#10 Systems, stories, and staying human in design

(00:00) Julia Petretta

I believe that this is what we were told for a very long time. like design was had this veil of, you know, like we’re helping people. And of course we have always helped businesses there’s a lot of,

(00:03) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah.

(00:16) Julia Petretta

a lot elaboration on top of this, know, like design was always a discipline for hire always

(00:32) Danny

Julia, Welcome to the Deeply Human Design podcast. I’m so glad that you’ve agreed to come. We haven’t really met, so people are going to witness us talking to each other as if we don’t really know each other. Yeah, thank you. And I think that discovery is interesting for people to see.

(00:50) Julia Petretta

getting to know each other. Yes, I’m very happy to be here. Thank you.

(01:01) Danny

I’m very curious and I think you are too. Nate, must be, given your illustrious career. Somebody messaged me and said they’d been to your talk, I think it was at UX Brighton, and they just said how inspiring it was and how amazing it was. I was doing a bit of homework just to learn more about you and I could see that you’ve been a speaker for quite a long time and done quite a lot of…

that space where you’re really sharing and giving something back into the community. And I was very impressed. was like, wow, that’s quite something that you’ve found that voice and found a way to channel it.

(01:46) Julia Petretta

That’s so kind of you to say, Danny ⁓ From my perspective, I probably still am exploring this voice and trying to find the niche a bit more. But yeah, I do get feedback that people tend to take something away from what I share. And ⁓ it’s kind of twofold, right? On the one hand, you feel like, wow, the…

they actually want to hear me say something. And on the other hand, you start feeling like, I better make sure that what I share is ⁓ meaningful. mean, you start feeling a bit of pressure on yourself.

(02:21) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, is. It’s something I was a few people have been talking to me about is like, finding your voice and that I feel like sometimes there can be this thing when when suddenly you’re like an audience member of a talk that you see the speaker and they just sort of this is this this is that UX is dead. This is this. This is this, you know, and it’s sort of like I found that quite intimidating. It’s like, well, if I were to go up there, what, you know,

would I have that commanding, what is my voice? Finding that authenticity, I think, for me has been important in those spaces.

(03:06) Julia Petretta

And I think it also changes in context, right? Like you’re on stage right now when you think about it. And it’s different, but you’re still showing up as yourself. So for me, it’s always this question, like, how can I be authentic? How can I be myself in this situation? Because this situation will not be the next and the next and the next.

(03:14) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah, like I think something that people have said to me, like, you know, they felt they feel so nervous when speaking on stage and, you know, and some people said, ⁓ how do I do it? And I’m like, I’m terrified. I being quite in the moment, like I think even now, I don’t feel I don’t feel scared. I don’t feel terrified. I feel a bit buzzy, maybe.

(03:43) Julia Petretta

you

(03:56) Danny

and a bit kind of like my mind is trying to stay here, but then it’s also thinking about other questions I could ask you. But yeah, I’m curious, what’s your feeling right now?

(04:08) Julia Petretta

Yeah, think, I mean, it’s very representative. When you go on stage, there is definitely a little bit of a different type of adrenaline because you don’t know the audience. And as much as you hope, there might be some friendly faces in it, but you just don’t really know how the whole of them together will…

(04:28) Danny

Yeah.

(04:35) Julia Petretta

respond to some of the words and sometimes you can pick it up like when they start taking photographs of your slides or ⁓ you see nods or smiles. It’s very different than, you know, this sort of one-on-one ⁓ conversation. The cues to pick up become so much more subtle and if you’re not able to see it properly, like if lights are bright or you’re very far from people, it becomes really, challenging to…

(04:43) Danny

Yeah.

Mmm.

(05:04) Julia Petretta

to read the room, so to say, and it is just a bit more personable in this situation. But I think the feelings that you describe are very much the sense of like, well, how can I be open to the moment, right? Like if a comment doesn’t land or I haven’t explained it or contextualized it or exemplified it enough, how can I frame it or storytell it in a different way?

that it might lean better. ⁓ So yeah, in a way, what you described to me is almost like that discovery mindset, you know, like, how can I stay alert, but also try to shape that path forward in the interaction.

(05:49) Danny

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I find and I find voicing it even like, I’m figuring this out as I’m going out. You know, I find that is actually quite helpful. And, you know, sometimes I do that in talks, sometimes I’ll just call out that I’m feeling nervous or something like that. And that will actually help me, you know, kind of feel more grounded. I, I, in trying to work, work out, you know, what we would focus on, I

I was really noticing in your career, like there’s this big draw. So for people that don’t know you, at the moment you’re product design manager at WellTech and you’ve had a history of like, I mean, I’m looking at here staff product designer, digital design manager, research practice lead, principal consultant, senior UX lead at Meta, interesting. In the poll, yeah, okay, yeah. I’d be really interested to learn a bit about that.

