Changing Academic Life

In this short Related Work podcast, I talk about the importance of noticing people, showing appreciation and saying thanks. Small actions can have a big impact, for them and you. And it can be contagious - a good contagion!Related Work: Grant, A. M., & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 946–955. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017935Roberts, K. et al. 2020. The Little Things That Make Employees Feel Appreciated, HBR https://hbr.org/2020/01/the-little-things-that-make-employees-feel-appreciated  Fradera, A. 2017. Small acts of kindness at work benefit the giver, the receiver and the whole organization. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/07/04/small-acts-of-kindness-at-work-benefit-the-giver-the-receiver-and-the-whole-organisation/  (on Chancellor et al, 2018)Ackerman, C. 2020. 28 Benefits of Gratitude & Most Significant Research Findings https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-gratitude-research-questions/ Fessler, L. 2017. Adam Grant recommends the best holiday gift managers can give employees. Quartz at Work. https://qz.com/work/1143760/adam-grant-says-gratitude-is-the-best-holiday-gift-managers-can-give-their-employees/ TRANSCRIPT: CAL Related Work 300:25:So welcome again. Just a little bit of housekeeping to begin with. Apologies for the, uh, confusions in trying to get these related works up onto iTunes or out to podcast feeds. Um, it just took us a while to work out how Squarespace, how we set up a new page on Squarespace for the related work podcasts and how that interacts with iTunes. Uh, if only I had a PhD in computer science, oh dear! And I also just wanted to report on my being bold as my theme for the year. And it was just interesting. I had two occasions last week, where my gut reaction was to say, Oh, I couldn't do that. In the sense of sort of being a little bit daunted or am I really the right person? And then I reminded myself that this was supposed to be my year of being bold. And so I stepped up and said, yes, and they were things that I did want to do. Good things to say yes to. And part of that was also just accepting. It might not all work out perfectly. And it made me realise that that may be what holds me back from being bold sometimes But they'll both be fun to try and I'll learn a lot, either way, however, it works out. So there you go.01:45And now for the topic of this week, which is, I just want to talk about the power of actually telling someone what you appreciate about them or what you want to thank them for what you're grateful for. And I can just start off with a personal anecdote because just this last week, it wasn't such an easy week for me. There was a particular situation at work that came up and a personal situation with a friend of mine who was, had just been told that her sickness was terminal.02:16And, so it was a bit of a tough week, but the week ended on a lovely high because I ended up getting some unsolicited student feedback. One was directly via email from the student and another was indirectly far another colleague who shared the content of a Slack exchange that they'd had with the student. And they shared it clearly with the student's permission. And it was just really lovely, detailed, very specific feedback about what they'd appreciated in the semester just gone. And that just meant the world to me. And reading it just made me smile. I felt warm. I felt good. I felt proud of the work that I'd done in the semester. Even though it was hard. It was hard work. And it certainly made all that work that I've put into the teaching feel like it was worth it. And it was interesting as well because the person who was the, who shared the feedback via the Slack chat, I could also tell that they were feeling good about being able to pass that on and share it because they knew I would feel good.03:29And I was reminded about another situation that happened about, I think it was about end of last November and out of the blue, I got a text on my phone from someone who used to work in our group doing research, and they were saying, Oh, I've been looking to tell you some news. And, you know, I started reading this and I thought it was going to be something about a new job or some family news. And so what they wanted to tell me about was that they were starting a master's degree and it was in a complementary area to their main research topic. And it was going to support them in helping to shape their research and career in a slightly different way, moving forward and are very excited about it. And they discussed it a little bit in the text. So I'm reading through this long text and thinking, Oh, that's great all well and fine.04:14And then totally unexpectedly, they added: 'And today I answered an exercise about role models and I wrote about you' and they proceeded to paste what they had written for me to read. I'm not going to read it out here. But what I can say is that I was deeply, deeply touched and it genuinely brought some tears to my eyes. And so I told them that I was deeply touched as well and thanked them for it. And they responded: 'I thought that instead of making a pointless exercise on role models, I would let you know that everyone notices what you do for all.' And it not only made me feel good, but it also seemed like it made them feel really good because they were able to share this with me. And it makes me so grateful for all of these people that they took the time and put in the effort to give specific feedback. And it reminded me that that's something that I want to be doing more of as well for the people around me.05:21And I want to pick up on a last word from that text exchange, which was the word - 'notices'. We all Want to be seen and recognised in some way, and to be acknowledged for what we do, what we bring, who we are. And I think this is particularly important in academia. I mean, it's important for everyone, of course, but particularly important in academia when so much of our formal acknowledgements are from, you know, the grand gestures of paper acceptances or grant successes. And, we know the low rate of these, and we also know that we get a lot of emphasis put on these performance metrics and outcomes, and we often define our own self-worth in these ways as well. And so being acknowledged just for who you are, how you do things, qualities that you bring, you know, people seeing the effort that you put in, not just focusing on the outcomes becomes really, really important.06:22And this is increasingly being recognised in the research literature, getting onto our related work. So there's the importance of acknowledgement in business. Corporate context is, is increasingly being discussed in the literature and leaders in particular. We often take for granted that people know we appreciate them but how do people know we appreciate them if we don't tell them .Then there's a link to an article I'm going to put in that that has a headline that says or that states in it that 'managers consistently underestimate how important it is to show their employees that they're valued. '07:04And this isn't just for managers and leaders too, to show recognition or acknowledgement, or, or to say things, but we can do this for one another, for all of our colleagues, to anyone, acknowledge the difference, the unique difference that they make to us. And that can be our people that we share office with, or who bring us a cup of coffee, or who just make the day a better day or the cleaner who empties your bin. You know, when we, whenever we get back to the office to have a bin that can be emptied. To anybody, to our line managers to say thanks.07:40And there is a lot of research about this, and I'm not going to get into, there are some conceptual debates about what's the definitions of gratitude and what's the difference between gratitude and appreciation and so on and so on. And you can find some of this work in a lot of positive psychology literature that talks about gratitude and appreciation and gratitude interventions, where people deliberately pay attention to the things that they can be grateful for, and also tell people. One set of interventions that have been consistently shown to have positive benefits. There's a whole lot of work in the social psychology literature. Again, they often talk about pro-social behaviours. The organisational leadership literature talks about the importance of recognition and recognising what is it about people or what they've just done, or how they've engaged with the task that makes you grateful for.08:38And I think that regardless of the research-based definitions and the conceptual arguments, it breaks down more practically for me. So there's the thing of feeling the gratitude and, and, you know, your own seeing and, and recognising in your own head what's going on and where someone may be doing something that you really appreciate taking the time to reflect on what it is about, what they're doing that you appreciate. And even just doing this, the literature says has benefits for you as an individual. That, that act of orienting yourself to be more attentive to what you can be grateful for.09:24But the real power comes from the other-focused action arising out of that feeling of gratitude and the reflecting on what's going on. And that's when we actually show appreciation, show that person the appreciation when we actually say thanks, when we give specific and detailed feedback and comments, when we draw our attention to what we appreciate, and this is where we can particularly focus, not on outcomes, you know, not just, yeah, congratulations on getting that paper submitted, but I really recognise how much time and effort that took for you to systematically work through. And I can see what you've learned. Or whatever it is, like give some very specific detail feedback.10:10And this is valuable because across all of the literature, it points to benefits like increased sense of social belonging and connection. Promoting increased pride in helping people be proud in their work, recognising their social worth. In giving attention to the details and telling them what exactly, we can help them come to recognise and value their own strengths that people often take for granted. Because if you've got a strength, you think that everyone can just do it. And you don't realise that what you do is maybe special in the way that you do it. There's a whole lot of personal, emotional and physical health and wellbeing benefits that have been recorded, not just for the receiver, but for the giver. And interestingly, in some of the studies, for example, about writing gratitude letters to someone and reading them out to them, there actually have been more long lasting effects for the giver than the receiver. In the business context, there's literature that talks about increased job satisfaction, increased engagement, increased productivity. Now, of course, we're not going to do this as managers just to increase productivity, are we, but it is a nice side effect. And another great side effect is that these everyday small actions of saying thanks, showing gratitude, appreciation, they're contagious. So there are many studies that point to the ways in which receivers pay forward with similar actions of their own and other studies that also point to not just the direct recipients of the thanks or the appreciation, but even observers others, not directly involved being impacted and increasing their own behaviours in these ways. So this is one very real practical way that we can start bringing about, um, culture change.12:13So there's really no downside to saying thanks, to letting someone know what we appreciate. And it's one of those things that's really, really small action. It can take a couple of extra seconds to not just say thanks, but to say, thanks in a very specific and detailed way, small actions, big, big impact. Hey, can you thank today? How can you build this into your everyday practices? How can I build this into my everyday practices? I know that some people do things like, have a have a ritual of taking a bit of time every Friday afternoon, just to write a handwritten note, to think about who in particular this week they want to thank and write a handwritten note or send an email or someone who will start yet. I've heard of other people who start their day in the first five minutes of their day are just taking, taking some time to think about who to thank and sending them a quick email or having a quick chat. So let's be quick to, thanks quick to recognise, appreciate and say, thanks a little bit can go a long way. And in these times that are really challenging and difficult. These small boosts can make all the difference.00:14:14 EndAcknowledgements:Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash (card and pen)Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash (blackoard)

