Designing for Longevity with Sheng-Hung Lee: Embracing AI, Empathy, and Growth

Sheng-Hung Lee (00:02.51)

Hi.

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Gerry Scullion (00:05.678)

It's Sheng-Hung Lee!

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Sheng-Hung Lee (00:09.486)

Nice to meet you, how are you?

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Gerry Scullion (00:11.406)

I'm okay. Just back from a short break in Europe. So, I'm feeling really tired.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (00:19.534)

What time is it now? It's like...

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Gerry Scullion (00:22.158)

now it's 2 .30 in the afternoon. What a time is it with you?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (00:28.366)

like 9 .30? Yes.

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Gerry Scullion (00:32.462)

Very cool. Let me check my notes here. How are you doing? Anyway, how do I am I getting your name right? Sheng-Hung? Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (00:44.207)

Yes, perfect. You're like, Gary? Gerry, Gerry, Gerry.

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Gerry Scullion (00:48.046)

Gerry as in Ben & Jerry ice cream. Jerry McGuire, Jerry Springer. Yeah. Good to meet you. Anyway, where are you? New York. You're in MIT, aren't you?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (00:52.526)

You

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Sheng-Hung Lee (01:05.166)

Yes, I'm based in Boston and then this week, so end of semester, last week at MIT. So everyone's like crazy with the final exam. I'm T at the one class and people drive me nuts, you know, all these kids. Can we have an extension? I mean, it's that sweet. Almost going to say that. Yeah.

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So which course are you working on at MIT?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (01:37.73)

The course name is called Aging and Build Environment. So it's pretty cool. All the graduate students work on sort of like a real sponsor project. So like focus on caregiving, focus on product design or service innovation, like fitness, healthcare related. And people are exciting, but the difficulties is like...

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Gerry Scullion (01:52.718)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (02:05.966)

is too short and also how do you really understand people have to put empathy, put your heart in the project and not just like you got a secondhand like desktop research and you say you know it. No, you have to really, really read people, understand them, talk to them, interview them. Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (02:24.718)

Yeah. You're an industrial designer though, correct? Yeah, same as myself. The industrial design show, the industrial design show. Welcome to the industrial design show, folks. Today we're going to be talking about how we've destroyed the planet.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (02:28.302)

Yes.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (02:41.462)

I love that. It's so true. We create more problems.

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Gerry Scullion (02:45.966)

Yeah, exactly. We're going to create more plastic. We're going to create more plastic. Yeah. So are you originally from China or are you originally, am I got that completely wrong?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (02:58.222)

No, I originally from Taiwan. Yeah, I pay actually. And then after that, I just, work a little bit. I studied for too long because I cannot study industrial design and electrical engineering. So it's like seven years, my parents thought I have some mental problems. Like you, you studied as a doctor, medical doctor. No, you were just designing. What happened to you? I said, mom, I want to study very solid. I'm not.

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Gerry Scullion (03:00.462)

Taiwan, okay.

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Gerry Scullion (03:12.782)

Anyway.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (03:26.798)

aim for a certificate, I mean, for really learn the knowledge, enjoy myself. It turns out too long. That's the longest time you can stay university for undergrad. And like, especially, you know, like design as an application science, right? And like, it's not just about, like, let's like, understand the framework, you know, draw a beautiful diagram, you know, nothing is learned from failure. And then luckily, join ideal afterwards.

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Gerry Scullion (03:35.822)

Mmm.

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Gerry Scullion (03:40.846)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (03:50.666)

Yeah, I was going to say, because forgive me for saying that you were from China when you're from Taiwan, but because I remember seeing you were in IDEO China. So that's where I originally thought that you were born in China. So you're in IDEO then for a bunch of years. And how long are you in MIT now?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (04:13.174)

my God, this is my fifth year. And it's like three years master and now the second year PhD and hopefully I can graduate by end of this year, finding a job. my God, the job is.

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Gerry Scullion (04:15.406)

Okay.

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Gerry Scullion (04:26.254)

Are you studying or are you teaching in MIT?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (04:28.91)

Both. So it's well, it was, why are you back to study? Like, I'm not studying. MIT is my client. MIT is my client. I'm working for them. I need, they pay my stipend. I have to work for the lab and contribute as a troublemaker.

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Gerry Scullion (04:30.734)

Right.

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Gerry Scullion (04:47.086)

Yeah.

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So at the end of this, what are you going to be a professor?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (04:54.766)

No, aiming for look after professorship for sure, but it depends on how it now is very competitive. I'm interviewing at school like Harvard, Yale and Parsons. But every, I mean, for design academia is very different compared with like engineering and science. It's like they call like professor of practice. You know, it's like, yeah, we, we value you, but there's no tenure track and we focus more on teaching.

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Gerry Scullion (05:13.294)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (05:23.438)

So like Parsons, RISD, you know, all MFA programs, they focus on teaching. And I feel like for me, it's the same. Like my PhD program is very different compared with other people. So I'm also now looking for traditional academia.

