Episode 21: Building and growing UX circles with Khai Seng Hong
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core. Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year.

Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design. Hi, good evening everyone and welcome to another session of working in UX design. And today we have a special guest, Kai Seng, who is a friend and someone deeply respected in the user experience design industry. And he has been hosting many community sessions with his own company, which is Studio Dojo, which we'll be hearing a little bit more about.

So let me take a moment to introduce Kaizeng, but before that, just to share a little bit why we're doing these sessions. We first did these monthly webinar sessions because it was COVID and there were a lack of physical events, and therefore we wanted to bring the community together in

a fashion whereby every month we could be sharing something from invited speaker who's actually a practitioner in the industry and we've been doing that consistently for the last two years so tonight we have kaicing over here and kaicing has been in the ux design field since 2004. in fact he's considered a design leader in the field and was formerly the head of singapore for foolproof

a UK-based experience design agency. So Kaizeng is a firm believer in holistic experience designs that span digital, spatial, product and service domains. And he thinks that delivering great design for a client is only part of the experience.

equation, it's also key to help clients bring sustained impact and cultural change in the way they work. L&D learning is actually part of his bud. He has an educator background teaching at Republic Polytechnic, as well as he spent time growing the UX community in Singapore through the UXSG conference in the past. Throughout his career, Kaizeng has facilitated many workshops and training programs with C-suite executives and

and working professionals to drive cultural change within organizations around design and innovation. So Kaizeng is also a certified integral coach by New Venture West that involves helping clients to create and maintain habits of excellence that are self-generating and self-correcting. So we have a man of many talents tonight. Please put our hands together to welcome Kaizeng.

or rather our virtual hands of applause over here. So Kaixing, how are you feeling this evening? Yeah, I'm pretty good. I think I should have given you a shorter intro. It's a mouthful. It's all good. I think it really talks about the span of your experience and your background. And I've known you for a couple of years now, and I think we did a collaboration before a couple of years ago on a community event as well. And I know how important building communities and

And doing facilitation work is part of your DNA and what you're doing. So maybe let's start off with that. Tell us a little bit more about the work Studio Dojo does. And I know it includes teaching people how to do facilitation. I think Studio Dojo was a...

interesting start. It really started about two and a half years ago and I was taking a break from my previous job at Foolproof. That was like five and a half years of really awesome experience and I thought, oh, I'm going to take a break now. So I had six months to travel, back then could travel freely and just do nothing.

And I think slowly that allowed me to explore what I really want to do in my next opportunity in life. And I think little by little, the idea of like coaching people started to come in for me. So I was just doing that ad hoc and I guess it just grew and grew to supporting people and allowing them to learn in maybe a non-traditional way.

So typically, you go for design school and you learn how to design there. I guess now, yeah, there's like, you know, curious call. You go through this really awesome kind of experience and many different variations. So I guess I'm one of the different kind of weird variations of how to get better at design. So in Studio Dojo, it's really an exploration of the idea that design actually may be not enough. After so many years of doing design, I'm realizing, hey, sometimes you say designers can eradicate poverty or

save the world, you know, combat climate change. But yeah, I realized, hey, maybe not, you know. There are other skills and other perspectives involved. And so apart from design, I look at futures and futures thinking. So how do you design for 20, 30, 40, 50 years ahead? I'm also looking at organizational development. So how do I move a big group of people in the company?

It's a different skill from design and then leadership development as well. So how do I change as a person? Who do I need to be to improve myself or who do I need to change within the organization and develop?

So it's really that mix of these four that I think I'm trying to explore with Studio Dojo. I love the way that you kind of frame it and you said like these are explorations, these are things that you're interested in and you just decide to work on them and you recognize that design is not sufficient. There needs to be a mix of other skills inside and I think you mentioned something about organization development, you mentioned something about facilitation and I

I personally attended one of your workshops that you co-created on facilitation itself. And I think it was an interesting experience for me as an educator. You want to talk a little bit more about why should people embrace facilitation and learn facilitation, especially as designers?

Yeah, there's so many reasons. I think the biggest one is like having quite a few peers start out in UX, I think about 15, 16 years ago. So there was a bunch of us that were, you know, trying things out. And back then there wasn't even this term called UX, right? I was curiously tracing those of us who were really successful. So some of us were, you know, did really well, but some of us were like, wow, had really amazing careers.

And I was trying to find out, actually what's common about those people who are really successful and are like now heads of design, managing big teams, you know, like speaking in conferences overseas. And one of the big ones was actually that they are really natural facilitators. And I would say natural, I guess I don't mean born facilitators,

facilitating and having that skill. But I guess they were very good at, you know, being able to manage different groups of people, being able to hear from, invite different views in. People felt relaxed sharing ideas with them. People felt that they were in safe hands if conflict happened within a meeting, you know, especially when you have different departments coming with different constraints and perspectives.

