So 2007 you became not just an artist you became an escape artist you escaped from prison.  This is my opportunity. I'm going to take it because you ended up in an airplane also. I believe yeah I Hope there's not much I hope but I won't have an ear face any consequences for this You ever done with Charlie Bronson?  Who was it prison Charlie Bronson? I think he's an absolutely adorable person It was he was always a gentleman to me. He was always extremely kind Unfortunately doesn't have the best press in the world I don't think people realize actually what you went through and prison especially struggling with being openly trans and The beatings that you got the slations the rapes.      I think I represented something to them that they had not seen before Boom we're on and today's guest. We've got a lovely Sarah Jane Baker. How are you?  Likewise. I have long been an admirer and Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you and to talk to your And so dress your fantastic viewers. Yeah, it's amazing to have you. You've got a very interesting story The longest-serving transgender in the world over 30 years spent in prison You're out now 150 115 days. Sorry 15 days. How are you feeling? well, it's It's been an interesting journey and Which is how I like to describe My life and my experiences since release There's been lots of downs There have been lots of times where I did wish that I was back in prison I think prison is cruel and I think release after 30 years of prison is a different kind of cruelty if you're not getting Enough support from from the system. Yeah, you've not had the easiest of lives either.  I was born in South London and I Was raised by a father who was Extremely violent. He loved beating his wives. He loved beating his children He thought that was his right And now his older he has able to take no responsibility For the consequences of his actions Consequences being that What he did damaged Many people including myself However as an adult I have to take responsibility for my own actions now and stop using my father's abuse as an excuse well Eventually ended up in the care system the youth custody system and The prison system as you as you know James. Yeah, what ages did you start getting into trouble? I? Think I started getting into trouble when I was perhaps nine years of age I Just started running away from home. I was a bedwetter and Every time I wet the bed my stepmother would encourage my father to beat me Or to take or make me sleep in the toilet in our house So I would have to take my mattress from my bed into the toilet and sleep on the toilet floor If my dad if my father had guests come round they would have to stand over me to use the toilet Hey, I was humiliated. I was embarrassed and I was ashamed of I was ashamed of Even being alive, and that's not a good feeling to have when you're a child And in the end I started running away Living on the streets of London I mean, it's no secret to anybody who knows me that I was a sex worker then or a rent boy as we were called I Was naive I kind of believed that The lust that some of these men and some women had for me that I mistook it for for love At least someone wanted me and wasn't beating me wasn't punching me and Wasn't humiliating me.  It was there was nothing complicated about it I had no desire for riches and I had no desire for I don't know Lots of money. I just wanted people to love me for me to accept me as me and Not so have My father who's my primary carer treat me like I was a Punch bag. I mean I was a child and he was an adult and I wasn't the only victim of his cruelty My father as I did in later years has left a trail of destruction behind him that he will not acknowledge Yeah, we're difficult to repair as well. You were a family of 12 Yeah, there's lots of us. Yes, there was a load. Yeah. We use all in the same roof. No under the same roof. No, we wasn't and My father had five partners and children to each of us each of them Everyone get abused James It's not really my nature to be evasive, but these these these of my these are my direct family and Of course, I'll answer any question. You've got to ask about me, but I have to be sensitive to To their feelings and I mean some of my family Some of their children may not know about their past And it wouldn't be yeah, okay.  Okay. So when you started doing the sex work, how old were you? Probably about 12 years of age. So a lot of pedophilia then with for men women For you it certainly is the world then back in the mid 1980s was a different world I still remember the days.  Um, I'm sure it's the same up in in your part of the uk but um even Cases of child sex abuse I mean, I knew lots of children who were being abused by their own parents um And it was common knowledge and nobody Nobody's kind of blinked an eyelid It was um, it was a different time This was also a time where if he was gay if he was transgender People would feel quite comfortable In beating you up, you know when people used to go up the west end to go queer bashing It wasn't something that they actually felt ashamed about it. They'd be quite proud of that I mean I It was a really it was It was a different time. This was the days of benny hill. This was the times of um to mean grow men on television um Blacking up Don't mean for for our entertainment Also the time of benny hill chasing chasing schoolgirls around the field You know, and it was this acceptable It was a really uncomfortable Time yeah, and a really uncomfortable period of time in in british in british history and The entertainment history too You you always say I've read a few of your interviews. You've also released two books You were a woman trapped in a man's body. When did you start getting those feelings? Did you always When did you start experimenting or did you always know that? Who you wanted to be or who you want to identify with or were you too scared because obviously the 80s was a tough time For anyone to say they were gay or whatever because obviously the beatings people getting murdered It wasn't accepted as a way things are now where It's it's a I believe it's open for everyone I believe if you want to be who you are as long as you're not hurting anyone then so be it absolutely James But then for you How was it? How what ages did you start feeling? You didn't know who you were or what you wanted to do or who you wanted to become well for as long as I remember I always felt that um That my body didn't match my mind or my mindset I always believed that I was that was a girl and eventually a woman trapped in a man's body Now When I was younger I I couldn't really I didn't really have anybody that I could talk to about these feelings that I had so I mean my family I think One judge described my family as being feral um I mean my father's is a racist I believe he hates women I believe he's homophobic Every I believe he's transphobic too. He's my father's not the kind of person I could talk to um my own mother um Run away from from the family house leaving me and two brothers behind because my dad used to beat her all the time And the only memories I had of her is if with black eyes So I never really had anyone That I could talk to about these really deep feelings and of course by the time I started to um Really acknowledge um The gender dysphoria are uncomfortable. I felt within my own skin I was a teenager and at that time The fact that AIDS existed It was all over the press James.  This was a time of demonizing the other this was a time of demonizing people who Who didn't conform um It was a really it was a really strange time the kind of He was like the The man it was it was all over with him because obviously all over the press because obviously celebrity status that And it a lot. I was on that kid But a lot of people were scared a lot of people spoke about it This might sound silly but everything that you see about your dad all that anger and frustration Because I watched a documentary on netflix just a couple of days ago called the making of arin Hernandez This was a nfl player a big strong lad his dad used to beat him but There was a lot he he did a lot of murders but because They're saying because he's sexuality he was gay, but he tried to pretend this big strong enemies. Do you ever think that? Potentially your dad might have had the same feelings you did and his way of try to deflect it was by anger and frustration and try and beat everyone I will I will on this occasion james be charitable and Say that there may be something in what you're saying I'm not a religious person Very far from it. Many churches would not let me through their door But I believe that That it's a good thing to express some kind of remorse to help people have some kind of closure and Now if you have done bad things and if you if you have hurt people it it's it's a Courageous thing to go and try and repair some of the damage that you've done My father is not a person to do that Um, is he still alive? Yeah, my father is still alive When was the last time you seen him? I saw the last time I saw my father was when I escaped from prison in 2007 Of course, I'm free now legally for the first time Do you it's such a hard question for people it Especially the abuse that you got from your father But I believe to move on there's got to be some sort of forgiveness The due would you for the forgiving or do you accept what you've done? And maybe he's fighting with his own demons or maybe was he abused or anything when he was a kid? My father was not the kind of person to share that kind of information um I don't know what kind of childhood my father had But you know james I've met many damaged people as you know as you have to yeah Not everybody who is damaged goes on to damage others They say there's this circle abuse in some psychologists. I've met on my travels They say there's a circle abuse people who were abused there's more chance of those abuse in others And that is probably true But it's not true in all cases Whatever my father may or may not have gone through as a child. I'll I feel for him But it's no excuse to It's no excuse to like to do the same thing to to children my father was a grown man We were children We weren't we weren't adults Having a punch up in a local boozer We we were we were children james. Yeah, and pardon my language.  Yeah I mean for a grown adult to to to to Use implements use sticks and or or to punch children with the same force as if he was punching an adult That's wrong. Now that may say a lot about his childhood But to be blunt I couldn't give a fuck You don't I find I find I I hate violence I will do everything I can to avoid it which is strange because I was really good at it James Clearly because you spent over 30 years in the jail for violence We'll touch on that then so when was the first time you went to because you were in the young offenders as well Yeah, I first um I was 15 when I went to lachmere house Um, which was then a youth custody center Yeah, what was that for? Uh stealing bicycles Stealing BMX bikes. I was living on the streets. You're homeless. Yeah, I was yeah, I was homeless um but the thing is there were Um opportunities for me to get off the street the probation service I'd offered me opportunities, but I didn't trust any adults. I didn't trust anyone in authority And personally I'd rather sleep in a sleeping bag Um under the embankment or the waterloo ball ring or indeed god bless them Center point the center point homeless shelter, which um, I think may still be on shaftsbury avenue They looked they looked after me really well How was your how was it in the young offenders in because I believe the young offenders institute is worse than the adult one Because people try to make a name for themselves people Are seem a lot more angrier How are you getting treated then with your good at covering up how you are feeling or how you are thinking? well, it was really difficult because in um in a youth custody center, you know the the most common The most common way of spending your time Is talking bollocks about each other stab on each other in the back and a lot of people in the youth custody center Knew me from children's homes um You know, you could have you could have written v on my head for victim when I went in I was small um I had national wealth glasses with a bit of sellotape around um Um, I was a target for anyone who wanted to let their anger out on anybody Um anyone who wanted to rob my canteen from the prison shop You know, it was um, it was uh it was a youth custody was bad and obviously with my history of um self harm Um, it that really didn't help So you from the get go of your life when you're born you've been a victim and bullied and battered What age were you when you says fuck this?  