Alumni spotlight: Gail Thynes
A quarterly series where we check in and learn what former HCDE alumni have been up to since graduation
Alumni Leadership Board (ALB): Okay, first, thanks for chatting with us and sharing your story with the Alumni network. To get us started could you tell us when you graduated from the program and what you’ve been up to since?
Gail: Sure. I graduated from the HCDE’s Bachelor’s program in December of 2015. I started as a vendor at Microsoft as a UX designer in March of the following year and I’ve been really lucky to be on the same team ever since. I work on the Microsoft Identity team — we are considered the control plane for how people access their resources at work. We build experiences where you use your identity to log into Microsoft or how an IT admin manages that access for anyone in your company.
ALB: That’s incredible that you have been there for so long! What motivates you to keep working in that space?
Gail: There are really complex problems to solve. For example, what does privacy mean and what does that mean in a device-agnostic or a multi-device world? And what does ‘consent’ mean? I remember doing a study in school in Kate Starbird’s class on ‘terms of use’ and how unfair I thought the whole thing was and I get to actually think about consent now in the work that I do. I get to think about ‘how can we democratize that?’ a little bit. For me these are some really fun problems to work on.
ALB: We also know you set up an HCDE mentorship with Microsoft. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Gail: Yes, I started the mentorship program almost four years ago. After attending an alumni network night where students network with professionals, I left having given away my phone number to 10 people and then they all called to have coffee. All the students I met with had similar questions -tell me about working at Microsoft, what is the culture like, how did you break in to your career, stuff like that.. I wanted to help each of them but could not do it all by myself. So I was sitting at my desk and thought — there are these designers around me that could be helping — it was just a problem of proximity. I pitched the idea to David McDonald, the HCDE Chair at the time, and approached my leadership about the idea and both were supportive. My goal was to help educate students about what design is like in the real world and help set students up for success as it relates to their career readiness. I’m extremely grateful for the support of my leadership on all of my extra-curricular endeavors.
ALB: What sticks out about the HCDE program for you that was helpful or applicable either to your job or to getting the mentorship program going?
Gail:I think the critical thinking skills we learned in the program have been important. Some of the more foundational thinking around what is user centered design, how design is political, and why it’s important to know design principles from the early papers we read — including how to read them have been helpful. I know that sounds really funny to say but when I think about how the complex space that I work in, I have an enormous volume of stuff that I have to read. While it’s not academic, I do have to be able to evaluate and understand technical specs and competitors marketing pages, and identify the gaps in their thinking. The ability to scan, read deeper, have some sort of essence of what you just learned, and then apply it to complex scenarios you’re working on is something I learned in HCDE.
ALB: What was your favorite class, and or what is like a favorite class memory that comes to mind?
So I think my favorite class was one that Kate Starbird led, maybe HCDE 419 on HCI Fundamentals. It was a very academic class and one of our learning outcomes was a paper. The paper I wrote was about ‘Terms of Use’ arguing their use of unfair practices. I didn’t realize it at the time but that was the class that ignited my passion around privacy and where I discovered that I really liked technical and political problems.
My favorite class memory is from Katie Derthick’s 418, User Centered Design. She had us do some really fun reflective exercises, but one day at the beginning of class we had to think about somebody that we had a difficult relationship with and meditate on how they were a human too. She had this whole mantra that we had to say out loud and mediate on as she read it out loud. It was something to the effect of “this is another person with thoughts and feelings and fears and dreams just like me”. The person I was thinking about during that exercise ended up joining my team at Microsoft. In that moment, it dramatically changed my relationship with them. And that I’ve never forgotten that moment, and I continue to use that practice when I encounter a difficult interaction with someone or I’m trying to influence an outcome — I realize that I need to come from this place of like profound love for others, they’re just another human like me trying to
ALB: I love that advice, it seems like a great way to constantly ground us in empathy. Speaking of — what is top mind advice for that you give to alumni, both for those just graduating and then those further along in their career?
For people that are in school and trying to land their first job I would say that your first job doesn’t have to be your dream job. You probably don’t even know what your dream job is yet. And I know there’s a lot of ego around the kind of job you get whether it’s vendor or full time employee (FTE) and the company but I really think the whole point is to get a job, start designing and solving problems, and gain experience. Your career path will unfold as part of all that.
And then for those further along in their career — I think relationship building is one of the most critical skills to develop. Design is about people. It’s not just about people we design for, it’s the people that we design with like our product partners and our design team. When I was in school I was mostly focused on solving problems and designing screens and, yeah, I don’t think I got how much it was about all the people involved. The people are the most important thing and my success is directly proportional to how well I’m working with and supporting the people around me
ALB: Thanks Gail, everything you shared has been really fun to hear and learn about.
To connect with Gail, find her on linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gail-thynes-80a7ba4/
Have an alumni you think the ALB should interview? Email us at hcdealb@gmail.com
