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2017 HCDE graduation address by Jerrod Larson


June 9, 2017

Jerrod Larson delivering the 2017 HCDE Commencement Address

Jerrod Larson (MS 2003, PhD 2010) delivered the 2017 Commencement Address for the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering with a choose-your-own adventure style ending.

The text of Larson's 2017 address is below.

Graduates: I’m honored to be here in front of you. It’s an honor because I know firsthand what an accomplishment this is! (By the way, embrace this moment because it may be the first and only time you’re allowed to wear a robe in public.)
 
Before I get too far I’d like us to reflect for a minute on those people who supported you while you were in the program. Some of those people are here today and some are here only in spirit. 
 
Some of you had parents who supported you. Their support may have meant enabling their child to travel across the country or in some cases, across the world to be here. Your graduation is a significant life event for those parents. For them it’s the final steps of an academic journey that started when you ventured into kindergarten. It may be hard to recognize how momentous this graduation is for those parents, but trust me, it is. Others of you had a different support structure: spouses, significant others, or children who had to tolerate your weekends committed to readings of Don Norman. Their support may have meant seeing less of you than they would have liked, watching you head off to Suzzallo Library when they would rather have you stay home. In our pursuit of our diplomas it's easy to miss what gets postponed in our loved ones’ lives. 
 
On that note, forgive me as I relay a personal story: When I was in the program I remember lying on a couch in Venice, Italy reading journal articles. Now here’s the thing: this vacation was a romantic getaway with the woman who is now my wife, Jenny. (Sorry Jenny!) In retrospect I can see that part of my academic success was a result of Jenny’s remarkable tolerance and support. Many of you may have a similar story if you look deep enough. 
 
So graduation is for you graduates to be sure, but it’s also for the people who have supported you.
 
Graduates, let’s offer a round of applause and thank you to those people who supported you, wherever they are.
 
Now I’d like to embarrass you, the graduates, for a minute. (This is where I impress your families about your accomplishment and why this is such an important milestone for you.) You’re graduating with a degree from the University of Washington, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Given how competitive admission is to the University, this accomplishment alone necessarily represents the culmination of many, many years of hard work. Moreover, you’re graduating from the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering — one of the best programs of study in a rapidly growing and in-demand field. The Department is extremely selective. Let me use some data to reinforce my point. This past autumn the undergraduate program admitted 38 of 321 applications — that’s a 12% acceptance rate from a pool of already very accomplished University of Washington students. The undergrads in the audience today should feel proud of the hard work that brought them here.
 
Graduate students: now it’s time to embarrass you. The Master’s program offers admission to approximately 25% of applicants who apply each year, and the certificate program admits 30% of applicants. And this department sees graduate school applicants from some of the best universities and businesses across the country.  You earned your special orange hood. 
 
Ph.D. graduates? Well, you’re in incredibly rarified air too — fewer than 20% of applicants to the department’s Ph.D. program are offered admission. Again, the best graduate students in the country were vying for the admission you were granted. 
 
So parents, family, loved ones supporting these graduates, I know I don’t need to remind you how impressive your graduate is, but I hope I was able to provide you with the context to make you all the more proud. Let’s have a round of applause for what these graduates have accomplished.
 
But alas graduates: you’ll still spend a good chunk of your future life at parties, on dates, or at family reunions explaining what you do and what “human centered design” is. That won’t magically vanish after graduation.
 
Now, let me break the fourth wall of my speech for a moment. When preparing this speech I thought, how can I innovate beyond the typical speech, how can I make it more user-centered? Well, I decided to let you, my audience, choose what you want for the remainder of the speech: The first ever user-centered graduation speech.

 

You’ve got a choice of how I proceed. Would you like a traditional, formal speech filled with advice that might help your parents understand what you do, or would you like an unconventional, somewhat risky, more informal speech? 

 

Great choice. A classic befitting this regal occasion. I’d like to now offer you some advice based on themes you’ve doubtless heard many times in the program. Consider it a final lecture before you get your diplomas tomorrow.

Human centered design is a relatively young field.
This is not the end of your learning. For some of you this may be the end of your formal education, but the human-centered design field is growing so rapidly that you’ll remain forever in a learning mode. Embrace it. The field is being invented as it’s being practiced, and you’ll help shape it. If you find yourself in uncharted territory, you may need to invent some new method, some new deliverable. Personas, for example, seem like such obvious design tools, but they were invented in the 80s (that may seem like forever ago to some of you, but trust me, it’s not.). This field is ripe for invention.
 
