Ep. 155: Creative Acts for Curious People with d.school’s Sarah Stein Greenberg

Sarah Stein Greenberg, Executive Director of the Stanford d.school, spent her childhood in Philly running bases, reading books, and getting lost in her vivid imagination. After getting an undergraduate degree in History, she embarked on an MBA at Stanford, which resulted in her introduction to the d.school and into the dynamic and fascinating world of design. As a lover of complexity and intersections, she found her tribe. Now she’s authored Creative Acts for Curious People, a rich and visual resource filled with innovative exercises aimed at helping everyone unlock their own creative potential.

Read the episode transcript here.

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Read the Transcript

Sarah Stein Greenberg: I'm Sarah Stein, Greenberg and I live in San Francisco, California. I work in Stanford, California. And I'm the executive director of the D school at Stanford, which is also known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. I work here because I love practicing design, teaching design, and being part of a creative community that looks at hard problems in the world and responds with all of our creative energies to try to do the best we can.

Amy Devers: Yes, I like to understand the raw material that I'm working with here. Like the conditions you were created in the greenhouse, all of it, can you take me back to your childhood and tell me what was the hometown like that you grew up in? What was your family dynamic, what kinds of things like pulled you toward them, in terms of being interested in your fascination?

SSG: So I grew up in Philly, and I had a really wonderful experience growing up there. As a kid, I lived in a neighborhood called Mount Airy, it was a just really vibrant community. It was a place where we were in the city. But you know, we had block parties, it was very neighborly, we knew all of our neighbors, I have really good memories of like playing outside with the kids in the back alley playing running bases, which was our favorite game for a long period of time, it was a really wonderful place to grow up really green, which I think kind of informed a lot of my aesthetic conditioning in the early days, I really love the outdoors. And I love that that mixture actually of the built environment on the outdoors. I grew up in a family with a younger brother, I'm a quintessential older sister, I like to take care of things, I like to organize things. And my parents were both educators at one point or another, my mom is a math educator. And my dad ultimately wound up working in health care. And that's kind of true of my whole extended family, like a lot of a lot of the helping professions are strongly represented across my whole extended family. And it's kind of interesting that you asked me about imagination, because in the book that I just wrote, I start out by talking about some of the things that drew my imagination out. And it's funny because I felt a little vulnerable, sharing those things. I think the kinds of things that we imagine as a as children are kind of this really special part of us, I felt it was like really important to share. Because those experiences you have as a kid using your imagination are so fundamental, and they they really can shape kind of how you operate as an adult, I was drawn to play like, elaborate, you know, games and make up stories with all kinds of dolls and objects, I was really into reading. And I would just get lost in reading and rereading books, you know, like, from the library or from home, my parents would tell you, I was very, very good at keeping myself busy. And occupying my own time, I definitely had a vivid imagination, I could just, you know, entertain myself for hours.

AD: I also love that you shared that it was kind of vulnerable to expose your childhood imagination, and the pages of your book. And here, because I think that's kind of an important point. I think one of the reasons adults maybe forget to use their imagination as actively as we used to, is because there's a little bit of shame in the fact that that's ridiculous, or that's not real, or that could never be so and then you feel a little stupid about it. So you just start to hide it, and then you don't do it as much.

SSG : I think that's exactly right. And I think you know, one of the things I'm continuously interested in is like, how do you create enough of a safe and trusted environment to help bring that back out and like help remove those blocks, and I know all of us adults, you know, and I'm sure like the particular examples of what fired up my imagination as a kid will resonate with some people and other people will say like, yeah, that's completely silly. Like, I think that's okay. Right. And I'm, I am curious to just really understand, like, what other people's, you know, childhood imaginations, like where that led them. I'll give you one more concrete example I haven't thought about in a while. I used to sit in front of my parents record player and speaker and at some point, we had a tape player that I could record on. And I used to like host a little radio show when I was five or

AD: Oh my god I did the same thing only Yes, I did it out the window.

SSG : You were already a broadcaster? 

AD : Yes, I was broadcasting to like, I don't know the dog in the backyard. But like, sort of loud enough that somebody could hear but not quite loud enough to actually like bring the neighbors into the conversation. Nice.

