Joanna Peña-Bickley, Chief Design Officer, Design Corps; Head of Research and Design, Alexa Devices, Amazon
Rachel Bickley, Musician and Sound/Audio Designer, Designedbyus.org 
In conversation with: Kate Aronowitz, Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm Design

Brainstorm Design 2022 - The Rise Of The Design Apprentice

Conferences

creating a pipeline of next generation designers is a critical task for all of us. I hope all the young up and becoming potential designers, their ears are all ringing after the past few days um design apprentice programs can really help widen the pool of designers needed to help power what some observers are actually calling the fourth industrial revolution. And this is characterized by a range of technologies using the physical, digital and biological world. We're now going to hear from a civic minded civic media and public service design cooperative leading opportunities for underrepresented communities and we're also going to learn about the ambitious apprentice program of a private sector tech titan. Please join me in welcoming Joanna pena bickley, the chief design officer of design core and head of research and design at Alexa devices from amazon and Rachel bickley, a musician. Sound audio designer at design by us dot org. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us at the moment Joanna. So you're here wearing two hats today, um you're both representing designed by us and amazon. Can you tell us a little bit about both your roles and the more specifically explain what designed by us is. Absolutely. So let me start with Amazon, that's the easy one in the room. So I am the head of research and design for Alexa devices at amazon and that covers all of the disciplines of design from uh industrial design all the way to design tech and of course all of our voice skills for Alexa. So we do both the hardware and software. Um if I put on the other hand for a second, which is entrepreneur, which is what it takes to actually survive at amazon um is roughly about two years ago, I saw a need in the workforce that we weren't necessarily reaching diverse crowds and all of the same tricks like internships, uh and maybe even forgive me, but even conferences like this was just not doing enough. Um and one of the things was I actually partnered up with a number of organizers who said, you know, one of the things that we're missing in this growth of a pipeline is actually thinking about kinesthetic learning. So kinesthetic learning happens to be an apprenticeship and in many professional fields, not just technical fields, but in professional fields, for instance, like medicine, um architecture, last speaker was just talking about is one of them. Um these uh apprenticeships already exist and it is learning through doing learning through making, and I got to thinking um and with my daughter, Rachel and a number of other folks. So what if we could actually create a program that went, not just to college students because we're doing that, we do that with internships and there's still not enough diversity in that pipeline? What if we went to underrepresented high schools uh and go in and bring design there and the first thing that we really needed to do was the homework and the research behind one was an apprenticeship, right, what does that even mean? Um and then go take a look at other countries uh to see how their programs worked. And so we um Sweden Switzerland. Um We're the model in which we first kind of discovered that design is taught in kindergarten. Let me say that again because I think it's really important design and problem solving. So we think about that is taught in elementary school and it is core curriculum, it is not necessarily an elective, which it is here in this country. Um So when we understood that there were already programs and says, I think well what we needed to do was learn through observation and see how these programs run and then begin to develop something that we could use here as a mechanism for women and girls in the areas of science, technology, engineering, arts, math and design. What we call steamed. Yeah, I love the that we've now got a d on the end of steam which I love so important tactic. Yeah, yeah. And so that's designed by us that is designed by us. And so it started with a question of what if. Um and you know, two years later we have launched a design core which is a global design core. And really the mission of the organization is bringing gender equity uh and actually to accelerate gender equity into the global workforce. Uh And we're doing that by we initiated design core which is made up of distinguished designers apprentices in which we employ and we put them in action learning programs, those action learning programs deal with everything from uh solving really tough problems in climate uh to during the pandemic around PPE um to uh to creating audio audio based programs like the design by podcast and helping uh you young people just learn how to develop these hard and soft skills in a vocational way and teaching them and certifying them to go out and learn programming. For instance, when we were doing 100 million mask Mayday, we had to specifically myself had to learn G code, which is the coding language for three d printers, something I had no experience in. So I had to immerse myself and educate myself and get ready to teach others. So then they could learn and they could then go out and manage and teach others as well and create that kind of this system where we continuously teach and educate and create curriculums that are