You got your seven and a half But you never you end up doing an attempt murder in prison and that's where he done your 30 years Why why was the attempt murder? Well when I went into prison on lots of numerous occasions People who knew that identified as transgender thought they could They thought they could slash me with razor blades They thought they could stab me and they thought they could rape me and And they could because they did so um These are things that didn't even come out in court because I was so ashamed and I was too embarrassed and I didn't want people to think that I was a weak person and So when I tried to take My revenge on one of the people who hurt me Um, and and thank god he he didn't die.    It's not just about um people not having the courage to uh to to To to live in their gender they'll identify with in prison um, it's not just about the fear of other prisoners It's the fear of their own families too um Coming out as transgender to your family can be a It can have a devastating impact on your family, especially if the person has children as as a wife um Perhaps as parents who are transphobic Anyone who's anyone who's brave enough and strong enough to come out as as trans um Sometimes they have to be willing to sacrifice all the people they love Because all the people they love may sacrifice them Yeah, but if people disown you for being different sexuality or trans or whatever it is Then so be it because That's not really family then or friends who turn their back and walk away Especially at a vulnerable time when you're being open and honest So for me for anybody that's maybe struggling to come out and you do then fuck them the ones who do turn their back because then they don't deserve I believe to be in your company no matter what it is you want to do in life but james we often make compromises in life and um We often love and care about people whose views we may not necessarily agree with you know um It may not be that the family or parents Are transphobic it may be the way that our society is structured And the amount of people in this country Who care more about what the neighbors think? What would the neighbors think about them? then Thinking about their own flesh and blood Did you have a relationship?  Yeah, of course.  I've had many sexual relationships in in prison with some absolutely fantastic people james um, I'll say I love sex shagging james you're flirting with your dates always james I Would it would it make up? I mean some of the best sex that I have ever had has been in prison Maybe that's how you My life behind bars james, but you know I like sex probably as well as as as much as any as much as a sexually active then as much as the next person Did you have any that we are involved with men who were saying they were straight who would just come with you but Keep it a secret kind of thing james I can turn a straight man In a heartbeat she's been working on me for the last two weeks, but we'll see You're so gorgeous james So sexual active in prison standard Yeah, I've um, it was I recently wrote a piece And hopefully it's going to be published by a vice magazine Um about sex in male prisons um I wrote the piece once and then I went away and I thought you know what? the public deserved the truth and the truth is that whatever goes on outside of prison Also goes on inside now.  Yeah, you know and and I And on the whole I love people my childhood doesn't stop me caring about other people and um Do I mean I Yeah, isn't prison wasn't all bad.   Well, you're sitting across from me. I'm gonna have to punish you all for this chance We'll keep the cameras rolling for that. Don't worry. I'll get the numbers up So how did you get treated by the cat and gay because you were in with the most fearsome and dangerous men in the world basically In the prison? How how did they treat you well? Because you're known. I don't think it was just the trans mafia The trans the trans mafia. No, it was they always called a trans gangster a trans gangster Why a prison governor who discovered that I was a Mobile phone and and drug dealer. Yeah, because you're not Yeah, you had because you believed if you control the drugs The phones then you control the wing So then you and whoever controls the wing will be whoever controls that um Especially mobile phones because currently the phone I have at the moment, which is perhaps was it? 100 pounds in prison. This is this is a thousand pound you know and If you can supply prisoners with what they need they will protect you they won't care what you're wearing and James, you know People can say what they want about why people are in jail.  Yeah that that that hypocrisy of it They're like, yeah, as long as you can bring it as long as as long as you can get drugs Oh, you you might you might be a serial rapist, but but We'll have it.  Yeah You and of course I did all the maximum security prisons as you know, who are you on with? IRA UDA UDF PLO PLA by the time I started moving through a system. That's when a lot of people Where you would have like Muslim extremists would come in and by then I left them all the maximum security system You ever live with Charlie Bronson? Yeah, I was with Charlie Bronson up in Franklin's prison I was next door to him in a segregation unit And I was next door to him in um, sorry. I was with him in Winston Green. Who was it prison? Charlie Bronson. I think he's an absolutely adorable person Um, it was he was always a gentleman to me. He was always extremely kind um Unfortunately, he doesn't have the best press in the world um But he was always a gentleman to me and uh a gentleman and he was I'll say he was to me. I thought he was Bit of a lovable rogue. Yeah, because I think it's a rough diamond. Yeah, it's been over 40 years. He's never done a murder He's just a constant and I think it's the press that maybe keep him in But I think he's trying to change that now I think he's got a good team behind him because I was speaking to Vic that and he says is They're trying to get the team behind them We are they're not trying to pay three that means because all the books and films it's all violence They're trying to change that to hopefully get them out. But of course um, Charlie Charlie's big enough to take this but um Some of his artwork could be considered homophobic And um, I think this is why he received his last sentence because um an art teacher Um Called charlie out on that Charlie went to the art teacher said, what do you think of my art and the teacher I believe was gay um Wasn't too favorable in his comments to our charlie and you know charlie kicked off And now he's got the sentences got now. Um, I don't think charlie bronson is homophobic I think is provocative and um and of course I wish him well and um Charlie if you if if you've got a mobile phone you see this Send me a visit in order and I will come up and see you any way you are in this country so You've had a lot of ups and downs in your life Especially with the self-harm and try to take your own life Were you self-harm and because was that self-medicating was that making you Kind of feel better Or why when did the self-harm and start when did you start doing the self-harm and kind of stuff? Well, I think I started to self-harm probably my mid teens um I wasn't comfortable within my own skin. Um It wasn't just about um I identifying as as a young woman then within this Young man's body. It wasn't just about that It was about the demons that most people Have, you know from their past um Sometimes we think we can change our life and forget what's happened to us But obviously certain times it will it will come out the more you try and the more you try and And and and suppress your feelings Um, eventually it will come out in some way. So I would burn myself with a lighter Um, I would cut with a razor blade um other times the um The self-harm would take um other forms So be perhaps uh alcohol Uh drug use Um, I mean I was on heroin for 15 years Uh 15 years of my life and Every time I took it it was almost to the point of death every time and then also with uh In I ended up in abusive sexual relationships where people would treat me badly and That was like a form of self-harm for me because I could have pulled away from these relationships But I kind of felt that Yeah, that's trauma bonding. Yeah, just to that. So yeah, I love self-esteem. I didn't have much confidence um people are complicated james and um I mean, I'm aware of some of the issues that you've you've raised about your own childhood and You know people we ain't necessarily good to each other and we're not necessarily good to ourselves on occasion Yeah, it's try to value my work in progress james. You're doing amazing things. We'll talk to you on that as well So you're free all that in 2017 you are close to death though because you cut off your own testicles Talk to me about that experience. Well, I prefer to use the term performing a double Orcatec to me and myself james the technical term. I was going to say cut off your balls, but I try to be professional That's james. That's that's that's okay. You know, you know me um politically.  I've only got one feeling That's my feeling of love too So, how was that? How did that come about then to do that because I know you weren't getting your estrogen Will you try to get estrogen in prison? Well in 2011 the prison system Decided that it would bring out this uh policy the caring management of transgender prisoners 2011 um A prison service instruction or as people would know it as a psi This was ideally uh, it was made up of a list of um rules or Yeah, a list of rules because they were written in italic a lot of this uh a lot of this policy However, a lot of prisons decided to interpret it as guidelines Which is not the same as following something to the rule now um To get on the NHS transgender pathway where you'll be diagnosed with gender dysphoria Then hopefully prescribed estrogen if you're a trans woman Or if you're a trans man be um diagnosed with gender dysphoria and be prescribed testosterone injections To get that you first have to have the diagnosis Now before you could get the diagnosis you have to live Let me do this for the camera. I've always wanted to do this in role For a minimum of two years james that means female underwear female footwear um and um to present To the outside world as a female or as close as you can get within the prison system Um, you'd have to do that for a minimum of two years before you can even Uh get diagnosed with a gender dysphoria diagnosis unfortunately Some prisons especially um in the early days of my transition within prison Um, they were reluctant to let you have female clothing or makeup to be able to live in role So that's one of the reasons why you did it as well cut off your testicles. Well I had been to the clinic Um at chairing cross dr. Barrett. Thank you very much. God bless you and not many people I agree with the decisions that you often make but um I may not necessarily agree with you But I'm still um, I'm still grateful because dr. Barrett is um At chairing cross. I think it still works or he may have retired He he he was always quieting to me and he always challenged me About the decision I was making and how important It would be and the impact it would have on my life But I wasn't prescribed. I wasn't given a diagnosis I was told not only would I have to live in role For a minimum of two years But I would have to live outside of prison For a minimum of two years And no one was talking about my release And I had I felt this This need to stop my body producing testosterone I mean every time, I mean the way you'd have hair on your face in the morning Um, or I'd look at my my testicles. I was just I just felt disgusted I just felt disgusted with myself Um The the muscle mass that I had I just hated I hated my body and um I said to the stuff and I reached out to them. I said to them. If you don't help me, I will help myself And they just laughed. I said, um, I said I will remove my own testicles.  