In this bite-sized Related Work podcast, I reflect on how these stressful times can be a catalyst for growth and change, moving on from bouncing back (resilience) to bouncing forward. I connect to literature on resilience and post traumatic growth and theories around ‘tend and befriend’ to point to the choices we can make in how we interpret and respond to the current challenges. Related work:Tedeschi, R., & Calhoun, L. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 1-18. https://sites.uncc.edu/ptgi/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2013/01/PTG-Conceptual-Foundtns.pdfTaylor, S. (2006). Tend and Befriend. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 273 - 277.https://taylorlab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/10/2006_Tend-and-Befriend_Biobehavioral-Bases-of-Affiliation-Under-Stress.pdfSteve Taylor. The Coronavirus and Post-Traumatic Growth, Scientific American, April 19 2020https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-coronavirus-and-post-traumatic-growth/Transcript CAL Related Work 2 (with some editing)Jan 17 2021 [16:57 mins]One of the unexpected pleasures for me this year was not having any travel and having weekends at home where was being able to catch up on some reading. And one of the books that's been on my list forever is a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It was published in 1946 by Victor Frankel, who's an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher author, and what he talks about here, Holocaust survivor. He reports in this book about his experiences in the concentration camp, and they're really quite harrowing and horrific, and also amazingly uplifting at the same time. And just to read a quote from the book, he talks about “Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing,- the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's way. And there were always choices to make.” He says, talking about his own experiences in the concentration camp, and it also says somewhere else later on “when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.I mention this because as I record this, we're in the middle of January and many, many countries are in the middle of escalating numbers of cases and deaths with the COVID-19 pandemic, and dealing with ongoing restrictions in terms of lockdowns. And this is certainly the case in Austria, Vienna, where my home is located even though I’m not there are the moment, and where Frankel's home was located. So I was really surprised last week when I checked in with the students in my master's class over zoom, about how they were going. And I did the same thing with the people in my group at the beginning of our group meeting last week. And I just asked for everyone to give a, give a thumbs up or thumbs down or whatever.What was so surprising to me was that the majority of people gave a thumbs up and this is in the middle of all this hardship and difficulty they gave a thumbs up! A couple gave us a sort of ‘so, so, so’ thumb, but I didn't see anyone with a thumb down. I remember asking similar questions some months ago, same groups, and it was quite a different response. I find this really fascinating because I know that while everyone wouldn't necessarily answer the same, it's interesting that in some ways the external situation seems to be so much worse than a few months ago. Yet somehow in the middle of all this, despite the uncertainties and increasingly ongoing difficulties and challenges and stress, it seems like some people are somehow working out how to adapt and get on.This starts to reflect I think what Frankl was talking to, that there are things in situations that we can control, that there can be choices, where we do have some agency in how we interpret and respond to it. I know it's a complex issue and there are lots of factors going on and people, various people have very different experiences as well. And tomorrow the answer to those questions may be quite different. But nonetheless, it seems to reflect a trend.I also see this connecting to the idea of resilience that the literature talks about – where resilience is this capacity to bounce back from adversity or stress. And that seems to be what's happening here.I think in other conversations, I'm also hearing hints that for a lot of people, it's not just bouncing back, but they're actually finding that some good coming from it, despite the circumstances.Now, of course it would be much nicer to have the good come from it, to have the lessons learned, without the pain of having to go through all this and without the stress and challenges. But at the same time, it is these stress and challenges that have somehow become of being able to be used as a stimulus for positive change and growth.There’s a concept in the literature that's called post-traumatic growth. This was first named as such by Tadeschi and Calhoun in 2004. They talk about post-traumatic growth as a positive change that is experienced as a result of struggle, struggling with really highly challenging, difficult situations.Now, this is often talked about in terms of very serious traumatic situations, such as war experiences and end indeed Viktor Frankl’s story is a classic example of what we could post hoc label as post-traumatic growth. It goes back to what Frankl said about making choices and control. I know there's some debate in the literature around the concept of posttraumatic growth and the extent to which it's a real phenomenon in that it’s only ever been identified in terms of self reports and self-perceptions of growth. So it's unclear to what extent there may be real growth, but nonetheless, there is certainly a trend in the reporting of self perceptions of growth by many people.The common pattern in what's reported by people in the studies are things like developing deeper relationships, becoming much more open to new possibilities, having a greater sense of your own personal strengths and how you might use those strengths more, having a stronger sense of spirituality in the sense of existentialism, meaning in life and, spiritual belief. And also just fundamentally a really much greater appreciation of life. I know from my own experience and from talking to others - and I know my experience has been much easier compared to many others in other countries - I can see similar things about appreciating more what's important and getting different senses of perspective and priorities. I know that these circumstances over the last year have really helped me slow down and it's been a circuit breaker for some of the choices that I was not making all choices that I was making by default, just by rocking along that I'm going to be much more reflective about that. And I hear that from other people as well about finding out what's important and connecting to themselves and to others and in new ways.So how do we get on this growth path?One of the first things is actually facing the pain. In fact, that's really critically important. Our first tendency though, might be like, wanting to run away or avoiding thinking about it, or really negatively ruminating on it over and over again, or trying to brush off the stress and ignore it or withdrawing and isolating ourselves or playing out inappropriate, emotional responses, getting angry or blaming others… various maladaptive coping strategies.A much more adaptive response though, is to face it, really genuinely recognising for yourself that these are difficult times and that that's where you're at right now. This also connects to some of the self-compassion research we can talk about at another time. So acknowledging for ourselves that these are really rough times, and sometimes we just need to stay with that stress and in the feeling and allowing ourselves also to grieve, but with a greater awareness and acceptance of what's going on there and, and also a curiosity to explore it. And then moving on from that to the next step involves quite deliberate reflection and attention to really think about those experience - what's arising, what questions it's raising for you and thinking about what can be learned.Everyone will have their own particular ways of doing that. One example of a practice that some people advocate is that of journaling. You could reflect on the last period of time, say the last year and write down experiences that stand out for you, that have been important for you in some way in that time and making a summary note about it, to remind yourself and then think about how you've grown from those experiences, what you've learned, what sort of person you are now compared to what you were then. And also writing down and reflecting on what does ended. Like, what are you letting go? What are you not going back to? What are you leaving behind? What of the previous madness you're not going to pick up again?This is all in the sense of reprioritising and thinking across all of this thing about what it tells you about what really matters to you. What's important to you? What brings you joy? What's what brings you meaning? And what are you grateful for? So we’ve just looked at this growth work at a personal level, and we can also do it as a collective level and social connection is a key part of this growth journey.  Shelly Taylor talks about social connection in response to stress as ‘tend and befriend’ response to stress, in contrast to what is more commonly thought of as fight flight or freeze. She explains it in terms of the oxytocin hormone that we won’t go into here and argues it is particularly the case in situations where we don't have the immediate ‘in our face’ stress trigger like the lion or the tiger just about to attack us, but something that's more ongoing and more pervasive, like we have in the current situation, and triggering a response to connect and care.The point is that tend and befriend highlights social connection as another really critically important part of moving onto this growth path.And we're seeing ’tend and befriend’, I think in all sorts of wonderful ways and in the ways that people are caring for one another, looking out for one another, checking in on one, another sharing ideas, sharing experiences, sharing, teaching materials, running webinars, to help explore new ways of working together, neighbours, doing things for one, another colleagues, helping each other out and inspiring each other as well. So there are lots of ways that reconnecting with the social becomes an important part of this path, and it reinforces the importance of language that we should get away from talking about social distancing, to talk about physical distancing and social connecting.We can also talk about growth happening at organisational and peer community levels. We could all point to ways in which our faculties have so quickly adapted and developed to better enable people to work from home and to support remote teaching at changes that may persists persist in many ways and the way in which our peer communities also are rethinking the whole conference models.So this notion of growth as a response in the face of our, and in spite of, and as a result of going through stressful times, can happen at multiple levels.It points to the shift from reacting to adapting, the bouncing back, to responding and growing, and moving forward. And these stages will all involve varying degrees of awareness and reflection. Also a lot of creativity to explore the new options and the possibilities, and also some level of motivation and commitment to stick with it. While I don't want to ignore the fact that this has been hard for people and continues to be hard, but I also want to recognise and remind myself that in the midst of these challenging times, there can also be possibilities, not just for bouncing back and adapting, but also for growing and learning. It's how we interpret and respond to it. To bring in Frankl again: ‘when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves’; ‘We always have choices to make’.So if this is all something that connects for you, how are you moving forward on this opportunity path, despite the pain and stress and challenges? My hope particularly for us as academics is that we can better keep academia in perspective and really connect to what's important, prioritise looking after ourselves and looking after each other and being connected to our peer communities, our families, our friends, because all of things will go towards making us better Researchers, better educators, better mentors, better collaborators. I’d just like to finish off and paraphrase something that Steve Taylor, a psychologist wrote in a blog for Scientific American and rephrase this as a collective wish, ‘that in the midst of the suffering and the challenge of our present predicament, may we develop a heightened sense of appreciation, more authentic relationships, and a new sense of resilience and confidence. May we slow down and learn to live in the present rather than filling our lives with incessant activity and constantly rushing into the future.’I really do believe that this is a unique opportunity for us, and it depends on the choices that we make.

