leadership – Cyber Anthropology

June 20 2020

A Hard Week

Dr. D Hubbard research, work COVID-19, Hilton, leadership, research 0

The first I heard of COVID-19 was at the end of January. I had a team member visiting family in China. She had flown out the morning the news broke here so she was in the air when we all found out what was going on. I was worried for her safety and her safe return. None of us had any idea that the effects of it would become so much broader than the concern we had at the time for our single team member. Within 2 months everything was locked down to help slow the spread. For a research team at a hospitality company, that meant our work took a hit as well. Three months later, we find ourselves here.

image of our Hilton research banner — Tell us what you really think!

Last week was a hard week for my team at Hilton. We had hope we’d make it through, but in the end it was all for naught. I have to say, I really liked my job. I loved leading a team of amazing and brilliant researchers consisting of PhDs and Masters. They made it easy. They knew what they were doing and were able to carry out their work with no need for micromanagement (that’s not my style anyway). When problems or questions came up, they were interesting and challenging and we worked together to solve them.

At first I didn’t understand why they wanted a director with 14+ years of research experience yet was tasked with no hands-on research (even as the head of a research team at IBM, I still did a lot of heavy lifting). It was only after I started fielding actual on the job issues that it became much clearer. Though this was a different experience than the one I had at IBM where I had to build a team from scratch and then teach each of them what it meant to do research in the corporate world (much through example), I still found it worthwhile and fulfilling.

image of researchers setting up eye-tracking — Setting up eye-tracking

What was great about this team was that no one was afraid of what they had to do even if it was something completely new to them. Though we rarely worked together on the same project (they were all embedded on separate teams), when someone needed help, everyone jumped in!

For example, it is practically impossible to run an eye-tracking study alone. We spent an entire day together working out the research plan and then getting the hardware and software setup and running. It was a true team effort from researchers working on the ins and outs, to me setting up (and scavenging) the hardware and observation setup, to our research ops manager getting the eye-tracking company on the phone to help us get the software working. There was a real camaraderie where everyone was there for each other. We all wanted it to be successful and we knew we had to work together to make that happen.

The best part about my job was I felt like I really made a difference. I mean, what more can you ask for when you walk into an existing team. I focused on building up the team culture as well as the practice of research and the strengths of each individual. We worked hard to show the value we could bring and why research was important.

Image of a researcher conducting eye-tracking. — Conducting eye-tracking

We had regular 1:1s where we discussed whatever they needed to that week. We had regular team meetings where we shared knowledge and expertise and learned from each other at all levels. And, we had a bookclub where we learned with each other. We genuinely cared about each other and our work, our users, and the company.

We haven’t worked together for nearly 3 months, but we all still chat in my personal Slack where I field everything from mentoring questions to keeping up with our ongoing bookclub and now help finding jobs. We may not work together anymore, but we are still a team.

Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries book cover — Our last bookclub read

What is sad is we had only been together 5 months. We were just getting started. I had a lot of great plans for the team. We were working on building up our own research repository that met our needs and would eventually fulfill the self-service needs of those with whom we worked. My next goal was to get our own Jira board and workflow setup so that we could standardize the way we took in research requests and so that it would be easy for me and my ops partner to show data to support the work our team was doing and that we had more work than people! (This worked well for me using Git at IBM, I was really excited about getting it going at Hilton, too.)

Additionally, I was making an effort on maturing the research model within the company. This meant gradually moving it from one where design relied heavily upon a lot of usability testing to one who tested when needed, but also prioritized problem finding – looking deeper into the wants and needs of our users from our guests to our hotel staffs – so we could solve the problems that really mattered instead of just focusing on things one screen at a time. I was also working out how to create a more inclusive research and usability testing process reaching out to our recruiters and panel companies on how to do this with dignity and purpose.

At the team level, I pushed for them to be thought leaders and to find ways to share their knowledge and craft with the outside world. One of our goals was to have Hilton Research representation at as many conferences as possible. The last panel we submitted was on how brick-and-mortar businesses could go through their own digital transformations and come out the other side with some very innovative products and services (digital key and connected room were my two favorite future facing technologies we worked on).

We could have done so much. I’m so thankful for having had the opportunity to have been a part of it all. It’s rare that I’m at a job less than a year (though my last one was a year and a half, the one before that was nearly 9 years). While this one was short, it will always have a place in my heart.

Our holiday team dinner — Holiday team dinner

I know this socio-economic crisis has had a real human toll across the entire world. And for us, though we no longer have jobs, we are all physically safe and healthy. And for that, I am thankful. However, I know we all have families to support and that is very hard to do without an income. So, I am going to end this post with LinkedIn profiles of a few I know still looking for work including my own. Please feel free to forward these on to anyone needing top research talent and/or research & design leadership experience. Hilton only hired the best, so please let their loss be your gain.

