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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

France: a world of baguettes, armagnac, beautiful towns and villages, and delightful people. But for us it also involved a whole lot of misunderstandings, not just because of language but because of fundamentally different world views.

What does this mean for Service Design? Sometimes the culture needs to change; sometimes what we do needs to change to work for the culture.

uxaustralia
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August 25, 2023
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    www.captionslive.au | [email protected] | 0447 904 255
    UX Australia
    UX Australia 2023
    Friday, 25 August 2023
    Captioned by: Kasey Allen & Bernadette McGoldrick

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    Page 86
    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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    Page 87
    >> 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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    Page 88
    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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    Page 89
    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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    Page 90
    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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    Page 91
    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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    Page 92
    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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    Page 93
    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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    Page 94
    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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    Page 95
    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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    Page 96
    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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    Page 97
    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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    Page 98
    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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    Page 99
    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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    Page 100
    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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    Page 101
    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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    Page 102
    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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    Page 103
    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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    Page 104
    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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    Page 105
    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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    Page 106
    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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    Page 107
    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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    Page 108
    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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    Page 109
    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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    Page 110
    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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    Page 111
    >> 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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    Page 112
    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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