Business Unusual

A transcript of Episode 277 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Nathalie Nahai to discuss how peoples’ values, priorities and expectations are changing, building on the topics in Nathalie’s book Business Unusual.

This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Lexa Gallery.

Transcript

Computer voice
UX podcast episode 277.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
Hello, everybody, welcome to UX Podcast coming to you from Stockholm, Sweden. We are your hosts, James Royal-Lawson

Per Axbom
and Per Axbom

James Royal-Lawson
balancing Business Technology, people and society with over 2 million downloads since 2015. And we have listeners in 200 countries and territories in the world, from Canada to Senegal.

Per Axbom
I love that we can say over 2 million downloads now as we finally passed that like magic number.

James Royal-Lawson
There was lots of two’s in that 2 million downloads 200 countries of which were mentioned two of them.

Per Axbom
And we have a fantastic interview lined up for you in this episode, we are joined by Natalie Nahai, who we have not talked to for many, many years.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, we last talked to Natalie on the show back in 201 4. The first talks were in 2013. She made a little guest appearance on our 100th episode. But it’s been way way too long.

Per Axbom
Yeah

James Royal-Lawson
Since we last talked and Natalie, who is always wonderful to talk to. So Natalie is many things. She is, amongst other things, a songwriter she’s one of our few guests we’ve had on that actually does have songs on Spotify. She’s an author of multiple books now. She’s an artist. In fact, she spent three years studying Fine Art recently in Barcelona, Spain, which has been mind blowingly interesting to follow the development of that side track that Natalie has followed. She’s a podcaster, her podcasting actually goes back pretty much as long as ours does.

Per Axbom
Yeah. That’s incredible, actually.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And she’s been a broadcaster, she does regular speaking, runs her own company and well, that’s been known of the years as the web psychologist.

Per Axbom
So obviously, a really truly inspirational POLYMATH. I mean, is there nothing that she hasn’t done yet? I mean, it’s just unbelievable.

James Royal-Lawson
Should have asked her about hang gliding.

Per Axbom
And we talked to her today a bit about her new book, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
So Natalie, how do you think that you’ve grown, personally, after withstanding the adversity of the pandemic?

Nathalie Nahai
Apart from the extra inches around the waist, the personal growth in that respect, I have been thinking a bit more about how to balance my time, I’m someone who does lots of different things. So that’s been one of the aspects that I’ve been exploring. And also..

James Royal-Lawson
The other things you’ve done, I mean, you you’ve been studying fine art for three years, there in Spain

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah. So one of the challenges has been how to integrate what was previously kind of held by this wonderful structure of quite a stringent intensive academic programme. So your drawing and painting from 10 in the morning till at least five at night, and then you’ve got extra time. How to integrate an artistic practice outside of the external structure, and then into one’s own life. Which I’ve struggled with a bit actually, I thought I’d find it easier. So it’s kind of that question of how do you bring in the creative practice, when we’re so geared towards being productive and busy in a way that, for instance, pays or contributes to a professional career. And then the other side, I think, as well as making space for rest, which I hadn’t really done much of and creating a ritual in the mornings, where I would sit with my partner on the sofa, and read a book for 30, 40 minutes with my coffee, which, you know, usually I would never have done and so I guess, thinking about what are the things I need, how to balance the different elements in my life that I want to be there that give me a sense of richness and stability and the rest of it

James Royal-Lawson
is because you started your fine art course that started before the pandemic.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, it did. Yeah. So I was two weeks away from finishing the final project when Barcelona, which is where I live, got completely locked down. And so you’ve got this gorgeous group of international students you’ve done… by then it was like three and a half years, most of us are done together and as a small group that was left standing at the end, and then they’re like, alright, well, that’s it, you have to go the school is shut. So then there were last flights that people had to get. It was a very last minute thing. Lots of my friends fled to their countries. And then we’ve just like two weeks to go on this massive painting with a live model, we had to shut it all down. So it was quite an abrupt and ambiguous ending to something which is actually a very important and joyful chapter. So it’s kind of this ambiguous loss tied up in not being able to complete it fully to say goodbye to kind of, you know, mark a new stage or chapter in one’s life after it

James Royal-Lawson
all that time that I’ve watched you, your progress for the fine art course, and just the amount of time you’ve got to reflect upon things. That combined with a pandemic, it’s, oh, it’s very privileged to be of that much space and time to be that reflective.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah. So I think also areyou talking about more than lockdown kind of sort of?