It was the most important decision that I had ever made um, and Obviously when I went to a hospital and they help tie up the loose odds and ends kind of thing Um, apparently said I did a really good job Because I'm about future when I did actually I did actually research what I was doing although there was there was a lot of There was a lot of blood loss. Yeah, because you nearly died. Yeah That's a brave thing to do But again with the compulsive and that just shows you how far you would go to try and make a statement and be Who you wanted to be if you're not this is why there needs to be a lot more things in place for people Who's maybe struggling to come to terms with who they are or what they want to be because It's dangerous because suicides on the rise and I believe it's there's so many different factors Commented that that we've had many suicides of transgender people in jail officially um In the last few years, there was three there was three cases But you know, these are people who openly lived as as identified as trans women What it doesn't take into consideration is the amount of people who've committed suicide who haven't come out So it was just considered and just a basic A basic suicide which which is so common Now in a prison system that it doesn't even draw attention in the last prison. I was in we had 22 suicides um in lewis prison. Um, I was in H&P prison elmly on the isle of shepi in the island in the kent the terms history um Don't mean I was there for seven and a half years. We had 35 suicides After perhaps the first 10 you have us didn't even the others didn't even make the local press Shameful see because you were so openly trans and you're openly People knew what you were and what you wanted to be Did a lot of people confined in you then to confine in you to Tell you their secrets are i'm trans not just James It wasn't just prisoners. It's a staff as well because um discrimination Against transgender people doesn't just it's not just it's not just from amongst prisoners one one group of prisoners discriminating against another But staff do it to each other too. There's a lot of bullying amongst prison officers too And i've met staff who are absolutely afraid that their colleagues will find out that their gay, lesbian Transgender or gender non-binary or gender non-conforming or intersex um And they hide these secrets and and you know secrets they can drive you crazy They can make you really ill um It's not about My my um It's not about Sex and it's not about gender to me and the the Organizations that i that i represent Um, or that i'm a or allow me to to to represent them on on on this platform It's about freedom i mean When you've got the prison system is apparently run by professionals So you've got professional civil servants bullying each other In no it that couldn't happen in a majesty's uh inland in revenue You know it couldn't happen in any other um body couldn't happen in in education because people would come out and defend them people to mean but When you've got prison officers who owe us and and i'm not saying all prison officers are like this but People are people whether they be prison officers or whether they be prisoners In a male prison system. There is this toxic Masculinity the harder you are the more people will respect you So i mean prison gyms are full up with people Posing and i'm sure you've done it yourself james and you look great from it And rightly so, um, yeah But you understand yeah, i mean to see the ones who are most violent more angry are the for me now For my experience what i've been learning over the last couple of years about the mindset of people interview The most loudest and craziest people are the most vulnerable For me, that's their shield. That's their protection Well, you're absolutely right james, but that doesn't give these people the right to demonize Uh and victimize other people now I will I'll take it on the chin to mean The transition from uh Not the transition through gender, but the transition from being a victim to a bully That comes with in in a happens in a lot of cases And it also happened in my because i started uh victim Victimizing people and i was a mean motor scooter james. There ain't no doubt about that But I learned a lot of things in prison Not just from people who cared about me Um, but also from people i met every day Especially many members of the ira Who were also musicians because i remember violinist and a guitarist myself um a lot of these um People in the ira The palestinian liberation organization who took the time to sit down and and and And we we spent a lot of time together anyway and a lot of these people were musicians Or we worked in the same workshops Or we were in we were in adjacent cells in segregation units, which was quite often the way and you spend a lot of time talking about your family um Where you had where you had come from what your childhood was like Kind of the same discussions that we're having you know and And they would they would teach me about The lessons that they learn You know a lot of people that i met in prison um, especially who were in for terrorism charges So i mean as they grew older and they mellowed out and were less idealistic um You know they I'm not saying they saw the error of their ways. It's not for me to to to know what's in someone else's head but they try to lead me away from The kind of extreme way I was thinking because I was always challenging the prison system I was always in the segregation unit for year upon year upon year um, I spelt years in strip cells um, I think uh I think charlie bronson's got the world record for the man a time in the segregation unit But um, how's that good mentally for you though being stuck in the room with nothing just break walls it I'm sure you're familiar with um the um The spoke prisons We'd have the center of the jail where if you walked across it you'd get a right ander of prison staff And all the wings would go off into like spokes So it'd be like like ones were for pent in there well I believed that a way a lot the way that a lot of these cells Used to be made was that the window was really high So you couldn't see trees and all you could do was see the sky from your cell window And apparently it was designed like that. So the only thing you could think about was what you had done Reflect on your life and reflect on god so mean it was prisons were built in a way to psychologically affect You don't affect the mind and to break it down but these But you know you you've got all gonna you've got gels Which I do not have any time for like a grendan underword And they say oh well we we break people down to build them back up Yeah, you know now A lot of people will come out the world and say oh grendans grendans fantastic Personally, I don't believe it. I think grendan is a dangerous place but um That's what I think so 2007 you became not just an atlas you became an escape atlas you escaped from prison I know James. I absconded absconded escape sounds better Well, I don't I had to climb a really big fence How does that how so what was going through your mind then did you not have any release day or did you think fuck? This is my opportunity. I'm going to take it because you ended up on an airplane also. I believe Yeah I hope there's not much I I hope I won't after any facing any consequences for this James I'm I'm I'm I'm not claiming to be a paragon or virtue I'm not claiming to ever be a model prisoner um I was a pain in the arse james still James that's just a rumor Right then base of well if you're behind me james, um I have generally been a piss taker in a prison system if um If I could get drugs I would take drugs if I could get phones I would get phones if I could do anything within my power to undermine the prison system and the prison regime as a whole I would do it. I was the second prisoner To go to the european court for the right for prisoners to vote because I think that's really important um and you know I could tell you don't know a secret james. Yes The most important thing I ever learned from prison Was that prison? doesn't work he doesn't And if it did I would tell you You know me enough Prison doesn't prison doesn't work. It's a terrible prison is a terrible It's so and such Anarchic it's so I'm thinking it's so We're supposed to be the seventh richest nation on the planet and yet all we can do with third perhaps 33 000 34 000 people who can't even read or write till to to to the same level of a child of 10 years of age another perhaps 33 34 000 people with drug addiction problems and perhaps another 30 30 or thousand people with uh diagnosed personalities disorders or mental illnesses is is to put them in a prison system which is Just I mean to be kind is dysfunctional um And they think these people going to get out in a better condition than they went in. Yeah, that is so It's not very creative. That's why yeah the the majority of people go back Well, they have well a few nights ago. I was with a friend of mine called Elio the friend her name was and she said to me she said uh or they said to me um I've got two tickets to go and see joker In Leicester Square. Would you like to come along? and at that time I was doing uh, I was um doing a bit of journalism And I was interviewing people tourists outside of Buckingham Palace saying um, would you think of the monarchy? Would you be happy for monarchy in the country that you come from? and um Personally, I'm I'm anti monarchy. I'm a republican um, but not like donald trump republican, you know, I think I mean we should be free uh, Free people in britain not citizens of the crown That's my view. So anyway, I went along to Leicester Square to the premiere of joker and I thought it was absolutely fantastic anyway, at the end the director was there And um, he was asking he said well, does anybody have any questions? So obviously me being the show-off and the narcissist I am Um, I thought you know what this is a golden opportunity um, this is a this is a platform to put across my my thoughts that um That people within prisons and people outside of prisons who commit crime or have mental health issues um, or come from abusive childhoods should not be demonized but they should be They should they should be cared for and they should be nurtured and they should be looked after And they should be seen as victims in their own right rather than criminals Parasites the people we like to hide away So I was able to speak to The old audience at this premiere at Leicester Square. It's a fantastic opportunity And thank you for the director of joker for allowing me that platform I said there needs to be more investment in in mental health You've been to jail yourself. You know, you know, I'm making you know, I'm talking sense, but the