WEBVTT 00:00:01.863 --> 00:00:05.553 What does it mean to spend our time well? 00:00:08.111 --> 00:00:09.982 I spend a lot of my time 00:00:10.463 --> 00:00:13.616 thinking about how to spend my time. 00:00:14.914 --> 00:00:17.201 Probably too much -- I probably obsess over it. 00:00:17.225 --> 00:00:18.670 My friends think I do. 00:00:18.694 --> 00:00:23.181 But I feel like I kind of have to, because these days, 00:00:23.205 --> 00:00:27.086 it feels like little bits of my time kind of slip away from me, 00:00:27.110 --> 00:00:31.628 and when that happens, it feels like parts of my life are slipping away. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:33.086 --> 00:00:34.237 Specifically, 00:00:34.261 --> 00:00:37.110 it feels like little bits of my time get slipped away 00:00:37.134 --> 00:00:38.738 to various things like this, 00:00:38.762 --> 00:00:40.729 like technology -- I check things. 00:00:41.515 --> 00:00:42.804 I'll give you an example. 00:00:43.586 --> 00:00:45.577 If this email shows up -- 00:00:45.601 --> 00:00:48.286 how many of you have gotten an email like this, right? 00:00:48.310 --> 00:00:50.608 I've been tagged in a photo. 00:00:51.684 --> 00:00:53.487 When this appears, 00:00:53.511 --> 00:00:56.922 I can't help but click on it right now. 00:00:56.946 --> 00:00:59.487 Right? Because, like, what if it's a bad photo? 00:00:59.511 --> 00:01:01.216 So I have to click it right now. 00:01:01.582 --> 00:01:04.029 But I'm not just going to click "See photo," 00:01:04.053 --> 00:01:06.951 what I'm actually going to do is spend the next 20 minutes. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:06.975 --> 00:01:08.152 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:08.176 --> 00:01:12.213 But the worst part is that I know this is what's going to happen, 00:01:12.237 --> 00:01:15.682 and even knowing that's what's going to happen 00:01:15.706 --> 00:01:18.522 doesn't stop me from doing it again the next time. 00:01:19.871 --> 00:01:22.633 Or I find myself in a situation like this, 00:01:24.097 --> 00:01:27.671 where I check my email and I pull down to refresh, 00:01:29.164 --> 00:01:32.515 But the thing is that 60 seconds later, 00:01:32.539 --> 00:01:35.670 I'll pull down to refresh again. 00:01:38.145 --> 00:01:39.947 Why am I doing this? 00:01:39.971 --> 00:01:41.779 This doesn't make any sense. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:43.010 --> 00:01:46.508 But I'll give you a hint why this is happening. 00:01:48.357 --> 00:01:52.865 What do you think makes more money in the United States 00:01:53.547 --> 00:01:59.221 than movies, game parks and baseball combined? 00:02:01.742 --> 00:02:02.983 Slot machines. 00:02:05.195 --> 00:02:07.892 How can slot machines make all this money 00:02:08.799 --> 00:02:13.583 when we play with such small amounts of money? 00:02:14.022 --> 00:02:15.680 We play with coins. 00:02:15.704 --> 00:02:16.979 How is this possible? 00:02:18.137 --> 00:02:20.082 Well, the thing is ... 00:02:21.490 --> 00:02:24.575 my phone is a slot machine. 00:02:25.809 --> 00:02:27.797 Every time I check my phone, 00:02:27.821 --> 00:02:30.138 I'm playing the slot machine to see, 00:02:30.162 --> 00:02:31.354 what am I going to get? 00:02:31.925 --> 00:02:33.085 What am I going to get? 00:02:33.109 --> 00:02:34.950 Every time I check my email, 00:02:34.974 --> 00:02:36.426 I'm playing the slot machine, 00:02:36.450 --> 00:02:38.061 saying, "What am I going to get?" 00:02:38.085 --> 00:02:40.806 Every time I scroll a news feed, 00:02:41.334 --> 00:02:43.276 I'm playing the slot machine to see, 00:02:43.300 --> 00:02:44.882 what am I going to get next? 00:02:46.346 --> 00:02:47.497 And the thing is that, 00:02:47.521 --> 00:02:50.613 again, knowing exactly how this works -- and I'm a designer, 00:02:50.637 --> 00:02:52.914 I know exactly how the psychology of this works, 00:02:52.938 --> 00:02:54.793 I know exactly what's going on -- 00:02:54.817 --> 00:02:57.059 but it doesn't leave me with any choice, 00:02:57.083 --> 00:02:59.134 I still just get sucked into it. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:00.173 --> 00:03:01.983 So what are we going to do? 00:03:02.991 --> 00:03:06.012 Because it leaves us with this all-or-nothing relationship 00:03:06.036 --> 00:03:07.516 with technology, right? 00:03:08.478 --> 00:03:10.016 You're either on, 00:03:10.510 --> 00:03:12.885 and you're connected and distracted all the time, 00:03:12.909 --> 00:03:14.759 or you're off, 00:03:14.783 --> 00:03:16.037 but then you're wondering, 00:03:16.061 --> 00:03:17.686 am I missing something important? 00:03:18.352 --> 00:03:20.606 In other words, you're either distracted 00:03:21.443 --> 00:03:23.504 or you have fear of missing out. 00:03:24.363 --> 00:03:25.520 Right? NOTE Paragraph 00:03:26.822 --> 00:03:30.924 So we need to restore choice. 00:03:31.942 --> 00:03:34.462 We want to have a relationship with technology 00:03:34.486 --> 00:03:38.692 that gives us back choice about how we spend time with it, 00:03:38.716 --> 00:03:41.773 and we're going to need help from designers, 00:03:42.662 --> 00:03:45.467 because knowing this stuff doesn't help. 00:03:45.491 --> 00:03:47.543 We're going to need design help. 00:03:47.567 --> 00:03:49.494 So what would that look like? NOTE Paragraph 00:03:50.656 --> 00:03:53.463 So let's take an example that we all face: 00:03:53.487 --> 00:03:55.533 chat -- text messaging. 00:03:56.089 --> 00:03:57.666 So let's say there's two people. 00:03:57.690 --> 00:04:00.846 Nancy's on the left and she's working on a document, 00:04:00.870 --> 00:04:02.077 and John's on the right. 00:04:02.669 --> 00:04:04.306 And John suddenly remembers, 00:04:04.330 --> 00:04:07.933 "I need to ask Nancy for that document before I forget." 00:04:10.291 --> 00:04:11.958 So when he sends her that message, 00:04:11.982 --> 00:04:14.068 it blows away her attention. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:15.436 --> 00:04:18.844 That's what we're doing all the time, bulldozing each other's attention, 00:04:18.868 --> 00:04:20.282 left and right. 00:04:20.306 --> 00:04:22.072 And there's serious cost to this, 00:04:22.534 --> 00:04:25.165 because every time we interrupt each other, 00:04:26.729 --> 00:04:29.976 it takes us about 23 minutes, on average, 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:31.840 to refocus our attention. 00:04:31.864 --> 00:04:35.212 We actually cycle through two different projects 00:04:35.236 --> 00:04:37.945 before we come back to the original thing we were doing. 00:04:38.806 --> 00:04:43.147 This is Gloria Mark's research combined with Microsoft research, 00:04:43.171 --> 00:04:44.529 that showed this. 00:04:44.553 --> 00:04:48.508 And her research also shows that it actually trains bad habits. 00:04:48.532 --> 00:04:50.977 The more interruptions we get externally, 00:04:51.482 --> 00:04:55.762 it's conditioning and training us to interrupt ourselves. 00:04:56.303 --> 00:04:59.883 We actually self-interrupt every three-and-a-half minutes. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:01.176 --> 00:05:02.327 This is crazy. 00:05:02.351 --> 00:05:03.652 So how do we fix this? 00:05:03.676 --> 00:05:06.926 Because Nancy and John are in this all-or-nothing relationship. 