UXA2023 Karina Smith and Alexandra Almond - What we learnt about service design living in France

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UX Australia
UX Australia 2023
Friday, 25 August 2023
Captioned by: Kasey Allen & Bernadette McGoldrick

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STEVE BATY: Hello, everyone. Welcome back from lunch. We are down to
three talks to go. I know! Post-lunch, we've got a holiday slide show, is
how I have been told to introduce this talk. Alexandra and Karina from
Meld spent three months in France, and because they can't help
themselves, deconstructed that into lessons about service design. Please
join me in welcoming Alexandra and Karina to the stage. (APPLAUSE)
(FRENCH MUSIC PLAYS)
>> Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. And welcome back
after lunch. Yeah, we are gonna give you a slide show. People were
asking at lunch if we were nervous, and I'm like, "No, I'm literally talking
about my holiday! It will be great."
>> In our stripy shirts.
>> In stripy shirts. Actually, we are gonna start with an
acknowledgement of country. This is the French version of a children's
acknowledgement of country. So, bonjour... (SPEAKS FRENCH) That's the
last French we're gonna speak! (LAUGHTER)

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>> So, welcome, everybody, to our holiday. Yes, as Steve said, we were
very, very lucky to spend the first three months of our year in France.
Alexandra and I both love France. We love the French language and we
wanted to kind of immerse ourselves in the culture and in the language so
we can improve on our pronunciation and our vocabulary and all those
sorts of things. So, bien Villeneuve-sur-Lot. We did a house swap. House
and car for their house and car, in a little house, right between Bordeaux
and Toulouse. It's terrible, looks awful! It is the middle of winter. They're
having quite a warm winter this year. One of the things we did want to do
was ski. Unfortunately, we only got five days of skiing because there was
no snow. However, that enabled us to spend time immersed in this
beautiful town and with these people. We met so many new friends. The
people who had the house, all of their friends adopted us because "les
Australiens", these two women who had flown over the other side of the
world to spend a couple of months in random France. They're like, "Why?
Why are you here?"
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: By the end, we were walking down the street and
they're like, "Oh, Australians!" Great. It was lovely. This is a slide of the
cultural context in which we were both, yeah, operating. And this one is
actually - sorry, I feel like I'm standing right in the way. This is actually
the couple that we swapped with. This is Christian and Sylvette with my
mum in the middle, because Mum and Dad took them to the footy. My
mum and dad thought they needed the Australian cultural experience.
This is them at the MCG watching Collingwood defeat Port Adelaide with
70,000 other people. They are being force-fed a cold pie and a warm
beer. And Mum is really enjoying this! (LAUGHTER) They told us
afterwards, "It was lovely!" (LAUGHTER) Because the thing is, food is
very, very important to the French, and you're not actually allowed to eat

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on the go. Like, you literally can't walk down the street eating your
baguette that you just got from the boulangerie, because lunchtime is not
when you sell things, that's when you sit down at the table and enjoy the
meal. Food is very, very important. So, this was a real cultural experience
for Sylvette and Christian. This is what we're having on the other side of
the world, same day. This is our market hall. Which is just two days' food.
Three days' food. The market is on again on Tuesday, when we'll stock up
again. This is the middle of winter as well, so it's not like it's... Yes.
KARINA SMITH: So, why are we here? What's this got to do with design?
Alexandra, do you want to flip to the next slide? We come to design with
a point of view about things. Many of us come into this world because we
really want to make a difference to people - people's lives. We want to
kind of move things on and kind of improve the world, I suppose. So,
we've talked a lot about this over the last couple of days. And we
advocate for a lot of things. So, we come into organisations and we're
helping them think about the way they go about their work, we're helping
think about what they do, we're thinking about who their customers are
and who the people are that sit in the system, and how can we just make
things better. And that's fantastic. It's what we want to do and it's what
drives us. However, all of this is cultural. And every single point of view,
every single thing that comes out of our mouth, every single decision we
made, everything we hear from anyone we do research through that
comes out of our mouth into some kind of insight or presentation has a
cultural lens and a bias over it. You know, that's not bad. It's not bad. We
are our culture. However, what we need to think about is the culture of
design. And the culture of the way that we do things, the methods. Zoe
has already talked about it today, you know, the way we do things has
come through certain perspectives, good or bad. Those contexts in which

