Hi everyone, my name is Jason Klein, I'm the Director of P20 Initiatives at Northern Illinois University, and we are very excited to be bringing you another episode of Amplifying Solutions, where we answer the questions of practitioners, of teachers and administrators from the field today with experts on those topics. We are extremely excited to be bringing to you two of the key leaders of leaders in the state of Illinois from the Illinois Association of School Administrators and the Illinois Principles Associations. Both associations are leaders nationally in the work they do. So I'm going to have them each introduce themselves. Courtney, will you go ahead and start us off? Sure. Thanks, Jason. I'm Courtney Rizal, the Associate Director of Professional Development for the Illinois Association of School Administrators, or IASA. I have started that job on July 1st, so this is fairly new to me. Prior to that, I served as a superintendent for seven years in the Chicago suburbs, and I've also been a middle school principal. I'm still recovering from that work. I'm not going to lie, right? We love middle school and served also as a high school English teacher and a middle school English teacher, so this is my 20-something year in education. I'm excited to be here with you today. Thank you. Sue? Yeah, thanks, Jason. Thank you for inviting me, and just a little bit about my background. I began my career as a high school business teacher in Wisconsin, and from there went into the Career College teaching arena. From there, I came back into K-12 public education as a suburban district technology director. From there, I moved into an assistant superintendent role for human resources where I worked with almost 30 principals and assistant principals on an annual basis, hired dozens of principals and hundreds, literally, of teachers, and then moved into a rural superintendency before coming to IPA as the deputy executive director for professional learning. And so I've been with IPA now just over three years, and again, really glad to be with you today. Glad to be with my colleague, Courtney. We have a lot of the same vision and ideas for what we want to see our support look like in the field. Well, and we're going to try and keep the middle school principalness of this tamp down with, you know, two of the three of us having that in our backgrounds. And so I've often said this year as we've encountered all the things we've encountered, you know, how was I able to get 800 students and 100 adults quiet just by raising my hands and the new puppy or this unique thing or the whatever thing that everybody's dealing with right now has felt so much more difficult. So with that said, let's go ahead and talk about those things because being a school administrator, like being a teacher is an incredibly complex job. There are all these decisions that are being made without you even realizing it at times, as well as as the decisions you have to make very thoughtfully, and with other people and so in a normal year if we would pretend we were rewinding to November of 2019. What would have been the number one tip that you would have each given to a new school administrator. So I'll, I'll jump in if you don't mind Jason on that. Our number one tip is, is typically building relationships with people, especially coming into a brand new situation many times people are coming in from outside of the district so they don't have that college base they don't have the school context the community context in some cases, the political context. And so it's about building relationships and beginning to build trust and respect, and also really to develop your perception of fairness with the folks that you're I would agree with that and I would say building relationships as well would be not only what we would say to new administrators in a normal year but also this year and just to piggyback on what Sue said, I like the idea of that coming from an outside organization. And I will. I think one of our greatest tips to administrators is when you come into a new organization. A lot of people don't care what you did before they care about what you're going to do in the new place so consistently saying things like well when I was in whatever district doesn't really serve a lot of new administrators well so just keeping in the context of, I'm in this new role. I'm here to learn and listen. I'm not going to be making those assumptions and I'll privately keep all my experience but my new focus is you and let's build a family professional family together. That's, that's great advice, and it's, it's advice that that I've certainly heard given that I've probably given myself. It's advice that I both followed and not followed at times in my own experiences and as you get more experienced when you're not following it you you almost know it as it's happening this doesn't matter here so building relationships is so critical. What are based on the things I mean none of the three of us are currently in a building or in a district but we're working with people in those roles every single day. What are the things that you're hearing or seeing that have helped people be really successful at building relationships during these unique times I mean I think about in my past experience. This would have been working with a group of teachers and they're being food involved and sitting around the table and meeting and standing at the whiteboard and doing that kind of work in a physical space together in close proximity. That that's not happening today have you heard any great suggestions for how to really build relationships given the parameters we're working within today. Just just to throw one out Jason, I think you know going back to thinking back to and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to violate Courtney's suggestion here for just a minute but going back to when I became a brand new superintendent in a community that I was not from. I think one of the things that I needed to do and made a point of doing was to meet individually with each person and despite the fact that we're in this Hollywood squares. You know, zoom world these days, I think it's still critical that people take the time to have an independent one on one conversation, whether it's through zoom or in a socially responsible distance way to really dig into who those who these individuals are. I need to know who Jason is, if I'm going to help to lead or produce a team that's effective I need to know Jason not only as an educator, but I need to know him as a person. The only way to do that and I believe to really show people that you're trying to be very sincere about it is spending that time investing that time, because we hope right over the long haul that this investment in time is going to pay off dividends. And that when you see people in the in the future or you know someone calls you and says this happened, you from a humanistic standpoint are connecting with that person it's not just about the business. I love the saying that people will forget what you did, but they won't forget how you made them feel. And I think that's really critical not only in working with our educational colleagues right now but in trying to build rapport with our families. And our stakeholders and even our children because ultimately we know down the road we're going to get through this, but reflecting back on how people helped us get through it is almost more important than how how well we did on an assessment for example. I agree with Sue and I will tell you I'll never forget when I was a superintendent. We visited classrooms and building principles all the time and I remember seeing a math teacher in the parking lot. And I said hey, I just want to let you know I was so impressed with what I saw today. The next day she came in to the office and said do you have a second. She got really emotional and she said I've worked here for X amount of years no one's told me that they loved what they saw in my classroom and I thought to myself. Shame