Tanya Pinto — Human at the Center: Empathy, AI, and the Researcher's Discernment

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Summary

Conversation with Tanya Pinto, Principal UX Researcher at Microsoft (Copilot, Office Suite) and founder of Baldan Charities, on AI as researcher's tool, keeping the human at the center, democratization of insights, and a separate Undercurrent segment with Matt and Stephanie on complexity theory and Sapiens.

Guest

Tanya Pinto — Principal UX Researcher (Copilot AI for Office Suite), Microsoft · Brand-side

From this episode — top claims

• Researchers should evaluate every stage of the UX/research workflow — exploration, planning, preparation, recruitment, execution, reporting — and intentionally choose where to leverage AI rather than defaulting to or rejecting it wholesale. — Ep. 5 · 16:30, Tanya Pinto
• The most effective leaders intentionally create space for learning and experimentation during work hours — not as after-hours self-improvement — and that allowance can change the trajectory of an employee's whole career, especially in a fast-moving AI environment. — Ep. 5 · 22:15, Tanya Pinto
• Effective AI adoption requires a culture of psychological safety around experimentation — taking baby steps, accepting that some attempts will fail, iterating, and bringing colleagues along at their own pace, including those who are still afraid of AI. — Ep. 5 · 34:15, Tanya Pinto

aytm's take on this conversation

Audit the workflow stage by stage, exploration through reporting, and place AI only where it earns a seat — discernment, empathy, and the cues no transcript captures stay the instrument. Judge how knowable a problem is before defaulting to hypothesis-and-test.

aytm's perspective, voiced by Stephanie.

Full transcript

1:53 Stephanie Today, we're excited to welcome Tanya Pinto, principal UX researcher at Microsoft focused on Copilot AI for the Office Suite. Tanya is also the founder and president of Baldon Charities, which has helped provide food, education, and supplies to over 12,000 children around 14 countries.

2:16 Matt Tanya's expertise spans branding, consumer insights, and UX research, shaping how AI transforms decision making. At Microsoft, she's influencing AI powered market research and user journey mapping.

2:31 Stephanie Today, we'll dive into how AI is shaping work, the role of inclusive insights, and Tanya's experience founding and operating Balcon charities. Tanya, welcome to the Curiosity Current.

2:42 Tanya Thank you so much.

2:46 Matt Well, I'll get us, uh, started here. I mean, I I alluded to it in the intro. You know, you you have this career that, uh, has approached what we what we would refer to as as researchers as, like, social science, as as the study of people from so many different angles, you know, insights, UX, and also from, you know, this humanitarian space. I have done I I have to believe there's some there's something connecting all of that together for you. Right? Like, what is it that originally drew you to market research, UX? You know, how has how has your your interest in in humanitarian work played into that? Where's all this come from for you?

3:30 Tanya Well, I think, you know, from a very young age, I think I was a journalist at heart. I always thought I would be a journalist or a reporter. I love telling stories. I love asking questions. I love talking to people. Um, my degree I grew up sort of all over the world. I did my degree at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and I majored in journalism. And I saw journalism and sort of the art of asking questions and trying to get to the heart of a story is something very core to sort of what I really love doing. And I think that is the trait that has carried me through being in advertising where you're doing, you know, a lot of storytelling and,

4:07 Matt you

4:07 Tanya know, the qualitative side of advertising, which is account planning, finding out, you know, what makes people take, what would make them gravitate towards a brand, um, persona development, and then, you know, the humanitarian sector. Obviously, a little like, a lot of investigation to find out how to help children in need, how best to help them, how to develop models to where, you know, the money that US donors give doesn't just go, you know, go to waste, that it gets to kids that really need it and developing systems and then market research and UX research. And I'm loving UX research because I get to talk directly to people and conduct studies where I'm sort of just there one on one and really understanding what their experience is. So I think that's the thread.

4:49 Matt It's so great. Like, one of the things we talk about a lot at AYTM, a lot of research agencies talk about is empathy, driving empathy, and, I mean, I think there's a propensity for it to feel a little bit like a buzzword. But it's so refreshing to hear that perspective. It's so refreshing to have that conversation. And just I think it helps remind us, like, why I think a lot of us have got have fallen into market research as a passion.

5:13 Unknown Mhmm.