SSG: There's like a tape floating around in my parents basement. That's like me singing songs and interviewing myself playing another person. I mean, it's just really sort of this hilarious artifact from childhood. But I think if somebody heard that now I would feel really protective of it. Right? Like I would share that with a really, really close friend. And I think one of those things about curiosity and imagination is how do we set the conditions to draw more of that out of each other,

AD: Yes, I mean, I think the safe and trusted environment is you kind of touched on it earlier, but like how do we create those safe and trusted environment. So this kind of leads into your teenage years, I think at some point, children kind of training out of each other because we start to judge each other accuse each other of like believing in Santa Claus, when it's totally fake, there starts to be a kind of social pressure to be a certain kind of way. And when that social pressure starts to dictate the culture of the school that you're in, or the environment that you're in, then the all those needs to fit in, start clicking in and you know, imagination is inherently about not fitting in about imagining what doesn't exist yet, or what couldn't be. So in your current environment and weaving narratives throughout it. Sometimes we get a chance to express that through art and drama and those kinds of things. But I don't know it gets weird in the teenage years, what was it like for you?

SSG: Well, I it's interesting to think about for me, because at the same time that I had this incredibly vivid, imaginative life and really like a life of, I read so much when I was a kid. At the same time, I also really wanted to be an adult as quickly as possible, I got along better with adults, I want to talk about serious things, I was really interested in politics for a long time, I actually think it's kind of still true about me, like I really like both extremes, in a way, in a funny way that has kind of informed how I think about the role of imagination, as an adult, or as somebody who makes things or create things or as you're saying, like imagines what isn't yet happening in the world, and then tries to build towards it. It's that ability to be able to hold both in your head that's valuable. So I do think that there's so much benefit in being able to adopt the playfulness of a child as a intentional way to get your head into the space of imagination. And also then to be able to step back and consider that from the more adult or mature perspective. And I do think that is a little bit of what being a teenager for me was like is like having both of those things going on at once and trying to figure out what setting should which part of me emerge. 

AD: That's the definition of being a teenager is not still a child and not yet an adult. And you were like, I'm bringing both of these with me. Always.

SSG: Yes, yeah. And I will say that I had the benefit of having a school environment in which I could bring both of those, right. So my, my classes were really fascinating. I loved history, I loved English, but I also loved theater, and I loved choir, and I loved the studio art classes that I got to take, both of those elements were available to me. Then during the summers, I worked at a summer camp. And that was like just the most buoyant and joyful and loud and fun community. And I'd known those kids for a decade at that point, it was a place where you could start to express more and more of that inner personality on the outside every year, I think those two elements also, were particularly helpful for me in trying to find that balance and find you know who I was and how I could express that.

AD: I feel like summer camp is that ideal, safe, trusted environment where you're supposed to be kind of as kooky as you possibly can and have the most fun you possibly can and come out with the most outrageous ideas you possibly can. And then you bond really hard with everybody. And then you miss everybody for the rest of your life and wish the rest of the world was like summer camp.

SSG: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I will tell you that that the community that I'm I'm still engaged with today, two of the friends who are around my age are now the directors of that same summer camp. And there's like a very strong sense of like stewardship and caretaking for people my age of that place. Because it's one of those few places where kids can't bring their phones and they get not playing video games. And you're like, you know, living outside and attend. And you're really creating that space that used to be more normative and more widely available, but you're creating that space for play and imagination. And so it's funny, like it had a profound effect on me as a kid and I feel even more passionately that that space now you have to intentionally carve that out for kids today.

AD: I'm so glad you had that experience and that you're still connected to it. I think that's a really important thread in your life. I'm interested in your college years. You have a BA in history from Oberlin and an MBA from Stanford, can you tell me about that path and the experiences that were informing your decisions along the way?