And different KPIs, that feeling of safety to converse seems to be something that made them really likable and really desirable. And I think that made them really have quite successful careers. So I think that was part of me, like reverse engineering. Oh, I want to be like them. And then what's it like? I think it's really interesting that you mentioned that the skill of facilitation being one of the key attributes that you find in successful design leaders, as you mentioned.

You said that this is not a skill that they're born with. It can be learned and I know you teach it. So maybe for our audience over here, what are some of the high level things that we should look out for to get better at facilitation? I think the easy one is methods. So, you know, whether it's affinity diagramming, you know, giving people post-its and then having them put it all up

on a really colourful wall, getting them to sort them out and name the headers. So there are techniques like this or Lightning Decision Jam. I think those are the basics you want to learn and you probably can pick it up watching a YouTube video or going for some of these classes and readings online. One of the interesting things is...

having supported a lot of people going through this different people seem to have different mileages so some people when they read it and they try it out right wow it's an amazing thing and they're like they love the method and people love the method as well they love them as facilitators and then there are other people who try it and it falls flat or they didn't get the response they want maybe people like you know not wanting to talk or

Or, you know, the ideas are not so creative and it doesn't seem to flow. And I think that's where the additional layer of facilitation skills comes in, which is what are you doing that is either contributing or limiting that from happening? And when people learn these key concepts, which are not really process nor methods,

then they start to see performance doesn't become as inconsistent anymore. So one of the key skills is actually being neutral, for example. So how neutral can you hold yourself so that people don't feel like you're expecting an answer, that you are siding a certain group of people, or you have a preference, for example. So it's very common, for example, for UX designers to be

facilitating a session maybe where they are collecting feedback about their concepts that they design so maybe they've done three concepts and they're trying to you know collect feedback one of the things might be yeah maybe you love concept b you know like concept b is your favorite and you know yeah that's what you prefer but maybe the rest of the team might not like it so maybe you know you try concept a which is maybe the safest idea and you present it first and then you present concept b and then concept c is the wow idea that probably you know takes too much i

but just by the way you schedule and sequence it, people are likely to pick B. But at some level at the gut, people can sense this kind of what I call a fascipulation. It's a mix of facilitation and manipulation. It's very subtle. People can detect when you favor somebody or you favor a certain option and if you don't take care of that and you don't watch how you present yourself, people can pick

up on this and these are all really small and there won't be people to name it but if you let it build up across an hour of a facilitated session or entire day's workshop then people might start to get upset but they wouldn't know what and these are the little things that you know really make that kind of experience and performance as a facilitator much better for you and less inconsistent

I love that you introduced a new word called "facipulation" Is that how you pronounce it? Facilitation plus manipulation I think that's a very interesting word I think this also goes back to what you spoke about, right? This idea of neutrality and that you are creating that psychological safety as a facilitator and being able to do that would actually net the kind of outcomes that you want and how well you do that does affect the outcomes that you're driving as a facilitator

And thank you, by the way, for sharing these tips on being better at facilitation. And I think as you spoke about that, it really reminds me of this idea of building circles, right? Or drawing circles. And I love circles as an analogy because circles can be expanded. Circles can be...

sort of like come together and it can be mixed. And I know you're also very much into this idea of philosophy. That's why you call company studio dojo and that's sort of like a element of practice to it. You want to elaborate a little bit more on that and how it all ties together from a philosophical perspective.

I think the reason why I chose Studio Dojo was you can read it in two ways. So the studio part maybe is the creative, iterative messiness of like a design studio or art studio. Then dojo is like a place of discipline, right? It's like martial arts. You go in, you bow to, you know, your instructor and then you go through the kata or the series and then you sweat it out and you just...

keep going on and going on and I think it's this idea of yeah like creative practice you know it's a dojo for studio practices but it's also a studio meaning an exploration of what it means to be disciplined in doing a certain thing which is maybe design is there a creative way to make ourselves more rigorous in

the ways we do things. So I thought, I think that's a little bit of how I got the two names and smashed it together. Yeah. Tell me a little bit when we sat down together and we agreed on this title or this working title called Circles and UX Design Circles. How does that growing UX Circles, right? And how does that sort of resonate with you when you hear about Circles?

Yeah, they're great. Like in organizational development, everybody sits in circles. You know, circle is like the sign of unity. No beginning, no end. Part of it also is the idea that it is inclusive. It is encompassing. And I think I...

really like that idea and one of the reasons why is i don't know about you or daylon and everybody else actually but i never feel like i belong you know anywhere i'm quite an introvert so in like big situations in community situations in meetup i'm usually the one maybe near the food or the drinks you know and i'm probably standing alone i'm really like nervous yeah even if i'm you know get into the conversation i meet a lot of people or friends like you they learn

A part of me is like, never feel like I'm in the circle. In a weird way, then makes me really care about community and what a community means for others. Because a bit of me cannot access that. Seeing people in a community and enjoying themselves, like gives me that vicarious, you know, it just transfers to me lah.

