But what is the purpose of all this experience designing? Are we just trying to increase bottom-line revenues? Are we trying to create better outcomes beyond profit? How about creating more equitable environments? Perhaps we are trying to effect some kind of positive change through the interactions that we orchestrate, the environments that we construct, and the perceptions that result. Or maybe all of the above?

To discuss these questions and more, today on Experience by Design we welcome Michael Kirkpatrick of Centric Park. Michael has had a long career as a designer, working as the Executive Vice President of Client Experience and Strategy at Mad*Pow before starting Centric Park and serving as its CEO. 

We talk about not just talking about design, but using experience design to transform business and outcomes. Specifically, we talk about how experience design needs to be a people (or human)-centered activity, constantly coming back to the question of what is best for those who are involved. Using a systems perspective, this requires the designer to take ethnographic noticings, stakeholder input, and designer vision to achieve those goals, which first and foremost includes designing products and services that will help people. 

Finally we talk about gaming in the age of CD-ROMs, and how Monopoly and Risk are really tough games to finish.

Where then, does curiosity go in our lives? It seems that as we get older, or more settled, or more busy and preoccupied, curiosity feels more like an obligation than an opportunity. How might we reinvigorate that sense of curiosity in our lives and ourselves? How can we integrate curiosity to make it once again part of who we are? And how can we have curiosity with care and intentionality, being aimed at a positive end that we are directing? 

Today on Experience by Design we Monica Canfield-Lenfest and Pim Schachtschabel from Architecting Curiosity. They describe their company as a community and school to practice and train your natural muscle of inquiry. That curiosity is part of our natural self is central to their work, and how they work with clients to tap back into it and exercise it. Like all muscles, curiosity can atrophy from lack of use. The good news is that Architecting Curiosity are like curiosity therapists, working with people who want to reinvigorate their inquisitive self.

We talk to Pim and Monica about their work and how it started. We discuss the “Huh” moment when that first noticing becomes a pathway to explore new worlds. They take us through their framework to guide their clients back into curiosity and discovery. Ultimately their work is to help people go beyond the limitations they have created for themselves, freeing their minds to explore and discover. 

We also learn what is served at parties in the Netherlands.

Our guest, Jason Barger, today spent a lot of time in airports, and it was a simple observation at the baggage claim that led to his book “Step Back from the Baggage Claim: Change the World, Start at the Airport.” The premise of the book is “how to change our daily world through thoughtful and compassionate action.” Or, the biggest changes can start with the smallest acts of compassion, kindness, and service.

He has a new book called “Breathing Oxygen: How Positive Leadership Gives Life to Winning Cultures.” In it, Jason takes his experience of working with some of the biggest brands and combines it with the lessons he has learned from a life spent in service to others. In the episode, we talk about how today’s generation needs fulfillment through their work, and to be part of something larger than themselves. We also explore how busyness is not the same as effectiveness, and how more time to reflect and think can pay dividends when it comes to deciding and doing. 

Gary also learns that good things can come out of Columbus, Ohio, although it is not clear if he remains convinced.

Being a physics teacher, a heavy metal aficionado, hockey player, cookie baker, rhetoritician has come together in interesting ways for our guest. Trying to teach high school students physics was good preparation for trying to keep the attention and reach executives. Heavy metal music allowed her to be sensitive to subtle aspects of a bigger sound. Hockey taught the concept of hard work and team work. Studying rhetoric gave her the understanding of how to communication information to people in ways that connect, along with diagnosing problems that people have when communicating with others. And cookies taught her the importance of …… cookies.

The key is to pull all of this together and integrate it into a workable framework that helps expand our capacity to understand and act. As we come to understand the importance of systems, we also understand that the challenges are bigger than any one perspective can understand or handle. This means that to handle bigger design problems, we need more integrated solutions.

Today on Experience by Design we have Jen Briselli, the Chief Design Strategy Officer at Mad*Pow, an experience design firm in New England. We explore how changing mindsets and “nudging” can be a key strategy to do so. We also discuss how communication and messaging is a key component to accomplishing behavioral changes. We need to know what makes people tick, what their goals are, and how to use the tools handed to them.

