Empathy is not enough  the power of engaging hard to reach users

Ariba Jahan PARISS: Hey, everyone.

Again.

This is our final talk of the evening.

So, this next speaker coming up, she climbed mountain Kilimanjaro, isn't that crazy, okay.

So, this is who is not in the room: Building better products by engaging hard to reach

users.

Let's give a warm welcome to Ariba Jahan.

[ Applause ] ARIBA: Hi.

Just so you know, you'll see me stepping on and stepping off a stool here.

I'm 4 foot 11 inches so some adjustments needed to be made.

So, I'm gonna give you a second to kind of read some of these headlines that showcase

what's been happening in our industry.

So, this  this is what we get when we don't challenge our assumptions.

Hi, I'm Ariba Jahan.

And today I'm here to share with you four ways you can challenge your assumptions to

avoid headlines like those.

And instead build better and more impactful products for your audience.

And the four methods  oh, okay.

And the four methods I'll share with you are helping us think through product development

in a new way at the ad council.

And I'm hoping they'll be helpful for you as you bring these back to your work.

So, for context, the Ad Council, we're a nonprofit organization that leverages the power of communication

to tackle the nation's biggest challenges like preventing wildfires and LGBTQ rights

awareness and diversity and inclusion and promoting girls in STEM.

We bring together industry leaders to develop campaigns to create social impact and create

action.

And as the director of innovation at the Ad Council, my responsibility is to facilitate

innovative thinking and work in our teams as well as cultivate a culture where experimentation

and curiosity can thrive.

And I get to do that in many ways including training our whole staff on Splash Box, which

is our approach to innovation.

And it incorporates methodologies from LEAN as well as human centered design with mindsets

to cultivate in our teams.

And to date we've trained 80% of the organization, giving us a shared proposal and toolset to

innovate.

And as a way to bring the training  the skills people learn at the training to life and make

them more tangible, we created a project where our new innovators can apply their skills

to create a digital prototype for one of our campaign issues.

So, today I'm really excited to share with you one of these digital prototype projects

where our assumptions got in the way and we had to use these  the four methods I mentioned

to uncover our assumptions and to really challenge them.

So, the campaign issue we chose was teen bullying prevention.

And the task at hand was, well, how do we leverage the power of technology, what it

is today, to answer this big question?

How might we influence teens to reduce peer mistreatment and empower one another by building

and perpetuating a more empathetic, supportive and inclusive culture?

Our target audience for this project were teens ranging from the ages 13 to 17 years

old who fell into the category of "Good eggs."

We defined" Good eggs 'as teens who believe they're good people and value kindness and

respect of one another and they want to be the best version of themselves.

So, as you can imagine, we were really excited to contribute towards creating a more inclusive

world for our next generations.

So, as any good team, we dug in n and did a tremendous amount of research.

From reading every single research report we could get our hands on about Gen Z, and

interviewing teens, teachers, as well as issue experts.

And our research gave us so many insightful findings, that we were able to come up with

over a hundred ideas and 20 concepts.

And we then showed our strongest ideas to team to get some early feedback on which ideas

do we refine, how do we refine them?

And which ideas should we be leaving behind?

After this many rounds of research and getting early user feedback directly from teens, we

felt pretty confident in our direction.

And we knew that whatever solution we create in order to solve for bullying has to solve

the three goals.

Our research told us that good eggs have an innate desire to create the change they wanted

to see in the world.

We wanted to show them that and their actions, hoping they will adopt the kinder behaviors.

And two, we should double down on social media.

We found out that 91% of Gen Z are on social media.

So, we knew immediately that we needed to prioritize and emphasize the role of social

media in our digital solution.

And three, leverage the rise of CGI influencers.

See, at the time, four computer generated based influencers are garnered over 1 million

followers on Instagram.

And we were kind of blown away by those and we need to do something with this.

Whether it's to do storytelling or to model good behaviors to teens in hopes that it works

for them.