SSG: I suspect there are not too many people who have both of those experiences. It's a kind of a funny, interesting combination. I went to Oberlin for the same reason lots of people do. It's, you know, has this incredible legacy of political activism as this incredible music conservatory so you're surrounded, I mean, that's way above my talent level, but you're surrounded all the time by this incredibly artistic and vibrant creative community, I studied history becauseÍ It was while I was at Oberlin, that I also discovered art history, that helped me build that more formal vocabulary around visual analysis that I had kind of already acquired in writing and reading it. But I didn't know that that same kind of analytical lens could also be applied to the visual world around me, and especially marrying that with the sense of history, it was just one of those experiences where like, the threads start to pull together in terms of like, these are lenses that I can use to understand and look at the world. And it's so much richer, when you just have even those sort of early stages of that vocabulary and that ability to kind of look at a piece of art and say, I want to understand the time in which this was made. I want to understand what was the politics of the day, I want to understand who is this artist in the in the moment that she or he was living in? And what they were trying to say from that perspective, as well as does this move me Does this engage me, that was a powerful kind of like eye opening experience. After college, I went to work for Planned Parenthood. And I really loved being at this intersection of, again, politics, but also healthcare and education as well. And that kind of very multifaceted set of issues that surrounds reproductive health, that requires you to look at it from multiple different lenses, and also that people have really different views on in this country. And I wanted to, you know, be working in an environment where that complexity was being addressed in all of these different ways. And from there, I got really curious about how to make increasingly impactful change in the world. And, you know, I had a lot of peers who were starting to go back to graduate school and get their degrees in public health or in public policy. And I kind of got curious about this whole part of our economy that I just didn't know a lot about and didn't understand very well, which is the private sector. That's what ultimately led me to go to business school, I felt like there were ways of making decisions and ways of making new things happen. That is around how do you help an organization become more innovative? How do you understand what it is that you should be doing to continue to change as the market changes or as people's needs change? And I didn't realize it at the time, but that is like the language of innovation and design. So I landed at Stanford, and then very luckily coincided with the exact moment when the D school was getting started.

AD: Oh, Kismet? What did that mean for you in terms of your education, and also in terms of your own, like sort of bonnet blowing off?

SSG: You know, it had this double effect. For one, it was really just a powerful introduction to design for me. And I again, it was that introduction to a formal language that already existed that I could tap into. It was a, it was a community of people who were just as obsessed with, like how two groups work as I was, which I, you know, like you can find in some places, but this was a whole, a whole community of people who really want to understand how to bring people together in different combinations to get to better and more creative outcomes. And it also was a little bit of a refuge for me, I got to take classes, and there were there were other MBA students in those classes. But I also got to meet engineers and medical students and policy students. And that was helpful for me, just because I had such a non traditional background going into business school. And so it was really amazing to be in a community where everybody was a little bit of a non traditional person to be taking a design class.

AD: Sure, I guess you can't have imposter syndrome. if everyone's an imposter, then you're like the norm.

SSG: That's one way to put it. And it's and it helps you really reflect on Well, what do I bring as individual, right? Because I'm not competing to be the best MBA in this class. I'm competing to be the most effective team member, I'm competing to figure out what can I offer that my teammate can't and what can he or she offer that I can't. And it's a it's a really different lens on like, what it means to be part of a, you know, an effective part of a team. It was a really wonderful complement to what I was learning and what I was doing in business school at the same time. And then of course, like, it introduced me to the basics of design. I did my first couple projects, I felt like, Oh, I found my people and you know, in a in a way for me, my trajectory was just ultimately, you know, completely shifted.

AD: And it also sounds like it was a really powerful example of the importance of diverse perspectives in a given like problem solving group.

SSG Absolutely. I mean, I remember in one of my earliest on projects, I had this moment of like real tension with this absolutely brilliant guy who's an electrical engineer. And the tension came because he had stayed up all night building out a particular prototype that we had conceptualized together, but he really had the technical skill to build. We met up in the morning when we were supposed to go test that prototype with a group of school kids. And he was like, I'm really exhausted, I just can't do it, I'm gonna you go test it. And I was like, Hey, this is the real work, like, we got to go test this together, we got to both be there. And he just looked at me like, no, the real work was what I did all night, when I was building the prototype, it was this great moment of like, both of us looking at each other and being like, how we're really viewing what this kind of process looks like, from different lenses or viewing our team dynamic from different lenses. And it was this really powerful moment of learning, at least for me, and I think for him, of trying to figure out like, Okay, how it's, it's not trivial to try to speak across those disciplinary perspectives. But Wow, he built an amazing prototype. And then I tested it and got really good feedback. And so it was that combination of perspectives that helped us navigate a really interesting set of problems. In that case, the design challenge was we were working within a classroom, and we were looking at the experience that kids were having a fidgeting, which sounds so trivial, right? Kids fidget, of course. But we were thinking like, what if you could help kids fidget in a way that wasn't distracting to the teacher or to the kid themselves? And we built some cool prototypes around that, that were really fun.

AD: I think fidgeting is just a manifestation of embodied learning, right? It's like a need to actually like move physically while you're absorbing information.

