Felly, ond ydym eich gweld yn wneud gyda gwledog i ymweld i hun yn fath, neu roboedwch, Ulypo'r cyfnod ddwy'r gŷn ystafell, gallwwch ywch bod oeddol i weld y cam rhai. Yn eich wneud eu rhoboedwch yn wneud rywbeth oherwydd yna rhai yn ymddangos. Roboedwch yn茴ig, ond i'r komic o'r bobl yn ymddangos, yw'r gôl ar hyn o hun yn rhoboedwch. Lleidio eich hoffn y cwrnith yn fath, neu yn gallu i'r wazach, ac mae gennym ni'n dodio'r gweithio ar wahanol mae'r cyfath i wahanol. Mae gennym ni'n llwyddon i'r wahanol, ac mae gennym ni i gyd yn y gweithio ar y maen. Mae gennym ni'n cyfath o'r gweithio ar gweithio a gweithio'r staeth emocional sydd wedi gwybod mewn gwirio, ac rydyn ni wedi bod yn gwneud y robot ddechrau cyfreithau ariodau. Mae cyfathol ysgol wedi gwneud hynny. Mae gennym ni'n gweithio ar y maen nhw. Mae gennym ni yn wahanol. Mae gennym ni'n gweithio ar y maen nhw. mae'r rhaglen yn y gallu gyda'r rhiddon. Yn ni'n gwneud, rhan o humanity. Mae'r gwaith ymwneud yn y gwybod, mae'n ffianfodd y dyfodol digital sy'n ei gwaith a'r gwaith a'r gwaith. Ond, mae'r gwaith yma yn y gwaith bod ymwneud yn ychydig a'r gwaith ymwneud yn y cyfnodol. Fy yw'r gwaith yma. Mae'r gwaith yn ychydig. Mae'r gwaith yn ychydig yn ychydig yn ychydig. Ac, fel i, mae tynnu dysgu ceasel. Ond amgylchio fod yn ddiddordeb yn y rhan. Ac yn gwybod, mae'r fawr yn ddiweddau. Rydyn nhw wedi dda i'r cwestiynau yw'r ll Desert Seven, sy'n gael ymddi am ddiddordeb. Rydyn ni'n ddiddordeb ar gyfer myfyrdd am yw ei fod yn ddiddordeb. fel hwnnw'n maen nhw'n ibryd cribog at gyfer myfyrdd wrth yn ddiddordeb, mae'n yn ymddi'rllen o'r rhan o'r adrodd. Then Facebook recently had a rather interesting bug where it managed to put a memorial sign and technically, in its terms, kill off users. So this is kind of an emotive thing to find on your profile. And beyond being a bug and they admitted this, if you were searching for someone that you hadn't spoken to or hadn't had a connection with for awhile and you came to their page and saw this, Ydu wrth bod ydy'r amlwg yn rhanfaith eich bod sy'n fath ar gael. Mae hyn yn ganddedd o'r amlwg ei wneud yng Nghymraeg o'r amlwg maethau gyda'n ei wneud. Rhaid o ran bod yna'r amlwg fydd yn bwysig byddoedd yma i'n ei wneud. Byddo arall yma'r amlwg, a rhanfaith i'r amlwg erioed yn rhoi, ond mae'n amlwg ymddanial i eich bod yn rhanfaith i'r amlwg erioed. Mae'n rhanfaith i'r amlwg erioed yn rhanfaith i eich bod yn swyddem. Roedd yw'r ddweud o'r ddechrau, mae'n dweud o'r codaidd. Mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Yn ddweud, mae'n ymddir, yn oed yn ôl ychydig sy'n ddweud ymddir, yna ymddir. Felly, yna, yw'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Yna yma, yma yma nifer 6, yma'r ddweud i'r enghreifft? Yna, yma yma yma mae'n hyd o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Mae'n gweithio ar y cyflawn ar gyfer yma, i ni i wedi ei gael y hyffordd cymryd. Ond mae'r problemau i ddim. Y problemau yn ymddangos, yn y pethau i'r hyn o'r ddau, yn y pethau i ddau, mae'n amlwg o'r maeslo a'r amlwg o'r rhesaith sy'n gadael. Ond mae'n amlwg o'r maeslo i'r hwn o'r maeslo i'r hefyd. Ymddangosio'r cyfnod, Mae'r golygu, mae'n rheiddoch. A ydych chi'n gweithio o'r gweithio'r ffordd, mae'n ddwy'n cael ymddangos y bydd y bydd y fan hynny. Mae'n ddwy'n cael ei ffordd, ac mae'n ffordd ei ffordd o'r cyfysgau o'r rhai ffordd. Mae'r rhai ffordd wedi gwaith o'r moddol AZ90, mae hyn yn ni'n gofio'r moddol yn robod moddol. Mae hyn yn ni'n gofio'r moddol. Mae hwn yn ymddydd. Mae hyn yn ymddydd. ac mae gwych yn gyfod y cyfathor yn unedol. Efallai, y dyfodol, y gallwn ydych yn y cyfathor y bydd yn y mynd. Felly mae'r byn yn y bydd yn y bydd yn y bydd yn y bydd, maen nhw'n ddweud y bydd y bydd yn y bydd. Felly mae'n ddweud y bydd yn y bydd yn y bydd. Rwy'n dweud o gyd-greifiau'n cyfathor y bydd yn y bydd yn y bydd. mae'n gwybod nhw. mae'n ddullai i lwni gwybod y ddweud. Mae'n ddweud eich ddweud o'r ddweud. Mae'n ddullai i lwni gwybod. Mae'n ddweud i gwybod yna'r ddweud ac mae'n ddweud i'r llwybr sy'n oed yn ystod allan i ymddangos. Mae'r cyfnodol yn y ddweud. Mae'n gyfnodol. Bwn yn ymdweud i'r ddweud, mae gydig i'r cyfnod, mae'n ddullai i'r ddweud o'r 100% i gyrdd o'r ddweud? I know that I don't, and when you test, we're giving 100% of our attention generally when we do that. But the problem is with that, we're not creating testing environments for the real experiences. Fluid experiences are really essential for us to start creating, and these go towards creating a longevity of a product which you want if you're creating an experience, and we have to accept that humans change. Beyond that, we function in different environments. Nobody, not one of us has a consistent life, and also often we assume that that's just what happens. I think the answer will be the same as mine, because none of our lives actually runs through a timetable that you can predict every second or every minute of your life. Life happens to us, and we have to create experiences that allow life to happen. Part of the creating experiences that adapt to the users that aren't rigid and fixed, we need to reflect this in how we allow people to interact with that. I was surprised in Medium, for example, and I saw this. Apart from the fact that Medium URLs kind of make me twitch a little bit, because they're just impossible, this message is basically saying that this image is needed for tweeting. It's needed because the formatting, the formatting looks better if you have an image. This isn't really having an adaptable format. This is forcing someone to put a pretty picture of a goat, but a picture of a goat, just to have that when they do this. It's great that Medium let you tweet out and have pictures and have a little bit of personalisation, but requiring for certain things. That's really just not a flexible interface. I'd really like to suggest this book, Design for Real Life. If you haven't read it, I would encourage you to read it. It talks about a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today, but it also talks about other things as well. In an interview, Sarah actually