[Applause]
like most creative people I’m a bit of a
risk-taker what if the earliest risks I
took started with a guy that I met in an
elevator by chance in Brooklyn the next
day
we ran into each other at the bus stop
we got to talking and we ended up
blowing off our plans and spending the
day at the Museum it was only a couple
of months later that we ended up driving
across country to come here to Pasadena
and attend the Art Center together this
adventure could have turned out to be a
complete disaster but instead it turned
out to be a major turning point in our
lives I discovered a whole new field of
design as it was emerging only in
California and I became a pioneer in the
field of user experience now I work at
Google as a design director and my
husband you know the guy I met in the
elevator in Brooklyn by chance 30 years
ago he is a virtual reality artist at
Facebook but it wasn’t just chance what
looked like risky impulsive decisions
were actually creative intuitive
decisions researchers say that what we
think of as intuition is at its heart
highly developed pattern recognition and
that those that have never faced
negative outcomes or those that have
never failed have a critical gap in the
body of experience that intuitions based
on so we all know that intuitions
required to navigate new and uncharted
territory that’s why many venture
capitalists won’t even invest in a new
enterprise if the founder hasn’t
undergone failure because it’s only
through doing things that don’t work
that a person can cultivate intuition
start to recognize patterns and see
warning signs and make smart course
corrections
I’ve worked in the bay area since 1992
before the days of angel investing
before the internet was a viable
commercial platform before there were
college programs to teach students how
to build interfaces for software and
that’s just to say that I grew up in a
high risk environment as a professional
I’ve lived that fail fast and learn
experience every day for over 20 years
and as a result my wheelhouse as a
design leader is solving big ambiguous
problems that have no apparent path to
an answer so how do I lead teams through
this kind of ambiguity often I use
what’s called design thinking because it
assumes that there are solutions to
ambiguous problems and it helps teams
unpack those big problems and think in
unconventional ways to get to solutions
quickly this agility to solve design
problems and meet business goals
consistently it earned me a seat at a
table by 2015 I was a vice president of
research and design for a fortune one
retail company I had learned the
language of business and I had elevated
the function of design to a strategic
level the funny thing is that once I got
there I realized that my voice as a
creative intuitive thinker just wasn’t
as relevant there and many times really
just wasn’t welcome I was spending my
days and back-to-back meetings making
decisions based on prepackaged
slideshows I was traveling
internationally to be a steward to the
function of design that I was building
essentially I had become more of an
executive than a design leader imagine
working so hard for so many years to get
to the top of your career only to
realize it just wasn’t as rewarding as
you think it would be
but then something completely disruptive
happened a rare chance came my way I
wasn’t really even looking for a new job
when I had coffee with a CEO of a new
startup I remember I was looking all
over this coffee shop for the CEO person
getting impatient and then out of the
corner of my eye I see this woman riding
up on a bike it turns out that was her
that was the CEO she’s a woman and as I
learned later a legend in Silicon Valley
she was entering her 60s and spinning up
her third startup without even flinching
she had all this depth and engineering
and in building innovative businesses
but we were having coffee that day
because she had a gap in her leadership
team she needed someone to come in and
build her product management and design
team and when she was describing the
kind of design leader she was looking
for it was like she was describing me
intuitively I was compelled to pursue
this opportunity but logically it would
mean leaving the security I left for my
family behind I mean I was still paying
student loans in my 40s and I just
didn’t have the courage to pursue this
opportunity I remember talking with my
husband and saying you know since you
just started at a startup I have to be
the responsible one
I mean someone has to have a real job we
can’t raise our two kids and both be
working at startups I remember you said
to me Sahra you’re the only person in
this room that’s saying that
and when I heard that I was the only one
holding myself back
I really felt challenged to go after
what I wanted and then I realized this
big problem were to take my future I
could flip the Design Thinking methods
that I use at work and apply them to my
life so I asked her friend who was out
of town for a long weekend if I could
use her house and I packed up my design
thinking tool kit post-it notes Sharpie
pens tape dots to vote with and I set
out to run a three days sprint to tackle
this problem of where to take my career
in design thinking we use a critical
question that always starts with how
might we in order to encourage divergent
thinking and delay judgment and be more
open to new ideas
so what was the question that would lead
me forward it was how might I align my
career and my purpose so I became a
participant observer and a research
study of my life and post-it notes I
wrote down all the pain points that I
experienced in my career and I put them
on a timeline at a tape and then I used
dots to identify all the points in that
timeline where I really grew and I
thrived
at the end of this exercise I realized
that the next phase of my career would
