Unlocking Success: Navigating User Experience Design – Tech.Strong.Women. EP 27

Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Techstrong Women, where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in tech. I'm Jody Ashley, executive producer here at Techstrong, here with my co-host Tracy Reagan, creator and CEO of Deploy Hub.

And in her free time, she sits on a bunch of stuff at the Lennox Foundation that I can never keep track of, but she'll tell us all about it. Um, before I introduce our guest today, I wanna give you a quick update about what's going on here at Techstrong. Be sure to register for our upcoming virtual events, virtual events in December.

Um, speaker submissions are still open, and we always love sponsors. com and be sure to tune in every day to Techstrong TV for great shows and interviews. Alright, Tracy, what is on your mind today?

Well, thank you. And yes, I am Tracy Reagan and I do sit on a lot of the, um, boards and working groups at the Linux Foundation, uh, open, S-S-F-C-D-F, um, and probably some more that are yet to come. So security is, you know, I, I can, I like to watch what kind of the news is around security breaches, and I normally don't watch for, um, denial of service problems.

But this one came up that I thought was worth talking about. Um, it's, uh, it's the HTTP two, uh, rapid reset, uh, vulnerability. It is zero day, meaning that it, they don't have an A patch for it right now, um, but the, the workaround is to reconfigure n Engine X with some different parameters.

Now, why is that interesting to me? It's interesting because it tells us how important in the the, in the configuration of your environment, and this is just, you know, n Engine X, it's a piece of your infrastructure, how important it is to, to track and know what those parameters are. Um, and that's something we don't necessarily track.

It's probably done manually or it's in a script, or it could be in a, you know, if we're doing GI ops, it may be stuck in a script somewhere, but it's not exposed. And we think about things like SBOs and knowing, uh, dependencies. But I think we also have to add to that list thinking about configuration data because it is also a dependency just because it's not a piece of source code, it shouldn't be put on the back burner.

And in this case, knowing the configuration of your Engine X, um, and knowing how you should, uh, do the work around is important because they don't have a, they, it, it's still zero day, there's no P for it yet. We just know about it. So, that's my news for today.

And everybody think about configuration as data as well. That should be versioned and tracked and known to all. Cool.

Thanks Trace. Super interesting. Alright, I would like to introduce to you our guest today, uh, Nicole ine.

Nicole, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself. Hi, I'm Nicole Ine, and thank you so much for having me. There's nothing more than I love than to sit around and talk technology with fabulous women like as yourself.

So thank you so much. Um, currently I'm the chief product officer at a cyber risk performance and planning, um, software company called Axio. Um, but I focused my career mostly on the design side of things and on the topic of usable security.

So that is a big passion of mine that I I'm mine would love to talk about. Yeah. So, well, first I wanna know, okay, so I looked at your LinkedIn profile and you are a UX guru.

Nobody realizes how hard user experience is to really understand. I know, I, I hear people say, well count how many clicks it takes to do something, but it's way broader than counting clicks. Mm-Hmm.

Could you start this conversation about, just tell us about your background and user, um, experience and what we should be thinking about when we start developing software in that area? Give us some tidbits of information and your insights over all these years. Yeah, thank you so much for saying that.

I, I don't know if I would call myself a guru guru, but it's something that I'm extremely passionate about. Um, and specifically in security. So when I talk about usable security, really that concept is security products should enable workflows not be a hindrance to workflows.

And so when there are a hindrance to workflows, they're not used, which is making you buy products that are inherently making you less secure. Right? So really focusing on the usability part of when you purchase security software.

Um, now user experience as a whole, or what I like to call it, is a more holistic user-centered design, right? Because it's bigger than just pixel pushing or like thinking about workflows or understanding in my, in my case, the CISO persona, it's also testing things, right? It's, it's, it's, uh, going out and doing gorilla testing and like, does this flow work for you?

Or doing more structured user testing with your work, with your workflow groups, et cetera. But it's really from the bottom up understanding who you're designing for, building out personas, right? Then utilizing that, um, and empathizing with the user to build out a workflow that makes sense in the product that is gonna be easy for them to use.