James Royal-Lawson
both of them, I think, that’s the amount… when you’re painting like that, it takes so much time and you have to reflect on it. But also, the fact that during the pandemic, we’re often forced to be more reflective and buttoned and considerate of our values of what we’re what we want, where that balance is.

Nathalie Nahai
And it’s tricky, isn’t it? like I know a lot of people during that sort of enforced those early months, three, six months of enforced lockdown, a lot of people quite dramatically reassessed their lives and you know, thought about how do I want to spend my time if I can’t go out to work, but I’m able to meet my rent, and I’ve got my basic things covered. So you know, you’ve got your healthcare, you’ve got a roof over your head, and what have you, it was a question of, how do they best use the time in a way that is fulfilling, and gives them a sense of maybe meaning and anchoring outside of the usual things that we would look to because if you can’t go to work, and you can’t socialise, and you can’t gather and eat with loved ones, how do you structure your day? How do you create that quality of aliveness and engagement in the world when a lot of the things that we turn to you for that are unavailable to us.

And so in that time, I was also thinking, you know, what can I do now, so I started with good intentions, Pilates every morning, and I’m not a gym person at all, I’m like, the opposite of that, I’m gonna do this, my back is gonna be great. I’m going to do stretches. Within in about two weeks, having gone through my entire wine cabinet and all of the chocolate in the house that we pre sort of got in and done some Pilates. I was like, Oh, actually, this looks like it’s going to be in for the long haul. And then it was a question of shit. How are we going to spend our time? Like, how do you structure your days, so you’re not just all over the shop without kind of a sense of rhythm. And I think that was probably something which a lot of people had to contend with, certainly early on.

Per Axbom
So was the pandemic then, the instigator that brought the idea of writing the book, or had you started on that thoughts about it already? Because all the things we’re talking about with values and how people are changing and reflecting. That’s so much part of what your book is?

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah. Yeah. So I was gonna make the, the strategic answer and then the existential answers, the strategic answer was that I knew that at some point, after I finished my course, I would start to, I would have to start thinking about writing a new book, mostly because the second edition of Webs of Influence had come out in 2017. And I kind of felt it was time, like professionally, I was like right, I want to have something new to dig my teeth into, and to speak about and teach. So I’ll think about that when I finished the art. And then on the more existential side, when it looked as though it was going to be dragging on. And I started to see some of the implications of the ambient stress and anxiety and fear and uncertainty and tumult. I then was thinking, Okay, well, if I’m going to use this time to put myself through writing a book, because for me, the book writing is actually quite an arduous process, its afterwards that I get the wonderful payoff of talking about these things.

But if I’m going to put myself through my paces to write the book, how can I use this opportunity to draw from the psychological research and behavioural science to, to write a book that’s actually going to help people? So as a question of, of that, really needing to do it, and then wanting to do something that made even a small amount of difference as people try to build out of the crisis, to build resilience, to think about values and purpose in a more robust structured, frameworked way. So you’re getting kind of almost a way of navigating some of these deeper questions with robust methodologies, with case studies, for example, so that it doesn’t become this kind of amorphous blob of well, yes, I know, I need to be purpose driven and values driven. But what does it actually mean? So it was kind of a combination of those two factors really?

Per Axbom
Well, that’s really impressive. So it’s like you already have the awareness that this pandemic would bring about this long term change in behavior really, that people would have to cope with?

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, this is the question, isn’t it? It’s always a sense of, you know, when you take the long view, if you look back through history, and you think, what are the what are the repercussions of big crises, both in the short and longer term, when you look back through history in terms of immediate reaction, in terms of ripple effects that last 5, 10, 15 years, or the children of people who’ve been affected in a specific crisis. And I think if you take that view, which I did, you see time and again, that when we’re confronted with loss, and a lot of people experienced, you know, small t and big T traumas throughout this time people lost loved ones, they lost work. There’s a loss of belonging in many cases, when when you’re confronted with such threatening and difficult circumstances, you can either try and find ways to kind of anchor yourself in something deeper, and find a way to move towards post traumatic growth. Or it can be very easy if you don’t have those sorts of tools and guidance to get stuck.