thing is This needs that the British public have for revenge It's really Inhumane Portugal are leading by example and always see it. They've dropped their numbers Dramatically, they had one percent of people in Portugal addicted to heroin and those numbers have dropped where you've got Nearing of zero percent people aren't getting re going back to prison Also, there's a study was done with a man called Bruce Alexander. He's a study called rat park He had a cage with a rat. He had one two bottles one with heroin one with water The rat would always go to the heroin and eventually it would overdose and die But he also did another study with a rat park. They called it Activities for the rats. They had the same water bottles one with heroin one with water But the rats had had friends there. This sounds crazy, but search this up was powerful and also they had the the rats had like Running wheels and like swings None of the rats would go to the heroin They would go just for the normal water at rat park, but in the cage themself 100 percent of them would go to the heroin Just let the human beings because this the says well, there's never been a study on humans But if you have if you look at the Vietnam war, I think there was 20,000 30,000 people on heroin 90% of them came back stopped I mean just because they were in that danger zone because there were their selves as well. They were scared Majority went to heroin So in the rat park one the mitra rats went to the water not the heroin So it shows that if you're outside having fun surrounded by good people friends You tend to not slip into those bad habits Which is a check this out. I mean I've just butchered that story there, but it's along those lines Bruce Alexander powerful man so so you're suggesting that and and I agree if it's so so you're suggesting that um that the craving um the craving for for stimulants Uh or or because heroin's a depressant. Yeah, isn't it or and same as alcohol. It's um um Because some people have said to have addictive personalities and I think I do But environment plays a big part in uh in in in our behavior and environment the prison environment played a big part in my behavior and uh, especially the way I reacted um within a prison system I was seen as dangerous I was seen as a threat In whitemore maximum securities. They said I was the most dangerous person in the prison system And I could not fathom that out. I said, how can you say that to me? I said, you've got Dennis Nielsen here That I used to play scrabble with I think it was the scottish. Is it a daily record or something? They did they did an article About it because he used to keep cheating I always used to catch him looking for the blanks in the bag You know, I mean I mean for a person who killed so many people How many people did he kill? I think he killed 13 people then chopped them up and stuffed them down a drain shit, but the most that but the most There was nothing amazing about him. You could never pick you would never picked him out in a crowd I don't think that was the most shocking thing really, but you know, I wasn't I wasn't scared of him. Do you know what I mean? I This I wasn't scared. Did you feel it more ease with the people who are crazier? Did you feel more connected to them craze crazier that's That's so bad semantics The people who had done the most vicious crimes Did you find that more at ease with them because the people you mentioned because I know you mentioned the boy From scottland as well earlier and today we were speaking who came down to london who he gave everybody Well the story of darryl rome Yeah, what was the story about him scottish? Yeah, um, this this this young man in in scottland. I mean I I can't speak for darryl um I was with darryl in in lewis prison um And it was said that he came to or he had met men on tinder and that he had gave them H is hiv or eight or whatever Apparently, that's what they said. He he did of course, uh, darryl darryl said that um it That wasn't So that there was there was there was lots of gray areas In the story. I mean, I don't know the full story. All I know is perhaps what you know from reading Um from reading the newspapers But it was always pleasant to me.  Because you're doing amazing things which we'll touch on but how have you adapted? I think amazing. I think you're you're that's of that. I think you're stretching that out No, you're doing big things man. You're you're constantly able to talk. How are you adapting though? How are you feeling just now? um Well sitting across from me.  But how do you feeling in general? James don't be so unnice in the world James Listen You're not Listen darling You're not in scotland now I'm done. You're you're in You're in in in london Which I would still say is the greatest city in the world with some of the greatest people And uh at the moment you're in london, so that makes you great too James So how are you adapting to the world then? You feeling good? um Well it's everything that's um It's quite it's up every day as it's ups and downs um I mean I'm fortunate that I have some really I have a really fantastic team of people around to support me um I love my friends um I love the people who've supported me all the way through prison Uh, it's one of one of my oldest friends um I mean visited me almost at least at least once a month for 28 years all over britain You know and my friend now is 81 years of age So we often meet up for lunch but um I thought Now I'm out of prison What can I do to give my life Some meaning um All the ideas that I had in my head um The books that I read because when I went to prison I couldn't read or write so I pretty much educated myself and When the opportunity arose I did my I'll say my gcscs and my a levels whatever um And this went on to study politics and economics You've got a degree in economics history You have a degree in economics james. I have I have many qualifications james, but you know what they're just pieces They're pieces of paper. The thing is how can I use the knowledge that I had gained? um How could I how could I use that academic use of that in the outside world? I wouldn't say they were just pieces of paper because For what you do because we'll touch on the fact that You're not just an offer, but you're a professional violinist a great artist And also these the people that you're working with just now. I had to write them down because there's that many so we've got r w o c I w o c yeah incarcerated workers organized in committee You want to run down of who they are? Yes, let's go. There are a fantastic group of people um across the world branches everywhere In britain at the moment there is a prison building program Now what apparent what seems to be happening is that um A lot of taxpayers money is being used to build prisons And then apparently the control of these prisons has been handed over to private companies Now these private companies are allowing uh business big businesses to come in whether it's um people like virgin or being q allowing Come companies to actually come into prisons and use prison labor on the cheap So And and thus undercutting local economies So I mean, why would they pay someone minimum wage when they can get a prisoner to do it for 25 quid? Yeah, so I mean exportation now in the united states where this is this is a run of the mill thing Prisoners are being exploited and maybe it's too strong a word to use the word slave labor But when it comes down to the fact when they say well, if you don't go and work in this workshop Which is called purposeful activity. You may not get your parole do you mean you may not um You may not get certain privileges that other prisoners who are working get so you're actually forced to work for a private company While you're serving your prison sentence Me I call that exploitation me. I call that wrong me I'll call these fuckers out now in the united states A lot of prisons are started forming unions. They said well if I work for a private company We should be unionized Whether that will ever happen in british jails. I'm not too sure but uh, one for organizations like the IWOC um they are they are They are challenging. Um They are challenging the authorities about their the way they treat prisoners.  Um They if when I go to prisons or um if I need to travel to a prison to deliver, um makeup or foundation or clothing Because my organization is the trans as you know the CEO of the trans prison reliance um queer care absorb all the train costs I mean the support they've given me is I mean they've given me mental like mental health support um Any issues that I may have uh We've getting on in the community Being trying to help me become less institutionalized queer care Is is is is there for is there for me? They're a fantastic organization The links in the description for all these amazing organizations that you're working for. We've also got The national prisoner radio Oh, um, yeah national prison radio, which is based in, um brickson next to the brickson prison. And what is this for? Well, every so often I've been invited in to do pretty much what we're doing here do a podcast So And One of the guys there he was like kind of shadow Shadowing me around london asked me what my views were about the world after 30 years in prison um They were really really supportive And um, especially they did this the crime and consequence book for clinks um They did like the podcast they did the podcast for that because I was uh I was given a chapter in the book a transgender in the 21st century prison system and um The podcast was recorded by the national uh prison radio. Uh, so thank you very much And you've also you write articles for the freedom press Yes, I do. Yeah Freedom press is one of the oldest, uh independent um Radical publishers of of um Of left-wing and radical news in the world um It's neither the guardian or the or or the times um I think the the writers Uh, some of the most courageous, uh, some of the greatest and some of the most courageous writing I've seen um If you want to go to like freedom press bookshop, uh, which is next door to the whitechapel gallery up in or gay east um They they have stickers.  That's okay. Go for it. Yeah, I told you james. I mean no There's An organization that I really care about that I support called CAPE, the Campaign Against Prison Expansion. Now, at the moment, I think that young black men, young Muslim men, women with mental health issues and obviously white males with mental health issues, the poor, the vulnerable, not just, I'm not just blaming the Tories for this, but the default setting has been that if you do not conform, if there is no spaces for you in psychiatric units because the units has been sold off so the lands can be gentrificated and have big buildings on it for profit, the default setting is for people like that is prison. Prison, the default setting for hiding away our social problems. James, it's unethical and it's immoral and every, the thing is everybody knows this.  Jeremy Corbyn was absolutely right and I love Jeremy.  I know a lot of people are suspicious of him. A lot of people think he's anti-semitic. Bollocks, at the last general election, he was demonised. But he was right and there's so many things that we don't agree on. But what he was right about was this. We're not a poor country. We're not impoverished.  There are enough resources for everybody. But people have to share. You know, I thought one of the first lessons that most parents teach their children is to share.  And if you've read Don Quixote, you know exactly what I mean.  