Episode 33
· 01:26:22
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[00:00:14] Brad Frost: I guess the big call to action here is the Design Wellbeing Index at designwellbeingindex.com, right? Go and give 15 minutes of your time to talk about how you're feeling navigating this moment
[00:00:30] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[00:00:31] Brad Frost: Hell yeah.
[00:00:32] Ioana Teleanu: Share it with your teams,
[00:00:33] Brad Frost: Yes.
[00:00:34] Ioana Teleanu: Design friends, share it with communities you're in.
[00:00:37] Brad Frost: Hey, Ioana
[00:00:39] Ioana Teleanu: Hi.
[00:00:40] Brad Frost: it's great to have you here.
[00:00:41] Brad Frost: , Let's just jump right in. , What has you waking up excited these days?
[00:00:46] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. Well, a lot of things really. I think all the excitement I'm experiencing in this stage of tech, design, and life is very mixed feeling-y. , I mean, all the excitement kinda comes with this, it okay to be excited about this? Is it okay to be excited about AI if it's also kinda bad? ... I think we will be talking more in depth about, but I'm gonna put it right here to begin with. I'm currently running a study which is called, the Design Wellbeing Index, and it's essentially, as deep as we can research, as we can create research to map how people are feeling and experiencing these, times. and I'm very excited about it, although my earlier point, it also comes with this feeling of I'm seeing a, lot of things already surfacing, , the idea to create a Design Wellbeing Index came from these anecdotes of , people not necessarily doing great. So I'm excited about this project, and it kind of make me sad as well, and this is my life now.
[00:01:51] Ioana Teleanu: I mean, there's a lot of excitement, but a lot of kind of like doubt alongside it in everything I feel.
[00:01:59] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah. , I think that you're, hitting the moment r-right on the head because it, is this very complicated world where there is a lot to be excited about, a lot to dig into, for sure. But then you also can't just fully live in that place. But you also solely can't live on the other end of the spectrum either.
[00:02:22] Brad Frost: - We're all in this messy middle, figuring it out together. But I love how you're excited about putting a project together to help better understand this and to ultimately, I'm sure, help guide people through this moment that kind of guidance is desperately needed right now, which I think we both share from our respective, spots , in , the world and in this industry.
[00:02:46] Brad Frost: So, , I'm really excited , to dig into this project. -- If you could just maybe start at -- how this came to be?
[00:02:55] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah, sure. So to, talk about, let's say birth of this project or its inception, I have to go even further back in past and talk about my origin story in the industry. I've been a product designer for 10 years, and somewhere along the journey, I started creating content about design.
[00:03:15] Ioana Teleanu: ... I think you were there earlier than I was, but I mean, in the industry for sure, but I think in the content space as well. but when I started, I think , I began this Instagram page called UX Goodies in 2018, by sharing all these stories constantly and my insights on whatever content I was creating, I kind of built a community around me, I've been spending a lot of time in this community with different kinds of projects.
[00:03:41] Ioana Teleanu: I always had a full-time job for most of these years, but I was very much passionate and involved in the community stuff more than I was in my day job which
[00:03:52] Brad Frost: yeah,
[00:03:52] Brad Frost: yeah
[00:03:53] Ioana Teleanu: it made me a bad designer, but it definitely
[00:03:55] Brad Frost: We're, gonna, talk about that , as well because I think that's also touching really important things too. So
[00:04:02] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. Yeah, , I'm excited to talk about it. and so with this community work and doing all these educational things, like I had a design school that was an alternative to boot camps, and , , i'm teaching this very large course on AI for designers on Interaction Design Foundation.
[00:04:18] Ioana Teleanu: And so I've been talking to a lot of people. I'm traveling the world now giving talks , in the US, in Europe. I just returned from Asia talking at an event in, Kuala Lumpur. So I'm talking to people a lot,
[00:04:30] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:04:31] Ioana Teleanu: I'm hearing all these stories, and sometimes these stories kinda repeat themselves or there are common threads to everything I'm
[00:04:38] Brad Frost: Yep.
[00:04:38] Ioana Teleanu: I've noticed things happen to people, especially in the space of how they feel, how they're experiencing everything, what's heavy on them, what's making them excited. but I always kind of felt like it's very anecdotal, and it's not something I can share, like,
[00:04:55] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:04:56] Ioana Teleanu: and kinda draw attention to.
[00:04:58] Ioana Teleanu: , I can't go on LinkedIn and say, "I talked with this one person, and they told me that they experienced this and that." And so it's , not academic. It's not proper. So I realize that probably a lot of designers are dealing with the same things, positives, negatives. There are patterns. But we haven't mapped them properly.
[00:05:20] Ioana Teleanu: Nobody looked at them. There are a lot of surveys exploring the tooling, the way the design process is changing, the way we work, careers, salary. So we are mapping the industry from many angles, but we're not looking very carefully at the feeling side, which I'm obviously very, passionate about. And so I wanted to add this dimension to the picture of how designers are working and feeling in 2026. So just talking to people prompted me to think about the study.
[00:05:55] Ioana Teleanu: And then I, reached out to a very senior researcher I've worked with along the years, and she holds a PhD in Health and Social Studies at the University of Warwick. ... She spent a lot of time in academia, so I knew that she could bring the rigor to this instrument, to the entire effort, because I'm spending a lot of time on social media, I'm doing a lot of Instagram polls and stuff, and so ...
[00:06:21] Ioana Teleanu: , i've lost that muscle of building something
[00:06:24] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:06:25] Ioana Teleanu: methodologically sound. And I wanted her to come in and kinda be, police me around, also construct a study that is, that can be shared in scientific journals. 'Cause
[00:06:38] Brad Frost: Yes
[00:06:39] Ioana Teleanu: standpoint, it's, very solid. And we are using scales that, for measuring burnout, for example, we are using an official scale.
[00:06:46] Ioana Teleanu: It's an instrument that, has been, I don't know, accepted in the scientific community. We had to ask for approval to use that instrument, so we're doing things as we can for two
[00:06:57] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:06:58] Ioana Teleanu: is that you're asking people to be very honest and transparent with very sensitive stuff sometimes, and so you can't really afford to make a mess out of that data or, not have it be, safe even from the way you capture the information and the way you surface that information.
[00:07:17] Ioana Teleanu: So it really has to be serious, 'cause it's a serious
[00:07:20] Brad Frost: Yep. Yep
[00:07:20] Ioana Teleanu: , and I think another aspect to why it needs to be, very well put together is that we plan on doing it annually. , If we wanna compare results across the years, we have to get it right from the beginning. 'Cause if you keep changing it, then this comparison, advantage will not be relevant.
[00:07:39] Ioana Teleanu: so we wanna have it very well-built to begin with, so it kinda becomes a timeless instrument and one that is relevant three years, four years from now, so we can compare what comes in.
[00:07:52] Ioana Teleanu: , One more thing, Brad, is that the point that we wanna protect people's feelings and take it very seriously, it's fully anonymous.
[00:08:01] Ioana Teleanu: There is no give me your email. We don't connect responses to any email or kind of personal identification. So, it's very well thought through, and I'm very proud of the work that... I underestimated how much work it was going to be to construct the survey. , I'm very grateful that, yeah, I've had a lot of experts reviewing the instrument, which is also part of the process of building this.
[00:08:28] Ioana Teleanu: We've had
[00:08:29] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:08:29] Ioana Teleanu: testing. We've been doing a lot of things to put it up, and now I just want the community to participate 'cause otherwise, yeah, there are some risks to not having a lot of people, respond. Mainly it's representation and potential biases and geographical, yeah, essentially.
[00:08:50] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah. that's amazing. So, if you're gonna do something, do it right, and I, freaking love that, especially whenever it comes to something that we designers can oftentimes get away with the kind of lightweight version, of this stuff. But I think that it, it's really good instincts to pull in people with ser-serious credentials and there is a science around all of it.
[00:09:20] Brad Frost: , My wife, she's, in the, mental health professional and been in and around various, mental health efforts, and it's like, oh yeah, great. It's not all just vibes. , It's like, yeah, there's a lot of rigor, there's a lot of structure there, and in order to, to measure how people , are feeling, it turns out that there's a lot of great and accepted methodologies for going about that.
[00:09:43] Brad Frost: , So I love that, first of all.
[00:09:44] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[00:09:45] Brad Frost: I also love the fact that it is anonymous so that people can speak freely, and that, be really curious to get your take on that juxtaposition of the waters that you swim in, in social media land can often feel, like this place that, that is very inhospitable to being vulnerable or being honest.
[00:10:08] Brad Frost: You know, , you're having to -- take a lot of care in how you're presenting yourself, and if you are even being vulnerable, there's kind of like almost an angle to it. You know what I mean? Where it's like, oh, I'm, kind of wielding this vulnerability , in a certain way in order , to get the social points.
[00:10:26] Brad Frost: So I think that, being able to speak freely feels like , a really important thing for this moment for people to actually share how , they're really doing. and then also I love, love just the idea that , you're already, thinking about the longitudinal part of this because it's like sh-- this is in many respects, first contact with a lot of this stuff, but , it's pretty easy , to see how, yeah, this is going to be a turbulent ride for a while.
[00:10:57] ,
[00:10:57] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. Thanks, bye
[00:10:58] Brad Frost: if, it ever, slows down, , it's genuine, we genuinely don't know. So I love that you're already mapping that path out into the future because -- that is important. -- Stuff's gonna continue to change and evolve. People are gonna have feelings about that, and it's good , to be able to capture that, over time.