be about working closely with teens
again in men being part of and being
present for that moment when ideas just
click I realized this was my opportunity
this was my chance to align my purpose
in my career so my next chapter began I
stepped into this new environment after
only two weeks between jobs and the
stark contrast and realities was almost
paralyzing at a startup you have zero
ramped up time and a very short runway
to envision a product build it launch it
prove value and pivot to do the next
thing
the pace is intense and the constant
uncertainty can be daunting and if that
wasn’t enough I was switching from
designing consumer software to tackling
the complexity of building enterprise
software I was taking on the leadership
role for not just research and design
but also for product management my work
structure was so my work environment was
so unstructured that I really started
spinning and doubt turned into fear and
things that used to be easy for me to
decide just weren’t easy anymore in this
new environment everyone was doing
things differently than I know how to do
them it was incredibly disorienting at
home bills stacked up unopened my gas
and water got turned off my kids needed
me and I felt really guilty because I
wasn’t there for them and ultimately I
had to get my bearings about me
at some point I realized that I had to
stop struggling and I had to grab a hold
of my reality I mean it was clear to
everyone that was around me that I was
struggling and in an act of empathy my
CEO sent me a video of an engineer who
had learned to ride a bike backwards
it’s a backwards brain bike so it
doesn’t really go backwards the
handlebars have gears in them so that it
works opposite of what you learned you
turn the bike to the left it goes to the
right you turn it to the right it goes
to the left and this engineer took this
experiment on the road and traveled the
world to demonstrate this neural
phenomenon it was so powerful to watch
all these people ride this bike for the
first time in each case they got up to
the bike they got on but the minute they
started to pedal they put their foot on
the ground to keep themselves from
falling that’s just how deeply ingrained
that algorithms is that makes noise and
forward motion on a bike possible this
is how you must feel she said and for
the first time in a long time I felt
understood but even more importantly the
message in the engineers experiment was
profound for me at that point in my
journey that algorithm in your brain
that makes riding a bike automatic it’s
so deeply ingrained that you don’t even
think about it until you try to ride a
bike differently which seems impossible
at first but this engineer was able to
demonstrate that he could reset his
brain to unlearn that deeply ingrained
algorithm it took him eight months of
falling and getting back up but in the
end he was able to prove that he could
rewire his brain to ride a backwards
brain bike
at this point it was clear to me that my
fear of failure was distorting reality
and I remembered that one of my best
friends told me that fear f.e.a.r is
just fantasy experienced as reality fear
can feel very very real but it’s not
real it’s just the fantasy of something
going wrong and I reflected on that as I
thought about all of the worst-case
scenarios and the worries flying around
in my head so I thought if this engineer
could relearn how to ride a bike that
worked differently than what he was used
to then I could relearn how to be a
designer in an environment that I was
not used to this backwards brain bike
metaphor empowered me to get out of a
fearful mindset and access my creativity
that I could adapt and move forward
so as I contemplated on that I decided I
do things differently instead of
inviting instead of avoiding risk I
invited risk I open up the design
process to the entire company
I got engineers from interns to
architects to take part in design
sprints and play an active role in
envisioning the product we build I
insisted that we all go out into the
field and we observe the attitudes and
the behaviors of the people who are
designing for I didn’t create fully
rationalized presentations to sell to
our stakeholders we work directly with
our founders and our engineers we
debated the merits of ideas in real time
not in scheduled meetings we built the
product together and in the end in each
of our own ways we all learn to adopt
and ride that metaphorical bike
differently
whether it’s in my design practice or
it’s in my personal life I see growth as
a cycle risk exposes us to vulnerability
and with safety stripped away
authenticity is revealed without taking
risks we avoid vulnerability and without
vulnerability we can’t expose our
authentic selves to rise to new
challenges the value of the risk of
failing big is that the scope of the
fall shatters all past patterns of
knowing and if you can learn to adapt it
not only changes what you think you know
it changes who you think you are the
person you are after the fall is
significantly different than the person
you were before it’s not just that the
patterns change your capacity to
recognize patterns has been transformed
TS Eliot said only those who will risk
going too far can possibly find out how
far one can go
how far do you want to go if someone
were to make a sketch note of my life so
far it would look something like this
if you knew you had the power to design
the life that you want for yourself what
would your sketch not look like and what
are you willing to risk to get there who
are the people in your life that will
push you out of your comfort zone
because when you’re fully engaged in
living you will court failure embrace it
design your way through it trust your
intuition and see how far you can go
thank you
[Applause]
you
like most creative people I’m a bit of a