But while the discipline is ready for invention, it’s also ready for mistakes. You will make mistakes, you will feel like you’re onto something when you’re not. You will make judgment calls when you should have relied on data. Have faith that we’ve all been there before.  Try new things, share your successes, and be transparent about what didn’t work.
 
Human-centered design provides a means of making sense of the world.
On that note, another bit of advice: Try not to be intimidated when you don’t know something. It’s hard, I know. I am constantly confronted with new challenges, new things I do not understand, and the worst: discovering I am not the expert in something I once thought I was. [Isn’t that the worst?] But there’s a subtle but profound benefit of your education: Human-centered design is a process for learning, not just a process for creating. Many graduates aren’t given the broad toolset to learn about the world that you have been. Conducting field observations. Interviewing. Reading research studies. Conducting experiments. These are UX tactics for sure, but they are also good ways to learn about the world beyond engineering.  Approach new situations as would a researcher, for in a way, you are and always will be. (And if something remains confusing after you research it extensively, you can always just blame bad design.)
 
Human centered design requires empathy.
I know I don’t need to remind you about the need to empathize with users--but the empathy you extend to your eventual users ought to be shared with your colleagues too. While I believe just as you do in the superiority of the human-centered approach, it is important to recognize not everyone you work with will have a similar perspective or training or belief system. You may be dropped into organizations that don’t naturally approach work in a human-centered way. Here’s a lesson I learned the hard way: The best way to affect change is to demonstrate value, not to preach. You won’t be successful preaching to people the error of their ways and the superiority of yours. Don’t joust with windmills like Don Quixote
--build partnerships. Empathizing with the goals, motivations, and interests of your coworkers: this will certainly create a richer experience for everyone.
 
Human-centered design assumes collaboration.
Now, hopefully this is not a shock, but you are also not done with interdisciplinary group projects. It may be the end of late night group work at a coffee shop or Allen Library, but not the end of group projects.  Life is, in fact, a giant series of interdisciplinary group projects. The smart faculty of this department established a curriculum to prepare you for this reality. You’ll find it familiar in many ways (yes, including that one person in a group who never seems to do his share of work). Use the collaboration skills afforded to you by the program to negotiate those projects--work, relationships, politics, whatever. Here’s the thing: Your individual projects will no longer be graded by professors (or TAs); rather, you’ll be measured by the overall impact you make on people, organizations, and the world around you. And perhaps the most significant factor in that will be your ability to collaborate.
 
Human-centered design is committed to people.
With regard to collaboration, support your community and those around you. Use your skills and training for your livelihood for sure, but also use it to help society. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the world is an imperfect place. Don’t just comment on it, try to fix it. Design it. This is a message a lot of graduates will be hearing this weekend, but again, you’ve been uniquely trained in how to approach this kind of thing. Further, you’ve had excellent professors who can serve as role models. The women and men on stage behind me have demonstrated what it means to help the world through teaching and through their scholarly pursuits. People did not grant your faculty a mandate to make a difference, they chose to. You too have a choice in what you’ll do for your world, your community.
 
Human centered design is not just a process, it’s a philosophical viewpoint that prioritizes the importance of people and is biased toward improving their lives. Embrace that philosophy.
 
And finally, let me offer a shameless plug: Support your department and its future students. The truth is people need each other, and your support has value. The human-centered design community is astonishingly small, and your individual actions can have an outsized impact on it.
 
With that, congratulations graduates on your accomplishment.  I’m honored to have you as a fellow alum, and I’m excited to see what impact you make on our discipline and our world. Do good work, and stay human-centered.
 
Thank you. 

I thought you might choose the unconventional speech. I trust the wisdom of the crowd. At the end of this we’ll see if you do too.
 
Let me give you some background before I proceed. When I was asked to give this speech I knew my role: I’m supposed to be wise and scholarly--after all, I’m dressed like Medieval clergy. So naturally I thought “I should convey some sage advice.” Here’s the thing: Everyone gives advice in a speech. How can I innovate? Then it came to me: I can provide you expressly, deliberately bad advice! Nobody ever does that in a graduation speech. I mean, certainly people do give bad advice all the time, but they don’t mean to. So this is my innovation, my gift to graduation speeches everywhere: deliberately bad advice. (I’ll bet you wish you chose differently earlier on, don’t you?) Let’s proceed!
 
