually care
about this do we want to have
conversations about what these deeper
human goals are well I'll tell you one
story which is about a year ago a little
over a year ago I got to help organize a
meeting between some of Technology's
leading designers and TKE not hum take
down Han as an international
spokesperson for mindfulness meditation
and it was the most amazing meeting you
have to imagine picture a room on one
side of the room you have a bunch of
tech geeks right on the other side of
the room you have a bunch of you know
long brown robe shaved heads Buddhist
monks right and the questions were about
the deepest human values like what is
the future of technology look like when
you're designing for the deepest
questions and the deepest human values
and our conversations centered on
listening more deeply to what those
values might be he joked in our
conversation that what if instead of a
spellcheck you had a compassion check
meaning might highlight a word that
might be accidentally abrasive perceived
as abrasive by someone else
so does this kind of conversation happen
in the real world not just in these
design meetings well the answer is yes
and one of my favorites is couchsurfing
if you didn't know couchsurfing is a
website that matches people who are
looking for a place to stay with a free
couch from someone who's trying to offer
it so great service what would their
design goal be what if what are you
designing for if you work a couchsurfing
well you would think it's to match
guests with hosts right that's pretty
good goal but that would kind of be like
our goal
with messaging before where we're just
trying to deliver a message so what's
the deeper human goal
well they set their goal as the need to
create lasting positive experiences and
relationships between people who've
never met before and the most amazing
thing about this was in 2007 they
introduced a way to measure this which
is incredible I'll tell you how it works
every design goal that you have have to
you have to have a corresponding
measurement to know how you're doing
right a way of measuring success so what
they do is say let's say you take two
people who meet up and they they take
the number of days those two people
spent together right and then they
estimate how many hours were in those
days how many hours did those two people
spend together and then after they spend
those time together they asked both of
them how positive was your experience
did you have a good experience with this
person that you met right and they
subtract from those positive hours the
amount of time people spent on the
website because that's a cost to
people's lives why should we value that
as success and what you were left with
is something they referred to as net
orchestrated conviviality or really just
the net good times created the net hours
that would have never existed had
couchsurfing not existed can you imagine
how inspiring it would be to come to
work every day and measure your success
in the the actual net new contribution
of hours in people's lives that are
positive that would have never existed
if you didn't do what you were about to
do at work today can you imagine a whole
world that worked this way can you
imagine a social network that let's say
you care about cooking and it measured
its success in terms of cooking nights
organized and the cooking articles that
you were glad you read and subtracted
from that the articles you weren't glad
you read or the time you spent scrolling
that you didn't like right imagine a
professional social network then instead
of measuring its success in terms of
connections created or
messages sent instead measured its
success in terms of the job offers that
people got that they were excited to get
right and subtracted the amount of time
people spent on the website or imagine
dating services like maybe tinder or
something we're instead of measuring the
number of swipes left and right people
did which is how they measure success
today and instead measured the deep
romantic fulfilling connections people
created whatever that was for them by
the way but can you imagine a whole
world that worked this way that was
helping you spend your time well now to
do this you also need a new system
because you're probably thinking today's
internet economy today's economy in
general is measured in time spent the
more users you have the more usage you
have the more time people spend that's
how we measure success but we've solved
this problem before we solved it with
organic when we said we need to value
things a different way we said this is a
different kind of food so we can't
compare it just based on price this is a
different category of food we solved it
with lead certification where we said
this is a different kind of building
that stood for different values of
environmental sustainability what if we
had something like that for technology
what if we had something whose entire
purpose and goal was to help create net
new positive contributions to human life
and what if we could value it a
different way so it would actually work
imagine you gave this different premium
shelf space on App Store's imagine you
had web browsers that helped route you
to these kinds of design products right
can you imagine how exciting it would be
to live and create that world we can
create this world today company leaders
all you have to do is pry or only you
can prioritize
a new metric which is your metric for
net positive contribution to human life
and have an honest conversation about
that maybe you're not doing so well to
start with but let's start that
conversation designers you can redefine
success we can predefined design
arguably you have more power than many
people in your organization to create
the choices that all of us live by maybe
like in medicine where we have a
Hippocratic oath to recognize the
responsibility and and this higher you
know value that we have to treat
patients
what if designers had something like
that in terms of this new kind of design
and users for all of us we can demand
technology that works this way now it
may seem hard but McDonald's didn't have
salads until the consumer demand was
there Walmart didn't have organic food
until the consumer demand was there we
have to or demand this new kind of
technology and we can do that and doing
that would amount to shifting from a
world that's driven and run entirely on
time spent to a world that's driven by
time well spent I want to live in this
world and I want this conversation to
happen let's start that conversation now
thank you
you