[00:11:17] Brad Frost: So I love, love everything about that.
[00:11:19] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah, exactly. I love all the things you said as well. I'm very proud that I managed to kind of look at all of these, let's say important dimensions to the study. And to the point about mental health, we also reviewed it with, the College of Psychologists. so I don't think if it's the official thing I'm allowed to say, but we did have psychologists, review
[00:11:43] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah
[00:11:45] Ioana Teleanu: of the study.
[00:11:45] Ioana Teleanu: And, we've taken a lot of care, , , I'm the social media person, so I know how, we misrepresent vulnerability as well. I think I'm also very trained into being vulnerable and very honest because of podcast with Anfisa, Honest UX Talks. We've been very open. Of course, I'm not fully open, either.
[00:12:06] Ioana Teleanu: So , it was really interesting to understand what are the, conditions under which
[00:12:13] Brad Frost: Yes.
[00:12:13] Ioana Teleanu: might be encouraged to really
[00:12:15] Brad Frost: Yep.
[00:12:15] Ioana Teleanu: deep things
[00:12:16] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:12:16] Ioana Teleanu: are coming up. ...
[00:12:18] Ioana Teleanu: There was a very long debate, and I think one of the biggest challenges constructing the study, to your point, is that the industry is changing.
[00:12:28] Ioana Teleanu: People have a lot of feelings, about it. many of the things that are happening are negative. we're seeing maybe a lot of layoffs. There's a lot of AI fatigue. There's a lot of AI noise. There's... People are overwhelmed. They have to learn all these new tools. The tools are ever-changing. And the problem is that many people are very positive about what's happening. A lot of people have found their love for technology again. They are enthusiastic. They feel they can have now new powers in the way they work.
[00:13:01] Ioana Teleanu: They can do things that were not accessible before because they would require a long learning effort or time investment that they couldn't afford. So , there's also a lot of excitement around, the transformation. So the problem when you do the study is that you have to communicate it very carefully to bring both groups in for an accurate picture, right?
[00:13:21] Ioana Teleanu: So if I am to talk about things like, I don't know, burnout, lead with burnout, like, " "designers are in burnout, they're not doing great," then, that would bring a certain of bias into the study, and we would miss all the people who are having a lot of fun.
[00:13:36] Ioana Teleanu: So when you communicate a study, have so much care and pay so much attention to how I position it, 'cause my inclination is also to lead with the negative aspects of transformation, 'cause I feel those are , in a way more important, 'cause they're painful, and they're big, and , the impact is very significant.
[00:13:58] Ioana Teleanu: I always tend to say, is design making you depressed? Do you think that there's no future for this role? Come and answer this." But that's not right. And so now I'm trying to kinda tone down that gloomy, also always present it in a neutral way.
[00:14:13] Ioana Teleanu: "Whether you like it or whether you're growing or you feel like you're, struggling, come give us your answer." I'm really curious, this really very intentional approach to bringing both perspectives into the study, if it will manifest and reflect in the results. I don't know. We'll find out. But yeah, we'll see.
[00:14:34] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:14:35] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:14:35] Brad Frost: You, talking about those different positions and, and sometimes those are different people, but I think that we all kind of have that internal struggle as well, where it's like, again, just this very conflicted, depending on what you're up to or how you're feeling or what your circumstances are, just even on a day-to-day basis, an hour-by-hour basis, we oscillate between terror or fatigue or exhaustion and complete enthusiasm and excitement and, "Oh, man, this is amazing look at this great thing that I made." And that kind of whiplash, that is part of just the human experience in general, but it does feel like it's playing out at this just very, very accelerated pace. Very few things feel so like whipping you around the emotional terrain as quickly as this stuff is.
[00:15:34] Brad Frost: It's, it's very challenging and again, the, the social media terrain. There's your internal feelings about it. There's you interacting with the external world and a lot of people sharing maybe the fruits of those, enthusiasms or like, "Look at this cool stuff," or, "Here's this new stuff and new reasons to be excited."
[00:15:56] Brad Frost: But if you're sitting in a place where you were just made redundant or you're looking for a job or you're, in a place where, you can't dig into this or you have serious, moral and ethical qualms about how all of this stuff is playing out, it's, it's very, very hard to be bombarded.
[00:16:17] Brad Frost: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You can't just be like, "Oh, yeah, let me set all of this aside and just just fully go into, 'We, we're having so much fun here.'" it's, it's, it's so complicated. so I love how you're designing that. And that's, that's also just like another hard thing, again, kind of being secondhand, mental health professional or seeing that it's like that, that, skilled therapists and stuff, it's not like, "What's wrong with you today?"
[00:16:44] Brad Frost: But rather to kind of be in this very neutral mirror lens and then help those people notice how they're skewing, versus trying to lead them down certain paths. It's like, man, oh man, there's a lot of skill, there's a lot of design that goes into how you articulate things, the specific words and phrasing that you're using and stuff.
[00:17:06] Brad Frost: It's wild.
[00:17:07] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah, I
[00:17:08] Ioana Teleanu: I love what you just said, that there's a lot of design that goes into it. I feel that... So I've been designing for 10 years officially, but for more than that, and so this study feels like it's one of the most interesting design projects. It feels like a design project, and
[00:17:25] Brad Frost: is.
[00:17:26] Ioana Teleanu: it exactly.
[00:17:26] Ioana Teleanu: It, so beyond the like I spent so much time even designing the home page. this was a, the, yeah, presence. 'Cause the presence had to be soft, not overwhelming, but also not leading. It, how do you make it neutral but still have some personality? And I'm very much into these kind of earthy color palettes, and earthy is now very much Claude and entropic. And so whatever I designed felt like this looks so much like it was vibe coded and generated by AI. How do I make it feel human again? 'Cause it's just like using the same background. yeah, so,
[00:18:05] Brad Frost: And this is designwellbeingindex.com
[00:18:09] Ioana Teleanu: Exactly.
[00:18:10] Brad Frost: the, address, yeah. And it's a very beautiful website, and I especially love there's, there's a really cool highlight effect whenever you sort of highlight words on the page. It has a really cool blur effect
[00:18:23] Ioana Teleanu: Exactly. So I chose that, intentionally because I thought that, and this is kinda, I don't know if it's, I mean, not all design decisions are, identifiable like that, I understand what's happening. But kinda like the subconscious effect I was going for was this concept of a blur.
[00:18:40] Ioana Teleanu: I think this is the metaphor the website is built around, the blur. 'Cause the blur is, I think, a word and a concept that is very fitting for what's happening. So to your earlier points, we're blurred internally. even on an individual level, I don't know where I stand from one day to the next, and there's always this ambivalence that I'm carrying. So everything feels very fuzzy and confusing in the, internally. But also externally, the market is a total blur right now. So I wanted to kind of borrow this quality of the blur and bring it into small design artifacts across the website. The pictures are a bit blurred, the highlight is blurred. There's more blur here, there. And, yeah, just reflect what I think is the, one of the, let's say, phenomena that's very
[00:19:29] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:19:30] Ioana Teleanu: to measuring weather right now. It's
[00:19:32] Brad Frost: Yeah that's beautiful. But the cool thing is that the juxtaposition is that the very nature of this study is meant to bring things into, to focus. So you're, you're capturing the, the current state, but I almost feel like, and we should talk about kind of its status and what's about to, kind of unfold there.
[00:19:52] Brad Frost: I feel like if you're collecting data and stuff right now, but it almost feels like, the, the results, of I can already design the results kind of pages that are a little clearer or something just because you get-- that's kinda what you get with, with the data and starting to capture all of this stuff in this very rigorous and methodical way.
[00:20:12] Ioana Teleanu: You just gave me design consultancy right here. It's really a good idea, I do, I, I'm gonna take it. You're gonna see it in the live reports page. It's gonna be this deblurring of artifacts and, data. It's,
[00:20:27] Brad Frost: so yeah.
[00:20:27] Ioana Teleanu: And
[00:20:28] Brad Frost: where, where is this at, at this moment? and we're gonna try to coordinate the publishing of this conversation. You've already kind of announced it. That's how we kinda got in touch.
[00:20:38] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[00:20:39] Brad Frost: I'm curious to know what the timeline is here.
[00:20:41] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. I've opened it, this week. The survey is up. It's collecting responses. I'm getting already a lot of responses. It's really interesting and, also something I wanted to tie to what you said about the, that kind of mirroring you mentioned earlier. You said that I'm... And it's a good way to put it.
[00:21:02] Ioana Teleanu: I'm trying to construct the questions in a way that, of course, don't lead anyone, but also offer an opportunity for reflection. And it's great that I'm getting this very specific feedback from people that it was a great reflection exercise. It was great for them
[00:21:18] Brad Frost: Great.
[00:21:19] Ioana Teleanu: think about their career, think about what they feel, think ab- and, this is, a by-product, right?
[00:21:24] Ioana Teleanu: It's,
[00:21:24] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:21:24] Ioana Teleanu: it's
[00:21:25] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:21:26] Ioana Teleanu: I intended mainly. it,
[00:21:29] Brad Frost: Yes
[00:21:29] Ioana Teleanu: didn't construct this just to give people the platform where they could take a break and think about what's happening to them. But it's, this is a very happy, side effect. And, So coming back to the timeline, I've opened it on October 20th.
