Prepare to have your mind expanded, and your creativity ignited as we delve into the realm of design mastery. Our guest Julie Gulick, President and CEO of Bally Design, a design consultancy firm nestled in Pittsburgh, PA, will take us on an unforgettable journey through the realms of product, industrial, and user experience design.
Host: Dr. Mary Goldberg, Co-Director of the IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh
Guest: Julie Gulick, President and CEO of Bally Design
Julie Gulick - Bally Design | LinkedIn, Website
IMPACT Center | Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram
Transcript | PDF
SPEAKERS
Julie Gulick, Dr. Mary Goldberg
Mary Goldberg 0:03
The IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh supported by the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research proudly presents ImpacTech. On today's episode "Room to Dream," prepare to have your mind expanded in your creativity ignited as we delve into the realm of design mastery. Our guest Julie Gulick, President and CEO of Bally design, a design consultancy firm nestled in Pittsburgh, PA will take us on an unforgettable journey through the realms of product, industrial and user experience design, recorded remotely from my soundproof bedroom closet in Pittsburgh, PA. This is your host, Dr. Mary Goldberg, and welcome to our 21st episode of the ImpacTech podcast series. Welcome, Julie. We'll jump right in here related to your background and company overview. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming the CEO and President of Bally Design?
Julie Gulick 1:10
Sure, I'd love to. So I joined Bally Design in January of 2019, after I had been a client for about 20 years. So my background educationally is actually as an engineer. So I was a practicing engineer for about seven years, was a manufacturing engineer and a design engineer. But I found I really liked people, I really liked solving problems. And I really liked people. So through a variety of situations, I had somebody that really encouraged me to go into upstream marketing. And these are the people that go out and figure out what the next product should be. So it's kind of like strategy, but then it's really going into sites and seeing how things are used and writing the marketing requirements for products. And in that work. I was in Pittsburgh at that time. And I was working at medical device companies. And I was working with Valley design at the time. So some of our project managers were bringing in Valley design and I really got exposed to them really under starting to understand their ethos and human centered design and what a difference they really made in our projects. And then by a lot of other circumstances, I had the opportunity then to become a part owner, and then also the CEO. So that brought me here in 2019. And here we are today, almost five years later.
Mary Goldberg 2:23
Thank you. And so what does Balley Design do? What is your tagline?
Julie Gulick 2:29
The tagline is very short. But what we do is we are an industrial design companies and a lot of people don't know what industrial design is people know what Industrial engineering is, but they don't know what industrial design is. So industrial design actually came out after people like Ford, you know, really exploded, the industrial revolution and things were all about making things. But they weren't about making things for people. So they didn't think about usability or aesthetics or things like that. And so that's where industrial design actually came out of was one of the industrial revolutions and saying, you can't just make stuff, it has to be stuff that people want or need. And they actually can use. And so that's what industrial designers do is we partner with companies that are developing new products. And we help them with the artistic aesthetic part of it at the beginning of the project, and also the usability and the manufacturability of it. We start with companies whenever they're in a napkin sketch, and we can go the whole way through developing CAD and working with them as they transition it to a manufacturer. We started in 1972. And so we worked very much on products at that point. And a lot of things have become a lot more digital, as we all know, in those 50 years. And so we now work on also graphical design for the user interface design. So people call these UIs G wise, gooeys HMIs. It's all about how does a machine and a person work together, either with a touchscreen or with an app on your phone or anything like that. So we do that kind of design as well.
Mary Goldberg 4:00
Such a helpful service, and obviously one that has been quite sustainable. So 1972 doing some quick math, you're already past your 50 year mark or valley designers anyhow. And sustainability is something that we talk to our teams about quite a bit. And obviously something that is increasingly important. How has the company evolved during your tenure? And what strategies have you implemented to stay ahead in this rapidly changing market?