So, keeping these three goals in mind, we refined our 20 concepts into five promising

ideas.

And then we took these ideas to teams to get some more validation and then start building

them.

And the main thing we learned at this round with teens is that we were wrong on all fronts.

What we focused on as goals were actually just assumptions.

Starting with the word bullying.

It turns out that the only people that use the word bullying is a bunch of adults who

want to end bullying.

[ Laughter ] And, you know, we learned that because we

talked to teens and when we asked them, hey, can you share your experience with bullying?

They didn't have much to share.

But when we changed our wording and asked, can you share the last time someone hurt you?

Or maybe when you've hurt someone else?

They shared stories about being excluded, shaming, blaming.

And there was just so much more vulnerability involved.

So, it turned out that their language around mistreatment looked very different than ours.

And they're actually way more self aware than we give them credit for.

We asked them, can you think about a moment where you mistreated someone or you hurt someone.

And when they did that, they used words like regret, guilt, is upset as how they felt afterwards.

So, they're clearly fully aware of the implications of their actions.

And it turned out that even though 91% of Gen Z are on social, they value privacy and

authenticity way more than what we knew.

To the point where they have two types of Instagram accounts.

One is called Finsta which is fake Instagram account.

And that is where they are their most authentic self.

Photos are unfiltered, they keep it private.

No crafted captions and they keep the number of people who can follow that account very

small.

And then they have the Rinsta, the real Instagram account where it's hyper curated, well crafted

captions.

Perhaps even song lyrics and that's where they want to have a lot of followers.

And when it came down to CGI influencers, only like a few teens knew what a CGI influencer

was.

And even the ones that followed them only did it out of curiosity for the character's

fashion.

And if you  I'm not so sure if you can read it, but if you can look at their handwritten

feedback on the screen, you'll notice what they wanted instead was someone relatable.

Someone who might have had a tough childhood.

Someone who has gone through issues.

And they also wanted someone funny.

I really think just wanted Kevin Hart.

[ Laughter ] So, our assumptions were checked.

You know?

And before I dive into the four tactics that allowed us to uncover these assumptions, I

want to talk about assumptions for a second.

You know, assumptions  assumption is something we believe to be true without any evidence.

And the reason it's so easy for our assumptions and biases to come into our work or to creep

up even after tremendous amount of research, is because our brain is constantly making

assumptions just in the interest of efficiency.

See, the thing is, over the course of 200,000 years, our brain has created several mental

shortcuts to help us cope and survive and deal with the tremendous amounts of innovation

in our world.

So, we end up having shortcuts that help us make sense of large amounts of information.

Shortcuts that help us determine what's important to remember and what to recall.

Shortcuts that create explanations for us when we don't have enough meaning or when

there is not enough context.

And shortcuts that help us act quickly.

These ready shorts that help us remember how to ride a bike, know 2 plus 2, help us detect

joy or frustration in someone's voice and to run from perceived danger.

While all of those sound necessary, these are the same shortcuts that cause us to make

assumptions, make snap judgments, jump to conclusions and make decisions based on our

biases.

And these mental shortcuts are more commonly known as cognitive biases.

And the thing is, with 180 of these mental shortcuts active in our brain all the time,

it's kind of hard to spot when they're getting in the way or when they're active.

So, I'll call out three that got in our way and we didn't even notice it.

See, we have a mental shortcut that causes us to be easily influenced by what is stored

in our memory or what's familiar.

And that's the way  that's the reason why all of us use the word bullying to describe

that interaction.

Even without even questioning does that language even resonate?

Does it even work?

We have another mental shortcut that causes us to make judgments and impressions by relying

only on the information made available to us.

And that's why when we see data like 91% of teens are on social media and they spend 9

hours consuming media, we're just like, oh my god.

They must be sharing everything and they're on it all the time.

Let's just like do everything social media related.

What we don't do is actively question, well, does this 91% do the same exact thing?