[00:21:44] Ioana Teleanu: I kinda wanted to, yeah, just not do it in a period where people are still in work mood. if we go too deep into end of year, then they're gonna start probably just, and hopefully I wanna let everyone disconnect and not have to reflect on, what they're dealing with. But, so I open it on October 20th, and the plan is to keep it up for three weeks until November 10th.
[00:22:08] Ioana Teleanu: I hope we can align with that. Even if we can't, whoever comes after the door closes will still have access to the results, which leads to an important other mention or quality of the study. ask people to give us 12 to 15 minutes of their time. it was a very good estimation. It's confirmed by the survey tool we use. So we ask people to give us this time, and there's the question, like, "What do I get out of it?" I'm giving you my time and, and why? What's the incentive? And nobody asks us that, of course, but it's a, it's, just something that might come up, like when you think about why would people give you so much time and sensitive, precious information. And of course, there's the, the, there's the element of reflection and contributing to the industry. But I think ultimately what this study will be, doing hopefully is make these things very public, in a way measured so they become tangible. And, I think a very important moment in the life of the study is post-study when we can discuss these things and even the people who don't fill in the survey, but I do hope we get as many people as possible, again, for and, for more accurate picture.
[00:23:31] Brad Frost: yeah
[00:23:32] Ioana Teleanu: but even the people who come in this world after the survey closes will still have access to all this information. So all, everything we
[00:23:40] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:23:40] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:23:40] Ioana Teleanu: out will be made public. Part, I think, I hope a first, layer of interpretation will be ready by the end of the year, and we will be able to share some of the key insights or important themes by the end of...
[00:23:53] Ioana Teleanu: By mid-December, let's say. And then the bigger, deeper report will be made available early next year, and we will share it with everyone. Everyone can look at it. And hopefully, I hope, like a, a utopian that I am, a techno optimist, I hope that companies will also lean
[00:24:13] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:24:14] Ioana Teleanu: insights.
[00:24:15] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:24:16] Ioana Teleanu: I don't know, m- maybe there's something to be done about
[00:24:20] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah
[00:24:20] Ioana Teleanu: Maybe there is an opportunity to have conversations, gather around the results, and then involve people who action, might take measures to make some things better or kinda amplify, extrapolate the coping mechanisms that we are discovering work for some people. 'Cause we're also looking at,
[00:24:42] Ioana Teleanu: So something I missed is what is essentially this study looking at, and we're mostly looking at How designers are feeling in general. the burnout, a version of techno stress, if there's stress coming in their life from their peers, the industry in general, the management in their company. Are they being pressured into using technology?
[00:25:05] Ioana Teleanu: So this element of, techno stress, but more connected to AI. Not because this is an AI study. I just spoke like AI. Not because, but because it's not just, it's also that. so not be- We don't want it to be an AI study, but this is the nature of things now. So
[00:25:22] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Ioana Teleanu: also debated that. Should we talk about AI when we communicated?
[00:25:26] Ioana Teleanu: Should we say we're measuring how people deal with AI?
[00:25:29] Brad Frost: Угу
[00:25:30] Ioana Teleanu: Initially, we said no, let's just leave it tech universal, tech general. But tech general is really not the reflection of what's happening. What's happening in the market is very AI
[00:25:42] Brad Frost: Yeah Yeah.
[00:25:42] Ioana Teleanu: So all of these, We're also measuring coping mechanisms, so an important struct- part of the study is how people have been dealing with what works for them to kinda maybe increase the positives and reduce the
[00:25:56] Brad Frost: Yes.
[00:25:57] Ioana Teleanu: And if we have enough meat behind this part of the study, this could be transformed into something that more people might use, or they could explore, or they could be guided into by their managers, by the companies, by the industry in general, by people who have a voice and can maybe stop talking about how everybody's gonna be left behind, and design is dead, and all those inflammatory and alarmist things that we're seeing on social media. Maybe with the help of these informations being socialized, we can move the discourse from, "Here's how to survive. Here's what you need to do to be AI first," or whatever, to, "Look, if you're not feeling good, you could try closing social media for one week" or I don't know, whatever we'll find out works for people. Yeah. So,
[00:26:46] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:26:46] Ioana Teleanu: I went all
[00:26:48] Brad Frost: No,
[00:26:49] Ioana Teleanu: paths.
[00:26:50] Brad Frost: it's, fantastic. You started with "Well, what's in it for me?" Which is, I think, a very fair and valid question to ask. And as, as, an empathetic designer that's asking people to come forth and spend, 12 to 15 minutes talking about some really vulnerable stuff, for no payment.
[00:27:12] Brad Frost: It's not like, " here's your gift card," or whatever. that's not really what this is for. But, but what you just said there is the beautiful thing about the, the web all these years later, but just of just collective action and community in general, is that everybody is bringing their stuff forward Sharing their truth, sharing their experience, and then through the right vehicles, things can be done about it.
[00:27:38] Brad Frost: And you have this , here's where we've all landed, and here are maybe some, habits or things to put out there as directional ways to address at the systemic level these issues that people can then take back. So what do they get out of it?
[00:27:55] Brad Frost: Well, it's not the immediate gratification, although it does surface that reflection, which is that really nice by-byproduct. But once this is out there, and because it is done in this way, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the, the mechanisms for coping with this stuff and helping with this stuff.
[00:28:14] Brad Frost: you get into stuff that already has some good solutions to it, like, protecting sleep and nutrition and, time in nature and time with people and family and not being just on screens from sun up to sun down and finding balance and all of that good stuff. I'm sure that there will be like at least some of that, stuff reflected in how people are coping with it. But, I think that it's really cool to be able to synthesize all of that stuff and then bring it back to everyone who participated and beyond. And that is , again, just that beautiful thing of: here's me sharing my experience for the benefit of the greater good.
[00:28:59] Brad Frost: And I think that applies more generally to just sharing in general, which is something that I'm sure that you've heard a lot. I hear a lot, in my neck of the woods where it's just like, "Oh, well, I've wanted to record a video of this or write a blog post about this or share this tool, but--
[00:29:17] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[00:29:17] Brad Frost: or this design or whatever, but this person already did it better than me.
[00:29:21] Brad Frost: I couldn't because whatever." And it's just like, no. Like it's so important to share your experience, your perspective, your truth, what you've found to be useful what you're struggling with. All of that stuff have that ripple effect that ends up helping other people.
[00:29:39] Ioana Teleanu: Alright.
[00:29:39] Brad Frost: it's such a beautiful thing, but especially through this lens, which is everyone experiences it Whether they are aware of that they're being assaulted by th-the zeitgeist right now in this way, everyone's experiencing it. So to be able to have a language around it and to be able to collectively unpack it, I think is gonna be really valuable.
[00:30:04] Brad Frost: So
[00:30:05] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:06] Brad Frost: this is exciting
[00:30:07] Ioana Teleanu: it is. And
[00:30:18] Ioana Teleanu: I think there's also an argument to be made, and here I'm gonna maybe take it even a little bit further than just this beneficial, let's say, cross-informing of I'm venting, I'm reflecting, I'm sharing what makes me excited, I'm putting my voice out there in the world.
[00:30:25] Ioana Teleanu: Because in this context, every single voice matters. It doesn't matter that we have 400 answers. Another answer matters. So there is this element of, let's say, the feedback loop, a positive virtuous circle. but I could take it a little bit further and make the argument that I think we also have a responsibility to give this answer in this context because it's very hard to just come in your little social media space and complain about things, or complain with your coworkers, or complain to your spouse, or complain... that's one way to go about things that are not working. But there's also this kind of the concept of participating in the collective voice, which has been around in human society for a long time. Like any revolution, any protest, any, any time we come together as a larger group, the voice is obviously stronger. So similar to how you go and vote to express your support towards some forces and your negative sentiment towards other forces, in the very similar, civic responsibility that we apply as a working society, we also have a responsibility towards the design industry. Of course, you could argue that, "I don't care about the design industry.
[00:31:49] Ioana Teleanu: It's just a job. I'm a person who has a job, and I don't really care about." But sure,
[00:31:54] Brad Frost: Ja.
[00:31:54] Ioana Teleanu: respect that, but I do believe that we have a responsibility to kinda, use the platforms that are given to us to express things that at scale become louder, more visible, more actionable. And so, you just have to do it, people.
[00:32:12] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:32:12] Brad Frost: yeah
[00:32:13] Ioana Teleanu: do your part in, making
[00:32:14] Brad Frost: Yes
[00:32:16] Ioana Teleanu: the things that matter. Yeah.
[00:32:18] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Es-especially obviously we need the spaces to be able to complain and commiserate and all of that stuff, and there's a lot to complain about, there's a lot to commiserate about. But I think what you're describing is this, how do we sort of channel at least some of that energy towards something that is trying to address things and move things forward?
[00:32:45] Brad Frost: And I think that that's very much, I think the spirit of this show is that, kind of it's this things like excitement and enthusiasm and optimism feel, almost like comically out of place, you know, whenever you look out at the world and it's like, mm, this isn't a naive sentiment here.
[00:33:04] Brad Frost: This is actually a very deliberate application of it's very easy to just stay in the negative zone a-and lots of people dwell there and stay there. But in order for positive change to happen, you need to find that within yourself, but also collectively, find that and that's how we get out of those places.
[00:33:31] Brad Frost: 'Cause otherwise, y-if you just take your hands off the wheel, that negative sentiment, that feels like the entropy. That feels like the world's going to hell in a handbasket," and if you take your hands off the wheel, then it will, right? so what's required to change course? And the answer is stuff like what you're doing, what you're putting together.