00:05:06.950 --> 00:05:08.451 Nancy might want to disconnect, 00:05:08.475 --> 00:05:09.828 but then she'd be worried: 00:05:09.852 --> 00:05:11.903 What if I'm missing something important? NOTE Paragraph 00:05:12.296 --> 00:05:14.259 Design can fix this problem. 00:05:15.311 --> 00:05:17.344 Let's say you have Nancy again on the left, 00:05:17.368 --> 00:05:18.540 John on the right. 00:05:18.564 --> 00:05:21.255 And John remembers, "I need to send Nancy that document." 00:05:21.279 --> 00:05:22.508 Except this time, 00:05:22.532 --> 00:05:24.469 Nancy can mark that she's focused. 00:05:24.493 --> 00:05:26.461 Let's say she drags a slider and says, 00:05:26.485 --> 00:05:28.408 "I want to be focused for 30 minutes," 00:05:28.432 --> 00:05:29.867 so -- bam -- she's focused. 00:05:30.771 --> 00:05:33.391 Now when John wants to message her, 00:05:33.415 --> 00:05:35.542 he can get the thought off of his mind -- 00:05:35.566 --> 00:05:37.639 because he has a need, he has this thought, 00:05:37.663 --> 00:05:40.090 and he needs to dump it out before he forgets. 00:05:40.744 --> 00:05:42.266 Except this time, 00:05:42.290 --> 00:05:46.594 it holds the messages so that Nancy can still focus, 00:05:46.618 --> 00:05:49.161 but John can get the thought off of his mind. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:50.875 --> 00:05:54.074 But this only works if one last thing is true, 00:05:54.098 --> 00:05:58.584 which is that Nancy needs to know that if something is truly important, 00:05:59.564 --> 00:06:01.242 John can still interrupt. 00:06:04.158 --> 00:06:08.271 But instead of having constant accidental or mindless interruptions, 00:06:08.295 --> 00:06:10.977 we're now only creating conscious interruptions, NOTE Paragraph 00:06:12.985 --> 00:06:14.506 So we're doing two things here. 00:06:14.530 --> 00:06:17.632 We're creating a new choice for both Nancy and John, 00:06:18.436 --> 00:06:21.242 But there's a second, subtle thing we're doing here, too. 00:06:22.022 --> 00:06:25.151 And it's that we're changing the question we're answering. 00:06:25.922 --> 00:06:28.910 Instead of the goal of chat being: 00:06:30.056 --> 00:06:33.253 "Let's design it so it's easy to send a message" -- 00:06:33.277 --> 00:06:34.707 that's the goal of chat, 00:06:34.731 --> 00:06:37.426 it should be really easy to send a message to someone -- 00:06:37.808 --> 00:06:40.888 we change the goal to something deeper and a human value, 00:06:40.912 --> 00:06:45.116 which is: "Let's create the highest possible quality communication 00:06:45.140 --> 00:06:47.623 in a relationship between two people. 00:06:48.162 --> 00:06:50.027 So we upgraded the goal. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:51.832 --> 00:06:54.643 Now, do designers actually care about this? 00:06:54.667 --> 00:06:59.696 Do we want to have conversations about what these deeper human goals are? 00:07:00.538 --> 00:07:02.297 Well, I'll tell you one story. 00:07:02.321 --> 00:07:05.391 A little over a year ago, 00:07:05.415 --> 00:07:08.495 I got to help organize a meeting 00:07:08.519 --> 00:07:13.391 between some of technology's leading designers and Thich Nhat Hanh. 00:07:14.297 --> 00:07:19.134 Thich Nhat Hanh is an international spokesperson for mindfulness meditation. 00:07:19.158 --> 00:07:20.909 And it was the most amazing meeting. 00:07:20.933 --> 00:07:22.953 You have to imagine -- picture a room -- 00:07:22.977 --> 00:07:26.830 on one side of the room, you have a bunch of tech geeks; 00:07:26.854 --> 00:07:28.350 on the other side of the room, 00:07:28.374 --> 00:07:33.355 you have a bunch of long brown robes, shaved heads, Buddhist monks. 