But we can’t do this in silos. To tackle the big challenges and wicked problems that we are facing, we need to combine our resources and work together. And ultimately, how keeping a beginner’s mind for every project keeps her engaged in her work and continuously learning. 

Despite his shows being on many decades ago, there is more Bob Ross today than ever. Bobble heads, Chia pets, art supplies, board games, t-shirts, and many other items. You can even watch a marathon of Bob Ross episodes on the live streaming platform Twitch every weekend. Bob, it seems, has never left us and won’t be going anywhere any time soon.

Today on Experience by Design to talk about the Bob Ross experience is Joan Kowalski. Joan’s parents were responsible for helping Bob launch into the cultural zeitgeist. From her first job at Bob Ross, Inc., Joan is now the company’s president. In that role, she oversees all things Bob.

We talk to Joan about the origins and rise of Bob Ross, Inc, and why she thinks Bob continues to resonate today. We explore the design of the Bob Ross experience in its many forms. We discuss Bob the Sex Symbol, and the rise of “Bobology”, or the study of Bob. We talk about whether Bob will ever get respect from the art world given that he is perhaps one of the most popular culture artist known. Finally she tells us why the world needs more art, and how the curating of Bob’s work is helping to connect people with their creative selves. 

Luckily, there is Greg Kihlström's new book "Meaningful Measurement of the Customer Experience." A prolific writer, speaker, consultant, and podcaster, Greg combines his experience and the experiences of others in a comprehensive overview of measurement strategy, philosophy, and execution.

Greg visits the Experience by Design studio to discuss his book, where he gives “guidance on how to create a customer-centric culture that prioritizes customer needs while aligning internal teams around a common goal.” On the podcast, we discuss ‘best practices’ across different companies, and how we might provide  ‘better practices’ for increasing our understanding of customers, their experiences, and their worlds. We also discuss the connection between customer and employee experiences, and new directions in CX and experience measurement.  

But memories are not ours alone to make. Rather, memories can be built, constructed, framed, and recalled in the context of others, society, and culture. We can see this today in American society, where there is a lot of contested territory regarding what is being remembered and how. When we broaden out the voices being represented in these collective memories, the challenge becomes even greater to be inclusive and to negotiate memories in these contested spaces.

To explore the creation of memory and place, Julia Beabout from the company Novaby visits the Experience by Design studios. Julia is the CEO and Creative Director at Novaby, and was involved in the Monumental Conversations project in Richmond, VA. The project combined augmented reality with local community institutions to tell different stories about place, history, and memory. 

She describes herself as “On fire for Fairness”, trying to create engaging experiences that capture the collective memories of community members. ‘Place making’ as she calls it is about co-creation with the community, and then making augmented and virtual memorials to commemorate in ways that are themselves memorable. By doing so, we make environments that are inclusive and representative in a continuous ways as our understanding of who we are evolves.

Attempts to change our energy production, usage, and pollution have run into the wall of politics, conspiracy theories, and denial. It seems that when we need action the most, it is hardest to come by. Despite people increasingly coming to terms with the reality of climate change, adequate action is still not being taken, leading to worries about it being too late.

To help us explore some of these questions, Professor Frans Melissen visits the Experience by Design studios. Frans has spent a career examining not only the impact of people and society on the environment, but also the larger question of sustainable experiences. We talk about the nature of how systems based on profit cannot necessarily act in ways that are environmentally responsible. He tells us about his idea of being a ‘scholactivist’, or combining scholarship with activism. By finding ways to communicate more broadly through new mediums like TikTok, scholars can have a greater impact.

Andy McDowell, of Generate Your Value, stops by the Experience by Design studios to talk about how self-transformation is the key to making transformative experiences. The mission of Andy's company is "to serve as a powerful catalyst for entrepreneurs to experience extraordinary success in business and life.” To help clients achieve this transformation, he applies organizational change and innovation strategies to individual lives. 

