Designing Your Life: Lessons In Courage, Creativity, And Connection With Ayse Birsel

Forget everything you think you know about life planning. In this captivating episode, Ayse Birsel joins Tony Martignetti, to share her inspiring career journey as a designer, emphasizing the concept of life as a design project. Ayse doesn’t just design products, she designs lives. From defying family expectations to pioneering innovative designs for everyday products like toilets, Ayse’s experiences illuminate the power of embracing the unknown. Learn from her inspiring journey and discover how you can design the life you love. 

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Designing Your Life: Lessons In Courage, Creativity, And Connection With Ayse Birsel

Introduction

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Ayse Birsel. Ayse is one of the world's leading industrial designers. She has designed hundreds of products from toilet seats to office systems, potato peelers, and concept cars. You've probably held or sat on something she has designed for Herman Miller, Knoll, Target, or Toyota among many others. Her work has earned her several nicknames, Queen of Toilets, Queen B for Office Systems, and Design Evangelista given to her by Mauro Porcini, Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo.

Interior Design Magazine awarded her Best of Year Product Designer for 2020. She's one of the Fast Company's most creative people in business. She's named one of the world's top eight coaches by Thinkers50 for the Marshall Goldsmith Distinguished Achievement Award for coaching and mentoring. She's the author of Design the Life You Love and is recognized as the number one coach for life design.

Her new book, Design the Long Life You Love, was published in December 2022. Her design process, Deconstruction: Reconstruction, is the red thread across all her work. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art or MoMA. It’s amazing. Ayse was born in Turkey and came to New York City with a Fulbright scholarship where she lives and works. I am so honored and thrilled to welcome you to the show, Ayse.

Tony, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.

It's truly amazing. I've watched all of the things that we listed in your intro. I would say that I’m such a fan of not only the writing you do on LinkedIn and all different places but your books are amazing. The things that you talk about resonate deeply with me and many others. I'm thrilled to have you on and to share your story with the people who are reading.

I'm excited that you're connecting me with your audience. Thank you.

As we do in the show, we share what's called your flashpoint moments. We want to get people to understand what was the journey that brought you to do all these amazing things in the world. Oftentimes people think, “Look at these superstars. How did they come that?” We don't just arrive. We have to develop and come through these moments in life. These flashpoints are the points that reveal our gifts. I'd love to have you share some of those moments. As you're sharing, we'll pause along the way and see what themes show up.

I'm telling a friend of mine at Deloitte about 10X-ing my life and the exponential growth that comes from going toward the unknown. When you talk about flashpoints, that's what comes to my mind. I don't know if that's what you had in mind.

When you think about it, there's a sense of propelling you to that next place in your life where life cannot be the same as it used to and the light goes on. All of a sudden, you sparked into something different.

I grew up in Turkey. One of those moments was when I decided to become a designer. I come from a family of lawyers. It was expected of me to go in that direction but then I fell in love with the human scale of industrial design and had to do that. That's one of the key moments in my life that shaped me Coming to New York was one of those moments. I have to live in New York. It’s hard to say where that came from, except when I was 12 or 13, I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I fell in love with that book and that girl who was growing up in Brooklyn.

That idea of living in Brooklyn or New York became something that attracted me. I found myself in New York. I went to Pratt Institute to do my Master's. As I was graduating, Bruce Hanna, who is the Chairperson of the Design Department, invited me to design products with him. That became my first collaboration and the first product on the market that had my name on it together with Bruce's. That was another one of those moments where I thought, “I've arrived.” I knew very little about having a design studio. Sometimes not knowing is the best thing because I didn't realize what I didn't know. That gave me a lot of courage. I've been designing products ever since.

Breakthroughs In Design Career

What was it like for your family? Did they support you when you were making the leap into saying, “I want to be a designer. I don't want to be a lawyer?” Did you start the path to design while you were in Turkey or was it like, “I had to go to New York and start there.” Tell me about those early days.