(06:40) Julia Petretta

You have to hold the sideboard.

(06:47) Danny

And it seems like you’ve skirted more on the side of strategy and system thinking. Like that seems to be a thread that I’m seeing. I think, did I read right, that you have a postgraduate in system thinking?

(07:01) Julia Petretta

⁓ It was an MBA in ⁓ technology and innovation and part of this was a ⁓ big part of that was about systems thinking. So yeah, it’s definitely cemented my way of thinking and my love for understanding dynamics and the fluidity of situations really.

(07:04) Danny

Okay.

Could you help people understand what system thinking is? It’s something that I’m quite new to. Somebody mentioned it to me two or three years ago. I had to Google it in the middle of a meeting and pretend like I knew what it was. But could you give me your ⁓ definition of it?

(07:37) Julia Petretta

Yeah, I mean, there are textbook definitions that are probably a lot more spot on, but the point of ⁓ systems systems or systems thinking is really around the interrelatedness of multiple factors that come together and it becomes a as a bigger part of its whole, it’s its own entity. So think of a car, for example, if you only have parts.

(07:42) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(08:03) Julia Petretta

They don’t really mean much and they don’t come to get like, they don’t really function and have utility in itself. But if you put it together, it actually helps you manage transportation. so, ⁓ systems thinking is really around like looking at, well, you have a whole that does something, but you also have all these parts that have to come together for this whole to do something. And so.

We see this in products, so digital products, physical products all have a system that comes together to function. But we also see that in organizational dynamics and ⁓ businesses, health as a system, you will have heard healthcare system. ⁓ These are systems where parts of a service or an organization dynamic

even policies will come together and ⁓ describe a entity really and how parts of that interact. So many times you will hear ⁓ attributes of feedback loops, you know, like being able to give in and receiving something back and they’re balancing and reinforcing feedback loops that are part of it.

⁓ And the other attributes of systems is that you have this interrelatedness, you like you have these multiple parts that come together, they all have their perspectives ⁓ and that these different perspectives are also really important in systems, like there is no one single answer that makes it all correct.

(09:49) Danny

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. I’m thinking like it lends itself so much to service design. And I feel kind of what UX used to be, where that was kind of what we were sort of told to do, is to think of the bigger picture, think about the context of why someone is using the product or service. And I feel like there was a time where, yeah, we would be thinking, oh, well.

you know, what’s this person’s life? And there was a bit of ethnographic kind of thinking and looking at the wider context that that person sits in to use your product or service. If that has system thinking, is that something that you like? Why do you think your mind went there? Because some people don’t like that kind of macro thing, because you can keep going, can’t you? Well, we’re in society, you know, we’re in a planet, you know, you can keep going. How do you how did you get drawn into that?

(10:37) Julia Petretta

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think some people that find themselves ⁓ close to system syncing, they will have had some form of affinity to it early on. So people that played with Lego, for example, I was really into typography for when I started out in my career and I actually ⁓ studied type and it is actually quite a good example. You know, like you have this set of letters and spaces and with that you

(11:02) Danny

Bye.

(11:17) Julia Petretta

generate a whole communication system. ⁓ And you like you have, you have even these interrelatedness of shapes in, in type and how they, how they make a picture. And that picture is something that we interpret as words. ⁓ I, you’re absolutely right. I always have been more in sort of the strategic ⁓ oversight. So one of, you know, there used to be this time where people would be like, what’s your superpower? And

(11:47) Danny

Yeah.

(11:47) Julia Petretta

anybody was asking, and I was super proud. And I had this go-to phrase where I was like, well, I really thrive when I can zoom out and then I can zoom back in. So being able to hold these two layers of, or stratas of what you’re working with at the same time, that was definitely a trait throughout my design work. ⁓

(11:59) Danny

Yes.

(12:16) Julia Petretta

I would even say, you know, like in the, in the last few years, I’ve gone deeper and deeper into product largely because, ⁓ you still have all these system parts that need to come together in product. Plus you have the organizational dynamics and what gets really interesting in product is that your constraints are really tight. So you actually have sort of parameters that push you towards execution. You know, like in.

(12:45) Danny

Yeah.

(12:46) Julia Petretta

In the traditional service design or UX, you can zoom out and it’s like, you know, where do I stop? Because these are experience, you know, like it’s so fluid. You can just keep going. ⁓ but in product, you, know, the constraints are there and that’s your operating canvas.

(12:54) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah.

boundaries.

Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of helpful, isn’t it? I was thinking, have you ever done anything like sort of system design, where you’re sort of using like actors within the system to co-design? Has anything you’ve ever…

(13:25) Julia Petretta

Yeah. So,

well, I’ve certainly done a fair share of, you know, like service blueprints, different perspectives on the same interaction, being able to look at what that process looks like, look at the ins and outs. And I still use that in my product environment now. You know, like you have different data points that come from backend and frontend and it gets layered together as an interaction. So I find knowing that…

(13:32) Danny

Yeah.