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we do design, the people we are doing it with, the time and place that
we're doing it, the environment we're doing it within, and also the
organisations and their point of view. And all of those things provide
lenses on that. Now, is that bad? Not necessarily. It's not necessarily bad.
However, everything we do has influence in some way. And so what we're
thinking about, when we went through this holiday, we just started
walking down the street and going, "We're thinking things but not!" So,
it's not great! (LAUGHTER)
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Is it great, is it not great, or how do we know? And
I think one of the things, because Karina said, "Is it a bad thing that we
come to design with a point of view, that we come to every project with
our own cultural context?" No, that's not bad. But the question you've
gotta ask yourself is, how do you know you're right? How do you know
that your point of view and your cultural context is a good one for the
circumstances in which you find yourselves? I was actually at another
conference a couple of weeks ago, where someone put this diagram up
about certainty and correctness. They're on an X-Y-axis. Like, you would
like to think that the more certain you are, or the more certain you are
about something that the more correct you are. But, actually, it doesn't
work that way. You can be 100% certain about something and 100%
wrong! And another way of looking at this - this is Gurwinder - I don't
know if that's how you say it - on Twitter, and he does this threads of
ideas to think about. This idea of epistemic luck. You know that you'd
lived in a different place or time, read different books, had different
friends, you'd have different beliefs, and yet you're convinced your
current beliefs are correct. So, are you wrong or the luckiest person ever?
That's what we want to talk about today. Is we're gonna share with you
some of the things that we realised we were probably wrong about! As we

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were travelling through France, but also want you to think about this in
terms of your design practice.
KARINA SMITH: What's important to French people? This was
observations we had in this one town or a few places. We're not saying
this is pervasively French or anything, just from our perspective and our
point of view of what we experienced. Let's take a journey of the story. In
our first couple of weeks there, we were really excited. We got the first
time in years and years of our life, we've got all this time on our hands.
It's like, "Great! I've got personal projects I want to get on with." The
house had a sewing machine. I'm obsessed with sewing. I thought I
would buy French linen, make something nice, it's gonna be great. So, on
Monday morning we're off to the shops and this is what we see. Um... It
wasn't exceptional that but everything was closed. It was Monday
morning. Nobody works on Sunday, but what about Monday? There was
nothing there to tell me why. OK, it's closed, and it's actually closed
Monday afternoon as well. Then I went the next day and it was this...
Which is, "For circumstances, today the store is closed."
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Then we kept going at lunchtime. We would go at
2:00, and closed.
KARINA SMITH: Closed. I was frustrated. I was frustrated. I'm not a big
shopper but I wanted to get on with my project! And I'm used to the
24-hour shopping culture that we can have in our country here, which is I
could probably order something online or I could go down to Spotlight on
Sunday at 6:00 and buy the fabric I wanted to get. That was not
happening and my patience was being tested. What we discovered over
the time of kind of talking with people and getting, you know, navigating

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this space, is that, actually, it's not about the customer. The French don't
care about the customer in the same way we do. We are
customer-obsessed in our customer-experience world. I think that's
actually a principle of Amazon, is to be customer-obsessed. But what does
that actually mean? That means we will do anything to make the
customer happy, and potentially in the marketing world, buy more stuff.
In France, no. The French care about their life. They care about living,
they care about their family, eating good food. What does a good life
mean? It is not working. And there is a lot of, sort of, literature out there
about that. It's actually about the work is there to help me support me
have that good life. Work is there to fund me and there will be enough,
but at the end of the day the customer is not the reason I am in this
business. And we'll talk about why they are in business. That obsession is
not there. So, if you look at their laws, what I came up against on Monday
morning was there is a must have at least 35 hours a week where you're
not working.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Every employee in France. 35 consecutive hours.
KARINA SMITH: So, if you worked on a Saturday, Saturday afternoon,
you don't need to go back until Monday. You can't be sent an email by
your boss and be expected to read it after 6pm. You'll have a minimum of
five weeks' annual leave. I have friends in France that have up to 12 and
16 weeks' annual leave now at the moment because of the tenure in their
organisation. There are 11 public holidays and around those public
holidays, if they fall on a Thursday or a Wednesday, you can officially
have the "pont jour", which is the Friday and Monday off, without taking
annual leave around that. So, in May, where there are four public
holidays, you are gonna be working around five days in that month. And a

