Ayse Birsel, Co-founder, Birsel + Seck; Author, Design the Life You Love 

Brainstorm Design 2022 - Design Talk: Designing the (Long) Life You Love

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Brainstorm Design 2022 - Designing the (Long) Life You Love


Brainstorm Design 2022 - Design Talk: Designing the (Long) Life You Love


my talk is kind of like a bookend to john Maeda's talk yesterday. Did you listen to him and he was talking about how the things that people regret when they're dying? Well this is the other end of that where I'm going to talk about what you can or to design a long life so that you don't have regrets. So all right, are longer. Rita braver. Art is long life is short. But hold on 1/2. Art is long life is long, it's longer. You know, actually like that. And my daughter brought this home to me last year and when she burst into my room and she said, Mom, you have another 50 years to live. And I looked at her and I thought you know your math needs help. And then I realized I thought for a second and I realized it's true, I might have another 50 years to live and you know, you can trust your kids to tell you the truth as they see it. I was working on design the long life you love and I had never, I hadn't really put myself at the center of that and she did. So I'm going to do that for you now and say you're you're going to have a long life and what do you want to do with that life? Right. How are you going to use that extra time? That gift of time. So this 2030 years didn't exist before. You know if you think of your grandparents great grandparents, this is a new era were at the cusp of something big. This is as big in my mind as like the invention of moving pictures or automobiles or even space travel. And in fact these people who are now living really long, they're like long life astronauts going where no one has gone before. Right? So do you know any people like that long life astronauts? I see some heads nodding. So if you do you have these cards on the table, I'm going to ask you to note down one long life astronaut that comes to your mind in the moment, what's their name? Maybe knew a little emoji for them? And then right there qualities, What is it about them that inspires you? So this is my mom and she's my long life astronaut where she's going where few people have gone before. And my mom is, you know, she was always strong willed, but now she still has that strong will in Turkish. We say she's laughing in the face of her challenges and she uses her wit and humor and she adapts to challenges and situations. But you know, without losing or letting go of who she is. So she is my um, long life astronauts. So let's take a moment to note yours as you do that. Let me tell you a little bit more more about this exercise. Um, I developed design the life you love and wrote a book about it and this exercise that I'm sharing with you is at the heart of it. It's really about giving ordinary people and I call non designers, ordinary people with the, you know, with the biggest love for them um to teach them how to use design processes, tools to transform their lives. And these people are extraordinary. And this exercise come comes from um teaching people how to design their lives. And we used it with First Amazon to help older people 65 plus to design their life. And then with the scan foundation, we took it further where we went on the road from east to the west to the south of the United States, Urban, suburban and rural and asked 250 people to come and be a designer with us for a day. These were all people who were 65 all the way to 90 plus. And they joined us to co design their lives and you know, most aging research is very reductionist, You age and something breaks down. You know, it's either the family structure or your work structure or your financial structure or your social structure and it's very pessimistic and it's hard to design out of that um pessimism. But what we found co designing with older people, they don't see themselves as shrinking. They don't see their lives as shrinking. It's quite the opposite actually, its expansionist and they have this growth mindset and in a way they're great designers because they know how to turn challenges into opportunities just like we do and what we learned through this year long research, I can boil down to two words same difference. They basically told us if you want to understand what we want, think no further than what you want and what do we want? We all want love purpose, well being in friendship and they said so those are the things we want. It's the same but what's different is what we need to do to get to them. And so as designers, if we want to understand older people and what they need, we just need to think about what do we want and then mind the differences for insights and new ideas and solutions and these differences. I call them lessons that I've learned from older people and I wanted to share them with you today. So the first lesson of course I had to start with Love This lesson one is love is not only about loving others, it's also loving yourself. And I think this is the modern definition of love. It's accepting who you are. Self acceptance and compassion and empathy and this this is something that naturally happens as we age. But there is a lesson we can all learn earlier on, right. Um and then I interviewed Cindy gallop who's um ad exec I can hear somebody going, huh ad exec extraordinaire and he's the founder of make love