00:07:34.442 --> 00:07:37.673 And the questions were about the deepest human values, 00:07:37.697 --> 00:07:40.015 like what does the future of technology look like 00:07:40.039 --> 00:07:42.254 when you're designing for the deepest questions 00:07:42.278 --> 00:07:43.761 and the deepest human values? 00:07:44.445 --> 00:07:48.135 And our conversation centered on listening more deeply 00:07:48.159 --> 00:07:50.087 to what those values might be. 00:07:50.929 --> 00:07:52.636 He joked in our conversation 00:07:52.660 --> 00:07:54.608 that what if, instead of a spell check, 00:07:55.551 --> 00:07:57.582 you had a compassion check, 00:07:57.606 --> 00:08:01.969 meaning, you might highlight a word that might be accidentally abrasive -- 00:08:01.993 --> 00:08:03.907 perceived as abrasive by someone else. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:04.844 --> 00:08:08.815 So does this kind of conversation happen in the real world, 00:08:08.839 --> 00:08:10.961 not just in these design meetings? 00:08:11.917 --> 00:08:13.092 Well, the answer is yes, 00:08:13.116 --> 00:08:15.413 and one of my favorites is Couchsurfing. 00:08:16.413 --> 00:08:18.866 If you didn't know, Couchsurfing is a website 00:08:18.890 --> 00:08:22.775 that matches people who are looking for a place to stay 00:08:22.799 --> 00:08:25.670 with a free couch, from someone who's trying to offer it. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:26.185 --> 00:08:27.728 So, great service -- 00:08:27.752 --> 00:08:29.416 what would their design goal be? 00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:32.187 What are you designing for if you work at Couchsurfing? 00:08:32.211 --> 00:08:36.735 Well, you would think it's to match guests with hosts. 00:08:37.589 --> 00:08:38.739 Right? 00:08:38.763 --> 00:08:40.018 That's a pretty good goal. 00:08:40.042 --> 00:08:42.961 But that would kind of be like our goal with messaging before, 00:08:42.985 --> 00:08:45.350 where we're just trying to deliver a message. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:45.374 --> 00:08:47.516 So what's the deeper, human goal? 00:08:48.175 --> 00:08:50.120 Well, they set their goal 00:08:50.144 --> 00:08:55.798 as the need to create lasting, positive experiences and relationships 00:08:55.822 --> 00:08:57.981 between people who've never met before. 00:08:59.343 --> 00:09:01.926 And the most amazing thing about this was in 2007, 00:09:01.950 --> 00:09:04.591 they introduced a way to measure this, 00:09:04.615 --> 00:09:06.066 which is incredible. 00:09:06.090 --> 00:09:07.397 I'll tell you how it works. 00:09:07.421 --> 00:09:08.968 For every design goal you have, 00:09:08.992 --> 00:09:11.060 you have to have a corresponding measurement 00:09:11.084 --> 00:09:12.633 to know how you're doing -- 00:09:12.657 --> 00:09:13.992 a way of measuring success. 00:09:14.016 --> 00:09:15.312 So what they do is, 00:09:15.336 --> 00:09:17.779 let's say you take two people who meet up, 00:09:20.120 --> 00:09:23.765 and they take the number of days those two people spent together, 00:09:25.010 --> 00:09:28.480 and then they estimate how many hours were in those days -- 00:09:29.136 --> 00:09:31.953 how many hours did those two people spend together? 00:09:31.977 --> 00:09:34.112 And then after they spend that time together, 00:09:34.136 --> 00:09:35.326 they ask both of them: 00:09:35.350 --> 00:09:37.308 How positive was your experience? 