5:14 Matt Um, it's just the study of people because people are weird and fascinating and and endlessly surprise you. They only generate more questions. So that totally resonates.

5:23 Tanya Absolutely.

5:25 Stephanie Tanya, before we get into, like, the role of AI within the context of research, whether it be UX research or, you know, consumer insights more broadly, because you have worked on Copilot AI, I would be very curious to hear you talk about how AI is just transforming transforming more broadly just the modern workers' experience.

5:50 Tanya Yeah. It's been it's been absolutely amazing. And, you know, I've been at Microsoft, um, almost eight years now, and I think it's the most significant thing that's happened in my career at Microsoft. It's just been absolutely transformative. Um, and it's just incredible what AI can do and what Copilot can do. I mean, I think the world changed a lot when COVID happened. We you know, I used to go to the campus every day, and now we're we're hybrid or we're on screens. And one of the most transformative things that I think Copilot enabled was Teams meeting summaries because a lot of us are in back to back calls, and then you finish the call, and there's the Copilot meeting summary with the action items. And it removed this cognitive load that I think many people didn't even know they were carrying because of the way work and the pace of meetings and screen time had changed things. Um, and so that's been just a personal delighter for me. It's just definitely using that. And I think just the opportunity that Copilot has given for for, you know, starting from scratch, um, for, you know, authoring and and and getting some help and coaching, changing the tone, personalizing something, the things that maybe, you know, are difficult in some ways, the the the written form. I think there's been a lot that Copilot has done to instill confidence and to make you feel like, oh, you know, I can I can push this project along? I have the tools that I need.

7:13 Stephanie For sure. I love it that you you mentioned something that reminded me of the the sort of the blank page effect, right, and how how clutch a AI has been in sort of helping us overcome that in a lot of ways. Mhmm. Um, so now kind of moving more into the consumer insights and research and and and UX research space. One of the biggest challenges that we see for brands today in executing research is balancing, uh, speed and quality. Right? Speed and quality. It it's it's always gonna be those two big tension points. AI is something that has come in and promised, uh, to to sort of, you know, bring us that speed. Right? While that's happening, how do we ensure that that acceleration doesn't come at the cost of, you know, experimental or research rigor and also deep human understanding of of of our research, uh, participants?

8:07 Tanya Yeah. I think, you know, AI is a tool. Um, just like Google or searching, you know, doing secondary research, I think these are all tools. These are things that can definitely increase efficiency and speed, but I believe you have to keep the human at the center and there has to and the rigor comes from, you know, bringing your worldview, your experience, um, your your empathy, looking at things with a critical eye, and applying your own analytical skills and not just trusting anything. I mean, you wouldn't go into research and just trust the words of just one respondent. Right? Like, you would get a number of different data points. I think triangulating different data, I think using mixed methods, I think you've got to sort of check, verify, be curious. I don't think you can just rely a % on just one thing. And having said that, there's some amazing things that are happening and amazing outputs that are high quality and truly transformative as well.

9:06 Matt That's such a great point that, you know, this sort of traditional role of the researcher as, like, you know, keeper of the knowledge, keeper of the flame is really still there. It's just that there are more tools to consider. There's more maybe there's more complexity to consider as well. But yet, that role, like, fundamentally, you know, at least in your view and in ours, still very much exists. Maybe it's even more important today, like, because of these AI tools.

9:33 Tanya It's actually more important. I think you need that discernment, that wisdom, that lived experience, and then you can put that along with these other tools and bring, you know, a more powerful package to the problem or solution to the problems you're encountering.

9:47 Matt That's a great point. You you did mention at the same time, you know, taking this, like, trust but verify type of perspective, very wise. At the same time, you've seen things that have been, you know, delightfully surprising terms of the outputs that AI tools have been able to create. Can you just walk us through, like, an example of, you know, what what has really surprised you, um, from the AI space recently?

10:11 Tanya Um, I think a couple of examples have been, you know, uh, Microsoft's a global company, and my humanitarian work is global. And I work with a lot of people where English is a second language.

10:22 Matt Mhmm.

