Compassionate Design Should Be in Every Digital Marketing Toolkit

About This Episode

Welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, we’re joined by Michelle Keller. Michelle creates content that promotes trust, protects her clients' agency and dignity, and is welcoming to all through inclusivity and accessibility, and hopes for the future.

This episode is perfect for you if you're curious about what compassionate design is and how to integrate it into your digital marketing strategy.

Episode Highlights:

1. What compassionate design is and how you can integrate it into your digital marketing strategy
2. How compassionate design and inclusive efforts overlap.
3. How can you convince your boss to take a compassionate design approach?
4. What soft skills do digital marketers need to cultivate in order to embrace compassionate design?
5. How can teams foster more compassion in the design and decision-making process?
6. How does compassionate design help us avoid bias or harmful assumptions about users?

Connect With Michelle

• Michelle’s Content UX Design Portfolio
• Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn
• Find Michelle on Medium

Resources:

Find on episode webpage.

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Transcript

Meet Michelle And The Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories Podcast, a monthly show where we celebrate and learn from the change makers in digital marketing. I'm personally obsessed with how digital marketers sell through and get their ideas executed. I'm your host, Catherine Watsie Ong. I'm the owner of WO Strategies LLC. We focus on organic discovery for our enterprise clients with a training-centered approach. Today we're joined by Michelle Keller. Michelle creates content that promotes trust, protects her clients' agency and dignity, and is welcoming to all through inclusivity and accessibility and hopes for the future. She specializes in designing clear, compassionate, and trauma-informed content for difficult and sensitive situations. She's led content development from initial concept through delivery and has experiences with UX and WordPress development. She's also created systems and processes for auditing, managing, producing, and publishing digital content. And she says she excels at bringing order and structure to chaos. So this episode is going to be perfect for you if you're curious about what compassionate design is and how you can integrate it into your digital marketing strategy, how compassionate design and inclusive ADA type efforts overlap, how you convince your boss to take a compassionate design approach, what soft skills digital marketers need in order to cultivate and embrace a compassionate design format, how teams can foster more compassion in the design and decision-making process, and how compassionate design helps us avoid bias or harmful assumptions about users.

unknown 2:13

Woo!

SPEAKER_01 2:14

It's gonna be a great episode. Michelle, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here, Catherine.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Cool. So I we were just before the show started talking about how you changed jobs. So can you introduce yourself to the listeners and let them know where you're at now?

What Compassionate Design Really Means

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah, sure. So I started my career initially in social work. Um, and throughout various years, I've taken a number of different jobs, especially when my kids were little, and I did some freelance design work. I started doing that about 11 years ago, and that was when I first got into design in general. But two jobs ago, I started working as a content designer for hospice, and that's where I was introduced to trauma-informed design or compassionate design, as I've been calling it lately. Um, and from that job, I ended up with my current position with a government contractor. And at the moment, I'm supporting two contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and I was hired specifically because of my background in trauma-informed design.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

That's cool. So uh you've mentioned a couple of times. Can you explain to the listeners what compassionate design is? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Um, my my quick elevator speech is actually what you just introduced me in, in terms of the kind of content that I design. So, but I'll unpack where that comes from. So, compassionate design comes out of what's usually called trauma-informed design. Um, and that is a term that was started by SAMHSA, which is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration here in the US federal government. Um, and they identified six areas that trauma-informed design needed to encompass, and that was safety, trustworthiness, and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, voice and choice, and cultural, historical, and gender issues. And so I've boiled that down for me personally into trust, agency, welcome, and hope. Um, and basically what compassionate design means for me is designing content in a way that cares about the people who are going to be accessing it. Um, I I've I use trauma-informed design as kind of what what I do, that's what I specialize in. But a lot of people are put off by that term and saying, oh, well, I don't, I I work for Amazon. Nobody has trauma when they come to Amazon, so I don't need to worry about that. But compassionate design makes it feel a little bit more accessible. So I'm actually applying trauma-informed design in the term compassionate design.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Ah, yeah, it makes tons of sense for me. I mean, when I was working with National Cancer Institute, it was one of the things that I had suggested because there's some interesting research out there about how if you're under stress, how that impacts how you can absorb online copy, like how fast you read things and whether or not you can see things. And uh the summary, the summary is that if you're um in a stressful situation, you have less capacity to handle too much text and complicated navigation and that kind of thing. That is exactly correct. Yeah, yeah. And it was so obvious because uh, as you would expect, a government agency that's never done any of this before, it sounded very dry for everybody. And that just didn't make a lot of sense. And it was also very obvious when you flip to like one of their non-fed competitors in the same topic space, and they are using compassion in their copy, and it's very clear. Very clear, wait, I bet there's research. Because I I I didn't have that background. I was like, I bet there's research on this. Wait, hold on. There it is. Um have yeah, because I've got a little bit of background in a human-computer interaction. So I was like, I bet there's some stuff out there about this. Um, so uh talk a little bit more about why you think everybody needs some sort of compassionate design, even if they're not like a place like National Cancer Institute.