And then designing a design system around that, right? And then testing all of that to make sure that it's actually gonna be used effectively, right? So there's a lot of, actually a lot of research that's involved in user experience much more than people think about, you know, like, like you said, people think about like, it's gonna take six clicks to do something.

Is that a good workflow? It's much bigger than that because in security specifically, I love that you started out talking about configuration. 'cause I think about security products in two personas, there's a utilization persona.

So the people that are being asked to use a product and there's a configuration persona, someone who's setting things up, holding that data, understanding the workflow of setting up a product. And often they're very different, specifically in security, right? So it's, it's bigger than just, you know, one persona.

You're thinking about everyone doing the research around that and then building out the workflow to get it utilized and pushed into development. Oh my goodness. Personas is something I talk about all the time, and I really never thought about it in the case of designing a, a user interface.

I've never thought about it that way. It's like very enlightening. Yeah.

I think about personas in terms of marketing and outreach. Mm-hmm. Right?

Yeah. Is it, is defining personas in UX different than defining personas and marketing? And what, what do you, how do you define it?

Like in marketing, you know, you create a, you know, kind of a name, you know, uh, Debbie, the developer, and what does she like, what does she do? What are her interests? What does she, you know, want to achieve in life?

But in the user and, and, and putting that into software, how do you see a persona? It's, it's similar, but they're often different, right? Because for marketing and sales, that's a buyer persona.

I know there could be overlap between the user and the buyer, of course, right? And for the, for the user, of course, there's things like motivation, their background. 'cause you have to understand where this person is coming from.

And we're all humans, right? So we all have backgrounds we, I empathize with. Um, but there's bigger things involved, like, uh, products that they normally use and they like, right?

Because then you're hitting on these mental models. Like, if I really, if I really like using my Gmail now I want to make inbox and my product look like Gmail, right? So you can hit on these interactions that people are used to using.

So it's, it's similar, but the motivations are often different between buying and using. And then also there's different components. Like, like I said, what kind of products do they currently use so you can leverage mental models and interactions that they're used to using.

So it's not when you, there's nothing worse than when you have to use a product and you don't, you, it's not inherently, you know how to use it, right? Like, that is the worst. We've all been there, like you just said, when we started, oh, this new, I got a new iPhone, and they're added all these things, right?

That is bad user experience, right? That's bad user experience. We wanna leverage mental models that people are used to using so they can, they feel comfortable, right?

Getting on their phone and they know exactly what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it. So when They include a 20 minute video to use your new phone, you know you're in trouble. Yes, absolutely.

At version 15, I ought to be able to 16. Yeah. It's real.

Maybe that's why they just added a cord this time. That was a big deal. Well, and, and that's so, and like user experience is, even if you think of, of it, uh, and this is like one of my big passions as well.

It's like, it's bigger than the digital experience. So the cord is a great example, right? So like, my partner, he ha has an Android phone.

We can never share, share the plugs, right? That is bad user experience. Why do we wanna buy four different plugs around our house?

Or it's just, you know, those are like the tangible user experience things that also when you build hardware, people need to think about as well. So you used a term that I wanna go back to. Mm-Hmm.

A mental, was it mental map or mental model? What is a mental model? So, you know, we're all humans.

We all have a way and or we've observed things in our lives, right? Where we have built this model in our head of this is how something should work, or this is how something I'm expecting it to work, right? And that's a mental model, and we all have them, right?

We often, you know, culturally share similar mental models because we all use similar in technology, similar products. Like we all either use an iPhone or an Android. But my mental model as a phone user with an iPhone is much different than the mental model of a user with an Android.

And if you've ever tried to use an Android phone as an an Apple user, you're like, how do I turn this on? Where, where, how do I make a call? Right?

Because I've, I've established such a strong mental model for the iPhone interface, right? I see. Now I understand.

I'm an Android user and I don't ever wanna touch an right. I'm like, what is that? Well, I'm a I'm a PC user.

I, and my, I'm a surface user and my husband's a Mac maniac. Mm-Hmm. I, I don't want anything to do with a Mac.

Everything is so weird and I can't deal with it. It's the same thing. And I'm sure you, so how do, from him being, oh, sorry.