Julie Gulick 4:29
Let's start with longevity. Longevity has to do a lot with understanding, you know what's going on in the marketplace and what your users needs. So it's being a good industrial designer, it's understanding what the services that you provide to other companies, because other companies are our customers. We saw this very much during COVID. And I saw two kinds of people that came out of COVID. They either sat down and said Woe is me. I don't like what's going on with COVID and they're not around anymore, or they're just eking by or the ones that said, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to figure out what's changing. And it was huge uncertainty. I mean, who would have known it would have lasted two months, we walked out of the office thinking was two weeks, maybe two months, let alone two years, and really going, okay, things are changing. What information do I have right now? What decisions can I make right now? What can I do to keep moving forward, because a lot of times when you die is when you stand still. And standing still can be just doing the same thing over and over again, and not making sure that it's what your customers still want. So what we found in in during COVID, was just understanding what the needs are of our customers. So some of it was also taking, taking risks. In 2019, we started looking at augmented reality and virtual reality, we thought the application was one thing, trade shows for our clients that were building large products that we were already working on. And we all know that during COVID, all of those got cancelled at least the first year. And so we started saying, Okay, what what is going on? What are the problems that you're having, and they were having problems with sales, trade shows were gone, and they couldn't get into sites. And so we started saying, Okay, let's try and use augmented reality and virtual reality with what you're trying to accomplish right now. So what are your goals? How can we help you reach your goals? That's what's been going on in Valley design for 50 years, we started out with products. And then screens came along. And we added graphic designers that that could learn how to do user interface design, we added in medical products, and we learned how to read regulations and make sure that we knew how to design within a regulated environment, we actually went and did some of the exhibit design for a while. But eventually, we decided that that was a market that we needed to exit. And so we got out of that. So it's starting new things. But it's also exiting things, understanding what your clients need, where they're going, how you can solve a problem. And alsounderstanding what your core strengths are and how you can expand into new things. So that's the longevity question answered for you.
Mary Goldberg 7:04
Excellent, thank you. So obviously, these are conversations about longevity that you have with your clients. What advice would you give to up and coming researchers and entrepreneurs specifica lly about sustainability?
Julie Gulick 7:20
It's always about, don't, don't try and sell a hammer to everybody that's out there. Because they may not need a hammer, they may need a screwdriver. It's understanding their problems, and really going out and talking to people. 20 years ago, we would go out and talk to lots and lots and lots of people and come back. And then make a decision from that. Now we use Lean Startup, build, measure, learn, and we go out and we talk to a few people over and over and over again. And what this allows you to do is still get the numbers that you need to understand what's going on in the marketplace. But it also allows you to be moving with the marketplace, the marketplace is changing. But in those conversations, you really need to understand what is their problem, not what you're trying to sell, but what is their problem? And then how does that come together with what your thinking is about what your solution is? And do you need to pivot persevere? What do you need to do? Because oftentimes, we get stuck in I want to sell this, I want to sell this thing. But nobody else has that problem. It may work for you. But that's really not what's important. It's really important to understand, what are people trying to achieve? What are their goals? And people will share this information with you? They really will it's very easy to ask those questions. You know, what keeps you up at night? What what do you what does success look like? And once you understand those things, then you talk about what are the barriers to, for you getting to what your goals are? What are the problems you have? What are the challenges? And then you can go out back to the office and brainstorm with the brilliant people that you have on your team and say, Okay, how can we solve this problem? We know this is a problem that people really want to solve, how can we help solve that. And that's how you bring all of that together. And that's how you have the longevity. There's one other thing that I read a while ago, four or five years ago, I have a corporate coach, and she was giving me books to read and took many things out of that. But along this lines, it's shoot bullets than cannons. Take small risks, take small risks and test things out. Make sure that it works. Make sure that what you think is going to happen actually does that you're on mark, and then you do bigger investments, more people, and you take on more risk. So that all combined really can make a huge difference.
Mary Goldberg 9:44
You've alluded to this concept of design thinking through your mention of the Lean Startup, the build, measure, learn and it's obviously a key aspect of your approach. So what role does Design Thinking play in solving complex business challenges?