In this bitesize ‘Related Work’, the first of the new year of 2021, I suggest using a theme for the new year and also connecting with your superordinate goals, your why, and to explore learning goals.Related work:Höchli, B., Brügger, A., & Messner, C. (2018). How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1879. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01879Christian Swann, Simon Rosenbaum, Alex Lawrence, Stewart A. Vella, Desmond McEwan & Panteleimon Ekkekakis (2020) Updating goal-setting theory in physical activity promotion: a critical conceptual review, Health Psychology Review, DOI: 10.1080/17437199.2019.1706616TRANSCRIPT: CAL RelatedWork 1Jan 2021(00:05):Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a bite-size Related Work podcast where we pick up on a single idea from literature and experience that may provide some insights or tips that will help us change academic life for the better.(00:29):So welcome to the first related work bite-sized podcast. So you know that every academic paper has some section on related work or literature review section that draws out interesting other research that's relevant to the topic at hand so that we can imagine that the topic of our paper here is about changing academic life to be more sustainable and collaborative and effective. And so in these bite-sized podcasts I want to pick up on a research article or some evidence-based theme complemented by some personal anecdotes, as they make sense that might offer some insights to feed into this agenda of changing academic life. We might call, these are implications for design designing the academic life we want and need both individually and collectively and designing that change at personal levels at collective levels at institutional and structural levels.(01:31):So in this first related work, I want to pick up on the fact that it's the new year. And one of the things that we commonly hear about in the new is about making new year resolutions and good luck to you. If you're one of the small percentage of people that can make a resolution and keep it, I'm not, and there are various figures reported in the literature about, um, 10 to 40% of us or so who make new year's resolutions, don't, don't get, don't keep them in the longer term. And I think this gives our perfectionist selves just one more reason to beat up on ourselves when we fall short, because these resolutions often tend to be all or nothing type of goals. So resolutions might make more sense when they're focused and smart, the acronym specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time bound. But I think one of the big lessons for me from 2020 was just how little we can actually control. And we know that the world remains at this time, highly volatile and unpredictable, and so really uncontrollable. So what I'm going to try is having theme for the year and my theme for 2021 is about being the year of being bold(03:11):For me, this encapsulates the aspects about being brave, um, vulnerable, stepping up, even when I'm a little bit unsure putting myself out there because I have a tendency to not do that, to always be cautious to over-prepare or to be worried about failing. And so it will really be about being brave. And this is important for me as a theme against the broader backdrop of wanting to make a difference. And I know that sounds all very vague and aspirational, but I think I've mentioned on other podcasts that as I especially get to the pointy end of my career, and we have fixed retirement ages in Austria, I'm asking myself, how can I best use my strengths and experiences and passions to have the biggest impact on, especially on helping to change academic life to make it better.(04:13):For me being bold provides a sort of anchor or North star for then for making choices and starting this bite-size related work series is something that has come out of this thing of being bold, because I have no idea how it's going to land. If it will make sense or if it will connect, um, or how it will work. So I guess starting this related work is sort of like my new year resolution in a way, but it's more about achieving the larger purpose. I just mentioned. I think being bold for me will also play out in being bolder about what I say yes and no to, um, it would also be about it trying other new things. And that means giving myself permission that it will be a learning process. So it's never going to be perfect. It's always going to be okay to be doing better.(05:10):And this connects to some work in the literature that looks at goal setting and talks about how, uh, the, the focus on, um, just, just having goals like smart goals often don't work on their own and you can actually do better if you combine both what they call, what Höchli, Brügger and Messner call as superordinate, as well as subordinate goals. So in their paper, and I'll put links to these on the, on the podcast webpage, a superordinate goal is a goal that's more abstract. It connects to your why and, or some broader long-term challenge. And then the subordinate goals become the much more specific, concrete, challenging, actionable ways that you might achieve or move towards that broader abstract goal.(06:12):So an example might be a superordinate goal might be being the healthiest I can be. And then a subordinate goal might be that I'm going to start exercising and being very specific about what I'm going to do and when and how I'm going to do it. We might think about the theme then in some way as sort of like a superordinate goal. And then what might be some of the specific ways that, that plays out your subordinate goals.(06:52):Swann has also done research on goal-setting and, and Swann talks about performance goals and not just being performance goals where we can set the sort of smart criteria. But also, looking at learning goals. And I love the idea of learning goals because they're goals that are about seeing how well I can do sort of goals. Um, so rather than saying, you know, as a goal, I'm going to run five K in less than 20 minutes, a more open goal might be, I'm going to see how much faster I can run the 5k.(07:38):I'd also encourage us then to think about the sort of more open goals, more learning goals. Because of all years of all times we need to take the pressure off ourselves. We need to, well, I need to connect to something that's, you know, recognizing what's important and what I care about and, and think about doing the best I can in the circumstances that we have right now. And I love the idea of the superordinate goals that sort of set the broad theme or broad direction. And then just having open learning goals that just says, we'll do what we can and it's okay, whatever we do will be good enough. And we can go through a whole reflection cycle and so on and so on, but take the pressure off ourselves.(08:25):So I'll put links to the two papers that I've mentioned on the web page and asking what might be the implications for design, for your academic life. You can think about as your theme for the year, how are you going to take the pressure off yourself? We still might want to encourage and challenge yourself, but give yourself a break right now about doing whatever we can right now in the circumstances. And just to illustrate that I won't get everything right, when I talked about learning goals, I should have referenced Winters and Latham who first came up or one of the early people who came up with this concept in 1996. And the paper I'm going to share with you though is by Christine Swan and colleagues where they talk about updating goal setting theory and doing a critical conceptual review.Welcome to 2021 and whatever you’re going to make your year.(10:11) End

Here are some brief reflections from me on this VUCA year of 2020! I also announce a new series starting 2021 of bite-size podcasts that I’m calling ‘Related Work’, discussing a single topic or concept from both an evidence-based and experiential perspective. You can find the full transcript of my reflections below or you can download it here as a pdf.Image: ‘Hanging out together: Physically distanced and socially connected’ (Geraldine Fitzpatrick 2020)Related links:Leadership-related events for Informatics Europe including: Webinar on Creating the New Academic Normal for Informatics ResearchersAcademic leadership development course - Autumn 2020 - with Austen RainerCheck here too for the Spring 2021 leadership course (announced soon)DigiLeaders event - Supported by Digital Futures and KTH Stockholm GEC2020 Workshop - on ‘Red threads, choices, and the ‘good’ academic life’Transcript:(00:30):Welcome. So this is going to be my end of year reflection and what a year it has been, hasn't it, 2020, will we ever forget that? So many big issues, not just COVID 19, but political issues and environmental disasters huge weather events. So many people impacted in so many ways this year. So following up from my earlier reflections as well we are still in Australia unexpectedly, I would never have put any money on us still being here at Christmas or for the new year. And this is one of the characteristics of this year. Isn't it? That it's just been so unpredictable at every turn we thought we would be back in Vienna in a few months, in a couple of months, even, and the year has been full of lessons about that.(01:34):In the business world they often talk about how we live in a VUCA world, which is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And if ever there's been a book a year, I think 2020 has been it. And I know that we've often talked about returning to normal or the new normal, and I'm starting to think that one of the lessons from this year is the reminder that everything is always changing and challenging. And it just so happens that we've got a concentration of challenges and changes this year, but there will never be any real stable time. There are always events that will challenges or changes in technology or changes in policies or whatever that we need to respond to or in our own personal life circumstances. And for me, I think one of the lessons for this year has been how to maybe just embrace that sense of ongoing change as just being where it's at.(02:45):So realizing things that never going to settle there are always going to be challenges. And part of that then is also that you're always going to be on a learning curve and that that's okay and can be difficult and challenging and uncomfortable sometimes, but we come out of it in some way better for having learnt the lessons of that time. I know that there have been lots of challenges and we've experienced them as well, but in different ways, I know that also that every one of you have experienced very different challenges. And that's one of the things that's been quite striking is that the experiences, your experiences, depending on what country you're living in, what city you're living in, what your family circumstances, what your living situation is, what your job is. And so I can only speak for myself. And one of, some of the things that I've learned this year are how much I really need to live with because we came over with a suitcase for a couple of weeks and here, we still are, and we haven't had all our things and we haven't had an oven and, and some practical things like this, but we've still had a good life. Really. We've had incredibly generous friends and family that I'm grateful for.