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Gerry Scullion (05:38.286)

Do you know Tony Dunn in there in MIT?

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Anthony Dunn.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (05:44.75)

No, no.

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Gerry Scullion (05:45.966)

Anthony Dunn, Fiona Raby.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (05:49.472)

No, do you know which department he is? Maybe I can...

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Gerry Scullion (05:51.686)

Anthony Dunn, MIT, and maybe he's a Parsons.

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No, he is Parsons. He is the professor of design and social inquiry at the New School Parsons in New York.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (06:07.99)

Hmm I didn't know I didn't know him. Yeah, just I should check Tony, right Tony Tom Anthony Tom

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Gerry Scullion (06:10.03)

You should check him out.

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And what Anthony done? He won't know me as a designer. He will know me as his sister's friend. OK. Right. So I like I mentioned him on the podcast a few times, but he is like a god in design, Sheung-Hung. Basically, when I did my I did industrial design and I did my thesis and I wasn't a great student, believe it or not, I was like I quickly saw beyond the veil.

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Second year like, I don't create a lot of plastic. You know, I was kind of a little bit more advanced and I was like, hey, let's talk about the earth. This can't be good. Like, you know, I like gardening like and we're putting pesticides in the soil. Where's all the stuff going to go like, you know, this is in the nineties. So my lectures were like, who is this kid? So but I did my fourth year. I did it on robotics and.

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sort of for people who are visually impaired and aided, robotic aided kind of sight. OK, so with this device that would follow them around and tell them what's in their environment and so forth. And my friend said, hey, you should speak to my brother. He's in the RCA. And I was like, OK, yeah, I remember you saying that to me. What does he do? Like, I know he's kind of he worked for Sony and he worked on the Walkman and stuff. I was like, OK, that's cool. So actually.

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did my thesis on the Walkman and he helped me. And then it wasn't until a few years later that I realized that all of the lectures and my university in Dublin were like, no, he's he's like the forefather of speculative design. So speculative was Tony Dunn, you know, out of RCA and Fiona Rabie, his partner. And he's included in a lot of the Dita Rams thinking of.

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Gerry Scullion (08:10.062)

kind of Johnny Ive, he told all of those. And so he's he's really. I can't say enough words, I read his books. It's just amazing. Like, but anyway, he won't know me as a designer, so his sister. So everyone goes, you know, Tony and I go, well, I called into him a few times in the RCA and we high fived because that was about it, like, you know, but it turns out he's a megastar, like in the whole kind of the world of.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (08:19.054)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (08:39.214)

You know, Gary Hustwood, you know, Gary Hustwood from Helvetica. He's on he's on all those documentaries. But anyway, he's in your same neck of the woods. He's a professor. He's in he's in Parsons, which is across the water and could be someone for you to connect with and network. I'm not I don't have his email anymore because he left the RCA a number of years ago to go to go to Parsons. And but he basically ran the.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (08:44.91)

Mm.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (09:02.24)

Okay.

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Gerry Scullion (09:09.454)

one of the key courses, I can't remember, I think it was interactive, like interaction design or something in the RCA and they're not doing it anymore because Tony left. That's the last I heard. But anyway, he might be a good person for you to connect with. But that's just how small this community is. It's not. Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (09:19.47)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (09:28.75)

is very small, everyone knows everyone and especially in academia, right? Yeah, I think same for industry, like,

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Gerry Scullion (09:37.07)

He's an industrial designer as well. So he did. He did my course in the 80s. I did it in the 90s. So, you know, there's a there's a kind of a reemergence. A lot of people I'm connecting with now are industrial designers. They're reformed. I say I'm a reformed industrial designer, you know. But your name came up anyway, because I don't know if I gave you the preface, but Adam Cochrane had mentioned you to me because.

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So I run this thing called the Human Centered Design Network, and we've been doing this podcast for about eight years. And we have a new community that started about six weeks ago or eight weeks ago, and the first theme came out of the first campfire, which was a bunch of people who are relatively kind of I would say they're probably in their fifties have all been made redundant. And we're all facing this kind of situation of.

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I work for myself. I'm independent. I'm lucky enough. I've kind of built a system where I can get work. But where have all the old designers gone? And we sort of sell this nirvana, this dream of being a designer. And it's so cool. He can change the world. He can change the world until he turned 40. And then you might have to start looking for another job. So.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (11:00.686)

You

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Gerry Scullion (11:01.646)

I train all these designers in Accenture and governments and stuff. I haven't trained a designer over the age of 35 in five years.

