Ep.22 Follow and know the pioneers - Sarah El Khamsa

Introduction to Sarah

0:00hello everyone uh welcome for one more episode of the world class designer podcast with me today i have sarah belkamser uh sarah has an incredible profile uh she is a associate professor at university in paris and correct me if i'm wrong do you have a phd sarah yep i have a phd and i did it

0:33on system design and semiotic at paris sorbonne university wow that's that's super cool that's super cool i don't think i'm smart enough to get a phd don't say that okay tell me like uh uh what you do now uh says like you are associate researcher on semiotic of art and design at acte at university of paris lecture in no actually i'm i'm professor at

1:09the university of tunis oh okay i see yeah okay nice uh so you're from tunis right yeah yeah i'm living and working at tunis i'm product designer researcher and also professor at the university of tunis and i'm also a design thinking coach for different startups okay and system design consultant uh what is system design system design is about systemic or system practice system

1:43thinking applied on design product design service design or system design more global product that's that's interesting i never i've never heard about that definition in particular so like uh sarah without without uh like uh waiting a lot of time uh like i'm really really curious to know because we've been preparing this this episode for some time now and i'm curious to know how you're gonna answer the questions that i'm gonna be asking during the interview uh so like

2:19we all know that this is a podcast about like uh discovering how can we like all like i'm saying me and my listeners of course how can we become old class designers so we intend to do that like asking questions to people that have kind of achieved the level that we envy or that we want to achieve but like to make the life of my interviews or people like sarah easier they just have to give advice to the younger self so she's gonna be so sarah is gonna be talking to herself but younger

Defining Design

2:52so like going straight to the questions uh sarah how would you explain design to your younger self with one year of work experience okay as a starter let me put you on the context uh as a designer who lives and who was trained in tunisia i have always had the idea that the design is a european invention also and for a reason that makes me low today i thought that all we have to do is follow the steps

3:23of these pioneers and do as they did without being aware of our heritage or our know-how and this state of mind made me feel shattered for a long time i couldn't make the link between crafted objects and what i learned at the school of fine art in tunis in fact our curriculum was about universal design as it was promoted by the classical period period so these designs were presented to us as a model to

3:57follow however they are not effective for a designer as me coming from the south from africa and from tunisia once on the job market and during the year following my graduation so one year after my graduation i realized that what seemed to me a marginal and academic problem was in fact a national issue which many practitioners were looking for answers so over the years a political engagement in design

4:30emerged in me and out of this tier to address these questions i specialized in critical thinking and postcolonial studies as of today my entire career revolves around these topics so looking back after one year of work i would like to tell my younger self to have confidence in her intuitions and that not funding an answer means that the place is to be built this has been the case for tunisia design in tunisia and

5:05for more generally in north africa so i advise my younger self to join the movement whose slogan is african design matters launched by simon chairway and i'm following him or perhaps to come back to its origin the black painters so design is above all a way of thinking about life and especially a tool to integrate this life

5:34this is what i will advise myself wow this is a super well elaborated answer yeah i believe your young

Design Process

5:43self will be thrilled to know that so and what about your design process you said your assistant designer uh so how would you explain your design process to your younger self okay my design process is very exploratory and iterative process as many designers do it can be represented by antonio macado's poem travel traveler traveler traveler there is no path the path is made by walking so until today my design

6:16process is therefore for me a journey a journey into a new community of users and into a new cultural and technical universe so from the start and like any journey i prepared my departure by learning a lot about the final destination you know then once on site i adopted the position of an ethnographer i listen i observe the habits i secularize the immersion in order to give a big place to the collective intelligence

6:51which according to me has always taken precedent over the idea that the designer is a genius inventor so i consider myself as a mediator as a facilitator as finally a translator of this collective intelligence so i always have in mind that i should work on the semantics of things context and situation and i just that i discover the meaning has a certain cultural anchor that allows me to grasp the idea and

7:25habits of people on a deep way so then and to keep memory of this journey i have adopted for a long time the tradition of notebook where i record my data thought and exploration while drawing the project i'm working on during this process i put visualization representation at the service of prototyping and finally in order to reach all human dimension of my experience of my design experience i leave a lot of room

7:59for imitation what i mean by mimicry or imitation is immersing myself into an environment and by adopting the habits and language of my users and secondly to erase my cultural bias in order to respect theirs this is my journey or this is my design process wow and again super elaborated i think most of your answers are going to be like that like that makes me think a lot because yeah uh yeah we're talking to a phd here

8:36i'm sorry if it's complex but i try to to explain as as uh detailed as possible but yeah i don't think they're complex they are just super thoughtful answers you know yeah but they're really nice so like tell me sarah which mistakes would you tell your younger self to make okay for sure the mistakes i would recommend to myself are certainly to fail as soon as possible and as many times as possible we have an