10:22 Tanya And I think that the the seamlessness with which AI is enabling, you know, um, language translation, uh, grammar, ensuring appropriate tone. I mean, I think these are things that are really valuable because if suddenly we had to conduct this podcast, this call, you know, speaking a language that wasn't our primary or native language, it would be really hard. And so that's been just very compelling for me to watch how it's really, like, brought confidence to people where English is a second language and they're using that. They're you know? And even if it takes them a few hacks to get around, you know, copying and pasting or figuring out the translation, it's come up over and over again, actually, in the work that I've done, not just, um, for my career, but just even with my charity work. It's just how people are using AI. Um, and I think another example is just the delight that ex it's experienced with creating things. So whether it's creating an image or writing a story or, um, just doing things for fun with AI, like, you know, bring me some recipes for baking or things I haven't thought about for

11:26 Unknown gluten free baking. You know? All these things.

11:28 Tanya Like, just the synthesis of information, the the speed at which and the nuance that you can put in to really personalize the ask. Like, you know, I'm preparing a dinner and two people are gluten free. Like, all these things that you can put in and you can kind of get this output that would have been very laborious and kind of taxing. I think that's been really that's been amazing to experience personally as a user and also just watch watch how how it's enabled a lot of people to kind of upskill and have confidence.

11:57 Matt I love that. I I I love the the the, uh, uh, the perspective of of upskilling. And you've you've said it a couple times, confidence building, which is something I had never really thought about before this conversation. But, you know, like we were talking about Copilot earlier, it's it has, uh, like, those those after meeting summaries have been such an important part of, like, my day to day that it has taught me sort of the value of, like, you know, having a little bit of rigor there while also, to your point, taking a very laborious task and taking that completely off my hands. I think that, like, you know, there there's there's a lot of conversation around AI, like, in general right now about, uh, like, the original promise was that it's gonna do all of the dirty jobs so that we can focus on the art. You know? We can do we can do the things that bring us a lot of enjoyment. And then, like, recently, you know, like public sentiment, a little bit different, some concern around like, well, is this really what I want to be doing? Is this tool, like, really panning out the way we thought it to? But I think you just shared some great examples of like how it really is when deployed, you know, with this, like, this empathetic, intentional, um, uh, informed type of strategy. It really does become a, uh, a partner that that does all the things that you don't wanna do and lets you do the fun things, like like, bake your gluten free cookies, you know. I mean, I think that's just such a great point. Um, going back to research. Okay. So we, you know, we we talked about the positive side of things. Are there gaps? Like, if you're trying to plan a research strategy and you have these tools in your, you know, you have these these AI arrows in your quiver, so to speak, uh, but you also have your traditional methods as well. What are the gaps that you look for in in your AI tools that indicate to you that, okay, this is where maybe we wanna stay away from from an AI powered solution. We wanna go back to, you know, the traditional human driven approach.

14:00 Tanya What I would just say is that I tend not to look at the gaps, but I tend to have the starting point that I can use different things for different purposes. Right? And just like, you know, you you open a Word doc to maybe write something long form, but then you prepare a PowerPoint deck when you're in a meeting, you know, for for presenting. I think, um, um, it's just very much looking at all the tools that are available as doing sometimes very specific things, and you have to choose. You you get to decide what you use when and where and to what extent. And sometimes, as we've talked about, it's a really helpful jumping off point to get me started. If you're kind of, like, staring at that blank page, you're like, I don't even know where to go with this. Sometimes it's an amazing polishing tool. We just wrapped up that meeting. We did a five hour off-site, and, wow, Teams, you know, Copilot made the meeting notes. That would

14:56 Unknown have taken me a week to write those meeting notes,

14:59 Tanya right, like, for a very long meeting. So I think you just have to know when to use it and and play with it and and and see what works for your own personal workflow and also, you know, what serves, uh, your clients, your customers, uh, you know, to to make their experience good with you too.

15:17 Matt It's a great point.

15:19 Stephanie Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. I kinda want to go back to something that you both have hit on here to talk about, you know, AI as a tool, and it's, you know, Matt, to use your words. Right? It's doing our dirty work for us. And and in some cases, that is true. It's not the dirty work. It's the executional work. Right?

15:35 Matt Yes.

15:36 Stephanie Do you have any advice, Tanya, for, like, how researchers UX researchers should be redeploying their time? Right? So when we think about it's gonna take up the laborious stuff that maybe didn't, you know, tap into your, you know, your experience and and your top skills. What how how should we be deploying that time? Where should we focus on making sure that what we're producing is the best that it can be?

