(soft upbeat music)
-: There's an interesting kinda loaded word in that question,
real people.
(Aporva laughing)
And I don't know
that there's unreal people and real people.
I think it's just people.
It's a really dangerous thing if you're doing a new project,
that you think, "I know the answer to this."
And there's nothing worse than that
if you're trying to work at scale
with hundreds of millions of people,
'cause you'll get smacked in the face real quick
if you just presume that you're correct.
-: The preconception thing, the baggage is,
I've done this before, right?
-: I've done this before.
-: You know, I've done this sort of work before,
therefore I know what the answer is,
and therefore I know who the audience is.
It's different every time.
And there's an opportunity for you to be different.
You know, you've lived something different,
you learned something different.
That's what it's about.
-: There's so many factors
that have to be understood properly
for us to then put a strategy in place
to solve that problem through design.
And that's how immersion ensures that we do that properly.
-: Not hiding behind your laptop or computer
and actually going out there.
-: And talk to the people that you're actually designing for.
We went on some immersion trips at the end of last year
and went kind of all around the UK
and just went into stores,
went into kind of like town squares all around the place,
and just chatted to people who live in England
and live in Britain.
And as a New Zealander, I loved that.
Never been to Birmingham before.
Loved Birmingham.
(designer in denim shirt laughing)
-: That's why we do the research trips
and, like, get all these insights,
do all these interviews with CEOs
of, like, massive companies
that would take the time out their day
just to tell us about their brand, their audience,
and all of that is just fuel and information we need really.
-: You have to listen.
There is no other way to do it but listen,
and that comes with research,
that comes with doing stakeholder interviews
or listening sessions.
It comes with focus groups.
If you're able to kind of get real people in a room and say,
"What does this make you feel like?
How do you interact
with this particular product or a brand?"
The instances in which they use that thing.
-: Instead of seeing yourself as the designer
and then them as a separate entity,
think of everyone as the designing party.
We're all in this together.
-: Go Time was a really interesting one,
'cause it was about digging deeper
and finding out as much as we possibly could.
and really closely with their team too.
We have this product
that's trying to serve an underserved community.
They're working with us, a London-based design agency
none of whom are Filipino
or know what it's like to live in the Philippines.
Can we really design
for this group of people who we don't know?
And there's like a limit to what you can do helpfully
or like positively before you ask questions
and you go to someone who does know.
-: You also have to keep your own spirit
in the work, for example.
It's, like, super empathetic
to what the audience is and their need,
but there's definitely, like,
a sprinkle of all of us in there.
And I think once you lose
the full identity of yourself,
then I think you're in trouble.
But I think you need to find the right balance
of empathy and your own self-expression.
-: Obviously you always bring your own self
into a piece of design,
but if you don't account for your own biases
and the things that you like
and you are not thinking
about the people you're creating for,
you're creating for yourself in a echo chamber.
You're not creating for them.
-: Si and AB tend to say, like,
we're not designing for designers,
we're designing for people.
-: We all have to have, like,
a good level of, like, empathy
to, like, put ourselves in those shoes,
live as that person,
almost like method acting but for, like, your audience
-: You have to kind of, like, put different hats on
so you can just jump into another culture
or another kind of point of view
and immerse yourself in that world
as much as is possible.
-: We try to build a team
that is as eclectic and representative as possible.
There's not even 50 of us,
but there are a number of perspectives, opinions,
points of view, stories, life journeys,
and everything that can help give you those perspectives.
-: And I love that.
I love what that brings.
And maybe it's a little tiny little microcosm
of the world in our studio.
-: It's quite easy to be in the design bubble
or the East London bubble a little bit.
And I think the first thing that you've mentioned,
diverse outlooks, me coming from Poland,
bringing slightly different perspective,
helping to maybe explain certain things
about Polish football when we create brands for Ekstraklasa.
-: The Everton project was an interesting one,
'cause it was done in the peak of lockdown.
And as we all know, and as we always want to do,
we want to go to places.
And even just going up to Liverpool,
we couldn't do it 'cause it wasn't allowed.
And we don't wanna break the rules, unlike some people.
(Eva laughing)
(laughing) How do we get ourselves in the frame of mind
of somebody who's a Toffee, who's an Everton fan.
We basically immersed ourselves
in the the only way that we kind of knew possible,
which was literally living like an Evertonian
and watching every game religiously.
Like I'm a Villa fan,
and I was watching Everton games
probably more than I was watching Villa Games,
which would pain my dad if he heard me say that.
(Tobi and Eva laughing)
We were like following
all the sort of like different places you could on social.
We're watching every single little bit of news outlet.
We were looking at the YouTube channels
of all the different fans who make films
talking about the different games that are happening.
So it was like absorbing ourselves in a digital way
is all we could do,
but by doing that,
it meant that we could really understand who the fans were.
-: It's really based on understanding
what people want from a football team and want from a club
and want from associating themselves to that.
And I think the execution of that piece of work
was absolutely incredible.
So yeah, just, just to shout you out.
-: Thank you.
(Tobi and Matt laughing)
Again, it was a whole team
worked on that one. -: Yeah.
-: Because we work in a studio environment
in front of screens,
you can start to become very detached,
not only from the client who are also on screens,
but from who you're doing it for.
Audiences become charts and graphs and stats.
So the immersion is to help us create our own relatability.
-: What you're looking for is commonalities
and similar behaviors or attitudes
or things people care about.
That's what defines particular audience groups
that you're working with.
Looking for those threads and overlaps
and ideas that people care about
will help you understand how large groups of people work.
Moving people from being an abstract concept
to a real concept I think is really what it's about.