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couple of months later, it's August and then you're gonna have the whole
month off and everything stops. Never travel there...
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: "Fermeture annuelle" happens in January and
always in August! (LAUGHTER) It's four weeks off. The tea shop closed for
two weeks because it was the school holidays. Because the people
running these businesses are running the businesses for their life, not for
you. Not for us. The other thing I want to talk about on this particular
slide, because I started taking pictures of the fermeture slides - the fact
they're all hand-written is great. I got this online. This one on the right. It
actually means "we're closed for compelling reasons"! (LAUGHS) Which is
great. So, I got that online. And that was an article from a UX designer,
who was talking about how you could redesign this experience to be
better for customers. I think you're missing the point! That is kind of
exactly what we're talking about, is we would have designed this
experience to be better for us as well, but that's not why it is the way that
it is.
KARINA SMITH: And so a classic action that happens, as they have put all
the bags out the door, they're in the back of the car, they're like, "Must
put the sign up!" And that's what they do every time. So, it's, yeah, this
is it. Life is what matters.
You know, and this whole thing about living plays out - many of us
have heard about strikes and the French are really good at striking about
things. We love that. We heard about in a town they had a big strike
because the council had taken the Christmas tree down, which is like the
annual thing they put up. And literally work stopped for a week. And they
built their own Christmas tree out of found objects and things like that,
and it just shut the whole town down. Traffic couldn't go anywhere.

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ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Everyone loved it.
KARINA SMITH: Everyone loved it. So, next year the Christmas tree went
back up and has never been taken down since. They stand by the things
they believe in. We were there during the strikes, which was all
about - this had been going on for years - increase the retirement age
from 62 to 64. 64! You know?! And they are so upset about it. Steve
almost did not get his plane back to Australia because the whole country
had shut down for months about this. And they don't care that the
country has shut down for months, because we want the government to
know, we are unhappy about this. And if we can't get to work and we
can't get to school, doesn't matter because we're gonna stand up for what
we believe in.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Standing up for what's important. And the fact is,
it's not actually just about the retirement age, this is about the philosophy
of life and work. The philosophy of life and work. And why they exist and
why they are the way that they are. Yeah. Still more about work. This is
our Chopin guy.
KARINA SMITH: We never knew his name.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Matthieu? He called us les Australiens. (SPEAKS
FRENCH) You've sold our pain aux raisin? It's only 7:30 in the morning,
are you making more?" "No, they're done today." This is a young guy who
has this amazing boulangerie around the corner from our house. Most
amazing bread. We tried all of them in town to get the best bread and I
said to Karina, I've come home from the market, found a better bread.

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It's great. Turns out it was him with a market stall! (LAUGHTER) Great.
And it's a tiny, little shopfront that's open for two hours in the morning
and two hours in the evening, so you can get your morning bread or your
afternoon bread. And he's got books in there and music playing.
KARINA SMITH: Because he loves classical music and literature. You go in
there, there's one chair. Can't even have a coffee with someone, there's
no coffee machine. He likes sitting in there, reading books, playing music.
If you buy his bread, that's good.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: The brioche that they only do on Saturdays
because that's the only day they can be bothered making it. Yeah, it's
lovely. But he's absolutely passionate about it. If he was in Melbourne,
then the Chopin Bakery would be a chain because they'd absolutely have
the best bread.
KARINA SMITH: Through Australia, it would be a chain.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: And he has absolutely no interest in doing that
because he is doing what he loves, which is this tiny little bakery in this
tiny town, where he has a relationship with his customers and he gets to
read books and make bread.
KARINA SMITH: And France is full of people following their passion.
They're in business because they're passionate about things. There's a
little guy I visit in Paris every time I go, and he does calligraphy in
magenta ink. For years, I have been visiting him. I love handwriting. I
have been at that pen stall a lot today. And that's literally all he does.
Yes, it's a big country, there's a bigger market for it. But he doesn't even

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care. He's just doing the thing that he really wants to put out in the
world. Yes, he's found his customers and the fact his business is tiny and
he makes just enough money and he's in a not-great shopfront in a
not-great area of Paris, it doesn't matter to him. He's following his dream.
This whole thing about growth and we always have to grow, he doesn't
have an Etsy store. Same with the wine people. We went to the Loire
Valley, found a beautiful wine. It was our first wine of the trip. Every
other wine was beautiful. We were excited. Our first week. We loved it, it
was a variety we hadn't tried before. We thought we will go home, order
some, and get it shipped back to Villeneuve-sur-Lot. No, the email
bounced back, website crashed.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: It was a disaster.
KARINA SMITH: We sent them an email, never heard back again.
Basically, it wasn't because they didn't like us. It's, "Unless you're gonna
come to my vineyard, you're probably not gonna get my wine."
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Efficiency, it's not about efficiency. This is the
butcher at the market. But we had another local butcher that we went to
as well. And going to the butcher was, like, quite time-consuming because
there were usually quite a few people waiting. And everybody took
anywhere between five and 15 minutes to be served, depending on what
sort of relationship they had. Because all of them had some kind of
relationship. Always a conversation about what you were making and
what would be the best meat for that, and had you tried this other thing
that we've got in today? And how did that work last week? And that was
really good, and how's your son going, or whatever? And with us, it was
teaching us French! (LAUGHS) It was very, very keen to make sure we