16:06 Tanya Well, I think, um, I think when it comes to the art and science of research, I think we all have sort of the phases in which we plan work. And a colleague of mine, Wes Hatcher, like, he came up with, you know, a UX sort of workflow of the stages that you go through from exploring the problem, to planning the research, to preparing for it and what goes into that, to recruitment, to conducting and executing the research, and then reporting the insights. So that's sort of a workflow that has definite stages. And I think a good practice is to look at each stage of work and think about how you can leverage AI or choose not to. Um, I actually would also like to say that that AI is not only for the admin work or the dirty work, right, that you don't wanna do. No.

16:50 Stephanie It's not.

16:51 Tanya Yeah. Very powerful thing. It can since it's like, there's big data, there's all these things that AI can do. I don't think we've even tapped the power you know, the full full extent of the power of it. But I think that it just if I was just, you know, about to start a research study, as you plan and you look at each phase, it would be a good practice to think about how and where you could use some of the AI tools that are out there, whether, you know, whether it's a niche tool or it's something that's, you know, like that Teams meeting that I keep going back to. But I think there's ways to do it and to do it, um, intentionally is what I would like to say. Yep.

17:30 Unknown Right. Makes sense.

18:16 Stephanie So, Tanya, there's also been a lot of conversation around AI democratization. Right? It's democratizing insights and making it sort of within the realm and reachable for nonresearchers, people like brand managers and product managers and, uh, you know, other people who are research adjacent but do not sit in that field very directly. Overall, do you see this as, like, a net positive, or do you see, like, worries about insights being misinterpreted by teams that don't have that sort of formal interpretation training somewhere in between pros and cons? Like, what's your what's your perspective on that?

19:14 Tanya I mean, I I think it's a wonderful thing if we can all get smarter and we can all learn. And I think there's definitely a different level of conversation when you come into to the room where somebody has studied up on things and they have a higher order of questions to ask because they've done their research or they've used you know, or they said, hey. I think these are the insights or I've used this tool, and what do you think? So I think, again, it upskills. It uplevels the conversation on both sides. I think it it forces us as researchers to hone our craft and be really precise and really know you know, really understand how we can land land impact with our insights. Um, and I think it's also actually a good relationship building tool because if if, let's say, you know, um, um, somebody is seeing something else and they've they've they've come to that through whether they're using their own analytical tools or AI or whatever and and you see something different, it it makes for a great conversation. Right? It makes for how do we solve this together and what are we missing? And we can all have blind spots. And I think, you know, there are things where, you know, if I've sat sat on hours and hours of research and I'm trying to build the story and I'm like, oh, I think the insight is this, and somebody fresh looks at that and says, oh, you know, did you realize that they were actually saying that? It's like, oh, wow. Like, you need you know, I love multiple perspectives. I think it goes back to my roots in journalism. You never just get one source. Right? So I think I think the more sources we have, the stronger it makes us all. I think, um, you know, we all rise when we have more access to the tools and information and data, and I would want that democratization to continue. I've seen the power of that. I think it's it's amazing. Um, and I think that the AI will enable enable, you know, people who maybe were actually also stuck in certain roles, um, to also bring more to what they have to do because maybe now they're not stuck just making those meeting notes, so they're able to free up time to be more creative and bring a different dimension to their work.

21:21 Stephanie For sure. How can leaders, whether they're research leaders or product leaders, but how do they empower their teams to take this sort of cross functional approach to we're all bringing some expertise, we're all leveraging tools, automation, AI to bring together that sort of holistic decision making that you're talking about?

21:42 Tanya I mean, I think some of the best leaders and managers I've worked for have always created a space for learning. They've always had a very intentional space that they give you their employee, um, to say, you know, take x amount of time and learn something. Go do that training course, or we're going to have, you know, no meeting Fridays, and that will give you space for focus time so you can try that tool out or you can do a little experiment. And I think when leaders do that and don't make learning something that you have to do in your own time or after hours and you're just struggling to keep up with everything that's out there, you know, it can change it can change the trajectory of your whole career. And I think I've been really blessed to have a lot of wonderful leaders that have enabled growth. You know, at Microsoft, we talk a lot about growth mindset and that notion of, like, you know, I'm not an expert yet. But when you can have growth mindset, but creating space for learning and development and training is actually, I think, something the the best thing a leader can do, especially in this environment where things are changing so fast. AI I mean, the the pace of of technology and all these tools, everything is it's literally changing week by week. So we need space to grow and to learn.

