<aside> š Daniel Le Compte is a UX Researcher at Anthro-Tech and a MHCI graduate from CMU. Heās an advocate for design-for-good, and using his skills for the benefit of users. When heās not working, you can find him enjoying live music and art installations around Seattle!
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Iām currently a User Experience Researcher at a company called Anthro-Tech. I have a background in Psychology and Social Cognition, and I wanted to pursue professorship, which didnāt work out, but my mentor at the time who was in the same line of work mentioned that UX was really interesting. I did University of Washingtonās HCDE certificate program, took a couple classes there, and kind of fell in love with it. During that period, I learned a lot about using our skills and research, hopefully, to improve peopleās lives. I carried that mentality to CMU for my masterās; I tried to look for ways I could explore that. I was a part of the NASA capstone, which was really cool, but thatās totally opposite from the design for good idea. After CMU, I followed up on my connection, and I went to Anthro-Tech as a UX research associate, and now Iām doing a whole bunch of fun stuff.
In short, we are a human-centered design consultancy. Rather than doing in-house research for our own products, we work with other clients to solve their problems. Mostly, we work with government agencies; city, county, state, even federal level. A lot of it is redesigning websites to make things more usable and understandable, and helping them adapt to technology changes. I take part in the research aspect, and a lot of it is iterative, taking what they have now and mapping out a path forward. Each project is different, and I get to be involved in all parts of that research.
<aside> š Read more about Anthro-Tech here!
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The most recent project was from the Department of Corrections. Obviously it sucks to incarcerate people, but people do get incarcerated because thatās how our society is set up. There are family members of those incarcerated people who still want to see their loved ones, and be in contact with them. The service that we were working on was ensuring that they can still contact their loved ones despite those circumstances. The project itself is very small, and it was essentially getting a baseline of how the website was being received. The very central part of that was speaking to users. At the base level it was easy; we could throw out a survey and look at analytics, do a usability study and such. But it has been the most impactful project because youāre taking this very standard toolkit of things that you do as a researcher and applying it into a very, very specific context. How could I frame, for example, a task in a usability study to be the most representative in what they would be doing on their own, and for me then to get the most accurate data to inform us to about what the problems are and where improvements can be made, and most importantly whether those improvements will actually benefit their lives.
Definitely. What we end up doing a lot as researchers is taking what weāve heard and reporting it back. Thereās an interesting debate in user research world right now about how much of a āpoint of viewā can you place on what youāre reporting back. Sometimes, depending on the client, you may need to put a thick layer of point-of-view and provide an interpretation of what users meant, and what that means to the client. Unfortunately not every client will want to listen to users, but they may want to listen to the expert that they hired. Itās an interesting thing as a consultant. Itās important to advocate for those who are in vulnerable positions in some way, but not to do it dishonestly. Thatās why itās so much of a debate; which way do you lean, how do you figure out how to emphasize what they said, itās definitely hard to do.
I typically say that design for good refers to using our skills, training, practice for the betterment of society. In in-house companies, youāll hear about specific metrics on return on investments, or KPIās, or conversion rates. All those are great, they help us get to a better standing of what is āusableā as a product or service or website, but often it is in service of what the company wants. Ideally, design for good is, in its truest sense, user-centered. Weāre focused on what users want and need; they want to be happy, live a better life, do things more efficiently, get more enjoyment out of something. Users donāt care if theyāre getting the conversion rate of their favorite website, they care about getting the benefits they need. Design for good is a re-framing of what the core focus of our work is, and it gives me fulfillment in life, in a lot of senses.
Design for good was a big topic in my cohort; we happened to be deep in the pandemic when our cohort started, and during that time there was a lot of really interesting and powerful changes around the world in terms of social inequity, racial injustice, and economic disparity. Something that I had to grapple with was that I really wanted to address those issues which are so much bigger than myself. There are companies and agencies that do that, and itās fantastic to hear about their work. George Aye from the Greater Good Studio in Chicago came to talk to us, and this studio tackles that kind of stuff. A reality that I had to think about was that not every line of work has to be in service of these big ambiguous problems to be design for good. We can still find those fights for good in other places. Itās important to remember that you can be in these big companies and still be designing for good in an everyday setting. You can stick up for participants in a study, for example, even if you are developing something for Amazon or Microsoft. Anthro-Tech fits somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. We arenāt working on the biggest problems you can possibly think of, but the projects we take on are still very much involved with improving peopleās lives.
<aside> š Interested in learning more about George Aye? Check out this lecture he gave at CMU this September!
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I wouldnāt say thereās a specific moment in time where I thought I should focus on this, but more so cynicism. Reading the news everyday and thinking about these big things, and realizing thereās moral decisions I could make within UX. Do I want to work on the app monetization team? Ads, advertisements? Or do I want to work on a quality of life team? Just over time, Iāve had different thoughts and discussions with people about this, and a few points in time here and there I realized it was possible for me to make my salary while still doing good. I always heard the notion that if you work for non-profit, you wonāt be able to make a living. I also thought that you could only work at non-profits if you wanted to make things better for people. The reality is that you can still fulfill those things without defaulting to non-profits. Itās a very strange thing to look back on. It was difficult too because a lot of UX or HCI programs push a certain model of success, where you eventually get to FANG. Realizing that I didnāt need to get to that āgoalā was a big thing for me.
To anyone whoās interested in design for good, Iād recommend really thinking about where they picture themselves in a couple years. It helps you understand where you should look for resources and connections. In general, though, the Greater Good Studio has a database that contains companies who do design for good. Thereās also a Google Group called Design Gigs for Good, where people will constantly post job listings. Otherwise, it really comes down to connections. Follow people who do work in spaces youāre interested in. If you follow someone really involved in the design for good world like George Aye on LinkedIn and Twitter, youāll start seeing recurring names and people who work at similar institutions and agencies. Thatās how I found Anthro-Tech. They say networking is overrated, but it works.