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could say the thing properly before we left that we were making, before
we left the shop. It was fantastic. And the market is very much the same
thing. Everything was a conversation and a relationship, and it's not about
efficiency. So, there are so many ways that we could redesign, and we
were - the first time we were at the market, we were like, "There's all
these people going everywhere. Why do these vegie shops over here and
something else? You could do this better." Yeah, sure, you could. That's
not what it's about. It's not designed for efficiency.
KARINA SMITH: We even had conversations with people we were staying
with, around this, and one of my friends in that picture was telling me
that, actually, it's really important for children to learn patience - that's
one of the, you know, all children should have patience. And one of the
things they do is they are conscious of making their kids sit through these
million conversations at the market, that the parents are having, and,
yes, they'll be chomping on a pain aux raisin, probably, but they wine,
complain. I'm not a parent, full disclosure, but I have nieces and
nephews. And we want to get them out of the stores as quickly as
possible because it's distracting and the kids are tired and hungry and
they're hot and thirsty. But here it's almost like not punishment, but, "You
must learn how to sit through the queues and sit through all of our
conversations because it's part of life." So, it's part of kind of life lessons
to sit through these queues.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: And the other example on there is the piano.
There's a piano in the house. And Fabien was playing the piano quite a bit
and it was quite out of tune. Thought it would be nice, we'll get a piano
tuner in and tune the piano for the people whose house we're looking
after and we're having this amazing time. And the piano tuner - you can

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tell this story, actually.
KARINA SMITH: He turned up! He turned up. And he was a quirky guy but
he got his tool kit, turned up, pulled the front off the piano and he was
like, "No. Oh, no." And the French that came out, I could not understand
the speed of it. Fabien got on the phone to him because he was not there.
They had an hour conversation about the piano tuning. And I was saying,
"Can't you just do a quick job?" This is again my cultural bias. "Do a quick
job of it!"
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Just make it a bit better.
KARINA SMITH: Because that's as good as better. And he was horrified!
It's like I had killed his mother. (LAUGHTER) He was... Like, he was
actually, like, "I'm either gonna do the job or I'm walking out the door.
I'm not interested in a half-job because this is not about efficiency or
getting in and out the door as quickly as possible. And doing the same 10
piano tuning jobs in a day." He got paid the same amount and it wasn't a
lot of money. But the thing for him is the pride in his work. "I'm not here
to be efficient, I'm here to be good." Walking in and out that door, it
sounded like a concert piano after the whole thing. It was amazing. We
don't want to hear dong, dong, dong, dong all day. But for him it was
doing the thing well.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: I just want to put this in context. Like, our view
and his view, there's no right or wrong here. And if that - we were fine.
We had three months off. We actually had nothing else to do that day
except make dinner! (LAUGHS) Which is fine. And so it was fine. But if
that had happened to me in my life here in Australia, I would have been

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so annoyed because it would have ruined my day, having to have that
piano tuner there when I had planned for it to be a one-hour or two-hour
thing and I had other things to do. So, it's not that there's a wrong. Like,
it's not a judgement thing. We weren't wrong, they weren't wrong. But,
yeah, it's just different. It's a cultural context.
KARINA SMITH: I want to give another example about efficiency too,
while we're there. We volunteered for a food bank while we were there. It
was one of the things about immersing ourselves in the language and
being forced to speak it. The food bank was set up that you walked in the
door and there were some vegies there and tins of meat and tins of
vegies and tins of things. It was - anyway. And people would walk
through and make choices from each of the sections. It took us about 15
minutes, and Alexandra and I are at the back, going, "This is so
inefficient." People are trying to cross in front of each other.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: If we just switched those two things around,
everything would go so much smoother!
KARINA SMITH: Literally 10 minutes into being there, we had redesigned
the whole experience. You've got paper checklists. What are you doing a
paper checklist? They have to add this up at the end of the day. Sitting
out in the back office, total, total our stuff around it. And then after being
there for a week, we discovered that what's really important is the
conversations and the time they spend with people, having conversations
as they go through in making the choices about their vegetables and
things. Because for many of the people, this is the only conversation
they're gonna have with another human in that week, and be seen and
heard to be able to make choices. So, if we had blindly gone in there and