And there are many different ways to bolster yourself, whether it’s a, I don’t know, a regular meeting with friends on Zoom, and that becomes a source of comfort and solidarity, or it’s a therapist or it’s a personal practice. But yeah, looking backwards, I was thinking, Okay, well, once you about a month in, and we were looking at other countries and Italy, in particular, which is obviously quite close to Spain, looking at how things are dragging out, I was like, right, this is not just going to be a quick, you know, two month thing and then you’re you’re back at work, it’s going to be something that has much longer lasting effects. So then what deeper questions can we ask to help ourselves to build resilience? When the long term outcomes are going to be quite unpredictable, and quite long, hence, the long term outcomes

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, because we have, what we value there and valuing different balance. You’ve mentioned the book about how in the millennials and generation Zed, they’re becoming different in the way in which they assess organisations they’re going to work with…

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah

James Royal-Lawson
taking their, accepting job offers now they’re not quite going for the money in the same way as maybe they were

Nathalie Nahai
right. Exactly. Yeah, that’s an interesting point. So there’s, there’s, it’s always quite contentious when we talk about generations, or when we generalise people into big groups of people. But what is interesting is that we are seeing shifts. And you know, if you look at general trends, we know that for instance, some research suggests that up to 40%, so nearly half of millennials, will accept one job offer over another due to a company’s environmental protection credentials, even if it means taking a pay cut. So it’s not just about, you know, the fancy corner office in the car and the promotion, it’s, well, if I’m spending all this time at work, what is it doing for me? What is it doing for the world? How is it actually bettering the situation and not just lining my pockets? We also know, for instance, that 62% of Gen Z, so the younger cohorts, who are now entering the workforce, prefer to buy from and work for sustainable brands. So it’s not just about, you know, what is it that I can do to get ahead in my career? It’s also, what am I doing that’s a meaningful contribution. And when we’re talking about these young generations, especially for older generations, so I’m at the very top end, the oldest end of millennial, we can think, well, you know, what’s this got to do with us? but actually, within seven years, so if we’re thinking about this in the new year, like by 2029, consumers who are born between 1981 and 2012, will make up 72% of the global workforce. That’s the majority. And yes…

Per Axbom
Global workforce as well

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah. And the thing is, you can say, well, all right, well, the people making the decisions at the top are still going to be probably people who are older, who’ve got established track records, well, that’s fine. But they’re also going to be having to deal with pressures from younger employees, from getting the best talent, helping to retain the best talent. And if the people coming up are making greater demands on companies to stand up for social justice issues for diversity, equity and inclusion considerations to make sure that you know, that they’re living in a healthy environment that supports their well being and gives them purpose, as well as providing professional possibility for growth. All of those elements have to be considered if we’re thinking about flourishing businesses, and what they need to do in order to build success and resilience in the long term.

Per Axbom
That also puts kind of a heavy weight on the consumers themselves and having to do all this research to really understand what companies are doing the right thing. Based on what, how do I trust what they’re saying? I guess there’s a lot of virtue signalling going on, because companies realize they need to do this.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, and I think the tricky thing with virtue signalling is that there’s obviously an implicit understanding, sometimes an explicit understanding from brands that they realise that people are demanding certain principles to be enacted, certain values to be upheld. And of course, the quick fix is to say, All right, well, this particular group has been very vocal about X, Y, or Zed, and we want to target this audience. So we’re going to say that we uphold the values that they care about. And yet if you do that without having the infrastructure, the integrity, the track record to build that up, and to prove that you’re actually, you know, living those values from the inside out, then you risk creating all sorts of issues for yourself as a brand, as you alienate people who feel that their values and trust have been violated when you fall short of meeting the expectations. So there’s an interesting thing here, like if you’re thinking about as a brand, first of all, if we’re going to uphold certain values, how do we begin to have that conversation?

