In this episode Tyson speaks to Marie Potel-Saville known as “a legal design superhero”, Founder & CEO of Amurabi, a legal innovation and design agency.

Amurabi has a multidisciplinary approach to legal design, using various areas of design; service design, strategy, graphic design, UX design in their methodology to bridge the gap between the law and its users.

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Tyson Ballard: Welcome to the next edition of the Legal Dispatch. I’m Tyson Ballard, head of consulting for SYKE and I’m joined today with the wonderful Marie Patel, Marie Patel-Saville which I just found out. I’ve seen that you’re called a legal design superhero in the media and founder of Amurabi,  the legal design agency.

So if you want to follow Marie, you can on the Twitter handle, it’s @MariePotelSavil , S-a-v-i-l,  not the l-e. And also check out their website amurabi.eu. Welcome, Marie. Thank you. So great to have you. I’m really excited to have this chat after seeing you talk in Berlin, which was a wonderful talk.

So yeah, so welcome.

Marie Potel-Saville: Thank you so much Tyson, and it’s my pleasure to be with you today.

Tyson Ballard: Excellent. So maybe if we can just start by telling us what you do and who you work for.

Marie Potel-Saville: Of course. So what do I do? I created Amurabi, which is a legal innovation and design agency. That was back in 2018.

So I worked for this agency, along with the team obviously. And what do we do? Our mission is to bridge the gap between the law and its users. We believe that there are not any laws which impose legal information to be incomprehensible.

We don’t know of any of these laws. We do know, however that there is a higher standard of clarity and accessibility of information that is imposed by the law. And therefore, that’s the topic we tackle. We transform blind signed contracts or, compliance programs that no one would ever want to read unless they were really into problem-solving into solutions that empower users to make their own informed choices and therefore free choices. Does that make sense at all?

Tyson Ballard: Yeah absolutely. I know a little bit about Amurabi, but you also take an interesting approach to solving that problem really in also in terms of the resources that you have.

So do you want to explain a little bit about your team and the makeup of your team? To me that is really interesting and I think a very different approach to the “just stick a bunch of lawyers and in a room” and try and solve the problem.

Marie Potel-Saville: For sure. For sure.

So our methodology is a combination of user-centricity, which is obviously inspired by design and design thinking. Since I’ve discovered neurosciences, I’ve really wondered why it’s not taught in law school. Plain language because it’s completely possible to keep the precision of the law while removing the jargon and obviously all the depth and fantastic results of design.

The various areas of design, whether it’s service design, strategy, graphic design, UX design. So that’s the combination of methodology that we use. And obviously, our team reflects that multidisciplinary approach. So of course there are designers in the team. We’ve got the fantastic Isabella, a senior UX designer.

With over 10 years of experience we’ve got graphic designers like Cami and GMAT neurosciences experts. So this is really important to us. I’m not, unfortunately, a neuroscience expert, but we are lucky to have a partnership with the awesome Doin Ashby. She is the founder of ‘Neuro At Work’ and she’s absolutely instrumental in everything that we do, and also who’s a PhD in neurosciences.

And of course, we also have project managers. Because what we do is obviously a radical change in the legal industry. And so change management is an integral part of our projects and services.

Tyson Ballard: Excellent. It’s truly fascinating.

Maybe switching it up a little bit and more talking about yourself, what does an average day look like for Marie at Amurabi and also maybe just surrounding the work as well?

Marie Potel-Saville: So interestingly, there’s really no typical day, and that’s also what I like about it.

My Monday could be more like managing the team and inspiring them. And then organizing projects with the project managers and then switching to researching the topics that we really care about, for example, dark patterns and then giving a conference, it’s really the variety of my days, which I love.

Yesterday I was giving a conference in front of hundreds and hundreds of people remotely explaining what we do, explaining the methodology and that’s also what matters. I think there’s no regular day, but it’s always a combination. It’s always focused on users. It’s always caring about who we are caring for, who are the end users of legal documents, of legal information, and legal apps and inspiring them to reject the status quo. That’s probably another key feature in our days. We never take that for granted. We always wonder, how could we make that better? How could we turn that problem into an inspiring solution. I’m sorry it’s not very precise , but there’s really no typical day

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, with the founders and CEO’s it is hard to find a regular day because it is quite varied from travel to managing the team to keeping your true north in terms of your strategy and things like that.

