If your life is your biggest project, why not design it? | Ayse Birsel | TEDxCannes

Ayse Birsel believes that if you have the desire to explore your life from a new point of view, think about it proactively, and change it creatively, there is a way to design the life you love.

Birsel is the co-founder of Birsel + Seck, an award-winning, New York design studio working with Fortune 500 companies to bring simplicity, systems-thinking and humanism to the complex problems of life, work, experiences, products and business. The author of Design the Life You Love, a book inspired by her coursework applying the design process and tools to your life, Birsel was recently identified by Fast Company as one of the world’s Most Creative People in 2017 and is on the Thinkers50 Radar List of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of organizations.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

What do you think is our biggest project?

Our life!

Our life is our biggest project.

Life is just like a design project.

It's full of constraints: money,
age, location, circumstances…

If you want more,

you need to make what you want
and what you need coexist.

But they oppose each other.

Look: I want to be on vacation,
but I need to work.

Now if I can find a gig to work
while I'm on vacation,

which is kind of what I'm doing
right now in Cannes,

that is making what you want
and what you need coexist,

that's creating value, that's creativity,
that's designing your life.

But if you have a perfect life,

don't design it.

In fact, you could leave now.

Anybody want to leave?

Because I'm going to show you
how to design your life.

See, I had a perfect life:

in 2001, Renault, the French
automobile manufacturer,

asked me to design a concept interior.

I knew very little about cars

so I asked them for a mentor
from their side and they said:

"We'll send you Bibi Seck
and you're going to love him."

Apparently they told Bibi the same thing:

"You're going to love her".

So can you guess what happened?

You can, right, we fell in love.

(Laughter)

I mean we did as we were told.

So things started happening really fast.

Bibi moved from Paris
to New York with his son,

we started our company,
Birsel + Seck together,

we had two daughters…

We were parenting full-time,
working like crazy,

my life was designing itself.

And I was really happy.

Then the economy crashed in 2008.

And I was really sad
because I hadn't seen this coming.

Suddenly it felt like overnight,
our clients took their work in-house.

And I felt very responsible
because I had uprooted Bibi

from a great life in Paris,

and now we had a family to take care of.

And I thought: "I should
have become a lawyer!"

Because I come from a family of lawyers,

but all I wanted to do
was to design products,

and it started with a teacup.

A family friend came to tea
and told me about industrial design

and he said: "You see how the edges
are curved? It fits our lips better.

And the handle is there so that
we can hold hot liquid in our hands

without burning ourselves;

and the saucer is there
so that if you spill your tea,

you won't ruin your mother's
beautiful tablecloth."

And at that moment, I fell in love
with the human scale of industrial design.

And I've been designing
products ever since,

from office systems
to potato peelers to toilets.

I mean I was known as the queen
of toilets, that was a compliment!

And I just wanted to continue to design,

except we needed clients.

And I had all this time in my hands
and I felt very frustrated.

It made me anxious not to work.

It was Leia Kaplan, one of my dearest
friends and collaborators,

who saw the opportunity
in the constraint and she said:

"You know, Ayse, you have
all this time in your hands,

but why don't you use this time
to think about how you think?

Because you think differently."

I think differently
because I think like a designer.

We think that no matter
how hard the problem,

we're going to come up
with a better solution.

We put ourselves in other people's shoes.

We see the big picture, the emotion,
the physical, the intellect,

the spirit of things.

We like to work together
and ask what-if questions.

What-if questions,
all about having an open mind.

So I asked myself,

"What if I can create without products?

What if I can design my life,

applying design process
and tools to my life?"

And from that,

Design the Life You Love was born.

And I became my first student
out of necessity.

My life was made up of Bibi,

our three kids, our work together
and our life in New York.

But the irony is the economic crisis
had already deconstructed my life,

had taken it apart,

and it's kind of like
having this compact black camera:

when you open it up,

you realize there are
hundreds of pieces in it.

Now, can you put this camera
back together again?

Thank you. No, not really.

And that's the beauty of deconstruction,

that when you deconstruct something,

you break the links
that hold them together

and now you're free to think about

which parts to keep,
which parts to change,

and which parts to get rid of.

This brings us to our
second step: point of view,

seeing the same parts differently.