open source and available for all. Yeah, I love hearing about that because it occurred to me as we were getting prepared for the talk, I'm like, what's the difference between an apprenticeship, you know, an internship junior design letter? So Rachel, let's pause on you for a second. I love that you all are working together as mother and daughter, but what is your role with designed by us and how did you get involved? Sure, my role is as uh the man I managed the audio and sound programs at designed by us. Um, I got involved because my mother and I did see that like I am a designer by trade, I create my own music. I designed my own music and I perform my own music and I just saw places in the music industry that everyone could learn from through my experience as a teenager performing in new york city. And I also want to point out that your mother is also a designer who's associated with what she wasn't able to be here today. We're going to have a moment with three generations, which I think she's working. She's, she's actually, she's actually designing today. My mom is gonna kill me, you're not here. So, Um, but she is in her 70s, we have three generations designed, she is um, she ran a 30-year architecture and design studio in which I grew up in. And so you know, so many people say, how did you stumble into this? I actually did everything as a teenager, not trying to be like your mom and then you end up exactly like your mom sounds familiar. I was trying to not be like her because she's such an inspiration. I was just trying to be me and it so happened. I became a designer through that. I love that. No. And you both share passed around sound design and I love that you're able to find both of your paths intersect here at design core. So you mentioned the masks, I want you guys to show, I think you I want you to talk a little bit about how design core is actually being put into action. You're making things, things are really happening, this isn't just, you know, theoretically learning it so by doing so. Absolutely. So first of all, if you go to designed by us dot org, if you are a designer or you are looking to Menti people, um what we do is actually, we have a great pipeline of really senior design talent that comes in and volunteers to mentor others. Um One of the core design briefs that we launched during the pandemic was called the million mask May Day. Um and it began out of the need for uh personal protective equipment for those of you that lived in new york. I'm sure if you knew for a very long time it was really tough for us to get proper PPE. Um and so we went about actually Going through the process of understanding what it took to create a 95 mask And we kind of deconstructed the N- 95 masks to reconstructed in um new kinds of materials. So as a part of the initiative, we actually created virtual studios across the country, we funded virtual studios across the country um taught three D industrial design, um did research as a part of it actually taught research because part of being in the design core and being an apprentice in that design core is actually learning through making. So we put out a grand challenge that said, can we get to 100 million masks worldwide? Um And the answer from the design core was yes, we can. Yes we can. Um and but it was really important to think about the design brief of having constraints, right? One of the things the constraint needed, the one it needed to provide the appropriate amount of protection, the second part needed to be sustainable reusable because one of the large challenges that it was a very young apprentice from a refugee camp uh that we will touch on. That told us one of the largest problems that was happening was land pollution from single use PPE. So one of the things that we said, we have to make this, you know, if we create a constraint we can innovate around it. Um And the last part of it was it needed to scale and it needed to scale beyond um just here in the United States because while after a while we may have figured PPE out um the vast majority of the rest of the world in places like africa, Puerto rico. We actually recently just sent uh you know, thousands of mass to Puerto rico still don't have appropriate PPE long and short to get there Rachel. Uh working with me, I was kind of the lead researcher teaching uh three D. Scanning so that we could understand people's face dimensions. We get the size right because the proper mask isn't proper without a seal and the right filtration. Um we were able to put this into a design brief and worked across the country um set up three D. Print studios uh kinda fab labs, you know pop up fab labs and started producing math day in and day out. And it was a paid model. The important part of this right Rachel. It was it was an absolutely paid model. We want to make sure especially in a pandemic where people did not have access to the usual income, were able to get a fair wage. That was very important. Not just any wage but a fair wage for the work they were doing. And it was really interesting because it started with sowing sowing used to be a hobby of mine that I used to tailor my outfit for performances and it immediately overnight became an essential skill to survive in a pandemic. So when we couldn't figure out how to scale sewing because it does take a lot of time and effort in people, one of our apprentices actually brought up why not three D. Print them with this open source code that I have here that he was trying to use to equip his community. And when we started doing the research and development, It