Black Stories/11: Khalen Morehead

Justin James Lopez:
Hey everyone, welcome to Amazon’s Black stories podcast where we highlight the stories of Black designers, researchers, and creatives from all around the world. I’m your host Justin James Lopez. And today I’m joined by Khalen Morehead where we discuss the importance of taking the experiences that you’ve had and making the path easier for the people to come behind you. Let’s hear his story. So Khalen, thanks for joining me. For the listeners here, let’s talk about what you do at Amazon.

Khalen Morehead:
Sure, sure. And thanks for having me, I really appreciate it. But as far as what I’m doing at Amazon, I am a user experience designer. Work in the devices space specifically on Fire TV. So my areas of responsibility really across all Fire TV experiences are related to settings and device setup or what we call OOBE, which is the Out of Box Experience. And so really my domain is focused on both our current products as well as emerging products that we have coming down the pipeline and trying to find more ways of really enhancing those experiences as well as trying to mesh them well with a lot of the other devices since we’ve got so many other things out there that all have a varying interest and needs or requirements and things like that. So very interesting work in that space.

Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. So I’m not going to lie, whenever I hear Fire TV, the first thing I think about is the Fire Phone.

Khalen Morehead:
Sure.

Justin James Lopez:
Is that something that we were thinking about at all?

Khalen Morehead:
I’d be honest if I said that I didn’t also think about Fire Phone whenever I hear the names like Fire TV, Fire Tablet, any of that stuff.

Justin James Lopez:
So backtracking here far as your current work as a designer, I want to explore a bit about how you got into that space. Where was your origin point in deciding that design was something that you really wanted to do? Was it always there or was it later in life that you decided that?

Khalen Morehead:
Interesting, fun. It’s like the superhero origin story.

Justin James Lopez:
What’s yours?

Khalen Morehead:
Take the cape off and the mask down. For me, it really started young actually. My objective growing up was always to get into video games. I decided actually when I was like 12-years-old, I read a book about making video games and I was like, this is what I want to do. And my father, I told him, I was like, “I want to go make video games.” He was like, “Okay."Well, at the time I was living in Atlanta, and so he said, “If you’re going to stay in state and go to college somewhere else, it’s probably either going to be University of Georgia or Georgia Tech, and Georgia Tech is probably the better place.” So I decided that day I was going to go to Georgia Tech and become a video game designer.

Justin James Lopez:
Nice.

Khalen Morehead:
And that was my plan, and I moved into that direction through college for my first two years. And around my third year, there was this one course, it’s called graphics. It was so hard. I know it was hard because all my friends who were actual computer science majors, which I was not, they went through it. And you had to hand code 3D animations and models and all these things like that. And I’m not that dude, I knew I was not. I’m not a programmer like that. And so I saw these dudes struggling before I even took the class and I was like, “I’m not going to make it through this, I need to figure something else out.”

As luck would have it, no pun intended, my friend Cameron Luck, he was a year ahead of me, he’s in the same program, good buddy of mine. He put me on to the fact, he’s like, “There’s this user interface design course that you should take. I took it last semester, I think you really enjoy it.” And so I go into class and the first assignment was to write a couple of paragraphs basically about a website that you don’t like or some experience you don’t like like that. And so I was like, all right, cool. Wrote this essay, turned it in. Next week, the assignment was, okay, now make a design that fixes it. And I was like, “Wait, this is a job. This is the thing I could just do professionally is go into terrible websites and make them better.” Because this is in 2011. Let me tell you, there was a lot of awful websites back in 2011.

I’m always the kind of guy who, I’ll sit there and I’ll pick stuff apart too whenever I see issues with things. The more I use it, the more I start to really figure out, I’m like, okay, this isn’t working. And I’m like, why isn’t this working? It’s like, oh, it’s because of this thing here. It was super fun for me to just do that as a job, and I was just like, yeah, that’s exactly what I want to do.

Justin James Lopez:
So there’s this idea of measurement. I think this is something that’s always been instilled in me is something that you can’t measure you can’t control, something you can’t control, you can’t improve. And when you think about design in the creative spaces, how much does that concept of you can’t judge art flow into having concrete standards around what’s good and what’s bad in UX and how you design better websites? Because when you say it’s like, this is an awful website, this is a better website. How does those different concepts interloop for you?