So how do you design software that can fit these two models, right? You do the research, right? And that's why user experience is, in my opinion, much more research than it is design.

Yeah. And so, and so you do the research, right? And you can leverage, if you think like, icons are a great example of this, right?

So if you, uh, use a metaphor in symbology, a symbolism of icons or something like that, you can leverage mental models pretty generally speaking, right? There are some differences with different cultures and like certain icons, but you gotta do the, in order to know that you have to do the research, right? You can make an assumption.

And even the assumption is based in fact, 'cause you've done the persona work, we still have to do the research. And that's user. And What, what kind of research do you do?

Is that just like, uh, I don't know, bring a bunch of users in and see how they react to the Yeah, there's A lot, There's a lot of different methods you can utilize. Um, you can do, like you said, bring users in to do guided tours. So if I, you know, I sat you ladies down and I said, okay, I'm gonna do a test.

I want you to find the home button, right? And I'll, and see how performant that is. Are you struggling with it?

Is it taking you a long time to find it? Right? Or if I say, um, okay, so here's a modal.

I want you to fill out the modal and then I'll observe you struggling or not struggling going through the modal, and then I want you to close it, then I want you to reopen it, right? It's very guided tasks. That's what I call guided user testing.

You can also do, if you put it in product, you can do AB and you can actually use quantitative data if you have some sort of telemetry around it. If you're lucky enough to have that, you can do interviews, right? You can say, we're thinking about doing this.

How do you feel about that? Like, there's a lot of research in human-centered computing that says if some someone likes something, it'll also perform well. They're highly correlated.

And so there's different ways that you can test, but you gotta know what you're testing for first, right? And then build a testing plan around that. Do you ever struggle to get buy-in?

Because it seems like we live in a world where everyone wants their thing to look unique and different and special, which is, again, the polar opposite of what you're talking about. So you open something up and think you know where to go, but everything's different. It seems like there's people like want uniqueness.

Do you struggle with getting people to be like, no, people want things to be familiar. Yeah. Um, well, I think that's like where influence is made, right?

If I can, and that's also why testing is so important. Mm-Hmm. So what I found out, like really early in my career is that if I was able to provide data onto why we made a decision, it often, what people found commonality and were okay with that, even though they wanted it to be like the super flashy thing.

Mm-Hmm. Like very flashy design is not usable. Right?

And so there, if you come with data, right? That can also help you influence and make decision and inroads there. And the more you do that, right, the more influence you have where those discussions become less and less, right?

Because they're like, okay, she's, she's proven it. Right? She like gets it.

And, and I think that is also where I think, uh, UX leaders really struggle is like tying their objectives and achievements to actual hard data. Not, um, you know, like visceral things. Like I like it, right?

Um, and then also tying it to revenue, right? So if I, if I made these choices and I've tested it and there was, you know, an x percentage of performance, we decided that was good enough to go. And then that was closing us deals because of the features that the usability team implemented.

Like, now you're golden, right? And a software company because you've tied yourself to revenue. So, Yeah, I always thought that the, when I, for the first time, I can remember the first time I ever brought up Google and had one box, and I thought it was like, okay, this is so brilliant.

'cause you know, I'd been looking at other like Yahoo and there was a lot of stuff on the page Mm-Hmm. But in Google, they just gave you one option. Just tell me what you need.

What, and it was, it felt like it was asking me the question, this is your time to drive. Yeah. And it was, I, I found it, it, it, it really shifted the way I thought about a user interface, to be honest.

Simplicity. Yeah. It was simple.

But there was a lot of design components that I'm sure they thought of use leveraging affective computing, right? The emotion, right? You felt empowered by technology when you, like you just said that, right?

And yes, is a usability design choice they made. Mm-Hmm. Right.

They could have designed that very differently. It wasn't, they, like, they decided we're do something super simple and let them go. There was a design choice that was like, we're gonna empower the user.

So, yeah. It's pretty Cool. This is fascinating.

How did you get into this? It's like, do you have a background in psychology? I mean Yeah.