(13:55) Julia Petretta

multitude of actors against a process and a desired outcome is actually quite a universal capability, whether that’s in product or in UX or in service design.

(14:11) Danny

Yeah, because I think because you had said something to me. Well, I think I’ve read I’ve read something that you read is something about designing not just interfaces, but relationships and.

(14:22) Julia Petretta

I’m quite big on the context in which we design in because, I mean, you will have heard this, right, like in terms of design maturity used to be a big term and how that affects the efficiency and how we can actually see value of our work. ⁓ But in many, many organizations, my experience is that

You need to shape the work to be ready to execute on the work. And to me, that’s that piece of, well…

(14:56) Danny

So need to shape the work in order to be able to execute the work.

(15:00) Julia Petretta

Yes.

Yeah,

like, you know, there is a blog post, we probably need to link to it in the show notes or something like that. But it’s something that I learned actually in my time with artworks, but it was something that, you know, like when I first started out in design, you had not that awareness how important discovery is. Nowadays, we are much clearer on yes, there is discovery.

(15:11) Danny

Hell yeah.

(15:33) Julia Petretta

But there is almost a, I mean, in product, they use the term a lot more around prioritization and being able to identify the next best thing, know, the thin slice that we start with. But ⁓ I would describe it as problem framing or opportunity framing and context setting. So we all have these different perspectives on the problems we’re trying to solve.

whether that’s an experience or, you know, progress, basically just an intermediary for the experience. You don’t come in and say, oh, make this button blue. I mean, some people do, but that’s not the problem, right? Like, and we need to try to really unpack what is the problem we’re trying to solve. And if it is around value exchange, it is this intermediary of we transact.

(16:15) Danny

Yeah.

(16:29) Julia Petretta

what’s in it for this one actor, which is the customer or end user and what’s in it for the business that we represent. And this is the multi-actor and the system interaction, the interplay between these different parts.

(16:47) Danny

Reminds me, I, well, I was just, I did, there was two, there’s two projects I did. One was quite, probably quite easy just to, I’m just thinking about a way to make this quite tangible for people listening. And I was thinking, example I can think of, and perhaps you’ll have some too. I did a very brief piece with the NHS and it was for the sexual health service. And what they wanted to do was to explore and understand how to improve sexual health service.

particularly for LGBTQ people. you could imagine there’d be different ways to do that. One way might just be that maybe straight user research, you just interview people and draw out insights and then present it back and say, this is how the service could be improved, blah, blah, blah. What was quite interesting about the gig was that they were quite interested in what I now understand to be sort of system design. And so I…

ran a workshop with some GPs, this is in the same workshop, GPs, some people that identified as in LGBTQT. And we had like some of the people from the local clinician board and like a few other actors in that system and actual health practitioners too. And then we co-created a journey map of the experience of, you know, patients.

and they were actually in the session going through the health, the sexual health service. were sitting there, were coming to the door, you know, awareness going in, you know, first interaction, you know, getting some kind of treatment, you know, and we went through all the stages, but everybody was feeding in together. And what I really appreciated and, you know, on reflection about that was sort of like on one level, yes, I made a journey map.

I made a bunch of how might we statements and stuff. But what was quite cool was the conversations that started to happen. It was already going beyond the workshop because there was already a clinician and someone on the board and whatever who were going, okay, we need to this now. And they’re already making notes and stuff like this. it was sort of like, I think someone said to me once, it’s like you’re sort of brokering relationships within the system.

And then it almost starts taking care of itself somehow. You know, and that was something I was just thinking might be helpful to kind of make it quite real. You know, that indicates like a co-design with different people in the system, you know, relationships, trust was being built, you know, and change was happening, but not necessarily all by me. I it was almost beyond, I was just sort of holding space, but does that, do you think that’s, yeah, that was an example that came to my mind.

(19:30) Julia Petretta

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, you can even apply it to actual design systems work. So if any of the UXers or more sort of design executioners listening, you design components or you can design parts, but only when they’re used and put together, you know, you can actually see the utility. You can see the dynamics. How often is one component used? Is it useful? How do you negotiate the trade-offs? know, like

(20:01) Danny

Yeah.

(20:12) Julia Petretta

If we build a component in this context with that level of complexity, can it be reapplied in another context? Would it need to be adapted? So it is always this sort of like, I recognize this. Okay, now how can I use that? And is it relevant to me? And so this is how these little pearls on strings connect through the whole and different.

people will see, for example, the component as a different ⁓ level of utility or opportunity, right? Like if someone sees like, yeah, this is ready to use, great, I can apply it, perfect. But then maybe you have a very complex edge case and it’s not so easy to just replicate and you might need a couple of variants. I don’t know if that’s helpful to illustrate.