Did they all use the same features in the same exact way?

Do they all feel the same way?

We don't do that.

And the last mental shortcut I'll call out is that we're just naturally drawn to details

that confirm our own existing beliefs.

It's just what we do.

This is why we have friends.

This is how we make friends.

I'll look for someone who likes the same thing as I do.

Now we're friends.

And the thing is, that same bias is what causes us to find things that validate us.

So, when we were super hyped up about CGI influencers, we ended up paying a lot more

closer attention to headlines like these that said, oh, my god, CGI influencers are the

future of the influencer marketing.

And that's what happens.

So, while great for survival, mental shortcuts are not great for innovation.

And that's how easy it is for mental shortcuts that are designed to help us cope to get in

the way of us making products that are right for our audience.

So, for the rest of my talk, I will focus on how we used  is it jumping on the screen?

Because it's jumping here.

So, I just wanted to double check.

It's jumping?

Okay.

I'm gonna assume someone's gonna take care of that.

[ Laughter ] But I'll keep going.

So, yes.

I'll focus on how we used these four methods in the teen bullying prevention prototype

projects.

And I hope it gives you inspiration on how you can take some of these methods back into

your projects so you can challenge your assumption.

Okay.

So, the first one being mapping  oh!

Mapping assumptions.

I'll just read for a second so you can have the slides while I talk.

All right.

We're up.

So, the first one I'll talk about is mapping assumptions.

It's an activity where we actively  what slide is that?

Oh, that's not moving.

All right.

Now we're there.

So, it's an activity where we actively uncover critical uncertainties, unknowns and blind

spots about our audience, challenge and solutions we're thinking about exploring.

And the thing about assumptions, as we saw, is that they don't always look and feel like

assumptions.

They feel like facts.

So, it's really good to have a diverse team in the room so that we can all help each other

spot each other's blind spots and challenge each other's assumptions.

So, for our project, in order to map assumptions, we started by asking ourselves questions around

teens' experiences with mistreatment.

So, we tried to figure out like how much do we know the audience?

What type of language do they use?

What's their lifestyle?

What brings them joy?

What are their priority, pain points?

And how do they use technology?

And then we asked ourselves, well, what do we believe to be true about teen mistreatment?

How does mistreatment show up in their lives and how do they solve it?

And is this a challenge they need solved by us?

And just in general, what else do they know that we should know about and whose voices

have been heard?

When we did this, we had more questions than answers.

And despite all the research we did, we didn't know much about teens.

So, we took all of our assumptions and needed to figure out, where do we go from here?

So, to prioritize what we needed to dig into, we mapped on a 2x2 grid.

From known to unknown, and the Y axis was very important to not very important.

It and helped us tease out the critical uncertainties that we needed to figure out before going

any further.

To recap, mapping assumptions can really help us uncover our blind spots, what we believe

to be true versus what is actually true.

And critical gaps in the team's overall knowledge.

And answering these questions about the audience and the challenge we're solving for is a great

way to know where to go next, what to explore before going any further or investing any

further in the project.

So, after rounds of interviewing with teens and doing brainstorms within our teams, we

had about 20 fleshed out concepts and we loved them all.

But we had no clue which idea would work.

And instead of just choosing an idea, just praying something works, we decided to test

five of our strongest concepts.

So, we ran several experiments to explore Whether or not our ideas could create the

desired outcome we were hoping for and to garner any new knowledge.

And while mapping assumptions is a great place to start, testing hypothesis kind of allows

you to uncover all the invisible assumptions that we didn't even notice yet.

So, to test multiple hypothesis, we do two things.

We created hypothesis statements to get really specific on what we were hope our ideas can

do.

And then that helped us hone in on what are we hoping to uncover through test something

and then we identified our riskiest assumptions which were, what are the beliefs we're holding

about our ideas that if disproven completely break ours idea altogether?

So, in order to create these hypothesis statements, we reframed each of our ideas into a hypothesis

by using a Madeline framework like this.