How do you get there? Actually, you know, I love, I love like telling my background and I, I bring it up to my family quite a bit because in my undergrad I focused in sociology and African-American history. I was very fascinated with societal human behaviors, right?

And the, the joke in my family was always like, what are you gonna do with that? You're not gonna make any money doing that. You know, like the classic, like, we're sending you to school.

And, and, um, and I was like, I don't know, but we'll find out because I love humans. I think they're so interesting, right? We're just very complex.

And then I, you know, did some more, um, schooling and sociology and started doing social behavioral research studying government grants. And this is where I really was like, oh, usability is a thing. Because I was writing a hundred page reports and I was like, no one is reading these.

No one is reading all of this. This is just check the box. And I started getting really into data visualization and infographics because I was like, what a better way to consume this information that we're trying to explain to you about the effectiveness of your government grant.

And this was before data visualization and like data-driven, uh, decisions were a thing, right? It was like very new data visualization and being talked about. And so from there, I started working in, um, as a contractor at NA doing a lot of their data visualization designs, um, on their budget and their security operations and their clinical research sites.

And then I was like, oh, wait, we can build software and I can utilize visualization, but I can also utilize all these other design principles. And then I just felt like I'm come from a family of educators, and I was like, I need to learn more about this. And so I, um, started pursuing my PhD in human-centered computing and just took a bunch of classes and did a bunch of research around usable security information visualization, right?

And like just best practices in human-centered design and things that have, are studied right at a academic level. And then I got my first like, big UX leadership job and just was like applying those principles. Like you, you know, academia sometimes you just read and learn and then you never apply.

And I, I was doing it at the same time. So I was just applying those principles and seeing so much success and building like a lot of movement around usable security at the place that I was at at the time called dichotic. And that I just was like, okay, these, this, this is fact.

Right? I'm seeing these principles go, I'm falling in love with the discipline. And that's been my career ever since.

So, yeah. And we need, uh, you know, and because I do a lot in the security and open source security management of, um, all the evidence, uh, we, we deploy have doesn't evidence store. Mm-Hmm.

Because what happens is we collect all of this data, but we don't ever really do much with it, to be quite honest. Yeah. And developers find it to be a useless exercise to generate an SOM, for example, if nobody's gonna consume the data or do anything with it.

Mm-Hmm. So the idea of applying these principles to security data certainly would help the development community understand why they should do these steps, right? Yes.

Well, and that's a, that's a larger topic in itself, right? The development community, we don't do a good job at the product perspective or the design perspective to communicate with development why what they're doing is important, right? So like that in itself is like a barrier from the product and design angle we need to break down.

But yeah. But also there's all these troves of data that things could be done and a usable, something usable to do, actionable with that data that I think people get lost on that next step because also people have bad math literacy, people have bad data literacy, people have bad cyber literacy. Like now how do you design something for that so people can consume that information?

And We don't know yet. That's haven't been done. It's, it is a challenge.

Mm-Hmm. You know, we have things that, we have databases we can go to. We have scanning tools, but how do you make that information useful and design something so that a developer would say, I want my data to be there.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's complicated, right?

And that's, but that's like where like the research happens, right? So like, what problems can this activity solve for the developer? And until you hit that pain point and get the buy-in, it's very difficult.

So that's where research, I mean, research is so key in all of these from the product or the design perspective. So Yeah. What is a person like you that's really into this particular topic, which is a very interesting one.

I have never, in all my years of being in software, I don't think I've ever had this deep of a conversation on user experience. I always hear, you know, obviously the UI design work, back in the day when there was something called Goey guidelines, I knew the woman who started that, but she had similar interests. Um, what do you do?

What do you do as hobbies? Yeah. Do you volunteer for things?

What, how do you apply this to your entire life? Yeah. Well, and so it's, I always, I do weird things all the time where I'll open a door.

Okay. So this is like a good example of this. So, So it's not a hobby, but it's how my brain works now, right?

So, have you ever, uh, tried to open a door and it looks like there's a handle to pull it out. So it's a pull door, but it's actually a push, right? And so you're so confused because your mental model is saying, this affordance means a pull, not a push.

And like, I'll be like, well, that's weird. They should really change the handle of that door. And the people that I'm with are like, what are you talking about?