risk-taker what if the earliest risks I
took started with a guy that I met in an
elevator by chance in Brooklyn the next
day
we ran into each other at the bus stop
we got to talking and we ended up
blowing off our plans and spending the
day at the Museum it was only a couple
of months later that we ended up driving
across country to come here to Pasadena
and attend the Art Center together this
adventure could have turned out to be a
complete disaster but instead it turned
out to be a major turning point in our
lives I discovered a whole new field of
design as it was emerging only in
California and I became a pioneer in the
field of user experience now I work at
Google as a design director and my
husband you know the guy I met in the
elevator in Brooklyn by chance 30 years
ago he is a virtual reality artist at
Facebook but it wasn’t just chance what
looked like risky impulsive decisions
were actually creative intuitive
decisions researchers say that what we
think of as intuition is at its heart
highly developed pattern recognition and
that those that have never faced
negative outcomes or those that have
never failed have a critical gap in the
body of experience that intuitions based
on so we all know that intuitions
required to navigate new and uncharted
territory that’s why many venture
capitalists won’t even invest in a new
enterprise if the founder hasn’t
undergone failure because it’s only
through doing things that don’t work
that a person can cultivate intuition
start to recognize patterns and see
warning signs and make smart course
corrections
I’ve worked in the bay area since 1992
before the days of angel investing
before the internet was a viable
commercial platform before there were
college programs to teach students how
to build interfaces for software and
that’s just to say that I grew up in a
high risk environment as a professional
I’ve lived that fail fast and learn
experience every day for over 20 years
and as a result my wheelhouse as a
design leader is solving big ambiguous
problems that have no apparent path to
an answer so how do I lead teams through
this kind of ambiguity often I use
what’s called design thinking because it
assumes that there are solutions to
ambiguous problems and it helps teams
unpack those big problems and think in
unconventional ways to get to solutions
quickly this agility to solve design
problems and meet business goals
consistently it earned me a seat at a
table by 2015 I was a vice president of
research and design for a fortune one
retail company I had learned the
language of business and I had elevated
the function of design to a strategic
level the funny thing is that once I got
there I realized that my voice as a
creative intuitive thinker just wasn’t
as relevant there and many times really
just wasn’t welcome I was spending my
days and back-to-back meetings making
decisions based on prepackaged
slideshows I was traveling
internationally to be a steward to the
function of design that I was building
essentially I had become more of an
executive than a design leader imagine
working so hard for so many years to get
to the top of your career only to
realize it just wasn’t as rewarding as
you think it would be
but then something completely disruptive
happened a rare chance came my way I
wasn’t really even looking for a new job
when I had coffee with a CEO of a new
startup I remember I was looking all
over this coffee shop for the CEO person
getting impatient and then out of the
corner of my eye I see this woman riding
up on a bike it turns out that was her
that was the CEO she’s a woman and as I
learned later a legend in Silicon Valley
she was entering her 60s and spinning up
her third startup without even flinching
she had all this depth and engineering
and in building innovative businesses
but we were having coffee that day
because she had a gap in her leadership
team she needed someone to come in and
build her product management and design
team and when she was describing the
kind of design leader she was looking
for it was like she was describing me
intuitively I was compelled to pursue
this opportunity but logically it would
mean leaving the security I left for my
family behind I mean I was still paying
student loans in my 40s and I just
didn’t have the courage to pursue this
opportunity I remember talking with my
husband and saying you know since you
just started at a startup I have to be
the responsible one
I mean someone has to have a real job we
can’t raise our two kids and both be
working at startups I remember you said
to me Sahra you’re the only person in
this room that’s saying that
and when I heard that I was the only one
holding myself back
I really felt challenged to go after
what I wanted and then I realized this
big problem were to take my future I
could flip the Design Thinking methods
that I use at work and apply them to my
life so I asked her friend who was out
of town for a long weekend if I could
use her house and I packed up my design
thinking tool kit post-it notes Sharpie
pens tape dots to vote with and I set
out to run a three days sprint to tackle
this problem of where to take my career
in design thinking we use a critical
question that always starts with how
might we in order to encourage divergent
thinking and delay judgment and be more
open to new ideas
so what was the question that would lead
me forward it was how might I align my
career and my purpose so I became a
participant observer and a research
study of my life and post-it notes I
wrote down all the pain points that I
experienced in my career and I put them
on a timeline at a tape and then I used
dots to identify all the points in that
timeline where I really grew and I
thrived
at the end of this exercise I realized
that the next phase of my career would
