Inside Adobe’s mission to build more inclusive tech, with TB Bardlavens - listener Q&A edition

TB: 00:00

My work is not about giving someone an unfair advantage, it’s not about grievances, it’s not about helping some and ignoring others. Through the lens of product equity, I focus on product. I'm focused on cultural attunement. Like those things are absent of whatever is happening in Washington. And so that's where me and my extension of my team focused deeply on because we know at the end of the day, our focus is our customers.

TS: 00:29

Welcome to Made For Us, the show where we explore how intentional design can help build a world that works better for everyone. I'm your host, Tosin Sulaiman. My guest this week is TB Bardlavens, Director of Product Equity at Adobe. If you're thinking, what exactly is product equity and why does it matter? Keep listening for some answers. We'll also be talking about Firefly, Adobe's suite of generative AI models, and why they decided to take a different approach from other companies and prove that generative AI can be deployed ethically.

This is also our first ever audience Q &A. TB will be answering questions submitted by some of our newsletter subscribers and also a former guest from season one. If you'd like the chance to pose your questions to upcoming guests, then sign up for the newsletter at madeforuspodcast.beehiiv.com. You'll find the link in the show notes. Now here's the interview.

TB: 01:26

I am TB Bardlavens. Personally, I am a black gay man from the South and I have been in tech for a little bit of time across a few different areas. But these days I lead the product equity team at Adobe. And for those who are wondering what’s product equity, how we define it is also our vision, which is a state in which every person, regardless of human difference, can access and harness the power of digital products without harm, bias, or limitation.

TB: 01:54

So a lot of our work is focused on really understanding how do we think about some of those CSR-like pillars that Adobe has around creativity for all, Adobe for all and technology that transforms and we ask the question, how do we actually do this through the lens of our products? And that's my team's job is to look across all one hundred and thirty-seven of Adobe’s products and figure out how do we do these things more equitably, more accessibly and just really understand how we make it better for people.

TS: 02:25

That sounds fascinating and I am going to ask you lots more questions about that throughout this conversation. But I wanted to go back a little bit. So before Adobe, before getting into tech, how close is what you're doing now to your original career ambitions if you look back to your earlier years?

TB: 02:44

Yeah, I think it aligns, but also it doesn't. It's like a waving path. But I think the thing that has been consistent is sort of my passion around things. And so my background is the hybrid of both design and product management. I remember my first job was at Microsoft and my manager at the time told me that hey, you operate pretty much like a PM and he said it almost as an insult, well, not really as insult, but as a critique but it actually was a huge compliment and it was funny because I actually built a lot of strong relationships because of it.

But what happened over time was I met an amazing human who is now one of my best friends, Antoinette Carol, who is the CEO of Creative Reaction Lab and the pioneer of equity centered community design, and a bunch of other things. And I met her years ago and I realized that a lot of things she talked about just around like diversity, equity, and inclusion, I was like, these are lot of things that I think about. And that started a journey of me sort of exploring the topic through the lens of organizational culture, change management, things like that. But then, you know, honestly, two things happened. One is the market started being saturated with a bunch of people all talking about the same thing. And I'm like, I'm just one of many. I don't really want to be one of 15 other design leaders or whoever else in the industry talking about organizational culture and diversity and so on and so forth.

TB: 03:50

So I started thinking more deeply about like the craft of design and our responsibility and power and things like that. And I just thought about like, oh, product development is actually broken. It's actually done in such a way that we aren't meeting the needs of humans who use our products, and we see it and feel it every day. And so that led me down this pathway of really thinking more about it, which when I went to Meta and everything happened where America woke up to racism existing. And this was, of course, during the time of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and just the harm that was happening, particularly to the black community, that was showing up in the surface finally.

And at the time, Meta created these pillars around social justice and I ened up taking on and being tapped to support racial justice through the lens of product, which really introduced me to a whole other world of things and so that that work sort of kicked off the foundation that became the product equity team at Metta. And then I left. I actually accepted a job at Twitter the same week that Musk was joining the board.

TB: 05:27

And I up sending a message to the hiring manager and the recruiter and I told them I can't join the company anymore. And they're like, oh it's fine. He's gonna be on the board is no issue. It's gonna be great. And I told them, there are very few people I'm diametrically opposed to. Elon is one of them. I can't join this company. And I knew in my gut there was something more that he was trying to do at the time. And just so happened a week or two later, he decided not to join the board. He then decided to try to buy the company and then the one of the first teams that he cut was actually one of the teams that I would have been leading. So my friends say, hey, that was just the ancestors watching out for you, which I'm like, thank you, ancestors.