I absorbed some of that. But it also means, yeah, I really take care to form a community or enjoy being in communities because of that. Maybe I'm trying to find my community. So, jumping everywhere into different communities, seeing how they happen, how they get formed and things like that. So, yeah, in fact, in Studio Dojo, one of the early blog articles we did was

We went to count the number of communities in Singapore in the UX field and wow, lo and behold, to our surprise, we counted like 29 small and big communities. Maybe it's time for an update because that's quite a while ago, almost two years ago. And some of them might have disappeared, some might have been born. So even within UX, if there's 29 communities, wow, that's like a lot, you know, to think about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's something I love. Thanks for sharing about that. And I didn't know you were an introvert, but...

Because you always seem like, oh, people want to come and talk to you. But I felt like you've always been an active community member as well as a community leader in various situations. And I think we've worked together very briefly as well on this community called Connectversations, which is about having good conversations before COVID. So I always felt like it seems like something that's quite natural to you. And I didn't know you felt like you were an outsider. Maybe you are someone who

loves observing right and that may have something to do with your background in teaching anthropological studies back at RP maybe that's just part of your personality and how you work and how you observe I like the idea of circles and I was first introduced to it in terms of learning circles that was the very first time I heard about it to me it makes perfect sense because if you want to learn something why don't you get people together who are interested in the same thing to learn together with you and

And learning circle idea really made me think very deeply about how we structure learning in even in our school. And I know you introduce it to organizations as well. So I was hoping that maybe you could share a little bit of examples. You don't have to share company names, but how does this idea of circling or community building exist in schools?

developing organizations or shaping cultures. I hear that you've done it for your stint in Foolproof several years ago. Yeah, I think what's interesting is tying back this idea of circles to UX or design, I see doing these communities and these circles also as design. But maybe you're not a UI designer, you're not moving pixels on a screen and

developing color values for them. But when you're designing an experience, a community experience, you are also, you know, considering certain processes that are very similar to UX design. So you're thinking about empathy, who's part of the group, what do they want out of the community? And yeah, you were mentioning learning circles. So there are certain communities that really prioritize

prioritize learning and maybe this group is as well and there are certain communities that prioritize practicing together and that's a different type of community like I guess a dojo right you go for your martial arts you go see people you know practicing tai chi in the park that's a community of practice and then there are other communities of a relationship where they just want to hang out and like get to know each other better you know or deeply

And maybe some of the Connectversations kind of thing that we did, right? Which is how do you start having deeper conversations right at the start and deepen that kind of networking, right? That can come in. And then the fourth one is like communities of support, meaning how can we help each other? And I think part of designing for organizations, I've realized the question is which of these four is the community that is needed and is wanted? Because each of the four have different, slightly different ways to set up and slightly different ways to

support them right and if you diagnose the wrong need you know like if you're solving the wrong problem then what you realize is yeah maybe the community comes it doesn't come it doesn't gel as well or it comes one day and then it dissipates you know and you probably have you know experience or you know you go for a workshop or a chat experience together and then at the end of the session is that everybody's like hey let's let's go on whatsapp you know let's create a group chat or let's create a group telegram chat and then it never really nobody else posts into the

that group chat, right? So that's the reason of the community has transitioned and it's a different need, but we didn't really take care to consider those needs and support that in a way. So I think one of the things I've learned is being watchful for what kind of community you're really designing for or trying to construct and create and just consider that as well.

So I understand that you were leading Foolproof Singapore with a team as well. Did you deliberately create any of these circles that you mentioned in the organization to kind of like support certain practices or certain way that the organization should function?

I think there were a couple. Definitely, there was a small community of leadership. So rather than me being the one leading, it was then supporting a group of four people from different work functions to come together to support each other. And then there were learning communities, right? So I think it was every Thursday morning, the whole team would come together to learn from each other. So I remember one of our team members, Samantha, was talking about her learning how to be a

kitchen in a restaurant working in a restaurant how did that mise en place and all the kind of things how did that really inform her design practice we had people who were talking about kendo and how that informed their practice so it's quite different things obviously some were a bit more design related but essentially yeah that was a community of like you know us sharing and contributing at the same time to

And yeah, so in my experience coaching for companies with Studio Dojo, part of it was also setting up learning communities for design teams as well. Because a lot of times, our design teams may be all over the place in different projects doing their stuff and they never really get together. So one of the key reasons that people really want to get together is learn from each other. What project are you on? What are your interests? Yeah, I heard like in organizations, people talk about gardening, you know, and how it relates to design. It's really creative. I think designers are wonderful because...

because they just cross so many boundaries, you know, and they can just relate. This is a really different thing and how it relates to design. These are the principles I learned. So it's quite awesome to see those like transferable skills. And yeah, so a few of these were also like taking half a day off every week to connect together, to play games together. That's also de-stressing, right? Especially if you've got a really stressful project, your timeline is going on, a little bit to de-stress, connect with each other can really help. But mainly it's communities of learning and support.