be about working closely with teens
again in men being part of and being
present for that moment when ideas just
click I realized this was my opportunity
this was my chance to align my purpose
in my career so my next chapter began I
stepped into this new environment after
only two weeks between jobs and the
stark contrast and realities was almost
paralyzing at a startup you have zero
ramped up time and a very short runway
to envision a product build it launch it
prove value and pivot to do the next
thing
the pace is intense and the constant
uncertainty can be daunting and if that
wasn’t enough I was switching from
designing consumer software to tackling
the complexity of building enterprise
software I was taking on the leadership
role for not just research and design
but also for product management my work
structure was so my work environment was
so unstructured that I really started
spinning and doubt turned into fear and
things that used to be easy for me to
decide just weren’t easy anymore in this
new environment everyone was doing
things differently than I know how to do
them it was incredibly disorienting at
home bills stacked up unopened my gas
and water got turned off my kids needed
me and I felt really guilty because I
wasn’t there for them and ultimately I
had to get my bearings about me
at some point I realized that I had to
stop struggling and I had to grab a hold
of my reality I mean it was clear to
everyone that was around me that I was
struggling and in an act of empathy my
CEO sent me a video of an engineer who
had learned to ride a bike backwards
it’s a backwards brain bike so it
doesn’t really go backwards the
handlebars have gears in them so that it
works opposite of what you learned you
turn the bike to the left it goes to the
right you turn it to the right it goes
to the left and this engineer took this
experiment on the road and traveled the
world to demonstrate this neural
phenomenon it was so powerful to watch
all these people ride this bike for the
first time in each case they got up to
the bike they got on but the minute they
started to pedal they put their foot on
the ground to keep themselves from
falling that’s just how deeply ingrained
that algorithms is that makes noise and
forward motion on a bike possible this
is how you must feel she said and for
the first time in a long time I felt
understood but even more importantly the
message in the engineers experiment was
profound for me at that point in my
journey that algorithm in your brain
that makes riding a bike automatic it’s
so deeply ingrained that you don’t even
think about it until you try to ride a
bike differently which seems impossible
at first but this engineer was able to
demonstrate that he could reset his
brain to unlearn that deeply ingrained
algorithm it took him eight months of
falling and getting back up but in the
end he was able to prove that he could
rewire his brain to ride a backwards
brain bike
at this point it was clear to me that my
fear of failure was distorting reality
and I remembered that one of my best
friends told me that fear f.e.a.r is
just fantasy experienced as reality fear
can feel very very real but it’s not
real it’s just the fantasy of something
going wrong and I reflected on that as I
thought about all of the worst-case
scenarios and the worries flying around
in my head so I thought if this engineer
could relearn how to ride a bike that
worked differently than what he was used
to then I could relearn how to be a
designer in an environment that I was
not used to this backwards brain bike
metaphor empowered me to get out of a
fearful mindset and access my creativity
that I could adapt and move forward
so as I contemplated on that I decided I
do things differently instead of
inviting instead of avoiding risk I
invited risk I open up the design
process to the entire company
I got engineers from interns to
architects to take part in design
sprints and play an active role in
envisioning the product we build I
insisted that we all go out into the
field and we observe the attitudes and
the behaviors of the people who are
designing for I didn’t create fully
rationalized presentations to sell to
our stakeholders we work directly with
our founders and our engineers we
debated the merits of ideas in real time
not in scheduled meetings we built the
product together and in the end in each
of our own ways we all learn to adopt
and ride that metaphorical bike
differently
whether it’s in my design practice or
it’s in my personal life I see growth as
a cycle risk exposes us to vulnerability
and with safety stripped away
authenticity is revealed without taking
risks we avoid vulnerability and without
vulnerability we can’t expose our
authentic selves to rise to new
challenges the value of the risk of
failing big is that the scope of the
fall shatters all past patterns of
knowing and if you can learn to adapt it
not only changes what you think you know
it changes who you think you are the
person you are after the fall is
significantly different than the person
you were before it’s not just that the
patterns change your capacity to
recognize patterns has been transformed
TS Eliot said only those who will risk
going too far can possibly find out how
far one can go
how far do you want to go if someone
were to make a sketch note of my life so
far it would look something like this
if you knew you had the power to design
the life that you want for yourself what
would your sketch not look like and what
are you willing to risk to get there who
are the people in your life that will
push you out of your comfort zone
because when you’re fully engaged in
living you will court failure embrace it
design your way through it trust your
intuition and see how far you can go
thank you
[Applause]
you
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