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redesigned this to be faster, to get through faster, that would have been
less time that they get to spend with other humans, to be able to talk
about what's going on in their lives and some of the challenges that
they're facing.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Yeah. And so Arnaud, who ran that session, he
was telling us that, really, your only purpose for being here, you know,
here's the checklist, the process, you kind of need to understand it, but
your only purpose is to have a conversation with them. And we're like,
"Oh, I feel sorry for them!" But we started every conversation with, "I'm
Australian. I don't speak very good French." And that was such a brilliant
start to the conversation because that then gave them something to talk
about, us being Australian. They had a relative who once went to
Australia. Or, "I don't speak very good French either. We can learn
together." And it was really good. It didn't have to be that we were
perfect, it just had to be that we were talking. OK.
Alright. I'm actually gonna start on the right here, 'cause this is a
TGV, a very fast train. When we very first arrived, we had a couple of
days' crossover with the couple we were swapping houses with. Christian
was taking us around the town, showing us the sights. The old bridge, the
market square, we're seeing all of the lovely old buildings and the river. It
was amazing. All of these fantastic place were just, "Oh, my God, this is
so great! We are gonna have the best three months here. It's fantastic!"
And Christian just pulls up and he puts his hands on his hips and says...
(SPEAKS FRENCH) "You walk like the very fast train!" (LAUGHTER)
KARINA SMITH: Because we're like...
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Yeah, OK. We do! Sure. And so for the rest of the

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holiday, we were - we'd walk out the door and set off, and, "Walk like a
French person. Walk like a French person. ""and it's very, very hard to do.
It's very, very hard to be that slow and not to get frustrated with people
who are walking slowly in front of you.
KARINA SMITH: Because we were on a mission all the time, you know?
My siblings do say, "You look like you come from Sydney when you walk
because you're trying to get there." But what about the fact that the
process may be more important than where you're getting to? And if you
slow down, you might see something that takes you in a different
direction? Hello, serendipity, that you don't allow anymore because you're
so intent on getting to the place. Isn't that in our digital world too? We've
narrowed things down so much to be able to get us through the thing
efficiently that we're not getting those kind of moments that kind of might
send us off in other directions and help us learn new things and see new
things? So, this direct course of action, fast, is not necessarily always the
best thing.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Yeah, and so that comes down to the being in the
moment. Like, taking time and being in the moment, and being where
you are. A few more examples of this. But this one, you could not get a
takeaway coffee in the town. No such thing as takeaway coffee because
you had to sit and drink your coffee, you had to sit and appreciate it.
Even if you were only there for five minutes, and quite often it was a
quick coffee. But, yeah, you couldn't take it away. The other thing about
coffee, the other cultural difference about coffee, is you couldn't get a
good cappuccino in the south of France. Part of it is it's all long-life milk, it
doesn't taste very good. The main part is if you put milk in your coffee,
you are an infidel and deserve everything that's coming to you! There are

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cultural things coming out in the coffee that is neither good nor bad. No,
the coffee was pretty much all bad!
And food.
KARINA SMITH: So, this is a vending machine at the local station where
we were, in the village next to us. Very small town. And you come to the
station and usually you would see the vending machine with the chips and
the chocolate and soft drink. No, no, no, no. Here is the vending machine
with - I'm coming home from work and there were snacks and things in
here as well, but I'm coming home from work, I need to get my fruit
supply for dessert, my soup mix over there with my carrots and my little
bit of onions and things in it. Some fromage, of course, some cheese,
wine. Even fresh anchovies in jars in this little thing. Isn't that
magnificent? Like, fresh food is just so abundant and so cheap and so
available. And if you did want to buy the chips at the station, it was
difficult. (LAUGHTER) Not so fresh! Although, it's not fresh.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: It's not-not fresh. So, there actually is a shop in
behind here which we saw them opening it and restocking it. They do
make the pizzas behind here. They don't make them when you order
them. They make them, put them in a fridge. They showed us the little
arm and how it works. All exciting. Not very good pizzas, though! The
contrast between this and our shopping at the market every week, twice
a week, and, yeah, and that was quite extraordinary. Alright.
KARINA SMITH: There's something really lovely too about those two
examples of traditionally, I mean, I go to France a lot, and technology is
just not a massive part of their lives as it is here.