22:55 Stephanie We really do. That's such a great they're great callouts.

23:00 Matt So, Tanya, I wanna make a quick 90 degree turn and just make sure we carve out some time for you to talk about your charity work because it's obviously something that's been really important to you, really important to your career, but also just just interpersonally. So we'd love to hear more about that.

25:21 Tanya Yeah. So I started my charity, Baldan, which means, uh, to give to children or donation to children in Hindi. Um, I started almost twenty years ago. My grandfather was a orphan. And because, you know, somebody took him and his brother and put put him in school, actually, he ended up being very successful in his lifetime. He won the equivalent of an Oscar. He won a a film fair award in India for being a documentary filmmaker. So in my own family, you know, the cycle of poverty was broken in one generation because an orphan child got to go to school. And I think that enabling children and catching them really early in life and making sure that they have, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food, shelter, protection, education, clean water, nutrition, it really stabilizes a child such that even if they're born into places with extreme poverty or, you know, really terrible circumstances that those foundational years, if you can help them then, it really mitigates a lot of problems down the line. And so I had this passion for orphans, for helping children. I went and took a sabbatical from my job at the time in advertising and looked at mother Teresa's orphanage in Calcutta, India and the home for the dying. It totally changed my life. And when I came back, started a five zero one c three, and my friends and colleagues in the advertising world started, you know, donating money. Um, and I sort of joke that I'm the world's worst fundraiser. I did not know what I was doing. I didn't know anything about running a nonprofit. Um, I've sort of held a full time job along the way and done this on the side. Um, but my model has never changed, which is I do a lot of research. I try to find the grassroots organizations that are working in very difficult context and helping children that are sort of missed by the larger safety nets. And a lot of these small organizations, grassroots organizations, are run by amazing women who just decided to do something in their community and say, I'm gonna take in these street children, or I'm gonna start a program for after school care or do something, and I raise money to help them. And because I have a full time job and because everybody involved in the charity is a working professional, Um, nearly a % of every dollar that we raise goes directly to help children, and we help children with food. We every day, we probably feed over a thousand children living in orphanages and in the care of special centers. Um, we've done everything from build wells, built lots of toilets and latrines because I'm a huge believer in good sanitation and hygiene, and we've done amazing things when there's been times of crisis. Um, so right now, you know, and over the last year or so, the market research community has gotten together and helped raise money that has enabled us to help more than twelve hundred children in Ethiopia suffering from severe malnutrition, children who would have otherwise probably died after they've been have had a critical intervention at health clinic because of conflict, climate change, um, and environmental factors have caused them to not have adequate food access. And so we're helping these children directly. And because I spent five years sort of consulting and doing a lot of consulting in the humanitarian space, I have some amazing contacts in that world, um, that enable me to try to get to these organizations that you probably would never have heard of. But they're on the ground. They're helping quietly, humbly, and they're really helping, um, children in a very impactful way.

28:37 Matt That's such incredible work. I I I don't even have a follow-up. What, um, uh, if someone wants to learn more about Baladan, what's the best way for them to learn more about the mission and, uh, perhaps contribute?

28:48 Tanya Yeah. Find us online. We have a website, you know, baladan.com. You can also, uh, add me on LinkedIn. I do a lot of posts about, you know, where the money goes. Um, we have a Facebook page, Instagram page. Um, and like I said, it's I think it's it's really been amazing to see how the research community in the last couple of years have come together to support Baldan. Um, I think as researchers, you know, we want evidence. We wanna know that what we're doing is working, and I am no different. And so if I'm going to, you know, donate, uh, my money or I'm gonna figure out, like, okay. I wanna help these kids. I wanna know what's really making an impact, and that's really been what I've I've I've tried to do since I started this organization. And Baldon is not a big charity. Probably haven't heard of it maybe until this call, and that's okay. But, um, um, what I know is that we are making an impact. We're making a difference. And if you're going to give money, whether it's $20 or $2,000, we'll actually make a difference to children who really need the help. And, hopefully, we'll go on to have, you know, good, stable, bright futures because they were invested in early in life.

29:51 Matt Amazing.