You fill in the parentheses with the relevant information in your project.

So, we believe this audience has a problem doing this.

We believe this solution can help.

They will do this engagement resulting in the desired outcome.

So, going back to our CGI project, this is an example, our assumptions and our hypothesis

is, we believe that teens have a problem noticing the impact of their actions which leads them

to mistreat each other.

We believe that a fictional CGI character whose life captures the dramatic realities

of the teen experience, including teachable moments where the character models kindness,

can help.

And we believe that teens will follow and relate to the character causing them to reflect

and adopt the modeled positive behaviors in real life.

So, it really gets the team to focus on, what are we doing here?

What are we hoping to do?

Versus getting tied up in the features and the color and the UI of the product.

So, we did that for all five ideas.

And then we needed to identify our riskiest assumption.

We did that by first asking, well, what must be true in order for this idea to work?

Like at all?

And what must be true in order for this idea to add value to the teens' lives?

And then when we answered these questions, we looked through them and tried to identify

the ones that, if disproven, completely breaks our idea.

So, going back to our CGI project, we came up with a lot of things that we're assuming

and hoping to be true in order for this idea to work.

And what really stood out to us as our riskiest assumption was our belief that teens will

resonate with the CGI character.

See, if teens don't relate or follow the CGI person, like this whole idea is irrelevant

and we're not going to do anything.

But what's great about testing is that we can know that without ever spending any time

investing in, developing and putting the CGI character together.

So, by the time we did this for each one of our ideas, we ended up with like a list of

elements and interactions that we were assuming teens would love and engage with.

But had no proof.

So, all of the  all of them needed to be tested.

Like does anonymity really matter?

Do teens care about interacting with things in real time and user generated content?

And do they really value influencer oriented things?

And then we took those and we wanted to test them without having to build anything.

So, we used simple things like surveys and design prototypes to test all of those features

to figure out, like, where are we going?

So, to recap, the simple act of reframing an idea into a hypothesis is such a great

reminder that regardless of how exciting our ideas may sound, we don't really know yet

if any of them will work.

So, they need to be tested in order for us to move forward.

And to help prioritize what to even test first, we really hone in on the beliefs we're holding

on to about our ideas that if invalidated our idea needs to be scrapped.

And the thing is, being able to test our ideas before building anything is actually gave

us a lot of freedom from creativity.

It gave us the liberty to dream just a little bigger knowing that our audience would let

us know what to refine and what to leave behind.

So, let's go big.

So, testing multiple ideas with our users was super insightful.

But there's a limitation to how much we could learn through testing.

Because the thing is, when we have prototypes that we're showing and asking questions to

teens, they're only reacting to whatever we're giving them.

And that's why engaging and working with and empowering our users to create their own solutions

was so critical to see.

We coordinated with a high school in New York City and we  we hosted three co creation

sessions.

And we really wanted to understand how do teens perceive bullying today?

What types of digital interactions do they even enjoy?

And that list of riskiest elements that we were so excited about?

We wanted to invalidate or validate some of them.

And lastly, we wanted to see how would teens solve this?

So, what you see up here is a snapshot of the solutions students came up with when we

asked them to design a digital tool that could help people be more mind and inclusive of

others.

And/or to help people avoid hurting someone's feelings.

We purposely didn't use words like teen or bullying because we didn't to want mislead

them or drive them in a direction that's not natural for them.

We then got our user feedback on these new ideas as well.

So, the co creation sessions validated some hypotheses while invalidating others.

And what we learned from teens directly helped us design three new cocreated prototypes.

And the thing about co creations is, you saw how insightful they were.

But they also uncovered ideas that we couldn't have come up with on our own.

For example, our students came up with this brilliant idea which they called In My Bag.

In my bag is a phrase teens use to indicate when they are feeling emotionally unavailable

or sad.

So, this is an app that would allow users to air drop or somehow alert their friends

when they are not feeling emotionally available and they want to be left alone.

