Erik: Where do you find purpose at the intersection of people and making things?

Lauren: I think that making things without considering people is foolish unless it’s something that’s meant for self-expression. So if I’m going to make art or if I’m going to make something that I want people to react to that’s more an embodiment of me, I think that’s fine. I think a lot of designers like Karim Rashid does that, and he makes things, and people purchase them and love them because they like his brand. So it’s more of a – I seem him as less of a designer and more of a – like an artist whose really good at form giving for a product. But I really think that as a practicing designer, interaction designer, graphics designer, product designer, fashion designer, whatever, if you’re making things for people and you don’t understand the way they think about things, the things that would be useful to them, how to not give them things that they don’t need, they’re gonna be detrimental, then you’re not doing the final product justice, and also, on the other side, I think that learning about those people and not figuring out the way to incorporate it into a better product is also a little bit silly. So I think that that’s like – it’s just a really great application of anthropology, and sociology, and all of these great social sciences to apply some of those great procedures or practices and methods to learn more about people so that we can ultimately make better things for them.

Erik: How are you challenging yourself to refine your views on that philosophy?

Lauren: I’m challenged constantly, not even by myself but by clients, You know, marketing research has been around for a long time and people understand that they have to understand their consumers, but using a more qualitative approach I think is really new, and using qualitative approach really early like before you’ve defined what the product is gonna be is a little bit newer. So I get challenge from the outside, and then, myself, the more I experience other cultures, the more I realize how difficult it is and how many variables are to consider, you know, doing, fielding, even in, you know, in communities in the U.S. that are different than the communities I live with—live in, I have to understand so much about the culture before I even go speak to someone so that I can get good responses from them and truly understand where they’re coming from. So the more I travel and the more that I do research in different contexts, kind of the more I realize how much I still have to learn and how important like – how important the research is. You know, it revalidates it every time.