(04:10):Also learnt more about what's important. It's been great. Being able to take the time to prioritize for me, time in the morning for just some time for myself to do something that I like to do some exercise to just spend some time sitting and enjoying a cup of tea before I start work, because I've been starting work a little bit later, so that I can overlap with European time zone for meetings in the evening. And it's actually been a great model too, to have a couple of hours in the morning before I start work. And I'm wondering how I can continue that. It's also been great, challenging, but also interesting to have meetings a lot time blocks towards the end of the day where the time overlap is. And I realized how much of my days normally broken up by meetings all through the day. And so I'm going to be looking at how I can continue to create better blocks and chunks of time to do the things I need to do and, and to, to chunk meetings together more. And of course, we've all learned lots of new things about new ways of teaching online, running meetings, running webinars, running courses having zoom meetings, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. 'Can you hear me?' Internet crashes. But we're still here despite all these challenges and we've done well enough. And I think we can really be proud of getting here no matter how hard it's been or how, what state we're in.(05:48):I'm also really proud of what our peer community has communities have achieved this year. I don't know about you, but I've seen countless acts of kindness and peer support. I know that we've also seen lots of also increasing aggression and agitation that may be associated with the times, but I've also seen people reaching out to one another supporting one another you know, heads of departments and faculties sending out emails, telling people it's okay, that you're not going to be working at your full capacity right now, given everything else has going on. I'm grateful for amazing colleagues in my own research group. Who've been so good at looking after one another and the morning hangout that is there for everyone just to drop into and the people who set that up and run it, I'm grateful to our volunteers and our communities. Who've had enormous jobs this year, responding to the challenges of COVID and the uncertainty, the bulkiness of it in organizing conferences.(07:03):I was a co-chair of one of our big conferences for 2019. And I thought that was a big job, but it's nothing compared to what I see my colleagues doing now, trying to work out whether they can hold conferences face-to-face or not, and then it hybrid, or do they go fully virtual and then all of the myriad of details involved in that. So a huge shout out and thank you to all of you who have continued to make our communities work in, in, in very practical ways. And, to keep us connected to one another. And that's been interesting too the language of this time, you know, where people are talking about social distancing, and I really wish we would talk about physical distancing instead of social distancing because of any time we actually need to be physically distanced of course, but more than anything, we need to be socially connected.(08:05):And that's what I see many of the initiatives going on about enabling that social connection and that peer connection to continue reflecting more personally, and thinking about this podcast series, changing academic life. Well, that academic life has certainly been changing, but my contributions to it through the podcast conversations with, with colleagues hasn't been very active this year for lots of reasons. I think in some parts, I was also expecting that I would be able to connect to people face to face, which is where I preferred doing the, the, the interviews, the recordings, but also just the challenges of time zone and just trying to keep the day job going with all of those other challenges. So we, we did have some interesting conversations, Pejman and Anirudha and Eunice. And I did also did sort of a 'musings from Australia' episode.(09:04):And hopefully, even though there are only a few, there were still some interesting insights there for you or food for thought around the podcast though. We've also been able to do some new things. So we, we ran a webinar looking at some of the challenges for academia in this current COVID situation. And also Austin Rainer and myself co-facilitated an academic leadership development course on behalf of informatics Europe. And the webinar was with Informatics Europe as well. And that was with a great cohort of people and also a very good learning experience for ourselves as well. And something that we'll be repeating in the spring running a different another version of the course, then there's also been the experience of running workshops for projects, for example, about bias in selection and diversity running workshops for the Greek ACM women's group for their conference on making a better academic life various keynotes, for example, talking to future Digi leaders, you know, women and nonbinary people at a Stockholm conference.(10:30):So there still have been lots of interesting possibilities to connect and make a difference and looking to looking forward to being able to do more in the coming year. And one of the things that I do plan to do that I'll announce here is that I, I want to start recognizing that I'm not getting the long form conversations done at the moment. Very often. I want to start a regular bite-size series that I'm going to call Related Work. And it's capturing, what I want to do is pick up a short, a small idea and reflect on it from both what the research evidence says about it and reflect on my own anecdotal experiences where relevant. So they will be short five to 10 minute episodes, I think on a single topic that will perhaps just provide different forms of food for thought as we're moving forward.(11:28):So thank you for listening to this. I'm glad that you're still around. I do hope to be able to come back with more and hoping that we're able to continue to find ways to change our own academic life for the better and academic life. More generally with the longer slower change things. And I love in some ways that COVID has given us reminders that there's more, that we can change and that's okay. To make changes and make mistakes and learn from them. And can we take those lessons forward in the future? So all the best as you continue to try to stay healthy and saying and well during this time and stay connected.12:57 END

Dr Eunice Sari is the CEO and Co-Founder of UX Indonesia, the first UX Research, Training and Consulting Company based in Indonesia, among many other ‘first’ roles and achievements. She has more than 15 years of experience in academia and industry. In this conversation Eunice shares her career trajectory working and studying in Indonesia, Denmark, Finland and Australia. A common pattern is, as she calls it, making trouble and seeing new possibilities, whether this is applying participatory design methods to service design before it was a thing, or starting a UX company in Indonesia where people had never heard of UX previously. What also comes through are culture-specific aspects, whether it is about working around career expectations for her as a girl in Indonesia or having to re-think management strategies that work in western contexts but have to be re-thought in her company. Eunice makes trouble though to make a difference and she is passionate about service and what she calls building society. She also shares her personal routines and strategies for managing all that she does and how having to work from home because of COVID is a blessing in disguise.“In Indonesia or in Asia, you can make more impact to more people if you have enough education.”“I always make trouble because I want to start something new, I want to break the norms, I want to go outside the box. And if I don’t have this PhD thing, it’s not about myself [or being called doctor] but in this region that position is very important. It actually helps you to make a difference and to change a lot of things. A kind of enabler.”[Service/volunteer work] “builds society and when society is built, the impact is to you as well as you can have a better conversation.”“My [management] style is to give you a goal you need to achieve and you sort it out for yourself. That’s more western minded and I’ve had to learn from my mistakes and give more specific instruction.”Full Transcript available here (thanks to Claudia, Personal Research Assistant of Eunice Sari!)Overview (times approximate):02:10 Current COVID experiences06:20 From a study/career for an Indonesian girl to starting a company21:15 Doing her Masters and working in Denmark35:11 Starting a PhD in Finland41:00 Doing service, making a difference47:10 Managing people, building a company57:20 Family and COVID times01:03:50 Final comments1:06:00 EndIn more detail, she talks about…02:10 Current COVID experiences2:10 Eunice discusses the impact of COVID for her personally and for her work and company; and that her people in Indonesia do not like working from home06:20 From a study/career for an Indonesian girl to starting a company6:20 Eunice talks about wanting to be a doctor but it being difficult in Indonesia, the complication being a girl – girls were not expected to have a high career. Also interested in doing something with technology but also not supported as a girl. Instead she was encouraged to learn English and become a teacher. Loved working with people. Also always likes to raise difficult issues.10:45 One thing she was really interested in was CBT computer-based teaching and learning. Worked as a research assistant to try to get connections and also looking for opportunity to go overseas. After several years, got a scholarship to study in Japan. Studied culture and language in Japan and also created two research projects for herself when only one needed. Went to school from 7-10 every day and it was fascinating. A language study and a suicide study.14:20 That was early 2000. So she got interested in user research and technology. In 2001 she was helping Josh, now her partner in the company – they were from the same university. His background was in computer science. He had the opportunity to study in Denmark at DTU where Jakob Nielsen studied and became interested in usability. Josh asked her to help him, analyzing usability issues with website, doing UX work. This was 2001.17:50 When he got back to Indonesia they started a company together, called TranslateEasy. Websites were just starting to get popular. A lot of the websites were in English and wanted to make these resources available in Indonesian. Used her language skills to do transfer to Indonesia in a contextual manner. Didn’t have a lot of knowledge then so learnt everything herself.19:48 Talks about the difference between Jakob Nielsen starting something in the US where everything is just accepted and starting a UX company in Indonesia. They both started around the same time. But in Indonesia they had to teach people from the very beginning. Started translating people’s websites then