My parents were very supportive. I was a good child and also obedient. They were very understanding and supportive. The one time where they quite agreed with me was when I said I wanted to go to New York. Even though this was an idea that they knew about and supported, when the time came for me to go to graduate school in New York, I got the feeling that they were a little bit afraid of that idea and that it wasn't going to be easy for them. I went out and got myself a Fulbright scholarship. I applied for it and I was lucky I got it. I went home and said, “You seem to be hesitating but I'm going.” That was the first time I did not obey my parents. It's been an ongoing story ever since.

It's an interesting thing that sometimes people misunderstand or don't appreciate, especially people from the United States. It's a big journey and leap to come into another country, start a journey, go against what is expected, and then do something out of character or maybe not out of character but it's a brave move. It takes a lot of courage to come to a new country and be alone. You're leaping into the unknown but then also realizing that even the career you're getting into is something that requires a lot of unknown parameters of what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and who's going to support you on the journey. One thing I'll point out is that I loved how you shared people taking a chance on you, believing in you, and then having those people support you is important.

It's huge. I've had my share of those people who supported me, believed in me, and continue to do that. As we move in my story, I'll share some more names with you but it's one of the most fortunate things to come across those people. John Walters has this funny book. I can't quite remember the name of it but in it, he says, “You only need one person to believe in you as long as it's not your mother.” I've had my mom and others luckily.

Let's continue on the path. Tell me more about what happened next. Here you are in the world of design and starting to have some breakthroughs and people supporting you. What happens next?

What happened next was I went for a long while after that wonderful project with Bruce Hanna, which was office accessories for Knoll. I couldn't find any work and I had a great beginning. Suddenly for a couple of years, it was slow going. At one point, I thought, “Maybe I should have become a lawyer after all.” I seriously started considering going back to school and studying law.

I had another break. Tucker Viemeister, who was one of the Cofounders of Smart Design and who's become a dear friend, knew of my work and sent my thesis, The Water Room, to TOTO, which is the world's largest manufacturer of plumbing products, toilets, bathrooms, and bathroom fixtures. TOTO was doing a seminar about world cultures on bathrooms. They were inviting people from all over the world. Tucker was going. They needed someone from the Middle East.

Tucker sent my thesis and said, “You need to invite this woman. She's from Turkey. She should be able to speak to bathroom cultures in the Middle East.” That was also a life-shaping moment or a flash moment of founding myself in Japan and eventually got invited to come and work for TOTO for one year where I lived in Tokyo and then Kokura, which is where the headquarters of TOTO is. I designed the first washlets for the American market. That was quite fabulous as well. Going into the unknown and living in Japan at the time was amazing and also very hard. I was young, a woman, and a designer. The combination was hard but I learned a lot.

There are two things that I hear from you. It's not always an easy path. To borrow from our friend Dorie, it's a long game. Sometimes on that path, you think you're doing the right thing and doing the right thing but all of a sudden, you get challenged. You're not sure. You’re like, “Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing.” You have to continue to strengthen your resolve and know that the hard times are tests.”

I love the connection you made to Dorie. Yes, the long game and staying in the game.

We're glad you did because there are so many great things about what we've accomplished along the way. Also thinking that some people maybe would have shied away from the opportunity. They’re like, “It's toilets. Why would I want to do anything with that?” These are the things that are needed. There are also opportunities to open the door to bigger things that go beyond that. We can't snub our nose at anything. Every opportunity is an opportunity to show what we're made of.

I'm so glad you bring that up because I often joke with people and say, “There are not many designers who've designed toilets. I'm very proud to have designed toilets.” They were the neglected products but that is a great opportunity. If it's a chair, you have hundreds and thousands of beautiful chairs. It's an iconic product to design. With toilets, few people do it so that gives an opportunity to lead the market and that's exactly what happened for me. It’s funny that I said chairs because I designed the toilet seat like a chair in the way I did my chair. It’s my throne.

Japan must have been an amazing learning experience, not only for the culture shock but also for the ability to see what it's like, how they think of design, and where they were leading things at the time. This is not yesterday. This was a while back. When you came back from Japan, I'm assuming you left Japan and came back to New York or someplace else, how did that all change the way you looked at things?