Why Every Product Needs Compassion

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, absolutely. I think the the reality is that I don't know what a user is experiencing when they access my content. So when they get my email or when they log on to my website, I don't know what has been happening in their day. Did they just come in from their their dog got hit by a car, or did they just lose their job and now they're they get an email from someone asking, hey, how's it going? Do you want to buy our product? Um, I don't know what my users are experiencing when they come to my content. So if I design content and visual design in such a way to be compassionate and to care about them as a human being, everyone benefits from that. Whether you're accessing my content because you just had the worst day of your life, or whether you just got a promotion and you're going to Disney, you're gonna love compassionate content too. So, in in my opinion, nobody loses in that. Designing compassionately benefits every single user. And because I can't control the state of mind that the person is in when they come, just like you mentioned for the cancer thing. Um, that apps we think about it in situations like that, right? Cancer, I work with veterans, so sure, that makes sense. But I mentioned Amazon earlier. You know, sometimes I'm on Amazon because I need to purchase something that's causing me a great deal of stress. Um, and if I can't find it quickly, it causes me more stress and I'm liable to just walk away and do something else. Um, so if it's designed in a compassionate way and communicating with me like I'm a human being, that makes all the difference in the world. So we all need compassion.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

You know, this makes me wonder whether software options like desk.com have some of this built into it, because I was just thinking of support structures, right? Because usually once you hit a support page, you're annoyed at the very least. If not maybe other levels of emotion. You'll have to know the answer, but you're gonna have to tell me on email afterwards because now I'm dying to know whether you know, because there's a bunch of them in that suite. It's like, you know, the Salesforce and the desk.coms and the whatever. And I just kind of wonder if they ever thought about it. Though they should.

Support Systems And The Best Chatbot Refund

SPEAKER_00 8:00

They should, they absolutely should. Yeah. Because we all need that, right? Yeah. I'm looking through my notes because I don't remember what question it was that um I was thinking through, but I had an experience just like this earlier this week, right? I got in a notification that my free trial um had been upgraded and my credit card had been charged. And I went, fabulous. I you love those. Yeah, I love those. Usually I put a ticker in my calendar to remind me to cancel before they automatically charge me. Well, I'd forgotten, probably because there was a lot going on. I was a little stressed. Um, and I didn't want this product. I literally had signed up for the free trial because I was annoyed at the pop-ups that kept coming up every time I was trying to use the site. So I I was I'm gonna reach out to their help. And so I clicked the help button. It was a chat bot. Immediately I go into fight mode, right? Participating a terrible experience. I'm not gonna mention the company because there weren't other options. There was no phone number, there was no email. I had to use a chat bot. So I type in my question to the chat bot, and the chat bot responds, not a problem. I've already canceled your subscription and refunded your payment. What? And I went, What? was my exact response. It was the most beautiful interaction I've ever had in my life with the chatbot. That's amazing. So do I wish they would have sent me a reminder email saying, hey, your thing's about to expire, or even better, that they didn't ask for payment information for their free trial. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

But they did, and then they recognized at some point along the line, someone said, Hey, what if a user doesn't want it and forgets to cancel before we re-up? Because the chatbot was already trained on that situation. So at least at that moment, someone thought about compassionate design.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

So you're making me think I'm gonna head off the web for a second because I I recently had a customer service experience that ticked me off. But um, does compassionate design also apply to phone trees? Yes. We're talking about AI.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

So um, one of the things actually, when I was unemployed and looking for a job, I interviewed for a number of positions that was writing the script for those phone calls that you make. Ah. Because your customer service representative that you're talking to, when even when you get a human, has a script that they're working off of, right? And so if you have a situation that doesn't follow their script, they oftentimes don't know what to do. So there were some companies that were actually experimenting with like a choose your own adventure where the the customer would call in, they would say what their problem is, the rep would type that into their program, and then it would pick up some options and they would select an option and then ask the customer a question and select a different option. And it was so much more interactive. And I was like, that's the kind of script writing I would love to be part of, right? Thinking through all the scenarios and stuff like that. So, yes, compassionate design absolutely applies to those kind of interactions. I think it applies to print. I think you can use it. There's even on LinkedIn, there's a trauma-informed design society that's actual for physical design. So, like the design of spaces, yes. How you put together, like you think of a doctor's office, right? People go to a doctor's office. Or a hospital or a hospital. How can we design our physical space in a way to be compassionate to the folks who are going to be there?

Beyond Screens: Calls, Spaces, Print

SPEAKER_01 12:39

You're reminding me. I also had an experience with a hospital that took me up. Anyway, um, no, because it was like I was my mother's not very mobile, and I was taking her for uh they they were open on the weekend, she was getting an x-ray, some sort of scan. Um, but they didn't tell me, and unfortunately, the front front desk didn't know either. There's usually a parking lot right next to the building. Yeah, and we can hit do handicap parking, and it's pretty short to go from there to where the scan is. But I booked on the weekends because I have a lot of medical appointments, it was easier to take her on a Saturday, and that garage was closed. Closed on the weekends, and it was raining. And the only and the only parking lot, luckily they let me drop her off in front, but the only parking lot was like group C or whatever, which was like very far away, you know. And and it just I was like, what are you doing? Like I I had a moment where I was, for instance, I was in a scooter for a while because I had operations on my ankles, and you'd be surprised at how many places like just don't even have sidewalks and stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

You see it everywhere. My dad told me just the other day on the phone, he's like, I think about you every day. I'm like, oh dad, that's so sweet. That's so sweet. Well, because I encounter all this stuff that's so messed up, and I think, man, Michelle would fix that. Ah, thanks, Dad. I was hoping you were actually thinking about every day.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Um, so how do you get started with the compassionate design approach? Is it similar to what you would do for like ADA stuff, only because we have a lot of listeners with SEO and our stuff overlaps a lot with ADA?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I think there is a lot of overlap with ADA or WuCAG guidelines or 508 compliance or whatever you're using at your company. I think there's a lot of overlap. I think that can be a good starting point because I'll be honest, I've worked for companies who weren't even that wasn't even on their radar. Um, and like this color contrast, like those, the the print is too tiny, no one can read it, and you've got gray background and white text, and no one can read that. Um, so I think that those are good places to start because at a baseline level, if I can't even access your content, it's not compassionate. If you haven't set up your header tags in a way that my screen reader understands, your can your content is not compassionate. It doesn't make me feel welcome, right? It says to me, Oh, you can't actually read content, you have to listen to it. This is not for you. Right. And that's not what compassionate content is about.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