(21:05) Danny

Yeah, yeah,

no, I can see it. Yeah, I think what I can hear is like you have such a deep grounding in system thinking and methodology. I’m curious like how, because I feel like there’s this sort of watch out for me all the time of like methodology and thinking and then practical application and ⁓ what does it mean for a Monday morning? What does it mean tomorrow?

And I can hear a deep understanding of the theory. And I’m just thinking like, of examples of like, how does that work in a workshop? How does that work in, you know, when you’re on a sprint? Can you apply it in that way, that type of thinking?

(21:51) Julia Petretta

100%. I think it’s really being super clear on your boundaries. know, every system has a boundary and systems permeate, know, like system can be moving into other systems, but you have to really know what the boundary is. ⁓ And if you don’t know, you have to put a stake in the sand, you know, instead of say like, this is where I assume this boundary is and that’s we’re working towards.

(21:56) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

(22:21) Julia Petretta

And in product teams in particular, you know, like you do tend to have a clear goal. Like you either have a business goal or you have ⁓ maybe a P1 priority one kind of a, we need to fix something. ⁓ That’s a very clear, this is what we need to do. However, even though you have that sort of high level directive, you know, you might have a similar directive in a workshop, you know, like, we’re getting together to understand.

user journey mapping, you often need to unpack that. And this is kind of this, shaping, you know, like what is it actually? And I’ve worked with engineers that had to go and actually just run a mini discovery of, we’re going to fix this code. don’t even know what’s going on in this code. And so they had to kind of unpack that first in order to be able to act on it. And that’s a lot of, that’s very classic for systems work, you know, like we’re trying to do something there.

but we don’t even really understand it and we need to look at it from different perspectives in order to really like have a good sense really in how to solve this, like how to get to that goal. So making that a lot more concrete, ⁓ Monday morning, sprint planning, we know, ⁓ it can be a simple feature, right? Like, we’re gonna upgrade our checkout process.

You need these different perspectives. This is why we have cross-functional teams. So you might have a front-end engineer, a back-end engineer, a designer, ⁓ and a product manager. And they all go away and try to figure out, what does that mean from our discipline? So the designer will see, ⁓ how does that interaction pattern work? ⁓ Is it good UX? Is accessibility permitted? Is it thought through?

is the call to action clear. Now the product manager might go away and check the data and the logs and the conversion rate and the understanding of ⁓ how that affects revenue. ⁓ Maybe the product manager will also look at different markets and different ⁓ areas where the feature will be released and what kind of legal attributes there are.

So you can already see, right? Like the list just goes on. The engineers will have to look at, okay, how does this, how does that interaction behave? Is the right data flowing into that interaction or not? And I think this is like, I think we’re operating these system settings all the time. And this is really part of the substrate of our work is understand like bringing these different parts together because really.

(25:02) Danny

and

(25:12) Julia Petretta

design and product especially, it’s an emergent process. Like you can’t control it, you have to like hurt these bits parts together and there’s always discovery as you execute, always.

(25:26) Danny

Yeah, and I think that I can really relate with and how, you know, as you say, it’s an emergent process and all of that. in that system itself, you’ve got the cultural, you’ve got the political undercurrents that kind of, and this is something I think you’ve written about, like the cultural and political, if I’m glancing here, I’m looking at my notes, the cultural and political undercurrents that decide what really ships and how design leaderships and organisation maturity help or hinder good work.

(25:40) Julia Petretta

Thank

(25:56) Danny

And I think you said something like, sometimes it’s easier to fix a bug than to have a challenging conversation. We often don’t ritualise the social part of shaping the work. Do you recognise that? Did I get that right?

(26:10) Julia Petretta

Yeah, wow, I don’t remember when I wrote this, but I do remember that I wrote it. Yes, I think, but it’s exactly that point, right? Like it’s so ⁓ that social part, that relationship part where these different perspectives come together and you generate that clarity of what that work looks like for each discipline, because everybody will work towards slightly different parameters in order to achieve that goal.

(26:16) Danny

Hahaha

(26:38) Julia Petretta

We don’t spend enough time, we don’t invest, we don’t nurture that as part of our teams, right? Like we’re rushing to the next deadline and the next deadline and the next deadline.

(26:49) Danny

I think the thing I, one of these things I’ve been reflecting lot on is what I call the difference, and I don’t know if you’ve encountered it, between a transactional and a relational culture. You know how, I’ve been on some gigs where, I remember, I’m in one place, I turn up, my first meeting, it’s a remote call, I dial in to the team, no hellos, no introductions, there’s about…

(27:00) Julia Petretta

Hmm.