And I was like, it's the wrong affordance. It's the wrong affordance. It should be flat.

So you know you're gonna push it. Right? And so it's like those, I'm constantly seeing these observations where like, I'm a very tall woman.

And so sometimes, like the hand sensors in bathrooms don't work for me. Right? And I was like, this is so weird.

They didn't, they didn't test this the right way. And I found this whole entire range of articles about how they only tested against white men for the sensors. And so they don't work for people of color or women.

And I was like, that makes sense. And then I like tell everyone about it. And they're like, they're like, you are so weird.

Like, what? I have, I have the same problem. I'm just say I'm exhaust.

I have had to ask people in the, in the restroom if they could wave their hand over it because my hands are covered in soap at this point, and I can't get the water to come on. Yeah. I always thought that my skin is so white that it looked like the sink, But it's also possible that it could be a pigment thing, right?

Yeah. Because they only tested against one thing. They only tested against one person, like one type of person.

Right. But it's like that, those are the things. So those aren't hobbies, but it's just, oh my God, point, my brain is just wired differently.

I know it's, I'm adopted. I think we might be related. We should do a DI drive my family bonkers because I would be like, what the hell is wrong with this door?

I do exactly the same thing with everything. And it drives them crazy. Like Yeah.

It's how my brain works too. It's nice to find someone who, uh, has the same, uh, functionality in their brain. Yeah.

Well now you're gonna know. Oh, sorry. Now you're gonna know.

You're gonna say the user ex the user experience can apply to anything. Yeah. Not just software.

Tangible. And It drives me crazy. People don't think about it.

Yep. Everything I, I'm fascinated with physical user experience. Right.

I think it's one of the most interesting things 'cause something we totally take for granted, right? And they used to call it ergonomics. Right?

Is this chair shaped the right way for my body? Things like that. Right.

But yeah, it's, I think it's fascinating. It's very fascinating. It Is.

It is. Absolutely. I got in the car the other day and my husband has a Suburban and I have a Mazda, and they have the little controls for the volume.

Mm-Hmm. Up and down. And mine has it on the left hand because, you know, if you're busy driving, you want it on this hand, his is on the right.

I'm like, why is it on the right when the dial is right there? Why do you need it on the right side of the steering wheel? That makes no sense.

And he just looks at me and shakes the head. And that is a perfect example of a mental model, right. That we're talking about right now.

Your mental model is very strong, right? Which is like, and I say things like that and people also are like, what are you talking about? Right?

It's like, well, how I think, Well, I think the mental model drives us in many different ways, right? Mm-Hmm. I, I mean, I, I love that, that concept, and I really never heard that term before.

But I think even from picking, um, a significant other, uh, from the, um, our, our hobbies, what we feel comfortable with, mm-Hmm. Uh, the culture that we wanna be around, it has to fit our mental model. And I think some of our mental models are pretty tight.

Yeah, I agree with that. Yep. So how do you change a mental model then?

How do you go about and say, you know, we are going to try to make a change in the way somebody interfaces with this particular data. Yeah. How do you do that?

It's hard, but there's good ways to do it, right? And there's proven ways to do it. So guiding people in software, and I'm sure we've all onboarded on software and you see these, um, guided walkthroughs, like, here is how you use it.

Here is what you're looking at. That is very helpful. I I always say people don't read, but there's one time when people read in software, and that is when they're first starting.

'cause you only get to be new once and you have their attention. So doing some guided onboarding, really good technical documentation is always helpful. Technical documentation is always a part of user experience from my perspective.

Whether it's videos or word documentation. And just really providing ways to customers, users of how this should work, right? And really helping them coming from a place of empathy and knowing it's gonna be different for you.

Right? And I'm gonna help you walk you through how it's gonna be different. And I think that's probably the best way to do it.

The other way is through these user testing groups, right? If you can get beta user testers to go through the flows, give their opinion now, they automatically have buy-in, they become influencers, and they can start talking about how this new flow and how it works, and they're so excited about it. And then people are like, oh, that makes sense.

I understand now why it's different. Here's how I use it, et cetera. So couple different mechanisms.