But yeah, that led me to Adobe. I met a great person named Matt May. He’s the one who asked me the question of, do you want to be my manager? And I was like, what does that mean? And we had these conversations that led me to where I am today. But the crux of it all was this really big motivation around like, I just want to change the way we build products. Like I want to change the way digital products are built and how they impact particularly historically under-invested and marginalized communities, and actually systemically under-invested and marginalized because it's still happening.

TS: 06:38

I listened to a panel that you were on, I think it was South by Southwest, where you talked about making this tangible for people, helping them understand what's in it for them. How do you do that?

TB: 06:49

I think it's two ways, right? The important thing about this work is that you always have to consider the business value of things. And a lot of people hate talking about the business side of equity work because they're like, it cheapens it or like it removes the humanness of it. And it's like, but you kind of have to do that. And how I make it tangible is thinking about it at different levels. And so one level one is let's just understand, like for example, through the lens of accessibility. Let's just understand human difference through the lens of accessibility. If you're wearing glasses right now, you are disabled. You have visual impairment. If you take those glasses off, you cannot see or you can't see as well as someone who has full 2020 vision. And so if you start to understand that we as humans enter and exit disability throughout our entire life, and it becomes more consistent as we get older, then you start to think less about well, this is just some checks and balances and more about, this is actually how people have to navigate life.

TB: 07:52

I take that a step further and I think about like something I've been talking to folks about lately, especially on the design side is like really trying to make real the ‘build for one, scale to many’ approach. And so the example I've been using is let's take an amputee, a person who's missing an arm. A person who's missing an arm using a digital device could be similar to a parent holding their child and having to juggle their child plus whatever they're doing on their device. It could also be connected to a person who, let's say, broke their arm and they just don't have, they have temporary non-functioning in that one part of their body. This also is connected to people who are doing multiple things at one time. They're multitasking or they're, let's say, using the device on the go where they're trying to pay attention to what's on their phone while also maybe they're in transit home or to work or something like that.

TB: 08:40

And so this one use case of thinking about a person who is missing an arm and all the connected use cases that come with it, all of a sudden it opens you up to think about, there's modality issues here. There's like reach and dexterity issues here. There's all these things that we can start to focus on. And so what I try to do is connect all these pieces when it comes to equity to real life. And some of it means having to really push hard on the potential harm that can come out of things.

I remember when I was at Meta, there was an idea to create a feature where anybody on the platform can create memes from Facebook. And I pushed back very hard on this and the reason why I landed with folks was because it's, you're thinking about the creative approach to this, like, look at how people can express. What I'm thinking about is today we know that people use misogynistic, xenophobic, racist memes to attack people. Like everyone is seeing sort of like the Michelle Obama and the monkey meme and things like that.

TB: 09:42

So imagine one, people are just sharing it on the platform. Now they're creating it on a platform. How much more harm can it cause the people, but also the business? Because now you're attaching harm directly to the business. And that's also a problem. So when we talk about these types of topics, particularly around making product equity real, I try to point to both the human side as well as the business side, as well as connecting to what is your experience today and how can your experience connect to this community of experiences?

And so all these things are sort of like a range of conversations that we have. And I tell my team, you know, sometimes it's about elevation. If you're talking to people who are like executing on the work, that human side of things becomes really important. If you're talking to, let's say folks who are between senior manager and senior director, then it might be more about having a conversation at a balance between 50 % human, 50 % business. But senior director and above, it's 100 % business. It's what is the impact to the business? What is the impact to the bottom line? What is the way in which we can penetrate markets, scale markets, drive innovation? And so being able to have that nuance of a conversation across these different communities of people is super important as well. And so it's always me having to learn how to rethink how to tell the story and tell the narrative to ensure that it's going to land with whoever we're trying to land it with.

TS: 11:10

I wanted to talk about Adobe and why product equity is a priority for Adobe and why now.

TB: 11:15

I would say like all other companies, Adobe made the decision to really thinking about what was happening, particularly in the U S and what was the business's responsibility to our customers, to the creative community, to citizens of this world who are attached to our products in some way. So they earmarked a head count really for this particular role. But they didn't hire for it for a couple of years. They actually sat on the role for a while.