Julie Gulick 10:00
I think that design thinking, human centered design, sometimes they're thrown around a bit too much, bit too cliche. When we started, it wasn't about people, it was about building things that were prettier. It wasn't about functionality, usability, it wasn't about solving problems for the person using it. And so you can we think about product a lot. We talk about product a lot. But it's the same thing whenever you have a business problem. That's just called service design. Now, that's a rather new term as well. But no matter what's going on, we're in discovery, we're trying to understand who was the user, what is the environment, the environment can be a business environment, it could be a physical environment, it could be a digital environment, it pretty much all the same. But you're in discovery, and you're saying, Who's the user? Who's the environment? What are the goals? And how can we achieve them? And then you just test around that over and over and over again, it's important to understand who that user is, from their perspective, not from your perspective, not like I would use this. And so everybody else is going to use this, but what are their motivations? What are the things that are important to them? What can't they do? What are their limitations? What are the things that that just you would never have thought of? So there's a lot of times you can put yourself in those shoes. But then there's other times that you need to take a step back and ask people that actually are in those shoes, so that they can tell you? Well, I don't think about it that way. I was having a conversation. It was a combination of listening to an episode on 60 minutes, months ago, six months ago, along with somebody, it was a startup that was thinking about ways to help blind people navigate through the world. And they had a very quick disparaging remark about a white cane. And how you know, it only does it only can feel what's on the ground in front of them. And I said, Wait a minute here. Have you listened to people that have used a white cane because on the 60 minutes episode, it was about an architect that became an architect and then went blind, and how he navigates the world today. And he was involved with designing something for it was like the New York subway. But they were walking along the street in New York City, and he was tapping his cane and he said, We're underneath a canopy now. And he was right. Right. It was a it was going up to a set of steps into a building. And he said, My cane isn't just feeling I'm hearing I'm, it's not just the cane feeling into your hand, but I'm feeling it in my body. I'm hearing it. I'm perceiving it in such a different way. And so we have to remember that it's not just our perspective, but the person that's using the product or service or solving the business problem that you're trying to do. They're all the same. It's just what data do you bring in. Also, when it's a marketing or a business problem, you also sometimes have to bring in marketing data. How big is this? How many users? Things like that. And so there is desk work that you have to do with it as well, sometimes.
Mary Goldberg 13:05
You're so right, that user centered design is so critically important in the development of Assistive and rehabilitation technologies. This is certainly a principle that we continuously stress. So we've learned a little bit about how you emphasize that and how you incorporate user feedback into the teams and the entrepreneurs that you support. So through the user centered design aspect, the actual beneficiaries are often part of the team. And we stress multidisciplinary collaboration, as occurring between the user design experts, medical professionals, as being so crucial to developing effective Assistive and Rehab technologies. How does Ballie design facilitate collaboration and communication between different stakeholders to ensure the successful development of products?
Julie Gulick 13:58
Oh, that's easy. So there's, there's a lot of different pieces on this that that you want to think about. So sometimes people say, we can't get the user involved, because there's too many people there, or it's too expensive, or it takes too much time. There are a lot of excuses that people use that, that you shouldn't have a variety of people involved. And really, it's just excuses. Some of that what you want to think about is when do you get different people to be there? So one of the things that we start off with is a stakeholder map. And you really want to understand, who are all of the different people that are involved? Who's the person that buys it? Who's the person that uses it? How do they inquire about it? When do they unpack it? Who, when do they get rid of it? When do they have to update it? You really have to understand all of these different things. I was just working with the team last week, and they were talking about I can't go into too much detail about it. But they were talking about an app that was used with adults that had learning disabilities, but we're living in sometimes A group home. But what we were talking about is we have to get the user, the adult as well as their caregiver, probably their parent, all involved. And we were talking about interviewing, and how you don't have everybody in the room at the same time. But you really think through what are you trying to learn? What is the question or the risk or the assumption that you want to explore? And who do you need that input from? And for this case, we were talking about talking to the adult that would be using this app, as well as their parent being there, but coaching that parent getting them prepared of what is this going to be about? Asking them not to answer the question that it's silence that we need, and in the room to have the discussion, that's just one example of you understand the dynamics of people, you don't need all of them in the room at the same time, all the time. And by splitting this up and adding people at different times, you really can change your cost, how fast you can go, the depth of the of the input that you get, and it really can change the dynamic in the room, then sometimes you do bring everybody together if it's possible. And you can get different kinds of input, because you can have somebody sit there and go, Wow, I just listened to a doctor say that. And I never thought of that. Now I can build on that. But it has to be facilitated so that people have the space and the opportunity to do two things think they have to have time to think sometimes silence is very good, so that people can think about things. And then they have to have room to speak. We often say you never interview a nurse in front of a physician, that nurse most likely will not contradict that physician, they will wait for the physician to speak. And then they will sell say nothing if they don't agree with that physician. It's a very good dynamic to think about when you're trying to put these things together. Because you do want to have people that have time to think and time to speak.