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Right?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (11:13.902)

That's interesting, yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (11:15.918)

So that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you a little bit more around because Adam was like, hey, Sean is into this stuff. And I'm like, OK, well, it's not like so much to poke holes in the balloon. It's more to understand how we can keep the balloon afloat and what what are the problems, because people might, you know, say that they're into D &I and we do our best efforts. But when suddenly you're faced with it in your own lap,

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In your 40s and I haven't really had to face too much. This is going to face everybody. You know, unless you're in academia where there tends to be, you know, you can go longer. But if you're working in some of these institutions like banks or. You know, tech companies, fast tech, you've got a shelf life.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (12:09.294)

Yeah. I know I feel the same because actually last night I was writing an article about AI and design. And I really feel like traditionally we all know like classic, like a double diamond model, right? Converged, diverged by design console from UK. And then, yeah, like we need to, with design process, like converge, diverge all the time. It's an iterated process for sure. Well, with the help of AI, my God, think about the diamond becomes super big.

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Gerry Scullion (12:33.742)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (12:38.894)

the first diamond, you keep going, right? Like you have tons of ideas, hyper sketch, like chat, GPT, dollies, right? You got, everyone can bring any kind of crazy ideas within a second by prompts or even just by your mood, for example. And then somehow what does it mean for a double diamond? Which means like, what does it mean for design process? Right? We, we, we can have thousands of ideas, but what I really want to say and emphasize is like, does anyone know what does mean by good taste?

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Gerry Scullion (12:40.014)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (12:51.342)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (13:09.134)

Do you know what do you mean by good lifestyle? Healthy lifestyle. It doesn't mean the more the better, right? The more like you goes like this crazy a lot, but how do you converge? How do you synthesize? Did anyone tell that how to synthesize, right? And then that's really based on our life experiences, work experiences and personal experiences, empathy. And I feel, wow, that's everyone think they know AI tools, they become designers.

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Gerry Scullion (13:34.734)

Yeah, there's a there's a little, I would say a little, there's a huge risk in that. And how do we stop the the people in the organizations getting fat on the sugar drinks of AI? Like, you know, that's you know, because they can go in completely the wrong direction. They can go in many directions at the same time. But it seems to be.

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that there's a lack of sort of custodianship of the craft happening in organizations. And that's something that I'm seeing more and more that. Well, I guess I'd love to understand your perspective of where is this coming from? It's not it can't just be pinpointed on AI. Say no, AI is the piece before that, even there seems to be this.

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a point where a designer hits in their 40s and I don't mean to say the 40s is the golden age of being made or done and doing that kind of stuff but some organizations look at 40 year old designers if you're not a manager or if you're not leading a team and if you are happy to be a craftsperson working in design like could be within user experience or service design or interaction design there's something wrong.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (14:36.366)

Mm.

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Gerry Scullion (15:03.47)

They're saying that's something wrong with this person because they're not happy to take the step up to become, you know, a team leader or a person leader, which is a different skill. Not everyone has that skill. So what are the things do you think is happening there within the organization to cause this kind of questioning of a designer's age?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (15:28.846)

No, I think this is great because when I work in IDEO, most of friends, they're left the company and they have their own, for example, they become leaders in the organization. Like my friend, G, we just met last week. He lives IDEO, he joined a tech accelerator called HACS, H -A -X. And he's like from engineer become partner, you know, and then like...

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Gerry Scullion (15:51.438)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (15:58.03)

like I like you say like, you start to think about yourself, now you manage people, right? So you think you're responsible for work, now you manage the people who are responsible for the work. And I feel like that like leadership role, that ties a lot of things, right? And then I feel like, especially now, everyone lives longer. We talk about longevity all the time, we talk about like, because now people like new kids born, they can live more than 100 years old, right?

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Gerry Scullion (16:02.99)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (16:07.95)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (16:25.358)

And what does it mean for our career, especially for designers? We talk about designer, right? And I feel like, yeah, we try to promote design, the value design, the design tool become more accessible. But that also push us to think what are the core design skill or like knowledge, right? It's just the hardcore skill. Like we go to school. Yeah. Give me like five days on YouTube. I can learn almost everything. Coding, you know, the Adobe and everything. But what about communication, leadership?

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creativity, team building. And these are things like, I feel like you said, it's shaped by organization culture. It's invisible, it's soft skill, it's a human skill. And then people in their, I won't say like a middle life crisis, it's like in the stage of the like age 40s, 50s, right? And how do you change the way a contribution of design somehow is transformed? It's no longer about I solve the problem.

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Gerry Scullion (17:25.838)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (17:25.87)

I feel like, can you create a condition to let more people to join that platform and solve the problem with you? And I feel that's something I really interesting to know more. Also for me, 37, 36, I also want to know what does it mean to me? Do I have the chance to practice to create that condition, to help new people to thrive versus I only help myself to thrive? It's very different mindset.

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Gerry Scullion (17:43.085)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (17:47.47)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (17:53.966)

Yeah, I mean, in some cultures, you know, they see the elderly as being places of wisdom and knowledge and experience and then others less so. So when you look at Japan and stuff, there's a lot more kind of inclusion around how they engage with the elderly and.