I’m always fascinated about morning rituals as well, like in terms of do you get up, do you meditate or do you check your emails before you get outta bed? Or, do you take a coffee or a tea or what are your morning rituals and habits and do you stick to those?

Marie Potel-Savile: Very good question. So for a long time, I had very bad habits. I’m fortunately and unfortunately a product of 10 years of Magic Circle. And that was a fairly long time ago, so even worse than it’s probably now by then. Yeah, so to be perfectly honest, it took me a lot of time to get out of these very bad habits, which is, for example, what you said about checking your emails the minute you wake up.

So unfortunately, I did that for a long time and thankfully thanks to all the work I’ve done with a coach and also just personal development. I don’t check my emails when I wake up. I completely stopped doing that. I don’t check my emails in the evening as well, just before going to sleep, obviously.

And yes, indeed a couple of years ago I started meditating in the morning. To be honest, it’s a bit complex. To combine that with family life and kids waking up, having to take them to school and, it’s a bit of a juggle. But basically I wake up, like 10 minutes earlier than I should and do my meditation on an app.

I’m an absolute fan of Headspace. And that’s how I start my day. And then the craziness begins, to be perfectly honest. I have two kids at different schools juggling with everything, but it really helps.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. I sympathize and yeah, I have two kids and it’s pretty much identical in terms of the situation. And I’m just hoping that they don’t wake up before you do so you can get that time in.

I think it is, it’s quite important to remove yourself from the digital realm at some point. Like what other kind of ways and do you remove yourself from that?

Marie Potel-Saville: Because we are so focused on neurosciences and I learned so much from our neuroscience experts I realized that this craziness that we all went through during the lockdowns, having back-to-back video calls all day. Yeah, that was absolute madness. We now realize it, and you’ve got studies even from Microsoft, which is perhaps not the most concerned company about people’s well-being.

Even they acknowledge the fact that it’s really bad for your brain. And we set up calls. So we set up our calendar on Google to have, or what to always have at 10 minute breaks before between the calls. And so it’s 25 minutes calls or 50 minutes.

And in between the calls, I always do a small meditation. That’s my way, you could do something else. You could go, I don’t know if you are remote working, then you could, I don’t know, have a walk in your garden or whatever. But I really use Headspace. It’s so convenient and so I do that.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. I do find with Headspace that it can put you in a place very quickly within, almost like within 30 seconds of just taking your mind off what you’ve just done recently in terms of that.

And I do find, and I’d be interested to know in terms of the neuroscience about this, but it’s incredibly hard to finish a meeting, just go straight into the next meeting about a different topic and be really present. And it’s almost like 3, 2, 1, back in the room. And not having that break in between is not healthy, I’m sure.

Marie Potel-Saville: Yeah, the neurosciences behind it are very clear. Basically you’ve got studies where two groups of people have been assigned the same tasks. And that included video calls.

One group had back-to-back calls and then had to perform the said list of tasks. The other group had shorter calls with meditation in between, and you can even see the brain images: the first group is really a stress for the brain. And that goes back to the very simple mechanism of our brain, which is to save its energy.

So, that’s the way our brain works, like all the time. It always keeps like a reason of energy just in case there’s a sudden danger and you need to either run away or fight back. So we always try to save our energy and what information overload does to our brain. Therefore, because we’re trying to save this energy, information overload is just too much.

So we shut our brain, basically, we shut our learning process. And that’s what happens when you go, from one call to the other because it’s just too much for the brain. It’s information overload and it’s hugely inefficient. And in this study, it’s fascinating when you see not just the images of the brain, fairly like blue, and green, the other one is completely red. And the efficiency in the tasks that were assigned to both groups is just completely different. So really once and for all, we should all stop that madness of believing that we can either multitask, this is really an urban legend

We can’t multitask. And again, tons of studies backing that. And we can’t just go from one call to the other.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, no, it’s really interesting topic and I wondered, I’m always striving to adopt, but yeah, not always a hundred percent succeeding, unfortunately. But, definitely food for thought.