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ALEXANDRA ALMOND: They thought she was from outer space when she
paid with her wristwatch! (LAUGHTER) Oh, and the lady at the church
concert. So, in a tiny church hall, maybe 50 people there, who paid with a
cheque! Five euros with a cheque! (LAUGHS)
KARINA SMITH: They're not like us walking around with their headphones
on all the time, listening to music. They do not sit on their phones like us.
Particularly, yes, in Paris, but in the regional areas, not so much on the
transport. We were always on our phones. You see books everywhere,
which is so lovely. And just technology has not - outside of, kind of, space
and planes and things like that - it's not in their everyday lives as much
as it is for us. But things like those pizza machines and the vending
machine for the fruit has popped up. I love this, we're using technology to
advance our culture and our way of being. Not buying into the other ones.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: I'm conscious of time. We're good? Cool. We're
going to delve slightly deeper into one particular topic. Dogs - dogs are
people too in France. Cats are appreciated. (LAUGHTER) Dogs are part of
the family. So, dogs go everywhere, they're in restaurants, they're
wandering around the street with you, they're just allowed to... This is a
dog that is looking after the village square.
KARINA SMITH: Traffic stopped for that dog, mind you.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: The traffic did stop in order to let the dog go past.
Dogs are amazing. We were joking about there being more vets than
doctors in our town. Because there were. There were more vets. There
were more pooch pampering places. And we were like, "Yeah, the French
really love their dogs!" And then we also went - actually, there's more

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pharmacies than I've ever seen in my life. So, like, this is our - the area
where we were living, and there's - I forget how many. Eight, 10...
KARINA SMITH: 13 pharmacies. There's five more pharmacies than there
are boulangeries, bakeries.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Within the radius of our house. There are
alternative therapy places. So, hypnotists was really big. And I was kind
of joking with Karina, "My God, the French are hypochondriacs." Where
are their doctors? What's the deal here? What is happening? They love
their animals so much that they've stopped looking after themselves?!
What's the deal? Pourquoi?! And what's actually happening here? It's
really way more complicated than that. I think it's one of the things that
we wanted to, in terms of our culture, we were making jokes about the
things that we were seeing that we thought were culturally funny and
very, very different to us. And so we did, we asked why. We put our
curiosity hat on and we asked one of our friends, Roger, why? And he
explained it to us in French over the course of a 2-hour car trip, he was
taking us to see the sights. I'm not 100% certain that we understood
everything that he told us, but we did a bit of research afterwards. And
healthcare in France is free. It's completely and utterly free. As far as I
can tell, there's no private health insurance, it's all government-based.
So, if you're in the medical system, then you are supported by the
government, it's all paid for by the government. Everything is free. But
that's obviously very expensive. So, back in the 1980s, the government
restricted the number of doctors that were allowed to train to be doctors.
So, they restricted the number of university places for doctors. And now
there simply aren't enough doctors. There are no doctors in our town, a
town of 25,000 people.

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KARINA SMITH: You would have to drive an hour and a half to two hours
to get to your doctor, and that's if you can get in, because there's a short
supply of doctors in those regional, bigger cities, and then a short supply
of doctors in the country. So, basically, when we actually ended up talking
about this, they said, "Just don't get sick." Or you go to the pharmacy and
the pharmacy is your pseudo-doctor. And people are queued in there for
hours, describing all their symptoms and getting medicines that we would
never be able to get over the counter here because you can't get to the
doctor.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Yeah. So, it's either the pharmacy or the
emergency department. There's pretty much nothing in between. And,
like, that's... It's horrific, in many ways. Like, it doesn't feel right and it
doesn't feel good. But also, we would never have got that if we hadn't
asked. And so one of the things that we think, one of the ways that we
think you can overcome your cultural boundaries, or actually understand
what your cultural bias is, is by asking, is by being curious and just
saying, you know, "Pourquoi?" What does this actually mean? All of these
lovely stories about how the French are different to us and our cultural
bias there. What does that actually mean for design? It's a lovely slide
show. We've done work with a lot of different people. Sorry, the thing
that I probably wanted to say here is obviously you're not going to be
designing for French people - almost certainly not. There might be some
French people or people with French cultural heritage who might be part
of the things you're designing, but we're not in France, so what does this
have to do with you? The fact is, even here in Australia, even if you're
designing for other people living here in Australia, there are different
cultures. There are different cultural biases that we all have, and that