And that was to divide working-class communities. And they did that. And they encouraged and they fermented this idea in the minds of many working-class people in Britain that all of their ills, all of their woes and all of their problems were down to immigration. James, you're an immigrant in my city. When I come to Glasgow, I'd be an immigrant in yours. This building that we're sitting in, this microphone, this lead and my glasses, this are probably all made by immigrants. I mean, immigrants build great Britain. What do you think the state of freedom of speech is the now do you think it's getting a took away from the people? Can you expand on that, please? I just think if somebody's willing to speak out about something, nobody's allowed opinions anymore without getting called out or getting called a racist or a Nazi, that's right or wrong. You can't just sit and have an normal discussion with someone and two people disagreeing but sitting civilly. And do you feel as if when people are speaking out that the people's getting their words twisted where people are too scared to talk about certain subjects now because they're scared of the backlash? Do you mean in the private arena or in the public arena? I've just been in both in general. James, the circles that I mix in, I say the wrong things. I make on a regular occurrence, I make social faux pas and I acknowledge that. I acknowledge that I maybe my mouth was working faster than my brain. There's nothing wrong with being sensitive and with being kind and being respectful of and having good manners. There's nothing wrong with that. And that is that is a thing that we should all encourage amongst each other.     Well, when you say something, there are consequences. There are consequences to what we do with our hands and our consequences to what we say. Now, I miss gender people. Not often, but I do. But because I do that, it doesn't the people that have around me are forgiving it. And I say, look, sometimes I just don't think I mean, getting the pronouns wrong, especially with a lot of my friends who identify as gender on binary. And for that, I am I'm I am sorry. And and and they know that and they are forgiving. And they encourage me to think to think more about other people and maybe to slow to slow my mouth down a bit. Yeah, that's good. I think I think I think maybe you can take some lessons from my friends, that would just shoot. I just live podcast. Yeah, we just been sitting in silence.  Is it anything you would like to finish up on? I think for this moment, I've said all I've got to say, and I'd like to thank me.  It's just too big. No, I'll take like I say, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank my friends at queer care. Obviously campaign against prison expansion, incarcerated workers, organizing committee, and the prisoner on my on my words. You should have brought that up. The prisoner solidarity network. So we do. We write to transgender prisoners whose families perhaps have deserted them. We're about the abolishment of the IPP sentence. And I'm sure you know about that issue already. Anyone can go online and read about the IPPs where some people have been given like a been told are you you have to do a minimum of two years. And they're still in 14 years later.   So people like like the prisoner solidarity network, I said we write and we support prisoners who are in jail. If they need legal help, if they need psychiatric reports to challenge unfavorable ones made by prison or psychiatrists employed by the prison system. We try to do that.  For anybody that's maybe want to come forward and speak to you or maybe because you're honest about everything. So for anybody that's maybe needing any help, how can they contact you through your social media? If you put Sarah Jane Baker, can I indulge me a moment? This is my favorite thing to do. This feeds my narcissism. You should do this more often. So if I click this, this is the first mobile phone I've ever read outside of a prison. So if I click on here and go, hey, Google, is that right? Feed my narcissism. Come on, Samsung Galaxy. Hey, Google.  Oh, if you've, you know, someone showed me some of these things, we can say things to it and it just pops up. But anyway, if you just say, hey, Google, hey, Google, what did it say? Get, well, I normally say to a Google, who is Sarah Jane Baker? And it will tell you who I am. It will tell you that I'm the CEO of the Trans Prisoner Alliance that I hope everybody will support. Get involved, get behind them. Yeah, yeah. And also we're trying to raise, we're trying to raise money as well because now you're basically... You can go away now. Because you're trying to get a flat because basically you're homeless just now as well. Yeah, well, I've been told that my time in a hostel is up and that I shouldn't use the hostel to hide in. This is time for me to move on. Obviously I need to live in an area which I consider safe, that there is some security and that I can run my organization from. Because I'll say there are, I believe about 2000 transgender prisoners, 140 approximately living openly. I believe nobody should have to live in fear, whether you're in prison or whether you're outside. And I will do everything within my power to ensure that transgender prisoners in jail, which are one of the most marginalized sections of Britain at the moment, there's not many people who are going to or are supporting trans prisoners or identify as transgender, whether they be trans men or trans women or indeed anybody, LGBT, QI or anybody, prison solidarity network and queer care and the Trans Prisoner Alliance or indeed IWOC or CAPE, we support prisoners, we support everybody. And we will leave all the links in the description including try to help Sarah get her apartment so she can live safe and keep doing what she's doing to help others who need your help basically. But listen, it's been an absolute pleasure, my love. It's likewise. God bless and I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for this opportunity. And thank you very much to all the people out there who've supported me since my release. I love you all and I value the support that you've given me. Thank you my love, I appreciate it. And the great British public too. Yeah, more of the Scottish though. Thank you.


Hello everyone. Can you hear me well? Hey John, well I'm here to talk about UX strategy and it's a really interesting topic for me because I started quite a long time ago and I went through different companies around the world and I just want to share a little bit of the insights I go during all this time. So this is me, you can verify that it's me. Since I was a kid I always wanted to grow a beer so I'm living the dream right now. I come from Buenos Aires and I live in a couple of different places and now here in Singapore I'm really happy to be here today. During my career I went through a different spectrum of roles from graphic designer to interface engineering. I'm still trying to figure out what that means. So if you guys want to reach out to me I'm on Twitter. There's a link in Twitter to more ways of getting in touch so if you guys want to share some thoughts about this presentation or whatever you guys want to share I'm open to have a conversation so please go ahead. For today so I want to tell you guys where everything started for me. I want to talk about a little bit the cost of not having a UX strategy in your company. I want to talk a little bit about value. What's UX or design brings us valuable to companies in different stages. I have some tips on how you guys can start defining your own strategy and then I want to bring an example of what a user-driving corporation means and what they're doing right now. I think it's really inspiring and then if we have time I have more stuff to share. So our main focus for today is basically UX and strategy related to user experience. So what's the first thing comes to your mind when you think about UX? That's the first question I asked myself when I started thinking about this presentation. If you go to Wikipedia user experience refers to a person emotions and attitude about using a particular product system or service. When I think about UX the first thing that comes to my mind are these two nice fellows right here. So I guess most of you are familiar with them. They're huge guys. Don Norman and Jack of Nilsen. They started their own consultancy Nilsen Norman group in 1998 and since then are being like the leading boys on a lot of things related to user experience and how we build products. And if you go to their web page you're going to find slightly different definition. They say that user experience encompasses all aspects of end user interaction with the company, its services and its products. So it's a bit wider that shows product and service. This is Don and Jack of. It's a killer name for any rock band if you ask me. Pretty cool. But this is a really old topic. I didn't start in 1998 with these two fellows. It goes way, way back. And for me started with understanding usability or getting involved in usability as a discipline. I started designing interfaces a long time and when I first heard of our usability I didn't understand really well what it was about. So I tried to really dive to take a really deep dive on it. And I learned a lot of things that I was doing wrong. And I learned tools and different aspects of my own discipline basically. And it helps me improving my game a lot in how to approach products and how to make them better. I had the amazing opportunity to be part of the World's Elite Day a couple of times in the early 2000s. And I met incredible people that inspire me a lot. And I think the main takeaway from that experience was we were here to solve problems for people. And that's the main thing. And when as soon as I understood that I was like, okay, so I'm actually making a difference. I'm really happy to be here now. So what we're trying to do is like we make a huge effort to make a really complex process simple and accessible. Usability 15 years ago, we were saying a lot of things about it. One of them was it can improve your return of investment in like 153%. And that was huge. Like if you think about it, improving that return in 153% is like awesome. And we were talking about simple things, gorilla, usability and user research, cheap and quick methods with pen and paper or pencil and paper. And it was easy to execute. It was easy to get value really quickly. When I say return of investment, I meant any of these things like conversion rate, traffic numbers, user performance or any target feature usage. Back then it was simple. Just grab a paper, start drawing things, show it to people and you get like completely, you realize how wrong you are on the first sketch. And that was really interesting for me because like when I was starting doing this all around me, I was so for developers with fancy computers and like gadgets and things. And they were making fun of me because they thought, man, you're bringing your kindergarten experience to the company. Like, you know, crying and doing colors on paper. That was really fun. Five years later, that number went down 85%. And that's really interesting to ask why. We were like 153% return of investment to 85%. Well, basically, that happens because we as a professionalist, we learned a lot. We did a lot. A technology got up and stood up for all the standards we were trying to push. We started getting guidelines and better information on how to build products. But the user research budget stood the same. So it's not like we step up in a lot of places except for the main ones. So picture that like back then, common conversion rate average was 1%. Today is 3%. That means like users also learn a lot of things and they're like used to specific patterns on how to interact with products. This is me 10 years ago. This is actually me with a braid and everything. So with a couple of frameworks, a browser and a computer, we can just build a prototype really quick, iterate on the same day, show it to people, get some insights and keep modifying the prototype in