(27:16) Danny

Yeah, There’s about, this was a palm job too. I didn’t stay there for very long. And there was about six people on there and immediately they’re opening up a spreadsheet and they’re going through like, okay, so we’re gonna do this tomorrow, do this tomorrow, you know. And I’m just sat there, literally, I’ve never got introduced. And it was just immediately like, oh yeah, so Danny, are you gonna do this research next week? You know, and I thought on that and I was just like, for me that’s a really like transactional.

relationship and I kind of wonder like why does an organization shape itself in that way? Like how did that become the norm? That delivery manager thought that that’s completely normal to just have new people turn up on the team, not introduce them, them any context setting. Whereas I think of another setting that I’ve been in on a recent gig where, you know, there was a massive effort to onboard me, you know, like

(27:54) Julia Petretta

you

(28:14) Danny

I actually made an effort to put in half an hour with all of the team to meet them individually and stuff like this because I’ve just come to appreciate like everything is about relationships. And I’ve seen design decisions go away that I think is not that good basically because so and so and so and so didn’t really want to work together and they just sort of like rushed it through. Do you know what I mean? Like does that ring any bells for you?

(28:42) Julia Petretta

So very much, yes. And I think we all, like anyone working in the corporate environment has experiences of those, right? There are political systems at play that we are inevitably part of and it shapes our work too.

(29:04) Danny

Does that, did that come in, I’m really curious about the meta stuff that you did. Does that, was that part of that work that you did, thinking about these political undercurrents? Can you help me understand the role?

(29:14) Julia Petretta

⁓

yeah, well, I…

(29:18) Danny

as much as you want to talk about it.

(29:21) Julia Petretta

I won’t be able to talk that much about it ⁓ for various reasons. ⁓ Yeah, in many ways, the interest in understanding how parts, different actors come together in that system and partake ⁓ was also present in that role. And ⁓ the…

Yeah, I think, you know, like in organizations in general, what you just shared, you know, like in terms of like, people didn’t want to work together or ⁓ didn’t know how to resolve conflict. I think that’s often an indicator that the work can move forward in a, let’s say,

type of a way that is full of integrity for the actual desired outcome. know, like in this, what you described, this sort of transactional ⁓ environment will probably not have the opportunity to express the values that ⁓ you care about, for example. So when it’s about relationships, you will know by how much

(30:33) Danny

Yeah.

(30:39) Julia Petretta

a product or a service or an experience cares about you. We know that and we can see through that. And then if you do, if you are a values driven person, you will probably make your choice as a consumer.

(30:45) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It seems like quite a hot topic, doesn’t it, at the moment of sort of this. I feel like there was a time of like values driven stuff was very important and now it feels like there’s a pushback and it feels like there’s some sort of adjustment happening of like where organisations want to say, you know, rolling back, you know, inclusive practices and all this kind of stuff. I’m just, yeah, like I’m just sort of observing everything and kind of noticing how.

Some people are going all in and going, no, we’re a B Corp and we’re values driven and all this kind of thing. And then some people, some organizations are just sliding back. All of that stuff was temporary.

(31:40) Julia Petretta

Yeah, think we see, I mean, you know, we live right now in a really…

in an interesting time with lots of change and change feels accelerated in our current time also because of the acceleration of technology releases, you know, like even in our professional context we’ve seen several waves of technology coming and going through and those are are media that for us as designers or product people or people that want to shape these

interactions to to grapple with and it’s a lot it’s a lot right like you know we barely knew how to deal with the internet became commoditized and now we have and then it was voice and big data and now we’re at the big word everybody the two-letter word the other day with my 2x but actually so

(32:34) Danny

yeah.

Yeah.

yet.

(32:41) Julia Petretta

Yes, you know, like we, see a lot of change and with that, think organizations systems have to, you know, like this is, this is literally when these boundaries shift and they wobble. And with that comes this question of, this still something that we do? Is this still our business model? Is this still our values? And if you don’t have the practice of being able to reflect and

redesign or reintegrate and say yes we stand for that and we will make a business in this space and it’s possible or we will stick to our business model then you will see these changes of position and policies and agendas and of course that’s a huge detriment to many of our communities too.

(33:36) Danny

Yeah, well, you wrote, I noticed you wrote, the myths we tell ourselves that we design user experiences or make the world better. What if design’s real work is enabling value exchange, aligning human and organisational outcomes? But you sort of said, what are the core myths in our field? Is that what you’re speaking to in that sense that sometimes we think that we’re making a better world and maybe we’re not? that what you’re alluding to?

(34:05) Julia Petretta

Well, I believe that this is what we were told for a very long time. like design was like, ⁓ had this veil of, you know, like we’re helping people. And of course we have always helped businesses and we, yeah, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of,

(34:09) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah.

(34:32) Julia Petretta

a lot elaboration on top of this, know, like design was always a discipline for hire always we. well, I think, you know, there is something very human about the fact that you tell yourself like, this is what I do, but sometimes hard to really see the full picture, right? Like you want to be a good person. You want to, you want to do the right thing. ⁓ and it is so much easier to buy into that than to.

(34:39) Danny

Today we’ve been hoodwinked.