9:10unhealthy relationship with failure and it's a social construct it is very important to make and to require a safe space for ourselves as designer and also as human to have the right to fail this is the only place where we can learn i will also advise myself to spread out and to get lost a little bit in several areas of design and moreover of ethnography and anthropology this is also how we learn about ourselves

9:43so this is it okay like that i think about uh like uh advising people to fail is really really important yeah because yeah because yeah we do learn more from our failures than from our success yeah so like uh uh i totally agree with this with this one and strongly suggest people to make mistakes as soon as

Advice to Younger Self

10:05possible uh sarah tell me what would you recommend your younger self to focus on okay for my younger self i would recommend two things in in its various stages design gives rise to very particular challenges we are all okay with that statement that are very much related to the context each design project requires a lot of awareness

10:37so i recommend to myself to stay focused on the context first secondly i consider design to be a creative way of thinking and solving problems so i believe it is important to integrate it as a tool of thinking or a tool of cognition according to lef wikotsky not as a simple artistic discipline in in between 2017 and 2090 i had the opportunity to work on a project called school of designers

11:11this project i wrote it and it was funded by european union the idea of this project is to introduce the very young children from nine and to 12 years old the methodology of design the results of this project were very eloquent to me because the results as to to the scope of this methodology and its impact on the construction of minds personality oriented toward problem solving and on the importance of collective intelligence and

11:46collaborative work to achieve solution thus i would advise my younger self to focus on the idea that design design is a cognitive artifact which has a great power of action and consequently to concentrate on its agency as a concept of design this is my two advice to my younger self to focus on okay yeah and as always super thoughtful answers like like your answers even have codes it's a proper phd concert

12:25uh so so like in terms of of of of of of of things to learn to get extra skills that you think kind of give you an extra edge or advantage what will those be what will you tell your your your mini me yeah uh uh uh to do to get extra skills to get extra skills i think

12:56what what i mean by extra skills is to stay curious never tell myself that this or that thing is finished to become multilingual because i can learn from others and the third one is to always be careful to not stay in my comfort zone and finally i would tell myself to always be a good listener and learn to be empathic because this is what being a designer is all about okay this is my four point my fourth extra skills

13:35and what about books which yeah so as a phd i have a long list of proposals about books but i will make it short okay what i would advise myself to read is certainly books on pragmatic philosophy by john deway charles sanders first and william james because i think all the current thoughts that build the design paradigm today come from these fundamental books and to me it seems

14:13necessary today to understand the position of design from a philosophical point of view before adhering to it as a practice in this way we know what we are committing our ourselves to what kind of lenses we are putting on to look at the world uh so i would also advise myself to read in depth the fundamental texts of a cognitive researcher donald norman design interaction and this is it it was not long

14:50okay so like which one uh design interaction okay okay published in cambridge 1991 okay yeah like i'm currently reading one of uh design of everything days uh it's it's uh for um the author is the same it's donald norman no Yeah, it's Dorman and Roma, yeah. And I should have read in the past, I think six years ago,

15:21and I don't think I understood most of the things then because it was like too early for me. I was like, huh? What are these guys talking about? Affordance. What is this? Affordance. Who cares about affordance? It's the most important concept of our work. Affordance. Making things affordant. Yeah, but the thing is like when you're new to design, you don't care about those things. You just want to make beautiful things.

15:48Yeah, but like now the book makes a lot more sense. I'm learning a lot about, yeah, like I'm revising very important concepts that I think might eventually get lost over time if you don't go back and make sure that you're still polished and you still have like, you know, the basics. So yeah, I also truly recommend this book of Dornodrom. Excellent. Yeah. In terms of people to follow, Sarah,

16:19which people would use Jesse and yourself to follow? Okay. Following celebrities. I have a particular thought about that. Following celebrities is a practice that is widely answered by platforms like TEDx, Medium, and YouTube. I'm always following this platform. This practice aims to spread positive energy by following inspiring, creative, and somewhat extraordinary peoples and personalities like you,

16:51Gaidon. As I said before, in my youth, the internet was not widespread as it is today, and we did not have access to as much information. Also, the only personalities could only be accessed through books, printed material, or in person. So it seems funny today to advise me, my younger self, which personalities to follow in a time before social network and internet.