I think. I think a good example of that is, um, younger people in particular, um, much younger than me have grown up around things like TikTok mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, you know, YouTube, real YouTube and very short videos.

And now what do we see? We see commercials mimicking YouTube. Mm-Hmm.

And TikTok, right? They have somebody that looks like they're, you're watching a YouTube, uh, you know, somebody recording themselves. Mm-Hmm.

So we have that younger generation now has a different mental model of what advertising should look like. And now we're seeing that reflected in very expensively produced commercials. But it looks like YouTube.

Right? Exactly. And not like the, it's very, these like micro videos, right?

Who decided that micro videos when, you know, it's a micro video is just a circle, right? And you're gonna select it. Snapchat made that design decision that now the rest of the industry has followed.

That's how it is on Instagram. That's Why I asked how do you change that mental model? And how, how, how is it done so effectively in some, and others fail completely.

The design is a follower game, right? Like, if something is succeeding, other people will follow suit because it's a good mental model. And so if you just hit one market, it'll go it.

That's a little bit different than like, you know, enterprise software, but it's, it is a follower game. And now the mental model is a circle means a micro video. I'm gonna select that.

TikTok has changed that, and now reels has decided to go more a TikTok approach, right? Where you just scroll up and scroll up and scroll up and scroll up and go. And it's, you know, it's interesting, right?

It's interesting to see these design behaviors persist in our lives. Like if you look at YouTube's micro videos are the same as TikTok, right? They decided that that was gonna be the same mental model, so, right.

Yeah. So Nicole, very interesting. Similar, your background.

Um, I know that being a role model to women and creating diverse teams in in your group are really both important to you. Tell us a little bit how you do that. Yeah.

So because I work in, because I'm such a passion of user experience, right? In order to empathize with users, you need people of different backgrounds on your team to understand other people as well, right? Because we're not all the same.

And so just out of, in some ways tactical nature Mm-Hmm. Having a diverse team in, in user experience is fundamental, right? Like, let's just start there.

'cause it brings different perspectives. Now for, with women, I struggled very deeply to get into technology, to, like, I worked in technology adjacent fields, and I didn't have, I didn't have an in, I didn't have a mentor, right? And I just want to pay that forward to other women when they enter into the company that I'm at, or someone reaches out to me because I think it's so vital.

Like we need people to talk to, right? We have a very different, unique perspective. And, and because of that unique and different things happen to us in the workforce, right?

And I want to be able to give back what I, what I couldn't find when I was trying to enter the field, and also like progressing my career, right? Like I'm 37 years old and I've never really had a female mentor, right? That's, that's, I've had male mentors Mm-Hmm.

And part of it is because I of the security background that I work in, right? There's a lot more males than women. But like, I want, I don't want other people to feel that way.

Right. It's, it's not, it feels very lonely. It's very isolating.

We hear That a lot. We hear that a lot. Especially in cyber.

Yeah. Tracy. Yes.

And we had Paula, I think her last name was Ratliff Rat Ratliff. She was with Women Impact Tech. Mm-Hmm.

She, we had this discussion with her and she pointed out, um, unfortunately that during COD women left, uh, our industry at a much higher percentage than men. And we have a long way to go now to catch back up to where we were. Yeah.

Um, you know, I, I pointed it out to her and I asked it as a question, but they have the data 'cause she, uh, worked for Manpower. Mm-Hmm. And she said it's very, the, the, uh, the gains that women, um, uh, had accomplished prior to Covid have all been lost.

Yeah. Uh, so, and I've noticed it in, in going to, you know, conferences, uh, oh, my phone's ringing. Sorry.

Oh, really? Noticed it At events too. Mm-Hmm.

Oh, I've noticed it at events. There were far fewer women at the last few events that I've been at. Um, and just in, in resumes coming across, I have a niece who is looking for work and she has really, uh, struggled and she's not being interviewed by women.

So it's out there. The problem is out there, you know, we can, we can say it's, you know, we don't wanna always cry and say it's hard for women in tech, but it is, there's no doubt about it. Yeah.