[00:33:51] Ioana Teleanu: The answer is participation. and participating in the collective conversation. And I also wanna make a small note here that I am very, mindful of people feeling like they don't have the energy to participate. some people are so defeated right now that, even contributing to fixing the problem feels like too much of an ask, too much of an effort, and I also understand that.
[00:34:16] Ioana Teleanu: So
[00:34:17] Brad Frost: Mm-hmm
[00:34:18] Ioana Teleanu: I don't wanna add guilt, like, "You're responsible for doing this," and they can barely, show up to work sometimes, right?
[00:34:24] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:34:25] Ioana Teleanu: there's, I think, again, how we started and talking about this metaphor of the blur, wherever you look at in the industry and in the study itself, and in us and our careers, there's an ambivalence that's always present. And yes, you can feel defeated, but you can also 15 minutes and try to, just put your defeat
[00:34:50] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:34:51] Ioana Teleanu: that might, make you feel less defeated at the end of the
[00:34:54] Brad Frost: yeah
[00:34:55] Ioana Teleanu: yeah
[00:34:55] Brad Frost: Yeah. That's right. and that's where that immediate effect is that, just by way of answering questions about how you're feeling is good self-reflection in general, even if it validates what you already know. But in a lot of cases, that's why things like therapy matter.
[00:35:13] Brad Frost: That's why things like, hashing it out or having conversation matters is you're able to get it out, right? You know, like better out than in, you know?
[00:35:21] Ioana Teleanu: Absolutely.
[00:35:22] Brad Frost: But yeah, wholeheartedly agree that it's just like there is a certain level of, of exhaustion and overwhelm to the point where you're really short-circuited, and it's very difficult to do much of anything.
[00:35:36] Brad Frost: That's kind of proving the point that these efforts matter and that participating in those efforts matter because that experience, if you're so tapped out in this moment, guess what? One, you're in good company. a lot of people are in that situation.
[00:35:54] Brad Frost: Hell, I'm in that situation half the time where I'm just like, it just feels like so much work to keep your head above water. And that's not a personal problem. that's the state of the river. it used to be a tranquil river or a lazy river, let's call it.
[00:36:12] Brad Frost: And then all of a sudden, boy, oh boy, the dam burst, and now all of a sudden it's this very fast-moving current, and we're all struggling.
[00:36:22] Ioana Teleanu: You highlighted another aspect to it. it can very often feel, and I've heard it from people multiple times, it feels like I'm the only one who is experiencing that. I'm the only one who is not excited about using AI in their process. I'm the only one who feels like there's too much noise.
[00:36:38] Ioana Teleanu: And when you participate in this collective conversation in a way, it also helps on this level. you understand, whoa, like 80% of designers feel this. It's not just me. I'm not the problem. I'm not, unfit. I'm not doing something wrong. There was a very fun comment that came on. Fun. is maybe not the best word choice here, but someone said, "I'm gonna fill in the survey because I wanna know if I live in the same reality as other people." this is exactly
[00:37:09] Brad Frost: There it is
[00:37:10] Ioana Teleanu: of efforts can offer.
[00:37:13] Brad Frost: Yes.
[00:37:13] Ioana Teleanu: you
[00:37:14] Brad Frost: Yes
[00:37:15] Ioana Teleanu: figure out whether the world you're experiencing is confirmed or different, and how is it different.
[00:37:22] Ioana Teleanu: And it's, I think it's interesting. I think it's refreshing to see that you do live in the same world. And
[00:37:29] Brad Frost: Yes
[00:37:30] Ioana Teleanu: I mean, I don't know what the results will produce, but I think there's gonna be a lot of patterns,
[00:37:36] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:37] Ioana Teleanu: yeah.
[00:37:38] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:37:43] Brad Frost: There's a spectrum of human emotion that we all share, and I think that seeing that on display is very, very validating for a lot of people. But I really love that shared reality comment because I think that that picks at one of, I think, the most important themes of this moment is that increasingly, I'm curious to get your take on, especially the social media landscape, but also just in communities in general, is that it feels like there aren't many spaces that feel hospitable to this kind of psychological safety or the vulnerability required to be able to do that.
[00:38:27] Brad Frost: And now that we have these additional things, these artificial things that we are now communicating with increasingly, we are in this different reality where rather than, just meeting after meeting with a clump of human beings, we now have this ability to spend more time
[00:38:47] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[00:38:48] Brad Frost: solo, dialed into a chat interface
[00:38:51] Brad Frost: And that shared reality is a little bit under threat. I don't know if that's the right way of framing it, but there is a force, a new force at play that didn't exist before that is now actually in a place of kind of taking people away from one another.
[00:39:11] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[00:39:11] Brad Frost: And there's a lot of pressure to learn this new artificial way of communicating and that is a big worry
[00:39:21] Ioana Teleanu: Oh, Yeah
[00:39:21] Brad Frost: for, me in, in the macro sense of this.
[00:39:26] Brad Frost: But like the, the antidote to all of that or the thing that still matters or matters more than ever is community and shared experience and, uh, those things remind us of our shared reality, our shared experience, our shared like, "Oh yeah, we-- I feel this as, as well." it's difficult to get there when all you're doing is, is plugged into a thing.
[00:39:49] Brad Frost: Even if you're asking that artificial thing, "How am I feeling? How could I feel better?" there's an irony there that is just like the answer isn't venturing further into that, artificial reality, but it's instead kind of pulling back and connecting with one another.
[00:40:09] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah, I have so many things I wanna say on top of what you said. I'm gonna try to keep it structured, but I can't promise. So I love this idea that we now have this force, this new entity that is drawing us in with a lot of force because it's obviously very validating. it's accepting of everything we say. It's... There's always, the a sycophantic nature of LLMs and so on. So obviously this is something I've been reflecting on, but not enough, this isolating nature of having this entity that produces a very comfortable echo chamber where we go in, and we are validated, and we are safe, and we can...
[00:40:53] Ioana Teleanu: And of course, I have a lot of friends, and myself, I'm using this instrument called, ChatGPT or Claude, depending on my mood kinda like feel better and express things, I'm still doing therapy, but sometimes I've even heard... I was listening to this podcast
[00:41:13] Ioana Teleanu: where Jungian analysts were discussing AI, and one of them shared that they have clients that come in with their ChatGPT conversations in therapy. And they even had, this Gen Z, I think, or a very young person who was using GPT in therapy. he was like, "Wait a second, let me ask GPT and then I'm gonna get back to you, my therapist."
[00:41:38] Ioana Teleanu: So it's really interfering with the way we communicate as people. There's this mediation level that's happening with LLMs, it's also kinda like reinforcing our worldview and reinforcing maybe our errors sometimes, our biases, This is a very long conversation to have.
[00:41:58] Ioana Teleanu: But to keep it to, in this context, in the boundaries of the, why community matters, it's because you can very deeply disconnect and very easily disconnect from the social space. Which would also understand why you would want that, because the social space of social media in general on any topic is not very friendly right now for two
[00:42:25] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:42:25] Ioana Teleanu: Of course,
[00:42:26] Brad Frost: Yep
[00:42:26] Ioana Teleanu: algorithms encourage polarization, polarized views. Like,
[00:42:31] Brad Frost: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:31] Ioana Teleanu: the AI space it's mostly AI negatives, haters, doomers that are very aggressive, or it's AI enthusiasts, the people who are borderline AI psychosis. and they're building every weekend. They're building. They have these gorgeous portfolios they've vibe coded with AI.
[00:42:49] Ioana Teleanu: They're reinventing their lives. They're rebuilding the conditions of their lives with AI. So it's between these two. There's not a lot of place for nuance. There's not a lot of place for common sense anymore, because
[00:43:01] Brad Frost: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:02] Ioana Teleanu: a way, y- many people feel the pressure that they have to be in this kinda like AI psychosis bucket because that's where the successful people are.
[00:43:11] Ioana Teleanu: That's where the people who are using agents for everything, to optimize their life, like like, Yeah.
[00:43:17] Brad Frost: Which TBD if that's actually successful or making actual improvements to people's lives. But It feels like the social pressure is there to be out there saying, not just I'm doing this, but the step over the line for me is like,
[00:43:33] Brad Frost: On one hand, I'm like, "Hey, more power to you, man." If you're finding, a lot of benefit, knock yourself out. I think the line for me has always been if you're not doing this, that's the part that's inflammatory or this thing is dead, that's the part where you're now putting that out there and, and setting up like a, real crisis in, anyone reading or, listening to that, that, that language. But yeah. So sorry, I digress. so you're talking about, beautifully, I think, articulating polarization.
[00:44:04] Brad Frost: Everyone realistically is in the middle there, but it doesn't really feel like there's a lot of terrain to, live in that middle comfortably.
[00:44:15] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. And also, I think it's because of the nature of social media algorithms, because we meet these social platforms. This is where we
[00:44:23] Brad Frost: Yep. Yep.
[00:44:24] Ioana Teleanu: Sometimes we meet in real life, and I think that's better, preferred, and great, but not many people have access to design communities outside of social media.
[00:44:31] Ioana Teleanu: So we meet within the conditions of these platforms, and these platforms reward... They reward whatever... What, what you just said, right? The, if you're not doing this, you're losing. Stop doing that. Stop doing... Like, there's a whole list of things we have to stop doing. and, and because of the algorithm rewarding this, it also shapes the discourse.