on us in our profession that we take for granted every day. I love what Sue is saying because sending a blanket email of congratulations or thanks is one thing. Really personalizing the work that we do as leaders makes all the difference a handwritten note to someone and really the sense of being genuine and I think new administrators need to understand that people see through ego. They see through the talk. But if you can really make a connection with someone at a genuine level, like I'll give you an example. Sue and I, we know each other professionally, and she's like, I want to see L my daughter in her Halloween costume. I remember thinking I got to send this to her because it mattered to me that she cared enough to ask about my daughter. So that type of thing I think is really where the foundational pieces begin and if people spent some time like Sue said on that we would we would really transform organizations at at the ground level easily. So much in what you've just said and people are people need that right now, more, more than ever I mean, I think about particularly some of the, some of the teacher friends right and colleagues former colleagues, especially some of the former colleagues who you see a text or phone call, you know, this is not good right if I'm if I'm hearing from this person right now it's probably something's gone, gone wrong and that's that's unfortunate and they need to be hearing those things from the people that I'm with on a regular basis so one of the things that I know both of you have spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about even and certainly doing but is for the, this is a perfect example where the amount of pressure the amount of what we're from our school administrators is extraordinary right there, they need to be giving and giving and giving and giving. What advice that's really really actionable do you have for an administrator to make sure that they, they are taking care of themselves in a way that it still allows them to get their job done and allows them to be whole in such a way that they can give of themselves to other people, like you're talking about because that's always one of the challenges of the job and it's a challenge I think has gotten greater over the years and I mean we're in a period right now where I can't imagine there's ever been a time where it's been harder than it is right now to do that. Can I jump in on this one first Sue? Sure. So, and the reason is because we've been doing an academy about bringing your why back to you and really it's kind of a let's look in the mirror and see what where are we at from a leadership perspective. One of the things from a tangible perspective Jason that I think that we have to do is that I have never asked a school or district leader to name three of their core values that they don't say family. I've never, ever, ever asked that they don't say family, and it's, you know, usually faith family, and, you know, whatever the third one might be. Family is always a part of it. We encourage people to go back. Why don't you go ask your family what they think your core value values are, because I think a lot of us in the field are giving everything to everybody else and we're not taking care of ourselves and like I go back to what my mom's said, if you're not healthy you can't take care of those around you. We're conditioned I think as leaders and administrators to be everything to everybody, and we're not taking care of ourselves so if you really are going to say families of core value, you should go and ask your family do you think families of core value I'll tell you when I was a superintendent, my five year old would not have said that. Working was my core value and it wouldn't have been language but that's what came home on a Mother's Day thing right so that's the fact. And I got two signs for two brand new administrators when I was a superintendent new principles that said, the people in this house, love you, and I had them put it at their garage when they walked through that door because I could already see. They were convinced in the work that they were forgetting about why they did the work in the first place and it was their own personal family so we're really passionate about this at ISA and IPA as well. And I know Sue does incredible work in this particular area but that's just something tangible that I think we need to be doing right now as leaders. I have to tell Courtney so what what she just talked about with the signs in the garage so that I think we've both lifted that from Jim Brigette over the years. So he has an acronym Pilly people inside love you and it is something that's very actionable and I actually even though I to grown children that are not in education. I created one for them as well because we all carry the weight of our jobs home. And who do we tend to take our frustrations out on it's the people that really can't revolt against us. So really, I love what Courtney said about keeping family first because I you know I've been working, some would say a workaholic my entire life, many years, and, you know, to go back and think about doing a better job of balancing. I'm doing a better job of balancing now just because I'm forcing myself to, but I think that this pandemic has really brought that to the forefront for all of us. Because you know what, listen Jason, there are administrators dropping like flies, it's, it's a reality, there are people quitting their jobs because the stress is getting to them. And you know, I know for us at IPA and I know Courtney and the and the folks that I say, we want to try to help these people stay off the ledge. There are, talk about the political context having a never before strong hold on these individuals already worried about doing a good job and serving their kids and now dealing with the the fallout if you will from the community, whether it's pro in school learning or remote learning or hybrid whatever it is. The administrators are the ones who are taking the brunt of that because there are countywide recommendations but ultimately it lays at the feet of the Board of Education and those administrators. So they've never had these kinds of personal attacks on them before when they're trying their human beings like you and I trying to make the best decision given the services. And it's also a never ending constant change. What you think is happening today may very well be something different next week. And how do we as human beings have the resilience to continue to get up every morning and not know what next week is going to look like. So I'm going to throw one book out that I really recommend for our new principles that we support. It's a book by Aguilar. It's called Onward Cultivating Emotional Resilience and Educators. It's Elena Aguilar. It's an amazing book and there's a workbook that goes along with it and it's really some very powerful tips about how to build your own resistance because right now leaders need to find ways of building their resilience. And the other thing I'm going to say and I know Courtney's going to agree with me on this is it's not only about building your resistance but it's about building your tribe. And what I mean about that is you have got to have people like you that you can fall back on when the going gets tough. You've got to have a group that you can cry with or laugh with or just vent with. Because if you have no one and you internalize all of that your mental and physical health will definitely suffer. So, you know, we spend a lot of time we put together these practical wisdom tip sheets that we send out to our principles. We spend a lot about wellness. A lot of our regions throughout the state are pushing wellness right now. Our own association has an internal wellness program that, you know, we've all decided to participate in because it's not that you and I know or don't know that we should exercise more or drink more water. But it's ramping it up a little bit by having a little bit of accountability. And, you