DV Alumni: Human-Centered Design with Kevin Bethune, Founder and CCO of dreams • design + life
After his appearance on the Same Same But Tech podcast, we caught up with Kevin Bethune, Founder and CCO of dreams • design + life, to talk about creating products, bias in design, and bringing together a multidisciplinary skillset.
From designing a sneaker with Nike to building companies at BCG Digital Ventures, from writing a book to starting his own design practice, Kevin Bethune has a wealth of experience and a vast well of expertize to draw from. We caught up with him after his appearance on the Same Same But Tech Podcast to talk through his career so far and what he’s learned from implementing his unique design ethos and bringing it together with his entrepreneurial nous.
DV: What’s your name, where are you from, and what’s your background?
Kevin Bethune: So my name is Kevin, I’m from Redondo Beach, California.
In terms of background I very much had a multidisciplinary journey throughout my career. I found design mid-career, and based on the way that the world is evolving I’m very thankful for the timing of that.
I started as a mechanical engineer in the nuclear power generation industry; that’s where I first cut my teeth on product and learned how to work with high-performing teams on mission-critical situations and problems.
Through that experience, a natural curiosity for business arose that eventually led me to business school. I wanted to add the business acumen to my tech background.
On a more personal level, ever since I was young, I always had a creative itch but never knew how to scratch it. Engineering initially made more pragmatic sense for me than any notions of design or the arts, but when I was leaving business school I told myself: I want to work for a company that not only embodies technology and strategy, but also has creative competencies. I was just very curious to be in that type of environment, versus going back to another engineering company.
Nike was at the top of the list of companies that I felt had that makeup. I started at Nike in a business capacity, but then moved over to product because of my engineering background. That environment really opened my eyes to design. Through experiments and stretch assignments — and actually through designing some footwear — in the Nike environment, I became very fascinated with design, and also with how design could complement my business and technical backgrounds. I made a decision that I wanted to prioritize innovation from there on out.
But I also had to be honest, and really come to grips with the fact that the creative leg of my stool was rather short. So I went back to school for it and really rounded out my creative foundation. Then I started finding people and groups to work with that embodied that multidisciplinary notion. Fast forward a little and that’s what led to the genesis of BCG Digital Ventures, and also the start of my own practice.
DV: What was it about design that drew you in? What made you identify design as the main area you wanted to focus on, despite your multidisciplinary background?
Kevin Bethune: My perceptions around design were a little bit skewed initially. I think I was initially drawn to the artistic aspects: How do you express beautiful forms around something that has to provide utility for someone? So there was this emotional gravity that brought me to design.
The more I got into it, the more I realized that design is actually a different way of problem-solving that hits on the notions of utility, relevance and emotion all together. That’s what made design especially exciting.
DV: What was it that led you to join DV? After being at Nike, attending business school and having an engineering background, what was it specifically that brought you in?
Kevin Bethune: After some projects at Nike, I had a business and tech background and had learned design under the mentorship of the creative directors that gave me that opportunity. I made the difficult decision through these explorations that I needed to go back to school. So I actually devoted another two years to graduate study in industrial design.
As I was navigating the very end of that program, I began helping entrepreneurs in the LA area on multidisciplinary problem-solving and helping them with the actual design of the products. Serendipitously, I was introduced to the early founding partners of DV. They had a variety of backgrounds but most were experienced with working as part of larger companies. They were used to the challenges of what larger organizations have to go through. They were familiar with how growth initiatives are often disparate, with companies working with design firms, strategy firms, firms for implementation; it might take a couple of years before a prototype exists.
Their thesis was: Why don’t we have all the disciplines involved from day one, and just work together to get to an integrated vision on the table much faster? We started working that way, they got in touch with a couple of clients, and things just sort of snowballed from there. I’m very proud to have been part of the early founding team of DV as the creative problem solver of the bunch, and involved in projects that led up to where DV is today.
DV: How did you go about building up the design cohort at DV and what did that process look like?
Kevin Bethune: Initially, when it was just a handful of us across a few disciplines, there was no one telling us what to do. We had to show creative competency and really deliver impact for our early clients, and show them that this was more than just a consulting sprint, that we were aiming to create something of value that could go to market or perhaps become a new business unit inside that client.
We had to first of all figure out how to operate in a conference room where the other participants did not necessarily have previous experience working together across disciplines. We also had to show how we could immediately rally around the client’s needs and their end user’s needs and create something that was relevant. In the early cycles, it was about holding up evidence and showing what was possible, and then saying: what type of person do we need to recruit that exhibits similar competencies? You had to be an all-round athlete and wear twenty hats.
As we grew over time, then we could start being more selective and say, we actually need a specialist in this area and that area, and could round out our diversity over time.