And what I really appreciate was their thinking was, hey, we want to make sure we hire the right person, not just rush and hire someone and put them in place. And so when, like I mentioned, Matt, he asked me that question, I didn't understand what it meant. They didn't even have a job description for this role yet. And so it was through conversations with leaders and such that we got that job description. Like it was the first time I looked at something, I was like, this is everything I do. Like it's a balance of design and product management and strategy and innovation is all the things that I do. Like what are my superpowers? And that felt really great. But then over time, like when I joined the company, I joined in July and I told them, don't expect anything out of us for the rest of this year. We're gonna focus on defining, on understanding what is our, like our role, what are we doing, how we execute, we're gonna identify opportunities to engage.

TB: 12:42

We're gonna be very methodical about how we approach this, because I want to make sure that we deliver on the promises that we make. And so what that has grown into over now almost three years is us being able to have a huge amount of impact on Firefly, us building huge sort of external partnerships with companies like Delta and Blue Cross Blue Shield. And so like, how do we leverage enterprise partnerships to like fill in some of these particularly AI gaps that exist in the world? And part of it started with let's just understand what's there and who's willing to partner and what that partnership could look like.

And so like I would say that product equity as a priority is a huge priority for Adobe design, particularly in for my SVP, but also it's a huge priority because of the business implications of not doing the work. And so what I've found is as I have more conversations, like right now there's, we're running on like the European Accessibility Act and what's gonna happen with that and a bunch of other accessibility laws are coming in place. Well, we're the ones who helping really land what that could look like. What's the strategy around this? What are the outcomes we're looking to drive towards? How do we build cultural change across the company? All those pieces. And so we're finding ways where we're connecting with high business value in what we're gonna drive and make sure those are always connected to what are the company outcomes? What are the company objectives and how are we making sure we can say we're driving each of those objectives in our unique way.

TS: 14:12

So you mentioned Firefly. I wanted to talk about some of your big wins. That's one of them. Can you tell us a little bit about Firefly, how it's different from other image models, and how was your team involved in the project?

TB: 14:26

So what makes Firefly different is first is what we call commercially safe. And the reason why it's commercially safe, and a lot of other businesses can't say that, is because we don't scrape the internet, right? And we're leveraging our own stock content. We have probably over half a billion images in Adobe Stock. And so we leverage those to feed into the model and create the model. We're also working on building out different approaches to what we call enrich the data set through other means, through partnerships and such, like I was mentioning earlier.

The other thing is that we're deploying Firefly in such a way that it's not so much about celebrating the creation, but creatives. And what that means is to really think about and focusing on how do we help support creative processes, not replace creatives.

And that's super important. A lot of AI products are looking at how do you replace humans in many ways? And while that is important, you may have to replace some humans here and there. We are a company that has been built on and built with creatives. So creating something that then automatically like cuts them out of the mix is antithetical to our entire business model. And so how do we build in a way that supports creative process that drives innovation that reduces, let's say repeat tasks with generative expand, for example. Having an image and be able to expand it out like that reduces cost on businesses that need to be able to iterate in different ways for campaigns, for marketing or for social media and things like that. So there's a lot of value there.

TB: 16:00

The way in which we engaged with the team initially was just to say, are we thinking about these things? And say, how are we thinking about it? And then what I did was is I literally did an analysis with one of the PMs on my team. We just looked across the market and said, and we just ran a series of prompts and there were social identity based prompts and we saw what the outputs were and we compared our outputs and our first model to those to say, are we at least on par with what other businesses are doing? And these are things like a portrait of a nurse or a portrait of a farmer, things that can generate potentially stereotypical images, but also an image of a deaf person, you know, things like that, where we're looking at how we displaying disability and other differences.

And then we started to say, okay, here's where we have the biggest gaps, where we need to fix. One, we have a ton of nurses, but all of them are white women. Why is that? And they're all white brunettes. How do we fix this? And so part of it was, how do we bring in more people of broader races and ethnicities, but also just something as simple as we have a bunch of brunettes, what about blondes and redheads? Maybe they have pink hair too, like how do we understand that type of diversity, but also body size was an issue. How do we make sure they're not all slim, they have different, like, so really how do we get from this really manufactured view of humanity to something that feels more real and more consistent with our everyday experiences? And so what we really anchored on was how do we ensure we have accurate and respectful representation of people and cultures? And that includes cultural representation of not only people, but objects, buildings, and locations.