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the access to the past and so forth so they can actually learn and bring that experience into the situation. This is just in life. I don't know what it's like within design, but it seems within design with, especially within fast tech where, most of the average age of an Amazon, Google, Facebook, includes any other fast tech company in there is 29. So when you look at that from a designer's perspective,

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Where are all these people going? What happens to the 40 year old UX designers who don't want to get into the managerial positions? They either leave and they set up their own business and they go freelance or they kind of change careers. They get into other disciplines that they might want to kind of explore further. But I'd love to understand your experience because you've got so many.

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I look at your LinkedIn and I'm just like, man, this person is so busy. You just sit there. You are like, I encourage anyone listening to this podcast to check out Xiong's LinkedIn and just try and hold your bottom jaw in place because it's just incredible the amount of stuff you've done in your career. But what would, in your experience, what would a great

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an all rounded design team look like from that perspective of creating great work.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (20:00.654)

Yeah, I really appreciate you asked the question because for me, like design team looks, especially now, I think post COVID or like there's a lot of new norms, right? Like we, people have more flexibility work from home and then location becomes something less impactful. Like how do you like form a team? Like ideal, they like, they call like the designer on the cloud, right? Cloud team.

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Gerry Scullion (20:21.998)

Sheng-Hung Lee (20:29.23)

there's no specific location. It's like, we need to solve this challenge. All the people on the cloud can aim for that. And then for me, I feel like a well -rounded design team is like, definitely we all know this very cliche, like teamwork, transportation, communication. But I think what's more important is people know their purpose. They want to grow. They want to aim for something challenged. They want to keep themselves. They have the growth mindset. And I feel for me, like,

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Gerry Scullion (20:56.75)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (20:58.83)

I'm really lucky, really appreciate MIT, MIT Aged Lab, Ideation Lab, really support my research. But at the same time, I feel too comfortable. I don't like that. I feel like, yeah, I help the advisor, all the undergrad students about the class, about the homework, focus on my own study. But I also feel like I want to do more. I want to try something people never tried before. I need some 5 % space.

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And I feel for me, the way around the design is not hiring people only focus on work they got assigned. They also think about how they expand. And I think that's very beautiful because you need to have some adventure. You need some pioneer. Otherwise, everything happens so fast. I really, for me, it's overwhelming to see what happened after AI, post -AI generation. The way they think about the world is so different. Like, nothing we need to remember.

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Gerry Scullion (21:50.574)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (21:55.15)

everything is like, it's all there, right? And how do you curate? And I feel, my God, it's totally disrupted my education, training, the way understanding design. And I also, I already feel slow. Even I'm in school. I feel very slow. People use Oculus Vision Pro. Do I know how to coding? Do I know how to communicate with them? Do I know how to set up my avatar? My advisor, my committee, Professor Al Duac, he joined my...

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Gerry Scullion (21:59.438)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (22:24.878)

catch a meeting with a HoloLens, with the Oculus, with the Avatar. I cannot see his facial expression, just the cartoon characters. And I was, my God, it's in this area now. How can I grow faster to know the next step? This was like...

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Gerry Scullion (22:40.334)

It's it's hilarious. In the last episode that I recorded before I went on a break there for a week and the person called Jerry Michalski and Jerry Michalski is in the US. Don't know if you ever heard of Jerry, but he has been documenting his brain for the last twenty seven years. So his brain is fully public and his thoughts are out there as well.

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So the ability for him. So we can already kind of jump ahead 27 years if you want with use case of one and saying, hey, look, how are you using this? He's about you know, Tiago Ford has been talking about the second brain. I've been kind of doing this for a long time, he said, like he said, like sometimes I look into my brain online and I'm like, hey, I've already thought about this. I've already encountered this stuff before. So it'll be interesting to see.

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What that looks like as regards the next generation, the next generation of designers, should I say, this pure reliance on AI and everything is stored and everything is just there for them. But going back to that question around forming teams, I'd love to understand your perspective of, you know, there's D and I requirements in most of these large organizations, but it seems that designers who are older.

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aren't getting the same credence as say, minorities, race, any of these things where it's equally as important. You can't have a team full of 25 year olds and expecting them to create world class experiences and services that are inclusive. It's just impossible.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (24:31.246)

Yeah, no, I really think about forming teams or the ideas of teamwork is all collective position making because like now the design challenges is no longer just make things beautiful, forms, shape. It's like, it's very complicated. It's systematic. For example, we talk about this like, climate change, right? It's a lot of things, like a lot of, and then for me,

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Gerry Scullion (24:48.43)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (25:00.206)

We also need to think about the definition of designer or design team, right? I feel like everyone is designer in their own domain of knowledge. And the thing is like, yeah, one of my super power or your super power as an industrial designer, we bring tangibility during the design process. But can we open our like a mind or be more like embrace all this possibility to talk with other people and show the tangible stuff as a way to unlock more potential conversation.