said that we need to change our wording and thinking about edge cases. When we talk about edge cases, and I think I've done this and I think everybody does this when you're creating interfaces, you're saying that it's fringe when you use the word edge. It really shouldn't be. You need to think about it as stress cases, and that's what they say. It's really important because when you attach that word to something, it becomes a lot more important for you to fix. The question, and what I'm going to address a little bit in this talk today, is how do you design for humans? Or by understanding them? By creating graceful, empathic experiences. We have to recognise that as humans we need to connect. That's not just with other people. We also need to connect with the experience and get feedback. We need social experiences. We need social animals. That's part of our makeup. We need these interactions beyond the simple point and click and no feedback. This is an amazing thing that happens to us as humans when we see a smile. We have these neurons that actually kick off in our brain and it makes us happy. That's kind of amazing. I kind of think of us as primates needing a hug. That's my visual image that I use when I'm creating experiments. We need that neuron hit. We need those feedbacks. Emotional connections are powerful. When we do those aptly, we create incredible, memorable experiences. Take this site. It's about Alzheimer's and it actually fades unless it's fed with memories. It drills down every single one of these dots as you go closer is a memory. You can zoom in and then in more. Eventually you can see each memory and then you can click on the memory and view what that person wrote. It's impactful. It recognises the fragility and the experience and it's a connection that goes beyond that simple pixel, that point and click and that coldness that we ought to often experience from the digital. In contrast but equally, something like this. You can't help pass on a good experience as a human. Going back to remembering that with social animals, we want to share that's part of us. This urge for us to feel good and make others feel good. Whilst we might not feel it all the time, we're actually happy by nature. It releases chemicals when we make someone else happy and that's pretty cool. It's a win-win for humanity when we do this as well. Making something like this that has to be passed on, that you just get that urge to just share it, that's great. That's how these memes work. If we can't help pass on a good experience, if you think about what happens with a bad experience, it's exactly the same thing.  All those kind of feelings come to us. When we create something, I think we really want it to be for a good reason that we have that, not for the negative reason. Has anyone in this room ever lost their keys? I've lost keys, wallets, lots of different things. Whenever I do, I first of all try and imagine where I was before. I trace my initial steps. I always have a key pop, I always go there because I lose them quite often. If they're not there, I then generally go rummaging through the sofa. I'll try, I'll be finding all my steps, I'll be going through it. As each step that I go through, this kind of fog of frustration is zoning in and I'm not thinking very clearly. I'm not knowing what I'm doing, I'm getting very frustrated and my vision is getting smaller because of that, because of that feeling that I just don't know and I don't know where they are. A couple of weeks ago I actually lost my wallet and because of this cloud of frustration I didn't know what I was doing and only hours later when I went in to a room did I see it lying on the floor when I wasn't in that fog and I'd searched that room, I knew what I was doing but because I had that tunnel vision I couldn't find it. I thought very well when we have frustration humans really aren't built for that and we can't use experiences when we feel this. The problem is a lot of interfaces are encouraging that mindset or portion of that mindset so it's just inevitable that users aren't going to be able to use the experience properly or we're going to get a bad experience. So when things change about obvious reasons we have the same issue of frustration that I was talking about with the keys and to compound that it's also if things change too many at the same time we just don't know what's going on we don't know where the furniture is in this interface. If this and that recently changed the word recipes to applets now it may feel a little bit weird that they did that but maybe they had some user research that said that that would be a better word I don't know I'm not privy to that however they also change a lot of the interface and they kind of move things around a little bit so they had those two problems and on top of that they had this URL then WTF so I'm frustrated I don't know what I'm doing on this interface and then I mean it's funny that they have WTF as a URL but it makes me feel I'm kind of being made fun of for being frustrated and not knowing what I'm doing and it might seem cute and it might seem fun but it doesn't to all users and we have to think about that feeling and remember what we feel like when we lose something and we're frustrated One other part of thinking about designing for humans is that robots are absolutely fine about being part of a collective as the Borg has taught us however we aren't as human beings we like to feel unique we like to feel special we like to feel that the experience is created just for us and that's kind of cool that we can do that If you go back in time and you think of cave drawings or you think of graffiti or I did it drawing on my folder or putting stickers on at school and even tattoos how we adorn ourselves how we mark ourselves and our identity there's this real need for us to make things our own and to be recognised by our name as well personalising an experience is really, really important if you know someone's name then use it they refer to him as a model name but there's a little bit of caution here and there's a caution