And it, I mean, it's, it's hard by the way, right? It's hard for everyone in tech. Tech is always an emerging space.

We're constantly learning. Um, we're constantly met with struggles, you know? Right.

Right. Now it's kind of the economy, you know, like there's other things, right. But we're constantly met with this ever changing landscape.

And, and when you have a, a unique and different perspective and background, right? It's hard to look around and just see like, is there anyone like me around? Right.

And that's, and when there isn't, you're like, oh, man, who can I go to if I, if I, you have like a stupid HR question, right? Like, it's not even as deep as like, this happened to me. It's like, I wonder like how do you, uh, access the HR portal, right?

Like, who do I go to assets, just like these little micro interactions that we have that it's like, it's so nice when you onboard someone who in some ways looks like you, right? Like, who understands you be like, Hey, you can always ask me this question. Right?

Like, it's just a little things to support people at work, which I think we take for granted a lot of times. Right? Well, and tech being so I would think more than a lot of other professions remote work Yeah.

Ability for it. It makes it even harder. 'cause you're not having those, you know, grabbing a cup of coffee and chatting for a few minutes or water cooler discussions because you have to really block 30 minutes on your calendar and send a Zoom link in order to have those, those interactions with people.

Yeah. Well, and I think that's one of the biggest things, right? Like build like building relationships.

Like, I can keep on saying like, we're all human, we're humans, right? We crave relationships and because that fosters trust, you know, communi better communication, like all the things that we're looking for in community and work is one of the biggest communities we situate ourselves in every day. And if we're doing this, you know, on a computer face-to-face, it's just not as community bonding as it is when you're in the office.

So then you kind of have to do like the extra mile, find that person at work you can trust and talk to and ask the stupid questions to, right? Like, should I use a Slack channel to say this thing? Right?

When you first start a job, you, it's, you're, you're a vulnerable person, right? So yeah. If you have to ask that question, you need to go to WhatsApp or your text and, And women need to, we, we need to own up.

Women need to own up that we need to do a better job of mentoring. Um, in my career, I have met far more queen bees than I have met mentors. Yeah.

Um, and I find that, um, women of color are actually better mentors than white women. Um, it's just a fact. It's just a fact.

Because they have had, they have, they've practiced it. They know how to do it because they are mentoring other women of color. Mm-Hmm.

Um, so white women in particular, we gotta figure the mentoring out. We really do. It's, it is a, uh, a problem for, um, for, for everybody in the community.

Yeah. I'm with you. I'm a hundred percent with you.

We have to take ownership and be the solution. Right. And like, that's what, that's why I'm so passionate about it, and I'll talk to everyone, anyone who wants to listen.

It's like, you didn't have that. Like, it's not like crime a river, right? It's like, okay, now are you gonna be that person for someone else?

Right? So, yeah. Mm-Hmm.

How did you get in interested? Oh, sorry, Jody. What I've seen too is because of the remoteness, even in the last, you know, now it's coming up on what, four years kind of, um, we've got younger women who are coming up and maybe they were in their mid twenties kind of getting started, and now they're four or five years into it.

And they're super smart and they're super technical and they know how to do their jobs. But what I'm seeing is they're horrible with people skills. They don't know how to manage the people that have been given to them remotely to manage.

They, they just don't have good skills to do it. And it's, it's a struggle because you're like, okay, you're really smart, but you're also not very pleasant to work with or work for. And it's hard to, 'cause they haven't been in that in-person environment that those of us who are older did almost of our careers in.

And where we learned how to do that. That's that we have a whole generation of kids that have been in front of screens for so long that they don't know really how to act interpersonally. And it's, I think, impacting everybody.

But I see even more women around me doing it that they just don't have those skills. And I'm not sure how we, how we mentor that. Yeah.

I, well, not everyone's meant to be a leader, right? Like some people, like, and, and that's okay. By the way, I talked this, talked with this with my team quite a bit, right?

It, it's okay if you don't wanna manage people, right? You have amazing skill sets that are super valuable. If you wanna manage people, I'll help you with that.

It's hard. I think managing people is the hardest job you can have, right? 'cause humans are complicated, right?

