How I started a Talk Show on Instagram about UX and Product
By: Koji Pereira
Tags: Instagram Live, Design, Product Management, Live, UX

Image created by Daniel Barreto @ unsplash.com

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I’ve been witnessing interesting conversations on live events, people are getting together to share skills, get creative virtually or just hang out during these difficult times. I also personally had very good conversations with my spot mentorship sessions, a 30 minute session with slightly random designers around the world.

I heard so many incredible stories, from people who went against their family beliefs on more traditional professions and moved on to pursue a career as a Designer, people who moved from countries in situation of danger to immigrate and follow their dreams, women who stepped up instead of doing what was scripted, and became who they wanted to be. And I keep learning with: resilient people around the world who are navigating this moment where everything is so unstable and sometimes a bit scary.

One of these days I woke up during a deep sleep and I questioned myself: how can I have more instigating conversations like these with even more people? So, I put some ideas together and today I want to introduce: Cells and Pixels.

Why another live event?

Live events are growing rapidly as people relearn how to interact remotely. Events like Together at Home raised US$128 million for COVID19 Relief, with live performances from artists homes and small studios. Instagram Live grew recently 100% in views, followed by group video calling surging more than 1,000%. Zoom is now estimated to worth more than top seven airlines in the world combined.

While the entertainment content is shifting to video and live streaming, there’s still few professional and skill sharing content on these formats. Most of that content about UX is still restricted to readable format or podcasts, the last one does require a more expensive and longer setup process for creators, as well as a different mindset for the media consumer. Well, nothing new for generations like Gen Z who are basically video only.

Cells and Pixels is an informal live streaming event, where I will interview professionals and scholars, with subjects around UX. These chats will take place on Instagram Live, publicly and free for anyone who wants to join. The interesting thing about Live events is that you’re not only passively infinitely scrolling, you’re getting deep in one subject, and you can actually contribute to the discussion live, and that’s what I hope for in my show.

Honestly, I’ve been putting myself out of my comfort zone with this one, I am not person who loves been filmed or recorded and I don’t have much experience hosting a show — but who has? Also I am seeing this as an opportunity for me make new friends and solidify old friendships, as well to practice asking good questions, designing conversations and some improv.

Using the platform

I also will take this opportunity to raise money to organizations who are helping those in need, refugees, women of color, GLBT rights and political prisoners.

The first one I picked is The Bail Project, an organization that provides funds to underprivileged people to combat mass incarceration, racial and economic disparities in the legal system.

I highly recommend the Ted Talk from the CEO Robin Steinberg from 2018 to understand why bailing system is unfair, to get a sense on numbers, 90% of people plead guilty when they are help on bail, while The Bail Project saw a 50% being dismissed and less than 2% being sentenced after they pay bail. In the moment we live in, where we see African Americans are struggling for racial justice, where people like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor still get killed based on their race, the work done by The Bail Project is more than urgent.

As a Brazilian I acknowledge that the killings became normalized there with police intervening in the favelas daily, cases like João Pedro Mattos, a 14 years old kid, César Gonzaga, and Marielle Franco a black women politician murdered in an unsolved case, and many others.