Number one, you don’t need to be all things to all people, we’re all in the process of growth and development, pick one thing that you really care about, where you can actually move the needle, if you’re a company that deals with, you know, logistics and you’re shipping things around, or you are moving things through fleets of vehicles, go electric, maybe that’s the thing that’s going to give you the greatest opportunity to enact those values. And then more broadly, if we’re thinking about as a consumer, evaluating how much a brand is virtue signalling, versus, you know, really living their values, or if you’re a business leader, and increasingly, this is happening from the very top down, if you’re a business leader, or an executive, and you’re thinking, how do we assess how we’re doing according to these values, then one of the frameworks that I think is super useful is what I call the four C’s frameworks for establishing integrity and evaluating it. And broadly speaking, this means making a public explicit commitment to the principles or values that you hold dear. It then means being congruent in word and action.

So walking the talk, it then means being consistent over time. So building that visible evidence based track record. So when people look at your actions over the last few years, they can say, Yeah, this person’s clearly walking the talk and doing it consistently. And finally being coherent in intention and behaviour. So doing the right things for the right reasons. And not just because suddenly, there’s social pressure for you to do certain things, or you’re legally compelled to, or whatever pressures might be coming from shareholders. It’s, it’s quite a useful framework. So commitment, congruence, consistency and coherence. And if you start to do that, and consumers demand that of their brands, eventually the brands will do that for the consumers and say, well, actually, these are the values we stand for. This is what we’re doing to make sure that we’re getting it right. Here’s the evidence, we make it easier for you. So you don’t have to look and do the hard work.

James Royal-Lawson
So, thinking about some of the shifts in behaviour, or even attitudes or value adjustments that we’ve seen, have been surfaced anyway, by the pandemic. Like, I know, this whole thing of seeing what’s around you and, been at home and then visiting local shops. Because you’ve realised you treasure the local cafe or the restaurant, and then I’m going there and making a point of visiting it. Whereas maybe before I’d be a bit blase, or think, oh, you know, it was almost too convenient. Because it’s next door.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, I think you really point out a really interesting trend, which is the fact that we become more conscious and deliberate in our consumption patterns. So for instance, one of the trends that I write about in the book was the fact that people have predicted that, especially younger cohorts that were more financially squeezed, many had predicted that they’d end up making consumer choices that were basically cheaper, so they didn’t have to spend as much money, we actually found the reverse in the majority of cases. And so to your point about, you know, how do we change, or how have we changed consumer behaviours in the main during the pandemic, in Barcelona, where I live, a lot of my friends, we’re buying organic food from Lidl, because it’s cheaper, it’s aligned with their values, in as much as they’re buying organic. And during the pandemic, when it’s sort of really started to… you started to see shops shutting down, and people taking a hit.

Most, if not all of my friends transformed their shopping behaviours, they said, Okay, we are going to intentionally choose not to go to Lidl, or the big supermarkets, we’re gonna, instead we’re going to go and support our local shops, many of them became vegan, or moved towards a more plant based diet, and it was really the sense of, you know, if we’re looking out for other people, and we want to make sure that we’re supporting those around us to flourish during very difficult times, what can we do to make a difference? And so these behaviours, which I think started out initially, from a place of compassion, from a place of wanting to be explicit about one’s values and prioritise certain things, a lot of these behaviours have since stuck in so you know, I don’t buy from supermarkets for much of myself, most of the purchases that I make are literally within like a two block radius with tiny independent shops. Yeah, I’ll go to the market to get the crunchy bars or Maltesers. But mostly speaking, you know, and then you develop relationships with people in these small shops. And

James Royal-Lawson
What’s so interesting that you mentioned well, two products there that you connect to, presumably your childhood, to your to your your pre expat life, living in the UK. So you write in the book about messaging to do with nostalgia and, and tradition and heritage, which ties in nicely to that and I think, with a pandemic, we’ve lifted more of those feelings that you think, if don’t want to lose a little local shop because it feels nostalgic. It feels like a heritage thing having a bakery here or being able to buy these products from your youth.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
So that local thinking that we’ve become more, more local and nostalgic, I guess.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, and it’s interesting, when you dig into the research, you find that typically when people go through hardship, there does seem to be a desire for more nostalgic, comforting products, services, even things like packaging design, for instance. So there’s, there’s a sense of, you know, what is it that you find joy in what is it that you find a sense of connection with perhaps more innocent or happy times, and of course, many of us will forget, unless it’s a traumatic experience, many of us will forget, the kind of more humdrum, boring or miserable everyday aspects of childhood, which I’m sure there are many. And we look back with this kind of Pollyanna. It’s called a Pollyanna principle, we look back through rose tinted glasses, and imagine the things or remember the things that we experienced then, in a much more positive light. So it’s kind of, you know, from a perspective of services and products, that’s one of the things that you see brands do during times of stress and uncertainty to get people to connect back in with that pleasurable sense of, well, this reminds me when I was happy, and I don’t know, buying sweets with my with my auntie or my grandparents, when I was a kid and spending time away from home away from the parents, like, whatever I wanted, at least that’s for me. Yes, definitely.