When you go from New York to Japan, it takes time to adapt but then coming back from Japan to New York, it also took me time to adapt. It wasn't so easy because I loved what I was doing in Japan. I was ready to come back but there was nothing waiting for me in terms of work. I felt like I had to start from scratch. “Why aren't people calling me? Don't they know? I'm an amazing designer.” What happened is I had another person who believed in me, Ralph Caplan, who was the Editor-in-Chief of ID Magazine and the author of the seminal book, By Design.

She introduced me to the folks at Herman Miller. I didn't know it at the time but the people at Herman Miller were looking for young designers. He said, “Here's a young designer from Turkey who lives in New York.” That was my introduction through Ralph to Herman Miller. The reason I'm mentioning it is because you mentioned coming back from Japan. I just came back from Japan. I couldn't show them the toilet seat, which was what I had been working on so intensely for one year.

The only thing I could do was describe it to them because the product was still an industry secret. Years later, they told me that they decided to work with me at that moment because they thought, “If this woman can do this with a toilet seat in Japan with Japanese engineers, imagine what she can do to office systems with our engineers at Michigan.” That was the turning point and the a-ha for them and me that opened up the doors to my working with Herman Miller as an external studio for more than twenty years.

They see you as somebody who can take on a tough challenge in a different environment and design your way out of it.

What I liked about is that Herman Miller is incredibly innovative with their products. They're the makers of the iconic Aeron Chair and many other things. I didn't know anything about office systems at the time and they saw that as an advantage. They thought, “She doesn't know. She's never designed office systems. It'll be interesting to see how she thinks about office systems.” I always talk about turning a challenge into an opportunity. They could have said, “She knows nothing about office systems. Therefore, we're not going to work with her.” Rather they said the opposite. They saw that as an advantage. I'm forever grateful.

Transition To Writing And Life Design

You have to put yourself in those places that allow you to be seen and then people take chances on you. That is a big thing. It wasn't like they took a chance on somebody who was some random person. You were in their view and you had at least proven yourself to some extent that you had an ability but you still weren't proven in their arena. They said, “We've got someone here.” Tell me what happens next because I would love to get to the point where we're starting to talk about what made you think about branching out beyond design and thinking more into this place of writing books and thinking about life design, which you have done.

Tony, my dad used to tell me, “Ayse, you need to write a book.” He would say that again and again. I would look at him and go, “Dad, I'm a designer. Why would I write a book?” It's almost like he knew and saw something that I couldn't see. In the end, I listened to my dad and wrote a book and then another book. I'm in the process of writing a third book.

How did that happen? It happened because in 2008 when the economy crashed, at that time, I was partners with my husband, Bibi Seck. We had this very successful small design firm in New York, Birsel + Seck, which we still do. We were designing. We had kids so we were parenting and creating this life together. Suddenly, the economy crashed and almost all our clients took their work in house, which was unexpected for me. We were successful so we'll continue designing stuff.

A life where I didn't design products was unimaginable to me. For our clients, it made a lot of sense. We were on the outside. They had to cut budgets. It was easier to take Ayse and Bibi out of their budget cycle. I had this one year where we had no work. I'm a business person as well so I'm responsible for finding new projects. I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find employment. That was frustrating.

We had two little kids. My stepson was a teenager and you're like, “Who's going to take care of these kids?” I've talked about difficulty but that was a difficult moment. There was one person who believed in me and that was Leah Caplan. Leah is one of my oldest friends and collaborators. She and I met when we were both working at Cato Gobe where I was freelancing and she was my boss. She's younger than I and yet she was my boss. I joke about it.

She's still my boss. She tells me what to do and I'll do it. Leah saw an opportunity in this moment and she said, “Look, you have all this time in your hands. Why don't you use this time to think about how you think? You think differently.” To me, that was like a lifeline. I thought, “If Leah thinks that I have something to offer, that’s enough for me. She's not my mom.” I did that.

