Episode highlights

• 00:01:14 The Journey to UX and the Creation of Dr. G’s Lab
• 00:03:14 The Definition and Depth of Trauma
• 00:08:23 The Intersection of Trauma and UX
• 00:14:02 The Importance of Cultural and Generational Sensitivity
• 00:28:25 Methods for Trauma-Informed Research
• 00:32:13 Upcoming Publications and Final Thoughts

About our guest Breanna Gentile

Dr. Breanna Gentile, a psychologist turned UX researcher and designer, is dedicated to trauma-informed research and product design. With a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, she founded Dr. G’s Lab, empowering teens and publishing studies in peer-reviewed journals. As Chief of Clinical Solutions at Esteem Therapeutics and Director of Product Design at the Center for Youth Wellness, she focuses on resilience through trauma-informed practices.

Podcast transcript

[00:00:00] Tina Ličková: 

Welcome to UX Research Geeks, where we geek out with researchers from all around the world on topics they are passionate about. I’m your host Tina Ličková, a researcher and a strategist, and this podcast is brought to you by UXtweak, an all-in-one UX research tool.

This is episode nine of season three of UXR Geeks. I talked to Bre, or Dr. G about blending psychology with UX design. She specializes in trauma informed design, aiming to make digital experiences more understanding and more supportive. In this episode, you will hear how deep insights into users’ emotions can improve design. We have discussed culture sensitivity, merging research methods, and how to create safer online spaces for everybody. Enjoy it.

So, who are you? What do you do? And then we go to our topic, which is trauma informed design and research. But yeah, let’s start with you. 

[00:01:14] Bre Gentile: Okay, that sounds good. So I’m Dr. G. My full name is Breanna Gentile and I was actually calling Dr. G. I was giving a presentation to some teenagers and I gave my full name and they were like, can we just call you Dr. G? Yeah, that’s fine. So it’s stuck. So I worked at that before I got into UX, I was a psychologist and was a psycho oncologist. So I was working as a therapist with cancer patients and caregivers. And then I found my way into startup and then I found my way into Google. And then I just kept going down the UXR path. And so now I have my own lab. 

[00:01:54] Tina Ličková: What are you doing in your own lab? That sounds Fancy. 

[00:01:58] Bre Gentile: It does not fancy, huh? The lab really is an incubator in some ways for youth and youth serving tech. So you don’t necessarily have to be a youth, but if your app idea or your digital solution Is serving youth, then you can come to the lab.

So we focus on the digital spaces and tools for youth because we’re feeling like it’s not safe, even for adults, and so for youth it’s even less safe and it’s just feeling really overwhelming for a lot of our youth out there. So that’s what the lab is for. It’s really a safe space for folks to bring their ideas and some of them have ideas that are just on a napkin and some of them have full blown ideas that with money behind them.

And so the lab really does take a lot of different folks and a lot of different projects. 

[00:02:51] Tina Ličková: Let’s start with trauma because people get more information about trauma, but there is a lot of, I wouldn’t say misunderstanding, but everybody understands in a different way. And I sometimes hear people saying, I’m so traumatized from it.

And I’m thinking, yeah, let’s not overuse some type of words. So what is your definition of trauma? How would you frame it for us? 

[00:03:14] Bre Gentile: So I actually go to the roots of the word and it comes from a Greek word with which means wound. And so when you’re when you hear this like overuse of it, you do have to ask yourself, were you really wounded.

And so, my definition and the kind of the labs working definition of trauma is an emotional wound that was caused by an event or an experience. And what it often leads to is a breaking down of safety and trust, either with other folks or even within yourself. And you can extend that to systems as well, but those systems are largely made up of people.

[00:03:49] Tina Ličková: And how would you, I don’t know, define wound as a stupid question, but how deep has the wound be, sorry for, I’m a lay person in this, to be labeled as trauma, how much Does it have to be embodied? How much is it on an emotional or psychological level? 

