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What do you think of when I say the word "design"?
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You probably think of things like this,
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finely crafted objects that you can hold in your hand,
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or maybe logos and posters and maps
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that visually explain things,
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classic icons of timeless design.
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But I'm not here to talk about that kind of design.
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I want to talk about the kind
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that you probably use every day
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and may not give much thought to,
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designs that change all the time
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and that live inside your pocket.
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I'm talking about the designs
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of digital experiences
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and specifically the design of systems
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that are so big that their scale
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can be hard to comprehend.
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Consider the fact that Google processes
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over one billion search queries every day,
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that every minute, over a hundred hours
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of footage are uploaded to YouTube.
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That's more in a single day
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than all three major U.S. networks broadcast
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in the last five years combined.
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And Facebook transmitting the photos,
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messages and stories
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of over 1.23 billion people.
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That's almost half of the Internet population,
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and a sixth of humanity.
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These are some of the products
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that I've helped design over the course of my career,
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and their scale is so massive
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that they've produced unprecedented
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design challenges.
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But what is really hard
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about designing at scale is this.
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It's hard in part because
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it requires a combination of two things,
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audacity and humility:
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audacity to believe that the thing that you're making
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is something that the entire world wants and needs,
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and humility to understand that as a designer,
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it's not about you or your portfolio,
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it's about the people that you're designing for,
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and how your work just might help them
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live better lives.
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Now, unfortunately, there's no school
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that offers the course "Designing for Humanity 101."
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I and the other designers
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who work on these kinds of products
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have had to kind of invent it as we go along,
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and we are teaching ourselves
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the emerging best practices
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of designing at scale,
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and today I'd like share some of the things
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that we've learned over the years.
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Now the first thing that you need to know
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about designing at scale
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is that the little things really matter.
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Here's a really good example of how
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a very tiny design element can make a big impact.
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Now, the team at Facebook that manages
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the Facebook "Like" button
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decided that it needed to be redesigned.
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The button had kind of gotten out of sync
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with the evolution of our brand
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and it needed to be modernized.
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Now you might think, well, it's a tiny little button,
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it probably is a pretty straightforward,
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easy design assignment, but it wasn't.
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Turns out, there were all kinds of constaints
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for the design of this button.
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You had to work within specific
height and width parameters.
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You had to be careful to make it work
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in a bunch of different languages,
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and be careful about using
fancy gradients or borders
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because it has to degrade gracefully
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in old web browsers.
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The truth is, designing this tiny little button
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was a huge pain in the butt.
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Now, this is the new version of the button,
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and the designer who led this project estimates
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that he spent over 280 hours
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redesigning this button over the course of months.
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Now, why would we spend so much time
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on something so small?
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It's because when you're designing at scale,
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there's no such thing as a small detail.
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This innocent little button
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is seen on average 22 billion times a day
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and on over 7.5 million websites.
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It's one of the single most viewed
design elements ever created.
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Now that's a lot of pressure for a little button
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and the designer behind it,
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but with these kinds of products,
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you need to get even the tiny things right.
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Now, the next thing that you need to understand
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is how to design with data.
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Now, when you're working on products like this,
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you have incredible amounts of information
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about how people are using your product
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that you can then use to influence
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your design decisions,
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but it's not just as simple as following the numbers.
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Let me give you an example
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so that you can understand what I mean.
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Facebook has had a tool for a long time
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that allowed people to report photos
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that may be in violation of our community standards,
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things like spam and abuse,
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and there were a ton of photos reported,
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but as it turns out,
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only a small percentage were actually
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in violation of those community standards.
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Most of them were just your typical party photo.
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Now, to give you a specific hypothetical example,
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let's say my friend Laura hypothetically
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uploads a picture of me
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from a drunken night of karaoke.
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This is purely hypothetical, I can assure you.
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(Laughter)
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Now, incidentally, you know,
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you know how some people are kind of worried
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that their boss or employee
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is going to discover embarrassing photos of them
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on Facebook?
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Do you know how hard that is to avoid
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when you actually work at Facebook?
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So anyway, there are lots of these photos
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being erroneously reported as spam and abuse,
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and one of the engineers on the team had a hunch.
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He really thought there was something else going on
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and he was right,
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because when he looked
through a bunch of the cases,
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he found that most of them
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were from people who were requesting
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the takedown of a photo of themselves.
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Now this was a scenario that the team
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never even took into account before.
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So they added a new feature
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that allowed people to message their friend
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to ask them to take the photo down.
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But it didn't work.
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Only 20 percent of people
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sent the message to their friend.
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So the team went back at it.
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They consulted with experts in conflict resolution.
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They even studied the universal principles
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of polite language,
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which I didn't even actually know existed
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until this research happened.
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And they found something really interesting.
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They had to go beyond just helping people
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ask their friend to take the photo down.
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They had to help people express to their friend
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how the photo made them feel.
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Here's how the experience works today.
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So I find this hypothetical photo of myself,
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and it's not spam, it's not abuse,
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but I really wish it weren't on the site.