29:51 Stephanie I love it. And such a great example of growth mindset in action just like we were talking about earlier. You were like, I didn't know anything about doing this, but I did it. Right? Like

30:00 Tanya yeah. And I'm still learning, and I still don't know. And I have a lot of wonderful people advising me and and and guiding me and, you know, experts I tap into. And I do as much research now as I did where I'm I'm talking to people, you know, at bigger NGOs saying, should I do this? Should I enter this territory? You know, what's the best thing to do? Should we not do this? Um, so so, yeah, I'm still learning, and it it there's it's it's it's it's a mission. It's a calling for me, and, hopefully, it's something I'll never stop doing.

30:27 Stephanie I love that. Um, well, to bring us back to the wonderful world of of consumer insights and and research, um, Um, looking to the future, this is a question that we kinda like to to ask everybody who comes onto the pod. What's one under the radar AI trend that you think people maybe aren't paying, uh, enough attention to yet but should be?

30:51 Tanya Um, no. I think I think I don't know if it's a trend, but it's a behavior that I've just seen anecdotally. So not even in my work life, but just anecdotally, is that, um, AI as a coach. So AI being used to kind of help with skilling or, you know, reframe something and that back and forth where it's it's really enabling, um, you know, a problem to be solved. And I think that's something that's very interesting. So I don't know what to call that trend, but it's it's I think it's you know, as a teacher, as a coach, it's it's providing some sort of a learning and skilling that I think is very valuable. Um, and I think people will do more with that. And I I myself was just interested just to, like, oh, if I wanted to learn another language, I wonder if, you know, there is an AI language learning app or something. Like, I wonder if there's gonna be different ways of learning that come through because of this this ability, this technology.

31:58 Stephanie Yeah. Absolutely. No. That's a great one.

32:02 Matt I could definitely see that. I mean, as as people's trust, familiarity, you know, the they start to kinda, like, almost develop a a relationship with their, you know, favorite AI tool, chatbots, whatever it is that they're using. Could absolutely see that, uh, becoming the case. You know, you you start to go maybe not like we're talking about earlier, not just there for the dirty work, but also, you know, as a thought partner where it is maybe today for bouncing ideas off of. And it sounds like what you're saying in the future, maybe it even kinda goes beyond, like, the the singular transaction and is able to help you again, upskill another theme that's kinda come out of today. I love that. If okay. So if if you're a market researcher, a user experience research leader, um, and you are trying to make sure that your team, uh, that your organization is staying up to date on all things AI is doing the right things to make sure, uh, you know, that that, uh, AI is being utilized effectively and efficiently. Um, what's the what's the mindset change that needs to happen to do that? So, you know, maybe not specific to the the the tools or the planning, but what needs to happen kinda, like, internally in order to make best use of all of AI tools that are available?

33:21 Tanya I think on a personal level, it's, um, having excitement and curiosity and understanding that you might have to change your habits or change the way you do things, um, you know, to enter a prompt or to go to something else instead of starting in one place. Maybe you start from a different place or source. So I think it's being open to habit change and being curious about that. And I think as we've talked about from a organizational or leadership level, it's carving out space and time very intentionally for your team to learn and to experiment. And I think that there is a lot I I want to stress this word of experimentation or pilot testing. I think, you know, take baby steps and try something and make it okay for that sometimes it doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you might not get a good output, and that needs to be safe and okay. And don't throw the whole thing away because you didn't get one, you know, one good experience because the technology is developing. It's being iterated on. It's it's it's going to be different a year from now. But I think having that mindset of, you know, I'm gonna keep trying this. I'm gonna carve out time to try this, and I'm gonna make my organization have a culture of safety around trying new tools, trying new things, maybe failing, failing fast. You know? I think these are all things that are important, um, and not putting so much pressure because there are a lot of you know, I've I've encountered it. Like, there are people who are still afraid of sometimes AI. There are people who who don't have a comfort with with doing that, and I think you've got to bring a lot of people along at their own pace.

34:58 Matt Such great advice. Such a great point.

35:01 Stephanie For sure. And I think part of that safety is not just about, uh, you know, safety to fail, but also safety to know that this is not about taking your job. This is about enhancing your Absolutely. Right?

35:12 Tanya Absolutely. We're still very much needed. I really believe that. And Yeah. I think there's like I said, it's like research. Right? Like, I think there's an art and science to research. You don't there's the human element. There's the curiosity about people, and it's all you know? And it's even in a conversation like this, it's the nonverbal cues. It's it's not just reading the transcript that might have been produced from the meeting. It's like what happened with our energy, our body language

35:38 Unknown Yeah.