[00:04:09] Bre Gentile: That’s a really great question. I would say that if your body remembers what that wound feels like when the, when the wound is gone, like when you’re away from the wound, then it was trauma, then it was deep enough.

So if your body starts to remember that feeling of when someone says, Oh, I got pulled over and it was traumatic. We want to understand like, what does that mean for you? Cause for some of us, that would be like, Oh, no big deal. But if we really sit with them and they say, no, I was like shaking and I went to work and I couldn’t think after work.

And then even when I sat down for lunch, I like, wasn’t hungry. Okay, that’s your body responding to that wound. And so that for me is deep enough to call it trauma. So I feel like if your body is reactive to it after the fact. and kind of remembers that, it was deep enough to cause trauma. 

[00:05:01] Tina Ličková: And if you look at some statistics or studies, or even one of my therapists in the past was telling me that 80 percent of the people in the world are traumatized.

What does it mean? 

[00:05:13] Bre Gentile: Yeah, yeah. So that’s a really actually an accurate stat. So one of the places of trauma that I focus on because I work with youth adverse childhood experiences or aces. And they’re really 10 events that happen within a childhood, that then lead to either some sort of dysregulation in the body or in the mind, or in the spirit in adulthood.

And so what we say about aces is that one in four of us has at least one. And so that’s right where your therapist is saying right 80 percent of us are traumatized. Now where we get a little bit deeper into aces is we start to say that a positive score or a score worth looking at is when you have four or more aces.

And so, for more aces we start to have a little bit less folks, but still one in four of us has experienced. One of those 10 aces. So that would be neglect, abuse, mother treated violently, incarcerated relative, domestic violence. So one in four of us has experienced something like that. 

[00:06:15] Tina Ličková: What is the theoretical base or frameworks that you work with when it comes to trauma?

Because I know there are some more popular ones, less popular ones. 

[00:06:24] Bre Gentile: Yeah, definitely. So I really try to focus only on two because you can get really swept away with all of the new ones and the refurbished ones. And so I will get attachment theory because I really do feel that is where a lot of things are based in.

Even when you look at like your favorite brand, if you really love Nike shoes, for example, that’s an attachment, right? You have an attachment to that brand. You trust it. You expect. You expect it to give you a specific shoe or style and you expect it to fit this way and you’re willing to spend enough money on it, right?

So it’s an attachment. So I really base my work with products and services in that attachment in thinking that folks at some point may have had a disruption in their attachments. And so now we look to products and services to maybe fill that void. And so we need to be really mindful of that, especially when it comes to like food products, for example, if we are looking at eating disorders and things like that, we need to be mindful about how we talk about food products or services.

How do people find food in airports, right? So things like that. So that attachment theory is important to me. And then the other framework I go off is trauma informed care, which is really just recognizing that whenever you enter into any relationship, you recognize that there could be potential trauma.

And so you really try your hardest to not use words that may reactivate. Um, you really try to say things like, instead of, Oh, I’ll shoot you over that email, just say, I’ll send you the email. So you just recognize that there might have been somebody on the other end of your computer screen or on the other end of this product that has gone through.

[00:08:07] Tina Ličková: I’m just wondering, because yes, we are trying to be in the UX space, more sensitive. And researchers definitely should be very sensitive people to all possibilities of living and human experience. But how does trauma really come together with UX? 

[00:08:23] Bre Gentile: Yeah, yeah. So the way that I’ve been bridging it together is because they’re not necessarily intrinsically or naturally put together.

And so the way that I really have been bridging them together is that no matter what product or service you use, you are a human being and we are human beings, right? Regardless of if we use a computer or a website or a phone to access that other person, we’re really just creating. Another relationship.

What tech allows us to do is to scale that relationship. So now I can have a relationship with you, but I can also have a relationship with 15 other folks through a product, right, but if you just take that away, you realize that you’re just with a person, and you wouldn’t be. Any less sensitive to me. If I was in front of you asking you, what is my bank account?