What about what is the most challenging thing that you find about your role as founder and CEO?

Marie Potel-Saville: To be honest the most difficult is to be on my own. And of course there’s a team. Of course, I’ve got partnerships and I’m developing those partnerships. But ultimately, the weight on my shoulders.

And the fact that it’s difficult to share that weight. And also the feeling that I should be the one working the most. And that’s completely normal. And you can never, and you shouldn’t expect from anyone in the team to dedicate as much energy as you do. You’re always the one giving more, and that’s absolutely the way it should be.

I’m not saying anything to the contrary, but ultimately yeah, it feels lonely.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. Because I guess obviously when some people start a business they do it with a partner. And you do have that kind of joint ownership, joint weight on your shoulders.

Did you entertain that idea when you were starting Amurabi or it didn’t eventuate in that way?

Marie Potel-Saville: No. Actually, I never wanted to set up a company on my own. That’s where it wasn’t my intent at all. So what happened was that I used to be a GC at Esau.  And I had experimented legal design in my own legal division, and it completely transformed my own practice of law there was like a lock-in effect after experimenting that it actually works and that it’s so satisfying.

I just couldn’t go back to the older templates. It was impossible. So I had to take the leap and to do so at the time I had actually hired a provider for one of my projects. They were called ‘Dot’ in Finland.

Fantastic team of super-talented lawyers and designers. We really got along very well. Up to the point where they said, you know what, Marie, you seem to really enjoy that. How about opening the Paris office or something like that, for ‘Dot.’ And so that’s really how it started. Otherwise, to be honest, I’m not sure I would’ve leapt into something completely unknown.

So I had the backup of ‘Dot’ in Finland. And they were super helpful and supportive, so that was awesome. What happened then was that very quickly the Paris office boomed. And by the way, I’m saying the Paris office, but it was actually my own company.

Legally. Structurally it’s just that we had this agreement that we would share resources and it was basically a gentleman’s agreement. And a trademark license basically. But legally and structurally it was my own company. It’s just that the minute I appeared on the market, clients came very quickly.

And so this sharing of resources which we had initially envisaged, quickly proved not to work because I needed people full-time.  And so gradually I started to hire people and then I started also to develop the brand. And at some point, I thought this does not make much sense to develop a brand that I don’t own.

And also if it’s my own team, then well. So we had a discussion and really I love everyone at ‘Dot’. We had a discussion trying to sort it out whether to purchase their brand or how it could work at that time. They also were wondering where should their agency go? So they were a bit unsure.

And so basically we decided, to call it today in terms of our gentleman’s agreement. And so I just created my own brand, but basically, it was the same company, the same team, and it just grew from there. But we’re still very much friends and I love everything they do.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, that’s a great story.

But almost very similar to our CEO at SYKE with the work that he did at ASDA in terms of transforming ASDA and then being a bit of a disgruntled employee because it was ‘what’s next and what else can I do?’ And things like that.

I’m always interested like in the internal conversation that you had with yourself and what made you do that leap? What was the discussion you had with yourself? And or your partner and tell us that story in terms of like almost it’d be great because, there must be one moment that says, all right, I’m gonna take the leap and it must be scary.

Marie Potel-Saville: So there were two defining moments in that internal conversation with myself and I talk a lot to myself. But there was the first defining moment, I was still a GC, and I decided to go to the Legal Design summit in Helsinki. That was in 2017. And it had actually happened in two different moments.

So first I attended the Brain Factory, which was before the summit. It was a 48 hours design sprint or hackathon or whatever you’re calling it. Anyway, was 48 hours. Super intensive in small groups with mentors. And we were supposed to deliver a new solution to an old problem.