[00:44:53] Ioana Teleanu: And if you come in with a nuanced perspective, it's boring. Nobody wants
[00:44:58] Brad Frost: Yeah,
[00:44:59] Ioana Teleanu: "AI is good, but AI is also bad." okay, boring.
[00:45:01] Brad Frost: yeah.
[00:45:02] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:45:03] Ioana Teleanu: will make me angry or that make me react. Like, there's so much rage-baiting these days and... Or so much, like, aspirational portraying of, "Here's how I'm building a milli- I made a million last month using agents."
[00:45:17] Ioana Teleanu: Okay. but the algorithm pushes that. So
[00:45:23] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:45:23] Ioana Teleanu: produces two effects. People create more of that, so creators lean into these mechanics of people's attention because if they present themselves in a nuanced perspective, that's boring, that's uninteresting. Nobody... Everybody will scroll, above it.
[00:45:38] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. So it's pushing people into creating this kind of but it's also showing people in their feed these things, these kinds of, like, very hot takes, very definitive declarations of things that are dead. And it's really bad. Like, We're killing nuance. So this is why studies or the things that kinda measure bringing all the perspectives have more value than ever, 'cause they're bringing back that nuanced perspective.
[00:46:09] Ioana Teleanu: Some people will respond this, and other people will respond that, and both are real and both are
[00:46:14] Brad Frost: Yes. Yes
[00:46:15] Ioana Teleanu: but it's the reality. So I think that, yeah, we're battling a lot of things here, and there's a lot of... There are a lot of new forces that are pulling us in many directions. And I love how we're leaning into this idea that community is more important than ever 'cause it keeps us in the social fabric, connected to the social space.
[00:46:38] Ioana Teleanu: Which is, again, it might not be comfortable. Sometimes I open apps and I see people who are doing all these amazing, incredible things, and I'm like, "Am I not doing enough? Should I be doing more?" I'm doing great. I mean, I'm a
[00:46:52] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:46:52] Ioana Teleanu: who is doing things, and I still feel like
[00:46:56] Brad Frost: Yep.
[00:46:56] Ioana Teleanu: I'm behind, right?
[00:46:58] Ioana Teleanu: So I would understand why you wanna out of that
[00:47:02] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:47:03] Ioana Teleanu: I don't know. We have to create new systems of interacting with each other, new platforms, new conversations, new spaces where things can exist in a more realistic way and
[00:47:13] Brad Frost: right
[00:47:15] Ioana Teleanu: social media optimized.
[00:47:17] Brad Frost: Yeah. that's exactly it. From any objective measure social media, like, counts and followers and all of those metrics that those platforms push out there front and center. It's like at the end of the day, you're a human being, and I think that that's where it's like also I think, using your position of, influence and, and where you're at to model that behavior to have people like you saying "Yeah, this is a really hard time," or, I'm struggling right now," and to say that and mean it goes a long way.
[00:47:50] Brad Frost: I find that myself where I'm just like, "Yeah, I don't know. I don't have this shit figured out." And people are like, "Really?" It's like, yeah. We're all going through it, and we're all going through it together, you almost see people's, shoulders, drop a little bit where you're like,
[00:48:05] Brad Frost: Oh, okay. Well, if Brad doesn't have it figured out, then maybe it's okay if I don't have it figured out as well." And I'm like, it shouldn't require me, but at the same time, if that's the thing that gets you feeling a little bit better. But that's I think that collective balm that we've been talking about, where if you have a space, you have the psychological safety, you have the ability for everyone to come together and just be like, "Yeah, shit's hard."
[00:48:30] Brad Frost: And let's talk about and unpack what's good and what's bad about it and what's challenging and murky and blurry. That feels just healthy. that is the word. That is a healthy way of navigating this moment versus you plugged in, feeding hot take after hot take into this artificial thing, which as you were describing those hot takes and that psychosis as well as that doomer kind of stuff.
[00:48:59] Brad Frost: What's terrifying about that, that's the landscape and that's what gets rewarded, so therefore more of that gets produced. And then that in turn feeds back into this artificial stuff's training. So it's like, uh-oh, that's a negative feedback loop right there, where if that is the thing that then says, "Oh, help me make viral, social media posts about this thing," or whatever, and it's all trained on that horseshit, you're like, "Oh, God."
[00:49:35] Brad Frost: so it really does require a real and deliberate short-circuiting of so many of the mechanisms that are currently in place right now. and again, kinda coming back to, positivity and optimism and authenticity and like you really have to like protect that shit because it's so easy to get swept away in the other thing, especially whenever you're rewarded for it.
[00:50:01] Brad Frost: It's like, as a business owner who needs to navigate this terrain, like I probably should be out there, doing more of that nonsense, but I can't bring myself to do it. So I don't know.
[00:50:14] Brad Frost: How have you found-- 'cause you're clearly dialed into like understanding the real, but you also, you have a platform, you need to participate there, you need to, to jump through the hoops.
[00:50:25] Brad Frost: Like how do you personally navigate that tension, I guess?
[00:50:31] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah Yeah
[00:50:32] Ioana Teleanu: It's,
[00:50:33] Ioana Teleanu: Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on this. I wanted to jump in with a fun story about this kinda like the self-replicating viral polarized type of content. I very often ask my AI friends, I'm using Grok bots now a lot for building this kinda second brain and, and managing my stuff.
[00:50:55] Ioana Teleanu: So I sometimes ask them, "Give me 10 ideas for viral posts." And I type that. I ask it. Like, my brain is paused in that moment, and it's just like, Tell me what's gonna perform." And then they respond, and it's so bad that every time, like, that's when my critical thinking is back on.
[00:51:17] Ioana Teleanu: I've read this article on how, maybe we can share it in the show notes 'cause I think everyone should read it. It's an article about how social media shortens your life. It's a very interesting argument of altering the time perception, whatever. But in that article, I've learned this example of casino design, where you, they, in Las Vegas they build these casinos in a way that is almost circular or like a spiral so that you don't have to reach where you would have to make a decision, like, "Do I go left or do I go right?"
[00:51:48] Ioana Teleanu: Because you would wake up, your brain would come back into like, "I'm making decisions. I'm present," and you would kinda lose. So they build it in a way where you didn't have to make decisions, 'cause decisions required presence. So to me, I'm in that kinda like zombie mode, "What would be viral?
[00:52:04] Ioana Teleanu: I need to be viral as well." And then when it gives me something, I just like, I wake up. "Oh, I can't write that. I can't possibly post that." I'm like, it's so bad. It's embarrassing. So I do believe that I'm also kinda under all these forces. I struggle with them very much. I feel like I have poor engagement on Instagram, and other creators have amazing engagement, and my content is not as sexy.
[00:52:32] Ioana Teleanu: It's not flashy. It doesn't look good. It's a little bit, dusty, and I struggle with it every day. I don't really struggle anymore. I struggled with it for a while. It was hurting me. No, but
[00:52:44] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:52:44] Ioana Teleanu: I'm-
[00:52:44] Brad Frost: like, 'cause this isn't just like, "I wanna be popular." This is your machine that,
[00:52:50] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[00:52:51] Brad Frost: Feed your fam... Like, that is an important lens to put this through, and that's, I think,
[00:52:55] Ioana Teleanu: Ja
[00:52:56] Brad Frost: important for everyone to understand. It's like people aren't just doing that for the fun of it.
[00:53:01] Brad Frost: This is a real thing that is needed to sustain your family.
[00:53:06] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. I always kept a full-time job as a designer for much longer than I could have from a, financial standpoint. This kind of, content thing became sustainable much earlier than I gave up on the design job. the design job was giving me, of course, the authority or legitimacy to talk about design.
[00:53:24] Ioana Teleanu: to me, one of the things was, like, how can I possibly discuss these things if I'm not in the trenches, if I'm not in Figma pushing pixels all day? I would be a total fraud, so I still have to have it. but indeed, once I started to think about this content work and the speaking and all the work I'm doing as my job, it...
[00:53:45] Ioana Teleanu: Like, I moved, detached my identity from I work at Miro as the AI designer, I work at UiPath on this AI product, I worked at ING. That was where my identity was attached and comfortable, and now I moved it into I'm a creator, For a long time, I was even embarrassed to say it. when people would ask me, "What do you do?"
[00:54:07] Ioana Teleanu: I would enter this very hesitation space of blur. I think I'm a creative technologist, but maybe I'm an artist now, and it was always... 'Cause I could never say influencer. It's really bad. Creator, I'm a little bit more comfortable with. But to your point, once this became my identity, I really had to think about it as, on one level, this emotional thing of this is how I am represented in the world.
[00:54:35] Ioana Teleanu: This is who I am in the world. But also, this is where I'm feeding my family from, and so it had to be good.
[00:54:43] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:54:44] Ioana Teleanu: when it wasn't good, but now I've learned to accept that I'm maybe not as talented in editing videos, and maybe I'm not as talented with yapping, which is what you need to do on Instagram to be successful now, yap very nicely.
[00:54:58] Ioana Teleanu: I can't yap properly 'cause I'm not a native English speaker. I'm born in Romania. we don't yap here. We're angry maybe very often but we don't yap like that, very American way of, like, talking and sharing stories. So I'm not
[00:55:12] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[00:55:13] Ioana Teleanu: for many of those things, and it's fine, and now I've integrated that kind of like a very wrong perception of failure.
[00:55:19] Ioana Teleanu: 'Cause you can be successful in so many ways. Success doesn't have to look like one thing, but this is what social media does to you because it promotes the same thing again and again.