I spent a year, while I was looking for work, journeying into myself. By that time, I had 15 or 20 years of industrial design experience, designing some incredible products for some incredible clients. I feel very lucky. How does that happen? How do I go from what I know to what I can imagine? That's when I developed Deconstruction: Reconstruction, my design process. Two things happened. One, we showed that process to GE. GE was at the height of its success. They were one of the top 10 companies in the world at the time and they loved the process.

They said, “Why don't you deconstruct and reconstruct five of our businesses and tell us about the value of design?” That was the first time we did a strategic project using this process. That was a turning point. The other was I had this belief that our life is our biggest project. When I had Deconstruction: Reconstruction as a design process, I thought, “I wonder if I can apply this process to my life, almost like a proof point.” I did that.

Our life is our biggest project.

One of my friends, Shirley Moulton, also had started a company called The ACADEMi of Life. She said, “Ayse, why don't you give a workshop on this for The ACADEMi of Life?” I was like, “Okay.” I had never done any workshops before. I developed a workshop around design and how to apply the process to your life and every subset of your life. That was the turning point.

There are so many things I want to react to here but one of the things you made me think of is the quote from Picasso, “Every act of creation starts with an act of destruction,” or something to that effect. I probably butchered his quote and I'm sure I did. It's an important thing to start with. What do I have to stop doing or take apart before I start to create? It's a powerful thing to even think about the way you navigated this period.

You struggled through a very difficult period. Sometimes we have to go through a difficult period to know what else is possible. There are a lot of people going through a difficult period. If you've been through one before, then you know how to get yourself out of it. You become more resilient. You're able to figure out how to take those obstacles and turn them into opportunities a little more powerfully, as opposed to floundering and saying, “I'm going to throw the towel in and give up.”

It seems to be a recurring theme in my life. A lot of creative people and founders have these ups and downs. Over time, you become more of an optimist but when you're in it, it sucks. It's afterward. In hindsight, you're like, “I'm so grateful that I discovered Design the Life You Love.” It transforms lives because that's what design does. I'm very grateful but it's not one of my favorite years. Let me put it that way.

Going through that but then also having this beautiful thing at the end, which is, “I'm not the only one have read that book and said it.” It's simple yet it's so easy to understand once they've read the book, been able to do the exercises, and seen it being applied in their lives. How powerful can that be? When you treat your life as a project to design, it's powerful.

You're making me smile ear to ear. Thank you so much for hearing that from you. Call me every day.

You can call me up and ask whatever you need to ask me. Tell me more about what happens next. This first book was published. You start to get a little heavier into this world of workshops, speaking, and things like that. You're a designer at heart and you still are. Tell me how you balance the next chapter of your life where you continue to almost have a portfolio effect of things going on. It sounds like you were creative in pounds after the book was published. Maybe I'm wrong.

Thank you. I'm glad you see that. It's yes and yes. The book opened opportunities or projects. A lot of it is serendipity. When you listen to people about luck, there's a big piece of that. Part of it is also going towards the unknown because you say something and something happens. A couple of things like that happened to me that were formative. One was when I gave a talk at Amazon and talked about Design the Life You Love. At the time, my team and I were interested in older people because we had young kids and older parents.

A lot of opened opportunities are serendipity. When you listen to people talk about luck, there's a big piece of that. Part of it is also going towards the unknown because you say something, and something happens.

We could see that there's so much for our young kids and so little for our aging parents. We had started doing some research into that. We wanted to work around projects for later life but there were no takers. I went to this conference at Amazon. We had an amazing host who's since become one of my dear friends, Anna. As I was leaving, I turned to her and said, “Anna, if you ever do something on aging and with older people, we'd love to work with you because there's so much need.” She looked at me and said, “I need you now.” I can tell you, Tony, people never say that.

When they do, you have to react.

It’s music to my ears. That was the beginning of our work with older people. With Amazon, that was one of their global projects, independent living, how to help people live longer at home and live well. We did Design the Life You Love but people who are 65 plus were in caregivers and people in nursing homes. I spoke at another conference at Amazon. The CEO of The SCAN Foundation, which is one of the premier policy making foundations in California, was there.