I like that you mentioned that and I am personally also aware that Studio Dojo has a community of practice and I know that sometime back you organized some design challenge where you invited people within the community who are UXers to come solve some problems. Do you want to talk about this idea of building the community of practice and why did you organize these design challenges?

I think the simple answer is I didn't plan for that to happen. Actually, you know, one of the social enterprises wanted to do something for mental health for youth. So they wanted to do research to understand how did youth start to seek help for their mental health condition and to understand that process so that we can design better to support them.

So they came to me, Kaising, Kaising, can you help me review this interview script? Which was their interview, you know, discussion guide. And after helping them, I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're just going to go out and interview people? Then I started to help support the interview process. And after that, oh, but you need to do analysis. And then they're like, you know, going to go about in a, I would say a layperson way because they're not design trained. And then it just went on and on until we found like, we thought, okay, to do analysis, one of the issues was it can't

take a bit of skill to do sense-making work. I thought, hey, you know, why not get some talented designers to do it? And one of the issues we found out was because design, especially UX, is so highly sought after now and the pay cannot compare to like five, eight years ago. You know, the pay now for UX is pretty decent, really amazing. But what that means is it's priced beyond the social service sector.

meaning the charities cannot pay such high salaries for such designers or to get such services from design organizations or firms. Really, what that means is, whoa, there's this group where, you know, they are focused on helping people, supporting public good, and they are really missing that really

important skill set, right? For example, we did social enterprise coming. So I was like, oh, is there some way to balance this off? And that's, I guess, the experiment, which is we sounded people out in the community, hey, who would be willing to take two weeks off? And there's two full weeks off, meaning you're going to be spending your leave with us and you're going to analyze this bunch of 40 transcripts and come up with some findings.

And wow, we were surprised. There were like 130 people who signed up for the information session in Singapore. So we're like, wow, that's like a lot of people who are interested. And in the end, we got 18 people. So they submitted their CVs and portfolios for us to review. There were so many good candidates that we couldn't, yeah, we had to pick 18 and we split them into two teams to do the analysis. And that's quite interesting because it's very rare that you have two separate teams

analyzing the same piece of data and they found different insights, which is quite an interesting thing. And they learn from each other. Another thing that we were thinking of when we designed this community circle was it's rare to be working with a senior who is different from somebody managing you or is the project lead in your company. And maybe sometimes when you do something like this, you can get paired with a senior with a different style and you can learn from them as well. So sometimes that's really good. We also got a lot of interest from

a lot of seniors and these are people with 8 to 10 years experience who volunteered for this as well who said you know what usually yeah I get to work with juniors and mid-level people but I never get to work with my peers you know because we're all heading different projects and so we never really get time to collaborate so that seemed to be a win-win for you know both the seniors you know the juniors and the seniors and then as the social sector as well so many circles kind of overlapping and benefiting each other I guess

I believe to a certain level that that was by design or it was very serendipitous and you're just weaving it as it goes along. Yeah, I think weaving it as it goes along was more like it. Because I know one of my students happened to sign up and was one of your 18 candidates. And she mentioned she had a really good time learning from people who were more senior than her. And it was like a good way to learn as well. So I think that was learning and that was...

practice, uh, learn and practice kind of like circle. If I were to frame it that way, will we be expecting similar challenges, uh, happening in, in future or like that's, that's kind of like just one experiment. Well, so that led to another one, which was about workplace health. Um,

mental well-being. So we actually got four organizations who wanted designers to go in and experiment with them for five months. So that just ended. So we're going to be sharing the kind of outputs of the work during Singapore Design Week in September. So a couple of weeks time. So do watch out for that. And yeah, there was another group

where we have three to four designers. We form them into groups. We send them into organizations like GovTech or a charity and an SME, and they will then open their staff up to do research, think of service design ideas to improve mental well-being. And then we were going to develop a playbook based on the ideas that came out. And that developed because we then...

laid on design coaches. We had a psychotherapist, 20 years experience, who was pairing up with them to bring these kind of innovations in and to see whether their ideas worked or not. So that was like an add-on. Are we going to do more next? Maybe. We may be doing one around sustainability and fashion. Yeah, but we're still thinking. It's quite a big exercise, so we're still considering.