What is my balance in my bank account? Can I, am I eligible for a credit card? You do online through a website, but if I was talking to you with a person, you would ask me these questions of sure. Why are you needing credit right now? And I would tell you, oh, and I’m coming up on hard times or my kid is in the hospital or something.

And you and me, we have a conversation, right? We’re. We’re talking to each other. You’re recognizing that the trauma that I’m going through and you’re really working to find me the best rates. You’re working to find me the best loan possible right because you see me. So trauma and UX come together in that we humanize that relationship, and we allow the tech to still do the job, but we just humanize it so now instead of going online and saying, I need a loan for 4,000$.

We can now ask. Great. What would you need that loan for? And you have debt consolidation. You have all of these different answers. And so we can now start to humanize that. And then the answer comes back in an email that says, we recognize you’re coming up on hard times. We’re so glad that we could help you with this loan.

Let us know if you need any questions. Right? So the emails are even more human. So that’s where trauma and UX come together is just this idea that we’re taking we’re taking the digital solution that’s in between the two humans and just making it more human. We’re not actually disrupting the solution, because the solutions we need, and we love the solutions.

We’re just making them a bit more human so it doesn’t feel like a digital product in between two humans. 

[00:10:50] Tina Ličková: And when you were mentioning youth, this is something also super interesting for me because I started in when I was 16 and NGO and student politics and we were like, you know, running around the school and trying to bring new laws into into the life of students and, and I really do care for younger people, the older I get, the Stronger I feel okay, let’s have a discussion about politics and what is happening and all the movements and trying to understand that. Could you explain more? How do you work with youth? 

[00:11:20] Bre Gentile: Yeah, totally. The biggest thing with youth is to actually just take your adult brain and leave it outside of the door. And that’s the biggest tip that I can give to anybody because as adults, like.

Either with an agenda or we come in with even three to five questions, even three to five questions is too many, right? Like you just come in with one question for a teenager and then just see where it goes. So me working with youth was a lot of letting go of control. And I think for UX researcher, that can be really difficult to just relinquish control over research because you want to make sure you get all of your questions in and you want to make sure you have all of these things to give to the next group of people, but working with youth is actually so simple. If you’re willing to listen. Listen, and then listen some more, it’s the only thing that you can do because they’re offering you their raw input, right?

When you work with adults, you get these like biased or you get like a polished version of something. But with teenagers, if they trust you, they’re just going to give you exactly what it is. This color sucks. I like this app, but it would be way better if I didn’t have to give my phone number because I don’t like to give my phone number.

Things like you’re like, okay, I didn’t think about that. And then the biggest thing after working with them is to make sure that you can include them. A lot of times with UX research, we get the research and then we’ll pass it on to our designers or software engineers or somewhere. And then we never really see what happens after that.

Or you might see it in the actual product, but with you, you have to come back. You have to come back and you have to say, we did the research. You guys wanted this app. Here’s the app. What do you guys think? And then you do the whole process again. So I think the biggest thing with youth besides listening is making that full circle communication and letting them know to that informed consent is probably the biggest thing that we take for granted because it’s so easy to just pull up a form and send it off to your adult participant and then DocuSign does the work, but with teens or youth, you really have to sit with them and say, This is what we’re doing.

If you give me an answer, this is what I’m going to do with that answer. And if you don’t see your answer show up, it doesn’t mean that your answer was a bad idea. So you have to talk to them in a much different way. And informed consent becomes your Bible or your like staple yourself. It’s like the thing.

And I think with youth, it’s really being listened, listening, and then just being full circle communication. So you can tell them what you did. 

[00:14:02] Tina Ličková: Why do you think is exactly this, I will call them target group, although I don’t like it, but it’s used so sensitive to the informed content. 

[00:14:11] Bre Gentile: I think because right now, oh, there’s a lot of apps out there.