Mary Goldberg 17:05
So I've heard you say user centered design, collaboration, time to think and room to speak. Do you have any other tips to share for how to foster a culture of innovation to push the boundaries of what is possible to develop cutting edge solutions?
Julie Gulick 17:22
Sure, you have to have room to dream, I think that's the other one that I would add to it. You have to have a safe space so that people don't mind saying this might be really out there. And they don't even have to have that qualifier. But they say, Hey, you know, I've been thinking about this, and I only have part of an idea. But if I could do this, can somebody else build on this, and you have it in a way that that brainstorming, you go around, and you brainstorm, and everybody has room to talk. But you also have the room to build on one another's, and you don't just you don't ever say, Oh, you had the best idea. It's not about one person having the best idea. It's about the group coming together and moving in a direction and thinking about things differently. The room to dream, you also can structure dreaming. So one of the ways is, whenever you do brainstorming, you ask everybody to come up with ideas silently, one, one idea per sticky, and then everybody's kind of done. And you say okay, let's think two more minutes, and you give them just a couple more minutes and push them a little bit further. And a lot of times people will come up with one or two more ideas that really can make a difference. So you can structure that and push that forward. You also you want to make sure that people feel comfortable that your core team loves really weird ideas, and will put things out there even if they know they can't be built. At certain times when you're doing things like brainstorming. It's not about if we can build it. It's about can I think about something differently that can help somebody else think differently and come somewhere else. So we do a lot of things in our values. We talk about practicality, dreaming and practicality. And we and the way that you pull these things together is that you dream big so that that your thoughts are bigger and other people can come up with things. But then you bring it back down into Okay, but what can we build? What can we do? What is the right thing to do? That's far enough away from just the same old, same old but not so far away? That it's impossible to build or make or manufacture or do it with a cost that makes it profitable?
Mary Goldberg 19:37
Looking ahead, what trends do you see shaping the future of the design industry?
Julie Gulick 19:43
Oh, if only I had a crystal ball to know that digital digital, digital, digital, digital digital, come on Chat GPT AI, you know, everybody's afraid that we're going to be replaced but who knows, you know, it's not going to happen in the next 5 or 10 years, but there's, there's things that are going very quickly. But in the end, I still need a human touch, I still need empathy. You know, on 60 minutes once again, I just saw the chat GPT, or the another version of that, writing some kind of poem that was just amazing from the heart. But can they tell you where a boss needs to go or where a screw needs to go in order to build something so that it's safe. I've also seen, you know, there's some strange things going on there. But if I look into the future, I think there's more and more that's going to be automated, you know, if you look 100 years ago, who would have thought would even be on this podcast like this couldn't have could have dreamed that 100 years ago, that amount of change is going to happen much more quickly. It'll be here in no time at all. I still like to believe that things will be automated, things will be faster, more possibilities will be there. But we're still going to need to work on usability, we're still going to need to think about corner cases in a different way. We're still going to need to think about does it make sense to do this? There's still so many questions that we just do so naturally in the design field in how we define the problem. Sometimes we find out that the the problem is defined incorrectly. And we say wait, wait, wait back up here. What are you trying to solve? Does everybody else see it that way? Because maybe you're defining, maybe you're trying to solve the wrong problem. And maybe if we just go over here would be much better off. So there's, there's so much that I think our software tools are going to continue to change. You know, they've been changing dramatically, just in the last 5 or 10 years. And I think more of that's going to happen, but and I think I wonder if we're not going to be all working like this more remotely and having to have more and more solutions for things like that.
Mary Goldberg 22:03
Yeah, the figuring out what problem you're solving piece would be hard for AI to do with even all the right prompts. How are you in particular at Valley preparing to kind of stay ahead in light of these tech developments in the evolving sector?