[00:55:28] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:55:29] Ioana Teleanu: feel like maybe it's also because I'm nearing 40.
[00:55:32] Ioana Teleanu: So when you're 40, you kinda accept who you are and who
[00:55:36] Brad Frost: You don't give a shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very liberating place to be. But
[00:55:40] Ioana Teleanu: I
[00:55:40] Brad Frost: there's a lot to touch on here, and I think that this is important for a lot of people, and I'm sure that on your respective platforms and stuff have talked about this.
[00:55:47] Brad Frost: But people identifying themselves with their work and pedigree and all of that stuff, really that's a very difficult place to be, and that feels like one of those things that the sooner people can get out of that strong identification with the very specific place they work at any given time, 'cause when that goes away and when we talk about community, right?
[00:56:16] Brad Frost: Like our work is a real place for giving us access to community and so when a job loss hits, especially in the US, your healthcare is tied to this, your access to getting mental health care and all of that stuff, like there's a lot that's tied up in that employment.
[00:56:33] Brad Frost: And so if your full identity is wrapped up and you say "I'm this at this place," if that changes or goes away that's falling down a very steep cliff. Whereas if you're like, "I happen to be working here right now and I enjoy doing that work," you can have the exact same lived experience, but you're just not saying , "This is, this is who I am."
[00:57:01] Brad Frost: Maybe it's a thing of aging and you see it enough where as you get older, and you take a couple bumps and bruises or change courses a few times that you arrive at that. But I do think that there's a way to get to that place sooner.
[00:57:17] Ioana Teleanu: Ja.
[00:57:18] Brad Frost: It's, probably healthier to do that
[00:57:21] Ioana Teleanu: I think, I think these people that are young now Gen Zs and even the people coming after, they'll do a better job at not identifying themselves with, whatever corporate tag they- they're getting. I think it's
[00:57:33] Brad Frost: Yeah
[00:57:33] Ioana Teleanu: our generation was very much between worlds, right?
[00:57:37] Ioana Teleanu: Where in the past, like, a steady, proper job in a reputable company was, like, the dream. and we've kinda, been on both worlds. Like,
[00:57:48] Brad Frost: Yes
[00:57:49] Ioana Teleanu: can still do my thing. Maybe that's an option. And so these people now have more freedom to not become the person working at Meta, who that's their identity, or I'm working at Google, that's my identity or whatever now
[00:58:05] Brad Frost: Related to this, this new era is opening the door in many respects for, oh, okay, yeah, if you're just a person with ideas in your head, all of a sudden, do you even need these vehicles, that are called companies? It does feel like in very real ways, the concept of a corporation, and I don't wanna say it's like fully under threat because I think that there's a lot of good reasons for a lot of these things to stick around, but it definitely feels...
[00:58:37] Brad Frost: I love how you said it's like, we're like the kinda first generation that's kinda straddling the line a little bit. Oh yeah, like freelancer or a contractor or working in-house, but also going off and doing your own thing. That wasn't always around, and now it does feel like you can...
[00:58:57] Brad Frost: Who the hell knows how it's gonna play out? But it does feel like there's this opportunity for like, here's just a bunch of people out there making stuff and doing a bunch of things to make two and two equal four.
[00:59:12] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[00:59:13] Brad Frost: And some people will get that through long-term employment at places, but it feels like the doors got blown off the hinges as far as like that's the only game in town anymore.
[00:59:23] Brad Frost: And I'm curious to see if in your community and who you're interacting with, if those are front-of-mind questions from people going and going like, "Maybe now's the time to go do my thing or I don't know."
[00:59:39] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[00:59:39] Ioana Teleanu: There are multiple angles, or doors through which people arrive in this the place where they question and challenge the status quo or the norm or whatever they were doing. I'm seeing a lot of people that come through this door from the creator angle, the freedom that social media creators seem to showcase continuously.
[01:00:01] Ioana Teleanu: I'm traveling, the world, I'm staying at these cool hotels, I'm doing what I love. Like, there's this level of... Right, social media is huge. I'm always shocked about how big the world of creators is, like, their reach really. Not mine,
[01:00:17] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:00:17] Ioana Teleanu: that people that, create content about how to be free and escape the nine-to-five.
[01:00:23] Ioana Teleanu: This is an entire thing. Esp- escaping a nine-to-five is an entire world, and a lot of people come in through that door. They see these people, they realize that there's a possibility in that, that that path exists, and people can make it. Not everyone can make it, 'cause it's a combination of skill, persistence, l- luck.
[01:00:43] Ioana Teleanu: A lot of huge element of luck, like many talented people and creators don't break that level, th- don't
[01:00:50] Brad Frost: Yep.
[01:00:51] Ioana Teleanu: Anyway, there's this level of, I can do my own thing on socials and then be free. It's huge. For me, in my bubble, I see maybe it's... Of course, I have my own echo chamber. I'm seeing a
[01:01:03] Brad Frost: Sure
[01:01:03] Ioana Teleanu: more of that, but that's one thing.
[01:01:06] Ioana Teleanu: And then there's this aspect of, people who are exhausted by corporate, and they just want the alternative path, whatever that is. And there's also the group of people who are exhausted by design, and they want to pick up, a completely different career. But you can't really become an accountant or a lawyer at 40, so many of them tend to have these small projects, small businesses as the backup plan, right?
[01:01:35] Ioana Teleanu: They're not building an entire career. I'm gonna become a doctor now 'cause I'm tired of design. I don't see that, but I see a lot of people who are building small businesses. Maybe they open a restaurant, maybe they wanna go into farming. Farming is a huge joke, or half
[01:01:47] Brad Frost: Hell Yeah,
[01:01:49] Ioana Teleanu: we're tossing around
[01:01:49] Brad Frost: but it's, real. I know, I know, and a bunch of people have done this.
[01:01:54] Ioana Teleanu: Exactly.
[01:01:54] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:01:55] Ioana Teleanu: people are kinda trying to find that combination of stability and but the joy in doing something and they're breaking that path that was, like, for our parents it was, like, ending, retiring from the director VP level, and then that's where you had to arrive at. And a lot of people are detouring.
[01:02:17] Ioana Teleanu: They're just escaping somewhere along the line, either through this, dream that creators sell, or the small business or the hobby project that becomes a world, or just not going into corporate at all. A lot of people are just startup people. there's that group of entrepreneurs, which I respect a lot. Gosh, it's so hard to have startup. Like, that's a very, very stressful and long journey, and it's very hard to get out of it once you're in 'cause there's that kinda, like, sunk cost fallacy and a lot of effort that went into... And they're self-starters that build products and are brave.
[01:02:56] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:02:56] Ioana Teleanu: also huge now. 'Cause also they've been informed by other people who did it, so now the group is as in any pyramid scheme. Like, people at the top make it, and then everybody believes they can also make it, and some of them
[01:03:09] Brad Frost: Here's what you do. Yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah, it is true. there's many different flavors of it, but it also... just more options available that, that is interesting. None of them easy, but at the same time, there is, there's more to and examine and I think that what's nice about having those options is that if you are aware of your-yourself and, and what, gets you excited and, and what your tendencies are and why you enjoy gravitating towards certain things and not towards others, there seems to be more, like, viable options for finding or, or building or shaping a thing that fits to how you're fit rather than kinda going, "I'm gonna go, like, work at a place," or, I don't like the, the startup founder part of it, but there's the, yeah, the, there's the farmer option of that same thing that doesn't require that same level of tap dancing or something.
[01:04:13] Brad Frost: So I don't know. It feels vast and that frankly, like, feels like this moment right now, is that there is this vastness that is also this double-edged sword, that is this like,
[01:04:25] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[01:04:27] Brad Frost: And on one hand, that sounds fucking amazing, and on the other hand, it's like you could do anything, which is, we know this as designers, it's like choice paralysis
[01:04:37] Ioana Teleanu: Exactly.
[01:04:38] Brad Frost: very much a thing.
[01:04:40] Ioana Teleanu: Exactly
[01:04:41] Brad Frost: like, this brings us back to just that really weird and hard navigating the feelings around this. It's like, "Oh my God, I could do anything I want. I could build anything I want. I could design anything I want. I could do this. I could do that." And then you find yourselves just, just mentally splintered into a million different pieces.
[01:05:02] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[01:05:07] Ioana Teleanu: That's 100% something I've noticed both personally but also, around me. It's a paralysis indeed, and it's a paralysis that also kind of feels productive, and that's where it gets really tricky and deceiving 'cause you can do things all day with your LLMs and but you're not really making any progress, but you feel like you're making progress, and it's really deceiving and dangerous in a way.
[01:05:29] Ioana Teleanu: I mean, dangerous if you value getting somewhere. You can also just do
[01:05:33] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:05:34] Ioana Teleanu: take them nowhere, and that's just for the sake of them. But a lot of people are, are paralyzed and also battling this next shiny thing. Like, I start a project, then I get somewhere, I just saw this meme today of this guy who built a product, and then when the time has come to launch it, it's like complete dread and avoiding the launch 'cause it's embarrassing.
[01:05:56] Ioana Teleanu: You have to tell people you've built something and then get users and then someone said, "Okay, I'm gonna just build another feature now." And then there's this ongoing
[01:06:04] Brad Frost: Yep.