I totally agree, it's a huge exercise and undertaking and kudos to you for doing that. I'm excited to see what you're about to share at the Singapore Design Week. And to me as you're describing this, it almost seems to me like meta-facilitation. We talk about facilitating within a group, but then you're like doing the meta stuff around the facilitation so that the facilitation could happen.

So it's actually really fascinating. We come full circle back to the topic on facilitation. You know, I've seen your company evolve and I've seen you do a lot of different interesting work. Is there like a direction or is there like a...

a way forward that you want to bring Studio Dojo and its practices more towards too? Yeah, that's something that our team has been trying to figure out. So recently we just finished our 10-year strategy. It took December till now to figure out. Three to four hours every week. It's 10 years for now, but a lot of it is intergenerational.

which also means there's a lot to do and a lot to think about. I think one of the things is to really understand what does it mean to be transdisciplinary. So I think a lot of people, you know, say they are interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, you know, transdisciplinary, but actually what does that mean?

it's not so clear and I think what we want to do is study what that really means. So to give you an example, so I was talking about the four domains that we are looking at before and we want to be in the intersection but actually what is the intersection? It's a bit like design thinking with organizational development. Great. So that's like red and blue Venn diagrams and then in the middle it becomes purple.

And purple, you use, I mean, as a designer, you know, you use purple to indicate in situations differently from blues and red. So there's a special quality to purple that gives it some kind of special meaning. So when you overlap two different domains, what is the new color that comes out that is neither red nor blue? You know what I mean?

It's neither design nor OD. It's something on its own. So what is that thing? So I think we're trying to figure that out or trying to study how people think about that versus multidisciplinary, which might mean, yeah, we have somebody in red and somebody in blue and they are collaborating. But it's different from, you know, we are collaborating and creating this new color.

I think that's a very fascinating concept and thank you for bringing the distinction between multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary, like there's two things. I'm curious, what kind of problems require transdisciplinary approaches to solving?

Some of the things we have been trying to... So some of the projects that we've been doing that require some of that would be how do we set up a team within the organization to, I won't say predict, but plan for the far future. Because if they're investing millions of dollars into digital systems now...

Hopefully the trend doesn't change in five years time and we have to scrap the entire thing because it's a lot of money. So how do you plan 10, 20, 30 years ahead? And what do we have to do now? What kind of team setup can do that kind of a thing? So we may not be predicting the future but maybe we are prototyping different types of futures to stress test our assumptions right now and then we'll

What do we need to do? What type of people do we need to have? What type of knowledge or type of skills do we need to have? That's one. Another one might be, you know how in certain industries, the salaries are constantly suppressed? The cleaning industry or security or F&B. Why is that happening? Is it because customers don't want to pay? Is it because the business owners don't want to pay? Is it...

Because the staff members are not motivated and therefore, you know, the boss doesn't think they deserve more? Or is it, you know, as a general industry, certain pressures are happening? Actually, what is the issue? And how do we resolve this? And if you ask them people, you get at least 11 suggestions for how to solve it. And because it's so complex, yeah, these are where, you know, sometimes those transdisciplinary kind of skill sets start to come in a little bit more.

You need a little bit of design. You need to be understanding big groups of people. You need to have inspiring leadership. You know, it all starts to sort of mix together.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting you mentioned that because when you were talking about it, I immediately what triggered in my head was like, oh, this sounds like an economics problem. It's about systems. It's about structures. It's about supply and demand. But it might trigger something very different from someone else. And personally, myself, I've been trained in business. I've been trained in design. So I'm able to understand both languages. That's fascinating. Do you foresee the need for

designers to be more transdisciplinary or even like multidisciplinary I mean if there's a difference in that

So more and more, I think whether you want it or not, it's happening. You know, now designers have to work. Well, previously they had to work with developers. Now product managers, marketing, analytics people. It's just going to get more and more, I think. And, you know, with a lot of the kind of bigger unicorns as well, you're also working with people with different cultures. And then you have to understand how you work with different types of styles.