So um now, do you use that line when you're trying to convince you haven't had I don't know if you've been in the moment where you need to convince people to do compassionate design because obviously your current agency you work for wants it for various reasons. But I kind of wonder, do you you you just said this content is not for me. So I wonder if you can pivot that in conversations to actually get people to do compassionate design.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yes, I have actually said that before. I was when I worked at hospice, I was doing some designing and I I wanted to change. We had print mailers that we were required by the government to send out to people. We had to send things in print, and I said, that's fine. Um, but our our print options were they were horrific, right? We're too much on the page, too tiny font, not bold enough for people to even read it on a colored background. And so I said, Can I redesign these? Um, and they said, sure, whatever. So I redesigned them both in print and digital because I wanted to make them available digitally, because what we had for the download before was literally the print copy that we sent to the printer. Oh, okay. Yeah. And they were trifold brochures, which looks great.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Fabulous. That's really easy on your mobile phone.

Starting Points: Accessibility And Standards

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I redesigned the digital one and the print version. And then I was showing it to my boss, and he said, convince me why I'm gonna have to reprint all of these now so that they look like what this looks like. And I said, Okay, I want you to stand at the back of my office and read this. Um, and he said, Well, I can't see it from there. I said, Exactly. Now imagine you're an 85-year-old man who just lost his wife in hospice and this comes in your mail. What are you gonna do? He's like, I'm gonna throw it away.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

You're gonna get angry probably and throw it away.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

And then you're gonna think, I hate these hospice people.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Um, and then I showed him a website that's called Who Can Read This? Um, and it actually shows you color palettes and whether people with different visual problems can see them. Oh, that's cool. I haven't heard of that one before. Fabulous. It's so fantastic because then you can isolate, like, here's what it looks like. Here's what our website, these colors look like to someone who has cataracts. Or here's what they look like to someone who has blurred vision. Uh and he looked at and he's like, I bet half of our people can't even read our websites. I said, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Wow, wow. Yeah, I mean, that's very similar to what I do in relation to page speed. If I see someone that's on a particularly atrociously slow website, there's a tool called GT Metrics, which is for free. I think they make you create a login now. But you could actually create a little video about how long it takes for things to load based on locations. So especially when I'm working with maybe like international folks, I'm like, this is what it looks like in Peru, and somebody has to sit there painfully waiting for the thing to load. And even that's compassionate design, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Because you're saying, hey, person with slow internet, this website is also for you. It's not just for people with fast high-speed internet who have great technological equipment that can download our things super fast. It's for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Um, how much um how much effort do you spend on text selection, like the actual language that you're using?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

That I think is honestly the easiest place to start when you're starting to say, how can I incorporate compassionate design? You're writing the text anyway, so just write better text. Use clean, plain language. The plain language.gov website is really helpful. Avoid euphemisms and uh inside jokes at anything that might be like if you're if you're writing content that's going to be accessible to people who are not just white Americans, then make sure that you're not using parts of speech that only that one slice of culture would understand. Um, obviously, when I was writing content for hospice and death, every culture views death so differently. So you have to be really careful. Um, generally, we say you want to use the same language that your customer is using. Um, the exception to that is if your customer uses euphemisms and similes and metaphors all the time, you probably want to dial that back.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yeah. Do you also pull down the reading level? Because you know, half the US does not read books anymore.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Um Hemingway is great for that. So um I love to try and get it down honestly between a third or a fifth grade level.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Wow, that low?

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Yes. Um if it's an academic publication, I will go up to a high school level. Um, but I don't think you won't even pull that into college if it's an academic? Your college students are reading at a college level. Not the current band of them. I mean, where are people reading today? They're reading on the web. Right, right. Short-term. How many people are sitting down and reading a novel on a regular basis or reading a non-fiction book to find answers to their questions? People aren't doing that anymore. Um I know that's my bias because I'm a big reader. Absolutely. So I mean that's totally my bias. Sitting on my desk right now to help me just with this podcast interview.

Plain Language And Reading Levels

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yes, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. People don't read. There was one of one of my training decks has got this article that I absolutely love. It's on Slate, and it's called You'll Never Finish This Article. So Slate partnered with an eye tracking company, and they actually noticed when people stopped reading. And so in the article, they're like, Whoa, I lost 20% of you. Okay, and then they'll go on to the next sense, whoa, I lost 15% more or whatever. Um, it really drives home the point that for the most part, people read the headlines of that, and indeed, not much else, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