the same day. And that was like a huge value for the company. And when they started realizing that, they started paying more attention. So as cheap as you can, this is one of the tips I wanted to share, as cheap and as fast as you can do this, it's always a great kickstart to start showing value to your peers or your managers. Usability today has like bigger challenges, right? There's new devices and peripherals. It's not just screens. It means a lot more like, you know, gestures and I don't know, voice control, self-driving things all around, AR, VR. We have data science is incredible. The things you can do with machine learning today is out of this world. I mean, back then I was thinking about how can we improve things. And now with all the technology we have on our reach, we're actually living in the future. Now I realize we're living in the future. Of course, scary AI, that I'm really scared about it, but we can talk about it later. So if you see Luke Wilson research, well, it's not research, it's about just visualization of the research. You can see that right now, the decline in market is screens. So if we only keep paying attention to screens, we're going to have left behind a lot of things. Big screens are fading away. I'm not saying they're going to go away, but they're like fading away. You know, hand computers like phones and tablets are now the rulers. And there's an emerging market that is really interesting. I mean, who owns like an Alexa or in a Google home? Like there's, some people have, thank you. Some people have those things right now. And I'm pretty sure they're really useful for specific things. So even the cars already have like voice controls. So basically we need to start coming up with new recipes, right? We used to have, we went through a phase where research was difficult and it became easy. And we were talking about screens and different challenges. Now challenges are getting wider. So we need new recipes. If you take a look of this little graph here, you can see how technology is actually catching up with us. So yeah, as fast and as quick we can get this done, it's going to be much better. But let's back a bit to the main topic. So usability was the kick starter for me. And then I learned a lot during my career. And I went through different companies and I started realizing there's, apart from the fact that there's different maturity levels on design and UX in different places, there's two things that I'm worried about. There's a like immediate cost of not having a good strategy. And there's an imminent cost of not having it, right? So for me, this is my subjective view on it. The immediate cost brings like, there's no clear objectives, right? There must be like, probably they want to make money. That's clear. We all want to make money. But there's no direction. So usually teams are running in circles trying to go fast, but they're going nowhere. There's a lot of copy and paste like following the competitions or looking at these main brands, how they do things. And basically we're just copying the same problems they have without realizing. People become task oriented. So we lose the value of collaboration between teams. And what happens usually is like, I got something to do, I just do it and then just pass it on. And contrary to have a collaboration with other teams, we can add value to the small task and they start adding up and it's completely different. Being task oriented creates gaps in between the areas, right? It's really bad for the company. There's bad communication, nobody takes ownership of what they're doing. There's absolutely no room for innovation. And that's something that worries me in this particular time, right? We're talking about an incredible, you know, emerging market of new gadgets and possibilities and we're not taking care of it. And then the assumption-based design, there is a shock we have in the office when, you know, a director of a manager comes with a requirement and they actually don't know about it but they're pushing it really hard because they believe that their assumptions are going to be a success with no validation whatsoever. And then the imminent cost is you're going to end up with a low quality product or you're going to have like low quality service and that this is really bad for conversion, right? You're going to have bad sales, there's going to be no growth. The low return rates are really, really bad for any kind of company. There's going to be a constant rework. I'm okay with reworking as long as we know where we're going, right? And this is a huge expense if you don't know where you're going and you need to rework every day because somebody don't like it or the manager doesn't feel like it's good enough. The team is going to be demotivated and they're going to lose the passion of what they're doing and that's an incredible huge cost for any company, just people going for the paycheck and nothing else. And it creates a really bad company culture, like I left companies because they didn't want to change. They actually was, they were driving like only making money or showing off some numbers. And it's really difficult to attract talent. When you bring talent and they start asking you about, whoa, how you solve these problems? What's your process? And you try to say, we want to do this, we want to do that, but we're not doing it. It's really, really difficult. I'm sure you're familiar with more different problems in a company that doesn't have a strategy. I just try to enumerate a few of them. But it's not all about money in UX, right? It's not about how much money we can make if we invest a little bit in design process. It's about people. It's about people. It's about understanding their needs. It's about understanding how to think, how to feel, how to help them. It's about empathy, emotion, empowerment, motivation, fun, accomplishment, right? When you have, when you have a good process in your company and you spend like a lot of effort with your team trying to solve a problem and then you validate that solution and then you get a successful feature out there and people start using it and you see their reactions. That's really, really, it's a great motivation for you and for your for your teams. So who, have you ever heard something like this? I mean, it happened to me like a long, a long time, too many times and recently as well. So focus on the Queen wins as long as directional and they're directional and they're focused on actually things that make sense. I think it's fine, right? I'm not, I'm not against it, but focus on quick wins sometimes is a trap, man.  So I'm not saying don't focus on the quick wins, try to be, have a methodology to identify those. We were asking for, for some time and budget for doing a research and a really important project on our company and I heard this, this from a product director, like he stopped the meeting and it says guys, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a user as well, I know what we need.  So finally we convinced him to, to move forward with the research and we sent our researchers all over Southeast Asia to collect a lot of information about how sellers, how buyers perceive sellers, right? It was really broad and our researchers came back with a really interesting report and we were in the meeting and we were showing this, I don't know if you can, I mean it doesn't make, doesn't make sense to talk about the results, but what it makes sense is we asked, we asked the buyers if they were willing to pay more, if they had, you know, sellers with good ratings that it makes sense and most of them, they says yes, that's more valuable for me than just good prices. And this, the same guy said something like what? In the meeting on the meeting and I was, then I realized that this guy has like this, you know, this visceral feeling that it was wrong, the research was wrong and he expressed it like that and I felt so bad.  I was like, dude, we sent people over all the countries and we asked them questions and they replied, it's not like we came up with these graphs to try to convince you. So I think if we go really high level, one of the problems I saw more often in different organizations is there's a, you know, there's a process that is pretty linear. So business come with a request, design thinks a really good solution or the best solution they can in that like constraint of time and then engineering does the best he can to deliver. And of course, this creates gaps because business has their own expectations, design interpret those expectations and create his own expectations and so on. So that creates a lot of gaps in something that it should be unified, right? But this is something I say sometimes. It has no value to say things where you're against. I don't think that's valuable at all to communicate. I think what defines us is to say what we're in favor of or what we like and express, you know, I speak Spanish, so it's not exact translation. Spanish sounds much nicer. So what I've been learning these last years is like the best user experience doesn't come from one place. It comes from a lot of places at the same time, right? It's an effort of a lot of things combined. It's not just one perfect pixel or one perfect business strategy or one perfect line of code. It's about how those things combined create a better experience. And the spectrum of this overlap is huge. There's so many things inside, right? So it makes no sense to split it. I don't think it's wrong. Sometimes it works, but from my point of view, it doesn't make sense to split it. So usually we see today, there's amazing tools to actually bring this to life. And one of them is design thinking, but it tries to grab all these things with a framework to solve problems and set a same direction for all the areas at the same time. And simply because UX is a reflection for all the areas combined, it's not just one or the other. John Mehta says the role of designer is constantly changing, and he changed his relationship with the way business changed and technology changed. And I think it's really accurate if you think about it, right? At the beginning, designers or thinkers were pushing forward with really innovative ideas, and it was really hard to build those things. Then technology got up and got it right. And now we have more technology available, and we can do incredible things. So I think it's time to design push again. And if you think about the tools we have today available, why shows thinking about the product of their service? Why don't think about wider? How we can make the entire company solve problems in a way that is effective and is iterative and is actually adding value to everyone? Because I said before, UX brings a lot of interesting tools, so I think it's time we start using it all over the place. So I had, I showed this talk or this deck before to different people, and I got really interesting feedback. I would like to hear you guys what you think after. So they told me, well, okay, so UX is really valuable. I got it, right? It brings a lot of really cool things to the table. But how you can quantify that value? Like how do you, how can I bring information that is, I don't know, to my business manager and tell them this is what we should doing because this is the, you know, the fact. This is the number. So, and I talked with business guys and they told me, yeah, I understand the process. I understand everything, but I need to make more money. So I tried to come up with different strategies to do it. And I'm telling them, well, this will help you. And I brought some information about it. So you can just share with your peers or managers as well. So there's something called the design value index. Design Management Institute, I think it's a London company came up with this. And basically what they do is they grow a lot of