James Royal-Lawson
Going back and filling your suitcase full of like, you know, chocolate bars, and various sweets and things is a normal occurrence. That’s definitely my family. I mean, it’s like half jokingly, and definitely, politically, we dismiss we also think about how if you really, really had to do or you knew you’re gonna do a pandemic and Brexit, that the way that in which heritage and tradition and the kind of the look more local comes into play, then you kind of want to do Brexit, after pandemic,

Nathalie Nahai
because you value the local more.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And the way that that’s kind of the branding that is needed, or the changes that is necessary. If you’re going to make a success of it, because it’s already started, it’s going to be done, then, then you’re going to maybe be more resilient to that or cope with that step that move in your world better because you are longing for the heritage. You see all so many British flags and everything going back to the UK just now, and everything’s UK, I mean, there’s more UK flags than anything I’ve seen for a long time, it feels like, and I guess that’s, that is a combination of the pandemic and Brexit, even though it has been pandemic, second

Nathalie Nahai
yeah, it’s a tricky one, I have so many mixed feelings about this as a Brit, who’s chosen to live in Europe and also most of my family are from Europe. I think you make a really fascinating inquiry, that question of, you know, what are the things that enable a transition to go as well as it can given that the political decision has been made. So thinking about going local thinking about empowering communities, farmers to make sure that they are resilient, that you are buying food that supports not just, you know, your local neck of the woods, but the whole country, if we look at things like, the way in which we deal with food in the UK, the vast majority, I don’t know how high it is, it’s in the 90s, I believe, percent of food coming in, is from outside, obviously, it’s coming in from outside. So we’re, we’re extraordinarily dependent on imports for fuel for, well, obviously, less shelter, but for fuel for technology, for the food that we eat, for the talent that we bring in, especially thinking about the major cities in the UK.

And so given that we’re so heavily reliant on external aid, help, transaction etc. Maybe indeed, it’s a good time, if we’re thinking about what can we do to actually make the most of a situation, which I actually found quite heartbreaking. So I feel very European, and I don’t like the idea of just having I want the English flag, and the European, I’m not really, really a flagy kind of person, but, you know, I like the idea of being able to kind of transact and hop across and have more of a sense of a network, of relationships. You know, and of course, that will come in a different way. But, yes, I think it’s an opportunity to think, given the circumstances, how can we change our systems, and build local resilience, whether it’s from an energy perspective, a food perspective, a social perspective, create a greater sense of integration with the people who are around us to bridge difference, to make sure that we’re not kind of retreating into this othering of you know, us versus them, and then we pick whatever we want to pick whether it’s any kind of identity politics that we want to pick on. Yeah, to make sure that we’re getting the best out of a quite challenging situation.

Per Axbom
So there’s something I want to ask you that I want to get onto. Towards the end of the book, you mentioned this difference between virtual and in person interactions, which obviously aren’t functionally equivalent for me, when I, when I read this chapter, it was so fascinating to me, the realization that we’re so focused now on talking about hybrid and the physical versus virtual, whereas that’s all we’ve been doing in UX really, for many, many years, and that we’ve moved physical spaces like shops online, but we don’t talk about the hybrid experience enough. We don’t talk about how one relates to the other. So speak a bit about how we benefit from one or the other, and this hybrid experience that we all have to deal with right now.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, it’s a tricky one, because, as you say, people have been talking suddenly, now about remote work and hybrid work. People have been working remotely since they were able to go on Facebook like 2012. Even before then, as soon as it was possible. A lot of people were doing it. Many of my friends have been freelance for many years. And you know, this is not new to them. It’s just new to the bulk of the population, who have previously demanded to be in presence in a physical office. Okay, so some of the some of the good things about virtually mediated work and communication. One of the things I think is really interesting is that it has the potential to democratise gatherings. So for instance, if you’re thinking about people who need to be present in a boardroom, and one of my relatives are talking about this at a bank where they work, previously, it was only a certain number of people that could fit physically in the room around the table. So it was only the execs that would get in there. The problem is that then they would have to, in their own time, relate to their managers of teams. And then those managers have to relate to their subordinates. What it was that had happened in the meeting what the most important elements were, what they needed to do in terms of action.