Yeah.

(35:01) Julia Petretta

step back and see, ⁓ this costs someone something and it might be very uncomfortable.

(35:10) Danny

Yeah, I guess it’s that thing, isn’t it, that we’ve been told you’re here to make an easy experience, delightful experiences, and we get fixated on that. And then actually, yeah, but that’s so that the company can make more money. Like, that’s so they can lay off another department. That delight will bring that misery. Not always. It depends what you’re selling.

Is that kind of what you’re alluding to in that we’re creating some system shift to some extent and then that will have some consequence that maybe we’re not focused on but might be happening?

(35:49) Julia Petretta

I think there is a repercussion. if we were to speak from a systems lens, you could call it a feedback loop, right? So you design a beautiful experience and it will have a ripple effect. And the design, sometimes the product folks don’t see that ripple effect because it’s a different part of the business that deals with finances, revenue, all that part.

I don’t think it’s always so intentional, know, like not all we, not all business is evil, right? Like they’re not, it’s not like we’re all just designing beautiful things to extract more, more, more money, more, more users, more, more scale. ⁓ but I do think that the, this is where, you know, like these other parts of the business come to play that when you don’t look at that.

you could easily believe you sit in this bubble and you’re just designing beautiful ⁓ experiences and it’s to improve people’s lives.

(36:57) Danny

Well, Airbnb, you you

just go, you know, go to Portugal and hang out in Lisbon for a bit. And it’s kind of like gutted out, right?

(37:05) Julia Petretta

Yeah.

And at the same time, I really doubt that this was the intent initially when Airbnb started, right? And this is kind of why these dynamics emerged. have something called scale distortion. You start having ⁓ players in actors in the system that you didn’t anticipate. So people that build their entire businesses and livelihoods on just renting out all this property. And it changes the platform too.

(37:14) Danny

Exactly.

(37:38) Julia Petretta

A friend of mine told me a story just the other day, know, like where people literally chase you not to write a negative review or just a neutral review. And it means so much. And so suddenly these these features that were really intended to increase transparency and trust now become such a like almost a cruel, so like a

a cruel habit of social engineering. How often do you walk away from an Airbnb experience and feel it’s okay not to write a review?

(38:15) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that vintage all the time. It keeps nagging me about I buy a little t-shirt for my son and then it’s like, it’s me to buy a review of the transaction. I’ve never I’ve never understood review because I just think well, I don’t get paid for it. You know, so why would I spend my time making someone’s platform better? I’m really cynical. I just don’t get it.

(38:38) Julia Petretta

Yeah

Yeah, I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it? Because I’m sure, like, I know this for myself, you know, like, I will definitely read other people’s reviews. And you kind of, you kind of start to understand and look at like, they said something that an incomplete sentence and you’re like, what happened there? And you’re kind of unpacking that in your head as well, because these are cues, right? They clues that something is like.

(38:52) Danny

That’s true, yeah.

(39:13) Julia Petretta

Maybe it’s not a great experience. Maybe I should, you know, be aware, make my decision on the back of that. So we definitely, I consume feedback for sure. I consume reviews for sure.

(39:24) Danny

How has this, we talked about values and system impacts, how has that influenced your career? Have you had moments of doubt or moments of reflection where it’s made you think differently about what you’ll do in the future? Has there been a kind of inflection point for you where you just thought, what am doing? I’m going to change, has that happened for you?

(39:51) Julia Petretta

lot. And I don’t know any sort of product and design person that hasn’t been through that. Because the way that our industry has changed a lot, right? Like we’re not seeing the type of roles, we’re not seeing the type of opportunities, we’re not having that rosy outlook that design thinking can fix everything anymore, right? ⁓ And, you know, we talked about like, why were we taught that? Because

There was a lot of idealism from a company, you know, from the US that came.

(40:27) Danny

IDEO

isn’t it? Do you think? Oh, okay, I don’t mind. They won’t hide me anyway, it’s fine.

(40:29) Julia Petretta

You said it.

Yeah, there were lots of sort of ⁓ good design heads and leaders in the space that had a lot of fun because it was a really opportune time, you know, and things came together and they were successful and they had a platform and it was just really good for them for quite a while. ⁓

And then we slip more and more. I think you probably see this, right? Like the traditional UX industry is kind of disintegrating in its core. It has different facets now. People are either in service or in public sector or in product. So a lot of it has moved in-house. The setup has changed a lot.

(41:16) Danny

Yeah.

(41:29) Julia Petretta

I, Danny, I know so many people that left the design field, even the product field, but mostly the design field, because it’s, it’s really hard in our times to feel you can make a difference. A lot of our UX patterns have been commoditized, know, design systems are out of the book and it becomes more and more niche, right? Like how do you get faster prototyping this and it…

(41:33) Danny

Really?