design-led companies and they compare it in the stock market with other companies that are like the, they're not, or they're not design-led. And the index prove that companies which make effective use of design outperform the peers and it confirms that design is an integral part of a good management, right? It's not about pixels, it's about management now. And if you look at the graph, the results over the last 10 years over, you can see design-led and emerging index companies, red and yellow on the top. And then all the other measurements are down there. It's like a 200 plus improvement. And we're talking about money. We're talking about stock market here. So I think this is a good proof to say companies that are being led by design, not by pixels, but design as a way of solving problems are way more valuable than other companies. The Design Console in also London published a report in 2007 called The Value of Design. The Value of Design proves evidence of how business in the UK, businesses that use design in different aspects of their company, not just organizational, but also service, product, marketing, whatever you want to call it. And they come up with some insight. The report is pretty long. You have the link down there if you want to see it. But I just brought like three main items that I thought were really interesting. So the first one is we already share it, right? The design-led businesses outperform key stock market indices by 200%. That's convincing to me right there. But if you're not convinced, there's another quote that is really interesting that says, every 100 pounds are designed out of business spend on design increased to no around 225. And that's also really valuable. And the last one says like, on average, design out of business increased their market share by 6.3% through the use of design. So you can read the report that's pretty interesting, but it's pretty old. So 207, right? It's quite old. So if we go further in time, in 2014, Shane Ray grew up that report and he amplified a little bit more. And you find out that that's true, like implementing designing new companies really value and makes you earn more money. But he also found that he helped you also reducing costs, right? And in case of Procter & Gamble, he reduced costs by 1 billion a year. Shows by designing a new process to create a different kind of plastic that is way better, that is like normal standard, right? Is thinner, is cheaper to make, is environmentally friendly, and some other things. If you move today, there's another report that I think is really interesting to read, at least to see the facts, to have a clear argument when your manager says we need to move this fast. Well, but we can make more money, right, if we do it this way. This report examines the skills of design in the company, not just the return of investment. And basically, design skill, one of the findings is design skills are connected to innovation, like that's straightforward. If you want to be an innovative company, you need to bring these elements to your company. Well, and then there's like 10 pounds per hour, more productive than UK average in any other company. And the design skills are worth 209 billion only in the UK, and their value is growing faster rate than the wider UK economy. And that freaks me out a little bit, like whoa, means like design skill now should be a must, right? We all need to start training on those. And I have much more, so more examples, but I think it's going to be boring. It was talk about numbers all the time. So I'm going to mention some things, and then we'll move on, right? So there's also really interesting findings on, you know, startups that we all know, like how Sendez increases the usage of the search function four times and article views in eight times. That's a pretty interesting success as well. You really need to roll out to 80 different cities and keep on innovating. That's a really interesting example to look around. If you Google these examples, you're going to see the reports, you're going to see the numbers. Airbnb, when it started, they were making 200 euros a week. And they went into, they tried to understand what was the problem, why we're not growing. And they realized the quality of the pictures was really bad. So what they did, they had no money, right? They flew to New York to the people who was publishing their apartments. They rented a camera, a high definition camera, and they took pictures of the apartments that were published back then. And they're increasing their revenue in 400 euros. So they went to 200 euros in one week to 400 euros a different week. And then they keep doing the same process of understanding what are the problems, why people is not renting. And now they're like freaking huge. They're all over the world. They're making a lot of money. This example for me is really interesting because Nike dropped the spending on marketing 40%. And somehow they increased the sales by 25 billion. And that's impressive, like how they did it. They changed the entire strategy on how they left disrupted transportation industry and who would copy them and then did it and then like all the other companies that just follow the same. So to recap this section just quickly, we're basically here to solve problems, right? That's what it is. And great UX comes from a collaborative effort, not just us pushing pixels or writing code or making business strategy better. Design lead companies create more value. That's proven. You can see the reports. And good design also can help you to reduce the cost of your company. That's also really positive. And a strong strategy keeps the team engaged and motivated. So what I see that a good strategy of UX comes live in a company brings a lot of value as well, but in worse, right? Not just about product and numbers and sales. Apart from all these things, having a clear and unified vision helps the team to follow the same route and fight the same battles and be more cohesive. The interdisciplinary collaboration is really interesting if you ever experience it. Like when you have a point of view and then somebody from business or from tech or from marketing chips into your idea and it becomes bigger and better and wider, right? You start seeing the problem from different perspective. UX is objective. It's data-driven, right? You do the research. You do your validation. You look at the numbers. You look at people using the product. So it's objective. And there's no room to discussion when you have a good research or research well done. And it brings innovation all around. You're always thinking outside the box because you know your constraints. You know your users. You know your context. You know everything. And it creates new business opportunities. It allows new crazy ideas, try new things, and suddenly you realize there's this opportunity to create a new unit business in your company. So aim higher, man. Don't be just a pixel pusher, right? So I thought bringing this Escher quote that I think is really interesting. You need to attempt the absorb in order to achieve the impossible. And I think it's really interesting coming from him that he was a great artist and he always tried these new geometrical and crazy perspectives. So some tips about what happens when you start your own strategy, right? I think every company is different. They have different goals. They have different ways of doing things. They have different cultures. So I think the main thing here is to just take small steps, right? If you want to change everything at the same time, it might be risky because getting everyone on board is really difficult.  And when you know where you want to be, just document the vision. Like you just create a document and you write it down, right? What are you aiming for? So everyone can just like relate to it and access to that information.  Create all the steps in between and try to achieve, you know, small things. If you set achievable goals, it's going to be easier to execute, it's going to be way easier to communicate, it's going to be easier to achieve. And every time you achieve one, you're going to feel awesome, right? Define the key metrics, get all the data you can, right? Try to set up your teams to actually look at that information if it's like a tracking system or it's a research, whatever. And know your constraint and get your proper tools. I don't remember who said that, but I think it's really accurate. Designers thrive in constraints. So that's also a really good tip. If you want to be accurate with your design and you want to create amazing things, you need to set up your constraints, your time constraints, you know, your technical constraints, etc. If you propose yourself to make a design in one day and then test it, probably it's more valuable that if you spend a week just looking at the details. And try to get everyone on board, like your peers, your superiors, your managers, you know, your reports, tell them what you want to do, tell them what you want to accomplish, tell them how you want to do it, what are the steps, and try to get feedback on the process constantly, review and iterate constantly. Because it's not just about the product, it's about how you reach to build the product as well. And take it slow. I mean, yeah, baby steps. So I thought about bringing an example of how this happening in a big corporation, because it's inspiring, at least for me. And every time I think about user-driving corporations, there's like two big names that come to my mind, right? The first one, not the best one, but the first one that comes to my mind is Google. I think they did a great job after the 2000, they come up with this integrated kind of look and feel and experience for all the products. And that was really challenging. And right now they're like leading as well on how we should do things. And I think it's really cool. The other one that comes to my mind is Apple, of course. Apple has a design at this core. You know, Don Norman was the first one to define what are the design guidelines for this company. And some of them that are still around. So we're like pretty strong. And Apple, of course, they build awesome products. I'm an Apple boy myself. I have an iPhone and things. Of course, they had a few setbacks. Not everything on Apple was incredible and amazing. But I thought about bringing a different example, a more challenging one, something that we don't relate with it every day. This company used to build hard drives. They started doing computers really in the early ages. And now they're building really powerful and interesting devices. I'm talking about AVM. Look at this monster, right? AVM is leaving a huge transformation. It's incredible. They decided to bring design at the core of the company. And in order to do that, they aimed to hire 1,000 designers and train the entire workforce, like everyone, in how the design thing works, from executives to interns. And that's really powerful. And they call in design thinkers. And I think it's really interesting to make this distinction. They're not designers. They're not engineers. They're design thinkers. So a new way of, not new, but a different way of thinking. And the transformation goes like, it's impressive. They have people in 175 places. They're over 300,000. And they're basically expanding the role of design to design thinking framework. They have their own version of it. And they say that will enable the company to humanize solutions for real world problems. And they use the word humanize. I think it's really powerful. It engloves all the things that we're living, right? I think they're doing a great job. I actually love them. I had the chance to see some of the presentations around. And they're really inspiring. Because they were like a data commercial driving company a few years ago. And now they're