And so of course, when the pandemic hit, and people had to migrate online, suddenly, you could still have, obviously, this core group of people making the main decisions. But you could also open it up, where appropriate, to a whole host of people who are relevant to the conversation, to listen in, to absorb to give feedback, in a curated way. So that then suddenly, all the company was on the same page, and people working much more harmoniously together. It also means that if you’ve got people who are perhaps a little shy, or they’re less extroverted than you know, if you’ve got… and also for people who don’t enjoy or find easy, the maintenance of eye contact, for instance, having something where you have boxes on screens with people’s heads, and they’re smaller, it can also be quite democratising in the sense that you then have a different way of relating to people, because you’re not in a specific corner of the room, you don’t have to raise your voice to be heard, you can just raise your hand. So it’s all of these elements that enable us, if we use these tools in an intentional way, to create more space for a richer conversation from a greater number of people.

On the flip side, beyond those things, you know, as we’re talking here, I can see your faces I can’t see your hands unless I move them up around my face. So we’re missing out on a lot of gestural and nonverbal cues, which are very important for implicitly understanding someone’s emotional content that states how they feel about things. We also don’t move from our desks in most instances, to take one type of meeting, or watch a particular documentary or whatever it might be to the neck. So we’ve got this situation where you’ve got this kind of setup, where you’re not physically having to move despite the variety of tasks that we engage in from that location. So it can bleed together. So whether I’m writing a book, doing a podcast watching Netflix talking with you doing research for a product I want to buy whatever it is, it all happens in the same space.

And we know from research in therapeutic context, for instance, that just the act of physically moving from wherever you you are to begin with, to the location where you go and visit your psychotherapist, that act of physically moving through space and then being in a contained space dedicated to a particular kind of relational work has a huge positive impact on the processing of that work on how you feel on the memorability of the experience that you have. And this also translates to, you know, moments for serendipity in a building. There’s a difference between the roomies and the zoomies, as one of my interviewees talked about it. You know, if you’re physically present certain number of days a week, and you are shaking hands, and you do have those water cooler moments, or you share a beer after work or you go for lunch. It creates a rich and spontaneous quality to the nature of our relationships, that is very hard to reproduce online. And so I think there’s also the question of how do you cultivate culture, belonging, interpersonal warmth, a sense of spontaneity, when we are starting relationships online, where it’s harder to build trust, how can you intend to build back in some of these elements so that we’re not missing out as much when working purely from a remote fashion.

James Royal-Lawson
Well think I’m going to use this word now, which I don’t really want to use when you use it anywhere. But with the with the where we’re talking about metaverse. Now, virtual reality that is there… do we have an opportunity or space for virtual office spaces to partly solve that issue on succeed, make hybrid virtual reality not just hybrid digital All physical.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah, so that’s, that’s a whole world that super interesting. I mean, I think there’s a couple of things that spring immediately to my mind. One of them is that if you are, first of all, lucky enough to get a headset, so you’ve got the hardware consideration to pull in, if you’re lucky enough to get a headset, and you are wanting to physically move through space, in order to have a more immersive experience, which I would suggest is perhaps the most resonant for people, mostly, it’s going to be most engaging, you also have to think about what are the physical spaces in which people are having these virtual experiences.

So if I’m in a tiny, flat share with friends, say I’m a young person, I’m starting out my career, how reasonable is it to expect a young person to find a physical space to move around, and I know sounds silly, but it does make a difference. And then furthermore, we rely on so much more than our visual and auditory senses to inform our experience of one another of the world. All of these haptic cues, the sense of the air on our skin, the sense that we’re surrounded with in terms of what we can smell and what we can touch. We know from the research, for instance, that when you look at virtual versus physically real environments, having something in a virtual environment, which you could visually potentially Imagine yourself reaching out and touching, it’s not encoded or experienced in the same way in the brain as a real physical object that you could physically reach out and touch.