became a no brainer because they're durable, they can be put in the dishwasher, you can wash the merv 13 filter which allows 94% filtration. And then we were able to find filament for our three D printers, which was antimicrobial, which also made it medical grade, which means we could donate these to local hospitals to healthcare workers, to domestic workers who are going into homes. And it also allowed us to donate them to election workers because this was a time where elections were happening. I myself worked it and we were able to make face shields and masks to protect our election workers during a very important election. That's amazing. Um, you talked about working within constraints obviously in the past two years have provided wide range of constraints, one of them being remote and, and Rachel. So you've trained apprentice the world virtually in, in kenya brazil Argentina, can you talk a little bit about that program and how you went about that? Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's a lot of management on the time because you're dealing with a lot of different time zones. So it's also understanding about making sure that they have strong internet connections and create either if they don't have the infrastructure, creating an infrastructure bringing them sending them hotspots that allow them to talk to us. So then we're not just heads on a Youtube video that we've sent them and then we can spend and by doing zoom, which was a constraint, but also a huge asset during the pandemic allowed us to go one on one and help them with any issues that might arose and helped us learn how to adapt our curriculum. The girls in Kakuma taught us a ton. We actually partnered. One of the important parts of our apprentice program was understanding that apprentice programs have been along around for hundreds of years and there were organizations in communities that we knew that we could reach. But as opposed to coming in and kind of imposing ourselves on those organizations, we partnered with them. You know, we did public private partnerships in a manner that, you know, we invested in the girls in Kakuma through an organization called I am the code. Uh, we developed co developed the curriculum And then we were the mentors, right? We were kind of, it was a 24 x seven operation across the world. Um, and what was really exciting about that was uh, in refugee camps. And this was, I think one of the eye opening things for both of us was that young women were actually not getting PPE before men were uh, it was, you know, through the a serious cultural factor that, you know in most communities outside of the United States. Women are unequal yet they are still part of the workforce. Right? Um, and they were utilizing sanitary napkins as masks and so to be able to bring in one, uh, to be able to donate hundreds of three d printers, um, and all of the materials and then do the training remotely what exactly the action learning and kind of the prototype. We needed to be able to scale this program. Um, I want you to put your amazon hat back on, which you quote, which you're easy. You're part of your role. Now. I'm understanding why it's amazing that you're, you're, you've got both roles going on. It's a two part question. How is um, how are you deploying design apprenticeship at amazon and for the folks in the room that are thinking, okay, I would love to do design apprenticeship. I'd love to get something going like what are the bare bones? I think people feel overwhelmed. How do you start a new program? So let me start with, you know, with amazon has always been really great about apprenticeships and the whole, we had technology apprenticeship when we began and um, you know, I would say within the last three years we began piloting apprenticeship and the, the importance about uh, an apprentice that was certification at the end, right. Um, and going in and realizing that the certification can be in lieu of a college degree, right? We're offering different and new pathways into what it means to be Amazonian one and then two to be entry into design. And so we have deployed apprentices across the country. But one of the, I think one of the key learnings for us was actually going in and partnering with organizations like career wise new york is a great example of, I have apprentices on my Alexa design team today, uh that are working on new Alexis skills that are working on research uh for new products that are really getting immersed in the everyday workings both of our unique and Amazonian culture, but also the hard skills that you need there. So these are high schools, an opportunity to partner with with outside organizations who have been on the ground, right? And and who understand the communities that we're going into and recruiting from um and and identifying students in a way that we are able to attract the, a real diverse talent and then understand, you know, I think the early days of the partnership was understanding what skill sets already existed and where did we need to come in and augment So part of it is the recruitment, but then a part of it is also getting your existing workforce to volunteer to teach design and or research at that core curriculum level. Uh so that what you're doing is actually producing now, building that pipeline of certified UX researchers and designers. Amazing, Amazing. Um thank you both for everything you're doing on, on the front lines and and and doing things together, It's, it's really, really inspiring. So thank you for joining us today, thank you for having us, we're having a blast