Synthesizing Multitudes
Disparate threads converge
At my heart, I’m a synthesizer. I love to take varied inputs and disparate ideas, and find ways to create something new, meaningful, and whole from those parts. My career path from Interaction Design to Product Management helped me develop skills in research and analysis, and practice synthesis across many dimensions — from understanding root problems and which opportunities are the most valuable, to defining useful models and coherent solutions, and on to communicating visions to diverse stakeholders and directing cross-disciplinary teams towards desired outcomes.
Synthesis, a word with Greek origins, means to put together in the sense of combining. In the creative process of designing solutions, we follow a process which involves taking things apart and putting them back together again, in iterative cycles. Diverge ⇔ Converge. Discover ⇔ Define. Each time we take something apart, we learn more about what it’s made of, and each time we put it back together again or make a model representing what we’ve learned, we increase our understanding of how it operates and how it might operate even better.
Honestly, I’ve had a few challenging years on the professional front. I experienced two separate chapters in corporate environments that ultimately helped to clarify what I want and how I want to operate my life. And now that I’m back to the joys of self-employment (where I can be my own worst boss!), I’m actively conceiving a synthesized career arc that can allow me to pursue what matters most to me.
My Mission
My personal mission, what matters most to me, is to be a force for good in the world and help improve the human condition. I’m sure many of you share this mission! I believe the world urgently needs more emotional intelligence, with frameworks to help sustain us as we face an onslaught of polycrises in the world and all-too-toxic behaviors in business. I believe we each have the power to become more well as individuals, and to support positive change in the collective.
Professionally
My firm, Devise Consulting, has supported this mission in various ways over the past almost 20 (!) years. We’ve helped companies define and build digital products that help people with necessary things, such as a cardiac rhythm management system; a cable analyzer; an AI/ML system that analyzes voice recordings to detect anxiety and depression; &c. I’ve been a champion for humanizing technology through my talks, writings, workshops, and volunteering with professional groups like the Interaction Design Association (RIP, IxDA).
I began writing a book in 2024, which started out being about the socialization and alignment activities we need to do to be successful in product development teams, then rapidly morphed with the realization that it’s even more important we foster positive mindsets and emotional states, AKA heartsets, to sustain our souls while doing this hard work. This book remains in progress, an important project I’m moving forward and feel ever more excited about. It may essentially be the synthesis of my product leadership days.
Personally
Outside of the business world, I’ve been pursuing this mission for decades now, mainly by prioritizing my own inner development and outer wellness. I’ve actively cultivated greater awareness of my emotional state and practiced mindfulness and other grounding activities to find more equanimity in the face of a world where the only constant is change. I have a variety of practices to foster my intuitive gifts. I’ve learned to play music — I’m a drummer! — which both fortifies the spirit and enlivens life in so many dimensions. And I try to get reasonable amounts of exercise and eat generally healthy food.
Most of all, I’ve launched into relatively new arenas of soul-sustaining activities by learning and practicing sound & energy therapies to help myself and others. I started providing group sound baths in 2024 and became attuned to Reiki that year. Today, I am a Certified Sound Healer, will soon be a Reiki Master Teacher, and am about to receive certifications in Biofield Tuning and also Meditation Coaching. In early June this year, I opened the doors of my private practice, Musement Wellness, where I’m offering sound & energy therapy services.
I genuinely believe that sound & energy therapies unlock our inner healing potential and our brilliant human template’s drive towards high-voltage coherence. I’ve experienced measurable improvement in my own health from Acupuncture, NAET1, and energy work.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to validate that these electromagnetic approaches cut through the noise of life, and restore the harmonic signal of our deepest essence?
This career development is also deeply influenced by Find Wellness, my venture from 2012-2014 which involved devising, launching, and operating a healthcare technology company to shine a light on the world of alternative & complementary medicine (CAM) modalities. CAM modalities — like Reiki, Massage, Acupuncture, Chiropractic, and so many others — do so much good for so many people. (They also comprise a sizable chunk of America’s out-of-pocket spending on health.2) It’s still a huge untapped business opportunity to define an underlying system that lets us increase the signal-to-noise ratio among potential CAM modalities, and better understand the mechanisms that make it effective. (Pretty sure this is a great problem for an AI to be deployed.)
Synthesis
Over the past few months, I’ve struggled to reconcile all these efforts with respect to my public persona. Here I am, resurrecting Devise Consulting and helping companies to invent products; here I am, completing my book about mindsets & heartsets that help us sustain our souls while working on teams. Also, here I am, standing up a wellness practice to offer sound & energy therapy services to the world; here I am, conceiving of ways to increase our understanding of our innate healing intelligence and the forces affecting our existence.
What I’ve realized is that when I’m at my best, I’m synthesizing. I don’t have to practice just one profession. I have always wanted to operate at scale and leverage my hands and my heart for the greatest possible impact. And I truly do contain multitudes. The common thread of these seemingly separate storylines is how I synthesize — I take apart and reassemble things to make them better, whether the material is a product opportunity, a team’s emotional life, or a client’s biofield.
I am beyond grateful for this precious life and being able to pursue my mission across a variety of endeavors. What an amazing universe we live in, my friends — onwards & upwards!3 ✨ 🚀
Author’s Note: Lizz at Devise is a newsletter devoted to the concerns of people who operate in the challenging arena of digital product development. Lizz Bacon runs Devise Consulting, a boutique firm helping teams to research, design, and deliver meaningful product solutions — and improve their emotional intelligence along the way.
NAET is Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Techniques. Catch me at a party and complain about your food allergies and I will 💯 tell you all about this fantastic and effective CAM modality! Hit me up anytime to learn more — I'm unabashedly a complete and total geek about alternative medicine.
The last time the government did a big analysis of CAM in the context of the healthcare system was 2012; at that time, people were collectively spending over $30 billion per year on out-of-pocket complementary health approaches, with over half of that being towards services rather than supplements. As a total of U.S. healthcare spend, this sum comprised just 1.1%. Here in 2026, Claude helped me get a rough estimate that following years of steady CAM market growth, American households are likely spending, by rough extrapolation, anywhere from $35-60 billion on CAM services and another $25-35 billion on supplements.
Surprise me greatly by not unsubscribing. Hell, maybe more than one of you who got this far will even like or comment!! 🤯 While I know this post was a heck of a lot of “me me me,” it felt necessary to synthesize my efforts by putting all of myself out there….
Love, just love the image of weaving!