(41:57) Julia Petretta

I mean, the technical side of our roles is really deep and you can continue going into that layer. But when you were more on the facilitation side and when you wanted to connect more that sort of end to end, mean, a lot of these workflows have been quite chopped up and it’s very, ⁓ just stay in your box, just do this. ⁓

(42:22) Danny

Yeah, know. It’s driving me nuts, thing about… I had this experience earlier this year when I was applying for product design roles and I didn’t get one interview and it was just like… which I’d never had before. I’ve always got interviews, I’ve usually gotten the first job and I didn’t get much feedback, they never do, but it was like, essentially it was because I didn’t have a polished Figma.

kind of ⁓ portfolio. That was what I got down to is was like, they want this sort of taste and all this, but this whole thing of a generalist, it was like generalists that are very good at Figma. I keep talking about it on this podcast, but it just, it winds me up. It’s just like, I don’t get it because I just think it’s all going to get AI’d out taste and all this stuff. Like, it’s not that special. I really, I know it’s special now.

(43:10) Julia Petretta

want this thing.

(43:21) Danny

But I just think GPT-7, GPT-8, taste is going to be easy to replicate. I don’t think it’s that hard to get down to. Whereas I feel like the aspect that is much harder to do is being a generalist that understands system thinking. Because those points are not on APIs. You can’t kind of wrap AI into what the impacts will be of a systematic system yet. So I feel like…

frustrated that some of those skills around that broader thinking that seem to be less valued in the market at the moment. But yeah, I don’t know, does that resonate for you or do you not feel that?

(44:01) Julia Petretta

Mm-hmm.

⁓

Yeah, no, mean, 100%. And I think it is, you know, like, it is a factor why people are leaving the industry, you know, trying to find different opportunities. ⁓ Yeah, and, you know, the job field and the description of the roles is like an ongoing change, right? Like every two years, it’s a new term.

(44:15) Danny

Mm.

(44:33) Julia Petretta

And I definitely have this impression that the field of UX still is very much in that UX generalist view. We know these things go in pendulums and cycles and circles and in a few years time, maybe it is, maybe we’re back to the generalist role. It might be called something very different. But I have this feeling that we’re

we’re going to foresee, like, it’s just sort of my sense. have no real evidence. With this, with this particular technology change, I am expecting a lot more fragmentation for the foreseeable time. And in, in our adjacent disciplines, so in engineering, you would then, you know, like a lot of engineering senior lead roles are about architecting all these different fragments, right? And

(45:07) Danny

Hahaha

Really.

Yeah.

(45:32) Julia Petretta

⁓ I haven’t seen that trend yet in our sort of design field. It seems product takes that up further.

(45:42) Danny

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And how are you feeling in this? We talked about people that you know that leaving the profession. We can see a bit where the wind’s blowing, but nobody knows. But how are you feeling personally? What’s the temperature for you?

(46:03) Julia Petretta

Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. And I think it’s very situational. Sometimes it feels like it’s not going to be okay. The beautiful thing about being a generalist or having had the foundation of a pretty varied application ⁓ experience in design is that you learn

that the canvas changes, right? But the problem solving and the shaping the work, understanding the actors, working through what the actual target goal is and how do you enable a good outcome? How do you set your constraints? How do you design for these constraints? I haven’t seen that change yet. And so that kind of gives me a lot of

anchoring, you know, for me that level of the work has always been there, but the application layer changes, right, whether that’s on screen and it’s a pixel perfect interaction or if it is more at a facilitation level, know, like workshops and mapping and getting people to agree on a mental model to move forwards to a a ⁓ clearer objective.

That can vary, but I believe the process of really gaining clarity of what is the opportunity that we can design for and how do we do that as a cross-functional team of people, I really hope it’s not going away. And if it were to go away, I think we’re back to that fragmentation where parts just don’t fit together.

(47:58) Danny

So coming into the feeling of that, is that, am I hearing that you feel cautiously hopeful?

(48:05) Julia Petretta

We have to. I think this is always been our job, right? We’re designing, we’re facilitating human technology interaction. I believe this is why you’re doing this podcast. It is how do we reflect that human element in a technology-enabled environment? so, yes, technology changes. ⁓ Is it always the best thing?

(48:07) Danny

Yes.

(48:34) Julia Petretta

It’s hard to say when you’re in the middle of that change, but we’re shaping it. this is really, I think this is why I’m in this, this is why I’m here today, this is why I’m still sticking with this field, this is why I’m focusing a lot more on product now is because in this space, we have the ability to shape these interactions.

these value exchanges.

(49:04) Danny

to be part

of the change, not outside the change, right?

(49:07) Julia Petretta

We might still fall on our face, we might make mistakes, but we can try.

(49:13) Danny

Is that, and just to sort of think of something for us to, you know, given the picture we painted, is ⁓ that, how are you staying grounded? How are you staying, your feet on the floor? I can hear you’ve got a perspective on it that keeps you there. Are there any things that you do in your sort of daytime or personal way just to sort of hold some of the uncertainty? there any?

any ways that you support yourself.