So I focus on making those matter, right? Um, filler words are out, white space is in. I just had a conversation with one of my clients earlier this week um because she has a abhorrence to white space, and she said, Really? I just hate white space. She grew up as a print journalist. Oh, okay. And white space is is is money lost, right? Yeah. And so I said to her, I said, you know, that's really interesting because in the digital world, white space is of high value because my eyes get tired and my brain is stressed out, and walls of text scare me and I leave. Yeah. Um bullet points, short sentences we're talking, sentences should be five to seven words, paragraphs should be three to five sentences. Um or it can be literally one sentence, by the way. Yes, actually, absolutely it can be. Yeah, bullets and lists are great. It's easy to follow. Or tables to remember. Google loves tables too. Yeah. Google does love tables. Just make sure they're accessible to your screen post. Exactly, right? Tables are a hot mess most of the time. Um so yeah, I think the words that you use is the easiest place to start because you're gonna write the copy anyway. So say what you mean and nothing else, and mean what you say.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Um which also means if you're if AI is helping you write, be careful. AI likes to be very wordy. AI wordy.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, AI is often biased. Yes. So you need to really like look, I get it. AI can make your life easier. It can, but it can also make your life harder if you publish something out there that's biased or just flat out wrong because you didn't double check it. So use AI as your brainstorm guide, um, as your unpaid high school job shadow intern. Um, but that content that comes out needs to be yours.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Um, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Because you're not designing for AI, you're designing for a human. And so it needs to be written by a human and sound like a human and care about a human.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

So um, we talked a little bit about uh spaces and phones and uh digital and and support websites, but can you also apply the same compassionate design principles to email and ad campaigns? And do you do any of that?

AI’s Role And Human Oversight

SPEAKER_00 23:39

100% you can apply it. I applied it to email certainly. I was working in a nonprofit, so we didn't really have ad campaigns. But I did apply it to our emails that we wrote. Um, so I absolutely think that you can apply it to emails. I think you can apply it to ad campaigns, and I think you should. Um, so off the record, I know we're still on the record, but I won't use names. So I know someone who worked for a major credit card company um as a data analyst, and this person was tasked with doing some research to decide whether they should offshore their email notifications that came out about customers um accounts and things like that, and offshore their phone support for um issues, because obviously that's gonna save money, right? And so similar, this was years ago before the AI range. So I'm sure that there are people doing research now on can we just get AI to write all of these account emails for our people? So this person I know who is a data analyst did the research on it with talking to actual customers, and they actually determined that they would lose more business by offshoring the email writing and the customer support than by keeping it in-house. And then several years later, this major so they decided to do that and to keep it in-house, and several years later, they actually designed an entire ad campaign around it.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Um, interesting. Talk to us like in their business differentiator.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, you got it. Ah I absolutely think that when especially like if you take financial services as a great field, right? Because everyone gets stressed over money. I don't know anyone who doesn't get stressed over money. I get an email from my bank, I immediately think something's wrong.

unknown 25:30

Yeah.

Email Tone, Ad Ethics, And Money Stress

SPEAKER_00 25:31

So in that email text, is it walls of text that you're sending me? Or do you tell me up front, hey, everything's okay. We wanted to double check one thing with you. Oh, already you've lowered my stress load. What's the one thing you need to double check? Um so I think the language that you use in those emails is key. Um, I think ad campaigns, for the most part, are not very compassionate. And I get it, right? Your whole object is to sell me this product, but treat me like a human when you do it. Um, don't talk down to me, don't demean me, don't make up stuff that's not true about your product. Um, don't spin it, don't leave all the really important stuff to the fine print at the bottom of my email where I can't read it.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

I think the dev campaign might be the one example of the opposite of that. The one where there are non-makeup and like all sorts of bodies and that kind of jazz. But yeah, I totally get that. Yeah. Um, so you know, how do you when you're having a conversation about, and you've talked about this a little bit, but having a conversation about improving compassionate design in the marketing materials you're creating, how do you balance the business goals with some of that? Is part of it leading that example of like, this is well, how much money we'll lose if we don't do it? Do you actually put in the research?

SPEAKER_00 26:54

I think if you are able to put in the research and get the actual numbers, that's the best way to do it. Now, I know a lot of times folks are in places when they can't. They can't, like their company simply won't pay to do the research and they're like, just do it anyway. Um, so I think this is the hardest part about compassionate design because it can't always be quantified. Um, I think you can do A-B testing and say, look, here's some copy that we wrote that's the traditional sell, sell, sell, sell, sell content. And here's some content that we experimented with that's uh that's compassionate and actually cares about the consumer as a human being. Um, you can do the A-B testing. It it may not give you great results. I think that compassionate uh content design is a long-term process. I think looking at things like net promoter scores can be helpful. Um and and hearing from customers who've contacted your company, actually talking to them, getting those call center records, um, because your company's collecting them anyway. So ask for access to them. Um, what are people saying? Right? That's an easy way to get research that doesn't take a ton of time and money because you already have that. Um, what are people actually saying? And use actual quotes when you're communicating with your manager or with your stakeholders about why we should do compassionate design. Here's what our customers are actually saying. Um, and here's what we're actually doing. And then being a model for yourself, be that person in the meeting who always says, why? Why are we doing it that way? Um, did we talk to customers? Do we know what they really want or need? Um and if they say, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, then ask how, how do we know that? Do we know that because you just think you know them? Or do we know that because we have this survey that we got back from our customers with their own voice?

Proving Value: Research And A/B Tests

SPEAKER_01 28:43

This is a critical thing. And I probably told you this story already on our prep call, but like digging into where did you get the data from sometimes has the most unique answer. Like when I was at Ketchum, they had a persona of Susan. This is for I think it was Con Egg or one of those big brands. And they were they kept talking about Susan in the third person. I joined a phone call without much background, and I literally muted the phone. I asked my boss, who's Susan? And he explains, oh, it's their persona. And then I got very excited. I was like, oh, they've got a persona because a lot of folks working with this PR agency did not have personas. Anyway, so then I asked him, I was like, where'd they get the data from? And he's like, Oh, they just made it up. Um then I went to Yahoo, because at the time, Yahoo would let you put a keyword in and find the demographic. Oh no, wait, this was the Chef Boy RD. Brand's important. Anyway, you put the Chef Boy RD into the Yahoo tool, and it told me it was college dudes. It was not this middle-aged woman with kids named Susan. Yep. So anyway, dig into where they got the where the data's coming from. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I think by asking questions, you can learn so very much in meeting. I know, right? Ask questions. Where'd you get that data?