know, one of the points we get for participating is simply that we've reflected on something positive that happened to us that day. And, you know, I think it's the simple survival tactics that we need to keep that emotional intelligence that emotional emotional resilience going because these are these are tough times they're tough for everybody. Let's be real. And I will tell you that we launched a mindfulness matters series that starts on Monday for our superintendents that's led by Dr Nancy Blair and master coach Sandy Brown and the reason is because like Sue said if we thought that the concept of leadership was isolated and lonely before. I can't tell you how many superintendents that I've talked to veteran first year it doesn't matter how many years in the field and they're like, I am flying solo and I miserable. We have superintendents that have received death threats we have superintendents that are on the front page of the newspaper for the decisions that they make. They've had successful relationships and boards of education before and everything's falling apart right now and, and it's never happened to them before so I think as associations that two of the things, the two associations represented here today, we are about taking care of our members. And this is a really, really tough time for everyone so I just wanted to at least put it out there that you know from either a principal standpoint or from a central office or superintendent standpoint that this is this is new to everyone and it's not easy. Right. Yeah, one of the one of the maybe concrete things and this is just building on specific things that you said the comment about you know having that group of people that you can laugh with and cry with is doing almost a daily reach out, whether it's a text or a phone call while you're driving to or from work to to one of those people in that group whether it's someone you currently work with or someone you've worked with in the past. One of the things that I found and I had this conversation last week with an administrator who said that when they're miserable, if they call to check and see if someone else is how they're doing, even if they are leaving a voicemail for that person. They actually find that they're feeling better, just by checking on someone else and knowing that the person on the other end like they know intuitively I guess in their heart and their mind, their gut, that person is in the same place that they are and so I think one of the things that we can do as administrators new or experienced and certainly as experienced administrators is help lift everybody up by kind of acknowledging that and you know not publicly second guessing someone else's decisions not assuming you know what all the politics are that that they're facing and their particular situation and just kind of trusting that they're they're trying to do what's best for students and teachers and staff members and their communities and supporting one another with that can probably help so those are great suggestions we're gonna we'll link in the Elena Aguilar book here as well that's a really great suggestion and if there are if there are resources that either the associations has that are available to people beyond their members, they or things that people who aren't currently members but can sign up to participate in, even if it's fee based. For example we have IPA members who want to become ISA members, you know as superintendents at some point, feel free to share those and we'll help put those out there as well these are fantastic suggestions. So one thing is in the midst of all these real feelings that everybody's dealing with and if they've been successful building relationships. So how do they, what suggestions do you have from your own experiences are from all the people the countless administrators you've worked with to help also. I don't think set it aside set those things aside is the right phrase I think that's probably actually the wrong phrase but make sure that they're able to also prioritizing get things done that need to that need to be gotten done and maybe some of our priorities from last year maybe shouldn't be priorities just because we do them every November, given the circumstances so what advice do you have to help people prioritize and then follow through on those priorities and getting certain things done with everything else going on around us. So, if you don't mind Courtney I'll go ahead and pop in. One of the things Jason and I want to take it back to what Courtney said earlier I think in terms of prioritizing because it is difficult you're a brand new administrator for example and, you know, our place in a traditional year is to have an entry plan to have a 100 day entry plan and to stick with that entry plan as a written guideline to make sure you're getting through those necessary pieces. And there's another great book by Doug Reeves I'll throw out their 100 day leaders. So in a in a normal year. That's a great resource but in this year, we really have to. We really have to figure out what the most important needs are what are our most important goals for meeting the needs of kids. Now and maybe that's social emotional support. Maybe that is helping teachers understand here are all the standards that I'm expected to teach in a normal year but how are we going to try to figure out what are the most important standards that we have to make sure that we're addressing. I think it's important that we identify those most essential goals and that everything else that comes to take our time is filtered through is this priority new priority. I'm trying to keep me meeting those initial goals that were set or is this going to be something that sucks my time away from delivering what I really essentially need to deliver. So PJ Kaposi is a superintendent in the state and he's written a book on time management. And he's got another one of our little practical wisdoms that we sent out to our members is about his philosophy of looking at time management and I'm going to I'm going to look down at my notes for just a minute because it's it's kind of catchy. So it's toss it tell it teach it and then the fourth T is today or tomorrow. And what he means by that is to look at something that's come your way and decide whether it's something you really need to do something with. And if it's not he says to toss it don't keep it there don't keep it in your mental space or even in your physical inbox space. If you can give it to somebody else and no without a doubt that you're not going to have to worry about it because that person has the capacity to take that on and do it, then tell it. If they don't have the capacity currently then teach it if it's someone you can teach that to while that is an investment in time initially, it may pay off greatly in the future if you can teach them and then tell them in the future. And then if not if it's something you really do have to deal with and certainly there are many of those instances as a leader. And then think about doing it as soon as possible, and and maybe even holding off until tomorrow and re re running that system through your head. You know, I think we get bogged down in reactionary things. You know, and it's hard you come in as a new administrator you're going to be proactive you have all these great ideas and then we get bogged down in the reality, and we find ourselves reacting to things that happen, or having those individuals say do you have a minute or I have a problem so I'm going to give you one other tip that I'm going to let Courtney fill you with lots of good tips to my other tip and this was my rule. I'm a superintendent and as a superintendent. Don't ever bring me a problem, unless you thought about a couple of potential solutions, because I don't want to be the one that has to reflect through the problem from the very beginning with you. I want you to bring me your problems but I also want you to suggest some possible solutions that can make us both owners in the situation or you maintain ownership. And I can just guide you to or guide you through what the better solution is. And if we allow people to constantly dump their problems at our feet, their problems start to take up our time. And so and that gives us away from right the goals that we've set and the goals that we need to keep in focus. So alright I'm done. I'll let Courtney add to that. So what else is there to say right now so she she every time she talks I'm like oh yeah I'm I'm reflecting on that here. Some things that I would say practical things. Number one, it needs to be in the calendar. If it's not in the calendar it's not happening.  