00:09:37.332 --> 00:09:40.381 Did you have a good experience with this person that you met? 00:09:40.952 --> 00:09:44.322 And they subtract from those positive hours 00:09:44.346 --> 00:09:47.663 the amount of time people spent on the website, 00:09:48.425 --> 00:09:51.139 because that's a cost to people's lives. 00:09:51.661 --> 00:09:53.426 Why should we value that as success? 00:09:54.066 --> 00:09:55.522 And what you were left with 00:09:55.546 --> 00:10:00.287 is something they refer to as "net orchestrated conviviality," 00:10:00.311 --> 00:10:02.993 or, really, just a net "Good Times" created. 00:10:03.017 --> 00:10:08.049 The net hours that would have never existed, had Couchsurfing not existed. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:08.799 --> 00:10:12.759 Can you imagine how inspiring it would be to come to work every day 00:10:12.783 --> 00:10:14.276 and measure your success 00:10:14.300 --> 00:10:19.329 in the actual net new contribution of hours in people's lives 00:10:19.353 --> 00:10:21.954 that are positive, that would have never existed 00:10:21.978 --> 00:10:24.788 if you didn't do what you were about to do at work today? 00:10:25.692 --> 00:10:30.672 Can you imagine a whole world that worked this way? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:31.564 --> 00:10:34.319 Can you imagine a social network that -- 00:10:34.343 --> 00:10:35.926 let's say you care about cooking, 00:10:35.950 --> 00:10:38.981 and it measured its success in terms of cooking nights organized 00:10:39.005 --> 00:10:41.970 and the cooking articles that you were glad you read, 00:10:41.994 --> 00:10:44.971 and subtracted from that the articles you weren't glad you read 00:10:44.995 --> 00:10:47.558 or the time you spent scrolling that you didn't like? 00:10:48.009 --> 00:10:51.505 Imagine a professional social network 00:10:51.529 --> 00:10:55.444 that, instead of measuring its success in terms of connections created 00:10:55.468 --> 00:10:57.057 or messages sent, 00:10:57.081 --> 00:11:01.393 instead measured its success in terms of the job offers that people got 00:11:01.417 --> 00:11:03.246 that they were excited to get. 00:11:04.281 --> 00:11:07.919 And subtracted the amount of time people spent on the website. 00:11:08.643 --> 00:11:11.678 Or imagine dating services, 00:11:11.702 --> 00:11:13.440 like maybe Tinder or something, 00:11:13.464 --> 00:11:16.942 where instead of measuring the number of swipes left and right people did, 00:11:16.966 --> 00:11:19.050 which is how they measure success today, 00:11:19.074 --> 00:11:25.219 instead measured the deep, romantic, fulfilling connections people created. 00:11:26.613 --> 00:11:28.672 Whatever that was for them, by the way. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:31.886 --> 00:11:35.114 But can you imagine a whole world that worked this way, 00:11:35.138 --> 00:11:37.390 that was helping you spend your time well? 00:11:39.009 --> 00:11:41.038 Now to do this you also need a new system, 00:11:41.062 --> 00:11:42.740 because you're probably thinking, 00:11:42.764 --> 00:11:44.319 today's Internet economy -- 00:11:44.343 --> 00:11:45.776 today's economy in general -- 00:11:45.800 --> 00:11:47.070 is measured in time spent. 00:11:47.094 --> 00:11:49.141 The more users you have, 00:11:49.165 --> 00:11:50.543 the more usage you have, 00:11:50.567 --> 00:11:51.885 the more time people spend, 00:11:51.909 --> 00:11:53.567 that's how we measure success. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:54.419 --> 00:11:56.351 But we've solved this problem before. 