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workplaces have, and that are all very, very different. And as we heard
from Erin on the first day, the workplace and the structure of the
organisation is what is actually going to create the product and the
service and how that's going to work. These are two very different
organisations that Karina and I have worked with over the last - in the
last few years. So, we did a project with Who Gives A Crap, we did a
project with Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. And both of them
were not one-off pieces, they were both long-term sort of organisational
change projects. Culturally, how do you reckon they compare?!
(LAUGHTER) They're very, very different. And, yeah, and we can't... You
could not go into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and do
work in the same way that you did - that we did with Who Gives A Crap.
We tried! (LAUGHTER) No, we didn't, really!
KARINA SMITH: But that awareness, even going in, and understanding
who are - you know, this anthropological study you almost do on the first
couple of days is, "Who are these people? What's important to them?
What is the way they work and why do they work in that way?" You know,
in each of those organisations, we had our own frustrations because we
have our point of view about where we think things could go, based on
what we're learning, and how we want to work, based on what we're used
to doing and how we think they could benefit from our ways of working.
But we have to adjust all of that along the way because we actually tried
to ban PowerPoint in PM&C for a week because 20-page PowerPoint decks
was the standard of any way of communicating with anyone. And we are
not 25-page PowerPoint-deck people. And so we had this middle ground.
We said, "Let's try it for a week." And, actually, it was a really interesting
experiment because they were just horrified. They're like, "I can't even
imagine any other way of doing anything."

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ALEXANDRA ALMOND: We had someone call in sick because of the
PowerPoint ban. They did not know what to do if they could not create
PowerPoints!
KARINA SMITH: Exactly. Some of them picked up their styluses and
created amazing things. We had a lot of moments for reflection as we
tried to change some of the things to get them over their ways, was we
actually set some bombs off in that place at various times. It wasn't good.
And we reflected on the fact that we need to be much more sensitive, you
know, we want to push things, but we've gotta go more sensitively into it.
Who Gives A Crap was a different environment altogether. They were
ready, up for it, "Let's do things differently and get all of the coloured bits
of paper out."
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: We were almost the other way around with Who
Gives A Crap. As in, "Do we know how to push them far enough?!" It was
really different. But the one thing we learnt, because the Who Gives A
Crap one was recently, we literally spent two days, we sat down with
them on the very first day we were there, and said, "Tell us what's
happening." And we talked for two days with no outputs. Like, other than
understanding what is happening in their space. And, like, I will do that
with every project I ever do from now on, as much time as they will give
me. They were incredibly generous with their time. But just that whole,
"What is the context in which you are working?" and be really, really
conscious of what my bias is, and what am I bringing to this?
KARINA SMITH: So, takeaways. Revolution! I think the thing is that,
really, it's about listening and watching and observing, and asking lots

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and lots and lots of questions. We went in there making some
assumptions. We went in there were frustrations that sometimes we
actually, like, ergh! But actually when you settle down a bit and stop
walking like the TGV and take that time to listen and observe and really
take in those cultural "what's going on around you", I think we can be so
much more effective as designers. And this is the one-on-one of what we
do. But it's always good to have that reminder, that curiosity and just
taking that step back and not running so fast towards the things that we
think are important, are really important.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: We would have designed a very different France in
the first week than the one in our last week. And so... You know, you
probably won't have three months to sit back and absorb the culture and
take that on. But think about what it is that you can do and what it is
might be your cultural bias that's stopping you from doing that.
KARINA SMITH: And house swap! It is amazing! So amazing!
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Yep. (APPLAUSE)
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: So, apparently we've got 6 minutes and 56
seconds left, so we do have time for questions. But we would actually like
to ask you a question. Has anybody got an example of cultural bias that
you have brought into your work that, you know, maybe you've only just
realised it, listening to us? Or that are you are already aware of and
would like to share with us? I'm actually gonna give you one, sorry. I
know, I meant to do this...
KARINA SMITH: Sarah has got one.

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ALEXANDRA ALMOND: While we're waiting for the microphone, I'm gonna
tell you mine. I'm part of a writing organisation. We had a conference a
couple of weeks ago. And so there was a trans rights awareness week
several months back, and there was a whole lot of stuff going on online
about trans rights readathon, so everybody read books by trans authors
and promote them. It's fantastic, I love it, it's great. All getting into it.
The writers' group, organisation that I was a part of, was all getting into
it. Everybody was hashtagging trans rights awareness. I contacted the
organising committee for the conference and said, "Hey, we've got
trans authors speaking at the conference. We need to do this. It's all just
performative if we don't put our money where our mouth is and start
showcasing this." I kept getting pushback. "Come on, what is this?"
Finally, the head of the diversity committee, a trans man, rang me and
said, "So, it's not a safe place. We can't have - we can't invite
trans speakers into this conference at the moment. We have work to do
first." And I was like, "Oh! OK. I thought I knew what was right." I
genuinely thought I knew what was right. But I was coming in with this
whole, "OK, cool, I have no idea what's going on." So, I'm no doubt on
the diversity committee as someone who can help them do what they
think is important, not push things of my own making. Sarah.
SARAH: There was one time when I was doing some career coaching with
somebody from Bangladesh that was a student of design in Sydney. And
she was talking about her background and how her parents were quite
progressive at that time, and I thought about progressive, what that
means for me. And then later on in the conversation, she said how she
wasn't allowed to go out on her own, she had to go out with a chaperone.
I'm like, "OK, so my version of progressive is very different to your