If a priority for you is getting in and visiting classrooms let's pretend it needs to be in the calendar or else it's not going to happen because you're always going to find other things to come into play. I would say this I think a great tip right now from either a leadership management. If you say you're going to do something follow through. Yeah, is great but walking it way way better. And the other thing is put a Google form out to your staff. If I'm a building principal every morning I'm starting with a morning email to every single staff member with a inspirational quote, and maybe a one question survey that I'm asking them something that I believe is a priority like Sue said. And then I'm responding back to people see that I think the teachers feel disconnected when principles aren't communicating back if you asked me something as a teacher, come back to it and have the follow through it's critically important.   So, anytime we do PD I put out what's your favorite song, what's your favorite quote, gather all the favorite quotes, load them into Adobe spark, and send it out as a quick two minute So, people personalize the work they want to feel connected. If I'm going to start a staff meeting, and I'm either a superintendent or I'm a building principal, I'm going to play that playlist.  Oh it's Jason song Jason. I didn't know you were a Beyonce fan. Get out of here. Like, we have to build personal connections right now. And so, I think from a leadership perspective, like, you have to find the balance of it is about management. It's about follow through in details but it's also visionary to that's not easy to do but if you can make people it's what what Sue said initially, if you can make people feel like you care, they will work for you. And so doing those little things and making people feel special. I don't think that's ever been more important than it is right now. Well, I want to thank Sue and Courtney because I think you've just given me about 18 additional blog posts to create that break down all of these things like Adobe sparks a great example. I'm sure there's going to be people watching this where like wait what's that don't worry we'll have a link in the blog post with some how to videos. It's real easy. It's fantastic. If you're lucky enough to work in a school district with the school communications person, they know it. You probably have teachers who know it, which that's okay, I would say if you've got a teacher knows it you're like hey I think you do this can you show me how to do this. That is there is nothing wrong with leading by learning I would throw out there and I think we'd all agree on that so with that that those were awesome really actionable ideas for balancing all of the different things we just talked about. I have one last question. So there has been a lot of talk from the beginning of this by people in all different kinds of roles and education, and and this has happened beyond education to it's happened with how we live and how we work, where we work about what can come out of this time period that might change things for the future so what I want to ask you is what changes. Would you want to emerge from our coven 19 period that that help improve learning for the long term and and then what tips would you give administrators today to start making those changes take root for that long term. Courtney I'll let you go first if you'd like. This, this is my hope, long term. I think that teachers are where it's at, I think they're incredible and I think doing less is more right now, and I hope that we continue to do that. Because I think we, if you're flipping into different modes, you can't do everything. So it's causing us to really say what is most important and do I know my daughter's in first grade and let me tell you I need her to know how to read. I might have my doctorate I was a middle school high school teacher I am heavily dependent as a mom that that first grade teacher even remotely is going to teach my daughter how to read.  Obviously bridging the inequity gap has never been more important we've been able to do that it's not at the level that it needs to be at all, but we will continue to grow and be better and personalizing our work and getting to know our kids I remember as a building principle, having a staff meeting Do we really know our kids and teachers are like of course we know our kids I put up a kid's name that had been in the office and everybody could tell you everything about this kid with the exception of a social security number. I put up a kid that was graduating, she was quiet straight a student never had a disciplinary referral and we heard things like I had her in sixth grade. She's really nice no but what do you know about her, it was a big wake up call for us, we can no longer think we're going to teach groups, we need to teach individual kids and really personalize that work and I think at the superintendent level. We're seeing a lot of opportunity with that. I am a firm believer and maybe I'm just an optimist, but I'm going to continue to be along with Sue, we need to take what we've done best and do it even better moving forward and things that we're doing right now we should have been doing all along. And so, for me, I really am hopeful about what the future will bring. And if I'm a new administrator right now. I will tell you, we have, I know a first year building principle or names Kate Quasney she's in Lamont where I was superintendent. I have never seen a better principle than I see in her and she is in her first year. She is in her first year and she's killing it. She calls people's families and thanks their parents and tells the parent or the spouse what the teacher is doing, like, she's all over the place right. She's brand new so let's not assume that we have brand new administrators that can't do this work or that aren't ambitious enough and certainly let's not count out people who are in their last year, getting ready to retire and have never worked harder in their career. So let's take that bias out of here and really think about what are the things that we're doing really well and is a is getting ready to push out and have some conversations around. What are the things that we need to continue to do organizationally, systemically, and as superintendents, and how do we build on this momentum instead of being miserable about it. So I'll turn it over to Sue. One of the things Courtney you just said just was the number one on my list and that is dealing with the inequities that still exist. You know it's interesting because as a technology director so I began a my role as a suburban technology director in 1996. This was before the internet. I mean it's not before the internet was developed obviously but it was before schools were using the internet. And so it's been really interesting over the course of my career to see how to bring the internet in how to teach people how to use these tools, and the slow uptick that has been historically the case. And all of a sudden we're in March, and people are forced to learn these tools that would have taken 10 years to get to. But because of the need, it forced people to really bring their game. And here's the deal and I'm with Courtney on this I have always said teachers and teachers of course are the number one, you know, influencers of children's learning principles are number two I'm going to throw that in but but teachers are and I've always said teachers have the hardest job, but you know what I don't with rare exception there's no teacher that shows up and says I'm going to just do a mediocre job today. And in fact, we have seen unbelievable creativity and and and idea ideas coming out of teachers to try to help because they want to help. They are desperate to help. They're in a position where they've never been trained to deal with this, but yet they're doing it.  