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Gerry Scullion (25:09.55)

Hmm.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (25:30.574)

And I feel, I really view like other people as also designers. For example, in HLab, 29 scientists, they're from like mechanical engineering, data scientists, social worker, you know. So for me, I'm the only designer on the team, but also the only troublemaker. I'm sorry, I spent too much money on this. I didn't know we have this policy about I can't bring people in the lab for this session. But the thing I want to say is like,

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designer or design team, we need to have people as a catalyst, as a bridge to connect that. And I feel my greatest superpower is I connect people through prototyping, through testing. You can see the lab space is very clean from data scientists, but you see another side, it's my space. Overwhelming.

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Gerry Scullion (26:01.166)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (26:23.982)

So you can see like the personality, right? And then I feel like I'm very lucky because I'm trying to, I'm not asking for permission. I'm asking for forgiveness. do it. Let's like connect the dots first. And people didn't, I cannot tell. I have to show them and then show them first. And then I realized, the best design team is like people create that space for you. You can make mistakes and you should. I love that because.

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Gerry Scullion (26:34.606)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (26:41.262)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (26:48.846)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (26:53.23)

My PhD is the best example. It's like, I got acceptance from MIT McIngenier department, but I feel like, I really, this is really not my thing. I still love design, I love creativity. So as the dean, as the chair, I really think I can graduate from this program. It's a little bit too hard for me. There's a qualified exam and I'm trying to know myself more. I know myself pretty well. So they suggest me, you should create your own PhD program.

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And I said, what do you mean? Like, what do you mean? I mean, and I told people, my colleagues in the lab, nobody believes in me because there's nothing written on the website. So what I mean by that is like, yeah, this is a new path. You have to craft or new path. And I feel design teams should have that momentum to allow people to make mistakes, to try something new. And I really, I feel like, like you said, team formation.

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design leadership and we need some people like that to connect the dust, the bridge. And also we need enlightened leaders with a vision. They probably don't know everything. I don't think leaders should know everything. They know something there, but we can prototyping to try it out, test it.

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Gerry Scullion (28:10.222)

Yeah. Where do you think designers or organizations? What are the precursors that are happening to designers? You mentioned they're about being comfortable. You're too comfortable, you said, like you should have this 5 % for growth. And I love that. Is that a case for designers who are maybe staying in the same position for too long? What does that look like?

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And do you think that's one of the precursors for designers finding themselves in situations where they are mid 40s, early 50s, and they're kind of missing out on these opportunities? Is that comfortability one of the reasons why they may be finding it difficult to find roles?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (28:56.75)

Yeah, this is a great question. I really think about, first of all, I don't think like the job description is fixed, you know, because we, as a designer, we really tend to kind of as a problem solver, we want to solve other people's problems. But the truth is like, yeah, people gave us brief design challenges, design brief, the scope of the project. But do you really, how do you design for yourself?

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Gerry Scullion (29:05.806)

Hmm.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (29:23.566)

And I feel like people, like, for example, in the middle of their age, we got a lot of experiences and we got a lot of like, we learning from our mistakes, our failure, but at the same time in that job, can you really challenged about your position? Can you do more than that? You know, it is, I mean, what I mean by that is like designed for yourself means like, can you put yourself in the strategic level to think about it? What, what are you going to grow next five years, next three years?

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Versus are you waiting for people to assign you a design task or design a brief. And I feel the mindset is different because designer, I think sometimes we overemphasize listening to consumers, listening to users or clients. Sometimes we need to pull back, think about how about listening to yourself? Do you invest yourself? Yeah, but this is really good questions.

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Gerry Scullion (30:14.99)

Yeah, I'm thinking as you're speaking there, like this whole kind of five percent thing where designers are expected to knock it out of the park nine to five. And then all of a sudden they're expected to create this five percent where they're could be doing a hustle. They could be doing something that's external. And I love that. I mean, like that is kind of part of my DNA. Like I have always taken on probably too much. But.

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When you look at other disciplines, say like in finance or in marketing or in engineering, they may not have that 5 % thing and yet they're able to sustain and get into their 50s and get the gold watch when they're retiring and say, thanks very much for your service at 60. What is it about the design role that organizations seem to have that expectation that that 5 % should persist?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (31:10.766)

Yeah, I feel for me, like, I think like, because for me, I will all love design. I definitely believe that people listen to this podcast all love design. And I feel like we love design. We love something. We're looking for not a sense of achievement. We're looking for a sense of fulfillment. Right. And I feel like that five percent stuff is more than just achievement. It's a fulfillment. What do you mean by fulfillment? It's like,

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When you do something, you totally forget about time. this is like five hours already. I forgot to have lunch with some friends, but you really enjoy, you involve yourself, immerse yourself in that work or that kind of project. And I feel in organization, we always want to think about scalability, efficiency, right? And you can really show out the business revenue and show us the number.

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Gerry Scullion (31:44.078)

flow.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (32:09.262)

rather than tell a story. But I feel like in order to make the organization growth or design culture growth or more sustainable, you have to have that 5 % stuff. What I mean by that is like, it's more than just revenue. Yeah, it's about sustainable longevity. And I feel, I don't think most organizations have that or they think about that because that's really take a long -term vision and goal to achieve that. You have the great foundation first.