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version of progressive." So, sometimes words have different values,
depending on where you are culturally. And that was a big learning for
me.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Words matter.
Thank you for sharing.
STEVE BATY: Over there.
>> Hi, thank you for your lecture. So, basically, my background, Russian.
I'm designer in Australia. So, I can say that the big difference between
Australian market and Russian market is tone of voice. Because what we
think is OK in Russia is very direct in Australia. And sometimes very rude
as well! (LAUGHTER)
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: That's such a great learning! So, how are you
working with that? Like, are you changing yourself to be more like
Australians? Or are you...?
>> So, I have Aussie friends, who are actually helping me a lot. So, my
very close colleague, I ask, "Please, can you check my grammar when I'm
speaking?" And also generally when I'm not professional for Australians.
Because to be professional in Russia, and to be professional here in
Australia, is absolutely different. Absolutely. In Russia, you have to be
even more quicker. You said that in France, it's slow. For me, Australia is
slow. (LAUGHTER) So, yeah. And sometimes I say, "Please, do something
else for me if I become rude for Australians, especially on meetings,"
because I collaborate a lot with marketing departments and with
developers. Developers are fine, actually! (LAUGHTER) But marketing

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department. So, always thinking about the tone of voice, how we speak
with our customers. And also it's important for them how I speak with
them as well. And sometimes I have issues that, for them, I'm not as
professional. Because I'm focused on professional in Russia. Yeah, to be
quick, to be quick, take a task, come back very soon, with already first
tries, and show this. In Australia, it's more about, "Let's do meetings.
Maybe then..." (LAUGHTER) Waiting for what we are looking for... Yep, so
it's absolutely different.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing.
KARINA SMITH: That's a great example.
STEVE BATY: It's coming.
>> Thank you. So, I'm gonna share about my Japanese experience. I just
came from Japan. So, we all comfortable with McDonald's shopping
experience, self-service, and we're lining up, and we design it to be as
everybody grab food as fast as they can. Even driveway takeaways, right?
So, when I was in Japan, I was buying a manga piece, and I went to a
building, I went there and got my manga and walked into the checking
out. I'm looking for, "Oh, where should I start my line?" Literally, the
people are lining up, basically occupying the whole shop, filling up each
the gap of the shelves. And they were enjoying it. And they were enjoying
it! Like, lining up, it's a culture in Japan. Everybody is so comfortable with
lining up. And they had no complaints. And once you line up, you know
that's a good start, and you go line up with them. (LAUGHTER)
KARINA SMITH: The queues are good!

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>> Yes! I'm very amazed. And there is a huge culture gap between just
Japan and the world. Japan and the world! (LAUGHTER) I'm looking
forward to hear you talking about service design in Japan! (LAUGHTER)
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Next year!
KARINA SMITH: Thank you.
STEVE BATY: One more at the back.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: And there is one over here as well.
>> I got the opportunity to work with an Aboriginal community on
Awabakal country in Lake Macquarie. And we were trying to gather stories
to create an application where we could share stories on site. And we
thought we could do this over eight months, and what we learnt was we
didn't have the right to learn those stories in the first place, and it takes
decades to actually get the authority to learn those stories. We basically
had to postpone the whole project for some time.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: Wow. That's amazing. I love that so much. There's
one.
STEVE BATY: That will be the last one.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: That's the last one, OK.
>> I just have a cute little one. Years ago, I got to do some design in

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Samoa, working for a big multinational conference. And I was asked to do
corporate graphics and experience design. And I'll never forget the clerk
of the Legislative Assembly of Samoa tell me it wasn't corporate enough,
it needed more colours and flowers! (LAUGHTER) It was a good learning.
KARINA SMITH: Love it.
ALEXANDRA ALMOND: That's lovely. Thank you so much, everyone, for
listening.
KARINA SMITH: Thank you. (APPLAUSE)

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UXA2023 Karina Smith and Alexandra Almond - What we learnt about service design living in France

UXA2023 Karina Smith and Alexandra Almond - What we learnt about service design living in France

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UXA2023 Karina Smith and Alexandra Almond - What we learnt about service design living in France

UXA2023 Karina Smith and Alexandra Almond - What we learnt about service design living in France

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