They're very difficult. And so I think there's ways to do that. Like we have my current company, we have, uh, we do personality assessments and we have personality coaches that we can utilize if we're seeing deficits there.

But that is an investment that the organization has made because we are completely remote. Right. A hundred percent remote.

And that has to be a business decision. But yeah, I agree with you. I think there's struggles there.

See, I love your attitude about that because I've always, I, I am the first person to raise my hand and say, I don't really wanna manage people. It's, I'm just not interested in it. I like to be a worker bee, but men that I've worked for have always needled at me.

You have to, you should be, why aren't you and women that I've worked for have the attitude? You do. Which is exactly what I just heard you say.

If, if you're interested, I will help you. And if you're not, you have a great skillset and you're gonna do great things. You don't have to manage people to be successful.

But I don't, I never got that from men that I've worked for and with. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

They always felt like, you know, putting their need to be driven into that direction onto me. And I, I've always fought it. I'm like, no, I'm good.

I think it's important. So, and I think there, uh, need to be driven that way comes from salary, right? Like, if I manage, I'll make more, I'll have more prestige.

Like in some ways I, that's how I see it, right? Yeah. But like, I know something that I do is I have two tracks for all my teams, whether you're an individual contributor or a manager, and they're very similarly compensated up the step scale, right?

Like, you're not gonna lose money if you don't wanna be a manager. That's okay. Right?

Mm-Hmm. And so there's some things that we can help people feel more comfortable saying that they don't wanna be a manager. Because at the end of the day, for the most part, most people are driven at work by money.

Right? I think that that's in somewhat accurate. And so if we can cross that hurdle for them or get rid of that barrier, right?

I think that helps that conversation much more. And it's better for the organization because you don't want people managing who don't a can't manage or don't wanna manage. Absolutely.

I guess it's a mental model. We have to get over that. The only way you can go up in an organization is to become a manager or a leader when it's not necessarily true.

No, exactly. Yep. I just have, I know Jody's gonna cut us off in a minute.

I know she is. But I have one question a couple more minutes. Ask you how did you get in interested in African studies?

Um, so I went to this small liberal arts school in Iowa called Luther College. I'm from the Midwest. And, um, I don't know, it's just like I was studying the sociology of race, right?

And a big part of, you know, the social institutions and structure of race is the history. And so the program that I did was from the dysphoria up to current African American history in America. And we just, the study of the history of it, and I thought it was just a good supplemental into the sociology of race topics that I was very interested in.

Yeah. Boy, it sure teaches you a lot. I, I recently, I have a book recommendation for all of us here.

Um, it's called White Women. And it talks about, uh, it's a, it's a book on race and it shifted my perception, um, of myself, uh, and what racism is and this and that. It has little to do oftentimes with the color of skin, but instead of superiority Mm-Hmm.

And how that kind of infiltrates everything, what we do in our culture. Even the discussion around leadership. We just had, you know, you have to become a leader.

That's, that's the way you move forward. It's about superiority. Mm-Hmm.

It's part of a race culture. It's called white Women. And it's like, uh, two women who go and have black women and Indian women, uh, east Indian women who go and have dinner with white women and teach them, teach about how they are themselves racist, even though they may have black children that they've adopted.

Mm-Hmm. It's really fascinating. Um, so I think you would really like it.

Yeah. That's, and I recommend it to everybody. It is.

It is called White Women. I don't know the authors, but if you look it up, I'm sure you'll find it. Yeah.

It's a highly illuminating topic that I think we should all be more comfortable with talking about and discussing, uh, as a larger group. So yeah. Thank you for that recommendation.

I'll definitely read it. Absolutely. You will love it.

Mm-Hmm. Well, thank you, Tracy. That is a good place to wrap things up today.

Nicole, thank you so much. This, this was a really amazing conversation. Um, I'm gonna make sure everybody watches it.

Um, and we're just so glad that you were able to be with us today. Thanks so much for joining us. Um, everybody stay tuned for another episode of Techstrong Women Coming Soon.

And please tune into Techstrong TV every day to watch all the great content we have for you. Again, Tracy. Nicole, thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you. It was great, Nicole. Thank you guys.