How do you go from what you know
and what you're used to,

something that's different in you?

The only way I know how to do it
is to do it playfully.

Because when we're playing,
we're like kids,

we're not afraid of making mistakes,

there is no right or wrong
when you're playing.

You just try things and you create
and you learn by doing.

So I decided, playfully like a kid,
that I needed superpowers.

I looked to my heroes for inspiration.

Our heroes are people
we know, like my mom,

or people we know of,
like Michelle Obama.

But they have something,
they have something that interests us,

that we notice, that we admire,
that maybe we want to emulate.

And so I thought of my hero,
Rowena Reed Kostellow.

I met her when I went to Pratt Institute
to do my master's and I was 20 years old,

she was 80 years old
and we became friends.

And she taught me how to design
in three-dimensional space.

She had a unique methodology to teach it.

She also taught me
how to live in New York,

how to shop for food at Dean & Deluca,

the beauty of living in a loft,

she also suggested that I should get
a personal shopper.

That's probably the only advice
I didn't listen to.

But Rowena reminded me of my values.

Our heroes connect us with our values.

And our values are things
like constant evolution

and having your own voice.

Longevity, generosity,

curiosity, fearlessly pursuing your dreams

and being the best at what you love.

Our values are the foundation of our life,

which brings us to our third step:

reconstruction,

which is the other side of deconstruction,
putting it back together again,

based on our values,
on things that matter to us.

So I put my life back together
again as a tree.

My foundation, my roots were in Turkey,
that's where I grew up.

And then my trunk, where I became visible,

that's New York, that's where I had
my products, my process,

and it made me realize
that my future is the world,

that if I'm a tree I should bear fruit
and I should have seeds,

and suddenly this idea
of teaching other people

to think about their life with creativity,
with a creative process,

started to make sense to me.

Which brings us to thinking differently.

What I was doing was thinking differently
about the same things

and realizing for the first time
that design can transform lives,

even without the intermediary of products,

and that this is for everyone,

we can all be designers of our life.

Expression, our fourth step,
is giving form to our idea.

If I'm designing a chair, I'll sketch it,

I'll make a model, I'll write about it,
I'll visualize it to make it happen.

Same thing with our lives: if we can
visualize the life we want to live,

we can make it happen.

And Stef Stefan from Amsterdam
expresses her life as the big bird;

she stands tall,
she's gentle, she's strong,

and this director of leadership
development sees himself

as the Zen master of his garden,
working around stones, hard stones,

that he cannot move.

And this young father
who's a strategist in New York

is the center of his life tree,

with projects dotting every ring
from here to 2050

on a life based on his values.

And my graduate student
at SVA, he's Tintin.

He is pioneering, loyal
and steadfast and brave.

And I,

I am Katy Perry
of Design the Life You Love.

Why Katy Perry?

You have to remember I have two girls.

When they were younger, we watched
Katy Perry's documentary together.

And I fell in love with how Katy Perry
connects with young people

and their parents through
the beauty of her music and I thought,

"That's what I want to do,
I want to connect with young people

who have their whole life
in front of them

and show them you can design your life."

And I want to connect
with their parents, with you,

and show you you can redesign your life.

And here we are, I'm on tour,
at Palais des Congrès,

with an amazing audience, you.

This is my Katy Perry moment.

(Applause)

Thank you!

Now more than ever before, we need
to think about our life differently.

I grew up in Turkey
and Bibi grew up in Senegal.

We grew up in very different places,

but our parents gave us
a very similar roadmap.

They said: "Go to school, work hard,
find a job, get married, have children."

That was the definition of a good life.

But today, I don't have that roadmap
to give to my children.

Things are changing so fast
and so dramatically,

our kids live in a different world.

There are no road maps
and that's an incredible challenge.

But every challenge is an opportunity
when you think creatively.

There are no roadmaps,
so create your own roadmap.

Imagine your life with creativity,
playfully, with optimism.

I cannot give my children a roadmap,

but I can share with them
how to apply a creative process

to their lives to approach problems

with creativity and courage.

And I can share that with you as well.

So I have found my voice.

Design your life, design an original life,
a life that looks like you,

that feels like you,
that even smells like you,

an original life that is coherent
with your values.

Design your life and then go live it.

Thank you.

(Applause)