I don’t know your age, but when I, I was born in 84. And so the internet was just coming up. And so the idea of reading all of the things and then signing them was important, but now we have these apps where you can give. Your name, your phone number, your, you give all of this information for a tiny bit of something and then they ask you to pay for the larger part of the something.

And so teenagers are just seeing that their information, their minds, the spaces that they hang out are just being taken advantage of. They’re just being pulled for information because teenagers are on the internet all the time. And so there are biggest trackers right there are biggest data mine, and people are really just taking advantage of it.

And so I think that when you focus on the informed consent, you’re empowering them, you’re giving them the power, you’re saying, at any point in time, if you don’t like how this is going, you can stop, you can back out, we won’t ask you any questions. Stop, unsubscribe, whatever it is. That’s it. And that’s not happening for them in a lot of the digital spaces so it doesn’t feel safe, and they don’t feel like they can trust places.

So the informed consent is really that trust, that’s showing them that you trust us we trust you and anytime that it feels bad. 

[00:15:36] Tina Ličková: Maybe I’m not going to be very culture sensitive right now, but I’ve said anyhow, because I was doing a lot of research in Germany, even people who come from classes or socio or subcultures.

Which are not so well educated are very aware. Look at this is data privacy. I have to take care of it. I have to be aware. And it’s always, when I compare, not even Germany, but Europe and us, us is like, Oh, okay. Give away your data. Is this a cultural shift that you would say it’s happening with use right now?

Or is it a broader on a broader scale in the U.S.? 

[00:16:13] Bre Gentile: I, I’m really seeing it only in the youth, because the youth are the ones that are really protective of their information. And I don’t know if it’s because they’ve seen the adults in their lives be hacked or be caught with identity theft or having their information leaked.

I’m not sure, but I’m seeing that they’re much more, they’re just a little bit more curious about what, what’s going to happen with their data and what are you going to do with that piece of information? And what if I want to get it back from you? Like what happens then? And I don’t know if it’s happening on a cultural, cultural wide, but I do know that in the United States, it feels like the youth are much more concerned about their digital safety than the adults.

[00:17:01] Tina Ličková: When I was mentioning cultural sensitivity, that has to be super important in trauma informed design, trauma informed research. And I know again, there’s, there are differences in different culture, how we approach it. So how, what is your recipe? How do you approach it in your cultural environment and with youth?

[00:17:23] Bre Gentile: Yeah, absolutely. One of the first things that we look at is what group are we working with? What cultural group are we working with? So we don’t always work with just youth in the United States. We’re actually working with group in India as well. Really try to first and foremost, set the stage that we’re not experts.

I think a lot of times you’ll get marketing out there. That’s we’re the expert in this and we’re the expert in this. And it’s true. We are the expert in these places, but when it comes to your culture. We are not the expert. So that’s the first thing we do is we set the stage for a beginner’s mind of you need to teach us some of the cultural ways.

But one of the things that we can do, which is research prior to about what was the historical and collective trauma of this group, right? So we can look at like genocides, we can look at colonization, we can look at traumas and we can say this group has been largely traumatized by gun violence. For example, therefore, we are going to be extra mindful to not use words like trigger, gun, shoot, all of those idioms, shoot yourself in the foot, right?

We are going to be mindful of that. We’re also going to be really mindful of the imagery that we use. So we’re going to not use anything that might look like there was a gun bullet or a gun wound, right? So we can start to think about that from a historical perspective. And then I think the only other place that we can really go is the stigma and shame.

Like what is the stigma and shame around trauma for this culture? Some cultures don’t talk about it at all. And if you do talk about it, you are seen in a different level, right? You’re not in the same level as everybody else. Other cultures freely express it and put it on their art in their wall of their public places.

So to understand how freely you can talk about trauma and also how freely Others will talk about their trauma is going to be really rooted in this stigma and shame of the culture. 