with a lot of what I'm going to say don't do it in a creepy way there's a fine line between being a stalker and a friend and if someone agrees then show their username but allow them to change it to be what they want it's their identity so they should be able to be referred to however they want to be referred to predicting also when done in a natural, non creepy way can be really impactful I was searching for a customer service phone number which normally is an indication I'm going to lose half an hour of my life diving into forms getting completely lost however I typed this in and it came up straight away with the virgin media number awesome, I could phone this number it was great, I didn't have any worries customer service is notoriously normally difficult to find so this was refreshing and I thought what happens if I do this in Google I did this it didn't demand any information from me it just popped up and that was a really good way of doing it but again have to be a little bit careful don't ask for personal details when they're not needed gender only matters in a very few cases and all too often we ask for someone's gender on a form or we ask for someone's we just don't need those extra bits of information when you ask details also remember that humans don't fit into boxes allow humans to be the diverse, interesting people that they are allowing someone, even a team to take that application and then mix in their own specialness is really great it's a really great way of allowing bonding and ownership of a team for example Slack here you can add customer emojis and whilst it might seem frivolous it's a great way for a team to unite maybe when you launch something there's a certain happy dance emoji something happens it's very personal and showing that it goes beyond the actual interface into showing how the product was made you really need to show that it was made by humans show the people that created this for example in Vimeo you see the faces of the people that did this there's something really powerful in seeing who made that experience and we have this in the non-digital life as well if you think of when you go and maybe buy some a cake or something and you know the baker and you know how that was made there's something in that story or maybe known the heritage of a handcrafted item there's something in us humans that really crave that and really feel comforted by that one thing above all that I want you to take away from this talk and try and focus a little bit on is the big thing that I think is lacking from our interfaces and our experiences digitally is simply respect respect is a drive and value to every human just like in real life in a digital one respect should be central to everything that we're creating and it's crucial to be respectful to users of their time, of their space and of their quite simply everything they are valued they are choosing to interact with your experience so be respectful to them you'd be respectful to another human being face to face to be respectful to them digitally respect comes in understanding also the patterns of behaviour so look at this form this is not showing any understanding of that the asterisks are literally reversed normally an asterisk is a required thing but optional fields are denoted by an asterisk this form thankfully doesn't exist anymore however you just have to think how many people will call out by this because we have that pattern we have that expected behaviour to do and forms are a really easy way of finding lack of respect digitally this time the sheer size and this easy reset button a feature I can only imagine shows no value placed on users time yes there are extensions that can save you from contents vanishing on forms but only accessible they are only accessible to a knowledgeable few most users don't use Chrome extensions getting out of that headspace the fact that we have it so therefore we know that's not what most users do and too much animation in the form of these crazy micro interaction festivals that quite simply shows a lack of respect of users time yes it's cute and amazing that we can do all of this now with animation but if it takes too long to be usable it's just not great for example an overly animated shopping cart that's just not usable it's not a full feature cartoon it's a shopping cart you just want to check out experiences really need to focus on people wanting to use them not having to use them and I think far too often we've just accepted that oh well someone's got to use that when you're forced to do something as a human we're a little bit grumpy and we start off on the wrong path when we have to jump through tech hoops for example that's the same thing a great example of that for me is modern web development the amount of tech hoops that I have to go through is incredible and it doesn't put me in a good mindset to do that if people want to use something to have that emotional connection and that bond is really really important going back to understanding humans if you understand that you're going to make a better experience if you think a little bit about how brands and people go back to them years and years and years and then pass on to their children we don't do that digitally but we need to change our mindset to have that because we're going to be around for a while when you're talking about humans, that bond there's one thing that's really important in that and that's a sense of delight delight is powerful and whilst I was a little bit flippant about cute earlier I'm not against cute experiences I love cute things but my perception of cute and what delights me that's not what delights you or anyone else in the room part of human nature is to look with these sense of delight these little moments and seek out our positive going back to them because I think they're a great example of how we do this well error messages also often have these cuteness about them and there's a problem with that often when they do that you lose the actual information and it's about a balance between giving a robotic error message and giving