Interestingly, but when I went there, what I was telling myself was: “Okay, this looks interesting this methodology”. I had researched everything about the legal design lab at Stanford. I had explored all of that, but I really had my doubts about how could this even work.

If this is true, this is such a radical change. It’s almost impossible. But definitely, I should find out by myself whether it works or not, or whether it’s just a nice idea. And what happened during the Brain Factory was that I really felt like my brain was opening up.

How can I explain that? So maybe just to take a step back to when I was in Magic Circle law firms, it was obviously very interesting technical work, but I felt that my brain was shrinking like almost lacking oxygen. It’s odd, I know. It seems strange because it’s so interesting technically.

I had that feeling of my brain shrinking and it was the exact opposite during the Brain Factory. My brain I don’t know, expanded. That’s the feeling I had. And so I had to leave Helsinki to attend a couple of meetings as a GC with my fellow VPs, et cetera.

So I went back to Paris and then I went back to Helsinki two days afterwards for the summit. And really the conversation I had with myself was like: “Okay I’m home at last. This is what I want to do.” I had felt quite lonely in the past, in terms of trying to find solutions and I don’t necessarily care about finding solutions, it depends.

But yeah so I really felt at home last, so that was the first defining moment. So then of course, I came back to my position as a GC, wondering how I could sort this for myself. And then the other defining moment was when I did further experiments in my own legal division with specialized providers.

And the other defining moment was when some of my fellow VPs after training I had delivered using legal design, knocked on my door after the training saying: “Hey, look I had no idea that legal training could be so not just interesting, but also empowering us to actually get into action without contradicting our business goals.”

I had no idea it could be like that. “Could you please train my whole team?” And to be honest, this never happens. When you deliver legal training, you know the best you could achieve is have people politely trying to keep up with what you’re saying. But the reality is they are behind that desk, checking their emails, doing other stuff and they run away from it at the first opportunity.

So this was really the other defining moment where I thought, “Okay, if business people want more of this, then that’s the solution.” And yeah, it really helped me make the leap.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, really interesting story. It takes a lot of guts, I think, to go from Magic Circle to two really prestigious GC roles in Chanel and Estee Lauder.

And then making the leap on your own based on some newfound idea that you’ve just seen in a four-day workshop or two days. So yeah, huge kudos to you. Maybe changing it up actually, but before I did that I forgot to ask. Maybe just for the audience, it’d be really good, I think, to explain what dark patterns are.

Because I know you mentioned that before. And I know we’ve talked about it and it’s super interesting, but I think the, especially with some new regulation coming in it’s even poignant to talk about dark patterns. .

Marie Potel-Saville: Absolutely. So dark patterns, we now have a legal definition of dark patterns very recently in the Digital Services Act.

So basically dark patterns: Online interfaces that either deceive or manipulate users. So tricking them basically into doing things they wouldn’t do if they realized and so that’s the legal definition. But we should also be aware of the fact that there are many scientific definitions that there has been fantastic research work in academia on dark patterns.

And so the legal definition is somewhat limited compared to the density of work and thinking that’s been put there by academia now. It’s really interesting also how I took the leap into creating the company because actually I did a master’s degree in Innovation by design.

And I, that’s how I discovered dark patterns. That was the first instance. So back in 2017 and when I realized that there were actually techniques based on our cognitive biases, because I forgot to mention, of course, the reason why your dark pattern works is because it’s based on our cognitive biases and it manipulates our cognitive biases to make us do things like, for example, a very classic, basic example is the fear of missing out that we all do and we all have.

And so auto play, obviously, manipulates that, or also the sort of laziness that we all have in us, that if there’s a default setting, then we won’t necessarily take a positive action to un-click, so we just leave it as is. So when I realized all of that the first question I asked myself, so a long time ago was, “okay, but if there are dark patterns, then you know, there shouldn’t. Could be the opposite as well.” Yeah. If we can manipulate cognitive biases to trick us into doing things against our own interest, basically.

Yeah. Then there’s probably a way of perhaps manipulating cognitive biases. But for, nudging people, in other words, but for their own good. Which is really the distinction between dark pattern and nudge. And so we’ve been developing the opposite of dark patterns since the beginning of the agency.