not porn and she told me, I say I am the most proudly visible person of the most invisible segment of society, older women. And she told me lesson to live life on your own terms and don't give a damn what other people think. And Cindy then went on to tell me a bunch of dating advice which I've put in the book and it can make any 20 year old blush. So you have to, you have to check that out. Less than three is every breath is a new you. So this comes from Marshall Goldsmith who just wrote a book called The Earned Life and full disclosure, I am Marshall's coach. So he's designed and redesigned his life with me a couple of times and he said, you know there there is no permanent view, life is a constant restart. So every breath is a new you And a lot of the people that we designed and co designed with who were 65 and older, I mean even if they were 93, they were ready to redesign their lives. They didn't think that it's too late for them. So it is true. Every breath is a new use. So with that let's just take a deep breath will you? And when you release that, you're a new youth and then all of you here are high achievers. So I wanted to share this lesson with you. Um they told me happiness is not a function of achievement. We need to separate the two. So if you're in the game of I will be happy when you'll never win, right? So let's separate the two, but that doesn't mean that we can't Do what we love. So less than five do what makes you come alive and of all the lessons, this is the one that I want my kids to really um listen and hear and put into action and that's create time for what you love. Waste less time, share your knowledge and expertise with abundance with generosity and care less what people think again, what Cindy told me comes back And then less than six is about starting something new, even though you don't know how it will end. And my friend Michael Bengal Stayner just wrote a book about how to begin and he talks about the ambiguity of great projects and I think here you're all well well aware of that and you lean into that ambiguity of great project because there are no google maps of projects, right? And that's just the beauty of it. Because every project is a journey of discovery and that journey of discovery feeds our soul, which brings me to number lesson number seven, feeding our souls. So I have in fact have two teenagers and uh you know, living with them, I realize when we're young it's truly our body is over our minds, you know, they have hormones and mood swings and you know, growth spurts, But then as our logic start to kind of mature in our 20's And we move into like this our 30s and 50 our minds and our bodies balanced each other around And then in our 50s and 60s it's mind over body and in terms of the growth spurts when we're young it's the physical growth spurt and then we have an intellectual growth spurt and then we have a beautiful soul growth spurt and our souls grow and what grows our souls like nothing else friendship. Thank you. Um and love is found but friendships are made and if friendships are made we can have friendship factories and to have friendship factories you need warehouses of share time, shared spaces of production hubs of shared interests, trucks of reciprocal give and take all of that powered by turbines of trust. And if you're thinking and you just Spent two days in a friendship factory, you're right. I mean this fortunate conference, we've all been making friends, right? I've made many friends very fast in the space of two days. And these friendships I mean to keep so that's the nature of friendship, no matter our age, we can continue to make friends. And one of the key things in many speakers talked about Trust. The thing that feeds friendship trust is made through collaboration it and we are very good at this. It's about helping each other. That's reciprocity right? And older people are really knowledgeable about this, that's why our grandparents and uncles and aunts and mentors and teachers. They help us and they invest in us with their time and energy. And that Help actually helps them. So the lesson number nine, which is my final lesson is that helping you helps me most. Which brings me. If I were to take all of this, I would tell you, you know, the thrill is not gone. The thrill is on because first of all, I mean it's thrilling to be alive. Who doesn't want to live long, right? And these people are thrilled to be alive no matter what the challenges and then this will is on for us. All of us in this room. All our teams are companies as innovators, designers, business people. The thrill is on for us because this era didn't exist before. I mean, how lucky are we? I feel like we're people at the cusp of an incredible moment of innovation and we get to design products and businesses and services For this extra 2030 years. And so let's come back to our long life astronauts. This is my mom again, I drew her Picasso's style. Uh, if my mom who's very beautiful saw her drawing here that I was showing this drawing to. She would kill me. So don't tell her. But do tell me, I want to hear I want to have some volunteers who is your long life hero who would like to volunteer a long life astronaut. All right. Hi and Hi Girls again. Um so I actually picked two of my grandmother's um 173 and one passed away last year but made it to 98. And um when I think of kind of the characteristics, I love your statement of no, they know how to turn challenge into opportunities. So my family