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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
[00:00:04] Dallas Campbell: Hello and welcome to Outer Orbit, one of our little bonus episodes where we continue the conversation from one of our main episodes. Giulia thanks very much for stickingaround.
[00:00:15] Giulia Bencini: My pleasure.
[00:00:16] Dallas Campbell: This is the bit of the show where I can ask like, really dumb questions.
It's really funny, I've been struggling with topic. You know, this idea of design. Because when I think of design, I think what most people think of design, we think of kind of physical objects. You design a chair and then someone can sit in a chair and maybe the chair looks nice as well and that adds to the thing.
That's what I imagine design. So when we talk about design in space. We're not talking about designing rockets or satellites. We're talking about designing something else, a kind of interface, if you like, between what space does, what it provides us, and...
[00:00:51] Giulia Bencini: how people use it.
[00:00:52] Dallas Campbell: I think for me it's kinda, it's quite difficult to imagine what that looks like because I want to visualize a chair and there isn't a chair. So what should I be thinking about? What should I, what mental image should I have in my mind?
[00:01:04] Giulia Bencini: I completely agree with you. I think it's quite tricky when we refer to service design or user-centered design. Because it's not tangible as other things. Usually when I say that I'm a designer, people either say, do you do fashion. No, actually they say fashion design or do you make interiors. Interior designer.
So those are the things that people come back to me when I say I am a designer and then I try to explain what I am actually doing.
[00:01:26] Dallas Campbell: Okay, so we're at a dinner party. Explain on the spot or actually no, we're at a children's birthday party. So let's say they're kind of five explain.
[00:01:36] Giulia Bencini: So I think what we do, it can be described as we have someone that has a problem. So first of all, we understand what their problem is and we observe it as well. It's about listening, it's about observing, it's about really understanding what they go through, and then we identify what they need to solve their problems or what we need to do to make their experience better.
So something that probably we haven't touched on, and it's quite interesting, is the experience side of things like designing experiences. We want people to have good experiences when using something. When doing something when...
[00:02:12] Dallas Campbell: Like the kind of like the interface of a piece of technology?
[00:02:15] Giulia Bencini: I think that's the crossover between service design and user experience design. User experience, which is usually connected with user interface design, is most of the times quite digital. So we're talking about apps, we're talking about websites, we're talking about digital interfaces. Whereas when we talk about service design, we go a bit wider and we can apply the experience or like shaping and designing an experience to different things like. Even just like using an object. So maybe we're not the ones that design the object, but we are the ones that understand how to design the object in the best way so that people can have the best experience that they need to have.
Or designing the experience that you have when you enter a space, for example. So service design is a bit wider and it is in that sense really connected to user research, which sometimes is a thing on its own.
[00:03:07] Dallas Campbell: Am I right in thinking then it's, I should be thinking not of a physical object, but aproblem.
Let's use your farmer analogy. So you were talking about how farmers can use data from space to better plan, to better understand their land usage, to use perhaps modeling to look into the future to see how things are going to change. Using that as an example, give us a sense of where you fit into that.
[00:03:31] Giulia Bencini: So in that sense is first of all, at the very beginning, I go to the farmer and I have a chat with the farmer and I try to understand what they're facing in terms of challenges or problems in managing their land, for example. Once I have those information and then summarize them in a way that is understandable and clear and I try to extract technology requirements, so what do we need to do from a technology point of view to solve the challenges that the farmer was talking about? And I work with my technical colleagues in doing that as well. Usually when we do interviews and user research, we always have technical colleagues observing as well. We bring people along, which I think is a power that we have as
[00:04:12] Dallas Campbell: So you do kind of market research.
[00:04:13] Giulia Bencini: We call it user research, but yeah it is market research as well sometimes and we bring back findings or insights that then inform the technology development. So we have those insights.
[00:04:25] Dallas Campbell: You'll go, oh, farmers, they really wanna know about this particular thing, and then you pass that knowledge onto the Satellite builders or the data and say, look, can you build it a bit more like that? Because that's actually what we want.
[00:04:37] Giulia Bencini: Yeah, so that then you're gonna have people that buy it and then once they develop it, we test it as well. So something else that we do is then once we have something, we take it, we go back to the farmer, we say, look, we have this thing. Can you try and use it? Maybe in front of us so that we can see how you use it, and we see if it's actually like helping you and solving your problem. And then we iterate and change whatever doesn't work to make it even a better product basically.
[00:05:01] Dallas Campbell: And what's that gonna look like? We talk, obviously talk a lot about space technology on this podcast. As space becomes increasingly more important as we become increasingly more reliant on it, as users, as the data that we get from space exponentially increases, what does the sort of future of your world look like?
So...
Can we make it more user friendly?
[00:05:22] Giulia Bencini: Yeah, exactly. I think a lot is about making sense of the amount of data that we have now and we will have more and more in the future. So translating those data into things, applications, being it a software or something else that people like farmers can use. But at the same time it's also about, I think, simulating technology development and helping our more technical colleagues, in thinking about the future and what we need to develop ahead of developing it in that sense.
[00:05:55] Dallas Campbell: Rather than just accepting a particular future, what it looks like actually being part of the shaping of the future.
[00:06:02] Giulia Bencini: A preferred, yes, precisely. So, I do like thinking about futures thinking as something that involves a proactive engagement with what we want to go towards and like, once we understand what the future might look like and what is preferred versus what is maybe more likely. We have then kind of a route that we can design to reach what we prefer to reach in a way.
[00:06:27] Dallas Campbell: Kind of making it more human. I always think that in, in the kind of wild complexity of modern life, we forget what it is to be human.
[00:06:34] Giulia Bencini: But also I think to that point, like I do think design as a fun methodology and approach to things.
