Through Texas Design Journal, I want to highlight how broad the design experience is through student testaments. Introducing Martha Czernuszenko, one of the first people to introduce me to design.
Tanvi: Introduce yourself!
Martha: Hi, happy to be here! I graduated in May 2020 with a double major in Management Information Systems and Business Honors, with Certificates in Design Strategies, Entrepreneurship, and Computer Science. I spent two summers at Apple (Design Operations & Business Analytics), worked in the social good space mentoring for Kode With Klossy, interned for AI Global, and researched for the Gates Foundation through the University of Virginia’s Data Science for Public Good program.
Tanvi: Very impressive! But with so many different experiences, what was the central theme that really tied everything together?
Martha: Thank you! I would say that all of my classes and work experiences look at how to use data to tell stories to drive business and societal change, and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to do that in various mediums.
Tanvi: How did design impact this?
Martha: Design helps shape these stories and understand which change to pursue.When shaping these stories, I think back on the Dean of Design, Doreen Lorenzo’s, advice, “design is leaving breadcrumbs for the user.” Design is the starting point for any user journey; whether it's building out a product or an experience, design tools and strategies allow us to build out a more effective solution that enables change. Even in “non-traditional” design settings such as data science, the best code is not always implemented; rather, it is code that focuses on what is important to the stakeholder (such as the Project Lead or End Customer) that is chosen.
Tanvi: Interesting. How did you develop this thought process and what would you say is the most important aspect to remember when thinking of a solution?
Martha: The design classes I took and the experiences I had really solidified the idea that user empathy is essential to the process of fleshing out a product. It is also extremely important to be open-minded when you take on a project, something that design classes definitely helped me develop. Always consider edge cases, scalability for your solution, and most importantly, the human problem you are trying to solve.
Tanvi: So you were one of the first people to sign up for the Design Strategies Certificate?
Martha: Yeah! The program started out relatively small but has been gaining traction in the past couple of years. The inaugural graduating class had around seven people and our class had around twenty. However, you do not have to be a part of the certificate program to take the classes - lots of people take a few classes that blend well with their interests!
Tanvi: Why the Design Strategies Certificate?
Martha: To be honest, I took my first design class, Design for AI, on a whim. My counselor recommended the class to me as an elective, but I ended up joining the certificate because I loved that class. I think what really spiraled me into the design world was the variety; I got to interact with a range of professors who had various experiences from startups to design studios which translated into different perspectives.
Tanvi: Are students typically from a certain major?
Martha: Not at all! Design is applicable to any field. I met a variety of people with different majors in my classes, ranging from Anthropology to Asian Studies to Engineering to Business.
Tanvi: So with such a range of students and professors, what is a consistent trait that you would say makes a person successful in the design world?
Martha: Having a very open mindset is crucial, but I would also say a curiosity to delve deeper into topics and knowing when to stop. For simplification, understanding which rabbit hole to go down and how far.
Tanvi: Finally, a field that endorses rabbit holes. What is something that you have picked up from design?
Martha: I definitely developed a mindset of prototyping and getting feedback on my projects early on. In the business and technology space, people often want to fully flesh out an idea before they even talk to any users. Not only does this waste time and effort, but it also gives very little space for feedback. It is really important to know when to start iterating on different features in your product, especially because it is very easy to deviate from what the user wants. The prototyping process works well for justifying my solutions to the teams I worked with, since I am supported by user feedback, engagement, analytics, and other elements of the UX process.
Tanvi: You’ve definitely emphasized user engagement. Why is it so important and when should we be cautious?
Martha: Solutions will not work unless you talk to users. You will need to prioritize action items that are user-focused, and this is essential for good long-term business planning. In terms of cautiousness, I usually check my “BS Meter.” Users tend to tell you what they want you to hear rather than what is true. Professor Garmon brought up a great study where a designer asked someone how they open a medicine bottle. They answered the question by stating that it was a simple process of twisting the cap open. However, when they were asked to actually open the bottle, they used a bread slicer!
Tanvi: A bread slicer?!
Martha: We are all guilty of doing this at some point. For example, users might claim they are eating healthy, but the junk food in their trash tells us a completely different story.
Tanvi: That one hits a bit close to home. What is your favorite thing that you have learned about or been introduced to in Design classes?
Martha: I really like the “How can we…” statements since they are a really nice way of framing ambiguous problems. The first step is trying to make the problem statement as simple and consolidated as possible, and in order to do this, it is important to ask yourself, “can your grandmother understand it?”
Tanvi: I like that! I am quoting it.
Martha: This idea is very applicable to problem solving, especially in research culture. I spent the past three months working in academia and one of the biggest opportunities that I saw in research culture was to shift the narrative of presenting information in a complex way to a simplistic form, especially for those who do not have domain expertise. How is research going to help societies if people cannot understand it? This is obviously very difficult to do because at times, the problems we are looking to solve involve how qualitative information like policies can be converted into quantitative solutions. Explaining the process to non-experts can be especially daunting.