[00:19:28] Tina Ličková: To have a better idea of how you take all this knowledge and all your approaches, what is a project that you work on and how do you use what you just explained?

[00:19:39] Bre Gentile: Yeah, awesome. So we’re actually working on an app right now with an organization that the app connects high school students with college students so they can get an understanding of what it’s really like to be in college at a particular university. And where it’s really helpful and trauma is that we’re focusing on those first generation college students who have no parents no sibling or cousin really to talk to about what was it like to go to university.

Yeah. They’re really relying on the folks who are already there who can give them a real experience. And so where the trauma starts to come in is we start to recognize number one, not everybody has gone to school. And so we really need to recognize that there’s a might be a learning curve to talking about just going to school.

The other thing is that folks need to really understand the value. of school, that it’s not going to be just like my mom went to school and my dad went to school. So of course I’m going to school. This is a business decision that some of these students are making in high school. That’s like a 30,000$ a year investment that they’re thinking, is it going to be worth it?

And so we needed to think also from a trauma perspective of what else would they need to calm their anxiety. They would need a calculator right to a calculator feature to know that if you put this much in, this will be your student loans or these will be what you can expect to pay, and then they would also be really wise to have somebody who’s just recently out of college.

be able to connect with them who had the same major. So if you were in political science, for example, if you could talk to somebody who just graduated from political science and get to know what jobs they did, what was their first salary, how much did they make coming out? So then they can know more information about the investment.

So this, the trauma informed part came in the research where we had high school students. We let it be completely optional for cameras to be on. So when you’re working with youth, you always want to be like, we want to be engaged and make sure that we’re engaging the youth. Sometimes engaging the youth is letting them be disengaged.

So we made sure that cameras were optional. We also made sure that we allowed for plenty of awkward silence. So if we had a question of, so what color do you guys prefer? And we would wait Tina for two, three minutes sometimes. And then somebody would say something or somebody would put something in the chat and then everybody would start going.

So we had to make sure that we were like perfectly okay with silence. And then also what we did was that we went at their speed. So when we put out the agenda, we let them know what was the energy level we would expect from them on that day. So if we were just going to be lecturing them about what splash screens were or what wire frames were, we would put that it was going to be a pretty low energy day.

You would be able to ask questions if you need it, but for the most part, you could just relax and take in the information. If we wanted to get feedback on the prototype, we would say it’s a pretty high energy engaging day. We really want to get your feedback. If we don’t get your feedback, we’re going to put it out as is.

And that’s just going to be a lot of us in the app. So make sure you’re ready to participate. So laying out that land was important too. And now we’re to the point where we’re having app developers build the app. So the teams that were working on the research, getting the wireframe information to us are now going to be able to have a clickable prototype that will go back to them.

And they’re like our founding group. So we gave them that power of here’s what’s next. And so there are our first beta testers, so to speak, where they’re going to get to see their ideas in the app and then give us feedback. So that’s our fun project that we’re working on now, and that’s how it’s done in real time.

[00:23:32] Tina Ličková: Very nice. And I have a question. I have to think about how to ask it, but have you ever been working on an app that helped people to deal with their trauma and their, maybe not crisis, especially when it comes to youth? 

[00:23:48] Bre Gentile: I have the only thing that I’ve gotten to work on was an app idea that I had for myself, which was breaking up with your doctor or matching with your doctor that was similar to a Tinder or a dating app so that you wouldn’t feel pressured to go back to your doctor and say, I don’t actually want to see you anymore.

I’m going to see a different doctor, but I have yet to work specifically with the cohort of you saying we’ve gone through genocide. And we want to build a website for teens who have also gone through genocide, like those are the things that I dream of having. Those are the projects that I dream of having.

But those are the projects that you either have to find, or they already have a large amount of money behind it, that you may or may not get to work directly with the youth. So that’s one of the things that we’ve had to be really picky about as an agency to say if you’re, we don’t get to actually work with the youth.