SSG: Yeah, absolutely. And actually, fast forward many years, we've been running a program called shadow a student in our K 12. Work at the D school for a long time, when principals and teachers shadow kids in elementary schools, and particularly, but even in middle and high schools, one of the things they often come back with as like an initial reaction, they followed the student throughout the whole day to try to understand, you know, their experience of what you know, is a very familiar context to the adult, that one of those amazing eye opening things is like, wow, our kids are sitting too long, it is uncomfortable, and draining, to actually sit for as long as we're making these kids sit. And we got to figure out how to tackle that.

AD: Honestly, whenever you can take people into a space where you're moving to complete a project, like project based learning makes a lot of sense to me. But anyway, back to you. It sounds like your MBA at Stanford, was eye opening in so many ways. And not only that, but it's kind of planted the seeds for what you're doing now, what were the first few steps into your professional world like and sort of what were the milestones on the path to where you are now?

SSG: After I was done with my degree, I stayed as a teaching fellow for a year at the D school, and it was in the very early days. And so it was very much in the startup mode. And so I got to do a lot of things that were really exciting and really stretched me as an educator. And as a designer, I helped, you know, build some of the foundational curriculum and one of our core classes, I helped start our executive education program. And then I wound up going to a consulting firm, which was called monitor and monitor had actually acquired this incredible design strategy firm called Doblin, which had been around for a long time. And I got to be right at that intersection between the design expertise and strategy of the Doblin folks and the kind of management consulting in strength of monitor itself. And that was a really powerful experience of seeing how design can be integrated into large organizations that don't necessarily come from a design background. So I learned a lot from that experience. And I got to work with a lot of cool clients who also were trying to make sense of like, Oh, what is it the design can offer us as a company that's not just about the kind of end finishing the aesthetic qualities, the kind of last step along the assembly line, but actually to think about how we might use design to initiate new product offerings or new service offerings, and you know, how that actually might help us become increasingly competitive. That was an amazing experience. I also spent two of those years living and working in New Delhi, India, an experience I have often gone through in my life where I somehow like to be at the intersection of different cultures, and be part of translating across those and I think that might be because it's just like an intense learning environment. You are kind of constantly an imposter. But you also really have something to bring to the table. And I think there's something about that dynamic that that calls to me.

AD : Yes. And you're also seduced by complexity.

SSG: I mean, that you are correct. I am really it. There's something about coming complexity and variety that it creates a really stimulating, like high learning environment.

AD: So now you are the executive director of the Stanford D school. And I wonder what this looks like on the practical day to day? And what is meaningful to you about it? What do you believe your strengths are in this particular role? I'm sure all of this that we've just talked about is adding to the value you bring in this role. Can you talk about the role of design in the larger world and how you're supporting that through the D school?

SSG: For one thing, I'll just say, like no day looks like any other, which, as I just said, is a very appealing attribute to me. So I might be talking with, you know, an incredible faculty member who's a synthetic biologist one day and like trying to learn and understand like what is actually happening in the labs, where people are designing with biology, right. And then another day, I might be talking to somebody who's like working very seriously on technology and ethics. And that's like a whole other area of practice, that's incredible. I might be in the classroom, one day, I might be working with a set of, you know, adult learners one day, from one of our professional programs, or I might be like moving furniture, or writing a budget or thinking about, you know, the strategy long term for the D school. So I really thrive in that kind of variety, as I've said, You know, I think of our mission as being around helping people to unlock their creative abilities and apply them to the problems that matter to them, or the opportunities that matter to them. That's become so much more multifaceted than the sort of like history around product design, and moving into service design and experience design. But even more than that, like really looking at complex systems level issues, and how our curriculum has changed over the years to try to support those students and, you know, prepare those students who are going to be working in much more complex environments that are highly dynamic and highly emergent, not just in the private sector, but also in the social sector and government in all kinds of different roles. That shift has been really exciting. And also, you know, that's part of where, you know, design, which is evolved, you know, continuously It feels like, for the last 100 years, I think it's going through yet another major shift.

AD: Yes. And you again, are at the intersection of different cultures helping to translate.

SSG: Exactly, I think that might be part of what really gets me up in the morning.

AD: Yes. So congratulations are in order. Today, you are releasing creative acts for curious people, which is the first book and what will be a collection of books on creativity and design offered from Stanford's D school, I've had the opportunity to peruse an advanced copy. And I am very, very excited about it both as a design educator, but mostly just as a curious person. Talk to me about this book, and what compelled you to write it and get it out there to curious people, and also how lucky for everyone that if you can't go to Stanford, you still can get a taste of what's going on there. The D school?