TB: 17:48

One thing that's also different about Firefly than like Gemini and other generative models is that we don't train on historical context. We don't train on public figures. And so if you're, let's say, going to look for, you know, George Washington sailing on, you know, the river of whatever, the system doesn't understand who George Washington is. And it's super important because it's not our job to sort of reflect the world in the sense of history and all those things is simply to give people some tools to be able to work through their own creative processes. And so they can add that context. They can add to those things as a part of their creation. But like we shouldn't be dictating what a Viking should look like. Vikings can be white, black, blue or green. Right. Let's just say it's a Viking and you look for exactly the type of Viking you want. If you want a black Viking, you should be able to prompt and search for it, but we're not imposing anything on you. We're not saying, there's a political view here. It's simply we're reflecting people and cultures as accurately as possible. And then for things like historical context and public figures and such, it's really about the creative and how they want to display them. And then we'll generate things as close as possible, but they have the controls to make it into what they want it to be.

TS: 19:05

That's super interesting. And I wonder how much you were influenced by looking at other companies had done, decisions made by other companies.

TB: 19:14

Yeah, I mean, I know there were a ton of conversations around like, hey, do we go this way or do we that way? Do we follow behind what these companies are doing or do we do this other thing? And what I really appreciate is every level of leadership all the way up to, know, Chantanu as the CEO, they were like, no, we want to do this right. And we want to make sure that we can show that you can be successful while doing it the right way, without stealing from people, without taking providence from people, without their consent, right?

Because privacy is important and you should like, your data is something that you own. We should not be taking that from you. The decisions that were made were really centered on we don't steal, we don't take, right? We pay people for their work. We ask for permission. We make sure we're doing things the right way. And I think that's one of big things I appreciate about like, there's a lot of things we need to fix. There's a lot of gaps we still need to fill, but that one decision all the way up to the top of leadership saying we aren't gonna do this the way everyone else will, was great. And I know there's a lot of temptation to try because our quality wasn't hitting the same as others for a while. But then we fine-tuned and fine-tuned and the research science team did a ton of work to really land where it is today. And so it is proof that you can actually have an ethical deployment of generative AI. And so that's like a super proud thing that I can look at and talk about.

TS: 20:41

So this is a great time to bring in one of our first few audience questions. So here's the question.

Speaker Three: 20:47

My Ida Persson and I work as a social impact designer. And I'm really curious to know, as a global company, how does Adobe tailor its strategies and equity initiatives to different regions across the world?

TB: 21:04

Yeah, I will say that it's hard. I'll start there. And what we're trying to do, and this is actually a part of our data enrichment strategy right now, is to really look at things more globally. My team is relatively small. It's bigger than most product equity teams, but still relatively small in the grand scheme of things. And across it is PM design, research and program management, and hopefully engineering soon. And so like, we have to figure out where we focus.

So right now, what we do is we're looking at, where is the company really focused on expansion or investing globally? And then how do we look at where we can be most useful there? So some of work we did was, like, for example, in India, we're like, hey, let's just do some debiasing work in India as a start, and it's all community-based. So what is it like to work with community members in the region? What does it look like for us to consider different nuances of cultural expressions and then how do we sort of bring those learnings back in?

TB: 22:07

So with our first debiasing work we did in India, we were focused on the global south generally speaking, but we said we want to start with working women in India. And what does that look like? And then some of it was understanding the difference between, you know, working women in India in rural areas versus urban areas. Like, for example, if you're working in, let's say a factory in urban areas, it's much more of a competition of who can produce quickly, who can do like the most work versus in rural areas, the focus is really on community. Like let's work together, let's build together. It's a moment for like specifically these women that come together and to have conversations and commune with other folks in their community. You know, there's a bunch of other things that come in those different nuances that we learned.

And so I think the biggest thing for us is figuring out not just how do we think about or expand into these different regions, but how do we connect to community in meaningful ways and make sure it's reciprocal? And think that's the hard part. And that takes a lot of money. And so we're kind of doing it one by one, one region at a time, one gap at a time to be able to like understand more broadly. And the hope would be like we can scale more and more as we learn more, we can do more research, we can do more engagements and things like that. But yeah, international work is tough, particularly when you think about equity and how it changes based on what region you're in.