35:38 Tanya Um, our tone. You know? There's so many things that we're we're still very much needed for.

35:44 Matt The fundamentals are still very much in place. Yeah. You're right.

35:47 Tanya Absolutely. Yeah.

35:49 Matt Well, I love it. Well, uh, again, our conversation today was with Tanya Pinto, principal UX researcher at Microsoft. Tanya, thank you so much for your time. This was a great conversation. We're so glad you were able to join us today.

36:00 Tanya Absolutely. So much, Matt and Stephanie. Uh, thank you so much, uh, to the team. It's been a pleasure talking to you all.

36:07 Matt Likewise. Alright. [00:57:59] So, hey, uh, Matt and I are gonna try out a new segment this week that we're excited about called the undercurrent, And we are both just going to, each week, bring to you something, whether it's an article, a theory, something we're reading, that's really just sparking a lot of interest and joy for us as consumer insights, uh, folks. So, Matt, kick us off.

57:59 Matt Absolutely. No pressure. Um, so something that's, uh, bringing me, uh, that that's sparking joy, uh, so to speak in in my day to day lately, um, is this idea that I was exposed to by a family member actually. And it's, um, a concept of called complexity theory, which I'm sure I'm certainly not the only one in the industry that has come across it, but, um, it is really at its core, uh, this notion that when you are attempting to solve a problem, as many of us in the insights industry are doing, whether, you know, we're doing it for our organizations in which we sit or we're doing it for clients on the agency side or maybe we are trying to do it internally, like, uh, to drive organizational change, transformation, something like that. Um, it's this notion that it's a valuable exercise to reflect on how knowable and how controllable the various inputs and outputs in that problem are to you as the problem solver. So in other words, like you take the way a consumer insights expert would typically approach a question. They're gonna wanna design an experiment. Um, you know, that scientific method is at the core of everything. And I don't mean to say that this is this is a this is a counterpoint. This is not me being a contrarian to the scientific method. I think that fight, I'm gonna I'm probably gonna lose. But it's saying, editoryou're going to want to solve a problem by designing an experiment, coming up with a hypothesis, uh, deciding the best way to test the variables and to capture the data. And at the end of the day, you're going to, uh, determine whether that hypothesis is accepted or rejected and you might, you know, uh, iterate on the experiment itself. It's this very sort of classical way of problem solving that works really well under certain circumstances. So complexity theory says, that works well when things are knowable, and in other words, when the system you're trying to affect, when the system you're trying to understand is simple. Uh, the problem is a lot of the things we try to do. So the reason this has been on my mind a lot lately is, uh, you know, there has just been such a focus on all of this, like, large scale societal change going on with, like, AI and, you know, politically and just everyone feels like like things are really, really chaotic. Uh, so that that's one of the reasons this has been really resonating with me lately. But, um, the the crux of it is once you get to the point where, you know, you can you can stop yourself from immediately going down that that that classical scientific method approach. You stop, you pause, you look at the challenges laid out in front of you and you acknowledge that things are not necessarily completely knowable or controllable. And what it what that does in turn is it encourages you to take a position of really championing true understanding and discussion and, um, you know, in in empathetic interchange between you and all the various people that are that are involved. The reason I think that this has really kinda stuck with me, uh, over the last couple of weeks and as it pertains specifically to market research is so many of us fall into research, we fall into research as we say, out of this, uh, love for, um, understanding people, you know, that like, we say empathy all the time. Sometimes it can be overused in a business context to the point where it feels like a buzzword. But to us in the insights industry, it's very, very meaningful because whether we know it or not, it is the thing that has maybe compelled us to actually pursue this as a profession. And so I really I think that there there's some interplay there. That that's one of the reasons this whole idea of complexity theory has really struck with me because it it has, kinda, challenged my notion that, like, okay, yeah, the science is great. You you know, that's that has its place. But acknowledge that the problem you're trying to solve first, uh, might be such a, um, an unknowable, uncontrollable thing that you need to approach it from a place of of empathy and understanding, which is is more difficult and nebulous and, um, you know, maybe somewhat uncomfortable for those of us sort of trained in, like, the classical western way. But it's yeah. It's core to us as people. And, like, whether we know it or not, we're good at doing that. We're we're good at actually reaching out and having conversations if if it's something we we prioritize. So that's kinda where my head's been at over the last couple weeks. I know that's a lot to to throw at you, but how does that strike you? Am I crazy?