There's so many parts of like the work that I do now that needs creativity. Even just when interacting with people, when organizing workshops,
[00:06:48] Dallas Campbell: Oh, tell me about the workshops.
[00:06:49] Giulia Bencini: Yeah, that's a big part...
[00:06:50] Dallas Campbell: What happens in a, what happens in a a workshop?
[00:06:52] Giulia Bencini: That's usually the part where we bring people together and we make them share things and empathize with each other and do things together.
[00:07:00] Dallas Campbell: Like what kind of things do you do?
[00:07:01] Giulia Bencini: So in one of the projects that I worked on a couple of years ago now, we brought people together from a company that was trying to develop a software that was using space data, local authorities and private companies. So it was different types of stakeholders in different markets.
We brought them together to understand the potential of that technology and understand at the same time how they might use the technology, but also like what were the really key problems that those stakeholders were feeling and to which the technology needed to be adapted to. So it was just like so nice being there and seeing everyone connecting and talking and being able to work together towards a solution.
[00:07:39] Dallas Campbell: I'm a big fan of people coming together and we've, we kind of have lost that a little bit.I'm a big fan of people coming together. I mean in a workshop do you do fun stuff that you know, when I think of sort of workshops, I always think it's good to play games and do things just to make people feel human again.
[00:07:53] Giulia Bencini: Yeah, exactly it is basically, and that's where the creativity comes in as well. We need to develop activities that will allow us to get the things that we need. But at the same time, we need things that are simple, that are fun, that are engaging, and it's never a frontal discussion like somebody presenting to an audience.
It's always like groups of people working together, using post-its using Lego,and just like doing...
[00:08:15] Dallas Campbell: Okay, gimme a, gimme the example of a creative of a game that you would play in a workshop that would open that would open up people's creativity.
[00:08:22] Giulia Bencini: Lego is quite an interesting one because people usually look at it as something that kids use and they're a bit skeptical when they see it in a workshop and then they use it and they're like mind blown
[00:08:33] Dallas Campbell: Do you get into build things? Like do you say, go build me a house or...
[00:08:36] Giulia Bencini: They're really useful to visualize things and we usually use them when creating scenarios. So we usually give a bit of a framework or some boundaries to work within, depending on like what we're working on, and then people have these literally like these pieces of Lego to create what they think the solution might be. Or maybe just even map the relationships between stakeholders that are gonna use that solution, how they interact with each other. So it's just like nice to have something physical to be able to move and use and visualize.
[00:09:05] Dallas Campbell: Well, it sounds like it's a way of making people just feel less self-conscious. Because suddenly when you are engaged in play, whether it's Lego or some kind of activity, you suddenly forget about the big stuff and you are concentrating on the rules of the game, and then you become open and you stop thinking about, oh, am I doing the right thing? And actually just letting the kind of creativity flow, which is good.
[00:09:27] Giulia Bencini: Yeah, precisely and I think as well, like you might not develop the right thing, but then you have something visual that allows you to see why is not the right thing and you stimulate discussions, like, we haven't talked about it as much in in the podcast, but visualizing is really a superpower that we have as designers.
[00:09:45] Dallas Campbell: Yes. Well, that's the thing, when we talk about designwe think visual. We think of objects, we think of clothes or interiors or whatever it might be. And so how do you encourage that visual sense that's so important in design within this rather more amorphous space?
[00:10:01] Giulia Bencini: I think for us it's probably mostly on us designers to visualize. We always get involved in very technical conversations and things that we talk about, but we don't necessarily see. And when we map those things, then people are able to have a baseline in something that we all look at and we can have a discussion on.
And for us, it means mainly like mapping things or visualizing things like processes or relationships between people or an ecosystem and how the elements within that ecosystem are connected or related to each other or even part of that ecosystem and I think that's a really, like, it's not for the sake of visualizing, but it's really like that's a tool that is not a final tool as a chair might be.
[00:10:46] Dallas Campbell: It's something that you take, you bring to people, and you let people input into it, like give feedback and you change it and you iterate and you move that way to create understanding between people and help decision making as well in that sense. D
o you enjoy it?
[00:11:01] Giulia Bencini: It's very interesting.
I feel like every time I start a new project, I become a bit of an expert in something new, which is extremely exciting.
[00:11:08] Dallas Campbell: I think all the designer designers, they're all obsessive and I understand that obsessive creative brain, you know? I get it.
Who's your favorite designer?
I'm obsessed by Charles and Ray Eames.
[00:11:18] Giulia Bencini: Maybe I'm a bit biased because I'm Italian as well, but Bruno Munari is probably one of my favorites and just the work that he's done as well with kids' books and that simple language and playful language.
[00:11:29] Dallas Campbell: Playful that's a, yeah, I'm a big fan of playful. I think playful is just like really key in all areas of life. I worry that we've become, we're sort of, we think of playful as something not valued.
Actually I think it's, I think it's of real value, and I think we can learn a lot from kind of the work that you do. Which has a little playful element as a way of getting people to be their best in whatever area it is.
[00:11:55] Giulia Bencini: And I think like that playfulness as well is brings with it, the fact that you are allowed to make mistakes.
[00:12:02] Dallas Campbell: Correct. Thank you.
[00:12:03] Giulia Bencini: And that's something that is really important. Especially like if you do them early on. That's the best way to de-risk something before it's too late. So, I do think design has that power.
[00:12:12] Dallas Campbell: Thank you very much for sticking around. It's been lovely tochat further. It's been great.
Maybe I'll come up and play with some Lego.
I'm an eighties kid, so I grew up with space lego. Part of the reason I'm here is we had space Lego. It was a thing and here I am.
To hear future episodes of In Orbit, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and head over to YouTube to watch the video versions of all of our discussions. And if you'd like to find out more about how Space is empowering your industry, visit the Catapult website or join them on social media.