when asked why were the results so good, they could say it was because they did user research.21:15 Doing her Masters and working in Denmark21:15 Being a girl and starting a company was not a problem, but being a girl and starting a technology-related company was a problem. In the beginning it was josh facing the clients. In Indonesia, at that time education was really important. A higher education from overseas was also really helpful in making people believe they know what they are doing. She also had to do her study properly and she went to Denmark. “In don’t believe in learning something without knowing I can do it!” So try doing it herself then. It is an investment and a privilege.So she had this company and then the problem of how she could improve her skills and how to bridge that, when she has a background in education and language. She found what Jacob Buur was doing interesting as he was doing interdisciplinary work. She put in an application and was accepted. Everything was free at this time. She got this privilege to study in Denmark for 2 years. Helped with foundations to learn interaction design.25:05 And as she said, she always looks for trouble. When doing her masters, she did a lot of crazy things. First person to volunteer at Chi and submit papers. People said why is she doing this but it was because she wanted to do this. Got paper accepted to HCII2004 conference and also accepted to CHI2004 in Vienna, as student volunteer. Paid her own way. Helped to build her confidence and network. The second trouble maker thing. Had to do participatory design (PD) activities as part of the research. And that changed her life a lot. Tried to do something different from everyone else who went to a company doing a product, a tangible thing people can see what it is. But she wanted to do something else and did a PD in a supermarket, in intangible things, to show you can still design something such as a service. Some argued it wasn’t user centred design. She stood her ground.29:52 (She says this was 2013 but it was actually 2003). No-one helped her find a company as not PD. So found her own supermarket company and a company IBM who were interested in her thesis. Moved to Aarhus. Getting a lot of help from Kim Halskov. Sent to Germany for work too – trolleys with RFID. Masters thesis was not UX per se but re-positioning UX, looking at it from a different perspective, designing a service. In 2004 there was the first writing by someone else in service design. She didn’t’ get to publish her own work - always starts things too early. Continuing to grow awareness of people in Indonesia of what they are doing. Changed her life.35:11 Starting a PhD in Finland35:11 After Denmark, wanted to do a PhD. Ended up doing her PhD in Finland, with a government scholarship, to do something with technology and education and UX. Did that for 2 years when they usually only support for 6 months. Then had to be self-sufficient and it was hard to survive. So decided to give up. But just needed to submit PhD thesis. Gave up her 2 years study and hoped to be able to continue. Actually planning still to submit her thesis in a year.  In her work as an opportunity to work with lots of teachers, as pro bono work. And write a book.38:05 So went back to Asia to continue her other RFID business. Had a company based in Singapore where they know about UX more. Then got an offer to do her PhD in Australia. A hard decision as she was in the top of her career. Should she give up and become a student again? Deciding factors – from context, from beginning, always wanted to do a PhD. In Indonesia or in Asia, you can make more impact to more people if you have enough education.  “I always make trouble because I want to start something new, I want to break the norms, I want to go outside the box. And if I don’t have this PhD thing, it’s not about myself [or being called doctor] but in this region that position is very important. It actually helps you … to make a difference and to change a lot of things. … A kind of enabler.”41:00 Doing service, making a difference41:00 Where does her service ethic come from?  She talks about her service ethic. She was so lucky and blessed to get lots of support and resources from people and the SIGHI community. It was inspiring. So it is about making things available for other people. Her heart can’t stay still when she knows people can’t get things. Talks about her work in SIGCHI Chapters and volunteering. A labour of love. Also has to do some paid work to eat. But also volunteering – meetups for a lot of people who have never heard about what you are doing and what other people are doing around the world – we can learn, and that actually builds society and when society is built, the impact is to you as well as you can have a better conversation. Her love of service and making her feel fulfilled and being part of something. Very rewarding when people send messages to say she has been an influence on them.47:10 Managing people, building a company47:10 Talks about the people in her company. About 10 people right now. Some people aren’t able to survive in this (COVID) season. Miss the role of face to face. Some people feel it is important for you to look to see what they are doing and get feedback. But that’s something she can’t always do all the time. Those who are successful have been with them a long time, have a really good work ethic without her micro-managing them. She doesn’t like micromanaging people. Her style is to give you a goal you need to achieve and you sort it out for yourself. That’s more western minded and she has had to learn from her mistakes and give more specific instruction. Wouldn’t generalize this as a cultural thing.51:55 In 2013 changed company name to UX Indonesia and that’s when she started having a lot of people working for her. And starting to use OKR (objectives, key results), asking the manger and team to think through objectives and key results at different time frames, and then break down to what needs to be done. Loves to do this exercise with lots of start ups around the world but when she started to do that in her company it did not work so well. It’s a completely new way of thinking. So then she created the objective and key result and then her team leaders were able to do that after some time. But can still say just tell me what to do. Probably a gap of knowledge. Not that they are unable to do it but afraid to make mistakes. 55:50 Talks about her core strength as a leader. Good at creating new business, creating new opportunities. Good at following up and completing. Quite detailed. So has high expectation of how people do things, not to her standard but has to be done properly. In Indonesia UX is quite a new thing and she doesn’t like shortcuts. So she teaches people in UX. People would not have this UX title in her company unless they go through a certain process. Talks about the importance of maintaining quality as UX practitioners and doing UX properly. Creating quality standards.57:20 Family and COVID times57:20 How does family fit into all of this? Talks about family being very independent and being a happy mum. When travelling this isn’t in her head. The kids now need a lot of attention not just as parent but friend. COVID situation a blessing in disguise having to work from home makes her available to her kids when they want to talk and also good for her to learn how to set boundaries. Working 8am-10pm every day. But always make family a priority. Spend a lot of time outside in outdoor activities and spending a lot of time together. But before that when she travels, she spends hours on her Whatsapp and phone. Would not go to sleep without spending time with her kids and husband. They are the centre of your life. 01:01:30 Where does she draw her own strength? Learning to prioritise what is important. A long list of things to do. Kids all have a to do list. Starts every morning with time for herself. Prays. Walks. Will not start her day without doing these things. Does the same thing at night. To open and close. Sometimes misses out but causes stress.01:03:50 Final comments1:06:00 EndRelated Links: UXIndonesia, SIGCHI Chapters, CHIUxID conferencePeople: Jakob Nielsen, Jacob Buur, Kim Halskov

Anirudha Joshi is a lecturer, teaching interaction design in the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay in India. Anirudha discusses his career path from engineering, to working in design, to coming back to university to teach and later doing his PhD. Many of his stories point to his particular ‘self-taught’ learning style, of learning first by doing then building on that learning in whatever way he needs. He also talks about developing HCI capacity and community in India and the particular challenges, as well as design in an Indian context, and what we can learn from India.  At a personal level, Anirudha also reflects on what he learnt from a recent sabbatical - how he is shaping his research to focus on making an impact in education in India, building up a collaborative lab culture, and making healthy life choices.“I’m happy to always be in a position where I feel like I don’t know enough about this.”“Good work happens from good people but a lot of it is just simple things…like having a regular lab meetings, having feedback sessions, having an atmosphere.”“Although we have residual time, it is not as productive as scheduled time.”Overview (times approximate) - you can also download a full transcript:02:00 On being a designer in an engineering school14:15 The importance of learning by doing and feedback21:50 Doing his PhD23:20 Growing HCI in India34:20 How he learns things by himself40:30 Doing/teaching design in India52:15 Reflecting on his insights from sabbatical01:04:20 Wrap upIn more detail, he talks about…[On being a designer in an engineering school]02:00 Anirudha talks about being in a design school surrounded by engineers and being in the oldest design school in one of the IITs; doing his undergraduate in electrical engineer, and realizing he didn’t want to do this; then discovered design and making educational videos – around 1992-93 after his Masters, and at the time that multimedia was coming to the fore. Practicing until 1998. Ahead of curve in industry e.g., making websites, multimedia content, before many others started. But saturated fairly quickly.05:25 Thought so much cool stuff that happens in academia in this area. Then decided to go back to do teaching. When all the confluence was happening with psychology, design etc. coming in. So design education has always been predominantly about self-discovery – developing own design sensibility, just trying things out e.g., drawing horizontal lines for a hundred pages to develop a certain sensibility to shape and form and colour. A skill and also brings attention to detail. More recent times, last 20 years, a whole thoughtfulness of research. Comes from Bauhaus.08:10 Second German design school, Ulm, that brought in whole intellectual angle, social angle, methods and so on. Also brought in rigor and quantitative methods. Now a much wider canvas for designers. And this got him into academics. Compares this to being in industry with its short timeframes in one place and here he is 20 years in academia.09:40 PhD at IIT Bombay, from Computer Science, so completely