We won’t take the project. 

[00:24:47] Tina Ličková: How would you say it’s good to prepare yourself for such hardcore topics like genocide? Because I even can’t express what I feel even when you say the word. 

[00:24:56] Bre Gentile: Yes, I’ll think that is the best question you can ask, which is that you actually have to take time to prepare for it.

You do. So one of the things that we do. Is when we look at like requests for proposals, for example, we’ll look at the whole proposal and what’s required. Let’s just say it’s for a website redesign and then we’ll look at it’s the organizations for the insurance company. And then we look to see what are going to be the required things, and they want new graphics or new icons.

And then we have to sit with ourselves and our team and say, is anybody, everybody okay with autumn autos and trauma? Has anybody gone through a big car crash recently? Are you guys all okay? What’s, how do you all feel? And then we check in with it, but there have been projects where we will, we won’t do it because it just doesn’t fit with how we work and what we believe in, but one of the things you have to do is you have to really sit with all of the different topics that are going to be within that. So you do want to do your research. You don’t want to put your head in the sand. You don’t want to just say, Oh, we’ll just see what happens. Do your research.

So if it is on human trafficking, for example, you’ll want to look at an organization and look at their website. What are some of the topics that might come up? What are some of the. Things that the visuals that might come up, what you might find and what I have found in my experience is, for example, we had some graphics done about abuse.

And when I first looked at the graphics for the abuse, I was, oh my gosh, I was like, wow. And it was a little human, not even like a real picture but like a shape of a human and a big hand and I was like, wow. So I asked for a redesign. And I made them a teddy bear with a band aid on the teddy bear arm, so that it’s approachable but it still gets the message across.

So I think what I’m saying is you do have to prepare for it. And just be aware that you might need to get support from somewhere else you might need to actually talk to somebody about. what you’re designing or what you found out in your research or if you’re doing interviews, the things that you heard, right, of folks going through something.

And then if you were, if you’re able to take some time between that project ending and the next project starting. So you’d be really surprised what comes up. When we stop creating or stop right doing something and so if you take a little time after that big project to just be and just let things go before you go right into another one because you can easily just throw things on top and then it comes up later.

[00:27:32] Tina Ličková: I’m wondering because I was working with for a while with caregivers, and that’s a lot of to take for one person, especially when you’re taking care of handicapped children or elderly people who are not mobile anymore. And it’s very time consuming, energy consuming that people go through a lot of burnout.

And what I was discussing at that time with my At that time, boss, she was telling me that they do focus groups because the whole group can share with each other, support each other. So there’s this therapeutical moment in a way. And I was really surprised because focus groups in my research world are like research theater.

You do it, you do it mostly for the client. So they have a little bit fun and then you do the real research. When it comes to the methods that he used, do you have any preference when it comes to trauma informed research? 

[00:28:25] Bre Gentile: Yeah, I really have to do a mixed methods. I really like to do quantitative and qualitative.

I will do the interviews, we’ll do the focus groups, but then also if there is a scale or something out there that can also help me understand the impact of something, then I’ll use that scale as well so that I have numbers to the actual story. Um, a lot of times also what I’ll do is I might use a more of a structured interview where I’ll have on a scale from one to seven, right, so I’ll have that Likert scale built into that interview where I can still give a quantifying number as to how people are feeling or where they are on the scale.

So I would say definitely mixed methods. Don’t forget the focus groups and the interviews, but also there’s value to those survey questions that are usually sent out in a survey, but done as an interview. So you can still get that feel without sending out a survey and just hoping they fill it out. 

[00:29:25] Tina Ličková: And now going back to the start where we were mentioning digital safe spaces, you, when I was asking you about where can people follow you, you also write, wrote down that Dr. G’s lab has no social media other than LinkedIn page. Everything is done through emails and newsletters, which I find super interesting. 