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Gerry Scullion (32:37.806)

is five percent enough to get that do you think?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (32:44.59)

I feel like everyone in different stages, 5%, it could be like MVP version, the minimum, right? yeah. I'm not saying like we should drop our like day -to -day job, just focus on our passion project and then no income, you know, love and breath, right? So like, I feel like 5 % is a great starting point. And probably because of 5 % thing, you come up with another business line and you will start to figure it out. How do you sustain that 5 %?

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Gerry Scullion (33:00.878)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (33:10.542)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (33:14.766)

become 50%. And that's a separate line. And then within that new initiative, you have another 5 % comes out. So I feel that's kind of the ideas I have.

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Gerry Scullion (33:25.102)

Jessica Hische, who was on the show a couple of weeks ago. And literally I see Stef, who's the producer of the show, has just dropped that episode now. And they had a really great quote. And must be about a decade ago, saying the stuff that you're procrastinating about procrastinating about or daydreaming about is the stuff that you probably should be working on. So I've probably absolutely destroyed that quote. But you get my point.

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You get my point. The stuff that we we think about getting that could be something I'd like to do like, you know, we never get around to doing it. I'm with you on that, but I know there's going to be people listen to this show and driving along with their fists in the air saying, screw you. I'm working all the hours that God says. And I've got two kids who are screaming. And now you're telling me just when I get that 20 minutes where I can scroll on Instagram, you're telling me that I should open up my laptop and start a Shopify.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (34:24.59)

Bye!

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Gerry Scullion (34:24.718)

You know, give me this guy's LinkedIn. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind. And his link is, by the way, is in as linked with LinkedIn is in the show notes, folks only joking. But I'm kind of really interested to go back to that point, though, where marketing and engineering aren't required to do those five percent pieces. And the problem that we're talking about here is designers are finding themselves in this situation in their 40s and 50s.

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and they cannot get jobs. So the bit that I want to keep on coming back to is, you know, understanding that problem. I'm struggling. Like there's no problem finding people who are going through the process, but any of the businesses that I have spoken to and I picked up the phone to, and I have, they kind of say, no, we've got designers in here. Like they ignore the problem. It's like, it doesn't exist. And I'm like, well, how many designers do you have in your design team?

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can't get away from that fact. So there's two ways of looking at this and tell me, you know, feed into this as well. This is not set in stone. This has been created with a very, very technical document and implementation tool that has been written on paper on my notes here. OK, so the two sides to this problem is the organizational side and the designer side. So so far in this conversation, we've covered off that there's potentially a requirement there from a designer's perspective.

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have this five percent piece where they're not comfortable. They're exploring, they're growing. It's the bit where they get the fulfillment, the rickety guys, so to speak. And then as the organization side of why, where is this tension? Where? Why is this happening? OK, so one of the main pieces is the hiring process. So the hiring processes that people are being put into now, there is a eye and there's potentially opportunities or problems, depending on how you look at it.

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that AI is filtering out people because they're too experienced and organizations don't want them because they're too experienced. What are your thoughts on that?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (36:31.758)

Yeah, I feel...

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Yeah, that's really good. It's really resonating with the experiment I did like two days ago and the guy talked about in the IT world, right? And then people, the organization, they love hiring younger people because they're learning faster and they could work without any benefit. They want to have a job. It's their first job probably. For people over like 40 or 35,

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They have got a lot of certificates. What they have is they have experience and they have a lot of troubleshooting experiences. And then how do we value this? Right. We're like willing to pay two young people versus one senior people. They have experiences. What does that mean for us? Like we're looking for the skill or looking for stories. So I personally feel like, yeah, it's like, it's also a little bit like age is an issue, right? Yeah. You're old.

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Gerry Scullion (37:32.686)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (37:33.678)

and I'm going to replace you because you're too expensive for us. And now, like you said, even harder, we have AI tools, AI -empowered tools. Everyone almost can quickly navigate and they kind of have extra extension of themselves to do this problem -solving skill. I do feel like something you cannot change is culture. It's culture. The reason I say that, yeah, you can hire all young talents in the company, but you cannot change the culture.

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Gerry Scullion (37:55.79)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (38:03.406)

what kind of culture you want to aiming for, you want to create or last, right? And the culture means people. So for me, design business is a people business for sure. And then you have to think about who going to pass or a curate that guiding that culture piece. I really, when I joined, when I work at Ideal is like around like 20s, 18, 17, sorry, 20.