Agile UX Qualitative Researchers & Usability Testers:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadesjenkins/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikayi/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathersroth/

Research Ops/Marketing Research Specialist: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-brilliant-cooperman/

Strategist, Innovator, Architect, Research & Design Leader: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianaharrelson/

(To learn more about me, check out my projects page and CV. For access to my locked portfolio and more recent work, please contact me.)

Thanks for reading.

May 29 2020

Team Building in Azeroth

Dr. D Hubbard gaming, Presentation academia, gaming, leadership, team building, world of warcraft 0

This presentation was originally given at DFW Beyond 2018 (October). I was the last of the speakers on the main stage for the morning (meaning: there were a lot of people in the crowd!). I’m going to add my script here as I originally wrote it along with the screen shots from the Prezi presentation. If you want to see the original presentation as it was presented, you can find it here.

Team Building in Azeroth: What product teams can learn from successful mythic raid teams in World of Warcraft

Intro
Hello everyone! We’ve heard a lot of great talks this morning and now all that’s standing between you and lunch is me! It’s like an epic boss fight. If you survive this then you’ll be on your way to victory. So, with that, let’s take a left turn here and have a little fun.

Gaming Team
Anyone here play video games? Anyone here play video games with other people? How about large groups of people?

Work Team
Now let’s think about the people you work with.

How many of you work with 4 other people? 9 other people? 19 other people? How many of you work with 19 other people for an intense non-stop three to four hours at a time multiple times a week? Could you do that? Would do you do you that?

What kind of skills do you think would be required to be able to do that calmly, collectively, and collaboratively even in the face of failure after failure after failure until you finally succeed?

Do you think we can learn from groups who are able to do this and do it successfully and do so repeatedly on purpose? I am here because yes, I think we can.

Who am I
My name is Dr. Diana Hubbard. I am currently a design consultant for SAP specializing in Blockchain (I’m now a Director of Research for Hilton). In my previous role, I was the head of strategic research and insights for IBM Public Cloud. You can also tell I’m also an academic by the length of my title and my strategically placed colon.

For the past 11 years, I have had the opportunity to pull together successful research, design, and development teams in multiple organizations ranging from Software as a Service to Infrastructure and Cloud Services to now with Edge Technologies.

I contribute the success of these teams to lessons learned from World of Warcraft.

Academically I am an anthropologist and information scientist who has studied gamers, gaming, developers, and open source development communities for the last 12 years.

Druid
I am also a max level Resto Druid (I main a horde druid these days) in a newly built high-end raiding guild (I’ve changed guilds since then) in World of Warcraft.

Though I’ve played for the last 14 years and been a part of many raid teams, this one was put together specifically for the expansion that just came out in August.

I raid with up to 19 other people 3 to 4 nights a week for 3 to 4 hours at a time. This is on top of my job and taking care of my family of 5 including 3 children, as well as our 3 dogs, and our home.

Learning
Today I am going to highlight a few things I think people like us, who build and manage teams, can take away from these organically grown communities of practice who come together both inside and outside the game to voluntarily put in a lot of time and effort to successfully collaborate in highly intense situations toward a common goal.

And they do this in the face of failure and defeat and the possibility of getting nothing but a virtual repair bill for their hard earned broken digital armor.

Since my time is so short (I only had 20 minutes) I will only be able to go into these at a high level but I will provide a link at the end of to my blog where I will talk about it in detail and link to this presentation. (<– this is just now happening)

Culture: Shared ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors connected with a common language and a shared vocabulary

Culture
Let’s start with Culture.

What is culture anyway. Is it where we live? What we do? The clothes we wear?

As an anthropologist, especially one who studies geographically dispersed online communities, I obviously have an opinion on this. I define it as shared ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors with a common language and shared vocabulary.

This is an important distinction because raid teams do not normally all hail from the same countries or even speak the same first language, but they all know, understand, and have a passion for Warcraft. The same can be said for many of our product teams in relation to our businesses.

Being a cultural anthropologist, it is no surprise I have found culture to be an essential element of successful teams. There are many ways it is important, but for the purposes of this talk I’ve distilled it down to 3. Culture of Research, of Knowledge Sharing, and of Failure.

Research
Considering research, the most essential part is that everyone does it. And this isn’t necessarily user research activities, though as a UXR I do highly recommend all members of product teams participate in at least some user research activities.

In this case, research is a bit more high level including topics such as the problem space. Everyone conducting some sort of research at this level not only helps individual knowledge, but it also improves the overall interaction of the team as it helps level the playing field and gets everyone on the same page.

The purpose is not necessarily to get all of the answers, but to know what questions to ask. Lastly, it should be noted that research never stops. The game is always changing, as projects do, so research is always ongoing and evolving which is why knowledge sharing is important.

Knowledge Sharing
Knowledge sharing is fundamental to the progress of the team because not everyone can know everything at all times. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a mythic raid boss fight, so imagine your favorite sports game and add earth quakes, volcanos, lava, tornados, hurricanes, and tidal waves all happening while your team is trying to score a goal and that might give you some idea of how much is going on any one time that everyone needs to have some knowledge of.