And so I think that this teaches us that we do have this adaptability that we never really gave ourselves credit for. And and so but yet I talked with a superintendent colleague of mine just last week, and in southern Illinois, they don't have internet mean they don't have reliable internet connection. They don't have devices and in in these rural school districts. And so kids are really being left behind. And so we have to do better as a country in in after this pandemic, we have to see that that is not okay. That all kids deserve that because we will potentially see the impact of the inequalities that existed during this time for for a generation of kids. And so, you know, I think that's my message in and secondarily, I have always felt this way and I feel this way even more today and that is the importance of educators has never been more significant. People can't do anything without educators. And the fact that educators are doing their best to bring their game during this time is just unbelievable and I'm with you Courtney. You know, some of these new leaders I'm so inspired by them it's unbelievable. And part of me says they don't know any different Jason. This is their, this is their reality. And so, you know, educators have so much creativity generally speaking anyway, and so they just bring this creativity in this solution this problem solving skill to this situation. And they're doing great. I mean if we can keep them emotionally supported. They've got ideas that are never going to stop. And I laugh and I say oh my gosh how many of these leaders are going to write books, really truly in the next five to 10 years about how they made it through these difficult times. And finally I'm going to go back to just take you in a different direction to something else Courtney said and that is about individuality of instruction, because I've seen it. I have a granddaughter in kindergarten remote learning. And so I've seen it myself the ability to individualize instruction for these kids and I think gosh when I was a superintendent. The kids that were home home instruction and you know home learning or hospitalized. If only they had the ability, like the kids do right now of participating fully in a class even though they're not physically present. It's just that that is an answer to so many parents prayers and really an answer to teachers who are trying to teach kids and yet will be accountable for their performance without them being able to be in the classroom. So I see at the end of this when everything gets dusted off and polished up. I see that there's new ways of engaging kids that we've never experienced before and so I'm hopeful that we'll take advantage of that. I'm so I'm a little awestruck right now. Thank you to everybody watching this all three of us and the people we work with and for we're here to support you during this time and to make the ideas that you have come to life and so please let us know how we can do that. And to to sue and to Courtney I want to thank you both for your expertise you know I feel kindred spirits with Sue and I both having that background as the tech directors and Courtney and I as middle school principals which you know Courtney do not try and recover from it just enjoy it it is part of who you are and and I can tell you with two high schoolers learning above me is as your own kids get older. They will hate the fact more and more that you were a middle school principal and you will enjoy it more and more every step of the way. So but but I you have personally both you this this time that we've been able to record this, which was not for me but it has certainly filled my bucket. I'm ready to go out and break down some walls and make more equity happen and make better learning and deeper learning happen for more kids so I hope people watching you've gotten some of that and that you've gotten some real tips and again, let us know what you need and we're here for you. Sue Courtney, thank you both so much for for your time today and for sharing your insights and expertise. Thank you Jason so very much for inviting me. I love being with my colleague Courtney anywhere but I sure love talking about obviously some of these topics I'm pretty passionate about so thank you for giving ear to some of my thoughts. Thanks Jason. Thank you both. We'll continue to post more episodes on YouTube you can see those here and we want to thank you all for watching today. Wish you the very best stay well and again, let us know what you need. Thanks again.


Can you hear us? We're interested in design systems. You are in the right room, and we are going to get going because there's a talk right after this. So, yeah, don't forget this. Real quick, you've seen this before, you know. Well, let me introduce myself. I'm Courtney Clark. I'm the Managing Director of User Experience at Forum One. At Forum One, we design and build cool stuff for clients who are changing the world. So, groups like Peace Corps, MacArthur Foundation, USDA, tons of other groups. It's fun. And this is my esteemed co-presenter. Hello, my name is Amy Vinari. I'm a senior designer at Teori Creative. Got some of our awesome developers here with us today. We essentially do the same thing as Forum One, just for different clients. We also branch out a little bit into commercial as well, but heavily on the nonprofit and government side as well. And Amy and I used to work together, and so we'll be talking about a project that we worked on. But before we get too deep in, I'd love to learn a little bit about you. So get your hands out, get them ready. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand. How many of you have used a design system before? Not as many as I thought. Okay, and then out of those people, or maybe whether or not you've used one, how many of you are deeply in love with design systems? Hey, we got some mega fans there, okay.  I used to be one of you, and now I'm standing up here. So there's hope. Convert. Great, well thank you, that's really helpful. So one thing we just kinda wanted to get, to set the stage a little bit. You're sitting here, we're gonna talk about design systems. You may be wondering if the design systems are right for you. We're gonna tell you if they are, yes. But just a couple questions just to think about. It's kind of a Jeff Fox working thing. You might need a design system if your site has 20 different button styles. You may have one of these sites, you've seen them, we've all seen them, they're awful. But it's probably not the designer's fault. It may be that client was controlling it. You know, the site's like 20 years old, who knows. If your site is gonna evolve or grow over time, you probably need a design system.  And we're gonna tell you why. But if you feel like you've answered yes to any of those three questions, you're in the right place and we're gonna tell you a little bit more. All right, so I wanna make sure that we're all using the same language and talking about it in a similar way. So what the heck is a design system? I like to use a taco analogy when I talk about design systems. So at Taco Bell, who's been to Taco Bell recently? Love it. We had tacos for lunch today. Yes, everyone had tacos for lunch today. This is perfect. So at Taco Bell, they basically have eight core ingredients, maybe a few more give or take. They've got their meat, cheese, lettuce, beans, salsa, tortillas, sour cream. And they also have a little bit of variety. So you've got hot sauces and you've got a range of different strengths there as well. But what Taco Bell and what many other groups have done is they're using these same eight ingredients, but they're mixing and matching them. And that's kind of what a design system is. You've got your eight core elements or design pieces and you're mixing and matching them in different ways for reuse. And what happens is you know that you can make a quesadilla, you can make a Crunchwrap Supreme, you can make a simple taco, but Taco Bell is using those same eight ingredients and they're really using marketing and other stuff to promote those different menu items for design systems or mixing and matching. So it still feels like it's part of the same family.  