And you can see the handwritten feedback from other students on this idea.

And their feedback on this idea was super enthusiastic and very validating.

They said thing like, it's fire.

And you can tell people around you how you're actually feeling.

See?

Their comments showed us that they wanted to be vulnerable.

And they wanted to share how they were feeling.

Which is contrary to the social pressure they have to be tough.

So, the ability to uncover new learnings about our audience and hear ideas that we couldn't

have ever come up with on our own, is what makes co creation so powerful.

And by creating space for our users to join us in the process, we get out of our own way.

So, it's been quite a journey.

From identifying opportunities and researching for insights to coming up with over a hundred

ideas to then testing those hypothesis with teens and then co designing some with them,

there were moments when our ideas were invalidated and our assumptions were checked.

and the thing is, that's what learning looks like.

And also we made progress, it didn't come easily.

We went out of our way to find a diverse mix of teens to interview and worked with our

local high school to organize these co creations.

And we needed parents to sign permission slips, we had to work around exam schedules, homework

schedules, and we had to be totally okay if a teen suddenly flaked on a phone interview.

But you know what?

All of that  all of that relentless effort was worth it.

Because the audience we were looking to serve was not in the room and their perspective

was crucial.

And to empower teams to be this relentless, to chase after these unknowns, we must create

a culture where curiosity and innovation can thrive.

And what does that look like?

It's a team where there's less of a monoculture of thoughts and ideas but has people who seek

perspectives unlike their own.

Where we spend less time defending ideas and spend more time testing our hypothesis with

a diverse representation of our audience.

We spent less time looking for that one right answer.

And realized that we must create space for everyone to embrace the unknown and ambiguity

and just stay curious.

And instead of using language and reward systems in our workplace to heighten our sense of

fear or failure, let's just create a culture that's open to being wrong.

So, rounding off, I want you to remember that our brain has many mental shortcuts that are

really just constantly on and just trying to help us survive and hope and process the

world around us.

But those same shortcuts also make us do  make decisions based on our biases, make snap

judgments, and make assumptions and miss critical information that others wouldn't miss.

So, while we'd all like to believe that we're not that biased or maybe we're not as biased

as the other people, that thought in itself is a bias.

It's called bias blind spot.

So, this bias blind spot can cause us to let our assumptions go unchecked and affecting

our ability to make the right product for our audience.

So, I want you to remember to do these four things.

Let's try to map our assumptions and unknowns about the challenge we're trying to tackle

and the people that we're trying to solve for, and the solutions that we think that

would help them so we can uncover the gaps of knowledge in our teams and figure out,

what do we have to really explore to move any forward?

Let's test multiple ideas to see if they really create the outcome we were hoping for?

And a great place to start with that is really going after the beliefs that we're holding

on to that if proven wrong can completely invalidate our idea.

And let's bring our audience more into our process by cocreating with them so that they

can solve the things themselves and show us ideas that we can't come up with on our own.

And let's be relentless in making sure that the people that we're trying to serve, that

their voices are heard and that we have a diverse team in place to hear them and that

we are making sure that we're aligned with our product, goals and ethics.

And lastly, nurture a team that seeks perspectives unlike their own, values testing and can stay

curious.

So, instead of fighting the 180 mental shortcuts, evolution has ingrained in us, Let's use these

four methods to uncover and challenge our assumptions so that we can make better and

more impactful products for our audience.

Thank you.

[ Applause ] >> Thank you.

PARISS: How are you feel something KATIE: I'm pretty tired.

I'm pretty tired.

I just did some yoga on stage in the other room.

That took a lot out of me.

But I'm feeling good.

I had a good day can you have a good day?

PARISS: I had a really good day.

KATIE: Did y'all have a good day?

PATRICIA: Again, I want to thank the speakers.

You did amazing.

I know you were all nervous.

You killed it.

Great job.

Round of applause.

[ Applause ]