TS: 23:30

Absolutely. So the second question, this is actually from one of our season one guests.

Speaker Four: 23:36

Hi, my name is Shariff and I'm the co-founder of Reframd. Reframd create inclusive eyewear for a diverse world. My question is regarding AI. With AI-generated content becoming more prevalent, how should designers and companies approach issues of ownership and credit for AI-assisted creations?

TB: 23:58

Yeah, so ownership and provenance is hard. I know that Adobe founded the Content Authenticity Initiative, which is an initiative that has partnerships across multiple industries from digital photography, Canon and folks, to social media like Meta, to all kinds of other companies. And the goal is to make it easier to identify AI-generated materials. And so right now, it's still tough. You have to go and submit it to a website, and then you'll get the output to let you know if it's real or not and where it came from.

Like I know they're even trying to figure out are there ways to get even more specific on what parts of the image is generated versus not. But a lot of the work they're trying to do is to bring it closer to the creative's hands or just the layperson's hands to say, anyone hopefully can start to check to see is this real or not? Like that's one part of it. And then the other part around like particularly ownership and stuff, I think there's a lot of choice here.

TB: 25:04

For example, if you're a creative who's like, want to make sure none of my art is used for AI, there are ways to look at terms in agreement. There's toggles that you can flip off in different apps and such across a wide, not just Adobe, but across a wide range of ones that say, hey, I don't want you training on my stuff. Now mind you, Adobe does not train on people's personal creative work. I just want to make sure that we're clear on that. But there is a certain level of power you have in being able to say, do or don't want my content used.

The really hard part is outside of like looking at odd styles, it's really hard sometimes to see if something has been taken from another person's work or not. And it's because like at the end of the day, Gen.ai is a collage. It is a collage of multiple levels of data points being like coming together to create a thing based on your prompt and that influence can come from a lot of different places. So step one is to protect your own work through making sure you're understanding what can or can't be trained on based on the different products you use and making sure that if you see that your work is being used in some way, your style is being used in some way, you find mechanisms to reach out to that company and call them out and say, hey, you're using my stuff, you need to stop.

You know, like I would say Adobe has a really good system right now of people who are contributing to Adobe Stock, particularly AI images, we're reviewing those, making sure they don't have other people's work wrapped into it. And so I think that that's sort of the level of vigilance right now that has to happen until there's actual policies and regulation around it, which will then help protect people even more. It's just that it's still the Wild West today. You gotta think, we really started this journey globally, truly only a couple of years ago as it relates to gen AI in it’s application to everyday people's lives.

TS: 27:00

So we're going to come back to a couple more questions from the audience later, but I had a question for you about your team. What would you say have been the biggest challenges in building and establishing your team within Adobe?

27:13

I would say it's really hard when a lot of the work that you do is not mandated by anybody. So no one has to work with us right now. No one's really required to outside of a subset of like a subgroup of people. And so that means that everything has to be sort of on their terms. we have a lot of our work is lead by influence.

You know, many times I have to reiterate multiple times, we are not the decision maker here. We're the consultants. We help shine a light on things, but ultimately you all have to make the decisions. You all, many times being leadership or product or design or whomever is the key stakeholder in that scenario. And so the biggest challenge is really being able to understand what are the priorities of each of these teams. Again, there's one hundred and thirty-seven different products. And so we can only focus on a very small subset of those. And then of those, understanding what are their different priorities, where are they focused, where are they going? And then saying, hey, how do we help from there?

TB: 28:22

And I use an example, I use the metaphor that Maria Yap, she's the VP of digital imaging. She's been leading up Photoshop and Lightroom for years. She gave me this metaphor of a house. And she was like, look, if you come to me, while we're, let's say like changing the roof of the house and you want to ask me about installation, I'm probably not going to listen. But if you come to me where we're changing, let's say the siding of the house where we're ripping it all down anyway, so the installation is right there, then I might be more willing to talk.

And so that's been the approach that we've had to take was understand these different teams' priorities and where they are in the journey and then saying, how is it what we're hoping to drive aligned with where they're already going? And then how do we bring these things together in a way that feels meaningful and well-resourced? And honestly, how are they willing to give up some portion of the power to drive the strategy in a meaningful way? And how do we build trust around?