We talk about how going to and then leaving Boeing lead to his own realization of achieving individual change. We also chat about how it is hard to be heard within your own organization when trying to lead innovation and change initiatives. Anyone who has tried to be recognized and ended up being ignored knows what this feels like. We discuss his own challenges in Boeing to be heard, how he uses this experience to fuel his own work, and how that work has translated into helping others to transform their own work and lives. 

On this episode of Experience by Design, we talk to Dr. Shelley Kimball, formerly of the Military Family Advisory Network. Shelley was the Vice President of Research and Program Evaluation at the MFAN, and is now Senior Lecturer and Program Coordinator at the Johns Hopkins University. In her role at MFAN, it was her job with her team to not just count how many services were delivered, but how many positive experiences were created. 

In our conversation, we talk about how she and her team use experience design principles in the evaluation of services and programs provided by MFAN. Central to their work is to treat everyone with dignity and that they are a customer. They use qualitative measurement approaches to understand the meaning behind the experiences they provide. Their goal is to make sense of everything from the point of view of those who are their target audiences. As Shelley notes, while AI and ML can perhaps get you 80% of the way in your analysis, you can’t yet replace the human brain. Also, you can't just deliver services and count that as success. You need to see the meanings that are created for those you are serving. 

But we don’t live in a world that is predictable and stable. As the saying goes, change is the only constant, and if we aren’t willing to change, then we may be on the path to irrelevance.

At the same time, wanting and being willing to change isn’t enough. We have to make changes in how we see the world and change our reactions to it. Barry Borgerson has been helping organizations see and make the changes they needed to make for some time. A PhD in computer science helped him see culture from a systemic perspective, understanding how an organization is a set of interconnected parts that can have a legacy framework that impedes change. Likewise, we need to create self-correcting mechanisms to help change happen more frequently in response to the rate of change. Finally, be challenging our perceptions in how we see the world can be the cornerstone in how we create the possibility for change

Eleni Stathoulis is focused on delivering that difference through design. She is Principal in Design at Mad*Pow, a New England-based firm that creates innovative experiences and solutions that benefit people and businesses. She has worked with clients across a variety of business sectors and industries, but with always the same goal: to bring the voices of people back into the design process in order to do good. 

We talk with Eleni about her path to her current position. From her education as a graphic design major and communications minor, she has integrated both to better relate findings to clients. We talk about how by keeping the goals of the project in mind, and the needs of the people at the center, we can deliver designs that matter and create change.

To help us explore how to make those radical changes in our individual and organizational lives, we have in the Experience by Design Studios Radhika Dutt. Radhika is the author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter. In her book, she distills that wealth of knowledge into some clear elements that any individual or organization can use. In today’s conversation we break down what radical product thinking is and can do. It’s a skill for creating change in the world around you, and one of the most interesting aspects is that it can work for organizations, but also you as an individual, or even entities not traditionally considered products such as Singapore. 

One key element of radical product thinking we discuss is building out vision vs iterative product thinking, meaning how can we create guides and guardrails to foster growth in a desired direction, measure what matters, and create lasting change.

Thibault Manekin has a habit of putting himself into uncomfortable situations of the extraordinary kind. In his new book Larger than Yourself, he chronicles the various moments in his life where seeking the uncomfortable was the path to not only his growth, but increased opportunities for others. At the heart of each of these stories is the rebellion against those who warn “You can’t” or tell him “No.” Hearing these phrases lets him know when he is pushing hard enough to do something truly revolutionary. If you are not struggling, what you are trying to do is probably too easy to begin with.

While perhaps laudable, such an approach can easily become misguided. Putting oneself into uncomfortable situations can easily become self-serving. Such an approach can slip into a person using others to feel growthful and even a thrill seeker. To embed the action into impact, it becomes more important to align the idea with the desires and goals of those in the setting. We have to build and make change from the inside out, getting input from the various stakeholders that exist in the space in which we are seeking to make a difference.  

This means a rebalancing of power, whether it be in an organization, an institution, or a community. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The question becomes how to make people more equal in the relationship. While a CEO and a janitor may have different roles and responsibilities, they are not unequal in their tasks. Sanitation workers, not physicians, would have curtailed the plague. Physicians could perhaps treat the symptoms. Sanitation workers could remove the causes. Thus, each has a role to play that is not any less important than the other. Ultimately each has a perspective to add and value to contribute. Organizations and leaders need to do better to make that possibility a reality.  