Khalen Morehead:
It is interesting because one of the things that I’ve talked about before definitely is there’s this weird balance I think that a lot of designers go through in UX where it’s like, it’s not as much of an art as it is a science honestly. And I think people think that you can’t become a UX designer if you don’t have an art degree or if you haven’t studied all these different classical artists and movements and blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, it’s not that. It’s like it can’t be learned. That could maybe make you a more effective or a more creative UX designer, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only way to get into it. And so a lot of UX, it’s science and psychology is really what it is. And it’s about human behavior as it deals with interacting with a digital website or some sort of interface or some device or something like that.

And so I really think that there’s a lot about use your experience design that can be learned by just about anybody. Even at this point, my parents, neither of whom work in any sort of technological field, they understand a lot of simple concepts with UX design because I’ve explained it to them a bunch of times. There’s a balance there, but the idea that it’s something that has to just be this innately artistic expression I think isn’t really seeing the full spectrum of what it is that we do.

Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. No, I love that you made that distinction because I find that I walk around and I’ll make that statement of this is a UX problem a lot. Most commonly, and this is a pet peeve of mine, most commonly when I walk into spaces, physical spaces and I’ll see a door with a handle but it only push opens.

Khalen Morehead:
Oh man, that is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Justin James Lopez:
It’s like, what am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to do with this? And mostly because I have that, you’re an idiot moment because I always try to, I pull it and I’m like, this doesn’t work, this door doesn’t work. And then it’s like, oh, you’re supposed to push that. I was like, you know what, just let it go and we’re just going to move on with life. I like that you made that because it’s about how we have that experience and how we cater that experience to create ease for the customer.

Khalen Morehead:
Exactly, exactly.

Justin James Lopez:
I love that, I love that. So as a aspiring designer going to, you said it was Georgia Tech is where you ended up going?

Khalen Morehead:
Yeah.

Justin James Lopez:
So going to Georgia Tech, I got to ask this question because that’s in Atlanta.

Khalen Morehead:
Yep.

Justin James Lopez:
So I went to a PWI as well, I went to [Villanova]. What was the experience in Atlanta because there’s more people of color in the general area than where I grew up up in the north? What was that experience going to school? Was there a lot of people of color in your program or were you still the only in there as well?

Khalen Morehead:
That is a great question because it’s super interesting. I’m from Atlanta, I’m ATL born, bred, and raised, I lived there the majority of my life. And so coming from a city like that where it is a predominantly Black city, just predominantly minority, predominantly Black, especially when I started growing up in the 90s. And it’s changed over time, sure, but it’s still very much a place where Black people, Black culture and other minority culture as well is just very much at the forefront in a way that is not in most other major cities. But even still, me personally, I grew up on the North side of town. I grew up in a more affluent suburban sort of community, so I was already mixed in with a lot of predominantly white spaces or places where there was certainly, there were significant number of Black people but we still probably weren’t the majority.

I went to private school for a while, I was the only Black kid in my class for four years. Going from there into the middle of Midtown Atlanta in one of the blackest cities on earth, you expect that to be reflected more of the student body but it wasn’t. And that’s really the whole of Georgia Tech. The Black students who are there I would say were predominantly in the college of computing where I was in, the ones who were there were probably usually engineering or business or something like that. So there was already a small Black population within there. And then the degree program I was in, it’s called computational media, which is basically brand new at that point, there weren’t many. It’s a handful, you can count, you know all the other Black CM majors around.

It was always interesting just given that it’s, I think the whole school’s population at the time as far as the Black population was under 10%. I think it was a single digit percentage, and it’s just going to get slimmer and slimmer. There’s always a weird tenuous relationship I think of just being a Black person in a Black city but not in Black spaces all the time either.

Justin James Lopez:
Talk about the psychological impact of thing, how does that hit when you think about the reality around that? Do you feel like because of your upbringing and being in a more affluent area where you tended to be the only in a lot of the spaces that you were in. Did that help you cope with that experience or did you not feel like there was anything to cope from?

Khalen Morehead:
I think it did help me cope because even I recognize there was something missing for me in not having a strong Black student group there. That’s not even the way I necessarily want to put it. But moving through a place where for me, like I was saying, when I was in private school, I was there for four years. And it was mostly middle school my first year of high school, which was some of the worst years of most people’s upbringing anyway. So it’s like being the only Black kid in a space like that, it was really hard for me. And because of that, I was like, I can at least move through whatever sort of other places and spaces that I need to. So it gave me a more chameleon-esque ability. After I’d gone through those years, I went to a public school where there were, it was much more diverse. And I really enjoyed that and appreciated that about it.