And so there’s also this consideration of how much does the virtual reality that we move around in from an audio and visual perspective? How much richer is that experience than a flat screen? Maybe it’s not that much, and how does it differ from our physical environment of actually being able to engage with the objects, people environments around us, and they’re not comparable experiences, I mean, they can be wonderful as an adjunct to, you know, the screens that we use and what have you, and great if you’re trying to create a more immersive experience with colleagues around the world, but I don’t believe that they’ll ever be a replacement for real physical in presence experiences, unless or until they’re able to completely reinvent or reproduce aspects of, you know, our lived experience. And that might just be, you know, neural interfaces in the brain that allow you to have the experience of being in a fully immersive environment without actually having to have headsets. And so who knows, I want to be around for that. I hate the idea.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing is about poking, hooking memories, or building memories based on the full range of your senses. And I don’t know, I know that I felt sometimes now when you’re staring at the screen that you can’t distinguish between that meeting, that meeting, that meeting, that meeting because they’re effectively all the same boxes, especially if you have a lot of overlapping people that are in your meetings, then you’ve lost all those mental hooks. So your memories don’t land…

Nathalie Nahai
Yes

James Royal-Lawson
…in the back of your brain in the right boxes, because they haven’t had all the things they need to send them on the right way.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah

James Royal-Lawson
…so maybe virtual reality could help even if you’re sat seated, maybe could help by giving you different spaces, creative spaces to work in, to allow your brain to process it, differentiate that in a differentiated way to all the other things coming. Maybe you’re right… hoping it’s something quite innocent, like that, rather than Strange Days plugged in cerebral cortex

Nathalie Nahai
Don’t get me wrong, I love you know, one of my favourite, favourite shows growing up was Star Trek, and I love the episodes when they go in the holodeck and get to walk around. But again, it’s an immerisive… basically, what Punchdrunk does, it’s an immersive theatrical experience, where you’re not losing somehow, with the technology, you’re not suddenly losing most of your senses in the service of audio visual input, you’ve got everything we produce. So it’s like, if we can do that, then great. I just, it’s just the in between stuff that I’m less excited by that, of course, yes, I think it has the potential to, to at least resolve some of the challenges that we face currently.

Per Axbom
So we really are identifying UX problems to be solved.

Nathalie Nahai
Yeah

Per Axbom
As the world really becomes more complex. Well, we covered a lot of topics over that short span of time. Thank you so much, Natalie.

Nathalie Nahai
My pleasure, it’s been a treat as always speaking with you both.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
As I said in the intro, it’s always really good fun talking to Natalie. And she, she’s just so knowledgeable about so many different topics. And you can get into the psychology side of things on any of these topics. And, and we do, and we opened up so many little rabbit holes there that you could spend an entire episode diving into,

Per Axbom
Right. And you just want to spend more time exploring and understanding things. So it’s a real… you start with this episode, and you can go continue on into 100 different topics if you feel like it.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. One topic that we discussed a fair bit in the interview, that I think we can talk a little bit more about is the the ability to work from home now, which has come very quickly as a result of the the pandemic, and how much the ability to thrive in that environment is connected to personality. There’s some people’s personalities that are more suited to that, and that way of working and some people’s personalities, as Natalie said in the intro would would need more physical meeting with people. And I was wondering or thinking back to things you’ve read and learned about how personalities formed, and might get some of these figures wrong, or might be slightly, slightly inaccurate, but roughly, they I think I’ve read research where half of your personality is genetic, and half of your personality you develop as you’re growing up,

Per Axbom
or likely varies from individual to individual, I guess.

James Royal-Lawson
Of course, of course it will do but but then I think it’s by the end of your 20s. That’s when your personality becomes basically fixed. And I started to think and reflect on what Natalie said about generation Zed and millennials, and how big a group of the working population they’re going to be within the next seven years. And the way that we’re dealing with the shift of going online, and they’re taking the opportunity to find a new balance in hybrid working between remote and an office, and how quickly we can cope with adjusting. And I wonder, is that going to be like, not maybe much of an issue for the younger people starting out in work now.

Per Axbom
Although, mostly because they can adapt, if that’s what you’re saying, is it?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, they’ve got capacity left in their personality change, They’ve got room to change in their personalities still, because they’re still young enough.