So I think increasingly more and more so. And I also guess it depends. I guess if you're still working at the level of a user interface for a mobile app, you probably may not need so much of that. But if you are going to design the end-to-end experience, you might then need to look at different touch points and...

you might have a bank branch to design together with the app, together with the service staff. And then you start to require quite different kind of skill set. And then if you're trying to support the organization's ambitions, that's again a different one where business and strategy starts to come in. And then if you're looking at the societal level, then wow, you're looking at multi-organizational perspectives. So I think the higher up you go in terms of hierarchy, the more multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary you might need to be

But just because if you just have the hammer, everything looks like a nail. And because it's so complex, you may need to be looking at quite different areas. And again, that's where facilitation comes in. The ability to pull different people together is quite key. That almost seems like sort of like a meta skill, right? That you need to...

have and get pretty good at in order to unlock the full potential of the multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary team members you're working with. I'm about to ask you some best practices on putting a team like that together, but I just want to maybe share an example from my end. And recently I'm putting together like a growth team for my own company. And I realized like, it's just centering the team around acquisition around like growing our sales leads or our

marketing qualified leads and stuff like that. So when I approached that idea of like trying to build a team around it, I realized actually for the longest time we've been trying to fit people in boxes, right? And we write this JD like, Hey, we need this person. And then we try and fit this person in the box. Right. And then I realized it actually, when I'm building this, let's just call it the growth team. I'm trying to build a multidisciplinary team that just gets shit done. Right.

and just get the goal, you know, get the results. And I'm like, why am I trying to fit people in boxes? Like I need this person, I need this person. I can agree I need specialists and I can agree that, you know, having a diversity of talents really gonna help and depending on the budget that we have. But if growth is the North Star and it's the ultimate goal,

then I'm also trying to figure out, hey, what's the best way to build the team? So I'm learning from you, basically, when you're doing all this futures thinking and futures work and trying to put all these teams together.

Well, I wouldn't say that's like a kind of best practice per se. I think... I mean, I'm also trying to hire and my own practice is I don't have a JD. You write your own JD after one month after you join. Actually, yeah, all my team members are like that. So I guess the kind of best practice

practice I'm trying to implement for myself, you know, eating my own dog food is find a person that cares about the mission and they'll find their own way to fit into the team to deliver success. I guess that's how I do that. So it's really finding somebody else that, you know, yeah, I guess you don't, you have a few like pillars to consider, but then really finding somebody that cares about the bigger thing that you want to aim for, because then you don't need to manage that person so much, I guess then.

then they'll try and figure out what to do. I guess there's also, you know, from OD perspective, there's always things like power dynamics, team structures. But I think team structure also is just one of the things that at least I learned in OD. There are many other things to consider. And actually a lot of organizations miss out because they think they're

restructuring a team solves a certain issue. And very often I think they think, oh yeah, let's just restructure the team. But it doesn't. And you do need management structures. You need reward systems to change. You need, you know, your culture, individual tasks, you know, how people see themselves, how they are managed, obviously your KPIs and things like that. So all of these need to be like considered as the entire network of support systems, little support system to support just the, okay, I need to build this team.

Or at least now that's how I'm thinking of it. I love how the conversation is going because it's so timely because I'm thinking about these issues myself, like how to restructure the team and thank you for saying that because it wouldn't occur to me to also like think deeply about all these other support systems that you mentioned about. And we're almost towards the end of the webinar itself and I was wondering if there's anything else you'd like to speak about

since we don't have any questions from the crowd yet. I don't have anything else to add. Yeah, happy to get some questions going. Sure. So we talk a little bit about leadership. We talk a little bit about facilitation and the power of circles. Among our audience, we have people over here who are not exactly people managers. They might be asked to...

to influence, they might be asked to do certain things or even like just work with stakeholders in general. How can the practices that you do help them get better at influencing? Does being a better facilitator help you be a better influencer?

I think so. I think the kind of skills you want to learn as a facilitator also can be quite key. So one of the key things that, yeah, in our design facilitation training, we teach is how to read power dynamics. And, you know, sometimes you're in a room with different people and, you know, some people talk louder or talk more than another group.

or somebody's paid higher and therefore everybody listens. Being able to read this and counterbalance that is important for safety. You know, they learn you're talking about safety just now, psychological safety. So that skill of understanding power, I think is really key. Knowing that there are seven types of power.

There's legitimate power, reward power, coercion power, knowledge power, expert power. You will then understand, ah, there's no one single way to gain power. And yeah, somebody might have the power to hire and fire you, but you might have another type of lever or power to balance that off. And that's really important even if you don't line manage because...

Actually, when you line manage, you start line managing, you get legitimate power from a hierarchy standpoint. But sometimes you're asked to work with somebody else from a different department and the hierarchy doesn't work anymore. And you're back to square one. That means you have no power at all. So if you can learn how to practice influencing and wielding power now, you're going to be using that later next time also.

Because actually a lot of managers have issues when they reach a certain level and they have to work together with peers and their hierarchical power cannot be used now because they don't manage the other team. And then they're stuck and they don't feel like they're equipped. So knowing how to wield power or to manage and influence while you have no power is probably one of the best places to start. It's not like the older you are, the more power you get. Or the more senior you get, the more power you get. It may not be that way.