something that's too cute and not giving enough information how you handle messages there's a really awful lot about the experience and respect that you have for the user and if you know that a setting and you're seeing that users are doing it time and time again then make it the default and it's easier from the start of interaction one thing I think there's not enough of in the world is helping UI and what I mean by that is UI that helps you level up as you go for example this is WordPress.com on entering the customizer for the first time it guides you through the experience and you click icons just like there's going to be in core so you can see where the elements are and you even have this handy little extra link to documentation so you can find out help the help isn't being hidden you don't have to read a manual or you don't have to go in some great FAQ just to be able to use something it's there in front of you and a great thing you can do with users is help them to level up with hints and tips along the way grow the user's ability to interact with the experience whilst they interact and that's about being respectful with their time making it contextual and not a manual that they have to sit down and read before they go or this giant wizard that they have to go through just to get the experience they're there, they're interacting and they're able to get that information so Isaac Asimov actually wrote the three laws of robotics I don't know if anyone knows that but they kind of started out as a fictional but they've now been adopted as something that a lot of people refer to and in writing this talk I began to think about how these could actually be converted to experiences so there is a really need to create these experiences that allow us to be the best humans not the worst that we currently are what would the three laws of designing for humans look like and the language that I'm going to use reflects his language so it's a little bit verbose in places but I'd like to share them with you so rule one an interface may not injure a human being or through an action allow a human being to come to harm harm is emotional something we really need to understand that we shouldn't be doing that to people rule number two an interface must obey orders given to it by human beings it's set where such orders would conflict with the first law it should just work in this sense you shouldn't have to hunt for things you shouldn't have to read a manual you shouldn't have to do all these long but both things just to get it and then finally rule three which I think is incredibly important to give this and that an interface must protect its own existence as long as such a protection doesn't conflict with the first or second law it shouldn't just vanish or disappear we really and these are kind of a joke three laws but I think they're also appropriate for us to consider whenever we're creating those experiences when we design for humans not robots we make experiences that connect that are powerful that matter that cause less stress no I'm not actually saying that when you're creating an experience you're going with the mindset to cause someone stress I don't believe that but unintentionally you do that when you design for robots not humans we have created a web that unfortunately brings out the worst nature in us and I don't know about you but that's actually not a place that I want to be to function and it's a place that I feel I have to function in and that doesn't feel right to me the simplest of tasks brings us frustration causes us stress and the good news is we can change this if we design for humans in all our variety then we start changing the experience a little bit more human the experience becomes as we do one by one it's powerful it's powerful and it adds up so let's design for humans not robots so thank you so any questions? sorry I didn't see you right back there I apologize have we got microphones for people or so finding those stress cases is yeah okay oh cool it's a long question so to kind of summarise you're asking how do you find the stress cases and then how do you design around them that's kind of what you're saying yes there you go okay cool so the big answer is use a test so you're not going to find the stress cases generally yourself well you are for you using the experience and using the experience in different places you're going to find some with your head space well you really need to do is do lots of user testing be very wide about that user testing as well and often when you're designing something you'll think oh well that won't happen because just a few people well those that's exactly when you should write down when you have that thought and know that you're going to like work that into it how you design to avoid those is just by remembering also as you create each experience remembering those times each time you do it so in the previous times you've done experiences and also by just avoiding them when you see it in a user test trying to make a way around that but you need to see them to design for them I encourage everyone to do something it's a term not a great term but called dogfooding so use your own products start just exploring them and just use a test if you're not, if you're creating something and you aren't user testing widely and you aren't observing people using that product then I really encourage you to do that answer your question awesome any other questions and I'll try and see you this time hi so generally when I do user tests I'll set a boundary of numbers I would just say user test often just user testing at the end doesn't really help you creating something there's a user research phrase at the beginning where you would maybe do surveys you do user testing situations you also do benchmarking but it really depends on what you're making and what set works for you the number from the time that it's put in you're going to have to put a time limit if you're doing one on one user testing that takes a long time to do if you're observing it it still takes a long time to process there's no magic