So this is the project we're gonna talk about today. What does a design system look like out in the wild? So last year, two years ago, Amy and I worked on the redesign of pscore.gov. pscore came to form one and they hadn't redesigned the site in seven years. Yeah, like seven years. It'd been a while and they were going through some new branding as well. So they had redesigned their logo with another firm and they needed to extend their new logo and new brand onto their digital presence, their website. So they came to form one. They had the goal in mind, a deadline in mind and said, how are we gonna do this? How are we going to extend this? So we got started and we did a lot of other stuff. We did a lot of discovery. We did a lot of planning, but we're gonna talk to you about the design portion of it and how that piece got implemented. A key part that I wanna talk about, which preceded the design system was the wireframing phase. Amy and I worked on this together and the thing that we did before we drew any gray boxes or arrows was we created the site map and we said for each page, what is the goal? Who's the audience? Where are they coming from? And where do we want them to go? These were really key parts in outlining the purpose of the page and how we knew whether or not it would be successful. So I'm showing you this just to indicate that Amy and I were on the same page around what our goals were and who our audiences were for every page from the very beginning. And that was really key because once we got into the design system you'll see that we were able to speak the same language and carry those really important parts about goals and audiences throughout. So the digital design system itself. For Peace Corps, what were our lettuce, our tomatoes going with the taco metaphor? What did we work with? So when you talk about designs, it goes by many different names. You've probably heard of atomic design, modular design, any number of things. This terminology is kind of different for everybody but these are the phrases that we use to describe the various levels. But the idea is the same for everybody. They just call it different things. So we went with basics, elements. Oh, it's not showing, sorry. Basics, elements, building blocks and pages. So we start from the base level and move up in complexity. So the basics and this is the fun part, right? We get to look at the fun system. Hopefully you like it. I worked with it for a very long time so it's very special to me. So our basics are our colors, your typography styles, any other basic elements that you use to design the site. For Peace Corps, we were essentially handed the basics from the firm that designed the logo. They had chosen a color palette. They had chosen the typography. All we had to do was kind of build it out for the web and think about all your various styles throughout the site. And they also made these lovely icons as well. Next up, we combine our basics into elements. In the Peace Corps case, these were things like buttons and form fields. And this is where we start taking some of those elements like the patterns and the colors and combining them into a button. And this is also where I started working closely with the developer to talk about what are the hover states look like and think about interactions with the form. It's one of those ones where when you click into the form, the input label kind of hops up to the top. So you still know what information you're supposed to be filling in. So that sorts of discussions start happening at this stage. And then, as we move up in complexity, we have our building blocks. And this is where your design system really starts to take shape.  So we're putting them into things like calls to action, which you see here on the left. Right, sorry. And stat boxes, which you see on the left. And as you can see, we were talking about how hot sauce kind of has variation. So do our building blocks. So it may be that your text needs to line up on the left for some and in the center line for others. So these building blocks have variation within them so that you're giving your site a little bit of extra feel as not the same thing on every page. But it also is limited so that it's not being so overwhelmingly different on every page that it breaks the system. And the same goes for things like listings and related pieces of content. So you can see these are all clearly part of the same family, but they're a little bit different. So you can, the user can tell which kind of content they're looking at, whether it's a news article or a volunteer opening position. Yeah, one thing I would point out here is those early discussions about what's the primary action or where do we want people to go next, that played into how we were designing these building blocks. Because as you can see, the metadata changes slightly, the use of an image or not, and what button we're using. And actually, if you agree, were you gonna talk a little bit about how you went between these different stages? Sure, yeah, so we kind of, it's a little bit backwards. So we actually, that leads nicely into our next section, which are full pages. So this member when I said I was a skeptic, this is where that kind of skepticism came in, because I went to a presentation years ago about design systems and how everything is gonna be designed in modules now, and there was no need for full page comps, and I got really sad, because that's, if you're any designers in the audience, that's kind of the fun part of a project is to do these full page designs where you see the whole thing come to life. So I was afraid that that wouldn't happen anymore. The truth is, you kind of still need to do that, and there's a couple of reasons. The client probably isn't gonna approve stuff at the module stage, because they like to see things the way that they're used to, which isn't a full page. And also, you need to see how the things are working together, whether the spacing is working. So you need to put it all on a page and see how it's flowing. And that was sort of where we started. We actually started building out full page designs like this one, and then worked a little bit backwards. So, as you can see, this is a full page design for the country page. They work in 60 different countries, so each one gets their own page. And this was a great example of a page that had tons of building blocks on it. So each one of these black boxes here on the right represents a building block. So you can see it was just a matter of slotting them all together. So that was kind of the process that we used. We actually did do the full page comps first, used those to build the system, and then as we moved forward, we had all the building blocks in place, a matter of putting things together in a few minutes. And from a user experience perspective, when we are wireframing this page, we knew that it would need to shrink and scale based on the amount of content that each country had. So you'll see on the left side, that's all the options that they could have as far as how much navigation and how many blocks on that page. But where Amy and I needed to coordinate was, okay, what happens if they don't have the stories bar? Or what happens if they don't have a quote? How will these elements or blocks fit, shrink and expand? And that's where the system was really huge. And