Not necessarily. And I think like I sometimes tell people like don't only look at people who have the title, but also look at the people who are listened to when in a meeting, right? Like when people are actually listening very intently to what they're saying, those are actually people with the

power and I have this experience where the chairman is the one with the most power but the second most powerful is the PA because she knows when he's having a good day and when he's not having a good day you know when is he going to a cafe to like chill out is this the best time to be introducing your idea or when not to like

that's like real power you know everybody's like okay can you please give me an audience with the chairman how interesting and thankfully we have two questions one is about with regards to your business how do you get a potential staff or partner to support your vision and journey with you wow um

One key one is community. Like knowing people and being able to reach out then allows you to respond. And it's a little bit like user research, you know. You put a little bit of something out there, like Daylan, I guess you probably know. You put something out there, people respond. And based on that, you learn whether to do that same thing or not. And I think that's how I try and get a potential staff. So I'll put something out there, people get interested, you know, come and have a coffee chat with me. And then we want to call...

we don't really brainstorm. What we do is we heartstorm. I think brainstorm is where you think of ideas and like amazing things to do, exciting things to do. But heartstorm is what are you committed to? What are you interested in? What would you want to be doing for, you know, 10 years of your life? Like what is the meaning you want to bring? And I think that kind of heartstorming is where I try and find that.

So I got a follow-up question from the same person and can an introvert be trained as a facilitator? I think anybody can be trained. In fact, I think sometimes introverts can... There are some characteristics that introverts have which allow them to be really good facilitators. One thing is the ability to just stay quiet and listen, to hold silence.

perhaps. I don't know about you, but as an introvert, I'm very sensitive to other people's feelings. And, you know, being sensitive to them is really good as a facilitator. You know, when somebody got cut off from explaining, you know, and feels a bit, oh, somebody cut me off. And then you say, oh, you didn't finish your sentence. Would you like to continue? Even something like that, extending care to those people can be really critical.

And I think it's super important, right? Especially when you're trying to create more psychological safety or trying to draw things out as a facilitator. Yeah. And I'll also say like extroverts will probably talk no matter what you're going to do. So it's the introverts that you need to draw out. And I guess if you are an introvert yourself, you maybe have a sense of what would draw you to talk.

yourself and maybe you have some understanding of how do I get somebody else who might be a little bit more quieter to consider sharing as well yeah that sounds lovely thanks for sharing and and

And we have another question. Could you throw some light on product scalability while designing? Do designers need to think about scalability as well? That's a really interesting question. Kriti, is there any... I don't know whether he or she is able to respond. When you say scalability, do you mean designing for a massive number of users? Is that what it means? Or that the product can be used in many different ways? Let's work with the first assumption that you mentioned.

Yeah, I think now, you know, you have to consider design system all the time now. I think initially there was this idea where UX designers were taught to, you know, design mobile apps, websites from scratch. You know, they can redesign their grid systems. They can pick any kind of design system, design grid, what kind of color tone to use and palette to use. Nowadays, no more. There is a system. You've got to stick with it. You probably are piecing different approved components

components together rather than creating something from scratch. So that kind of sensibility, I think, will have to start to come in from a design education standpoint, which I think, Daylon, you do as well, right? So that kind of scalability is important to consider whether it ages well

or thinking long term as well, I think that's really where design research comes in. Because, yeah, you know, you can design for needs that come up, but really where I've experienced a lot of power is designing for evergreen human needs. The need for security, the need for trust, the need for, you know, safety, connection. Like, if you can draw upon those kinds of, like, if your product insights are based on that, then I think it can really scale for the long

or it doesn't have to shift a lot. So, you know, even the idea of like the iPhone and the interface, how it stood like the test of time since iPhone 1, just its simplicity is a testament to, you know, the kind of like long-term kind of thinking. If you can really understand the core experience that's required. And I think just to tie back on our topic at hand tonight as well on skill, do you,

I know your work involves future thinking. Do you actually think about or design circles or communities that are scalable or that are sustainable over a very, very long period of time? What are your thoughts around that?

I guess yeah it goes back to the need to what is the need right so is the need for learning like is it a community for learning for practice for relationships or for supporting each other and I guess yeah it's really fascinating to see like you know the web3 kind of nft community coming together to learn something completely new like you know if you're a season you're probably like six months into this that's like what like somebody's super experienced

But the idea, I think, is really quite fascinating for me. And yeah, I would say topics can definitely change across time. But I think it's that those kind of different intentions that really come together quite a bit. And I would say that would probably also help with longevity. But I think that's a question that I really don't really have a good answer to and probably good for exploration for the next five to eight years, I think.