And so then going into college, I was like, this isn’t too unfamiliar. But I still had to find ways to essentially recharge my Black battery, if you will. We had a group, it was called the Minorities at the College Computing, and that was my safe haven really. So all the Black computer science majors, everybody who is in the college of computing showed up at M@CC. I got to meet so many great people who I’m still great friends with, been to their weddings, been at all these kinds of things. And so it wasn’t something that I wasn’t accustomed to, but it was not necessarily the kind of experience that I knew I wanted for myself. So I knew I had to make a space for myself in that way.

Justin James Lopez:
And it sounds like that’s a theme in your life as well because now even at Amazon you are a part of BEN Design. Tell me a little bit more about that, whatever you can talk about.

Khalen Morehead:
Yeah, absolutely. BEN Design is a new organization, relatively new, about a year old. And so I am recently this year elected as one of the leads along with Donald Burlock Jr who you interviewed already.

Justin James Lopez:
Oh yeah, nice.

Khalen Morehead:
And some of the other board members, Morgan Burton and Camille Anderson. And the whole objective of BEN Design is really trying to, one, create a communal space for Black designers at the whole of Amazon and trying to find a place where we can just come together, let your hair down, just talk and just be ourselves and make a space for ourselves. But also trying to look towards ways that we can advance Black people within design at Amazon and even outside as well and trying to bridge certain external relationships to hopefully elevate the brand and bring in more Black designers at all sorts of levels. I think one of the big things that we’re really looking forward to this year is trying to focus a lot on ... Previously the last two years with everything that’s gone on since 2020, we saw this big push in BEN Design and in the whole of Amazon I think really in recruiting Black people and bringing just more Black talent into the company.

And so we’re like, well, we have that talent now, we’re still finding ways of getting them, but we’re also not necessarily getting them at high enough levels. We want to see not just more Black faces but more Black faces at higher positions of authority within the company, just higher levels. And so how can we help people get promoted, and what can we do to help people get on the track. So that’s really a big goal for us this year.

Justin James Lopez:
In general, from the workforce planning perspective, it makes sense to focus on higher tier, higher level candidates because it’s ... Again, talking about the psychology of things, when you think about organizational psychology, people hire people like them. And if we’re consistently doing that, it’s always going to be an uphill battle when there’s no people like us in those levels. So that’s 100% fair. I want to go back to a comment that you made about BEN Design, I’m going to ask you this question. What did you mean by that when it comes to your daily job or just you coming into work? I relate to the comment, but I want to hear what you meant by that.

Khalen Morehead:
I think in a lot of ways there’s just the politics of being in an office space and being in a corporate space. It’s something that just comes with your work no matter where you are, what level you are, any of that kind of stuff. I think just as an employee you have a certain professional self-image that you want to portray and that you try to carry throughout the day in the way you interact with people and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, I don’t think that always does a service to you individually. I think it’s a way for people to just get by on a nine to five sort of basis. But you also need to have space for the happy hours, for the time where you get to just connect with people.

In the last two years of being at home, I think that’s the thing that I’ve missed most about work is just the ability to go in and to connect with the other people physically around me. That was my greatest joy out of my work a lot of times was just being in a communal space with people who I really liked and just got to know better. So we wanted to make sure that we brought that back, but then also with an appreciation for the fact that as a Black person in corporate America, I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily the kind of environment that we created for ourselves initially. Just historically, it’s been not necessarily designed for us. And so as Black designers, I think it is our duty really to make things for us, by us in that sense and try to have places and spaces where we can commune and we can just really connect and talk about anything that may be bothering us but also just what brings us joy, what brings us happiness and making black joy a part of your prescribed day.

Justin James Lopez:
I love that, I love that. I absolutely love that, making black joy as a part of your prescribed day. So as a part of your personal journey in design and in giving back, what I’m hearing a lot, and correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing a lot is you’ve had certain experiences that ... And you speak to them really eloquently. I’ll give you credit to that because behind that I also hear a lot of struggle, a lot of pain having to deal with some of these things, especially on your own as far as being the only person existing in this space. Not seeing a lot of representation, but still taking the strides. But you then have learned from those feelings and emotions and experiences that you’ve been through and focus on how can you create better spaces so that other people don’t necessarily have to experience that? And as a part of that, I’m familiar with the fact that you also have your own, podcast. Talk to me a little bit about what the origin point for your podcast was, and what do you use it for?