different. PhD about integrating HCI with software engineering, looking at design process and integrating process into software development. A very slow journey but interesting as never really attended a course on any of this until much longer after he needed it. An interesting way of learning things.12:00 Being self taught? On the one hand all the courses he has taught, whatever he learnt he learnt on his own. Then thinks he needs to find out more about them if he wants to teach them. Challenged him in unique ways. A lot of literature in design came from 60s 70s, started by Ulm writing about design. IIT founder came from Ulm design. Can see the depth in his work as a result of the intellectual background that comes from this tradition. In practice-based profession like design need all sorts of people. Who can design stuff, and who can also reflect and think about it. [The importance of learning by doing and feedback]14:15 How do you teach students other skills? Interviewing is one skill and then converting that into actionable design. Can be learnt but takes time and practice and feedback. Building up sensitivities is also an important skill. Growing up in a developing country you see lots of problems all around you. Human way of dealing with it is shut yourself off from it particularly if a sensitive person. But that is not going to help you solve problems as a designer. So you need to be open to this without messing your own thinking. When you do things in practice that is when it hits you that this is so hard. So talking about skills is very important but the best way is actually to do it. An important role as a design teacher is to give feedback, one-on-one connect with every student in the class. When it comes down to doing it you actually mess it up. And that is when feedback is very important.17:10 Any particular technique for giving feedback? In teaching creates situations where feedback is necessary, gives feedback early rather than late, and tries to set it up as a feedback session to be ready to receive critique. Gives an example of teaching interviews. Set it up as a safe place where you can get critiqued. Later doesn’t give much feedback, more ideas. Class sizes ~15-55 students. Interesting challenge, how do you teach design in a large class situation? Most important learning point in design is when you get feedback. Some colleagues trying peer feedback but he doesn’t like it so much particularly if lot of peers are in same boat. If you can involve 2nd year students to give feedback – from position of more experience, and distance as an outside person helps in being a bit more balanced in what you say.[Doing his PhD]21:50 Did PhD while also working at IIT Bombay. Part time, started 2005, about 7 years after becoming a faculty member. At one time teaching 3 courses and attending 3 courses. Now he would think it is very hard to do but at the time didn’t think it was hard. Value of being naïve. [Growing HCI in India]23:20 Challenges working in India and engaging with broader interaction research community? Someone suggested industry would be interested and he started conducting courses for industry people, now doing this for 19 years. Very popular as a course. Thought, why are they coming to learn this stuff as could just read books. Then realized it was more about feedback. Also about the community effect it had – people from different companies coming together and staying in contact, swapping companies. Then formed a mailing list and in those days very active discussion. 2700 people on it. A lot of discussion has now shifted to other platforms.25:50 Then met a few colleagues internationally. Andy Smith from the UK and at that time looking for HCI partners for a EU project to help grow collaborations. That’s how he met people like Jan Gulliksen, Steven Brewster. Way before his PhD. His first CHI conference was 2004 in Vienna – first exposure to an international conference. And in the same year, before attending CHI, he organized the first India HCI conference, alongside Andy Smith. This is what has always happened. Had never been to a peer-reviewed conference before organizing one! His learning model. Then went to CHI, thought it was interesting. Then got on TC-13 (international committee for HCI) and went to first Interact conference in 2007 and by this time was already doing his PhD. But still trying to understand how should I do this myself and how should we do this as a country and how to grow it in the country as a whole. Thought conferences was a good idea. 2010 onwards got act together again to do an annual India HCI conference.28:30 Looking on it as a community development work. 10 years ago people couldn’t even afford to go to a conference. How to have properly inclusive conferences? Need to have multiplicity of conferences. There was a recent exercise on thinking about how to look at CHI 2030. CHI growing and fabulous but growing itself out of smaller venues very fast and not sure we need to have just one big conference every year, could have smaller conferences and a big one. Lots of possibilities.29:45 What does India HCI do towards that community development? Provides a local platform to find out about conferences. For students to see what it is. To younger PhD students to publish their first paper and the opportunity to be part of the process e.g., reviewing. A good mentoring opportunity. A good opportunity to mess up things in a safe enough way. Also a platform for people to try out things. One thing that happens in India that he doesn’t see elsewhere – got 52 submissions and accepted 15, a large number for India HCI but always get 250 participants. Proportion of submitters to participants. A lot of networking. Gives industry people a chance to keep in touch with research. Borrowing words from Paula Kotze’s talk yesterday, there are business and technology and executive people – similarly academically inclined and doing-oriented people. In India, number of people in industry is huge, about 30-40,000 people somehow doing some stuff in IUX (interaction user experience). Interested in looking at challenging work. When they ran INTERACT in 2017, they also had a lot of focus on courses. In India HCI conferences, courses are really popular. People want to learn things. [How he learns things by himself]34:20 How he does this for himself? He has learnt to be a self-taught person and continues to be self taught. Wants to pass this on to his kids. Have to learn things by yourself. Keeps him on his toes. “Happy to always be in a position where I feel like I don’t know enough about this” and know I can find out if it is important. Love of learning, being comfortable with not knowing, and asking stupid questions, and knowing how to know; also about taking initiative, having meta-thought ‘what is it that I am missing here and what should I be doing next’ and constantly asking myself to do that. Gives an example of starting out doing a lot of qualitative work, then for PhD had to do quant stuff, never did a research methods course, and read about principle components analysis then after 2 months supervisor saying he just needed regression analysis – one of the challenges with being self-taught, not knowing what you should be looking at in the first place. Tends to read books from the middle of the book as doesn’t have much patience and usually things that matter are in the middle of the book not the beginning. That’s what he did with quant. Now going back to first few pages.  Reading ‘The book of Why’ on causality as he thinks he needs to understand causality if he is going to teach research methods in the future. 37:50 Serendipitous or targeted e.g., finding that book? Not completely serendipitous. Talks about being in Sussex for some months last year and someone there at the same time, giving a talk. Impressed. He mentioned this book and it being difficult to read. So he thought he should read it as well. The book looks at the different rungs of causality – first one is causality, but then interventional and third one is counter-factual. Very powerful arguments and very relevant in current context of AI and machine learning. Learning in response to the new wave of technology. And meeting smart people and thinking about it and learning from them. “I’m always looked for, who can I learn this from?” In a sense it is serendipity but also looking for sources.  [Doing/teaching design in an Indian context]40:30 How to do this as a country, when many resources situated in western contexts? Many answers. Historically design school has done this. Founded by an Ulm School graduate. So it has strong western design tradition in it. At the same time it has a lot of responsiveness to the problems around you, and also a lot of response to the cultural heritage you bring. Talks about a design teacher he had – used to teach a course called Indian Design Tradition. Language, typography, art. Rooted in respective culture. The other side of it – the technologies are penetrating our societies all over the world fairly rapidly and an opportunity to respond to those opportunities. And there is another part to this issue of how we do this as a country. One of the challenges he felt when he started teaching 20 years ago - all very bright people but don’t think they have taken a leadership role in design in the country. Need to contribute back to the field itself. Didn’t have a strong research tradition until drawing from HCI.44:00 Issues of emergent users and opening different approaches to design? Design schools tend to attract very creative people. A lot of competition to get in. And creativity given. The question is does it get channelized? How do people learn to do text input – you can have an idea that is nice as a concept but just doesn’t work in practice? Text input makes you the most humble person. So yes there is a lot of creativity but it needs to be backed up with a rigorous evaluations and assessment and other critical approaches that is perhaps a little less in design.46:45 Pressure to publish? Yes. IITs in general have expectation re publications and having effect. Most difficult bit is travel. Still reasonably well supported. Can get to 1-2 conferences/year. That is another reason to start India HCI for domestic travel as about 1/10th of costs.48:10 Anything else particular to the Indian context? Have a lot to learn from the international community and a lot to give. People talk about emerging markets and developing countries. But most countries in some way are uniquely positioned. If you look at our telecom sector, we have the highest wifi penetration rates and data consumption rates per capita in the world. What have we done to make this possible? Compares to African context. In India people have data to waste, cheaper than water. Would never have thought his parents would be tech consumers, e.g., watching TV on his phone. Would never have imagined. It changes society in very unique ways. Many societal factors. Can learn a lot from what can happen. Get amazed with amount of plastic we use when I travel. Maybe we can learn how to be frugal from India. Priorities seem different to different people. [Reflecting on insights/changes from his sabbatical]52:15 Big challenges for Anirudha personally? Just came back from sabbatical. Now 52 years old and probably have another 12-13 years left. “What would I want to do with the next few years.” So he has picked on a few themes to work in. Education is one of them. Education numbers lagging in India. Lot of opportunities. Something he always loved. So a lot to achieve in that space. All media including tv, youtube etc haven’t really lived up to full potential for education. Difference? Would like to have made some real difference to educational outcomes, how education could be scaled up. Talks about comparing number of people working in restaurants in different countries. But in a classroom, 50 kids to one class with one teacher. What tools can help the teacher do better work? That might be an example. Or a different way of engaging with learning, especially for kids who aren’t so proactive or a bit behind with learning. And challenge of multiple languages. 