SSG: Well, thank you, I'm so glad you've had a chance to look at it, I'm really excited to have it out in the world and to hear what people think. I did write it in part because there is so much more that's happening in our classrooms, then I think people have gotten a chance to really hear about and I really wanted to share, you know more of the methods and also just some of the philosophies behind how we set those conditions for things like trust and vulnerability and thinking about the future and the sort of bigger picture skills that you need, I think to be equipped in today's world of what design looks like, the times that we're living in at the moment, I really think call for like, reinvigoration of thinking creatively and approaching the kinds of challenges that we're facing with curiosity, right, with the acknowledgement that we don't know what the right answers are. And with creativity, like every day, all of us are being challenged with some degree of trying to address problems that we haven't solved before. Right, whether that's on a very personal level, like, you know, how am I reintegrating my kids into in person school for the first time, in a long time, or on a regional level, like, you know, we're having intense climate change related disasters all over the country, or even even more global and the ways that we have been approaching these kinds of challenges in the past, you know, may or may not be up to the task in the future. So, I found that, as I was writing this, which a lot of the writing I did during this kind of very challenging period, it just felt to me like the urgency around sharing these ideas was was intensifying as I was writing,

AD: I can see that and, you know, as you're explaining this, it is very urgent and I do believe that we need a cultural reinvigoration of the creative thinking process. But this book is also so playful. So I also think we need a reminder that when you're tackling complex challenges, it doesn't necessarily require 100% seriousness.

SSG: I think that's right. And I again, I feel like that is a little bit where I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve in the writing of the book is that I strongly believe that playfulness and seriousness can happen simultaneously. And I kind of think they have to happen simultaneously for us to navigate through the era that we're in. And you can see it in the illustrations that my kirschen did, they're so playful, and they're so vibrant. And they hopefully embody some of the emotional experience, the highs, and the lows and the and the play and the rigor, that we attempt to create that and foster here at the D school. And you know, many of the assignments that are inside the book are based on practices that like seem really unconventional and playful, and like a little bit, perhaps, silly. But then once you actually take them on, you realize how they, they are unlocking new ways of thinking or behaving, or behaviors that that haven't existed in your team that you want to see happen more often. What I hope that readers get a sense of is like, Okay, if I just tried this, you know, little shift to try for that, like, you know, 10% more playful by trying out this assignment or that assignment? Like, let me just learn from that. Let me see what can happen as a result of that? 

AD: Do you have some favorites that you can talk about now and kind of illustrate what they are and how they work and how they unlock the creative thinking?

SSG : Yes, I feel like this, this book’s subtitle, this book is like all my favorite assignments. But I'll just share a few that kind of tackle really different skills. So one of my favorites hands down is called the doreive, which our Director of teaching and learning Christa Carter really brought to the to her teaching at the D school. And the dream actually comes from, I think, the 60s, an art movement and a political movement in France. And doreive in French means to drift or adrift, that you go in a dream, which is simply a walk in which you decide that you're going to follow a particular quality and let that be how you drift through your walk. So it could be the color yellow, or it could be a smell, or it could be certain types of straight lines. And you allow that to be what's setting your compass. And what happens in your brain. I don't fully understand that the chemistry of it, but it is fascinating. People come back with, you know, examples of like, Wow, I've been walking in the same place for 30 years. And I noticed things today that I had never seen before. Some people report, it gets them into this very sort of meditative space. And they start thinking about the sort of in a metaphorical way, what do lines mean in their lives? What does what does shadows or light mean? And it's a very powerful way to like, get unstuck or reset. But it fundamentally helps you notice things that you have been not noticing. And that's one of those skills that in design is so important. And many people who've been you know, designers for a long time, kind of just instinctively notice things that are just seemed so obvious when they point them out. But like no one else had pointed them out, right? That is one of those things. It's like, Well, how do you actually train people to be able to do that the doreive is a great way to practice that for yourself. 