[01:06:05] Ioana Teleanu: stream of avoiding and avoiding making something and taking it to the end. And we can all sit in this kind of space of blur and, oh, let's say productive procrastination, where we do
[01:06:20] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:06:21] Ioana Teleanu: yeah,
[01:06:22] Brad Frost: Yeah. And that's again that addictive thing where "Oh, this is comfortable. I could just sit here and build features all day." But I had a number of conversations recently where the people who are building products that are meant to be a vehicle for actually, feeding their families, are gonna learn the hard way that what goes into making those things successful and stick around and viable have very, very, very little to do with the specific feature sets
[01:06:52] Ioana Teleanu: Exactly
[01:06:54] Brad Frost: and, it is all of the other stuff that goes on around it. As like
[01:06:58] Ioana Teleanu: sagt
[01:06:59] Brad Frost: business owner, it's like, goddamn, there's just so much to do that has nothing to do with the actual thing itself. And you almost find it like weird when you are in that place of actually working on the thing that is the thing that you're ostensibly building.
[01:07:18] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[01:07:18] Brad Frost: know, like,
[01:07:19] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[01:07:19] Brad Frost: 'cause most of your effort is spent elsewhere in the, in the work around the work.
[01:07:25] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. around the work. Exactly.
[01:07:28] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:07:29] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[01:07:30] Brad Frost: well so let's fast-forward a year. What would you hope to see fall out the other end of this getting published?
[01:07:40] Ioana Teleanu: I have two let's say positive, images of the future this project. One is having these kinda like community councils or the coming together through talking. So not as much posting or commenting or whatever, but having these social events that could be a network of physical events, or they could be a network of events.
[01:08:10] Ioana Teleanu: But like we're talking now, you and me, now I feel like I know you, right? This is the kinda thing that I want to have people do more, and maybe these could be facilitated, but not overly facilitated 'cause you don't want it to feel artificial or
[01:08:25] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:08:26] Ioana Teleanu: I don't know
[01:08:26] Brad Frost: want, but you want them to be real and, and safe
[01:08:29] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[01:08:29] Brad Frost: and yeah, doing, doing the job, yeah,
[01:08:32] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[01:08:33] Brad Frost: people together. Yeah
[01:08:34] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. So maybe this kind of like concept of a community council that comes together and has conversations and people can express themselves and maybe that turns into a set of, don't know, best practices for working with designers or whatever.
[01:08:51] Ioana Teleanu: So but this is like the level of community. And then the other positive scenario that I'm hoping for is me in a boardroom with important people, telling them that they have to change the way they think about design and designers, and they have to change the way they think about forcing them to use AI to irrelevant outcomes or, kinda like having this impact on a leadership level.
[01:09:18] Ioana Teleanu: I'm seeing a lot of amazing leaders in tech really, I don't wanna demonize them or tell or say that they don't
[01:09:24] Brad Frost: Yeah,
[01:09:25] Ioana Teleanu: They do
[01:09:25] Brad Frost: yeah,
[01:09:26] Ioana Teleanu: also pushed from
[01:09:28] Brad Frost: That,
[01:09:28] Ioana Teleanu: to kinda
[01:09:29] Brad Frost: that's, right. Yeah. They're subjected to the same forces. Yep
[01:09:32] Ioana Teleanu: I want to kinda have people that have some power or stakeholders that can move things in better directions to help them have the data, help them have the reasons to higher up to the CEO or the CPO or whomever, go in their org and say, "Look, we know that this is happening, and this is bad for business because if people are not happy, they're not doing," I don't know, whatever.
[01:10:03] Ioana Teleanu: We can construct it into some sort of narrative or, discourse that has data behind it. And then actually, my pious hope is that there will be tangible impact in way companies structure design orgs and design work. So these two things, community and tech leadership coming together to make the design industry a nicer place to exist in. Yeah, that's more
[01:10:33] Brad Frost: Beautiful
[01:10:34] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[01:10:34] Brad Frost: I love that vision, and I think that you're dead on what-- As soon as you're like, "Yeah, whatever," there's data behind it. That's, that tends to be the stuff that it's like, oh, here's the big chunky numbers and percentages and stuff like that, that, that tends to work at that higher level ...
[01:10:53] Brad Frost: But, but also just back to the real thoughtful design of this endeavor is to arrive at stuff that feels real. You're not pulling numbers out of a hat. All the more reason to do this right so that you're able to sort of come armed with this stuff and it has some real weight to it and can make a difference.
[01:11:13] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:11:14] Ioana Teleanu: 'Cause I
[01:11:15] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:11:15] Ioana Teleanu: you put data behind, if you have the numbers, then you have an argument. and I'm thinking of a very painful example, but it just came to me as you were talking, and I'm gonna put it out there even if it's uncomfortable or triggering. But there's a, I think a difference in between saying, "Oh, there is a war.
[01:11:34] Ioana Teleanu: There is a war happening," and saying, "1,000 people died." It's just a different level of, fidelity, clarity on what we're actually talking about. But if you say 60% of designers don't wanna go to work the next day, then that's more, alarming, I hope,
[01:11:52] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:11:53] Ioana Teleanu: a generic and blurry Yeah.
[01:11:55] Brad Frost: adding your initial lens into kicking this thing off is you had these anecdotes. And what's weird is that we as humans, a-as things get quantified, we, we tend to value it, especially in, at leadership levels. But journalism knows this, better than anybody.
[01:12:13] Brad Frost: you, you telling those anecdotes that then coupled with the data and then cuppy-- coupled with all the other stuff, helps tell the, the, the full story. So, so I love that you're, you're kind of like hitting it from, from all the angles. And I think that that's, that, that is required in order to, to have the impacts that you want to have.
[01:12:33] Brad Frost: It's beautiful
[01:12:34] Ioana Teleanu: Ja. Ja
[01:12:36] Brad Frost: I guess the big call to action here is the Design Wellbeing Index at designwellbeingindex.com, right? Go and give 15 minutes of your time to talk about how you're feeling navigating this moment
[01:12:53] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah.
[01:12:53] Brad Frost: Hell yeah.
[01:12:54] Ioana Teleanu: Share it with your teams,
[01:12:56] Brad Frost: Yes.
[01:12:56] Ioana Teleanu: Design friends, share it with communities you're in. again, I don't wanna have it geographically leaning into one
[01:13:05] Brad Frost: Yes.
[01:13:05] Ioana Teleanu: have the
[01:13:06] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:13:07] Ioana Teleanu: but then we don't hear from people from South Asia or whatever.
[01:13:10] Ioana Teleanu: I wanna
[01:13:11] Brad Frost: Yes
[01:13:12] Ioana Teleanu: as possible, so that's why this kinda like community-based dissemination. if one person from Spain picks it up and then sends it to 30 people from Spain, and then it, it grows, that area grows. And I think a lot of things matter to communicating the data, but this kind of cultural and geographical aspect is something that
[01:13:32] Brad Frost: Yes
[01:13:34] Ioana Teleanu: in very more tangible ways.
[01:13:36] Ioana Teleanu: So that's why I think more people should participate. Yeah. I
[01:13:40] Brad Frost: 100%.
[01:13:41] Ioana Teleanu: I'm optimist.
[01:13:43] Brad Frost: Yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah. I am also really curious 'cause obviously a specific cultural context matters, and there's more individualistic cultures than collective cultures, and we've been talking about just, that tension, already. I'd be very curious to see i-if there are, differences in the data between different communities and cultures and stuff, so yeah.
[01:14:06] Brad Frost: So again, the, the timeline is by the end of, 2026, you'll be sharing some of the results and then taking it forward?
[01:14:15] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. Yeah. This is of course, I work with a very senior and solid and rigorous researcher. I've had the conversation where I told her, "Can I just put all the things into Claude and then have a quick just so people..." And, and she
[01:14:33] Brad Frost: Do you see her eye twitch?
[01:14:35] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah, and so
[01:14:36] Brad Frost: It's
[01:14:38] Ioana Teleanu: I want... I think you can have results but I'm not optimizing for that.
[01:14:42] Ioana Teleanu: So I'm not optimizing for speed and bite-sized, things. Of course, I wanna make them socially shareable just so that they reach more people. But behind them, there needs to be this very human-informed, human critical thought report where we've
[01:14:59] Brad Frost: Jep
[01:14:59] Ioana Teleanu: this with nuanced perspectives, with patience, with attention to all the personal details and sensitive things that people told us.
[01:15:09] Ioana Teleanu: So it kinda takes time, which
[01:15:10] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:15:11] Ioana Teleanu: I feel I don't wanna overpromise. But ho- clearly by the end of the
[01:15:15] Brad Frost: ja
[01:15:15] Ioana Teleanu: have some insights or some themes emerging or things that are easier to interpret or know. And then the things that are harder to know or more nuanced have to be deeply processed by and also reviewed.
[01:15:26] Ioana Teleanu: And so it's, I, it's the first time we do it. It's a pilot from my
[01:15:31] Brad Frost: Ja. Ja
[01:15:32] Ioana Teleanu: I don't really know how the timeline will unfold. But this is where we kinda commit to giving a part of it by
[01:15:39] Brad Frost: Oh, yeah.
[01:15:40] Ioana Teleanu: and earlier next year. Yeah, but
[01:15:42] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:15:42] Ioana Teleanu: see.
[01:15:43] Brad Frost: beautiful. When it does come out, I'm excited to see, what things start emerging.