2000 self-reported languages, of which 43 languages spoken by a million or more, and 22 official languages plus English that India supports.58:00 Any deliberate practices to support his reflection? First took a sabbatical. Went to two labs, where he knows good work happens. Getting out of his comfort zone. Good work happens from good people but a lot of it is just simple things…like having a regular lab meetings, having feedback sessions, having an atmosphere. So he is trying to build that culture back in his lab. One of the big changes he is trying to make is to bring in this lab culture. Had many interesting people but most of them worked independently so one of the big changes is bringing in this lab culture, collaboration, group meetings and so on. The other thing he realized was that 20 years ago with certain levels of responsibility he developed a certain teaching culture but he has not updated it or responded to the changes that have happened. Life has become easier. And a huge amount of travel. Which means the amount of time he is giving his students is less and less. Talks about he would block out teaching, travel, research then students can be met in the remaining time. Now the lab has a schedule and then also do free other time. Although we have residual time, it is not as productive as scheduled time. These are simple things. Not sure why he couldn’t have figured it out on his own, but it helps to see such things.01:01:00 How does he look after himself? That’s another thing he did in his sabbatical. Started picking up weight, a lot of diabetes in the family. Doctor said he had to lose weight. Now on a diet plan that gives him enough energy to exercise. Schedule that in. Now wears a fitbit – seeing the delta changes are the ones that motivate you. Gives an example re his running. Never been a runner. Also got back to cooking. The brain doesn’t stop thinking, on auto-pilot. When cooking or running, the brain can’t just wonder off and that’s useful. Mindful cooking and mindful running.[Wrap up]01:04:20 Wrap up. And complementing him on giving so much acknowledgement to his students and collaborators.EndRelated LinksPeople: Andy Smith – Case study on Institutionalising HCI in Asia: an impact focusing on India and ChinaConference/keynotes: Interact2019 conferenceSlides from Anirudha’s keynote talk: Designing technology for adoption by emergent usersPaula Kotze’s keynote talk: Is HCI ready for the 4th Industrial Revolution?Book: The Book of Why: the new science of cause and effect. by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie, 2017, Basic Books.

An “in-between” podcast - where I reflect on my own experiences being COVID-stranded in Australia. You can download a full transcript here. There are numerous resources being made available to help us all navigate life and work at this time. Interactive Webinar: "Creating the New Academic Normal for Informatics Researchers" Offered by Informatics Europe Thursday, 25 June 2020 from 10:00 to 11:30 am CEST Registration Deadline: Tuesday, 23 June 2020, 12:00 pm CEST Registration FormSome links that I’ve found useful recently include:Action for Happiness - 10-day program to boost wellbeing. Simple light weight evidence-based activities.UQ Wellness: Navigating the disruption - insights. Video 57:47 mins. Explains from a psychological perspective why we might be feeling like we are and tips for what we can do about it.Anna Cox and team’s ‘E-Worklife: Remote workers and digital self-regulation for effective productivity‘ site - full of evidence-based useful strategies to try out

This is the Part 2 of a discussion with Pejman Mirza-Babaei. Pejman is an Associate Dean, Industry Partnerships and an Associate Professor of User Experience Research in the Faculty of Business and Information Technology at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. In the Part 1 he talked about his research and getting to tenure. In this second half we explore Pejman’s experiences in navigating life post-tenure, working out how he can have the biggest impact, and learning to become an academic leader, in particular what it is useful to focus on and how to get the best out of people.“I need to constantly remind myself that I can take a break [at evenings, on the weekend, taking holidays]… It’s becoming more normal now and I’m actually enjoying it.”“I know what I don’t want to do but too many things that I want to do.” “I try to understand the impact of the choices that I make but also knowing that I cannot predict the future so the thing that I decide to do at the time is probably the best.”“It sometimes takes years to understand if a decision you made at some point was a good decision or a bad decision.”He talks about (approximately): [You can download a full transcript here]1:30 Until his tenure he always had very clear goals. Then suddenly it’s ‘what do I do now?’. He really enjoyed preparing his tenure application because it was an opportunity to step back and look at what he had done and figure out the story to tell. Thought about it for 2-3 weeks without writing anything. Then in a matter of a few hours he drafted a couple of pages. Found it very rewarding to see what he had done and think about them. But afterwards no clear task. How to prepare to be a full professor? Tries to figure what gives him satisfaction, that have a bigger impact. And what are those? Not only to figure out which ones he cares about but how fast do you see that impact to get the satisfaction?5:20 One reason that the academic job is so challenging is that the feedback loop [re the impact] is quite long. Cares about having an impact on someone’s life eg for a student. “That’s my highest priority. What I also found myself being interested in is how can I help others like a junior faculty.” More papers, he will be happy but not sacrificing the other things for another paper. Now more selective, which student to accept, what paper to write or what grant to apply for. Now feels better about the papers he submits now. Tries to submit papers with a good chance of being accepted vs all accepted. Now only go to conferences he cares about. So a change in strategy.9:10 Aim is trying to bring that balance back in his life. All positions come with sacrifices until you reach a level where you feel more stable. He talks about working really hard up to tenure and now not working so hard, not weekends or evenings any more as he used to do up to tenure. Used to neglect relationships with people he cared about. Now trying to rebuild those relationships. Trying to have his life back.When he tries not to work on the weekend can feel bad but has to constantly remind himself that he can take a break. Becoming more normal now and actually enjoying it.13:55 Talks about scuba diving that he used to do, that he has returned to post-tenure.15:00 Discusses moving into admin and postponing his sabbatical for this. Wanted to see if he could have a different type of impact. Also trying to figure out if uni admin leadership role is something he wants to do as a long term career path. Still trying to figure that out. Still works closely with industry partners and really enjoys solving industry problems through lends of academic research.  “I know what I don’t want to do but too many things that I want to do.”17:40 How will he make choices? Tells story of not being able to decide re Masters – what if I choose the wrong thing? Advice from cousin about you are only making a choice on the information you have at that time and that will be the best choice you can make. And if you don’t make that choice, other factors will make it for you. A factor that shouldn’t be determining your choice. Now one of his decision-making strategies. Tries to understand the impact of the choices he makes but knowing he cannot predict the future. One thing he tries to do is try to influence or manage his manager to make that decision together. Talks about book on how to get a PhD with a chapter on how to manage your supervisor.  Very helpful to know how to get what you want from other people.21:30 Key skills learnt as a manager? First thing he learnt is that he doesn’t know anything about academic leadership so started training himself. Sees a big difference between academic and industry leadership positions. In industry have duties and power. In academic set up the power balance doesn’t exist. ‘I am one of the faculty members similar others. Some are higher ranked and now I have to ask them to do something.” In the company call a meeting and everyone comes. In the university, call a meeting and 2 out of 10 come and you can’t do anything to the other 8. Still learning. Most managers try to figure out how to do tasks and processes more efficiently but you can’t be efficient with people. Efficient way might not be the effective or best way.  The other thing, we often aim for perfection. But you realise soon to aim for ‘good enough’.25:30 How to judge good enough? At the beginning he thought if he could do everything himself he would achieve the perfect result. Very soon he realized it is not doable. One of the weaknesses he tries to improve is how to delegate to people. And give them the space for how they would do it and then accept the result. It might be different to what he wanted but it does the job. Needs to keep reminding colleagues we are not trying to run the best faculty or ideal … we are not trying to be a modern democracy but still need to decide what tasks are important and where to put the effort because we don’t have unlimited resources. That’s the role of a good leader.At the time we all make decisions hoping for the best result.29:42 Finally highlighting that sometimes listening to people’s stories feels like they make all the right decisions because we usually tell the successes. But it sometimes takes years to understand if a decision you made at some point was a good decision or a bad decision. Looking back you can then realise the things you can learn and the dots you can connect. And that’s the exciting part. He always asks for feedback from mentors. The things he wants to do and things he should do. Choices as part of the job you want to do.36:40 End