00:11:57.335 --> 00:11:59.901 We solved it with organic, 00:11:59.925 --> 00:12:02.859 when we said we need to value things a different way. 00:12:02.883 --> 00:12:05.819 We said this is a different kind of food. 00:12:07.067 --> 00:12:09.116 So we can't compare it just based on price; 00:12:09.140 --> 00:12:10.980 this is a different category of food. 00:12:11.004 --> 00:12:13.737 We solved it with Leed Certification, 00:12:13.761 --> 00:12:17.208 where we said this is a different kind of building 00:12:17.232 --> 00:12:21.379 that stood for different values of environmental sustainability. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:22.500 --> 00:12:26.548 What if we had something like that for technology? 00:12:27.772 --> 00:12:32.969 What if we had something whose entire purpose and goal 00:12:32.993 --> 00:12:37.266 was to help create net new positive contributions to human life? 00:12:38.971 --> 00:12:42.326 And what if we could value it a different way, 00:12:42.350 --> 00:12:43.848 so it would actually work? 00:12:44.634 --> 00:12:48.565 Imagine you gave this different premium shelf space on app stores. 00:12:48.589 --> 00:12:50.924 Imagine you had web browsers that helped route you 00:12:50.948 --> 00:12:53.422 to these kinds of design products. 00:12:55.475 --> 00:12:59.973 Can you imagine how exciting it would be to live and create that world? NOTE Paragraph 00:13:01.211 --> 00:13:03.932 We can create this world today. 00:13:04.978 --> 00:13:07.750 Company leaders, all you have to do -- 00:13:07.774 --> 00:13:10.662 only you can prioritize a new metric, 00:13:11.146 --> 00:13:15.549 which is your metric for net positive contribution to human life. 00:13:15.573 --> 00:13:17.624 And have an honest conversation about that. 00:13:17.648 --> 00:13:19.809 Maybe you're not doing so well to start with, 00:13:19.833 --> 00:13:21.524 but let's start that conversation. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:23.035 --> 00:13:28.730 Designers, you can redefine success; you can redefine design. 00:13:28.754 --> 00:13:32.687 Arguably, you have more power than many people in your organization 00:13:32.711 --> 00:13:35.634 to create the choices that all of us live by. 00:13:36.311 --> 00:13:37.712 Maybe like in medicine, 00:13:37.736 --> 00:13:39.594 where we have a Hippocratic oath 00:13:39.618 --> 00:13:43.740 to recognize the responsibility and this higher value 00:13:43.764 --> 00:13:45.331 that we have to treat patients. 00:13:45.355 --> 00:13:47.395 What if designers had something like that, 00:13:47.419 --> 00:13:49.251 in terms of this new kind of design? NOTE Paragraph 00:13:50.668 --> 00:13:52.673 And users, for all of us -- 00:13:52.697 --> 00:13:56.200 we can demand technology that works this way. 00:13:57.176 --> 00:13:58.843 Now it may seem hard, 00:13:58.867 --> 00:14:03.264 but McDonald's didn't have salads until the consumer demand was there. 00:14:04.529 --> 00:14:08.722 Walmart didn't have organic food until the consumer demand was there. 00:14:08.746 --> 00:14:13.491 We have to demand this new kind of technology. 00:14:14.194 --> 00:14:15.475 And we can do that. 00:14:16.092 --> 00:14:17.604 And doing that 00:14:17.628 --> 00:14:21.145 would amount to shifting from a world that's driven and run 00:14:21.169 --> 00:14:23.739 entirely on time spent, 00:14:25.151 --> 00:14:29.186 to world that's driven by time well spent. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:31.569 --> 00:14:33.656 I want to live in this world, 00:14:33.680 --> 00:14:35.768 and I want this conversation to happen. 00:14:36.586 --> 00:14:38.436 Let's start that conversation now. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:39.707 --> 00:14:40.858 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:40.882 --> 00:14:42.777 (Applause)