Max Louwerse’s book “Keeping those Words in Mind: How Language Creates Meaning” explores how we make meaning through language in terms that anyone can understand. Based on his own cutting-edge research, Max helps us explore how words work in the mind, how people create meaning, and what it means for experience design.

We also discuss efforts at creating transformative learning experiences through pedagogical technology. From augmented reality, to virtual reality, to “CAVES”, to artificial intelligence, and to not giving tests, Max talks about his work pushing the boundaries of how students learn. We engage in a critical examination of the educational system, some of the biggest challenges in higher education, and how technology is meant to enhance and supplement rather than replace. 

Our guest today is looking to change that by making data privacy a human right. Ben Brook went to Harvard with aspirations of studying film. Soon after arriving, he turned his attention to books on the future of AI and computer science. This led to his co-creation of Transcend, a company that aims to make managing your data and privacy an easier and seamless experience.  

We talk about how cleaning up someone’s data is like throwing confetti into a ceiling fan, and how Transcend helps companies and consumers clean up that mess. Transcend also helps companies be who they wish they were but helping earn their customers’ trust in how they manage customer data. Inspired by regulations like GDPR and California’s CCPA, Transcend aims to educate end-users and give them increased control over their personal data as an enjoyable experience. 

At the same time, there is this whole thriving online world in which masses of people regularly get together to view content, have conversations, and build community. 

On this episode of Experience by Design, we welcome long-time livestreamer and content creator Chuck KostALnik, otherwise known as Heyappl. From his early days in 2012 making videos for YouTube, to his current Twitch channel, as well as his work with the open source product Firebot, Chuck has been exploring how to make virtual moments that matter. 

We talk about seeing things from the viewer’s perspective, how dead air is not necessarily bad air, the danger of metrics, and digital brand management. We also talk about how products like Firebot can create “immersive theater”, and transform watching another person playing video games or “Just Chatting” into a unifying virtual experience. Finally we talk about creating inclusive experiences online, and the fighting back against flamers and hate raids. 

To help us in this conversation, today we welcome to the Experience by Design studios Dan Egol and Desi Carson of the Inclusion Nextwork. The Inclusion Nextwork is a global network of emerging leaders who are passionate about innovating how organizations and communities approach diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. Rooted in their previous work in the field, Dan and Desi take us through what an inclusive community looks like using their IDEAS framework. From Roundtable on a range of inclusive topics, to skills and leadership development, they talk about how to create new approaches to our long-standing issues.

The key lies in co-creating a more just and equitable society across community building, resource strategy and opportunity finding.

Today we welcome Howard Tiersky to the Experience by Design studios. Howard has been named one of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers, and has helped some of the biggest brands and companies with their digital strategies. From a degree in cinematic arts and directing, to creating the first Ernst and Young internet set, Howard has extensive experience in constructing experiences. We talk about his new book “Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance,” which lays out practical steps and proven approaches to make your company succeed in the digital environment. If you are not even sure where to start, Howard’s new book will direct on where you need to go and how to do it. 

Michael Solomon is exploring new rules for a new marketing world. From a PhD in social psychology , Michael has spent a career looking at how to reach people through marketing. His new book, The New Chameleons: How to Connect with Consumers Who Defy Categorization, breaks down how those traditional marketing  boundaries are blurring. Also, it’s no longer just the individual heading out for a purchase. They’re checking with their friends and social media sites and doing research before even starting to buy anything. It’s as much about social validation as it is satisfaction from the purchase. 

In order to truly understand and meet people where they are at, Michael walks us through how we need to update old marketing tropes for the 21st century and embrace chameleon consumers.

Anthony Rocco is an experience artist who is an architect of curiosity. Inspired by his education in cinema and directing, from the Latitude Society to Burning Man to his own creating of transformative leadership experiences for corporate clients, Anthony helps us unpack the underlying framework for what makes experience design work. For example, where does the value lie? He notes as designers it's our responsibility to design for the whole experience, not just the perception of it. Further, we open up the idea that curiosity mixed with design is about bringing stakeholders into the here and now so that we can see the often ignored and overlooked fabric of social life, to ask deeper questions and rethink how we conceptualize, construct, and frame our experiences. 