Tanvi: How have you used design strategies when it comes to turning something abstract into a concrete idea?
Martha: Turning vague information into concrete solutions is a pretty consistent method across all the fields I have worked in, whether it was projects at Apple or at AI Global. With the Gates Foundation Case specifically, we were analyzing an extremely broad problem of economic mobility in states like Virginia and Oregon, and needed to figure out how qualitative information like policies can be converted into quantitative composite indicators.
Tanvi: Can you walk me through the design process for the Advancing Economic Mobility Project funded by the Gates Foundation?
Martha: Sure! We started out with a literature review to understand the landscape of economic mobility as well as to identify various frameworks. We went with Flora and Flora’s Community Capitals Framework and defined the scope of the project by analyzing one of the community capitals: Political Capital. After conducting some research in policies, we started getting feedback on our solutions from domain experts in the field. I was analyzing education policies, and since I am not an educator or government official myself, it was vital for me to get opinions from field experts. Being able to empathize and letting someone tell you “how to walk a mile in their shoes” is a skill I’ve definitely strengthened from my Design Strategies classes, and it changed the way I work through the problem solving process. Definitely talk to your end-users, but also involve others in the design process. Try integrating subject-matter experts into your problem solving process when you are prototyping and getting that user feedback. With this external insight, our team then started visualizing our results, quantifying our policies, and we finally developed an application for community members to explore the state of policies.
Tanvi: Moving a little bit away from the project here, what was your initial impression of design?
Martha: Sadly, I succumbed to the preconceived idea that design was all about “making things look pretty” and that it maybe extended out to branding. But design is so much more than that. It’s the secret sauce for great execution.
Tanvi: I really like that! I am definitely writing that down as a quote. What has been your favorite class as a part of the certificate program?
Martha: I would say it's a tie between the Ethics of AI and Women in Entrepreneurship. With Ethics of AI, I realized how important design is to the technical process. Here, design isn’t just designing for power users, it’s designing for fair and equitable user experiences. We really stressed moral issues in comparison to edge cases as well; one of the cases that we looked at in Ethics of AI was a self-driving car and the risks of it being hijacked, including creating a fake stop sign to disrupt traffic. I learned about the impact of considering responsibility as a part of the design process.
Tanvi: What about design in entrepreneurship?
Martha: Design is integral in entrepreneurship, especially early on, because it enables you to develop for the user and identify where to focus. After talking to classmates whose full-time roles were delayed or cancelled because of COVID-19, I realized that while some people were looking for internships, others were looking to volunteer or even to make wine. I bootstrapped Short-Term Opportunities, a website that uses Google Analytics to iterate based on users’ experiences. The website was a success! It has been accessed by thousands of users in 1,200+ cities and I would largely attribute this to the design steps that were taken before: talking with users and solving a problem. For example, an interesting metric that I noticed is that most people look for jobs on Sundays, and data like this helps me figure out how I can improve my website.
Tanvi: That is so interesting! Besides your side projects, what has been your favorite design project?
Martha: My Design Capstone class this past semester worked with Planet Texas 2050 to make climate change data and research more applicable to the daily lives of Texans. My group focused on giving recommendations from a data and technology perspective, so we looked at technologies that could be used for data interpretation. We talked to over 25 people from the TACC, Planet Texas 2050 researchers, journalists and the local Austin community to learn about how they access climate change information. We were able to identify an opportunity to connect Texans to research, so we essentially needed to figure out a way to make it easy to understand and drive value at the same time.
We came up with a brand, Climate Bites, which featured various products such as Climate Bites for Tots. Climate Bites for Tots is a video series where we had small kids ask researchers questions about their research. After getting a prototype, we were able to iterate from user feedback and started completing user journey maps to guide this experience. We then laid out several touchpoints and the differences in the level of engagement between researchers and the general Texan public. In the end, we provided a tangible solution with an implementation plan and brand guides to translate and communicate scientific research to make it applicable to the daily lives of Texans.
Tanvi: Any last pieces of design advice?
Martha: Prototype - get something out there and get feedback!
Key Takeaways:
Design classes are not boxed into one field, category, or industry! Martha’s focus has largely been in technology and public policy-related industries, as she uses data to drive societal change. Her use of design is integrated with her approach and problem solving aptitude.
Design is an inherent part of problem solving. Here are some key strategies to keep in mind:
Simplify the problem at hand! This not only allows you, the designer, to better understand the issue, but also allows you to better understand what the user wants.
Prototype, prototype, prototype! If you want to measure the success of your solution, ask the people who are going to use it in the future.
Engage with users carefully. Do not forget about the BS meter - users do not necessarily know what they want and do not want, but it is your job to observe the process they use to get from Point A to Point B and understand their pain points.
Design is everywhere - Side projects, classes, and the industry!
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