We call them fair patterns. The idea is to develop interfaces that equip users with knowledge so that it empowers them to make informed decisions, informed choices, therefore, free choices. So that’s the work we’ve been doing since day one, really. And over a year ago, we decided to create a small R&D lab and dark patterns are one of the key topics that we’re researching. So we’re yeah, we’re almost to the end of this work.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, that’s a fascinating topic. And do you think are these intentional?

Marie Potel-Saville: Very good question. In the legal definition very wisely, so the Digital Services Act does not say anything about intent, or intention because as we know, as lawyers, it’s terribly difficult to prove.

When you research all the academic articles, some of them address the issue of intention. Clearly, when you dive into the topic, you can see that you’ve got like good UX principles like guiding the users and empowering users not to make mistakes. For example.

And when you see the type of dark patterns, clearly some of them, most of them are intentional. For example, so Harry Brig is a UX designer and PhD in neurosciences who coined the term dark pattern. And one of his most famous, unfortunately, dark patterns is what he calls Roach Motel.

What it means is that something that’s very easy to get in, but very difficult to get out. And so the classic, terrible example is free, all it takes is one click to try for free. When actually because you put your credit card details, it automatically turns into an annual, automatically renewable subscription.

Yeah. And when you realize it’s a subscription, usually there are many articles about that. Usually, people find in their bank account. Because they see a recurring amount being deducted and they don’t even know why. So this is as bad as it is. And then when they try to cancel the subscription, this is where all the tricks and the manipulation are.

It is really obvious because all it took was one click to subscribe or try for free rather it could take up to, I don’t know, 10 clicks. And even in the worst cases, it’s not even possible to cancel online and you have to call someone or to write to someone, which is clearly intentional.

So yeah unfortunately, it’s terribly intentional. There’s also a very interesting article written by researchers namely at Princeton who actually uncovered at least 23 providers of dark patterns online. You go to them and you can purchase a dark pattern, for example a widget that you plug in your website that puts a timer that says : “ this offer is going to expire in five minutes.” And it actually runs all the time. Yeah, you can actually purchase that online, which is completely crazy. But thankfully and going back to your original question about the legal framework, thankfully the FTC in the US is definitely taking a hard line against dark patterns.

They’ve been doing workshops. They released a report in September of this year. And Europe as well is also tackling dark patterns through the Digital Services Act, but not just, what’s interesting is that you’ve got very solid grounds against dark patterns in data protection law, obviously.

So GDPR and its equivalent, consumer. And some even competition law could be used against dark patterns. So we’ve got a number of legal tools. Now, what we need is to raise awareness because most people obviously don’t know they’re being manipulated. That’s the whole point.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. Yeah. And I think even as a consumer you feel powerless, to be honest, really. Obviously, those of us who are closer to the law and potentially closer to these topics would know. But how does the average Joe know or Joanne know what to do in those circumstances and how they can get out of, and things like that.

But I guess it’s up to the powers that be to push that behavior out of the companies that are acting in this way.

Marie Potel-Saville: Yeah. And also, because it’s so difficult for people to one, realize spot that there’s a dark pattern and second, even when they’re spotted.

There’s a really great study about that by the University of Luxembourg. There’s a difference between people being able to spot there’s something wrong. They don’t necessarily know what it’s called, but okay, this is a trick, but it does not necessarily mean that they’re able to resist it. So in other words, you’ve got two problems.

One, spotting the manipulation or the deception and second resisting. So that’s why you’ve got a number of regulators or, logistic legislative bodies, thinking that ultimately if we let the internet and also Web three grow all these dark patterns that could be a threat, the market economy is considered the best model we know.

They go as far as saying that, for example, O B C D states that the reason why we currently think that the market economy is the best or the least bad system. Yeah, this is for a number of reasons and a number of conditions, including transparency of the information.

So transparency is a condition for the market economy to produce the best benefits for consumers. Okay. And so they say that if you know the web and including web three is absolutely full of opacity and tricks and manipulation, then perhaps the market economy is no longer the best system to produce the most benefits for consumers.