SPEAKER_01 29:48

How do we know that information? How often do you run focus groups or are you always grabbing I do interviewing almost every day?

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm really fortunate. I I had one earlier today. I have three scheduled for tomorrow. So yeah, it's a big part of what I do is actually talking to our users and asking them, tell me what works about this website for you. Tell me what doesn't work about this website. Are there things on it that used to be there and aren't there anymore that you're like, what the heck happened? Why are they gone? Um we do a lot of co-designing sessions with our clients where we'll get on a virtual call with them and we'll just talk through what's working and what's not working for you here. Um and they'll be like, well, I wonder, could like even things like could this box for text be a little bit longer? Um, yeah, absolutely. Um, so we talk about designing with people, not for them. That that if I'm just assuming what you want and designing something, and then I find out later that I made something that you don't like, now I have to go and undo it all.

unknown 30:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Right. And that's money and time. Whereas if I talk with you and you show me what you want and tell me what you want, then I just have to build it the way you want it.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

As long as you're talking to the end users, I was thinking about like one of one of my Fed clients who, without prior to me coming on board, they were like, Hey, developer, why do all these meta descriptions look the same? And the developer was like, Wait, I can fix it. I'm gonna create a whole bunch of hidden tabs. And that'll fix it. And then I come in and I was like, why didn't you just write unique copy of meta descriptions for every page? Now I have to undo your tab thing that Google can't read. That also happens. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

So you need to talk to the people who are actually using the thing. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah, yeah. Do you do um like user testing type stuff where it's like anonymous but it's your target demo?

SPEAKER_00 31:44

I don't in my current position, but I have in the past, yes. Uh um, so and I'm I kind of do it a little on the slide right now, where I will sit in on meetings where they're actually using the tech and I take notes in the background of what I see. Yeah, on the screen. So there are there are ways to get the information you need, even if you don't have this multi-million dollar research budget, you know. Um, just say, hey, can I be in that meeting? Um, I just want to be like a fly on the wall in that meeting. And so you sit in the in the in the room, right? It's virtual for me. I sit in the room, I got my fig jam open, and I'm taking all kinds of notes on little post-it notes, and then I'm clustering them to, oh, I see six people mentioned this issue that came up all the time. Yet when I talked with people, nobody thought about that. But as they were in there doing it, they're all like, oh shoot, yeah, this always happens when we do that. And I'm like, take note of that. Um so the the joke now around my company is that I'm the person who wants to be in all the meetings. So everyone thinks I just love meetings, which is so not true. Um, I love productive meetings, but meetings are a great place to learn what's going on with the people who are using your stuff.

Co‑Design And Learning From Users

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, so we've talked a little bit. I think most of the stuff we talked about has actually been US focused. But what other tips do you have for people that are working on international websites or other languages? I mean, for instance, with my client, and mind you, they have decided to go with automatic translation but Google's translation, which okay. Um, but my initial approach was you don't rank very well in Portuguese. Maybe a doll should be actually written by your Portuguese staff.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Yes. Um AI translation is notoriously bad. I don't care who you use. Um, if you're writing for Portuguese humans, a Portuguese human needs to be writing it. Yeah. Um, when I worked in hospice, we did translate our newsletters into Spanish, but we had a Spanish-speaking employee who did that for us. Um, and just for fun, I did an AI translation of the same content. And then I showed it to my Spanish-speaking coworker, and he went, it's really terrible.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Now, have you played around with Google? They literally, like I think last week, rolled out translation, which is also powering the they have a function where I think it's an app on your phone where you can actually hear in live translations as you're talking to somebody in a different language. So I wonder, mind you, it's just like a week ago, but I wonder if it's better. That's my it might be.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

The thing about AI is that it can't capture nuance and it can't, AI does not have empathy, it can't feel what your user is feeling, it can't feel what you want your user to feel. Um, it's not capable of doing that because it's not human. So I get it, it's expensive to have a human do your translation. Have your AI do it and have a human double check it at least. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Um yeah, but I think we have literally looked at a client's website that was in a different client that was in Chinese, and I was like, Yeah, all those headers are English. Okay. Which I feel like it's so common. I don't know how many times it's always China, too, for some reason. They're like, oh yeah, we're gonna try to do a website in China.

Designing For Global Audiences

SPEAKER_00 35:16

And I was like, why is it not all Chinese? Chinese. Yeah, anyway. Also, you have different languages, right? Some languages are read from right to left, some languages are read vertically. Um, and all of that matters for your layout. Like, you can't just take your English designed and written website and hit the translate button and expect it to be intelligible to someone in another language. It doesn't work that way. Um, does that mean it's expensive and you have to design multiple versions of your website in an ideal world? Yes, that's what it means. Um, I recognize that that's not always going to be possible, but you need to at least be thinking about that. Um, some like I don't speak Thai, right? But but I know that Thai words tend to be really long. Um, and so I may have an English sentence that takes up an inch on the page, and in Thai it might take up three inches. Did I do is my design flexible enough to allow for that? Right.

unknown 36:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Um, or is it gonna look like a hot mess when somebody hits that translation button?