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18 to like 2020, 19, something like that. And I feel like what I learned the most is the culture in the company. And we need the senior people to guide us to that culture. And that's irreplaceable. You cannot find young people doing that. The term, the language, the pace, mortality, and do you have mentorship? Right. And I think the question back to us,

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Gerry Scullion (38:55.31)

Hmm.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (38:58.99)

Can you quantify mentorship? Can you quantify culture? Yeah. And you want to make design or design culture more transactional or it's more conversational. And I feel that's the thing is it's really, really important. And most people overlook because we, we tend to believe numbers. We tend to quantify everything, but we totally forgot something you cannot quantify. It's people, it's culture and it's mentorship.

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It's a trust.

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Gerry Scullion (39:29.934)

Yeah. In the scenario of the designer who's been prolific and busy and successful over the last 20 years, and they find themselves in the situation without a job and they're 50 and they're based say, they're based in New York or based in Los Angeles or based in London. And they ring you up and they say, hey, listen, look, you're you're doing some interesting things.

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Can you give me some advice what I should be doing to try and get a job? What do you say to them?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (40:08.782)

I feel when people ask the question to find a job, they already view themselves as people to finish the task. Yeah, and I think I will definitely suggest, think about, yeah, job is important. Think about what are the other offerings and you can initiate by yourself, you can invest yourself. Because I also feel like one of the examples,

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I want to share is that when I work with MIT Office of Sustainability, my toast, and then the director really kind, she allows me to write my own job description. And then I realized, yeah, but sometimes part of the job is like, OK, I make things beautiful. But I feel that's not my job. I really honest to say my job for this position is really celebrate people's story.

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Gerry Scullion (40:43.118)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (41:07.534)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (41:07.79)

So what I'm doing that, right? I'm not like, I still fulfill the job requirement. I do the meeting, I support the report, I do the field trip. But in the end, what I provide them is like, I shoot them a small documentary. The task is about how do we create a sustainable carbon neutrality makerspace or labs in MIT? We have more than about 200 labs or makerspaces at MIT.

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Gerry Scullion (41:25.102)

Mm.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (41:36.142)

So carbon neutrality is important. How do you save more material flow, like waste to make sure we have better, cleaner future? And then I shoot a documentary. Before that, nobody understand what are you talking about? What do you mean by celebrating people's story? It's so vague. And then one of the vice president at MIT and also all the directors look at the presentation. Some people like bawling. my God, we get the point. Like, you know, like, like.

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Simple stuff. Use like a coffee cup. Is it for recycle or for trash? It's for trash because it got stained, right? You have to clean it up or go to recycle. And then people's behavior. And then what I really want to say from the example is like, in order to ask for a job, you should think about yourself as department to operate, to think about what are the offering or impact you can offer people. But that is not happened.

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when you lose your job or when you're like, I'm in 50. I have to think about that. No, it's a gradual, gradual movement. It's not like, let's make things happen tomorrow. No, you have to build your connection, your own brand identity. Like I love this podcast because it kind of, you know, this is kind of like, it's more than a job for you. I think it's like career. It's your, it's your baby. Right. And for me, what's your brand child and how can you offer to, to people out in different world? And.

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Gerry Scullion (42:58.318)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (43:04.686)

they want to work with you versus that you're asking for a job.

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Gerry Scullion (43:09.486)

Yeah, it's the push pull mentality. I just I know, I know, like from speaking to a lot of designers in the community that they are looking for jobs. And when you're in that situation, it's very difficult to give an awful lot of time to say things that may seem like they're not going to instantly gratify you and get you a paying opportunity straight away. Like in its.

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really frustrating for a lot of these designers. And they just keep on shaking their heads. And we don't know why this is happening. There seems to be a theme and a trend that's happened over the last 18 months for a lot of really, really skillful designers and reputable designers out there that some people know about or are kind of just looking, looking around for work. There's just seems to be this this gap in the market. And.

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So just going back to this, your work at MIT, okay, because you keep on alluding to your course that you got to create yourself your PhD. It sounds like Nirvana. It sounds like you've just created, it sounds like you've created this kind of space in the corner of MIT and you're like, yeah, it's, you know, I'm the Dean of this course and it's got an admission of one. And, you know.

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The check in time is 10 o 'clock and the checkout time is 10. well, tell us about your work as regards ageism, because I know you have a lot of common commonalities and there's a lot of interesting intersections. Tell us about the kind of stuff that you're working on right now.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (44:55.726)

Yeah, I think before I respond, I want to quickly add one small point to build on the previous questions. And I feel like I respond like it's very idealistic, ideally. And I feel the real pain point, the problem is like our society, how they view design, you know, how they view us. Is it like we just make things beautifully or we're like a visual animal just view things and make it sexy? No, it's more than that.

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Gerry Scullion (45:02.606)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (45:25.678)

Design is the strategy, is a way of thinking, is philosophy. And then are we, are society willing for that? You know, are they willing to paying for that? I think that's really a question mark. And I feel like people in their mid 40s, 50s, like very skillful, like you say, a lot of experiences. And how do we leverage that? How do we create a safe space for them? People as artists, they work for the entire life and in the end they cannot retire.