He saw me in action and then he came and talked to me afterwards. That was the beginning of our year-long research, traveling the States, researching people who are 65 and older, asking them to design their lives, and co-designing life with them. That became the second book, Design the Long Life You Love. These things don't happen all the time but when they do happen, if you can listen to them, pay attention, and go towards them, they can be amazing.

It's carpe diem. You seize those opportunities when they come and take advantage of them but we have to be in tuned and listen to them. Oftentimes, we're so busy trying to hustle through life. We don't listen to them. Maybe we think we got our blinders on and continue to do what's in front of us. It's important to be attuned to what's in front of us or what shows up, the serendipitous moments.

I agree with you. I sometimes feel like, “Was I listening? Did I miss something?” Before the show, you were talking about how you and I are both thinking about connections. My new work around Design Connections started like that, too. If you want, I'll tell you the story of that.

I would love that. You read my mind because that's where I was going to take us. Please share about Design Connections.

With The SCAN Foundation, we traveled the states from the East Coast to the West, down to the South, to Mississippi for one year. It was incredible. We finished it under the wire right before COVID hit because these were in person workshops. We published our reports and then we couldn't do anything. One of the things that we realized coming out of that research was that potentially the best thing that we had done was people who came to our workshops wanted to stay connected. These workshops had an incredible potential for making connections for older people and creating community.

I remember Bruce Chernoff, who was my client, and I had breakfast a couple weeks before COVID and we didn't realize it. We’re saying that phase two should be about creating communities using this methodology for older people and then COVID hit. We couldn't do anything. That's when I wrote the second book. I had all this time in my hands and didn't know what to do with that. I'm grateful that I could translate that time to do a second book about all the lessons we've learned from older people that we can use no matter what our age is around love, purpose, friendship, and well-being.

To make a long story short, after COVID, I went back to Bruce. Bruce has retired since after an amazing career. I said, “Bruce, that's what we had talked about. I'd love to continue this idea of helping people make connections. Would you be interested in doing that together? Are you in?” He said he was in. We started developing what this second phase could look like.

Surgeon General Dr. Murthy's report on loneliness and isolation comes out. Suddenly, we felt like we had one of the solutions and remedies. We don't have to explain the problem to anyone. It clearly states that this is a huge epidemic. Loneliness and isolation are the worst things you can do for your well-being. That's how Design Connections started.

Loneliness and isolation are the worst things you can do for your well-being.

It's wonderful for so many reasons. It has me come back to the idea that I'm part of an organization called Design Museum Everywhere. One of the things we always talk about is design is everywhere and it's under the surface of everything we do. When we apply it in the right measures, it can make an impact on everything we do, even how we connect. It's a beautiful concept. If we design connections, it can change the world. It's at the core of what you're doing here. What you have been doing is amazing. Seeing some of the things you've shared already, what is done is it's the start of something beautiful. Continue on this amazing path.

Thank you. I finished and came back from Alaska. We did our first pilot with The Mat-Su Health Foundation and the Council on Aging in Alaska. That itself was an incredibly serendipitous beginning of a project. Alaska is so far away in terms of population density. It’s very sparse. It was a magical and beautiful place where you can talk about loneliness and isolation with the fact that for half of the year, you're under very harsh conditions, snowed in, cold, and very little sunlight.

We got to work with these people kind enough to say, “Come on over.” We did that and it was simply amazing. We're in the process of putting our report in terms of what we've learned, measuring Design Connections before and after, and then bringing that as the people in Mat-Su will say, “Getting ready to bring that to the lower 48, which the rest of the state.”

I could talk to you for hours but I know we have to come to a close at some point.

I feel like I can talk to you for hours as well. Maybe we should do another second episode.

Piece Of Advice

Yes. I'm going to ask you a challenging question. I don't often ask these questions but this is one that I'm feeling an intuition to ask you. You've had a very amazing, full life, and interesting things that have happened along the way. If you were to share one piece of advice based on your journey, what's the one thing that you want to share with people that's on your heart that you want to share? What’s that one piece of advice?