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Well, and the other thing is if you really want to have an international plan, every single language needs its own promotion plan. So you are doubling your SEO work every time you add another country or language. It's that's just that's by the way, China is probably the hardest to tackle because it's got all sorts of extra so many different dialects. Yeah, all the different dialects and and it's a character-based language, which is harder. And you need to have somebody on the ground registered with the Chinese government and all that kind of jazz.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

There you go. Yeah, so think wisely when you're thinking about that. Do you have the manpower and budget? Yeah, bring people on your staff from that culture who can help you not just with the language, but with the visual look, right? Colors mean different things in different cultures, yes. Um but if you're designing, you're like, look, I don't have the budget for that. Our website's gonna be in English, but I would like other cultures to be able to access it and use it. Okay, then you can do things like your images. Are your images multicultural? Um, are your images multi-age? That was a real issue for us in hospice. They're like, well, most of our clients are old. And I'm like, actually, like almost half of our clients are not. Um, so I don't just want old people on our website. Um, so thinking through the visuals of your site, and this is why, right, clean lines, easy design is super helpful because that translates across cultures.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Yeah, one of the fat easiest audits I did was actually like a venture capital wanted me to like look in on what another agency was doing. They're running Facebook ads targeted to Latinos, and the images were white people. And there you go. You're like, I don't know. I mean, I realize there's white Latinos, I get that, but like literally they weren't A-B testing any images except for the white problem. Yeah, yeah, it was like uh I don't know. So um, do you have any examples of situations where the compassionate design has resulted in a negative experience for users?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Where can we lack of compassionate design or yeah, sorry, a lack of compassionate design. Yes. I do actually I pulled a bunch out. There's a Eva Penzi Moog has written a book called Design for Safety. Um, and she has a number of examples in her book, but I'm just gonna pull out a couple that were really horrifying to me. So let's talk ring cameras for a minute.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Um, I have one. Um, I imagine a number of our users do. Well, in 2019, Guardian wrote an article with multiple reports. Sorry, my computer's asking me to log in on my other side. Um, Guardian wrote an article in 2019 detailing multiple reports of people describing instances where other folks hacked into their ring cameras because their passwords were not secure enough. And so you had folks who were actually talking directly to children through the ring camera. You had an example of someone demanding a$350,000 Bitcoin ransom because ring was not asking folks to create complicated passwords or use two-factor identification, and they got sued for it. Now they've made changes, but nobody thought about that. Um in 2016, Wired published an article from some hackers who had hacked into a 2014 Jeep Cherokee because it was internet connected, and they were able actually to cut the transmission of the Jeep Cherokee while their friend was driving it. Their friend was in on it, knew about it, and Chrysler actually had to recall vehicles to put safety features on them. Wow.

Images, Culture, And Visual Signals

SPEAKER_01 39:51

So I have an example of that, but related with AI, just because I noticed the article and I thought was hysterical. So, first of all, AI hallucinates 60% of the time. It also goes off the rails. It's also traded on the entire bloody internet, which includes stuff you don't want your kids to see. So I'll just put that as like a baseline. Somebody decided to stick AI inside a talking teddy bear.

unknown 40:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

And it encouraged the kids to start fires and go find the knives in the house. Like, who didn't think this through?

SPEAKER_00 40:21

There's a sometimes those cases are called, well, that's an edge case, Michelle. No one actually would do that. Here's the thing: yeah, they would. Never underestimate the ability of human beings to do terrible things. Right. So you those edge cases. There's another book that I read called Designing for Real Life by Eric Meyer and Sarah Wachter Beckter. Um, and they'd say, they say, stop calling them edge cases, call them stress cases. And you need to design for the stress cases. So one in three women and one in four men have been victims of domestic violence. That's my stress case. So if I'm designing software that is home security software, my initial thought is that's gonna make those people feel so much safer. Unless is it a shared account? What if I share this account of my surveillance camera? And now my partner is abusive and I kick him out, but he still has access. Now he's spying on me through our cameras. Nest thermostat got in trouble for this because they didn't split accounts. And so the partner who got kicked out was able to control the thermostat remotely. Oh, that's awful. Right?

unknown 41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

These are things we don't think about, but we need to think about them when we're designing products and when we're writing copy. We we have to think about those stress cases, and and it's not just my job to not to do the right thing. It's also my job not to do harm whenever I can avoid it. And so we need to be asking those questions. How could someone use this in a bad way? And can I design safeguards to prevent that from happening?

Harmful Gaps: Safety And Stress Cases

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Yeah, no, that's that's a great, great idea. I was thinking about that because my daughter was occasionally like bringing up like, why does this have this weird boarding? And I'm like, well, you know, there was a lawsuit. That's why I, you know, the bottles cups say it's hot coffee, and now it's like obvious, you know. But it's not obvious. It's not obvious sometimes. Yeah. Um, so let's see. Let's talk about. I think you've convinced people that they should be doing compassionate design effectively. You've definitely convinced me, but I was already halfway there. Um, but what small, like impactful changes could people start doing to like start this process?

SPEAKER_00 42:47

I would say get educated yourself on it so that you know some of these examples. Read some books, follow some folks on LinkedIn. Um, there actually is a free LinkedIn learning course. Um, hang on, I got the name of it written down. Um it's called Trauma Informed Design. Oh, well, there you go. On LinkedIn, it's a free course. Um, take that to learn about it. There are always examples in those. Um get familiar enough with examples so that you can share them with other people on your team. Just like you and I have done in this very call, we've come up with examples from our own life, right? You don't have to look far. Anybody ever tried to cancel their Amazon Prime account?