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Gerry Scullion (45:35.214)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (45:51.662)

Because there's no supporting system for the retirement, right? There's no pension. And how do we celebrate that? We love art. Art is like human universal language. I think same for design. How do we have that like safety net to support? I don't think it's there yet. Yeah, that's kind of, I feel like, yeah, it's idealistic, but in reality, our societies, are they ready for that? And that creates like a lot of organization have to bias on design.

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Gerry Scullion (46:08.878)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (46:18.478)

Hmm. There's, there's definitely something in what you said, even though, as you pointed out, maybe being perceived as being idealistic, but around your personal brand and your purpose. I mean, you look at a thousand portfolios. I'm convinced 950 of them will literally be just saying, this is what you do. The really, really, really great ones. Tell us why you're doing it. Tell us a little bit about what makes you.

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stay awake at night and what are the problems you're trying to fix and what is your potential, your own human potential to try and make things better. That is what separates those 50 of those thousands in my mind that I can point at and say it's a great portfolio. And it's really about thinking differently and doing something different to try and catch the attention, I think. It sounds like we've trivialized that a little bit too much, but...

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Sheng-Hung Lee (47:14.926)

I'm sorry.

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Gerry Scullion (47:15.278)

I know it's a huge problem. We're not going to cover it all from this one, but it's definitely a theme that I've been kind of focusing on for the last number of weeks. Shung Hong, tell us a little bit more on this course, because if anyone is in the area of New York, is it a course that people can sign up to or is it a case of like it's a course created to function your furthering PhD?

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Sheng-Hung Lee (47:39.534)

It's a course, it's a graduate courses and people can cross register and we're definitely open for a listener and me and my boss, Dr. Joe Coughlin, and we both worked this together at this course and we tried to definitely promote ideas of aging and also promote ideas of like a long -term economic. Yeah, that kind of ties back to your previous question. My research now at MIT is really focused on...

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Gerry Scullion (47:47.31)

Hmm.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (48:06.734)

How can we shift the mindset from design for retirement to design for longevity? And how do you view like people at different ages? It's not different ages. It's not just numbers, it's different stages. So that's kind of like really ties to the previous question. Yeah, like, yeah, middle life and different stage of life, what people needs, right? And how we can grow and nobody teaches. And I also feel like this is true. Like,

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Gerry Scullion (48:12.558)

Mm.

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Gerry Scullion (48:19.63)

Yeah.

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I love that.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (48:34.318)

The idea is the concept or the term of retirement. It's mock up. It's fake. Like we live longer and we need a purpose and motivation to leave. It's not just about, you know, finished and above like 65 and the US 65, maybe in Asia longer. They retire in Europe, different ages, but you retired doesn't mean you, nobody celebrate your birthday. Right. And how do you, how do you sustain that? Right. And how do you make sure like you,

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Gerry Scullion (48:40.11)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (49:04.014)

still need to think about what are the Tuesday morning you're going to launch with. You know, something like that. And I feel that's my focus currently.

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Gerry Scullion (49:08.782)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (49:12.43)

really, really interesting. I'm going to offer you the opportunity to come back on. I'd love to come back on and discuss that one and more. And one of these guys that you just start talking to and you're like, I like having my episodes wrapped up in about 40 minutes. But with you, it could be like 40 hours after you leave all these kind of like little little kind of, you know, fish hooks. And I'm like, I don't know which one to nibble on next.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (49:36.238)

Well...

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Gerry Scullion (49:40.75)

You're going to have to come back on. We'll talk about those different stages of life. And some of the listeners like, yeah, Jerry, get him back on this. This is a good conversation. So think of this as stage one, folks. Part one will have Sheng-Hung on in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully we will put a link to your LinkedIn for people to send you positive emails. Don't harass them about any ideological suggestions about trying to get jobs.

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It's been really, really fantastic to speak to you, Xiang Ngung. And, you know, I end every episode thanking people for their vulnerability and their, I guess, their appetite for listening to me go left and right and weaving left and right with my questions. Thank you so much for giving me your time. I know you're a busy person.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (50:28.494)

Thank you. Likewise, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think it's really important. And also, I never really think about that perspective. And then for me, it's like, wow, that's something that is really critical, especially now job market is crazy. A lot of layoff, not just design company in general, a lot of innovation project got cut because economically, the world situation is very sensitive now. Ethnicity, inclusiveness, right? And I feel like...

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Gerry Scullion (50:43.278)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (50:49.806)

Yeah.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (50:58.254)

It's really important to talk about this as designer. We have much, I mean, everyone has a lot of social responsibility for that, not just design. Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (51:04.974)

Absolutely, absolutely. So listen, look, this is part one. Part two will be coming up in a couple of weeks, folks. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. If you're on Spotify, hit that subscribe button. Otherwise, you will hear from us soon. Part two, and we'll learn more about shanghans wonderful PhDs course at MIT. Thanks for your time, folks.

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Sheng-Hung Lee (51:26.766)

Thank you.

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