TS: 29:22

Okay, so I want to move to a topic that is understandably on many people's minds, because I got a variation of this question from three different people. So one of them is Giselle Mota, Chief of Product Inclusion at ADP, and she had this.

Speaker Five: 29:39

Hi, TB. My question is the following. So in light of the current US administration positioning and redefining terms such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and even accessibility, such that brands are even rescinding certain programs and commitments, how do you think that this will impact the products that those same brands and companies create?

TB: 30:08

I think it depends on what they actually do internally. And I actually had a mentee reach out to me recently to ask for help on something related to an employment decision they want to make. Like, should I go with this company or not? And what I said to them and what I've thought about more deeply is a lot of these companies have to make these decisions because they have so much money on the line, right?

Like I'll use Google as example. You know, Google removing its DEI stuff is them protecting $12 billion of a business. Whether it's right or wrong, they literally could lose $12 billion instantly if they don't remove like some of the DEI callouts on their website and such, right? And that means jobs. You know, that means a lot of people will lose their job because of it. And so on one side is like, this really sucks. And other side is like, I understand some of the business decisions that have to be made to protect the business by extension, the employees, but it's not everyone, right? Like I don't think Target has a ton of government contracts when they pull their DEI stuff, right? I don't think there's a few, like Meta does not have a ton of government contracts when they pull their DEI stuff.

TB: 31:25

But I will also say that a lot of these DEI commitments have been more related to employees than it has been products. And while we know it does have a direct impact on product as well, because you need people who can think in different ways, I think that like there might, at least I'll say the approach that I'm taking. My work is not about giving someone an unfair advantage. My work is not about grievances. It's not about helping some and ignoring others. It's not about any of that. And on top of that, it's not centered on hiring. It's not centered on HR.

So through the lens of product equity, I am focused on product. I am focused on the global use of our products. I'm focused on the representation of a global community on our products. I'm focused on cultural attunement. I'm focused on cultural responsiveness. I think about cultural representation. Those things are absent of whatever is happening in Washington. And so that's where me and my extension of my team focused deeply on because we know at the end of the day, our focus is our customers.

Now that doesn't mean I don't care about all the other DEI things that are being sort of shut down. That doesn't mean I don't care about what's happening with the ERGs and other things, but I have to be keenly focused on where we have the most impact and the most power to shift than not.

TB: 32:48

I do think that some people are looking for different terms because of what's happening with DEI. Like fairness is something that has popped up a lot. I'll say right now, I don't like fairness. It's too vague because you can't talk about fairness without talking about power. Who are we saying is being treated fairly and who are we saying is being treated unfairly? What is the benchmark of fair? then like, so for example, we say, hey, we want to make sure that what's fair is that everyone has an opportunity to get this job. Cool. Who is the decision maker of what is actually fair? Is fairness that we have one of each person or as fairness that everyone got a chance. Like where do you place the fairness aspect? And so I don't really love that as a framing. I don't know what we think about what we move to. I don't know what the new language will be.

I do think that it's something where we do have to take a conscious look of what are these companies potentially doing internally? And that's sort of what I gave the feedback I gave to the mentee was I know what they had to do externally based on their business, right, and protecting their business. But internally, are they still living their values? Are they still focused on these areas? Are they still investing in this way? And maybe they don't call it DEI, maybe they call it engagement. But engagement and let's say fair hiring still means that on some level you have to take into consideration the human condition and all the things that that represents.

And so the real question is, are these businesses completely removing any human consideration or are they taking steps to protect the business and while internally still operating generally the same as they always have? It sucks that you have to see this capitulation that happens, but when you have power at the highest level with this much control, you gotta take steps. And we as employees, as consumers have to also take steps based on what we believe is right or wrong. And so it doesn't mean that it makes like it gives these companies a pass and you just stick with them. You still have a decision to make yourself. And so that's kind of how I think about it. And I've been approaching it as of late and I know. We're only at a month in my thoughts might change in another six months.

TS: 35:03

That was an incredibly nuanced answer, so thank you for that. So I wanted to share our final listener question. This is from Geraldine Worry, a futurist.