Life is beautiful and a design project that is waiting for all of us to design our original life, a project that is our own and unique to us. Often we forget, myself included, that having an ever-changing vision for your life, thinking about your life like a designer with optimism and empathy, seeing the big picture, asking what-if questions, having an open mind, and also collaborating with people are the things that I think about when I get fearful or stagnant in my life and decide that the biggest learning comes from the unknown. Go towards the unknown and do it with design principles and design process. That's my approach.

You didn't disappoint here. This is amazing. What you shared is beautiful because, with that, it's not a design that's ever finished. You're constantly making improvements always. It's in beta mode. You're always thinking, “If I don't like what I currently see, I can always make a change and an adjustment.” Imperfectness is the aim. Would you agree?

As individuals, none of us are perfect. I feel like I learn constantly. Who I am is very different from who I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. I'm grateful for that.

Thank God for evolution. I think back and be like, “I'm a different person.” I'm thankful for that because there are so many things I've learned. One last question to ask you. What are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you and why?

There are so many books. My mind goes to non-fiction, even though I love fiction. Here are the two books. One of them is Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There. It's an incredibly simple but profound book on how to be a better person. I love that. I'm very lucky because I have met Marshall and he's become one of my dearest friends. He has taught me a lot.

The other book is The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, who's an amazing dancer and choreographer. It helped me create my creative habits. Both of these are timeless books and are co-authored by Mark Reiter, who has also become a dear friend. That is the weirdest serendipitous coincidence because when I read both of these books, I didn't know Mark Reiter. One day, I met him through Marshall and then we became friends. I realized it as he mentioned The Creative Habit. I was like, “You are that Mark Reiter?” Those are my favorite books that I keep next to my chair.

You blew my mind. First of all, I love those books too. Mark is the unknown person in the room but I’m like, “I'm going to go look this guy up and find out more about Mark.”

You should invite Mark to one of your episodes. He's an amazing storyteller. He has an amazing story himself and then he has a gift working with some of the top people in the world and making their stories accessible to the rest of us. If I may, Mark taught me a lesson, which I love. He came to this workshop that I did with another friend of mine, Ron Carucci, who wrote one of my third favorite books, To Be Honest. I read To Be Honest and then reached out to Ron. Dorie introduced us. I said, “Ron, designing your life is designing an honest life.” We started doing these workshops together where we bring design and psychology together.

Long story short, Mark came to one of the Design the Honest Life You Love sessions. In it, he said, “I want to design my friendships.” He gave this description that a friend is someone you can call without making an appointment no matter what time of the day. I thought, “I love that.” When the workshop was done, I called him up. He answered and I said, “I wanted to make sure that you're my friend.” and hung up. I want to invite everybody who's reading this to give that a try. Call someone without texting them, telling them, or making an appointment, and then say, “You're my friend.”

It’s a great way to close things out. I can't thank you enough for everything you've shared. This is a wonderful conversation. People who are reading are going to leave with so many great things to take away into their lives. Before I let you go, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming on the show.

That's so so kind. Tony, thank you so much for inviting me. This was lovely. I felt like I was talking to a friend, which you are. Thank you for all your support. When I see you liking something on LinkedIn and making a comment, it makes my day. Thank you for following up on that and saying, “Why don't you come to my show?” I feel honored.

I'm so glad I did. Sometimes, you have to take a chance and see what happens. Before I let you go, one last thing. Where's the best place for people to reach out to you if they want to learn more about you?

Thank you for asking that. They can go to AyseBirsel.com/Newsletter. They can subscribe to my newsletter. First of all, in the newsletter, every week, I talk about whatever is top of mind like the projects that I'm working on or the things that I'm working through myself. They'll also see connections to connecting me and Leah, who's part of my team.

I will tell you firsthand that they want to go subscribe because it’s wonderful insights and such great things that you share. Thanks again. Thanks to the readers for coming on the journey with us. I know you're leaving inspired.

Important Links

• Ayse Birsel
• Design the Life You Love
• Design the Long Life You Love
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• By Design
• Design Museum Everywhere
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There
• The Creative Habit
• To Be Honest
• AyseBirsel.com/Newsletter

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