Per Axbom
Right, and you and I feel it will work for because we’re people who like to adapt and change our behavior and are curious and want to try things out. But…

James Royal-Lawson
And we’ve spent a lot of time working remotely anyway due to self employed nature, I think.

Per Axbom
Yeah perhaps exactly, but then that means that there is like a population where people have been adapting to working on location for many, many years and commuting, and that’s part of… sort of built into their body. That’s how it works.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, they’ve grown up with it…

Per Axbom
Yeah

James Royal-Lawson
…from birth, effectively, they’ve been in a culture where it’s expected that you will end up working, and the workplace will be somewhere you go to for the vast majority of people, I guess, I don’t like using majority there, but most people have been going to an office if they’re employed. And yeah, and suddenly, and that’s been set into our personalities is one, I think in there. And that doesn’t mean that we have to adjust and find a new balance, because our personalities haven’t been raised to cope with that new way of working.

Per Axbom
This does make me reflect on how things are changing so much with the technological revolution. And we’re always talking about the next version of things. So now we’re moving from working physically to working online. And we’re seeing this… everybody’s talking about this future world where we have virtual 3d office spaces. But the reality, of course, is that we’ll have as you as you said, already, we will have hybrids. And it, it seems that we’re increasing the number of possible hybrid variants all the time, because different companies will have different maturities around these issues. And some people want to go fully remote, some will have partial, and those partial versions will be so many different ones. So we’re not… we’re actually making the world more complex. Because moving from one workplace to another will mean that I will have to shift the the time I spent on location, perhaps

James Royal-Lawson
Then again, but for our 30 Plus, then we might struggle with this more, because it’s not something we’ve done. And that our capacities to… or I can maybe say that our balance will be different.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
And how we accommodate other groups with other needs and balances. It’s another thing we’re gonna have to be inclusive about, isn’t it?

Per Axbom
Exactly, we have to allow for different wishes of ways of working.

James Royal-Lawson
And it’s kind of maybe, oh, I suppose the other thing where you’ve got like, maybe someone in the organisation will say, No, no, no, I want all my team to work on-site. Which, I mean that might be something that is reassuring for them. I think you you mentioned another thing, you’re worried about the youngsters?

Per Axbom
Yeah, I made a joke about, oh my god, they’re going to be online all the time and they’ll not have to experience this wonderful experience of, I mean, being face to face. I mean, that feels so important to me, just from a biological perspective. And then we realize well, maybe that’s just because I’m old.

James Royal-Lawson
They say, Yeah, you’re, you’re being nostalgic for something that they’ve never had.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
Potentially. So we’re in to the psychology of that as well.

Per Axbom
Exactly.

James Royal-Lawson
You’re grieving. you’re grieving for someone else who never experienced a loss

Per Axbom
And they’re not even… yeah, they don’t even see it as a problem.

James Royal-Lawson
Potentially, yeah. It’s an exciting change that we’re going into now. And I think like Natalie writes in the book that, you know, can we check, take the chance to find a new balance and seize this moment to do something better?

Per Axbom
Yeah. And with this increased complexity that we’re seeing, I think that there are a lot of topics covered in the book around values and self determination and personal growth, that are really important to addressing all these different challenges.

James Royal-Lawson
And, I suppose it’s quite a good and relevant podcast to listen to, after this would be our chat back in episode 255 with Margot Blumstein.

Per Axbom
Oh, yeah

James Royal-Lawson
…trustworthy

Per Axbom
Perfect pairing

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, it’s Margot, in her book focuses the entire book on the trustworthiness of brands and humiliation of branding. Now, go listen to that one if you haven’t already.

Per Axbom
And if you can spare a little bit of your time, then join our small community of volunteers. We’re always looking for help with transcripts, publishing and links for our show notes

James Royal-Lawson
Show nits?

Per Axbom
Show notes, show nits, and the show notes for this episode, of course are on our website, lots of links, remember to keep moving

James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side. I don’t do a side it’s a joke.

[Music]

Per Axbom
So speaking of hybrid working, James, what do prisoners used to call each other?

James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know, Per. What do prisoners use to call each other?

Per Axbom
Cell phones

James Royal-Lawson
Oh.


This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-LawsonPer Axbom and Nathalie Nahai recorded in November 2021 and published as episode 277 of UX Podcast.