Speaker Six: 35:11

Hi, I'm Geraldine Wharry. I'm a fashion futurist based in London. And my question to you is that as a futurist, I'm struck by how creative tools shape not just what we can make, but who gets to envision possible futures. And given Adobe's scale and influence, how do you see product equity evolving over the next five to 10 years to ensure that historically overlooked communities aren't just users, but actual shapers of tomorrow's creative technologies? Thanks very much for answering my question.

TB: 35:45

I mean, that's not a future thing, that's a right now thing. know, everything that we do is going to be centered in community on some level, right? Like I mentioned about the de-biasing within India, like we could have just sent some researchers there, got some insights and came back. No, we connected with people in the community to make sure we not only build trust, but it was reciprocal trust. And we worked with them to define what reciprocation looks like, you know?

I think about Adobe Express. You know, we did work first working to understand how caregivers of people, both caregivers and individuals themselves, of people who have developmental or cognitive disabilities, learn, express, and how do we potentially make that easier for them? We actually did some work in Ohio, working, partnering with the a diversity and design organization, and we basically worked with a bunch of black high school students in Ohio.

And we wanted to learn about what is their first run experience like when it comes to these tools. Like, and not only that, but how to even think about creativity. They were doing highly creative things. They're like, I don't see myself as a creative. I'm just doing it for this thing. Or I'm just like trying to make whatever. And I'm like, no, you're a creative and this is a creative process. And so our work is rooted in community and that's not a future thing. That's a right now thing.

TB: 37:00

I think that what I'm hoping that our work will influence is a redefinition of innovation because I've talked about this a lot. We define innovation many times and we see it all the time is, you know, it's first to market. is, you know, hide whatever you're doing until you're ready to launch it then do a big show about it. Like it's all these things that are sort of hidden, which means you don't actually get the type of feedback you need.

I think that more companies that sort of do this targeted universalism approach are like built for one scale to many. The co-creation with community, the reciprocation with community, the engagement with community, like all these pieces lead to more equitable products. And we don't have to wait ten or fifteen years to do that and figure it out. We can do it today. Like we can shift pre-existing user research functions inside different companies to be more community-based. And it really only takes a couple of extra steps.

TS: 37:55

So we've covered a lot of ground today. So thank you so much for being willing to take questions from the audience. If there's one thing that you'd like listeners to take away from the conversation, what would that be?

TB: 38:07

I think the one thing that I would want folks to know is, in fact, it kind of ties in with the last thing I said around community. I'll say a few things, actually. One, I watched this video once that talked about how most regimes or kingdoms end between two hundred and twenty and two hundred and fift years. And actually, I Googled it because I was like, hmm, is this really true, like on average? And it's true. And America is at, this year is two hundred and forty-nine.

So what that means is that when July fourth hits and we're two hundred and forty-nine years old, it's the recognition that a lot of what we're seeing happening in the US but also across the world are two things. One, it's a reaction to the world changing and evolving with people who are not yet comfortable with that evolution. And two is that change in is inevitable and the question just becomes, is it a positive or negative, right?

TB: 38:59

And so when I think about like, okay, America is coming by this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary soon, and that's usually when there's huge changes in countries and regimes, then let's just pray that it's a positive change, right? Like it could be that it takes a year, four years or twelve years, I don't know. But in the midst of it all, it's focusing on community and the support system that's close to you and really anchoring on that versus what's happening in the broader world, not to be ignorant of it, but to say, this can't rule my everyday life is going to be so important.

The battle is for resilience right now. The battle is for tenacity. The battle is for perseverance. And that means that we have to navigate through these things while being aware of the world, while also not being sucked in by it. And it's tough. It's so hard. It's easier said than done. But if we just recognize that this is a moment in time and it will pass and that the thing that will help us get through this community, then it will help a ton of people just kind of take a deeper breath. And that's just all I want us to do. I just want us to take a deep breath and drink some water.

TS: 40:11

A fantastic note to end on. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

TB: 40:14

Thank you. I appreciate you.

TB: 40:21

Thanks to TB Bardlavens for a fascinating conversation. And thanks to Ida, Shariff, Giselle and Geraldine for their brilliant questions. I hope the conversation has given you a deeper understanding of what product equity is all about and provided a few insights into the intersection of design, technology and social impact. Why not share this with a friend, colleague or someone who'd find it useful. And please reach out on LinkedIn or Instagram to let us know what you thought about the episode. We're at Made For Us Podcast. I'm Tosin Sulaiman, thanks for joining me on Made For Us.