I think it's an fascinating question. I mean, cause even as you mentioned about WebTree, people pay to feel a sense of connection, right? They pay to get access, to feel a sense of connection with other people who pay for the same things. And the fact that they're invested in this ecosystem for

the long term because it doesn't die, right? It's a blockchain. And the fact that they're exchanging whatever ideas or goods and services and stuff like that, it's so fascinating to see that happen. And in terms of how sustainable it is, I think that's still a big question. Whether there's longevity, whether there's like, it can continue, you know, beyond the

the founding phase, because you and I are community builders and we've built different communities. And I can see like whether it's web two, whether it's web three, whether it's physical community, it's about the system, right? And how it's being passed on in terms of like community building, which I find that's why your pillars of work is very, very interesting to me because you said, hey, there are four pillars, right? There are learning, there's learning, there's practice. What's the other two?

relationships and support. Relationship and support. So I think that's really fascinating to really think intently starting off from that perspective. What kind of community are we building over here? Which I don't think a lot of people ask when they build communities. Yeah, and it's interesting because there's like organizations like the Long Now organization

community is weird. So they are designing a clock that can last 10,000 years. That's their current project now. The Chinese Egyptian civilizations are only like 6,000-7,000 years and they're planning for a 10,000 year long kind of design. Like,

Like, how do you even think about language? Because all the languages we know are younger than that, like a few thousand years. And that's, I think, quite an interesting perspective to think about communities, right? Especially if you're thinking of really long-term stuff. Because the principles you use to design them will be quite different, even when you start.

Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the finiteness of human life or the finiteness of things, right, or even interests, for example, there's a limited amount to that. And therefore, when you're designing a community, when you're designing circles, it needs to take into that account that people's interests will fade, will wane over time and the community will evolve over time, right? As it changes hands, as it changes people.

It's a big topic of its own. I don't think we're able to explore every single element of it, but I really like how we brought sort of like an anchor to the topic today, which is why is it important for UX designers to learn facilitation and pick up facilitation skill? How does it help you as an individual contributor who is influencing stakeholders in the organization? And what kind of circles can you be designing

within your organization or within sort of like outside of your professional circle in order to learn, in order to practice, in order to connect, in order to support. I think that's been a really, really wonderful conversation. Lastly, I'd like to ask you, do you have any final words or final things that you might want to share and impart to fellow practitioners?

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of a segue to Raji's question, advice as a first-timer. So, and this came up because I was just discussing with my colleague about, yeah, our weird HR policy of when you join us, you have no JD and after a month, then you start writing your JD and you never stop writing it, which is this idea of it's really difficult to know what you want because in life, you know, you're given choices, right? So, even in school, what CCA you have

have, there's a choice for you to pick. You don't get to design what you really truly want. The subjects you take, there's no choice per se. You don't get to go on YouTube and just create your own curriculum. There's some distinct timetables and these are the lessons you go for. And throughout life, we never really are asked what we truly want. And I think part of the search, even in community, is what do I really want?

I myself find it very difficult to answer if it was like this blank slate, right? What exactly do I really want? And yeah, maybe as a first timer, being very clear what you want then helps you to figure out what kind of resources and what kind of communities you want to be in that can support your journey. And some would also share that maybe you don't know what you want, but at least you know what you don't want. And we can start there first through a process of elimination. So perhaps that's a good idea. Yeah.

I do very much agree. It's a very difficult question. It does take time to ponder. You know, sometimes that is a luxury that not everyone can afford to go on a sabbatical or like just spend time and think about.

it but if I think about the irony of it right like we spend so much time planning our holidays sometimes we take days to plan our holidays but we don't even spend enough time planning for our lives and our career we're so hasty about that

Right. So I think if we spend this amount of time planning for a holiday, I think we should at least spend that amount of time planning for our careers or more. That's something I can share. Yeah. Any last words, Kaixing? No. Yeah. I really enjoyed the chat with you, David. Appreciate it.

I appreciate it as well. I think we always talk about life design or design philosophy, right? That's kind of like how it has evolved. But I like the concreteness of it. I think there are some very practical ideas that people can take away today to kind of like frame their careers and the way they do things.

And yeah, Kaixing, I'm very appreciative of this conversation. It does trigger certain things for me as I'm thinking as a leader, like how I restructure my team. So I do appreciate what you're sharing today. And as for the rest, if you'd like to connect with Kaixing, I think you may do so over LinkedIn. He'll be more than happy. I think someone proposed a coffee chat with you. Are you actually open to that?

Uh, yeah, of course. Yes. Oh, awesome. Whether face-to-face or coffee online, coffee online is, he's open to coffee online as well. So I, I know we have an international audience listening to this. So feel free to reach out to Kai Singh. If you find the conversation today, very interesting. Um,

I know I did. And with that, feel free to look out for our next Working in UX Design session next month. We'll be having another speaker. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. And we'll see you around very, very soon. Take good care of yourselves. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please let me know what you think. Get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com.

I would love to hear from you. Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at CuriousCore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.