Bad advice: Treat everyone as if you know more than they do.
My first piece of bad advice: It’s best to approach every colleague and work situation as if the only rational, acceptable way to do work is the way you’ve been taught.  Moreover, it’s best to marry that with a lot of preaching. After all, empathy is for end users, not those with whom you work. If a developer has a different approach or creates a user interface without customer input, publicly shame her. Similarly, if a coworker prioritizes a business objective over a user need, he is clearly unqualified for the job and could care less about people.  
 
Essentially, the best way to ingratiate yourself to colleagues and prove your mettle is to make them feel inferior.
 
Bad advice: Stop learning. Rest on your laurels.
Another piece of bad advice is based on an unavoidable, regrettable reality: Being in a constant state of learning is hard work. It’s tiring. It is not always confidence building. It really stinks to not know something, and it stinks way worse to think you know something and have someone--maybe even someone more junior than you--point out that you were wrong. What’s one way around that? Effectively avoid trying new things. Stop experimenting. Keep relying on the same kinds of research methods you learned in school, the same kinds of approaches to design. Try to ride it out to retirement. It’s only 30 or 40 years away, right? After all, trying new things is a sure way to make mistakes, and who wants that?
 
You got this.
 
Bad advice: Go it alone.
OK, now that you’re graduating, let’s admit it: Group work can be exasperating. There are a lot of different personalities and approaches to accommodate. And let’s admit it publicly: there’s always that one person on the team who never does their fair share of work (by the way, if you never had that person on your team it’s best not look into that any further--you are just fantastically lucky and there’s no possible other explanation). My bad advice? Just try to do everything by yourself. Be the hero who fills every role on a project, and anticipates every viewpoint herself. Eschew help. Be a unicorn. And if someone is working on something and they aren’t doing a great job, just grab the reins from them and do it yourself.
 
Remember, Superman didn’t do group work. You shouldn’t either.
 
Bad advice: a job that isn't always fun is a job not worth doing.
I’ve had plenty of tough jobs, plenty of tricky situations, and plenty of teams that didn’t function perfectly well. Sure, some of the hardest, most unpleasant experiences I had in the workplace caused me to be better at my work, but ultimately I like to have fun. Fun is fun. It’s right there in the word. So my bad advice is to actively seek out fun and relentlessly pursue it, even if it means slowing professional growth. If you’re not having fun, run. Run far away. You’re entitled to fun and the only way to determine if you’re in the right job is whether you’re constantly overjoyed.
 
Run to fun.
 
Bad advice: Comment on problems, but don’t try to solve them.
The world is an imperfect place. We’re awash in opportunities for improving the world. It can be pretty darn tiring. I open my Facebook newsfeed and I’m flooded by the world’s issues; I drive in Seattle and I’m wildly confused by bad signage and poor driver-centered design; I open Twitter, get confused by its user experience, and leave again.  So my here’s my bad advice: Notice issues in society, issues in products, issues at work, and loudly point them out to everyone. Then, here’s the trick: quietly walk away and let someone else try to solve those issues. After all, commenting on a problem is pretty much offering a solution, right?
 
“Fixing” problems is for people who have nothing better to do. You’ve got better things to do.  
 
Bad advice: look forward, don't reflect on mistakes.
The last piece of bad advice I have for you is this: look forward, never look back, or even worse: inward. Being reflective takes time and effort, and discovering things you want to change in your approach smells like learning and hard work to me, and you remember my bad advice around those subjects. Introspection is for philosophers.
 
With that, my bad advice is over. Let me say that this speech has been cathartic. It’s been cathartic in that I have lived that bad advice in one form or another through my HCD career. Only with the benefit of time did the previous insights become obviously ridiculous. Your own careers will be fun and frustrating and exciting and at times discouraging. You’ll have a ton of wins and a ton of losses. So my only good advice for you today is this: be comfortable making mistakes, evolving, improving, and keeping a sense of humor about who you are and where you’ve been.
 
Anyway, I hope you feel happy with your choice as to this speech’s direction. I promised you unconventional, right? (And if you want to know what the traditional speech was that you didn’t choose, we’ll post it on the HCDE website. There really is one.)
 
With all kidding and bad advice aside, in closing I want to congratulate you all on your accomplishment today. It is serious and momentous. I’m honored to have you as a fellow alum, and I’m excited to see what impact you make on our discipline and our world. Do good work, and stay human-centered.
 
Thank you.