1:03:34 Stephanie I like that. Does it become like a different way of a a different means of knowing? Or is it like complimentary? Is it like we need to do that work first before we can put the experimental work within the proper context?

1:03:47 Matt I would say it's more of a, um, a complimentary approach. But, really, it's almost like there so there's a lot of, uh, interplay between, uh, this concept and, like, mindfulness because, um, it's first saying, like, don't jump ahead to the solutioning and and Yeah. And the challenge and all of that. It's it's almost like grounding yourself in the in the present and really just absorbing as much information, as much of the the nuance that you can. Um, so I I would look at that as complementing, you know, all of these skills that we have amassed as as researchers, which are still very valid. You know, there's there's like I said, I'm not here to dispute the scientific method. Um, but that that's that's how I'm looking at it. And and we'll we'll see if it sticks with me. I'll I'll have to, um, um, keep you updated on on where this, uh, this philosophical exploration goes.

1:04:40 Stephanie Yeah. Definitely do. I love it.

1:04:43 Matt What about you? What are you nerding out about?

1:04:48 Stephanie Sure. I have a a a timely topic this week. So last week, I went to Quirks LA, uh, and had a terrific time. Got to do a speaking session, um, show show off some some AYTM, uh, you know, some new new developments. Uh, and then on my way home so I wanna stress, I had a great time. On my way home, I was in the airport as one as one is and, uh, doing that thing where you walk through, you know, the bookstore. And I'm a sucker for an airport bookstore book. And so I picked up this guy called Sapiens, which is by Yuval Noah Harari. Uh, this book is about ten years old, but it was just rereleased, I think, in 2024, like a ten year edition. Started reading it on the way home, and it is like the perfect, uh, complement to something like quirks because quirks is so much about the business of market research, which I love.

1:05:45 Unknown Mhmm.

1:05:45 Stephanie But to be able to immerse myself back in this, like, very, like, you know, popular science book about what makes humans humans has been such, uh, like a bomb for my soul. Right? Because this really is, like, what what got me into market research is that, like you said, that deep desire to just understand people and how they work, and so it's been really fun.

1:06:11 Matt Just like getting back in touch with your humanity. Maybe that's maybe there's there's a maybe that's the undercurrent of of this week. Right? What okay. So I'm curious. I have to ask you, what makes us human?

1:06:22 Stephanie Well, Matt, there's such a succinct answer to that. Uh, just kidding. But, uh, a few things that I thought were really interesting and that I think we know, you know, in, uh, informally, inherently, intuitively, uh, is that one is fire, which I loved that they just called out. Right? Like, taming a taming fire, big time human skill. But the bigger one, and it's related to language, so it's not language, but it's that what language gives us is the ability to have shared imagined realities. And when I read that, my mind was just like, oh my god. Of course. Because, really, what that translates to is culture. Right? Uh, because by imagined realities, it means not concrete things.

1:07:08 Unknown Right.

1:07:09 Stephanie It means not grass, not animals, not all the tangible things that we see and can feel. But, uh, even money, I like to use that example, is is an imagined a shared imagined reality. Right? That's not real, and that's a very human experience. It's unique to us, and it's allowed us to is is a huge part of what's allowed us to become, you know, what we are today. So

1:07:30 Matt That's so interesting. Yeah. I've never really thought about it that way. But, yeah, like like, currency is a is a construct, for sure. There's like there's a physical component to it. It's a

1:07:38 Stephanie symbolic construct. Yeah.

1:07:40 Matt Yeah. That's and you have to you have to be on the same plane as another of your species for that to actually have a a true existence. That's really interesting.

1:07:50 Tanya Yeah.

1:07:50 Matt But also fire. Also fire. You need to be able

1:07:52 Stephanie to separate it. You gotta have fire. I mean Yeah.

1:07:55 Matt That's fair. I love it. Well, you'll have to keep us updated on where your your exploration of human reality takes you.

1:08:03 Stephanie Same. Same with with complexity theory.

1:08:06 Matt Love it.

1:08:08 Stephanie Alright. We'll see you guys in two weeks.

1:08:12 Unknown Take care. Bye.

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