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Exactly. I mean, I can't see the look on her face, but we got a head tilt there.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

And some of these seriously six screens, and how threatening can they be? You're gonna lose all your benefits. That is not compassionate. No, like maybe because I lost my job, Amazon. Don't make me feel bad. Just say, oh, we're sorry to see you go. We'd be happy to extend your benefits for the low, low price of$1.99 for 30 more days if you are whatever. Um, but there are nice ways to say things. It doesn't, I had someone tell me one time it doesn't take any more time to be nice. Um and I think that's true, right? So if I'm writing ad copy, ask myself if I was super stressed and I got this flyer or this email, how would it make me feel? Yeah. How would it make me feel? Um, and if the answer is it would make me feel gross, then maybe you should rewrite it.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Well, and a side note, because all of us currently are living through, especially here in the US, I'm not gonna say too much about politics, but shit's hitting the fan, y'all, right? And uh I'm not the only one that is stressed about the overall things, the measles and the things, and the trumps and the things, and the things and the things. So I would assume this would be a good time to do compassionate design because parents are out with their sick kids all the time, and uh people have stuff that is stressing them out right now. Yes, so much stuff.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

And if you are the company that is able to speak into that chaos with a voice of calm, people will take notice. Yeah, people will take notice. Now, I do not advocate I'm gonna do compassionate design because I'll make more money. That is not what this is about. At the end of the day, this is about being a good human. Um, and at the end of the day, humans use my products and humans read my emails, and humans access my website. And so I want to demonstrate that I care about those humans because it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do, it's the kind of person I want to be, it's the kind Of company I want to work for. And I think most of us would say that. Nobody says, I want to work for the guy who's like Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life, who hates everybody and is mean and underhanded and lies and steals.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

I don't know. You just mentioned a brand that I know is kind of challenging to work for, is all I'm saying. But yes, most of us want to be nice humans. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

And work for brands that are nice. Yes. Right. We certainly want to shop at places that make us feel nice. Right. Yeah. So, and if I have a choice between two equal products, and one is from a company that has always provided me with stellar communication, and one is with a company that's been a hot mess to work with. Who am I going to pick?

SPEAKER_01 46:30

See, this is why I know I grew up in Maine, so like I'm gonna default to LOBN anyway, but like there, you could return forever for your entire lifetime. And I know they pulled back on it, but they still don't give you crap about returning ever. Yep. And so it makes you nice. It does. It does. And I have never, you know, actually, that's huge. I have never had increased stress walking into L-O-Bean to return anything.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Whereas I've definitely had increased stress walking into everywhere else.

Quick Wins And Everyday Empathy

SPEAKER_00 46:58

I keep things that I don't want sometimes because the stress of having to return it is just more than I want to deal with. Yeah. And I'm like opportunity cost on that and keeping it.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Well, especially in the instance of walking into an L-Obean store where you then get lost because there's a lot of stuff to look at. And then I spend more money. It's crazy. Yeah, exactly. It's all that. Look at the fish in the at the main headquarters location and get in the bubble and see the fish. Did you get in the bubble and see the fish flying around your head? I don't remember. Oh, you missed that over a long time ago. Over by where they sell the guns for everybody listening. There's a huge aquarium with main fish in it, including trout and salmon. And they mind you you can get in there as an adult, it's really for the kids. But you can like scoot under and they have like a bubble where your head pops up into the aquarium and the fish fly around your head. That's really cool. See, that's a smile. There you go. If you ever end up in Freeport, I've given you a tourist tip. Um so where do you see compassionate design going in the next one three to five years?

Compassion As A Brand Advantage

SPEAKER_00 47:57

I hope it becomes the norm, honestly, for the reasons that you just said. We are living in crazy and chaotic times. It's everywhere. You can't escape it. Like I'm on LinkedIn to look for business stuff, and people are still talking about personal stuff. Yeah, like it's everywhere. You cannot escape it. And so my hope is that it becomes the normal way of how we design. But honestly, I don't know. Um, when we wrote our book, I wrote a book with a bunch of other people called Designed with Care, Creating Trauma Informed Content. And when we wrote it, it was the only book on the market about trauma-informed design. It isn't any longer. Um, and so I'm thrilled with that. There are more courses available. Almost every tech conference that I've seen a report come out lately, anything that's content or design related has a module on trauma-informed content design. Um, it's becoming more known. There are tons of people on LinkedIn who are talking about it and writing about it. Um, I think it will become more of the mainstream. I do also think there's been a little bit of backlash because some folks are saying that they're doing trauma-informed content design and they're not. Um, and so there's been some backlash about that that, oh, now it's the hip-in thing. And so everybody's doing it. I don't want everybody to be doing it like that. I want everybody to be doing it because it's the right thing to do. Um, and if some people are doing it just because they think it will make them rich, fine, they're still doing it. You know, I'll take that. Um so I think that it is gonna become more the norm because I think people are gonna expect it. As companies begin to be more compassionate in their content, it's going to be very obvious the companies that aren't. Right. Um, and so I think that they will shift. Like this company that I had the phenomenal chatbot experience with, um, it was not Amazon. And I had a problem with Amazon and it did not go as well. Yeah. Um, but I think that's going to be changing as companies see that there are different ways to do things. Um, so I hope more people are practicing it. I hope more people are talking about it. I think making the shift to trauma-informed marketing is another step forward because I don't know that there's been a lot of inroads into that. Because I think we kind of reflexively look at marketing as not compassionate, right? Right. Um, and I don't think it has to be that way.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Um, so we've been dancing around the idea of empathy, because obviously compassion forum, you need to have empathy. Uh, do for people that feel like they need to, I worked like decade in nonprofits, I don't know. And I volunteer every week now. We're filling local food pantries because the DC market got hit by unemployment and stuff. So anyway, and particularly we're filling them in front of schools, so we're feeding kids. Um, so I don't know that I need to flex my empathy muscle too much, but for people that are like, hey, maybe I need a little bit more help. Do you have any sense of will they get it from some of these classes you've mentioned? They will.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