Tyson Ballard: Super interesting, a hundred percent. Excellent. Thank you so much for the explanation. Like obviously a topic that is another super interesting topic that you guys are tackling. Maybe changing it up a little bit.

If you think of the word successful who’s the first person that comes to mind?

Marie Potel-Saville: That’s a difficult one. I think it’s difficult for me because, I don’t really think in terms of success, perhaps strangely. Yeah. Why is that? Ah, why is that? I guess I’ve always put first interest of things. The intellectual interest is things that stimulate my brain or that make me I don’t know, feel happy, but not necessarily in terms of success.

Tyson Ballard: So then if I was to, maybe to change it. So if you were to think of the word interesting, who is the first person that comes to mind and why?

Marie Potel-Saville: Cool. There are too many. That’s my problem. Yeah. I’m sorry it doesn’t come to me. Just now. I’ve got too many names in my head to pick just one. Okay.

Tyson Ballard: Maybe you come back to me on that one. Yeah. Yeah. What about another maybe interesting question? What about if you were to give a TED talk that is something that is not in your area of expertise and not legal design or anything like that.

What would the talk be about?

Marie Potel-Saville:  The topic would be precisely how do we create a model, an economic model where we are not the product. Where we use digital economy to our own benefit, to thrive, to grow, to learn things, and not having companies learning so much about ourselves and then tricking us or manipulating us or profiling us.

So that would really be, what are the economic incentives to shift that economy to perhaps something else which is way more focused on humans being able to grow through digital economy, to grow mentally, to grow, to thrive as human beings, and not being utilized.

Tyson Ballard: That’s really interesting. It would be a beautiful thing. I think if you’ve got kids right you’d probably be less connected. I think I’m pre-internet, so I think I feel less attached to the digital realm personally, even though it’s kind of part of my everyday existence like most people.

But I do worry about the next generation in terms of like my little one knew how, if a phone doesn’t swipe right, what’s wrong with this phone? It’s broken? Whereas we’ve come from that generation of the beautiful Nokia 61.10 that the battery lasted for a month.

But yeah I agree, like how do make our kids and the next generation after that kind of thrive in this new digital space. But hopefully with all the information that they’ve got at their fingertips, they can solve some of those big problems that collectively that we’ve haven’t been able to.

I’m interested about the kind of the lessons which you touched on just now and which I think is a really important thing. And sometimes you can only do that by making mistakes. So if you had a favourite failure in your life what would that failure be and why?

Marie Potel-Saville: Oh, I fail all the time. I think my favorite failure, what is it? I think it’s trying -there are so many things you need to learn when you manage a company. When you create a company and I think my usual failure is to first try to understand exactly how things work.

For example, I don’t know silly things, but like marketing, I don’t know. A thing about marketing and my natural inclination would be to first, do all the research, try really to understand absolutely everything and then try to see how somehow do that. Whereas obviously, there are very skilled people, who know all about it.

And yeah, that’s a mistake that I’m really trying to stop doing, trying to just solve everything by myself and instead, of course, just relying on very skilled people who just are here.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. Yeah. I think Steve Jobs always said that, right? Didn’t he? He said, make sure you surround yourself in a room with people that are smarter than yourself.

Marie Potel-Saville: Exactly. Smarter than yourself. Exactly.

Tyson Ballard: Exactly. Which, to be honest, I feel like that’s quite often the case for me. But yeah I agree. Sometimes I think if you’ve got so many wheels spinning as a founder of a company, it’s impossible to be an expert in every single area.

So learning where to focus your efforts and where you can thrive as well, I think is equally important and to contribute. I’m nearly finished the book, the Design of Everyday Things which was on your recommendation, on the last time we talked.

I’m quite interested because I saw, obviously, we are probably more involved on the legal technology side, I think Don Norman who is the author, and he’s quite passionate in saying that a user experience shouldn’t be driven by lazy coding in that book.