number this is the number and then it always passes user testing it's really up to your product that you have as well I wanted to ask you what did you mean by vanishing interfaces in rule 3 I think by vanishing interfaces so say someone was using a form and a button was in a certain place and then you did version to where the button moved to a completely different place that's a vanishing interface or some functionality that they could always do on your site maybe they could always put a header image and then suddenly you decide you know what we're not going to have header images anymore there's probably a good reason why you didn't you just didn't flippantly say that but the user would expect either there to be information of you can't do header images no more but you can do background images some way of guiding them through interfaces change interfaces develop because you should be user testing and adapting to feedback so when you do do changes either bring them in, trickle them in or guide someone through that new experience I've seen some great re-onboarding so we always talk about NUX or the new user experience well sometimes you need to have that because an interface changes so there's like a second or third new user experience where you adapt an on board again try not to change everything but you know things change and I don't know it depends on the product I think often when you get into advanced functionality that's where poor design gets introduced so what do you think is the utility of creating that advanced design versus keeping it simple I mean there's a purpose sometimes for that advanced design for functionality so I think keeping it simple is used as a blanket statement but keep it simple in terms of what it has to do is probably more appropriate so some things are just complex to do applying for a visa that forms incredibly complex whether I want it to be or not that's just the way it is but there's ways to ease that and I think keeping it simple blanket statement should be keep it simple as it's appropriate and also keep it simple even though it's complex is very important you know guide and all those kind of things I don't think that overcomplication sometimes is bad absolutely you should never overcomplicate something but some things are complicated and I think we have to accept that and not be dismissive of there's the phrase with stupid at the end which I think is not particularly good because it's saying blanketly that we should keep it simple and I think we should keep it appropriately simple things happen complexity interface wise hey how's it going with Tammy so I had a question about edge cases is it ever appropriate to approach an edge case in a way where instead of just creating a situation where an interface works well at the edge is it ever appropriate to drive the user away from the edge case and basically kind of use it to steer the user back to not using the edge case does that make sense I think it depends whether they so edge cases you're actually that's a good point you're saying it doesn't have to be because it's a particular user type an edge case could be that they're just this is completely random they're using it in a particular way and really like you shouldn't be applying for a passport when you're trying to go up an escalator I don't know something really random I think people use things in different ways and you can try and encourage them away from using them in a certain place but they're going to do it even an edge case it's a stress case so I just think it's about recognising it and making it easier at that point I would highly doubt you can eliminate all stress cases and that's why stress is better than edge case another reason because you're easing the stress as well as yes you want to remove it but sometimes you need to ease the stress you're not going to be able to fully remove that stress because some people are going to use things in that situation I'm kind of against forcing someone to have to do something in a certain way or even guide them to do that because I just accept that humans are excitingly random I mean if you stop someone doing or heard them away from doing it in one particular way that was equally or even worse random so I think it's about just again easing it's very difficult I'm not saying any of this is easy and it's like the next step in what we do creating interfaces I don't think it's very easy to just create how we did maybe not thinking about users maybe doing two or three user tests maybe a little bit of a survey but to take that extra step because some making these experiences the best they can be for humans is not easy at all but it's something we really need to do if we want people to stick around with this web if we want humans to just be happier and interact better there's one right at the back thank you so I technically don't need this I was the one yelling from back here so I've got another question for you I love users and I love making sure that the users have a great experience making everything delightful but usually I'm hired by business interests who have business goals and one of the things that I'd like to hear your insight on is whenever talking to the people who hire me to build websites and build those web experiences what language, what different tips and techniques can you kind of advise us to use when talking with them to help them understand the importance of user centric design and delightful design because sometimes it's at odds with the business goals I think the simple answer is getting to feel it if someone is not using their product is not experiencing their product and doesn't see the user test they're not going to understand it they're just going to see the accountancy side of it, the business side of it it's really about trying to get someone to connect saying that feedback, that connection if you watch an emotional movie you get the emotional feedback so watching a user test is something so powerful about watching a video of a user getting completely stuck and horrible I hate it because the fact is that users have