Another assignment that's very close to my own heart is called distribution prototyping. So in distribution prototyping, which I teach in one of our classes every year helps people think about, well, how am I actually going to get the product or service that I've designed to the people who might actually buy it or use it. And often, that's not a space where we think perhaps, is, is bright for creativity, but it absolutely is. And I developed this actually, after I came back from India, and India and many emerging markets, the distribution channels that exist are not as fully robust, particularly in rural areas, or places with low population density, you really have to be creative about how to figure out how to get your good or service all the way to the people who might need it. And in distribution, prototyping, I mean, it's a riff on the practice of body storming. But it's particularly designed to help you make something that is a very abstract concept into a physical tangible model. And so you stretch a piece of string across the widest room that you have, and you have one end represented, you're the person you're trying to serve. And you have want the other end represent the thing that you're trying to make. And then you hang a set of cards all along the string and figure out okay, who is going to transport this? Who is going to store it? What are the economics related to each of those who is the right retailer, what are the all of those experiences of handoff that have to happen along the way. And when I do this with students, they often have these profound insights in the moment that like, get them way further away. Long in their design process than they think they could be. We do this during class when they're just starting to conceptualize their solution. And often, it will have this wonderful upstream effect where they then realize, oh, if I change my solution in the following way, it's I'm going to have a much easier time of distribution, right? Or I'm going to be able to reduce a lot of the cost. So it's one of those good examples of like working in a very non linear way, and how that can that can really benefit the bottom line of what you're actually trying to make.

AD: I want to play! I want to come to your house and play these games with you. So fun. I think that the power of design to start people thinking about potential solutions to complex problems is immense. You've talked a little bit about the power of designed to kind of approach not only complexity, but in visibility and things like power structures, resilience, inclusivity, things that don't really have a physical presence, but they definitely are a driver that needs to be looked at, and redesigned. Are there any exercises in the book that deal with those kinds of things like visualizing power dynamics, resilience, or inclusivity?

SSG: Yeah, that's a category of assignment that is increasing in its presence in our classrooms. And, and also in importance, I'll share just a couple that are in the book along those lines. So one is this really incredible assignment that was developed by an educator named Zaza via dondo. And I think she developed this when she was running the design program at Smith. It's called embodied prototyping. And she uses this activity to help her students design a feeling or try to design a feeling. The topics are very related to what you're talking about. So they're about power, or they're about privilege, or they're about inequity, like how do you create an experience of inequity through a five minute designed environment or a power, and it's a way of getting her students to really reckon with these values that if we don't pay attention to them wind up being expressed in ways that we don't anticipate and don't intend, the prompt to her students is fairly straightforward. She'll say, you know, design a five minute experience of power. And in one case, a team of students came up with the idea that they would have everyone in the group sit in a circle, and come up with three words that they associate with power. And then the first person would say the first word. And then anyone who had a related word would go next. And at the same time, they were connecting each person in the circle through a ball of rope. And so by the end, they had this, like, kind of networked web, and the experience of it was like manifesting how all of these elements of power like a judge or a ruler, it is the web that we normally is, is invisible, in our society in our lives, but actually, they made that manifest. So that was, that's one example in the book where you can actually have students like develop real literacy around how some of these invisible forces are around us all of the time, and how they might be thinking about, well, what would it look like to design inclusiveness? What can I design that feeling? Right? What and let me try this is a prototype, right? That's one assignment, I would point people to. Another really powerful one, which is from a designer named Earl Coleman and his team, it's called stakeholder mapping. And I think that's a that's a technique that is used in other places, but derails team is doing it very much from a design standpoint, they'll put whoever is their kind of end user, the person they're, they're really designing for in the center of a set of concentric circles. And then all of the stakeholders who they think might support the design work they're doing and the next circle, and the antagonists in the final circle. And then outside, they'll map all of the players in the ecosystem who are not yet engaged, but might be. This is a way of then spotting unexpected opportunities to forge alliances, or be able to deal with potential roadblocks from people who are resistant to change. And what Doral says is that often it's those folks in that external space that aren't yet engaged, but could be who wind up actually helping you implement a new program or kind of break through a stalemate in existing power dynamics. So that is a very practical tool that he uses in his work on early childhood education or design within the foster care system to really understand all of those different power dynamics and structures that are at play.

AD: Oh, I love it. This is so hands on and so practical, and so playful, but also so important and inspiring.

SSG: Thank you. I appreciate that. And actually, let me just take up To say, I think part of the reason it is inspiring is because these assignments come from across this very wide range of our teaching community. So you have people who bring perspectives far beyond what I as just one individual could ever bring. And I think that multifaceted lens, Well, as you know, I like to be in the middle, curating and translating like that. I mean, it was truly a privilege to kind of bring this set of different ideas together. You know, I'm kind of hopeful that someone will, will go through these set and like, really resonate with some and others might be like, Oh, I don't know, like, I don't know, if I think this way, like, maybe be a little provoked or stimulated in a new way. I'm hopeful that the range that's in the book will will allow for some of that to happen.