Pejman Mirza-Babaei is an Associate Dean Industry Partnerships, and an Associate Professor of User Experience Research, in the Faculty of Business and Information Technology at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Pejman’s story spans Iran, the UK and Canada as he discusses his path from Masters to working in industry to doing a PhD closely tied with a start-up, and then his experiences moving into a tenure track position immediately post PhD, well in fact before his PhD, and later taking a break to work back in industry before working out that academia is what he wants to. What’s particularly interesting in his story is how strategic he has been in exploring his options and making decisions, leading to him getting tenure in very quick time. And what else is interesting is how he is always seeking feedback and open to learn. There is a Part 2 of this conversation (coming next) where he talks about the uncertainty of life post-tenure and how he has navigated these new choices, as well as what he has learning moving into more faculty leadership roles. “One thing I do a lot is ask for feedback… The important thing about feedback is to listen carefully but not necessarily do all of them… Ultimately it’s your decision and you know what is good for you.”“Going to a faculty position with mindset that you are doing everything is the fastest way to burnout. “ He talks about… [You can download a full transcript here]2:05 Pejman talks about his background, doing a Computer Hardware Engineering undergrad degree working in a bank as a network manager, finding it boring and deciding to continue his education and ended up at Sussex Uni doing a Master of IT for Commerce and took an HCI course there. But never knew what he wanted to do.5:05 Being fascinated by computer games as a kid, but never thought of it as a career. Working in a college back in Iran then coming back to Sussex to start a PhD. The teaching part got him excited about a PhD. Originally wanted to study something to do with technology to support people with visual impairment but ended up working with Graham [McAllister] doing games user research.7:20 Geri provides background on the serendipity of it and Graham being new at Sussex, bringing an interest in games and starting a games user research company. 8:15 Pejman talks about his PhD being relatively unique, working with a start-up games company and working on real cases. Changed his understanding of approach to research questions and how to communicate results back. Applied research. What was challenging then but he benefits from it now was that many academic papers couldn’t be applied to the commercial work they were doing which was more formative evaluation and usability studies, similar to papers but needing to think more on how to apply it.10:35 Did it feel stressful then? No. Didn’t have stress that this one study had to be the best. Had loads of opportunity to iterate as always new game to test next week. And supportive supervisor. Both understood no-one had done this before, no recipe to follow. Now very proud of what they did in the projects. 12:50 Turning this into a thesis? At some point it felt like a job he was doing. Learning a lot. End of second year [of a 3 year program], tried to capture what he learnt from each project – wrote a page for each and put them on the floor to look for connections. Knew broad aspects eg physiological measures etc but not sure how the story would be. Last year of PhD then more focused on how to visualize this data. So only finding story at end of second year. Ran close to 30-40 studies but only included 4 in the thesis, picking relevant ones. Not a common PhD training. 16:15 Stressful about finding focus? Not that particularly. The whole experience was stressful. But being able to run lots of studies and having a supportive group helped a lot. Benefited a lot from Ben [du Boulay] he would run surgery sessions as open office door and spending a lot of time with him. And the advice about creating the one page of each project to help find the connections. Was also under pressure to publish as were presenting a lot in industry conferences and didn’t want others doing academic publishing on his ideas. 18:55 Went from Sussex to Canada before he finished his PhD. Never thought he would live in Canada. Always thought he would end up somewhere in Europe. But did 3-4 months as a visiting position in Canada in 3rd year of PhD. They had an open position so he joined the interviews to see what was going on. It was a failed search so they re-advertised at the end of his visiting for a researcher job there. So he applied. The only position he has applied for. The intention was to get experience with job interviews only.20:30 Ended up being offered the position. Big part was his unique experience. They had a games program and wanted to build the HCI/UX part of the program and he came from experience of working on real games plus experience of starting a spin off at Sussex Uni. In line with the vision of the Dean for that position. Applied in Oct, offer in April. Difficult decision. Partner working full-time. And he had an almost full-time job. Had a nice comfortable life in the UK. Talked to Graham for advice. He said Pejman could always go back and work in the company. Unique situation. Didn’t have a PhD. 23:05 Deciding factor to go to a tenure track position rather than a post-doc? Salary. Knowing that he had a safety net back in the UK. And the position was something he was excited about. While some disadvantages of not doing a post doc (more experience, more papers, higher citation number before tenure track). Once he knew he accepted the position, put 100% focus on writing up PhD. Defended in Oct and started position in July before, submitting in August. Didn’t get many corrections but strategic in taking his time to make the corrections to delay the start of his tenure track time, which would have started if he submitted before Jan. So getting one extra year. Submitted final thesis in Jan. 25:55 Tenure track in North America very demanding. Dean was also very supportive. No teaching load in first term and could also write grant. Didn’t negotiate anything! She was just a good Dean ad provided the support he didn’t know he needed.27:05 So he joined Uni of Ontario in 2013 and now 6 years. Did get his tenure submitting his application 2017, a year early so he didn’t need the extra year. Proud of it. Started PhD 2009. Tenure in 2018. 28:15 Key things important for getting there? Being a UX researcher comes with some benefits ie understanding the stakeholders. Even as a PhD student, he went to sessions in the second year on how to defend a viva and what a thesis looks like, so knowing what he needed to prepare himself for. In tenure track position, went to a workshop in second year on applying for tenure. People laughed but too late to do this in the 5th year. So knew in his second year what he needed to do to get tenure and had a clear strategy for what he needed to do to achieve those. Plus what he does a lot is ask for feedback – couple of meetings with Assoc Dean at the time to show what he was doing. The important thing about feedback is to listen carefully but not necessarily do all of them. Good to get feedback but also important to make your decision. Listen carefully, think about it. Ultimately it’s your decision and you know what is good for you.31:25 Pejman gives an example about deciding to edit a book. Strategic decision. Thought there was a need in the field to have a book. Majority of suggestions though were right. Talks about another decision re publishing at CHI conference and getting advice to also publish journal papers as important for tenure, which he listened to. Another suggestion re establishing himself as an independent researcher and important to show independence in the tenure process so tried specifically not to collaborate with the people he used to collaborate with. These are the types of things he learned by going to the workshops early.35:20 Managing those relationships? Talked to them about his need to show his independence and they understood. The tensions between the work being collaborative but review processes wanting to see individuals. Important for his uni was being an independent researcher and the other was cross-faculty collaboration. So purposely joined projects with people from other faculties. Again being strategic.37:20 Also continued working with industry. In 2015 after first year, wasn’t sure if an academic job was something good for him. The first year in survival mode, no real training for transition from PhD to faculty and that caught him. As PhD expected to do all yourself. Going to faculty position with mindset that you are doing everything is the fastest way to burnout.  In his first year he was trying to teach, set up his lab, literally setting up cabling, and thought he had to do everything himself. At the time it felt too much. And lost all the industry connections he had in the UK. So thought he wanted to go and work for industry. 39:35 Again Dean was supportive of his going to work for a company and allowed him to buy out his teaching. He moved to Montreal from Toronto. Started a position as UX Director for a gaming company. After few months realized he missed his academic life. Missed the flexibility and the freedom of doing the research the way you want to do. Used to flexible working hours and in company had to be there by 8:30. And missed opportunity to do his projects, And missed his own office to be able to focus; company had open office. Did this for 4-5 months. Told company he this wasn’t something he wanted to do full-time, and re-negotiated role to be an on-call advisor for UX. Gave him the industry links he wanted. Looking back partner also didn’t like the experience. But it was really important for his career, both in knowing what he wanted to do and in having connections.44:05 So back to Uni and things started working out. Got a house, permanent residency. Tells the story of buying his first house and the dream of the sort of house he always wanted to live in leading to his second house on a lake, inspired also by Saul Greenberg’s podcast interview about how living further from the uni gave him opportunity to work from home and focus on his research some days and live in the countryside and do stuff in between. Now working from home he will take a 20-30 min walk a few times a day – thinking walks. Also enjoys the drive to uni as his time. 48:50 Made a mistake initially by deciding to work from home Mon-Wed and only going to campus Thurs-Fri. Not a good idea. People not able to get to him. Going to change it next semester to Tue and Thurs at home. People ok to wait for one day to come and talk but not three days. 50:52: End Related LinksPeople: Graham MacAllister, Ben du Boulay, Saul Greenberg podcast  Companies:Vertical Slice startup article Indie game company, Execution LabsPapers/articles:Book: Drachen, Mirza-Babaei, & Nacke, Games User Research, 2018Book: Phillips & Pugh, How to get a PhD: a handbook for students and their supervisors.

Welcome to 2020! This is a short podcast reflecting on the past two years.You can download a full transcript here.Related links:This page collates lots of links for donating to the Australian bushfires: ACM-W Greece June 2019 conference talk on “Superchickens, superpowers, and small actions with a big impact"Personal letter to the CHI CommunityCAL podcast chat with Anna CoxAnna Cox’s blog article on her commitment calendarAnd some of Anna’s subsequent reflections: CAL podcast chat with Amy Ko