Ariba Jahan PARISS: Hey, everyone.

Again.

This is our final talk of the evening.

So, this next speaker coming up, she climbed mountain Kilimanjaro, isn't that crazy, okay.

So, this is who is not in the room: Building better products by engaging hard to reach

users.

Let's give a warm welcome to Ariba Jahan.

[ Applause ] ARIBA: Hi.

Just so you know, you'll see me stepping on and stepping off a stool here.

I'm 4 foot 11 inches so some adjustments needed to be made.

So, I'm gonna give you a second to kind of read some of these headlines that showcase

what's been happening in our industry.

So, this  this is what we get when we don't challenge our assumptions.

Hi, I'm Ariba Jahan.

And today I'm here to share with you four ways you can challenge your assumptions to

avoid headlines like those.

And instead build better and more impactful products for your audience.

And the four methods  oh, okay.

And the four methods I'll share with you are helping us think through product development

in a new way at the ad council.

And I'm hoping they'll be helpful for you as you bring these back to your work.

So, for context, the Ad Council, we're a nonprofit organization that leverages the power of communication

to tackle the nation's biggest challenges like preventing wildfires and LGBTQ rights

awareness and diversity and inclusion and promoting girls in STEM.

We bring together industry leaders to develop campaigns to create social impact and create

action.

And as the director of innovation at the Ad Council, my responsibility is to facilitate

innovative thinking and work in our teams as well as cultivate a culture where experimentation

and curiosity can thrive.

And I get to do that in many ways including training our whole staff on Splash Box, which

is our approach to innovation.

And it incorporates methodologies from LEAN as well as human centered design with mindsets

to cultivate in our teams.

And to date we've trained 80% of the organization, giving us a shared proposal and toolset to

innovate.

And as a way to bring the training  the skills people learn at the training to life and make

them more tangible, we created a project where our new innovators can apply their skills

to create a digital prototype for one of our campaign issues.

So, today I'm really excited to share with you one of these digital prototype projects

where our assumptions got in the way and we had to use these  the four methods I mentioned

to uncover our assumptions and to really challenge them.

So, the campaign issue we chose was teen bullying prevention.

And the task at hand was, well, how do we leverage the power of technology, what it

is today, to answer this big question?

How might we influence teens to reduce peer mistreatment and empower one another by building

and perpetuating a more empathetic, supportive and inclusive culture?

Our target audience for this project were teens ranging from the ages 13 to 17 years

old who fell into the category of "Good eggs."

We defined" Good eggs 'as teens who believe they're good people and value kindness and

respect of one another and they want to be the best version of themselves.

So, as you can imagine, we were really excited to contribute towards creating a more inclusive

world for our next generations.

So, as any good team, we dug in n and did a tremendous amount of research.

From reading every single research report we could get our hands on about Gen Z, and

interviewing teens, teachers, as well as issue experts.

And our research gave us so many insightful findings, that we were able to come up with

over a hundred ideas and 20 concepts.

And we then showed our strongest ideas to team to get some early feedback on which ideas

do we refine, how do we refine them?

And which ideas should we be leaving behind?

After this many rounds of research and getting early user feedback directly from teens, we

felt pretty confident in our direction.

And we knew that whatever solution we create in order to solve for bullying has to solve

the three goals.

Our research told us that good eggs have an innate desire to create the change they wanted

to see in the world.

We wanted to show them that and their actions, hoping they will adopt the kinder behaviors.

And two, we should double down on social media.

We found out that 91% of Gen Z are on social media.

So, we knew immediately that we needed to prioritize and emphasize the role of social

media in our digital solution.

And three, leverage the rise of CGI influencers.

See, at the time, four computer generated based influencers are garnered over 1 million

followers on Instagram.

And we were kind of blown away by those and we need to do something with this.

Whether it's to do storytelling or to model good behaviors to teens in hopes that it works

for them.

So, keeping these three goals in mind, we refined our 20 concepts into five promising

ideas.

And then we took these ideas to teams to get some more validation and then start building

them.

And the main thing we learned at this round with teens is that we were wrong on all fronts.

What we focused on as goals were actually just assumptions.

Starting with the word bullying.

It turns out that the only people that use the word bullying is a bunch of adults who

want to end bullying.

[ Laughter ] And, you know, we learned that because we

talked to teens and when we asked them, hey, can you share your experience with bullying?

They didn't have much to share.

But when we changed our wording and asked, can you share the last time someone hurt you?

Or maybe when you've hurt someone else?

They shared stories about being excluded, shaming, blaming.

And there was just so much more vulnerability involved.

So, it turned out that their language around mistreatment looked very different than ours.

And they're actually way more self aware than we give them credit for.

We asked them, can you think about a moment where you mistreated someone or you hurt someone.

And when they did that, they used words like regret, guilt, is upset as how they felt afterwards.

So, they're clearly fully aware of the implications of their actions.