on my grandmother's side, we haven't had men make it past the age of 56. Yeah. And so that means they saw their husband passed, their grandchildren passed etcetera. And yet they were able to continue on through the idea of strength and they were very nurturing of everyone. Uh and also there was a lot of creativity in what they did and so they inspire me every day and I always say when people say who inspires, you I'm like my grandmother and I hope to just be like 10% of what they were even though they weren't on any magazine covers and usually they're the ones that you never hear about. But there's a reason why a lot of us are in these rooms today. Beautiful, thank you so much. Alright, one More Please. Oh great. Hi Angela Harris. Catapult design. Uh So my hero is my grandmother also um grandma Helen. So Shia she didn't sweat the small stuff. You know she really she said don't sweat the small stuff like really had this ability to prioritize and have this very easygoing air about it all like and just share that. Um She as she got older, I noticed that she became more irreverent, Her tolerance for authority. Um, grew very thin to the point where she, she at the very end even denounced her Catholicism, which nobody could believe. Um, she had an incredible sense of humor and I think it got better and better as she got older. Um, I think in the 40s, you know, kind of maybe in the 50s like sense of humor can kind of get lost And she got funnier. She got older so she died when she was 94. Um, her priorities like, so reading, I'm 5 to 7 books a week, crossword puzzle master, uh, swimming anywhere in anything cold rivers and lakes preferred a lifetime of musical ability acquired and shared from choirs to piano and, and many other instruments and really saying things that you know, were hard to hear. Like she would tell my mother like those pants don't look good on you and, and they didn't look good on her, you know, and my mom was not thrilled about that or she would come at me, you know, when I quit teaching, which she thought was the most brilliant. Um, you know, the most brilliant thing to do in the world, you know, and who knows? So yeah grandma Helen, wow, it's like we had have your grandma in the room, thank you so much Angela. Well I'm going to turn your here, I'll start with you. Um, Angela back to you and say um your grandma is continuing in you. I just met you but I can bet you don't uh sweat the small stuff and that you're easygoing your reverence, low tolerance for you know, any authority. I have to read my uh my own writing and then being able to say hard things and um saying hard things to hear. But I'm sure with a lot of kindness. So that's you. And then um let's see, continuing with grandmothers, Antoinette, uh you have the same nurturing creativity and the kind of this resilience in the face of challenges uh and hardship, but you're also creating a beautiful next generation. So that's you. And this is my way of saying, this is my way of saying that what we see in these people, long life astronauts that we admire our our own values. This is really my way of asking you what do you use values when it comes to long life And you know, our values are the foundation of our design, whether we design a life or a product or a service or a business, right? Um so I just wanted to connect you with your long life value and this is an exercise that I designed to help build empathy and bridge the gap between one person's life and another person's life. And um Antoinette I'm going to work humility into that as well as my next step. Um and I hope that you you can feel that empathy. Um When we were working with amazon we had a room full of 350 young designers and engineers in their twenties and thirties. And we did this exercise with them to help them have empathy for themselves, their future selves and their end users In the space of 10 minutes you can see it's very efficient And that prepared them to design uh for people who were 65 and older. Alright mom see you um you are the users of your life and you have a long life. Give yourself permission to design that long life. And then you also have end users for whom you can design a beautiful life. Nothing was designed for these people right? Because this time didn't exist before. So it's onto us to design a beautiful life for them and as we do it there's one thing we need to do and that is to co design with them. Co create with them, listening doesn't do it it leads to that pessimistic viewpoint you age and something breaks. But when you're designing with older people you realize life is thrilling. So um I didn't think that this was gonna be my second book but it was so compelling and I thought I'm going to write a book about long life and um it's coming out in december if you're interested. There's like a little Q. R. Code on those pages you can preorder it or gifted. Um And when I was writing this book initially I thought this is a book for older people. And then luckily I caught myself like 23 months into the writing process and I realized I said everything that you're talking about is telling you that these are lessons that we could all learn the sooner the better. And I realized this book is actually the oXo peeler of books. It's thank you for understanding what I mean. It's really um based on research into longer life and people who are older. But the results are for everyone and it's for all of us because after all we're saying different right same difference. Thank you.