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So I report it and I say,
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"I'm in this photo and I don't like it,"
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and then we dig deeper.
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Why don't you like this photo of yourself?
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And I select "It's embarrassing."
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And then I'm encouraged to message my friend,
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but here's the critical difference.
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I'm provided specific suggested language
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that helps me communicate to Laura
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how the photo makes me feel.
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Now the team found that this relatively small change
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had a huge impact.
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Before, only 20 percent of people
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were sending the message,
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and now 60 percent were,
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and surveys showed that people
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on both sides of the conversation
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felt better as a result.
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That same survey showed
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that 90 percent of your friends
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want to know if they've done something to upset you.
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Now I don't know who the other 10 percent are,
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but maybe that's where our "Unfriend" feature
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can come in handy.
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So as you can see,
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these decisions are highly nuanced.
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Of course we use a lot of data
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to inform our decisions,
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but we also rely very heavily on iteration,
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research, testing, intuition, human empathy.
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It's both art and science.
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Now, sometimes the designers
who work on these products
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are called "data-driven,"
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which is a term that totally drives us bonkers.
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The fact is, it would be irresponsible of us
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not to rigorously test our designs
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when so many people are counting on us
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to get it right,
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but data analytics
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will never be a substitute for design intuition.
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Data can help you make a good design great,
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but it will never made a bad design good.
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The next thing that you need
to understand as a principle
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is that when you introduce change,
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you need to do it extraordinarily carefully.
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Now I often have joked that
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I spend almost as much time
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designing the introduction of change
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as I do the change itself,
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and I'm sure that we can all relate to that
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when something that we use a lot changes
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and then we have to adjust.
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The fact is, people can become
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very efficient at using bad design,
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and so even if the change is
good for them in the long run,
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it's still incredibly frustrating when it happens,
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and this is particularly true
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with user-generated content platforms,
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because people can rightfully
claim a sense of ownership.
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It is, after all, their content.
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Now years ago, when I was working at YouTube,
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we were looking for ways to
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encourage more people to rate videos,
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and it was interesting, because
when we looked into the data,
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we found that almost everyone was exclusively using
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the highest five-star rating,
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a handful of people were using
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the lowest one star,
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and virtually no one
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was using two, three, or four stars.
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So we decided to simplify
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into an up-down kind of voting binary model.
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It's going to be much easier
for people to engage with.
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But people were very attached
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to the five star rating system.
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Video creators really loved their ratings.
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Millions and millions of people
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were accustomed to the old design.
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So in order to help people
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prepare themselves for change
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and acclimate to the new design more quickly,
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we actually published the data graph
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sharing with the community
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the rationale for what we were going to do,
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and it even engaged the larger industry
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in a conversation, which resulted in
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my favorite TechCrunch headline of all time:
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"YouTube Comes to a 5-Star Realization:
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Its Ratings Are Useless."
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Now, it's impossible to completely avoid
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change aversion when you're making changes
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to products that so many people use.
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Even though we tried to do all the right things,
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we still received our customary flood
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of video protests and angry emails
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and even a package that had
to be scanned by security,
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but we have to remember
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people care intensely about this stuff,
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and it's because these products, this work,
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really, really matters to them.
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Now, we know that we have to be careful
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about paying attention to the details,
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we have to be cognizant about how we use data
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in our design process,
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and we have to introduce change
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very, very carefully.
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Now, these things are all really useful.
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They're good best practices for designing at scale.
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But they don't mean anything
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if you don't understand something
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much more fundamental.
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You have to understand who you are designing for.
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Now, when you set a goal to design
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for the entire human race,
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and you start to engage in that goal in earnest,
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at some point you run into the walls
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of the bubble that you're living in.
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Now, in San Francisco, we get a little miffed
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when we hit a dead cell zone
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because we can't use our phones to navigate
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to the new hipster coffee shop.
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But what if you had to drive four hours
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to charge your phone
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because you had no reliable source of electricity?
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What if you had no access to public libraries?
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What if your country had no free press?
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What would these products start to mean to you?
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This is what Google, YouTube, and Facebook
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look like to most of the world,
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and it's what they'll look like
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to most of the next five billion people
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to come online.
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Designing for low-end cell phones
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is not glamorous design work,
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but if you want to design for the whole world,
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you have to design for where people are,
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and not where you are.
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So how do we keep this big, big picture in mind?
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We try to travel outside of our bubble to see, hear,
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and understand the people we're designing for.
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We use our products in non-English languages
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to make sure that they work just as well.
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And we try to use one of these
phones from time to time
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to keep in touch with their reality.
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So what does it mean to design at a global scale?
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It means difficult and sometimes exasperating work
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to try to improve and evolve products.
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Finding the audacity and the
humility to do right by them
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can be pretty exhausting,
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and the humility part,
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yeah, it's a little tough on the design ego.
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Because these products are always changing,
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everything that I've designed in my career
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is pretty much gone,
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and everything that I will design will fade away.
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But here's what remains:
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the never-ending thrill
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of being part of something that is so big,
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you can hardly get your head around it,
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and the promise that it just might change the world.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)