And it turned out that even though 91% of Gen Z are on social, they value privacy and

authenticity way more than what we knew.

To the point where they have two types of Instagram accounts.

One is called Finsta which is fake Instagram account.

And that is where they are their most authentic self.

Photos are unfiltered, they keep it private.

No crafted captions and they keep the number of people who can follow that account very

small.

And then they have the Rinsta, the real Instagram account where it's hyper curated, well crafted

captions.

Perhaps even song lyrics and that's where they want to have a lot of followers.

And when it came down to CGI influencers, only like a few teens knew what a CGI influencer

was.

And even the ones that followed them only did it out of curiosity for the character's

fashion.

And if you  I'm not so sure if you can read it, but if you can look at their handwritten

feedback on the screen, you'll notice what they wanted instead was someone relatable.

Someone who might have had a tough childhood.

Someone who has gone through issues.

And they also wanted someone funny.

I really think just wanted Kevin Hart.

[ Laughter ] So, our assumptions were checked.

You know?

And before I dive into the four tactics that allowed us to uncover these assumptions, I

want to talk about assumptions for a second.

You know, assumptions  assumption is something we believe to be true without any evidence.

And the reason it's so easy for our assumptions and biases to come into our work or to creep

up even after tremendous amount of research, is because our brain is constantly making

assumptions just in the interest of efficiency.

See, the thing is, over the course of 200,000 years, our brain has created several mental

shortcuts to help us cope and survive and deal with the tremendous amounts of innovation

in our world.

So, we end up having shortcuts that help us make sense of large amounts of information.

Shortcuts that help us determine what's important to remember and what to recall.

Shortcuts that create explanations for us when we don't have enough meaning or when

there is not enough context.

And shortcuts that help us act quickly.

These ready shorts that help us remember how to ride a bike, know 2 plus 2, help us detect

joy or frustration in someone's voice and to run from perceived danger.

While all of those sound necessary, these are the same shortcuts that cause us to make

assumptions, make snap judgments, jump to conclusions and make decisions based on our

biases.

And these mental shortcuts are more commonly known as cognitive biases.

And the thing is, with 180 of these mental shortcuts active in our brain all the time,

it's kind of hard to spot when they're getting in the way or when they're active.

So, I'll call out three that got in our way and we didn't even notice it.

See, we have a mental shortcut that causes us to be easily influenced by what is stored

in our memory or what's familiar.

And that's the way  that's the reason why all of us use the word bullying to describe

that interaction.

Even without even questioning does that language even resonate?

Does it even work?

We have another mental shortcut that causes us to make judgments and impressions by relying

only on the information made available to us.

And that's why when we see data like 91% of teens are on social media and they spend 9

hours consuming media, we're just like, oh my god.

They must be sharing everything and they're on it all the time.

Let's just like do everything social media related.

What we don't do is actively question, well, does this 91% do the same exact thing?

Did they all use the same features in the same exact way?

Do they all feel the same way?

We don't do that.

And the last mental shortcut I'll call out is that we're just naturally drawn to details

that confirm our own existing beliefs.

It's just what we do.

This is why we have friends.

This is how we make friends.

I'll look for someone who likes the same thing as I do.

Now we're friends.

And the thing is, that same bias is what causes us to find things that validate us.

So, when we were super hyped up about CGI influencers, we ended up paying a lot more

closer attention to headlines like these that said, oh, my god, CGI influencers are the

future of the influencer marketing.

And that's what happens.

So, while great for survival, mental shortcuts are not great for innovation.

And that's how easy it is for mental shortcuts that are designed to help us cope to get in

the way of us making products that are right for our audience.

So, for the rest of my talk, I will focus on how we used  is it jumping on the screen?

Because it's jumping here.

So, I just wanted to double check.

It's jumping?

Okay.

I'm gonna assume someone's gonna take care of that.

[ Laughter ] But I'll keep going.

So, yes.

I'll focus on how we used these four methods in the teen bullying prevention prototype

projects.

And I hope it gives you inspiration on how you can take some of these methods back into

your projects so you can challenge your assumption.

Okay.

So, the first one being mapping  oh!

Mapping assumptions.

I'll just read for a second so you can have the slides while I talk.

All right.

We're up.

So, the first one I'll talk about is mapping assumptions.

It's an activity where we actively  what slide is that?

Oh, that's not moving.

All right.

Now we're there.

So, it's an activity where we actively uncover critical uncertainties, unknowns and blind

spots about our audience, challenge and solutions we're thinking about exploring.

And the thing about assumptions, as we saw, is that they don't always look and feel like

assumptions.

They feel like facts.

So, it's really good to have a diverse team in the room so that we can all help each other

spot each other's blind spots and challenge each other's assumptions.

So, for our project, in order to map assumptions, we started by asking ourselves questions around

teens' experiences with mistreatment.

So, we tried to figure out like how much do we know the audience?