And I found that fascinating because quite often it seems to me still very not quite pioneering, but it’s still the early days really in terms of the user experience. And quite often we are always saying: “oh, but that’s a constraint of the system. Oh, you can’t do that.

What are you guys seeing in the work that you’re doing regarding the areas of improvement that you think technology can do in the legal space? Because I know you tend to do quite often template playbook kind of design in terms and conditions and dark patterns.

But on the technology side, what’s your opinion in terms of, what are the key things that we could and should be focusing on in some of the key tools that legal use?

Marie Potel- Saville: So we never start with tech, just to be clear. Yeah. Our starting point is always the needs of the users and their pain points and how to solve them.

Now, of course, we embrace technology as one of the potential tools, that can solve users’ problems, but it’s always, I’m always very cautious. Because for example, it was a long time ago, we created a legal platform for Orange. They’ve got 700 lawyers in the world, and we created a legal platform for the 700 lawyers.

And of course, we started with interviewing users and a very recurring remark we got during the interviews was, referring to tech tools, I’m feeding the machine, but I don’t think that the machine is feeding me. And so I think that’s really how we should see tech as something serving our needs and solving our problems, not the other way around.

In other words, to me, digitalization is not progress. It shouldn’t be an end in itself. It’s only to the extent that it can solve users’ problems that maybe that could be used. This being said, I’m absolutely amazed by the results you can get in terms of data mining and the speed at which systems can now find information on the volume of data that can be assessed in one second.

And that’s exponential. That’s Moore’s law, it doubles. Each year’s been doubling. It’s been doubling each year since, I don’t know, the seventies. So this is absolutely mind-boggling actually. I think the opportunity is clearly in terms of making knowledge accessible, this is a fantastic opportunity.

Now the danger is obviously information overload and it’s also which information you make accessible to whom, which goes back to the manipulation point and the profiling. So it’s a huge opportunity. But then I think that there needs to be human centricity, put at the core of everything we develop from a tech point of view.

Tyson Ballard: I agree. Which kind of is what he touched upon, in that book, I think. Which is quite an interesting book. But yeah, maybe I’m just conscious a little bit of time, but I’ve got two more questions that I really wanted to ask you, which was what advice would you give to your younger self?

Knowing where you are now and experiences you’ve had and things like that what advice would you give yourself?

Marie Potel- Saville: I would advise my younger self to worry less and enjoy more. Definitely. At the same time, I recognize that, triple checking and doubting not just triple checking but doubting the system, doubting a number of things is a very powerful driver to reject the status quo and achieve new solutions.

So it’s just that, okay, I should probably keep that questioning part, but taking the worry out.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah. No, that’s really good. Because I guess in some respects like to have the knowledge where you are today, you’ve probably had a really great foundation of lessons learned throughout your career in terms of the magic circle and in-house, and probably those things you would never really want to change.

That questioning is giving you the foundations to launch a fantastic career, right? In terms of your new business. I think even cognitively worrying less must be much more healthy for you.

Marie Potel- Saville: Exactly. I didn’t know that at the time.

And definitely, I would advise my younger self to learn as much as possible about neurosciences. Early on,  it was really stupid. I discovered neurosciences 20 years of practising though. It’s ridiculous, really.

Tyson Ballard: Yeah, excellent. So the final question is if you had a theme song what would be your theme song?

Marie Potel- Saville: Oh what would be my theme song? Okay. This is going to sound really cheesy, but I think it would be “Happy.”

Tyson Ballard: The Pharrell Williams song? Oh yeah, that’s on high rotation in for the dance lessons every morning before school we have in our music room. Great song.

Great artist actually, and quite an upbeat one, especially for a Friday, right?

Marie Potel- Saville: Yeah. Just, something really light. Light and easy!

Tyson Ballard: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation. I’ve learned lots. And hopefully, for everyone out there and in the audience, they have to please don’t forget to check out Amurabi. Its amurabi.eu if I’m correct. Some wonderful work going on and thanks once again.

Marie Potel- Saville: Thank you so much, Tyson, it’s been a real pleasure.