[00:29:43] Bre Gentile: Yeah, some of it is personal I would say, but also just in general, the spaces out there are not safe. They’re not safe for our vulnerable folks. They’re safe for people who really are able to get in there and say, Nope, that doesn’t look right, or that doesn’t pass by me.

But for the folks who are there in a vulnerable space, perhaps looking for a friend, or looking for an outlet, it’s not safe for them. They are getting people and information that is not accurate and not safe. And so it’s becomes even less of a safe interaction. If you don’t, it’d be better to not even have that space available.

So what we decided was that because it doesn’t fit with us personally to do social media, it was causing anxiety in our own lives and trying to figure out like, should we just outsource it? But then it wasn’t us doing it. And so we just said, look at the anxiety it’s causing us. Inside in our team, what’s going on out there.

So we said to heck with it, we’re not going to do it. We’re not going to do it. LinkedIn is fine so that people can see that we’re there, but we don’t post, we don’t engage, and so it’s emails and newsletters. Because we feel like those are the places that we can actually control what we put out and then we can shape it based on what’s putting in so we really open up our newsletter and emails for folks to say, Oh, I really like this or.

When you shared that story, it was too much. I needed a warning beforehand. Or I’m really looking for a case study on this. Maybe you could put that out there. So we figured if we can engage there, we’re better off engaging there and just staying there. Because it’s real interactions and we know the space that we exist in. Out there is a little scary for us. So we are only on email and newsletters. 

[00:31:34] Tina Ličková: Okay. Totally understandable from my perspective and also understandable with all the arguments. Where can people actually subscribe to the newsletter? Because this is what folks out there listening are just like, okay, just tell me where I want to get all those information.

[00:31:48] Bre Gentile: I love it. Yeah. So the website is the best place. So https://www.drgslab.com/ a pop up should come up and if not at the bottom, you can fill out a form and we’ll get in touch and we don’t, we do not sell your information. We do not spam. It is real people creating the emails and answering emails and doing newsletters.

[00:32:13] Tina Ličková: Great. Last but not least, you also mentioned, shared that you are going to publish some books. So I’m super interested in that one. Please feel free to do a promo on it because I’m really looking forward to it. 

[00:32:26] Bre Gentile: Oh, I love that. Thank you. Yes. I’m going to be publishing an ebook this fall. It’s called from psychology to UX.

The evolution of a career and the intersection of disciplines. So that’s really a nice, short ebook for folks looking to go from psychology to tech or philosophy to tech, right? Just making that jump from academics. And then I’ve been waiting for this one to come out. So my son titled this, it’s the book.

This book is about research and emotions. And I’ve got an awesome forward from Rachel Dicus, who is a social worker and design. And I’m just thrilled to get this out. So I’m so excited. And it’s exactly what the title says. It’s a book about research and emotions. So look for that coming in late fall. 

[00:33:12] Tina Ličková: Nice. Very nice. And you also mentioned that it’s a braiding sweet grass by Robin Kimmerer as one of your favorite books. And I was just checking it out really quickly on Amazon. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. Can you tell me more about the book and why it’s your favorite? 

[00:33:28] Bre Gentile: Yes, so braiding with sweetgrass is one of my favorites because it talks about the farming and how originally farming was really complicated and things were all growing together and then colonization happened and we started growing things.

in rows. And we started really working the land, overworking the land, tilling the land. And so it really talks about this practice of coming in and destroying a practice and then creating a new practice. And so it’s just really fascinating, especially in design, to think about how we are disseminating some of these new processes while we get rid of some of these old processes.

So I highly recommend it. I also love it because I’m Plains Apache and so anything that’s of native is really interesting to read. 

[00:34:17] Tina Ličková: Great recommendation. Thank you very much for your time. It was a big pleasure. Looking forward to your books and looking forward to subscribe to the newsletter. 

[00:34:26] Bre Gentile: Awesome. Thank you so much. It was great to be here. I appreciate it.

[00:34:34] Tina Ličková: 

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