DV: What was the appeal of DV, as opposed to a design firm or working in-house at a company?
Kevin Bethune: For me, DV represented a runway, somewhere I could actually feel fully comfortable in my own skin as a hybrid. When I was thinking about what to do next, a lot of companies and even design agencies would be looking for someone who’d done one thing for their entire career. They didn’t want someone with my hybrid background.
I think a lot of organizations — big and small, agency to enterprise — haven’t quite wrestled with the multidisciplinary opportunity that they have. Embracing a multidisciplinary approach will be vital for them in meeting their future needs. DV got it from the start.
“For me, DV represented a runway, somewhere I could actually feel fully comfortable in my own skin as a hybrid.”
DV: What did you learn at DV, and what were some of your highlights?
Kevin Bethune: A big thing for me was showing clients what was possible with the power of design.
We also proved that while designers could contribute to the actual design crafting of experiences, they could lead ventures too, just as well as those from other cohorts like Venture Architects and Product Managers. We demonstrated that a strategic product designer could actually step into the leadership role of a venture and move it forward through the paces.
I’m very proud of the evidence that we created to show the impact that design could have as a multidisciplinary partner, at parity with the other disciplines. That was very important and I think an essential differentiator when comparing DV to other organizations that were trying to become multidisciplinary in the marketplace.
A second highlight was learning what it takes to actually convince all the stakeholders, client included, to let us try these new and novel approaches. That speaks to methodologies — how do you get teams on board to try those methodologies, and then give them the runway to actually make them better through their venture experiences?
It was always fun to travel the world and visit the different innovation centers and learn how the Berlin studio or the Sydney studio were wrestling with the approaches, how they were making them more relevant and purposeful for the local business climate. We had to respect and listen to the ingenuity that they demonstrated, and then codify that local learning into the global rubric. So what we’re really doing is just exercising transition management for a very new entity that was existing inside of the giant BCG.
DV: You’ve since left DV and have been working on a book project, speaking at various events and conferences, and notably you have set up your own company, dreams • design + life. What is dreams • design + life, in your own words, and what was the idea behind founding it?
Kevin Bethune: dreams • design + life is a platform that provides human-centered design and innovation services. We also invest in startups on topics that are important to us, and one day I could see us making products of our own under the umbrella. It’s a very fluid, small and nimble platform that I think in two ways demonstrates continued evolution around strategic design. First, let’s help shape the businesses of organizations, big and small, by looking at their future trajectory through a human-centered lens and a more systematic lens. We’re also appreciating where the future is going in terms of how different landscapes and scenarios are unfolding.
“I think a lot of organizations — big and small, agency to enterprise — haven’t quite wrestled with the multidisciplinary opportunity that they have. Embracing a multidisciplinary approach will be vital for them in meeting their future needs.”
The other side of that is the industrial design methods — because of my combined physical and digital background, I’m very passionate about the role that the industrial design discipline can play. As we uncover opportunities and evolve how a business is going to grow over time, some of those ideas will manifest into a design outcome. A startup that I’m working with might need a device, they might need some industrial design cohesiveness to their digital experience or their human-based experience. It’s about getting deep into the design opportunity and ensuring that we actually achieve a thoughtful design outcome with the clients.
DV: Do you think like any of your experience at DV has directly led into how you work as part of dreams • design + life?
Kevin Bethune: Absolutely. DV was very much a proving ground and a rare runway to be able to show what was possible around multidisciplinary problem-solving. I think with the scale of BCG, and the number of industries that we had to entertain as we were growing DV in the midst of that, my decision to leave was more about wanting to steer more of my calories toward a couple of select topics, rather than what the larger BCG ecosystem would would afford me. It was a difficult decision to say goodbye to a team that I loved serving, but now it’s about dedicating those calories around specific topics, working with specific clients around those given agendas that I’m very concerned with and wanting to spend most of my time.
DV: Let’s take a step back from your career for a moment and talk about more of your methodology and your perspective. Human-centered design seems to be a really big thing for you. Could you break down exactly what you mean by human-centered design?
Kevin Bethune: For me, human-centered design is about bringing other disciplines into what is already a natural, creative problem-solving process for designers, and just getting people to feel comfortable with going through the paces of discovery. This involves investigating natural market needs, finding friction, really casting the net wide and talking to extreme users that can provide color around why they’re early to adopt something, or maybe why they’re a laggard and are opting out. It’s really insightful to talk to them, as you can get a sense of their openness to consider something new.
Then, once we can gauge these brewing opportunities, we get teams comfortable with casting the net wide and not just fall in love with one hypothesis or one solution, but get them to consider the multitude of solutions for a given opportunity, before converging over time to a good answer — after exhausting all possibilities.