where putting it on a page is so vital, because you need to make sure it still goes together. And it's not too overwhelming or underwhelming. So that's the basics of a design system. But why is it a good thing? Well, we've kind of pulled out a few reasons why we think it's a great thing and why it worked particularly well for the Peace Corps project. Scalability, consistency, and efficiency in teamwork. So scalability, this one kind of goes without saying, but I'll say it in any way. It's in the name of our presentation for a reason. Like I was saying, at the end of the day, as we're getting closer to the end of the design portion, I was putting together pages in five minutes and I'm not kidding, because I have all the elements already ready. So if we needed to add 50 more pages, it would have been very easy to do so because we had a design system in place. Secondly, consistency also kind of goes without saying, if you're using the same elements throughout your site, using the same set of basics, your site is gonna look consistent so long as you follow the system. And that was really huge for Peace Corps and for many brands, which is how do you maintain a consistent look and feel across many, many pages, hundreds of pages? And it was huge for them too, because they were rolling out a new brand, so they needed it to feel very cohesive. Exactly. And making it consistent for mobile very easily, because all we had to do is translate those building blocks for mobile and you could do it really easily. And I feel like this is your slide. This might be my slide. The last one is, we can't emphasize enough, which is efficiency and teamwork. The system that has some rules and some building blocks that everyone knows makes everyone's life a little bit easier, not just Amy and me, the UX designer and the visual designer, our friend and developer, our backend developer, our project manager, the client. We all sort of were speaking the same language by the end of it. And like Amy said, by the end, once we were able to identify the content needed on the page, Amy could turn out a design very rapidly and our friend and developer also could whip out a page really quickly. This is Dan who worked on the project with us. Slight exaggeration, but he's a huge fan. He was already doing this on projects where he was trying to figure out how to systematize the design. So we actually started that earlier before he even came in, which made him exceedingly happy, as you can imagine. So the other thing to note here around teamwork is that our team was spread out across the country. We had folks in DC, LA, Seattle, and a couple other places, but I think you said it was one of the most collaborative projects you'd ever been on before. And so from the outset, part of the way that we collaborated was we had working sessions daily, every morning, or it was noon for you. But we would meet, we had this blocked off time where we could sketch together, where anyone on the team could come in and ask a question. Sometimes we used the time, sometimes we didn't, but it created this cohesiveness, and even our project manager set would just listen in on sketching time with us and was developing that language. What that meant was we were all saying the same thing by the end, and we were straightening out issues early on. Now for your team, you may not need to meet daily, that may be overkill, but the main takeaway I would give is creating a space for your team to come in and collaborate with you or ask questions. That's sort of a standing time. That was really valuable. So that's kind of a summary of, these are free benefits that we think you could gain if you use a design system. And after the launch, the story continues. We, the site launched June of 2016, and we're still working with the Peace Corps, we're still extending the system and building on it. And there are unique challenges that come up, right? Because we were moving over some new pages or some new sections onto the new site. We're adding some new functionality and interaction, changing some interactions. And when you're changing the user experience or the journey that somebody might go through, that affects the design system. So there are a couple of key questions that I'd encourage you to ask before, before you're like, let's design something new. The first one is, what already exists? So you might have somebody come and say, we need a new button. No you don't. No you don't. There's like six different buttons you can choose from. Surely you don't need a new button. That's right. So you refer back to it, the system becomes your Bible and you say, what already exists, what can we use? If you identify something that doesn't already exist, your second question is, what is the significance? Is this a game-changing element? Is this vital to that goal that we identified? Is it vital to the audience? And this one's a little squishy, right? Because you need to talk about it with your team and it will vary based on the goal of the page and the site that you're working on. But if this is something for Peace Corps example, their goal is to increase the number of high quality applicants. If this element fits squarely into that, then yeah, maybe we need to add it. But one more question, how will it be used again in the future? Is this a one-off or is this something that can get reused over time? And those are the three key questions that we've been asking ourselves when we think about adding new elements. And just a word of advice. Once you create a system, it's your duty to guard it because it will unravel very quickly. The whole point is that you're not spending time creating tons of unique elements. So if you finish the system and then you start creating new unique elements, you've unraveled all the work that you did and you've lost all the efficiency. And this is just a quick note from the designer that came in. Amy handed it off to Sarah and she is now the one who's extending the system with us. And I asked her, I was basically like, what advice would you give? What did you learn in this experience? Taking on something that somebody else had designed. And the short answer is that understanding where some of these decisions came from is really vital. After she understood that, it made a lot of sense. So one example of that is we are pulling over some pages where people can donate and we needed a button and the question was, should we use another color? And we had talked early about the rules around the buttons and there's a green and a blue one and then there's a red one. And the question was, should we use a red one? Should we add a color? And one of the things that we communicated early was, red means apply, red buttons are only used for apply. You can't use them for anything else. So that rule was really clear for Sarah so that she could make the adjustments that she needed. Had she not known that, that rule completely unravels. And I would have been very sad. We all would have been sad. So how do you get buy-in? We talked to groups who maybe there's only one designer on the team or maybe you're working with teammates where they don't really get it. This is for all of you folks out there. So the first thing I would say is, send them to watch this talk. The second thing is, John Mehta does a report every year called Design in Tech. It's a great report. You should look it up if you haven't seen it before. It just came out in March. He presents it at South by Southwest usually. But as he was sharing the Design in Tech report this year, he talked about how in the technology industry, there's so much design debt. And when he was talking about how do we start to tackle that design debt, this is the quote that he says. He says, you have to scale the company's design function through better managing and leading of designers and through shareable design systems. That's how we're going to be able to extend good design and start to tackle all this design debt. The other thing that I would add that should be appealing to your