(49:44) Julia Petretta

Yeah, well I’m lucky to have a really beautiful dog so I get to go out in nature quite a bit and just spend time just being and also just seeing another creature that isn’t so caught up in its head, you know, is really helpful to ⁓ change perspective and see something else.

(49:50) Danny

I mean it’s-

(50:13) Julia Petretta

⁓ I do try to, you know, physical exercise and like reflective practice. I do yoga and I love it. It’s really important to me. And then I think it’s another part is just trying to make time for art, at least to go and see it, to expose myself to it, because that is ultimately such a…

shortcut to human expression.

(50:44) Danny

Is that what

happens when you look at art? Is that what happens to you?

(50:49) Julia Petretta

depends on what art it is, I suppose, if it’s conceptual.

(50:50) Danny

Yeah, I’m really curious

about this because I don’t feel anything when I look at a picture, particularly, no. But I understand some people do, like some people cry when they look at a picture. Are you more in that camp?

(50:58) Julia Petretta

really? Have you done it? Have you?

No, not crying, but ⁓ have you done art? Have you painted or drawn or…

(51:15) Danny

I’ve done some, this is the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done. I did this on a holiday, but it’s some rocks. There we go. There was an art teacher who helped me do that, but I’m actually really, I don’t feel very confident drawing, like properly painting. So I kind of just stay away from it.

(51:20) Julia Petretta

Yay, let’s see it.

Nice!

Okay, awesome.

(51:43) Danny

I mean that was very therapeutic but generally looking at art doesn’t, nothing happens in me. But is that what happens for you? Does it sort of help you feel relaxed or I’m just really curious?

(51:52) Julia Petretta

Yeah.

So

what helps me looking at art, so I mean, I dabble. There’s like nothing to be proud of either, but it helps me generate a flow state. And I think that’s when I look at art, I can connect to that. know, like the sort of just being in, being, not judging, but just being in expression.

(52:05) Danny

Yes, yes.

⁓

you’re looking at a picture, I’m sorry, again, you’re looking at a picture, you can be in that expression just by looking at it. So I’m 100 % with you. If you replace that the music that I’m, that’s where I am. Yeah, I’m there music. I’m right inside it. But visually, like nothing happens. But

(52:31) Julia Petretta

Yeah.

⁓ yeah, that’s what it’s for. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think both music and art, even, you know, including art as a quite wide category, apply this to dance or even theater, you know, like just having that exposure to expression. And I do think it’s, it is something very human, you know, like, you can’t really replicate that in the same

(53:08) Danny

Yeah.

(53:17) Julia Petretta

Well, you can replicate a lot, ⁓ when you do spend physical time in that context, there’s an immediacy that I think comes back to connection. For me, that flow, it connects me to that flow state and it’s that connection to someone else tried their expression and they create something.

(53:26) Danny

you

Yeah, I have this image of you, you know, with your dog, maybe, you know, out in nature and I just, it just strikes me it’s so contrasting to the type of work that we do, especially if you’re thinking divergently and systematically and all of that, like, it’s almost completely, it’s a completely different state, isn’t it?

experiential, like feeling the soil or the leaves or the bark on a tree or the fur on your dog, you know, I mean it’s just it couldn’t be any more different really could it?

(54:25) Julia Petretta

It’s very textural or tactile really and I think that’s also really important that we don’t lose that connection to our physical environment. You you can get so sucked up in pixels.

(54:38) Danny

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you know, we’re actually working remote and you know, you’re on the screens all day and yeah, I can really see that. Like I think even just, you know, I used to commute to work and that, you know, I look out the window and the train and you know, you can’t, I’m gonna lose those things and it gets more sort of box-like, you know.

(54:46) Julia Petretta

Yeah.

this.

Yeah, so it’s a while back, but one of my engineering colleagues said, you know, like, we are replicating so much of our actual physical lives in the digital substrate. And it was like, yeah, you know, I mean, you could take that all the way to like metaverse. And I do like a little bit of speculative fiction, you know, when you when you read about like how

how life could be if we extrapolate and amplify the current tendencies in sort of the digital interaction. It could be quite an ironic, maybe even bleak picture, but this is why, know, like feeling your feet on the ground in the here and now and having that sort of sense of, well, we still all need air to breathe.

(56:03) Danny

⁓

Yeah, I think that is a great point for us to end on. ⁓ Yeah, but there’s some hope and there’s something just sort of human.

(56:04) Julia Petretta

It’s really awful.

Yes.

(56:19) Danny

I think that’s perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s been really interesting and I’ve enjoyed going round a bit of a journey with you to talk about everything.

(56:30) Julia Petretta

It was really nice

hanging out. Thank you, Danny, for inviting me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.