that bad experience but that bad experience can make such change when someone feels it before I worked at Automatic I used to use that and I frequently had that I was working on communities and I was creating designs that would take a long time and it was like no we need to deliver this on budget and people weren't understanding why we need to do a lot of user testing but when you do testing on things and you can show that people are getting stuck and people can make that connection they don't question it they really don't because they can feel it so it's all about you trying to make them not trying to make them feel bad but kind of trying to make them feel bad as well trying to make them feel that connection and feel that user's frustration it's not easy it's really not because you're talking about a lot of fluffy ethereal things sometimes and you're using a lot of emotional words that don't necessarily always apply in business but if you can show data as well of people that are going on and then just going away from the site they can't deny that someone's having a problem getting through a certain point one good way is to put that gathering at particular points and find where the fallout points are if you do that people are going to clock on I'm losing users this way no problem any more questions so that really depends on your circumstances so at automatic I'm very lucky we have a data team I'm very lucky that I can rely on that outside there's a lot of different stuff getting that you can do from a video perspective just physically showing a video I love screen flow but also user testing.com no I wouldn't say do all your user testing on user testing.com and it does cost but actually those videos are great they have a really great interface for doing annotation and it's a good way to just do some quick user tests and you can change the pool but there's a lot of options out there it's really what is appropriate for you to do out there one-on-one is also the best way of doing this just recording someone's screen while they're using it but try not to be an influence and let's do a user interview and it's just kind of getting into a lot of the user testing side which is the talking itself you have to be careful about your influence on someone so if you're sat there breathing down their neck while they're using something probably going to get a little bit of a different result if you just let them use it with a script so it's really up to you just showing a video is so powerful animated gifs also equally powerful but it's a small thing moving screen shots are great for showing a flow and the pain points in a flow but showing a video of someone highlighting the mouse when you do that so certain videos they just take and they won't necessarily show the mouse so showing where they click that's just a great way of doing that


HBCU Digest Radio welcome back. We are continuing our conversations with distinguished leaders from historically black colleges and universities. And today our distinguished guests as a friend of the show, Dr. David Thomas, the esteemed president of Morehouse College. And I just was joking with the brother that we always meet under conditions like this where Morehouse is getting a big check from somewhere. And today is no different of $40 million from the Quillen Hastings family, the leadership of Netflix in support of student scholarships at Morehouse in addition to Spelman College and the United Negro College Fund. So brother president, again, in honor to be with you, I know it would seem cliche, but it's never cliche to get support for your institution. But what is the feeling today on campus and among the Morehouse community? Well, I can only speak about the Morehouse community because our students were evacuated from the campus in March, and we're not doing summer school online, but from the community. And if you look at everything from our social media to the emails and texts I've gotten, the community is elated. You know, we're feeling great about this. And it's a real affirmation of Morehouse's mission, as well as an affirmation of the fact that we have produced proof of concept, that our record of producing men committed to excellent leadership and service is unassailable and to be rewarded and supported at the level that this gift represents. So this is a really unique time, man. You know, obviously, we can't escape the reality of the world moving on a different access in the weeks and months and years to come post the lynching of George Floyd and that part of that new access, it turns because there seems to be the beginnings of an awakening of how do we as a country, as a world reconcile discrimination and oppression of black people. And so from the corporate perspective, some of that reconciliation is support of black institutions and black causes, Morehouse being among the premier of those. But how do you balance in your mind that Morehouse is a beneficiary of this new access or this new turning of the world, but it comes at a time where George Floyd and Reynard Brooks in Atlanta, these killings, you know, kind of spur this self-examination from some people to say, we wanna do right. Morehouse is a place where we can go to help show that we're doing right. Is there any kind of dissonance there? In spite of the fact that, you know, we wanna be good fundraisers and we wanna be good citizens of the institution. Yeah, it's a great question. And I have no dissonance. What I do have is a discomfort that that's what it takes for people to see the value of institutions like Morehouse and value it in the way that they would value, you know, any other elite undergraduate universe that has produced individuals who've gone on to be leaders in every aspect of professional pursuit from medicine and science to law and politics, which Morehouse has done for 153 years, but we haven't been supported in the way that colleges that we compete head to head with, like Davidson, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Wofford have been supported. And, you know, that's the discomfort, right? That I need a