Khalen Morehead:
So the podcast, we have a YouTube channel, it’s called Bold Design, go check it out. Shameless plug. The whole point of the project really came about with my friend Cameron as well as another friend of ours [Wixell]

Justin James Lopez:
This is the same Cameron from college?

Khalen Morehead:
Yes. Cameron Luck, he’s been a recurring person in my life since college. He’s actually married to my cousin, which is a whole funny story because I didn’t know she was my cousin at the time. I have a huge family, it’s a whole thing. So he’s technically related to me by marriage but we were friends even before that. And so he was the one who actually referred me to Amazon the first time I came through here, and so that was how I ended up here. So he’s been a big part of my life. But we’ve also just really been great collaborators over the years. When we were in college, we spent a lot of time working on music, videos, video games, movies, all these kinds of things. And so I think that naturally just worked for us to move into a space where Cameron, [Wixell] and I are all UX designers, we were all at Amazon at the time.

And we wanted to start a platform honestly that could bring in new talent to UX design, that could really teach UX design in a career oriented way. And we saw just a lack in the space that’s out there now as far as ... You get to like some basic stuff, and that’s right. But then it just kind of peters out after that. And there wasn’t a lot to really tell you about how to get into tech, how to get into larger tech companies, how to present yourself in your portfolio and how you need to curate these portfolio pieces in different ways and speak to different things. And so what we really wanted to do was make sure that we were attracting a lot of black and brown talent honestly. People who looked like us, people who came from underserved communities or didn’t have traditional college education and those kinds of resources to be able to ... Who felt the need to get into design for whatever reason or who was making a late career stage change.

And that was really where it all came about. And so for us to make something that we felt could reach those people, we were like, this would be great as far as, like we were saying, that recruitment side and trying to bring people into the fold and get more Black people honestly into design.

Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, I love that. So trying to change, what is it, the 3%, trying to raise that percentage. I actually spoke to Timothy Bardlavens about that in a previous episode where he was discussing how that number really historically just hasn’t really moved, which is pretty disturbing in many ways.

Khalen Morehead:
Pretty damning in a lot of ways.

Justin James Lopez:
So you’re working on filling that gap in your own way with the, you said Bold Design podcast?

Khalen Morehead:
So actually Bold Design is the name of the YouTube channel, but the podcast itself is called The DeCypher Podcast.

Justin James Lopez:
And that’s what I was getting at earlier, that the idea of taking your experience and saying, this could be so useful to other people. And I’m not sure, was that a conscious decision or was that just, I just want to do a thing, and if it happens to help people, then it happens to help people? I want the honest answer here.

Khalen Morehead:
I think it’s a little bit of both. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. As far as if I had to pick one over the other, I think there was definitely more of an objective in us doing this as opposed to other creative projects I’ve done in the past where it’s like, I just want to do a thing, I really have a cool idea I want to execute on or something like that. This was something that it was a mission, and I felt in a lot of ways a sense of purpose behind it. I think what we should be doing as sort of the, I don’t even want to say the first generation of Black designers because there have been Black designers all throughout history and people who have just not gotten the kind of recognition that they deserve.

But I think we’re getting to a place where it’s like, this is probably the largest generation of Black designers that we’ve had and trying to pave the way so that way we can bring in that next generation and trying to do things to put people onto game early on because there are just things that you won’t learn otherwise unless someone’s there to teach you. I personally have always had a very strong ethos of each one, teach one. This is a tribal knowledge sort of profession in a lot of ways. The point should be that we’re trying to make these, not just whatever products we’re working on better, but whatever places work better. And hopefully through our work, we could make the world ultimately a better place. I feel the need to do something to help with that. And if this is my way, then perfect, and I’m going to try and do that to the best of my ability.

Justin James Lopez:
Absolutely, love that. You’re doing a lot, Khalen, you’re doing a lot. I think it’s really easy for us to forget how much we are doing and how much our impact has because the world is so big that we don’t realize that we’re all pieces to a puzzle. And it’s important to make sure that you manifest your piece appropriately so that it fits appropriately on the puzzle instead of trying to be the puzzle itself. So if you haven’t heard it lately, you’re doing a lot. I appreciate the work that you’re doing with Bold Design, with BEN Design and just, being an example for the people that come behind you. Thank you Khalen for joining me on on the Black Stories podcast and sharing your story here.

Khalen Morehead:
Absolutely. I appreciate being here, thanks for having me.