17:26No, I see. Yeah, but I would play the game. I would follow personalities that aspire to better humanity while respecting the area of my youth. So the personalities will be proposed that were salient and important between 1980 and 2000. In the field of design, I will advise myself to follow the designer Marcel Vendors,

17:57steaming from the famous collective drug design, because it sensitized for me the idea that the design is above all a practice of laboratory. The second designer that I will follow is Ettore Sotzes, because his object or design with a human focus gave the birth to what we call today human-centered design. The third one is Karim Rashid, because he's, for me, the birth of the holistic approach to design

18:30and eclectism that I like a lot. And the final one is Shiro Kuramata. He's a Japanese designer who has dealt with the question of the relationship between tradition and design in Japan. And by the way, I totally agree with his statement that says, it's not merely a matter of recovering a traditional Japanese style radar. It is the manifestation of a new Japan,

19:01one which has finally broken away self-confidently from a perfectionist imitation of Western culture. That's all. Okay. Wow. It's a very eclectic list. Yeah. From Italia, from Japan, from France. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tell me, like, still, which tools would you suggest to your younger selves to learn,

19:32to become expert in, because you think it's going to give yourself an incredible advantage now?

Future Plans and Recommendations

19:38Yeah. So, in my entire career, I see that the tools I needed the most is really drawing, drawing and sketching. So, I will advise and suggest to my younger self to learn drawing, because that's where our thinking is materialized and shaped. I believe that drawing is one of the fastest

20:09and most efficient tools in meeting with clients. So, I would advise myself to really master all techniques of sketching. Okay. Then, yeah, in digital environment, I would suggest to myself to use sketchbook and perhaps concept. that it is an application very helpful to define an idea in very primary stage of a project.

20:40This is one. Okay. Yeah. Nice. And what you wouldn't tell your younger self? As you supposed, I would never tell myself to give up. Okay. Yeah. Or you won't find your place or something like that, because everyone can bring their stone to the edifice. Only the passion that one has for this profession counts. I think this is the most important statement.

21:10Okay. And how much of your current professional success will you attribute to luck and how much will be hard work? Well, it's really tricky to understand how much luck and hard work play in part in what we consider a successful career. But in my case, hard work has always paid off. No other maxim should be recommended or remembered by a young designer.

21:43This hard work led to opportunities that we call luck. So, in the end, it's all about continuous effort in a chosen field with a lot of passion. So, there is no luck in my eyes. Okay.

22:01Nice. And, like, yeah. So, you think that, you think hard work alone pays off? Yeah. Always pays off. Okay. Nice. So, I'd like to close, Sarah. Do you have any, like, questions for me? Yeah. What's the next step after World Class Designer? Other African projects or perhaps a book with the community? Yeah. Yeah. Like,

22:32I'm learning to, like, the idea of the podcast is to take the, like, timeless knowledge that I'm going to be collecting and make it, them into a book. The Makings of a World Class Designer. Yeah. And make it available for them, for people.

22:50Yeah. And we're going to be opening the school soon, hopefully, that we manage to raise money from the conference. Excellent. Yeah. Like, and we might create, like, services, like, for people who want to hire, like, world-class designers, not for Africa alone, but, like, for overall, like, for the rest of the world. So what we're trying to do is to get, like, very experienced people across the world to work in projects and to dedicate at least 30% of their time

23:22in an African-based project, like, for free. So imagine if you have a startup in Tunisia and, no, in Mozambique, and they want experts like you, then we would never be able to afford, like, a PhD designer. But if you work for the world-class designer project, like, you will have your clients work and 30% of your time you will have to dedicate, like, to have a startup in Africa. So this way we'll be distributing, like, a very qualified knowledge

23:52in Africa. So basically, it's taking, it's taking the rest of the world to Africa in terms of capital knowledge. Amazing. It fits with my thoughts and with my beliefs. I believe in Africa, you know it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Can I do some thanks for this interview? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I would like to thank my cousin, Amina Sweden, who helps me to translate my ideas in very effective manners.

24:23And I would like, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to bring my voice to this audience. And I hope for a long life to this collaborative project named World Class Designer. Thank you. Nice, nice. So tell me, Sarah, where can people find you online?

24:42I'm on all platforms. I'm on LinkedIn, essentially, and on Twitter, on Facebook, on Slack, on different platforms dedicated to designers as Dribbble and Behance. Well, fantastic. Fantastic. for you all, my dear listeners, I hope you enjoyed this interview with Sarah, the PhD designer that we have. I think you are the first PhD designer

25:12that we have in the podcast. Oh, excellent. I hope you enjoyed it. I opened the door for other PhD. Definitely. So, hope all the listeners enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I think it's a lot of, a lot of, like, very thoughtful answers that we can definitely, we younger designers can definitely use in our work. So, to make ourselves better designers. So, Sarah, see you next time.

25:43And, see you next time. Thanks for having me in this podcast. Thank you. Okay, fantastic. Bye.