AD   

Well, there is quite a range. It's a book that can keep you busy for a very, very long time, if you are truly curious person. And if you're not a curious person, you should be you should try a few of them anyway, it'll develop your curiosity. I have a question here about how do you personally stay inspired and curious, and it's mostly to bring it back to you personally. But honestly, if this is the work that you do every day, my question is now morphed to, are you ever not inspired or curious? And like, if so what are the conditions that cause your own blockage, and how do you unblock?

SSG: That's a nice flip of that question. I think I find routines pretty deadening. And I think that is one of those things where I'll notice that if I have a doctor's appointment, or I have to just like reroute myself on my commute, at some point, like, all of a sudden, I'm like seeing things in a new way. And I feel better. I think it's easy to be sort of unconscious of the effect that sort of deadening effect that routines have, I really noticed that when I break a routine, and then I'm like, oh, I've got a really I'm in a rut, they're like, how can I How can I shake that up a little bit. In this past time, when it's been hard to like physically transport yourself to another geographical place, or travel or, for me, I really avid scuba diver. And I've been really missing that experience because it is so stimulating. And in so many ways. It's so interesting, from the ecology perspective, and the visual perspective and the, you know, physical perspective. And I found myself honing in on the nature that's really close to home. So like the house finches that are on the telephone wires behind my apartment, are what I photograph, right, or the very occasional visit by the Cooper's Hawk that lives nearby, I have literally like, stopped a conference call or a zoom call in the middle and just left and said, I'll be right back, I have to go see this hawk. So yeah. And my my dear and patient colleagues understand that you know, something that is just so exciting and inspiring to me. So I think this has definitely been a time of finding ways to continue whatever it is that inspires you in in smaller ways and more local ways. And figure out like, how can you still keep learning and still pique your curiosity even about things that are much closer to home.

AD: I think I'm going to take you up on the derieve later this afternoon, you can feel like you've seen everything there is to see in your radius, your local radius, but if you actually challenge yourself to see what you're not able to see, you can flip your perspective on everything that you're living amongst, in a in a really wonderful, more textural contextual way.

SSG: I think that's exactly right. And, you know, if you do get a chance to do a derieve, I'd love to hear I'm sure everyone listening would also love to hear what your experience is like, it's really kind of a neat way to visit someone else's brain. When you hear those reflections. That sounds really wonderful. I like your framing around texture. I think that when we're in those routines, it's the world flattens that really fine tuned way of noticing with intention, like brings back a lot of that texture. I hadn't thought about it in those terms. I think that's a really beautiful way to frame it.

AD: Where would you put yourself right now on the road to self actualization? Like, what are the existential challenges or the self growth area that you're you're chewing on and growing?

SSG : For me, I am trying constantly to figure out how do we grapple with the kinds of challenges that we are facing, which are on a long term scale and on a planetary scale? And, you know, how does the little corner of the world that I am a part of like, how do we contribute to positive change? When I think there are, you know, a whole host of new challenges that are emerging, and they're emerging really, really fast. So whether that's, you know, the kinds of design materials like algorithms and machine learning, or like synthetic biology that I just mentioned, where when you design with them, or you design products or services that involve them, the potential for unintended consequences is quite high. And they might happen at a scale and on a time frame that you really have to figure out how am I going to react quickly. And I think that is a real challenge that the design world and the technology world needs to face and, and rise to, and you will see a few of the assignments in the book are starting to point to the experimentation that we're doing, from an education standpoint about like, what what could that look like? I think this is kind of the next big inflection point for design is thinking about, where do we show up? And how do we show up ethically in a world where the things that we make and create can have those unintended consequences very rapidly? What is our responsibility as people who create things, from an intellectual perspective, it's a real exciting moment, but it also there's a lot of weight that's attached to that. And at the same time, how do we retain that that playfulness that we know helps people unlock some of the best of their thinking, even in a moment when the kinds of challenges that are that are happening in the world are grave, they're really serious. So I think that that tension is kind of where I'm sitting right now and how I'm thinking about, you know, how I want to spend the next kind of season for myself as an educator and as a leader,

AD: On a personal level, are you able to have such a tolerance for that kind of tension intellectually, professionally, in your personal kind of interest and fascination? Because you have some stability elsewhere in your life? Are you attention junkie?