teammates and your project managers is to really talk about the investment that you're making around design systems and how that helps everyone. If you're doing a traditional process where you're creating page after page after page, that's that dark green line that just goes straight up. That's sort of what you're going to do. You're investing the same amount of effort over and over again, and the level of effort just keeps going up and you don't really gain any efficiencies. With a design system, yes, there is an initial bump in effort, but eventually that sort of mellows out and starts going straight because that seriously happened. Amy could put together pages in five minutes because you're reusing those elements. So a lot of times on projects, especially large projects where there's 500, 1,000 pages, this investment in a design system, you will reap the benefits of that down the road because you're not doing all of these unique one-off pages over and over again. And we really wish we could tell you where that magical intersection is, but the truth is it's different for every project. So there may be small ones where it's not important, but it's important to think about the scale of your project and if this is going to be appropriate for you. And this is something that everyone can benefit from, whether it's your project manager, the brand specialist, business development developers. Developers, that sort of investment resonates with all team members. If you look at design systems around the web, you see a lot of great ones from in-house teams, Airbnb, Etsy has a really good MailChimp, MailChimp, Uber, really good examples. There are a lot of great ones. I don't see a lot from agencies or consultants who are creating these, and we're certainly in-house teams have in-house clients, but we have external clients that we're working with, and we have to educate them along the way if they've never done this before, it might be new for them. So one of, you sort of have to teach them along the way. And again, hopefully this presentation can be a good resource to let them know what direction you're headed and what the benefits are and what to expect along the way. And you have to share this approach so that you can walk them through. So as Amy said, we may be starting with pages, but she needs to communicate with everyone that she's working on the elements and the basics and refining those so that in the end they have that system. Examples are really important to use. The benefit here and why you have to educate and bring them along the pathway is because ultimately they're the approver of the work, obviously, and so you gotta take them along on the journey. The best thing that can happen at the end of this is, and this actually happened, was we'd submitted a design for approval and we were at a check-in call and we asked the client, hey, did you take a look at this? We're ready to move forward. And he said, as long as it matches the design system, it's good to go, I don't need to look at it. They were amazing. Yeah, they totally got it. And it was just because, like Courtney said, we talked to them along the way. We used the same terminology over and over again, so they were following along with us as we built the system out. We never actually showed them the system. We just showed them pages, but they got it because we were communicating clearly and talking to them a lot and teaching them along the way. And it helped them internally to manage their own stakeholders, so they knew what was flexible and what wasn't, and they had those priorities around consistency and scalability. Yeah, because when you have 60 different countries giving you opinions, you'll be like, oh, sorry, we can't use that button because it doesn't match the system, so it gave them a lot of leverage as well. And eventually, there may come a day when they're no longer working with forum one and they have to maintain this by themselves, so it's really important to teach your clients in case they're taking it and running with it. You don't want them to break the rules. Right, and our goal is to give, to provide a system that can live on. That's the whole point, is that we're happy to help, but wanna make sure that you're getting the resources you need for your site to live on. Yeah. And real quick, we're gonna just do a few tips and tricks, mostly because they're GIFs, GIFs, whatever, and we love those. So, be consistent. Your design system's gonna be consistent, but you have to be consistent as well as how you talk about it and how you use it. Be organized. This comes naturally for some than others, but even if you're not an organized person, do your best to be organized. Document stuff, make sure your developers know where all your files are. Just be organized as much as the level you are comfortable doing. This was really huge too, because you created this big spreadsheet that organized our wireframe, our design, where it was in Pattern Lab. We used Pattern Lab here and then where it was on the dev site, so Amy was great at tracking that. Yeah, so it hopefully benefited the whole team. And speaking of the whole team, it's really important that you're communicating. Like Courtney said, we were talking every day, but that also goes for communicating with your client as well. If you guys are all talking together constantly, your project is gonna go a lot smoother just regardless, but especially when you're talking about a system.  So early on, we were like, this is the quote block. This is a stat box, yeah, so that's consistency. There you go. You should get into code as quickly as you can. I think there's, the evolvement of this process is that we hope to be able to do this stuff directly in code. That would be fantastic, but at the moment, it's more just getting that in code as quickly as you can because that's where your system is ultimately gonna live. It's gonna be on the web, so let's see it in its actual environment. And then finally, this was something we learned with transition, so decide on the afterlife. What does that mean? Decide where your system is gonna live. This was a problem when I handed over the system to Sarah, the designer who took over, because I didn't tell her that we had made changes in the pattern lab that we hadn't gone back and made in Photoshop, so I had handed her Photoshop files that weren't actually right, so that was my bad. So that's something we went to in part to you. Make sure, it doesn't matter where it lives, just make sure everybody is working from the same stuff. So in that case, we decided, or you decided after I had left, it lives in pattern lab. That is where the system is, that is the final version, that is the Bible. That's where the last update is. So it doesn't matter where you decide to do it, just make sure you decide it, and everybody knows that. Because the thing about design systems is they give you opportunities to do the cooler stuff. If you can do a page in five minutes, but you had an hour of time to work on something that day that leaves you, I can't do that. 55 minutes to do something cooler. So in the Peace Corps, I got to do two really fun things that I'd never had the chance to do before because there was never time. I got to build a really cool 404 page. I love this page. I hope nobody ever sees it, but I love it. And I got to do a really cool preloader, which again, I hope nobody ever sees it, but it's there because we had that extra time to put in those pieces of delight throughout the site. Because at the end of the day, who wouldn't want more delight? So thank you very much. We are gonna see the stage for our next presenters. Obviously these are, this is our contact information. If you have any questions, please feel free to email at us, tweet at us. But we're also gonna hang out just in the hallway outside if you wanna talk to us. We won't bite. So thank you so much for coming. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks. Totally forgot.


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