Julie Gulick 22:23
I think it's interesting. We're not preparing to stay ahead. We're always trying to stay ahead. It's 50 years old, you can't stand still, you we've never been a company that stands still. So for me, it's it's the natural curiosity that comes out of industrial designers, user interface designers, graphic designers, designers, in general, engineers, like I am. I'm not I'm not a designer, I appreciate design. But I'm not a designer, but I'm also very similar to them in that we're all curious. We all want to know, how can I do my job better? I'm always our company is always helping people do their job better, faster, easier. And that job doesn't have to be what you make a living at. But it's in living life. We're trying to make life easier to live. Sometimes it's just for consumer goods. Sometimes it's for a medical device, sometimes it's in a manufacturing situation, but we're just always trying to make people's lives better. And so putting that curiosity with tools that we have, we look into new software packages, where we're playing with chat GPT, to see what it is and where it's going to go by reading, just by being aware, and not being afraid of technology, not you know, people say oh, we're all going to be replaced. Well, that's just a defeatist attitude. Let's figure out how we're going to be replaced and what our new jobs are, because there's going to be something new to do. So you're always staying ahead. You're also not just doing what everybody else is doing. But you're pushing the boundaries. You're asking yourself, what is the value? Once again, what is the value that I bring to my clients? And how can I do that? Even better? And that never ends? Never, never ever ends? Even whenever you think, yeah, we're, we got we're going on right now. We gotta go. And you got to keep thinking again, how do you renew yourself? How do you do things better? So that's how you stay ahead.
Mary Goldberg 24:20
You're obviously a leader in the design industry. What advice would you give to aspiring designers or entrepreneurs who are looking to make an impact perhaps specific to assistive technology and rehabilitation?
Julie Gulick 24:34
I talk to a lot of young people. I find that just a little bit of advice can go a long way. I know that I had people in my life that helped me along the way. That's how I got into upstream marketing and it changed the trajectory of my career and my life, as we think about new people, new young people coming into design or engineering or anything, any role It's really, I thought a lot about I wanted to make a difference in the world, I wanted to have a job where I knew that going to work every day, I had to go to work every day, I had to make money, I wanted to make a difference in the world. And so for me, that led me to medical devices, not necessarily assistive devices, but medical devices. And I always felt really, really good about the things that we did. You know, I remember we had one, all hands meeting, which was about 1000 people at Med read. And they showed some of our technology, which was imaging technology of a young, a young girl whose mom was actually at the gym with us. She didn't work with us at med rat at the time. And we were able to see how it changed her life by having that imaging of this young girl's heart, the physicians, then were able to make a difference. The advice that I give to people is Be curious, if you're in a job that you hate, find a new job. If you don't, if you're not fulfilled by what you're doing, find a new job. There are so many ways that we can make a difference. And that doesn't mean it's easy every day, because there are caregivers, for people that need help that they have a very difficult job. But at the end of the day, don't forget what you're doing. You're making such a difference in somebody's life. Being able to change and not stay when you're where you're stuck, can really make a difference. And you know, when you hear about people that aren't being treated well in a job, it's your fault, if it's continuing because you gotta go, you gotta go find something else. That's how I feel. We have only one life, you got one shot at this, do it well, and make a difference.
Mary Goldberg 26:44
If people are interested in learning more about Bally or working with you, where do they go? And how do they contact you?
Julie Gulick 26:52
Yeah, the best way to get in contact with us is through our website, ballydesign.com. We're revamping it now there's more and more content that's going to be coming up there, we're going to be doing a lot more case studies and blog posts. And so there's a lot in the works there. We're very excited about starting to share that. You can see case studies there. Now some of our work, you can follow us on LinkedIn. That's our main social media is to find us on LinkedIn. And we do a little bit of Instagram that comes and goes mainly because we can't share a lot that we're doing today. But we we do share things that are now in the market that people can can see.
Mary Goldberg 27:28
Excellent. Julie, it's been such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for your time today.
Julie Gulick 27:32
Thank you so much. It's been so nice being here and I wish you all the luck it's been it's been wonderful and I love working with you both take care.
Mary Goldberg 27:41
Next time we'll get a sneak peek at some up and coming assistive technologies. Until then keep making an impact in whatever you do. If you'd like ImpacTech Please review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you again for tuning in and continue to make an impact in whatever you do.
Mary Goldberg 28:12
A quick note from our sponsors. IMPACT initiatives are being developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. NIDILRR is a center within the Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services. IMPACT initiatives do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government and the same goes for the University of Pittsburgh. We would like to thank our ImpacTech guests and our production team led by Dr. Michelle Zorrilla at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology