Kian Katanforoosh is the founder and CEO of Workera, an AI tool that measures skills in the workforce that, in turn, helps to develop and verify new skills for the people who use it. While his business is powered by AI, it was built through conversations with students–a human-centered approach that he learned at the d.school.
As the CEO of an AI company, Kian cares about “future-proofing” designs in a rapidly evolving landscape, keeping lifelong learning and quick adaptation as core values. “When we think about design, we think very deeply about the progression of AI systems, and we build our platform in a way where we can plug in the next level of models, and everything gets better immediately.”
Ingraining instincts
Kian received an MS in Stanford’s Management Science and Engineering in 2017. He was also a TA in the Computer Science department for technical classes like Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies or Cryptography and Machine Learning.
Through his degree at Stanford, he took courses with the d.school: Designing for Refugees and Hacking for Defense. “It was the first set of experiences where I felt close to what was happening in the field,” said Kian. “The refugee crisis workshop felt like a learning experience that’s ingrained in my head forever.”
With the core of human-centered design, Kian said that the d.school taught him how to talk to people that he was solving problems for. “It’s easy to build what’s in your head and the problems are generally better defined. But here, it’s all about ‘Is this the right problem we’re solving? Does it meet the criteria that the person you’re solving for needs?’”
Kian says that his current instincts to ask those questions were developed through learning at the d.school. Now, he teaches Deep Learning at Stanford, which he says holds him accountable to learning about the cutting edge of technology.
“I try to find the time balancing out with the company. It pushes me to stay up to date and I love it—the innovation aspect of that, and staying at the forefront.”
Learning at the forefront
Since he can remember, Kian has wanted to make an impact on the workforce through what he does. “I’ve always wanted to work on talent-related problems. I think education mentorship can change someone’s life incredibly, just like it changed my life.”
One of his personal focuses is research and learning, which he says he developed through different habits and practices—some of which he’s brought to Workera. “You tune your antenna by being plugged into the innovation ecosystem . . . being connected to the right network on Twitter, on LinkedIn, having a curated feed or a set of newsletters.” Kian routinely reads social media along with books and research papers to stay in the know.
And when hiring for Workera, they ask key questions like “What is your learning strategy? What have you learned in the last 90 days?” They even have a ritual of high five-ing to recognize growth and skill acquisition. “There are a lot of learning high-fives. We reinforce that on a regular basis.”
Designing delightfully
Design should be delightful in Kian’s opinion—Workera is designed in a way that makes it easy for people to use. Kian personally thought about how to test a system like it through flashcards, where he would set out questions based on how well a student did.
“The premise was to create a measurement system that would mimic how a great human mentor would assess a mentee. Our first computer adaptive testing platform was me using flashcards to benchmark how well a student did while testing AI skills,” said Kian.
Nowadays, the system is much more complex and agentic, but the core focus of having that mentor/mentee relationship is still there. “To me, design is solving the right problem with delightful solutions within certain constraints.”
Cracking problems
Kian believes that the mission of Workera is to improve the workforce’s effectiveness. He looks at the supply and demand of skills, and said, “The demand for skills is represented by job postings, jobs that are online. But the supply isn’t tracked at all. We have no idea what skills we’re lacking . . . How many people are trained for four years on something that doesn’t have any demand in the job market? I think with verification, we can solve a lot of that challenge.”
One of his main focuses these days is to make it more efficient to build their system—their “future-proofing” ensures that they don’t have to constantly recreate the Workera AI every time other systems get an update.
Workera, he believes, will help people achieve their fullest potential. He even encourages his staff to use Workera’s self-assessment tools for testing their own skills. “When you get the workforce to be more productive, you can solve a lot of upstream problems. I think we have a meta impact on the world if we crack our problems.”
Credits
Thanks to Tran Ha and Amalia Rothschild for originally interviewing Kareem for the d.school’s “This Is Design Work” exhibition; Mark Grundberg for shaping the interview content; Second Peninsula for producing the video; the d.school’s academic team and teachers for guiding generations of designers; Eli Ramos for writing this article; and Jenn Brown for her persistently collaborative editing.