SSG: I don't think I'm attention junkie, I certainly think that I have the luxury in many ways to be contemplating, you know, inviting that kind of uncertainty and tension and ambiguity into my professional life. You know, we talk a lot at the D school about how design can be extremely helpful in developing people's ability to navigate ambiguity. Yes, oh, I believe that 100% once you have that taste of working on problems and in opportunities, spaces, where there is a lot of ambiguity, and you manage to create something that is productive, that helps the situation probably doesn't solve the whole situation, but but helps meaningfully, then you actually start to seek opportunities to flex your design skills where there is ambiguity, right? I do think that I've spent enough time now working in a field where we have a set of ways to prepare ourselves for navigating times of deep uncertainty and times of great ambiguity, and actually invite some of that ambiguity in, right is to say, like, oh, if if we know what the answers are, it's probably not the kind of problem, one that we need to use design for. But also that is really going to allow us to contribute as much as possible. I think I'm certainly fortunate to have the kind of stability in my personal life that allows me to even entertain these ideas. But also, I think, from a professional standpoint, that is one of those things that design really deeply offers. We think about navigating ambiguity is kind of the designer superpower, like the thing that allows me to be like, I don't know the answer yet. I'm going on a journey that involves a lot of learning. I'm not an expert, right? I know, I have a way a set of skills that I can apply and that I can use to learn rapidly. But like we this could go in a number of different directions. And that is part of the definition of a good problem to be working on not one that I'm afraid of, or that I need to constrain so that I can get to like a clear right answer.

AD: Yes, you're amazing. I love this conversation. I want to know what you're looking forward to either in the near or distant future, like what is a bright spot on your horizon?

SSG: I mean, really, in the very near term, I'm really looking forward to having people digest this book and tell me what they think and tell me what they're trying. My huge hope is that just about no one does any of these assignments exactly as written. Right? Like I did my job well, if you take this and when you do your dream, if you do it like a little differently than what's in the book, because you're thinking about how do I adapt it for my for your own context? And I think the reason I'm excited about that is because when you're teaching, and I'm sure you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, it's like it's satisfying and rewarding for somebody to like, use the tool or the method as you think it should be used. But then when they come back, and they're like, you know, I had to adopt it because such and such was happening. And then like, that's when you actually see people start to become like tool makers. Yeah, this is so exciting. And off Like students will come in, they'll be like, hey, I need a tool that you didn't teach me about. Because this is my context. And I'm like, well, it's time for you to make make something, right, create a framework, create a process, adapt the process you've been using. And getting people to like, actually recognize, oh, that's a part of design work to like designing your design work is a part of, you know, really being fluent in using design. That is a really exciting moment. So like, I'm excited for people to get their hands on all of the content in the book. And I'm also really looking forward to like, what, how are people going to break it or bend it or adapt it

AD: I'm looking forward to that too. Because when people take things and customize them, and adapt them to their own needs, a whole new bouquet of awesomeness gets born is pretty cool.

SSG: That's a lovely way to put it. I think about like all the like when you have like a watercolor palette, and it's like all the like super intense colors, but just a little mixing with so many possibilities.

AD: Well, this has been great. And I love the book. So thank you so much for sharing your story and for sharing some of these assignments and some of the powerful impacts that have happened because of this work.

SSG: Thank you so much. This was such a fun conversation. I really appreciate it.

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Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors:

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What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

One of my earliest bosses once told me that in her career the only times she’d made big mistakes were when she moved too fast… or too slow. This has really stayed with me. Timing and pacing are so important, yet rarely considered when you’re developing a strategy, creating change, or trying to move people. I think about whether I’m moving too fast or too slow on something just about every week.

How do you record your ideas?

On whatever is at hand. Notebook, post-it, voice memo… I’m not picky!

D.school “Future Happenings” March 2019. Photo by Patrick Beaudouin

What book is on your nightstand? 

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot. I highly recommend this book to anyone who makes or uses technology… so… basically everyone.

Favorite restaurant in your city?

Al’s Place in San Francisco. Try the chawanmushi. Actually, try everything.

Pitch Night, 2018. Photo by Patrick Beaudouin

ExtremeExpo 2018. Photo by Patrick Beaudouin

What might we find on your desk right now?

Prototypes of the cover for Creative Acts for Curious People.

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?

Last year I worked on a side project to help make sure everyone could stay safe and healthy while voting in the US election. During the pandemic it has been important to me to find new ways to be of service to the challenges we’re all facing as a society. Our team was really grateful to support and contribute to the incredible work being done by local elections administrators across the country. You can learn more about this project at Healthy Polls.

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

https://dschool.stanford.edu/books
www.sarahsteingreenberg.com
@steingreenberg on Instagram

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.

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