Though knowledge sharing may seem like a small thing, it creates an environment where team members come to rely upon each other and learn how to be relied upon, which is important when it comes to progress through failure – something that is a given for a mythic raid team.

Failure
It is nearly impossible for a team to walk into an encounter or a problem space for the first time and be successful.

We should all know this going in as it’s what we signed up for. Those with egos do not make it very far in mythic raiding because you have to be ok with giving up your invulnerability. You have to be willing to fail with the team if you’re going to ever succeed with them.

There have been nights where we have died an upwards of 30 times, half of them trying to get past a single boss.

However, every time we died we got a little further and learned a little more and all those little failures are what helped us succeed in the end. The important part was we kept going and kept each other’s spirits up as we did, which is a very important skill to have.

Skills: Expertise gained from experience

Skills
Skills can mean many things, but for this talk I’m going to keep it simple. I love the straightforwardness of this definition – expertise gained from experience. It plays very well into the three skills I consider essential for raid and product teams, which are getting things done, playing multiple roles, and leading at all levels.

GTD
We’ve all heard of GTD or getting things done, but how many of us practice it? How many of us have meetings about meetings or walk out of a meeting having accomplished absolutely nothing?

For a raid team, time is precious. Not only does our chance to progress reset every week, but we all also have lives and jobs and even children fighting for our time and attention. So, when we meet in game it is always with a purpose and a goal and a timeline.

We all want to see our guild name move up the rankings and we all know we have the power to make that happen but it takes commitment and dedication. We will progress only if we show up together and get things done. And to get things done we sometimes have to step into someone else’s role.

MultiRoles
Having people play multiple roles is not the same thing has having a team of unicorns. Rather, it is about having a team of people who can pick up the slack when someone is sick or on vacation or the deadline has just been moved up.

It’s about team members who have empathy for each other and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Building a team of people who have both breadth and depth creates an environment that is both adaptable and versatile making it an exceptional place for leaders to grow.

Leaders
Leaders who strive for adaptability and versatility need other people who are willing to take on leadership positions within their teams in order to lead successfully. This is more than delegation. It is about creating a supporting atmosphere for team members to own their contributions and to mentor others.

It’s about creating a space where they feel empowered enough to do new things and take risks to improve the team’s chances for success. Encouraging leadership at all levels provides ample opportunities for motivational and inspirational interactions.

Interactions: Reciprocal actions or influences

Interactions
Interactions are simply reciprocal actions or influences. It’s the reciprocity that makes a difference for collaboration, communication, and critique.

Collaboration
Organic collaboration may seem a bit strange, but we’ve all had those scheduled collaborative sessions that weren’t really collaborative at all.

The idea here is that people get better at what they do and they produce better work when they are able to spontaneously collaborate as needed, work together in smaller groups on smaller problems, and work with people outside of their team for additional or missing expertise.

In WoW we call this pugging or creating a Pick up Group. Doing these things increases team relationships both internally and externally, which improves the success of the team overall especially in communication.

Interaction: Free and open communication

Communication
Free and open communication is essential to the success of every team because it helps build relationships through trust which is needed when the situation gets intense.

The key here is to establish a method of communication everyone can participate in and to make sure it is kept active and relevant. That said, though we may want to try to keep everything on topic, I always recommend a time and place for off-topic chatter because people matter and this is where you really learn what matters to them.

And knowing people is really important when it comes to critiques.

Critique
Critiquing can be difficult to do well and even more difficult to take, but when it is simply a part of the team’s regular interactions it becomes normalized and accepted and even sought after. Giving and accepting critiques is only the first step.

The step that really counts is immediately testing or applying the feedback. This should be done even if the feedback seems silly or counter intuitive because if nothing else it gives you a different way of looking at your problem, which may be what you need to make a difference and that may be all it takes to get a ding.

Dings: Make it a point to celebrate all success big, small, and in between

Dings
What’s a ding? Traditionally a ding is what players in WoW would refer to when they completed a character level. I’ve taken it a step further to use it as a way to celebrate progress. Many of us have likely been on teams working on a project that seems like it never ends, much like an MMO. Dings are useful break up the monotony and to keep people motivated as they mark movement forward. So, I recommend building in dings to give something to look forward to and to look back on.

Resources:
https://bigthink.com/videos/how-world-of-warcraft-could-save-your-business-and-the-economy-2
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2015/06/24/7-ways-world-of-warcraft-builds-better-leaders/#6773055e3fee
https://www.cnet.com/news/the-business-lessons-of-world-of-warcraft/
http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/10343.52340.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/495889/Minions_of_the_Night_Ethnography_of_a_World_of_Warcraft_guild
https://www.academia.edu/1007653/Collaboration_beyond_the_game_How_gamers_work_together_beyond_gaming_environments_to_make_their_shared_gaming_experiences_better
(The last two links are my papers.)

Note: All images are owned by their owners including Blizzard Activision and are used here in Fair Use for scholarly purposes. This talk was given pro-bono and this information is being shared for free. You can find a portfolio of all of the slides here.