civil unrest for that to happen. The great news about this gift is Patty Quillen and Reed Hastings had already given Morehouse seven-figure gifts prior to this ever happening. And their first seven-figure gift was before Robert Smith gave us his gift. So they had already started to recognize the value of this institution given their own commitment to social justice. And, but I think, you know, there are other parts of our, or other institutions and individuals for whom the value of Morehouse College, this moment was a wake-up call to them. I think, right, I think for Patty and Reed, what they wanted to do was to spur those people out there who hadn't recognized the value of institutions like Morehouse and Spellman and other HBCUs under the UNCF umbrella so that they would see us in the same light that they see other institutions that they've supported at the level of eight-figure filling flopping gifts. There seems to be in higher education and you've known this over your career. And in a lot of ways, this is just life, period, where if there's something that seems to be trendy that a lot of people get on board to associate with that trend. And so in light of all that is going on socially and civically, the trend seems to be let's support organizations which can do something to create more opportunities for social justice and equity. That is unique to higher education because at college, like Morehouse or university, anything is not solely focused on social justice. Just like most colleges and universities are not solely focused on STEM. When that was very trendy a few years ago, let's throw money at STEM, science and technology. Are you concerned that because there is a push for social justice and racial equity, that that can, and I know this is going to scholarships and we'll talk about that in a minute, but are you worried about philanthropic support pushing the college in a way that says social justice, social justice, social justice? And we gotta move with that tide where it's also like, don't forget, we also do science, we do education. You know, we do law, there's a lot of stuff we do. So. Right, well at Morehouse, we're not concerned about it because if you know anything about Morehouse, social justice is core to our values. Right. And if you look at what our graduates have done, we've been leaders in every industry on the planet science, technology, math, politics, et cetera, et cetera, you know, social justice is a theme they pursue. So we're not worried about that. What I think I am conscious of is not accepting donations where we're going to be told how to grow about doing that. Right. And the beautiful thing about the gift of the $40 million from Patty Quinlan and Reed Hastings is they just said, we're gonna give you $40 million to support scholarships for students who will leave Morehouse debt free.  And I'm very conscious of the fact that I've got to manage attention. Morehouse needs more philanthropic support than it has gotten in the past so that we can compete with those institutions that today have billion dollar endowments and want exactly the same students that we recruit and have more capacity to give them a full ride. And at the same time, we can't change Morehouse so that, you know, we reflect every whim of a donor and lose connection to our primary purpose, our vision about how we produce more and ethical leaders who can go out into every field in the world and provide leadership and service. So I'm also prepared to say no to the $40 million gift that is gonna take Morehouse away from its fundamental mission. Let's talk about the nuts and bolts of the actual gift and so many of the others that you've gotten.  You, those go in support of student scholarships, right? But, and from the outside or to the lay person in higher education, it's like, hey man, Morehouse is doing this thing.  And we've talked about this before but can you explain the delicate balance between, here's a gift that somebody wants to give to support student scholarships and in a large way that supports revenue for the institution. And yet we still have to make tough decisions about our finances and how we do this almost month to month. Can you explain to folks those two worlds and how you bring them closer together for a stronger Morehouse? Yeah. So, you know, we have to think about, you know, the hardest thing about my job is if I just think about Morehouse for the term that I will likely be president.  So I'm two and a half years into my term. I can make myself look like, you know, an amazing president if I didn't make those tough decisions but I've kind of think about the long term viability of this institution. And things that, you know, happen in an episodic way like a $40 million gift when you're running a $100 million a year operation and that gift says, this is a 10 year gift. Right. Right? This is a 10 year gift. So I won't be president when this gift is finished.   You never know, brother. You won't question that. I wouldn't say never. I don't know, you know, but, or let's just say, you know, yeah, let's just say I'm not sure I would want to be because this is a very demanding job. You know, I think I still have a young man's energy but it's becoming more and more clear to me that my body is like everybody else's. You know, it's a prisoner of time. Yeah, yeah. Uh, so if I was gonna just play the short game so that David Thomas, you know, doesn't have any conflicts or you know, complicated press, I could get away with not doing that, but I'm playing the long game. What I want is 153 years from now when people are talking about why Morehouse is so healthy and still doing what it does. And it's relevant to the next century. I want them to look back and say there was a moment in the tenure of David Thomas that we made some tough decisions that ensured that we would be here today. And then the light. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, bro. No, go ahead. I was gonna say, and then the last one, when you think about that, there's also this undercurrent within our sector, right?  