doing all this huge transformation. And they're doing something interesting inside a company that I thought it was sharing that is, they're changing the design or developer ratio. And they're changing it. And it's a huge trend right now. For the impact they're having is pretty interesting. Because in 2012, there was one designer every 72 colors. And that's like a lot of colors for one designer. Today, they have one designer every eight colors. And they have one mobile designer every three colors. And that rate is huge if you think about it. The transformation they're going through is impressive. And this happened in the last decade. They started this process quite a long time ago. And they're still going on. And they're not the only ones. They're not the only ones. A lot of companies go into the same trend. They realize that the design thinking framework is a powerful, powerful tool. And in order to bring this new way of thinking inside a big company, they're doing all these things to change it. And designer developer ratio was a huge problem back then in 10 years ago. I mean, I was one designer with $50 developers. And it happens to me in a lot of companies. And it was really hard to comply with so much demand. But if you're clear on your direction and you do take the baby steps, there's a lot of people who are going to start seeing the value right away and it will help you out. So that's pretty awesome. IBM, they're also working on their own framework that is based on design thinking. And I don't know if they're doing it for branding purpose or they're actually trying to improve it. I didn't experience this myself, but I read it on their website and encouraged you to take a look. There's a link down there. They call it the loop. And basically have three phases of serve, reflect, and make. So I'm pretty sure we can relate to this, right? First we research, then we understand, and then we build. The keys for this framework, they call it heels playback and sponsor users. And I think this is really interesting. Heels is the guidelines on how you're going to build your team in order to solve a problem, right? Here's a nice graphic so we don't see text only. Heels is how you accommodate your team, what kind of roles and expertise you need to solve a problem. The playbacks are basically the iteration, like how your team is going to interact over time. And the sponsor users, I think it's a great upgrade for the framework. Because what they do is they have this feature, they know the users they use the feature, and they get one of those users as a sponsor of the feature. So you actually have to interact with a real person to try your product or to understand how to improve it. And the main principles are focusing on user outcomes, it makes sense. Restlessness in brainvention, just reworking and working. And diverse and powerful teams. That's one of the most powerful things, right? Just have a diverse group of people trying to solve the problem. The responsible for all these is Carl Frendenburg. And I think I'm pronouncing it right, I think. So anyway, this guy is a designer academic and is doing this work in IBM and is really inspiring. I encourage you guys to take a look at his blog. And he has a podcast as well that is really interesting. It's one of my new, I'm a fan right now. I mean, I saw this guy talking in a few conferences and it's really interesting. So you can check it out there. The IBM site is really interesting. They documented the entire process and it's really insightful to see how a company thinks about design thinking. But if you guys want to know more about the framework, the original one, design thinking, Adobe has a really interesting documentation about it, right? So if you want to take a look, it's online workshop. You can do it like in a week or so. And it will give you a span of what's design thinking about, what are the tools around it, and how you can grab little pieces and bring into your company. So I got some more stuff to share. I tried to make it sweet and colorful. It's more entertaining. We're just about, and part of the talk. And I know I talk too much and I brought a lot of information as well. So I work at Lazara, right? Everyone knows Lazara here. So nobody knows Lazara. I see two hands. That's good. More, more. Okay. Good. So Lazara operates here in Southeast Asia for the guys who didn't raise their hand. It's an e-commerce platform. Now we're working with Alibaba Group. So we're joining forces and a lot of things. It's really interesting face on the company. But to share a little numbers, Lazara is pretty huge in Southeast Asia. There's a lot of users. There's a lot of transactions. There's a lot of things happening on mobile. There's a lot of things happening socially. And there's really, really interesting things that we want to do in the company. And from the UX team, and we thought about a lot of things that we were doing wrong, right? We knew that there was a lot of things we can improve. Let's call it like that. A lot of opportunities. Maybe a little more positive. So I thought about sharing some key things that we did to start driving change in the company. And believe me, guys, it's really difficult. It's not like we implemented this and we're good. Like it's an ongoing effort. But the first thing we did with the team was, okay, how we want to solve problems. Where we want to be when this is awesome, right? When the process is done and we're working as we want. So we went on and we defined a process. The team did a great job doing this. And we documented. We documented all the faces to what we think we should be doing to understand and build the product, right? We documented from the intent, current state, future state, design, and the test phase. We defined the objectives, some considerations, the actions, collaborators, and the expected outcome from each stage. And this is really important because it's a reference material. Every time you're doing something, you can go back to it and say, ah, okay, I can just do all these things now. I can just push the team to do more research or do this and that. Apart from defining the process, we run a couple of workshops. We thought, okay, we're going to bring the product development team together and we're going to run a creative workshop using this framework. So we can raise a little bit more awareness of how we can use these tools to solve problems. And that went really, really well. This happened, I think, online. It started in Vietnam, right, John? Vietnam. And it was an online workshop also together with the Bangkok office. And the results were awesome. Then all the product people was talking about the same things. Then we also, according to the projects, when we raised a little bit the awareness level, we got into the projects and we said, hey, guys, you're trying to solve this problem? Okay, we have this thing we can do. And it's really interesting. Let us try, just sitting, get together in a room for a while, run these tools, and you'll see what happens. And that was incredible. We got a list of new opportunities that we can execute right now and some others that we cannot because we don't have the platform for doing it. But the reaction of the company was intense. We also run some exploration workshops, basically to understand from the business unit that I want to try to push new businesses in the platform, okay, how we can approach these opportunities. And that was like incredibly positive. Now, different teams from the company are asking us to collaborate with them in running this process to understand how to move on and forward and do it quicker. And then we did a lot of noise, but this one in particular I really like. We created a club that runs every quarter. And last time we brought this movie from ambition that is called Design Disruptors. I highly recommend, guys, just take a look. We brought it in, we screened the movie and we had a conversation about design and product development and product design. And it was like completely insightful, not just the content of the movie, but the conversation we have with our own colleagues. So we're making a lot of noise and the company now is listening. So we define it, I think it worked and it's working because we define it achievable goals. And it wasn't that hard. We come up with the process, we generate some content to share, we run a few design workshops to level up the awareness, we brought content from outside to inspire all the people to understand what we're doing and we keep on making noise. So I'm about to finish, but I just want to show some pictures related to change, right? How about change and how difficult it is, right? So Andy Warhol said, they always say that time changes things, but you actually have to do it yourself. Time definitely changes things, but if you don't do nothing, this doesn't work either. So small steps, achievable goals, and you're going to get there. I know that sometimes it's really painful, like you're trying to push forward something, that's my wisdom too by the way. It was really painful. So you try to push something and people push back because they're afraid of change, they don't know what it's about. So bringing awareness, I think, is one of the first challenges. And it seems like an impossible task, right? That you're fighting against the status quo, and then it feels like it's an immense effort, but don't worry about it. I mean, you're not alone, right? You're going to start recruiting an amazing team for sure. You're going to get colleagues and peers for different companies. This is some of the guys from Alibaba and Lazara designers. They're all great. I can vouch for any of those guys. They're incredible people. And then know your standards. We don't need to reinvent the wheel like IBM is doing, or trying to fit a new framework. We don't need to do that. We can just pick it back on whatever is there already, and it's impressive and it's really cool. And go out and connect. Just let's have a conversation after this. Let me know what you think about what kind of problems are you running into. Maybe I can just give you a hint, or no, or maybe I learned something new. And go, you know, really go and connect like, I just reached out to this guy the other day and I told him, hey, I'm going to show some of your things on the conference. So what do you think about it? How do you feel about it? And he was thrilled. He could get back to me and we had a conversation. And I thought, I thought at the beginning, when I, when I did it, I was a little bit afraid that I was going to, you know, forget about it or ignore me completely. But definitely he didn't. He saw that I was trying to also drive a little change and I told him, just push me your data. Give me some more info, and some of this in the presentation already. And go out, get inspired, right? Talk with people, see what they're doing. Not only on work-wise, just go and watch a movie and try to bring some of that experiences back home. And try to inspire people as well, to show what you're working on. There's definitely an interesting conversation. Everyone, everyone knows something that somebody else doesn't know, right? And try to have fun, man. Don't make it, don't be stressed. Everything's going to be fine. It's, it's hard, but try to have fun in the middle. And that's it, guys. Thank you very much. You're the best. Thank you so much, Nathan. So we have one, we have one question. We only have time for one question, because we've been strapped for time and we had a very, very great sharing from Nathan. So is there anyone that wants to ask a question, perhaps? Okay, so you can find him afterwards. If you are too shy to ask right now, we'll present the token of appreciation to him. Thank you very much, Nathan. And it's a small thing from us. Thanks a lot for being here. Awesome. Yeah, no problem.