This is where the folks from Jeb’s Game come in. Inspired into action by the story of Jeb, a young man with Down’s Syndrome who was having trouble learning how to read, a group of game designers, developers, sound and communication professionals, and educators who met on Reddit and organized themselves on Discord. Using an open source mentality, this group has been exploring how VR gaming can be used to help people with intellectual challenges learn how to read. 

We chat with Oliver and Kellan from Jeb’s Game about the process of bringing the team together, how they creating a VR-based learning experience, and how they keep the project on track. It is a great example of how sharing a strong purpose and mission can be the glue which holds an organization together and keeps work aligned. 

Thankfully, our next guest has an outlet to help academics with their mental health and wellness. Dr. Wendy Ingram started to become concerned with the impact of academia on mental health as a graduate student. From what she saw around her with their peers, as well as a personal tragedy, Wendy saw the need for mental health services for academics. This, along with the reality that 50-60% of academics struggle with mental health issues, led her to create Dragonfly Mental Health, a mental health organization dedicated to academics whether graduate students or full professors. 

Calling academia the original Instagram, where all you see is the good stuff, we talk about the challenges of being constantly in a ‘headspace’ versus a ‘heart space.’ She discusses how academics need an outlet to discuss their mental struggle, how they work with universities and departments to create better mental health environments, how they have grown to over 160 volunteers in 25 or so countries, along with weekly virtual support sessions, and how to connect passions of purpose with metrics of worth.

The author of four books, Josh and I talk about what it means to be innovative, and how little changes and small insights can lead to dramatic transformations. From his fascination with the video game Frogger, to our conversation on the need for change in our educational system, we explore the potential for creativity in all aspects of our lives, filling what he calls the creativity gap in organizations, and how Detroit serves him as the hub of his innovative approach and spirit for renewal. 

In this episode, we talk about how he arrived at this work from his dissertation on social movements. We then work through his 911 first responder training and research, which then led into his work with his wife Marilyn on Call Center operations. We then track how ethnomethodology is really the first human-centered design. Jack talks about how being a social broker to bring stakeholders together is an important element in workplace studies and turning findings into design outcomes. Finally, we explore how workplace studies and ethnographic studies of work has created an important framework for how design ethnography is done today.

We explore her work in philanthropy around the world, especially on the African continent, women in technology, and founding Black Philanthropy Month. She shares with us her passion for creating sustainable social justice movements, and why the social sciences are essential to building a better world. Some of her projects have included helping the Federal Reserve bank meet the capital financing needs of religious minorities, assisting corporate social responsibility efforts, and aiding in capacity building for grassroots social innovators. 

Finally, she helps us to understand how we can get started in philanthropy, social innovation, and social movements through giving time, talent, or treasure (or all of the above). 

• case stories of how Oscar used the social sciences to help businesses see and solve organizational problems, find new marketing opportunities, and help people craft new narratives that empower them to be the heroes of their own stories
• why we believe it is not only ethical to bring the social sciences into business, but why it is fundamentally necessary to do so
• how to get started learning the world of business

This episode is jam packed with great stories and advice!

Today we’re talking with Adrian Swinscoe, customer experience guru and author of the book Punk CX, which draws on his love of the punk lifestyle and culture to make the case that we need to rethink the overly bureaucratic and out of touch consumer experience apparatuses of many corporations. He advocates for DIY, democratic, back to basics cultural approach. 

So, sit back, put on your headphones, break out your torn jean jacket, metal studs, spiked piercings, and Punk attitude, and listen to Adrian talk about how to make CX more Punk Rock.

With Lauren we talk about how the brain processes information, and what that means for designing and integrating learning technologies. Just because we have more sources of information and venues to communicate it does not mean that more learning automatically takes place. We explore how technologies, including Learning Management Systems, need to be constructed with how the brain works. We also discuss tricks and tips of how to better reinforce learning, especially in online environments.

So, prepare to let the Learning Pirate come aboard and join the journey for learning treasures and technological maps to help us find it.

The College is not just there to have an extraordinary experience while attending, but through your experiences while taking part you will begin to find the extraordinary in everyday life. Doing so comes with some potential costs as these experiences and the journey you take with others can expose old wounds that have yet healed. But the point is to become transformed not only professionally, but personally and hopefully spiritually. The college is based on the Hero’s Journey, where you come through the abyss to be renewed at the end. A feature of this transformation is that you see how everything is extraordinary if you can see it’s extraordinary nature. 

The goal is to provide participants with a pathway to rediscover through an intense multiple day journey that combines education and LARPing in a Polish castle. The challenge becomes, especially in modern society, how can we get back in touch with the extraordinary experiences of everyday life

Our guest today, helps us figure out how to overcome this gap. Stacy Sherman has been living customer experience since she first had to pick it up and learn it on the job. From her full-time work as Director of Customer Experience and Employee Engagement at the Schindler Elevator Company, to her other full-time work as a consultant at Doing CX Right, much of her days are spent trying to make customer experience and centricity a part of organizational life. 

In our conversation, we talk about the conception and birth of customer experience, its coming of age and the growing pains associated with early adolescents, how it is finding an identity in its adulthood, and where it may be going as it ages. We also the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in customer experience as a profession and practice. Finally, we talk about what we can learn from the pop band The Go-Gos about customer experience.

To explore the question of healthcare experience, we welcome Dr. Justin Bright to the ExD studios. Dr. Bright is a real doctor, unlike Adam and me. He is an ER doctor at Henry Ford Health Systems in Detroit, my hometown. I heard Justin speak at a Patient Experience online conference, and knew he had to be on ExD. He also is the Assistant Medical Director for Patient Experience at Henry Ford Emergency Medicine, and Co-Chair of the Physicians Council at the Beryl Institute. 

We talk about understanding provider perspectives in delivering patient experiences, comparing famous television doctors like Doc Martin versus Doc McStuffins, how to innovate in regulated spaces, whether patients are customers, and ER medicine in a pandemic. 

To help explore this issue, we welcome Nicholas Bott of Sengii to the Experience by Design studios. Sengii’s platform and features helps organizations create online communities and member experiences. But they do more than that. By working with organizational leadership, Sengii also helps organizations develop strategies to help grow their membership. Through their team of “Supernerds” and continuously expanding offering, Nick and Sengii work closely with organizations to support their mission of making online communities possible. 

We talk about the nature of virtual communities, the temptation of selling your dream at the risk of losing your vision, creating a team of people who are empowered to innovate, and finding purpose in the Sengii product. 

Fortunately, John Day has an answer in the form of AVHero. Being born out of his early days as a member of the ‘nerd crew’ in the av club, John moved through Guitar Center to become an expert in all things audio-visual. He has rallied his fellow AV Club members to save the day for those who are in dire need of technological rescue. Now over 2000 AV Heros strong, John’s forces are here to help those who need it.

We talk about the psychology of disruption as new approaches are introduced to established domains. We also discuss how the gig economy has been leveraged by creatives to help fund and fuel their visions and art. We revisit how his start of doing audio production at his church has now become a way for persons across the country to get help in their homes. Finally, we find out about John’s award winning music video, and how confidence on the stage is the same as confidence in innovation. 

To explore these questions, we have on today’s show Ken Gordon, Principal Communications Specialists at EPAM Continuum. EPAM Continuum, located in Boston, has an over 30 year history of delivering design solutions for clients across industries. It is Ken’s job to communicate the work they do, the successes they have, and to create content that stimulates thought and engages readers.

We chat with Ken not only about his current work, but his journey through working with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, his teaching of creative writing, and his work as a freelance author. We also explore the challenges of conducting ethnographic-based design work in a pandemic, and how EPAM Continuum maintains their unique approach in virtual environments. Finally, we discuss keeping a beginner’s mind and democratic innovation working with clients, as well as how to create psychological safety to encourage creative solutions.

To answer some of these questions, we talk with Sue Harvey of New Direction Strategy. If there is one thing that Sue knows about, it is change. Her early career found her working as the Deputy Communications Director for Minority Leader Rep. Richard Gephardt, to working with the new Republican House majorities led by Rep. Newt Gingrich. She then changed to work with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, trying to navigate the changing waters of the healthcare system. She now finds herself working with organizations as a strategic thinker, change management expert, and coach. 

We also talk about her Wonder Woman Award  from the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, but that did not come with an invisible plane or golden lasso, which is disappointing. 

The panelist, who include Sandy Mathis, Stephanie C. Harris, and Thomas Houston, all bring a range of professional and personal experience on this topic. Join us in learning from the panelists regarding how to help inspire racial equity in organization, and deliver better experience for diverse audience. 

And yet: social institutions have remarkable resilience. Is the death of higher education greatly exaggerated? Are we witnessing the steady demise of this cornerstone of the American dream, or just witnessing its transformation? What will higher education look like in 5 years? How can the glacially-paced higher education world stay relevant in an agile world?

Listen to our panel of experts explore these topics in a fun and free-wheeling conversation about the death and re-birth of higher education.

In this episode, we talk about how funeral directors are really community organizers, and how funerals are in many ways an opportunity to bring people together. We also discuss the cast of characters that he has met in his experience design journey, and what he has learned from other industries. We explore how his journey started with a couple of guys from Philly starting trouble, and how that has expanded to a national network of funeral homes working with Life Celebration. 

We dig into the experience of creating engaging online learning experiences and teaching to guitar students of all levels, and talk about his blanket as a transitional object and now a key feature of his brand. We also discuss how having a ‘beginner’s mind’ is important for any teacher, and how learning left-handed gives him greater empathy for beginners (and with luck more empathy for left handed people).

In this episode Megan talks about how a self-proclaimed ‘word nerd’ gets organizations to understand how words and terms can drive the wrong messages without even knowing it. We also explore how the human brain is the ultimate legacy technology, as well as how to upgrade your brain without it crashing. Finally, we talk about how companies are in an ‘experience race,’ and how many should stand down to focus on what customers and employees actually want.

Overall, it is about identifying those Moments of Change™, and how organization can put themselves in a position to take advantage of them to create better experiences.

Megan Burns on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganburns/

Experience Enterprises - http://www.experienceenterprises.com

Intro Music - The Tall Pines - “The Key”

Ending Music - Ketsa - ”Dreaming Days”

To explore this question, Neil Lundberg and Mat Duerden visit the Experience by Design studios to talk about how their program in Experience Design and Management started at the Marriott School of Management, located at Brigham Young University.

We discuss the origins of the program in transformative leisure experiences, and how whitewater rafting trips helped to establish a foundation in experience design. We also examine what kinds of content should be part of a program in experience design, and what skills and perspectives do students absolutely need to know. Finally, we look toward future growth of experience design programs, and the need expressed by employers to hire graduates of these programs.

In our conversation, we dig into what is social design, and how everyone can be a part of designing for a better world. Durell tells us how he deals with the challenges of systems design when you have different groups that don't necessarily have the same goals. Through his work on wind turbines, we explore how design can be used to not just to create a product, but create an infrastructure where people acquire the skills and tools to manage and sustain change themselves. During a time where a lot of discussion is being had around social change, Durell's work shows us a way forward in using design thinking to create opportunities for social impact.

While recorded before the pandemic and protests for Black Lives Matter and against police brutality, many of the themes we cover have resonance with the larger discussions going on right now. We explore the structural challenges toward getting women involved in cycling, and efforts to change that. Do women feel safe cycling in public? Is the broader cycling ‘community’ a welcoming environment? How are female athletic bodies viewed in culture and society? How do we make roads safer for cyclists? What role can a national organization like USAC play in that, and to what extent do we also have to be the change?

 These are just some of the questions we could ask around this topic of how to increase diversity and inclusion of women in cycling.

Beyond that, and for those old enough to remember video games like Frogger and Qbert, Mike was on the team that turned those arcade games into video games for early home gaming systems. Mike also was there to work on Lucas Film games like Return of the Jedi in an 8x8 pixel environment. 