They'll get some of that from those classes. I would say the best way to kind of build your empathy muscles is to hang out with people, volunteer, just like what you're doing. Yes. Um if that feels too overwhelming for you, go to a public place and just people watch for a little while. Um, and ask yourself, what do I see? What do I see as these people walk by me? Um, or when someone cuts you off in traffic and your first response is um not very compassionate or empathic. Ask yourself, what kind of day is that person having? And I don't know what kind of day they're having. Well, maybe I could be a little bit more gracious, or something as easy as I'm in the checkout line at the grocery store and I just want to get home because it's been a long day. Well, look at the clerk who is ringing up your groceries and taking your money. They have a name tag, use their name tag, their name, and ask them how their day's been, right? Because they're always going to ask you something. Hey, did you find everything you needed? Have a good day, whatever. So look at them and say, Hey, Crystal, I hope you're having a good day. Or, Crystal, you look like you've been on shift for a long time. I hope you get to go home soon.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

That's funny because that is what my husband does a lot. He'll ask, he'll, yeah, because uh honestly, my my empathy muscle got better being married to this man because he always, even before kids and the pets, he had that like, I bet that person's having a stressful day. That was his default every time something. I know, I know. Mine was not, unfortunately. It's getting better, it's getting better, but but his always was. He I I would grump about it and he'd be like, wait, I bet that person had a stressful did you ask them? And then he will ask people and be like, Wow, man, that's a long shift. I'm glad you're almost getting off. And anyway, that is part of his DNA.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

I think that's a great way to just build your your own empathy muscles. And because what it boils down to at the end of the day is is understanding people, right? Um, and I can't understand people if I'm not with them. And I think that's so key in our world today, where so much of our contact is online and on screens, right? And we text people living in our own home, right? While they're in the next room. That's true. I do that.

unknown 53:22

It's so true.

Where Compassionate Design Is Heading

SPEAKER_00 53:23

I tell myself it's because we don't have an intercom system in our home and it's easier than yelling. Um but I think I think recognizing that there are real live human beings out there um living in real world situations. Um, and though I can't see them when I'm writing my email text, they are there. Um and so the more I get to be around live humans and watch how they interact with one another and think about the kind of days they might be having, that will naturally inform the way that I write.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Yeah. Yeah. So this has been great. Um, you have a bunch of resources. You've mentioned a couple. Do you have any others that you want to share?

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Yeah. So I mentioned uh so a couple people that I would say follow online. Well, first you should buy my book, Design to With Kid. Go ahead. Yes. We're gonna plug that. Just do it. Um, Eva, Eva Penzi Moog's book. Now, these are book apart books, so I hope that you can still get them. Um, but Design for Safety, Design for Real Life is also good. There's one, David Dylan Thomas has written one called Design for Cognitive Bias. That's also excellent. If you're trying to figure out how I can talk to more customers and clients without a research budget, Erica Hall wrote a book called Just Enough Research that gives you some creative ideas on how to incorporate research into that. Rachel Edwards, who's out of the UK, actually just posted last week on LinkedIn a ton of resources for trauma-informed design. Um so she's a great person. Rachel Dietkiss, it's D-I-E-T-K-U-S, is in the US, and she does a ton of stuff with trauma-informed design, as does Megan, and I'm gonna butcher her last name, Lega Week. It's L-E-G-A-W-I-E-C. Um, she writes a lot about trauma-informed design as well. Um, so those are some places that I would start and folks that I can that I would say follow, read some books, Google it because I've done some talks on it that I know are available on YouTube that you could look up. So there's a lot of resources out there, and there wasn't even just three years ago, there were not that many resources out there. Um but there's great buttons now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

We'll make sure to put all those in the show notes. That'll be great.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

And how can more people learn about you? You can follow me on LinkedIn, um, reach out and connect with me and tell me, like, don't just send me a connection because if I don't know you or not sharing connections, I probably won't accept it. Um, it'll probably just die in my box. So let me know that you heard me on this podcast, and then that gives me a frame of reference. So I'm Michelle Decker Keller on LinkedIn. You can find me there. I I do write on medium. I'll be honest, I haven't been super consistent since I got a new job last year. Um, but I have a ton of articles on trauma informed design on my medium, and so it's also uh Michelle Decker Keller on Medium as well.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

Awesome. This has been so much fun. I'm so glad that we were able to reschedule this and make it happen. Thanks for being on the show.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Thank you for asking me. I really enjoyed it, and I hope your users found it helpful. And if they have questions, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to talk about it.

Build Empathy Muscles In Real Life

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Great. Thanks so much for listening. To find out more about the podcast and what we're up to, go to digital marketingvictories.com. And if you like what you heard, subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Rate us, comment, and share the podcast, please. I'm always looking for new ideas, topics, and guests. Email us at digital marketing victories at gmail.com or DM us on Twitter at DM Victories. Thanks for listening to the