It's your fault, you know, the success that Morehouse has had over recent years has started to spark a conversation that says, is there a wealth distribution gap or philanthropic gap between some of our, you know, private institutions, Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, and what philanthropists see in other HBCUs or what they don't see? I know that that is a totally unfair question to ask you because you gotta take care of Morehouse. But for as much as you can, could you speak to the, you know, the anxiety or the concern that some folks have that would suggest, man, Morehouse gets all the money. And yet a school like Savannah State is struggling. I know it's unfair. But just for the sake of the conversation, what would you say if that was a conversation brought to you? Like, how is it that you do so well when there's clearly some other campuses that could use it as well? Luckily, I'm not on this conversation with the presidents for many of those schools who might challenge, you know, my answer. I think there's a couple of things to it. And here's where, right? We use this, we have this term called HBCUs.  The term is so powerful in its meaning that many people don't think about the fact that within that category, there's as much diversity as there is in all of higher education. Some of us are highly selective institutions that compete with, you know, the Ivy League and, you know, the Southern elites in terms of who applies and who admits in our admissions criteria. And others of us, other HBCUs are doing the work of, you know, publicly funded institutions that are, you know, enroll a different kind of student who wouldn't be competitive at those places. And how you make the value proposition so that you garner the funding you need is different across those different institutions. And it will attract different kinds of donors and different kinds of opportunities for funding. So you just take, for example, there's a great opportunity for funding out there right now for colleges that are really focused on preparing people for jobs and skill development. A lot of HBCUs are in that milieu. They wouldn't get rehastings money just like I don't get workforce development money from the state of Georgia, right? So I think that's, you know, if I were speaking to the leaders of those organizations, I think there are a few, you know, there are not a few, but, you know, there are a number of institutions that are competing in the same market as Morehouse where they say, gee, you know, David, why does Morehouse get all the gravy? And I say, okay, that's a good question. But here's 114 or so HBCUs. I don't know that that's the case for all of them. And I think, and this has been the case since I've been here at Morehouse. I've said very explicitly at Morehouse, we have to create a 21st century message about what our value proposition is as a liberal arts college dedicated to being among the best liberal arts colleges in the country. That's what we've been since Du Bois and Booker T Washington had their war over how do we educate black people, right?  And that's what we've gone about doing.


Several decades ago, there used to be a lot of small grain in this part of the state and in this county and then as time went along, wheat wasn't as profitable and this became more of a corn and soybean area. I think it kind of continues with the theme that the corn belt moved west. So we can produce some great corn and soybean around here, but then you don't have the diversity in your crop rotation that I think we're seeing the benefits of now. And so we've been trying to bring back as much wheat as possible on the fields that require that more diversity in our operation. And so instead of just corn and beans, we've got some spring wheat corn and bean rotation. We grow some oats and occasionally some barley, you know, it just depends on what our feed needs are for our livestock as well. And so by using the small grain, we're able to really shine with our cover crop behind that rotation because it can grow for two plus months in the fall after spring wheat harvest. And so it's another avenue to add some diversity in our soil for our crops. Now that we've also incorporated our livestock back into certain fields that are near the farm during the winter season, it's a little bit more diversity there as well. The economics of farming have to work and that's where, you know, you still have to be able to pencil a profit or you hope to pencil a profit when you're putting in your grain and so wheat is borderline but we've found that we can produce the yields for our wheat that can make it profitable and then by following with a cover crop, our corn and our soybeans are more profitable than next year's. You can't tie just that one year's profitability to spring wheat. I mean, you've got to take that extra gain you get from corn and beans and attribute that back to your small grain. Having that small grain in your rotation, you have a lot better weed suppression too. So we're finding that we necessarily don't have the weed problems that maybe some neighbors have because that residue from the weed or the small grains creates a nice cover on the soil so your weed seeds aren't even getting in there to germinate and come up and growing. A lot of buzz in the industry now is the weeds that you're not killing with herbicides. On our farm, we really don't have a lot of problems with that and I think that can be attributed to using the small grains in the rotation and keeping it diverse. And because of that diversity in your crop rotation, you also have a diversity in your herbicides that you can choose from.  Just the beauty of having that diversity across the farm of having something besides corn and soybeans in and then learning and seeing what those things do to the soil and how that can help the next crop just intrigued me and I'm just like, let's just keep doing this as much as we can to keep that diversity in the rotation. I don't know, I'm a long-term thinker and I just want to give this farm to whoever comes next in the best possible condition for them to be successful.