[01:15:48] Brad Frost: Well, the only other structured part of the show is to share, what music you would like more people to know about
[01:15:57] Ioana Teleanu: Well, I decided that I wanted to answer this question spontaneously. I don't know why. So I, I know you k- kind of briefed me that there's gonna be a question about music, and I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I think I have some things in mind." But just go here and talk from a very heartfelt place. Three weeks ago I was in Berlin, in Germany, at the Berlin Art Week, and there was this exhibition, for a composer, a music maker called Ryuchi Sakamoto. And this is, this was an installation with music and visuals, and it was extremely powerful, and the music that he created during his lifetime is beautiful.
[01:16:39] Brad Frost: Oh
[01:16:40] Ioana Teleanu: I think everyone should listen to it as poetry, and it's gorgeous music.
[01:16:46] Ioana Teleanu: and I do listen to a lot of, don't know, a combination of electro, ambient, kinda, don't know, indie music stuff. but I feel that there are people that have created these almost like, yeah, like music that feels like art in a way. I mean, all music is art, make that argument, but
[01:17:13] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:17:14] Ioana Teleanu: people have kinda played with this material so creatively and they push the boundaries, they push the norms and something comes up that is almost different from music in a way.
[01:17:28] Ioana Teleanu: If that makes...
[01:17:30] Brad Frost: Yeah.
[01:17:30] Ioana Teleanu: It
[01:17:31] Brad Frost: Yeah, yeah,
[01:17:31] Ioana Teleanu: thing
[01:17:32] Brad Frost: not like I know what music is. It's a four-minute-long song that I can listen to and say, "Yeah, that's nice." But it sounds like this is more an experience and
[01:17:41] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah
[01:17:42] Brad Frost: yeah, a high art.
[01:17:44] Ioana Teleanu: So this is one, Ryuki Sakamoto, artist that, I think lived until 2023. But anyhow, I also experienced him in a very artistic setup. And then there's another artist I wanna recommend, and that I listen to a lot. So, it's a band, I think, or... But it's actually a solo project called Headache. And Headache was, my greatest music discovery this year. I was listening to it incessantly. It's very poetic. The lyrics are absolutely brilliant. the music is very beautiful. It's very cinematic. It has this quality of kind of like a daydream or a story that you can... So beautiful, very relatable, very like, I don't know, human truth kind of like thing, Headache.
[01:18:30] Ioana Teleanu: And then, then because I became in love with the music, I started reading about the artist, it's this musician that has created an AI voice that is the lyric
[01:18:42] Brad Frost: Wow.
[01:18:43] Ioana Teleanu: He says that the lyrics are written by this friend of his, but nobody can confirm that that person exists, so there's an entire kind of Reddit world where people speculate is are the lyrics also made with AI, or are they not? I feel AI music is some- a concept that I find to be very tacky and very bad, and I... I despise the idea of listening to AI music. But because I loved Headache so much for such a long time, I have to revisit this kinda like, let's
[01:19:14] Brad Frost: Yeah, that, that bias or assumption or feeling or something, yeah
[01:19:18] Ioana Teleanu: like, a repulsion towards the idea of listening to AI music 'cause it, in a way, defeats the purpose of art, because art is ultimately about hu- suffering and human experience, and why would I wanna see anything produced by AI in this space of art?
[01:19:33] Brad Frost: Ja,
[01:19:33] Brad Frost: ja
[01:19:33] Ioana Teleanu: not productivity, and it's not optimizing life. And so I have a very, let's say, visceral reaction to this concept. But then I love this band. I really love it. It's beautiful music. The lyrics are great. And, and it... Did it make me listen less? No. I still listen to it even after learning that the voice is AI-generated.
[01:19:54] Ioana Teleanu: Or maybe, I don't know trained on a person's voice, and then
[01:19:58] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:19:58] Ioana Teleanu: it. 'Cause they didn't make it, this person that also existed as an artist before,
[01:20:04] Brad Frost: Ja
[01:20:04] Ioana Teleanu: at, the name of Vegan, I think. I
[01:20:07] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:20:08] Ioana Teleanu: We're gonna add that as well.
[01:20:09] Ioana Teleanu: But I wanna invite everyone to listen to Headache. It's an experiment. you're gonna love it, and then you're gonna be angry at you 'cause you love it. It's really interesting.
[01:20:17] Brad Frost: That's fantastic. That's a great pitch. But, but also you're touching on something that is back to the blurriness of it all, which is just like, oh, here's artistry and I know what artistry is, and then here's this new technology that is weaving its way into all sorts of things and blurring the lines.
[01:20:35] Brad Frost: And so we live in this very strange place where we have to, yeah, determine w-what's real and what isn't. I'm with you in that it's artistry is us like receiving another person's perspective or people's perspective, right? it's them sharing themselves, expressing themselves, and we do that in all manner of ways.
[01:21:01] Brad Frost: And these tools that exist can be tools wielded creatively to create and participate, I suppose, in human expression. I think that the, yeah, hit button, receive song, hear song feels lazy and gross. But I do think that just like how Daft Punk and, and other people I feel like, did, just such a service by making these machine worlds feel human. I don't know, maybe, the Headaches of the world, it's like they have enough of an understanding and know where the lines are and where to play with them to make it feel right or, or it's like, oh yeah, that's-- this is quite interesting.
[01:21:52] Brad Frost: so yeah. So here we are
[01:21:54] Ioana Teleanu: Ja. Ja.
[01:21:54] Brad Frost: in the blurry middle world, so
[01:21:56] Ioana Teleanu: Yes, exactly.
[01:21:58] Brad Frost: Amazing. Well, very last thing, where can people follow along with you, and keep up to date with this project, but also just you in general?
[01:22:10] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah. So I used to lead with Instagram, but even though it's still my social, my biggest social channel, I don't feel like I'm most myself there. but on Instagram you can find me as ux_goodies, which is a name that has aged, and I don't know what I should do with it 'cause UX is not a thing anymore, so should I change it to
[01:22:28] Brad Frost: Oh, it totally is a thing.
[01:22:30] Ioana Teleanu: is, goodies is also silly and it was great when I started and, like 10 years ago, but now am I represented by this concept of goodies? And so it's really something I keep going around, 'cause whenever I go in the community and tell people I need to rebrand myself, they're like, "No, you're ux_goodies.
[01:22:48] Ioana Teleanu: We love you." And I'm like, "Okay, what the hell do I do now?" if it's not broken, don't fix it 'cause people love it and they know me like that. So it's an entire internal conundrum around should I still continue as ux_goodies? But you can find me as ux_goodies for now. on LinkedIn I'm also pretty active with my name.
[01:23:07] Ioana Teleanu: and, I love being connected there 'cause on LinkedIn, I don't know, things are very serious and, but I try to make it
[01:23:13] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:23:13] Ioana Teleanu: them less serious, but it, they're still serious. trying to, be more present on X I always refused X and Twitter because it was a US first platform. I thought that I can't even be on the same time zone posting and, but now I realize that a lot of the interesting design conversations and, the frontier of design is most active on X. So whenever I go there I'm like, feel totally an imposter as a designer, and it's just, really hurting my self-esteem, but I keep doing it because it also inspires me and it pushes me to think people are makers. Oh my God, these people are incredible makers. And it's, it's been really... I think that's where it's at if you wanna grow your, let's say, I wouldn't say just aesthetic, but your understanding of what good design is.
[01:24:04] Ioana Teleanu: that's mostly happening on Twitter. So I'm trying to be more present there with my name as well as a handle. And I'm writing a newsletter, it's called AI Goodies. Which is also not something I'm particularly happy with now. I'm also... I've been trying to rebrand it as well. Like, I arrived at it's gonna be Intentional Futures. But then Intentional Futures felt like, is this about design? It didn't say anything. And then I was like, Designing Tomorrow or Tomorrow's, but then I felt like that's too generic. So I'm stuck. Like, to your point, like, I can be anything.
[01:24:37] Brad Frost: Yep.
[01:24:38] Ioana Teleanu: What do
[01:24:38] Brad Frost: Yep
[01:24:39] Ioana Teleanu: am? What do I become? what do I choose if I can any name?
[01:24:42] Ioana Teleanu: how do I make this decision? Anyway, I write a newsletter called AI Goodies. I also put a lot of heart and attention into... It's mostly about design careers, what's coming next, how the shape of our work is changing, stuff like that. And of course, the Design Wellbeing Index is my most important project now, and that's me in a nutshell.
[01:25:08] Brad Frost: Wonderful. Yeah, all sorts of good things. But also, yeah, again, getting back into, navigating that terrain is just very difficult in your identity and how you present yourself and what's true. it's freaking hard
[01:25:23] Ioana Teleanu: Yeah,
[01:25:24] Brad Frost: but awesome. But I mean, I think above all whatever the name, you're putting good stuff out into the world.
[01:25:29] Brad Frost: you're helping people think deeper. You're giving some practical advice as well as pushing on these, more human qualities that we're all experiencing. And so that's-- it's very much appreciated. so thank you. Keep it up.
[01:25:43] Ioana Teleanu: Thank you so much. Thank you for
[01:25:44] Brad Frost: Yeah
[01:25:46] Ioana Teleanu: like, I really felt like I made a new friend m-
[01:25:49] Brad Frost: Ah, yeah.
[01:25:50] Ioana Teleanu: you. I
[01:25:50] Brad Frost: same. Same
[01:25:52] Ioana Teleanu: this will kind of like surface throughout people listening, this vibe that, I really had a great time talking to you. Yeah
[01:25:58] Brad Frost: Aw, I appreciate it. Right back at ya. All right. Well, thanks so much for being here, and thanks everybody for listening. All right, take care. Bye.
[01:26:07] Ioana Teleanu: Bye
[01:26:07]
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