At the same time, we have to be very careful when we go about that volition, because even though we talk about HCD we tend to talk a lot about empathy — empathizing for our end consumer or stakeholder — we can forget that we might be doing that from an ‘ivory tower’ perspective. We might not be doing it from a place of complete respect and authenticity. Of course, the speed of the clock only gives you so much time to engage, unfortunately. We might have some bias or environmental ignorance to navigate when we are talking to people; we might overlook a lot of things.
Sometimes, a big concern I have is that while HCD has been helpful to organizations — DV included — I’m growing very concerned about how the impact of our biases could create harm if we’re not careful. Add to that the compounding power of computation as things only get faster and faster. Will we see a widening disparity, widening bias, widening injustice because we’re not checking our own biases?
DV: How would you describe your main design principles?
Kevin Bethune: Number one, I’m a big believer in the power of multidisciplinary teaming. That’s why I spent as much time as I did at DV. It’s a rare skill to have, but I also believe that we can’t look at design, business or technology in isolation anymore. The future won’t tolerate it.
I also think that, especially in light of recent events, every decision we make has brought ramifications and implications on the greater ecology that we navigate. We have to think more systematically than just looking at the end-user, and think about the broader system.
Of course we’re dealing with multiple pandemics now, with raised awareness around societal imbalance and injustice. Those injustices and threads of imbalance have defined our institutions and our enterprises to this day; we need to unwire and unpack them. If we do that well, then what does the multidisciplinary, systematic and respectful construct give us? It allows us to see the future through multiple vantage points, and that creates a powerful environment for creativity to manifest itself.
DV: Building on that, earlier you alluded to the fact that we’re in a position where technology is moving at such a fast pace, and also that technology has its own inbuilt ideology. If you just have algorithms and rules, where you enter an input and you get an output, but you don’t have the information outside of that to lead you to a more humane decision… Do you see design or an interdisciplinary approach as a way to offset this kind of technological bias and make sure that it doesn’t go in the wrong direction?
Kevin Bethune: Absolutely — and honestly, it’s already going in the wrong direction. I read an article recently about how an African-American gentleman was incorrectly identified as a perpetrator by facial recognition technology. He was ruffled up, arrested, the whole nine yards. He was innocent and an algorithm led the police his way.
Another example would be autonomous driving systems not being able to detect people with darker complexions.
DV: That was also the issue that they had with camera film many years ago. Is there a way that we can stop that and suggest a different path?
Kevin Bethune: Design should absolutely be involved from the very beginning. I think the people, the diverse audience that is the world, needs to somehow be involved in the upfront problem-solving too, in a co-creative manner. We could involve the community in co-creating the systems in the test trials. These systems then could emerge more robust, relevant, ethical and I think a little bit more balanced. That is the hope.
I would also love to see things slow down a bit.. My ‘hot take’ is that really great leadership in the future will be about slowing teams down to thoughtfully rustle with these forces. There is an unfortunate attitude that you always have to move fast, out of this false sense of urgency. It’s actually important to slow down.
“Don’t be afraid to slow the team down, to resolve it, in order for the team to move faster later on.”
Especially for the teams that I was serving at DV, I would always coach them and say, you know what, you should never feel like you have to like settle for that solution, just because there’s a milestone on the calendar and there’s a checkpoint. You should always feel free to raise your hand and question something if you feel that conviction brewing, because there’s usually something to it. Don’t be afraid to slow the team down, to resolve it, in order for the team to move faster later on.
DV: So rather than a ‘move fast and break stuff’ approach, you want to slow down and then think a little.
Kevin Bethune: Exactly.
DV: One final question — Looking back on your own experience, what advice would you give to someone in their early career who has an interest in design, or even technology more broadly?
Kevin Bethune: You definitely have to listen to that inner child inside and ask yourself — what am I most curious about at this given point in time? Start to experiment with those child-like curiosities. We’re all busy and have our professional and personal responsibilities, but it can be as simple as carving out a little bit of time for yourself to read up on a topic, or download some software to try out something new, or go experiment with something in the market.
See what evidence you can create around the potential for a given idea. Experimentation creates evidence that you can hold up to convince yourself, with competence and credibility, that there’s something there. But it also convinces other people and enables them to lean into those ideas, or lean into you as a professional and believe that you can do things for them.
It’s not about shooting in the dark in any direction with your experiments. Usually there’s some set of convictions that drive each of us to tap into what our heart, mind, and soul is saying about where we can add value, what we can do to improve in the world. Listen to your gut and go in those directions.
That is what matters when I look back at the defining threads in my experience, because I would be lying if I said that the multidisciplinary journey was part of some master plan — because it surely wasn’t.
For more from Kevin, check out his appearance on the Same Same But Tech podcast, powered by BCGDV.
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