Mike also has innovated in areas of experiential learning, creating an in-house design company at Bentley University, called IDCC Design House Studios, where students work on projects to create web and graphic design for clients. His own design story centers around how one mentor made a difference in his life, and he’s definitely paying it forward with his students today. 

On today’s podcast we hit the following points:

-From whence does creative come, and how to create a culture of innovation;
-How circuitous career paths can be much better than linear ones;
-How to innovate experiential learning and curriculum design to improve student and faculty experiences;
-And finally, how the important element of teaching design is to give students permission to be creative, and make them believe in the process.

And even that doesn’t capture the whole story. Along with patient experience are the employee experiences of those who work in the healthcare context. Thus, rather than just thinking in terms of a patient experience we are really thinking of a healthcare experience that encompasses an ecosystem as complex as the healthcare institution itself.

To help untangle this, we have on today’s podcast Steve Koch, Senior Vice President and Co-Founder of Cast and Hue. Cast and Hue is a consulting company that focuses a lot of its business in the healthcare space. They describe themselves as integrating “empathy, observation, behavioral psychology, and technology” to “cast a light on the people you serve and gain a deep understanding of their perspectives.” Using human-centered design methodologies, Cast and Hue seeks to co-create solutions with their clients to help them better understand their complete environments and then design approaches to develop better experiences. 

Voltage Control president, design thinking facilitator and innovation coach Douglas Ferguson recently published a book called Beyond the Prototype that aims to help teams and organizations (and individuals!) go from generating awesome ideas to implementing them. Over the course of our conversation we cover:

• the power of systems thinking
• seeing variables in the design ecosystem
• facilitation as model through systems thinking
• The connections between organizations and society. 
• HR departments using design thinking to point the lens inward
• Caution that when we compress ideas there is opportunity to meaning to be lost
• Why facilitation is such a crucial role
  • for example, realizing if you’re using one word to mean two things, or two words to mean the same thing - skilled facilitating brings these discrepancies and differences in meaning into focus for teams to help them overcome roadblocks in understanding
• Why so many start up founders get stuck on the idea of scale rather versus pursuing a smaller, but passion-driven idea
• How design facilitation sessions are about harnessing the power of the child’s mind - playful energy
• and debriefing as a crucial stage in any process: can you answer the question of why did we did this?

Links and Resources mentioned in today's episode

voltagecontrol.com

beyondtheprototype.com

startwithin.com

Beyond the Prototype book

Jake Knapp - Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Greg Satell - Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change

David Epstein - Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Attorney Marissa Bluestine comes by the Experience by Design studios to talk about her work in the criminal justice system, and what can be done to design a better system. While today’s episode was recorded before the COVID-19 outbreak, we do examine the issues around the criminal justice system. From her founding of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, to her current work with as an Assistant Director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania, we explore what a just criminal justice system would look like. 

But what does this mean for patients and the clinicians, as well as caregivers and healthcare professionals? Besides, does any of this stuff work? How does it impact the clinical workflow and clinical profession? And what does it mean for privacy and security?

To help answer these questions and more, we have Dr. John Torous, psychiatrist and Director of the BIDMC Digital Psychiatry Clinic. John has been engaged in this topic for some time, and is one of the leaders in the field. He also created the LAMP app, an open-source tool that clinicians and patients can use to track symptoms and onset of chronic mental illness. You can say he knows a lot about digital psychiatry.

John drops by the Experience by Design studio to talk digital psychiatry, COVID-19 responses, and the future of clinical mental health. Hope you enjoy our discussion. 

Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal is the Assistant Program Director and Associate Professor of Practice at MPH@Simmons.

What a difference a week makes. Or does it? With the expanding pandemic of COVID-19 disrupting more lives, many here in the United States might feel caught off guard, or that things have changed to rapidly. Now health care is a constant concern.

What Shelley White and Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal help us put in perspective is that even though we can all get sick, public health and care has always been political, and who has access to care, and even what diagnoses one gets, have been deeply tied to class, race, ethnicity and other socioeconomic classifications. Public health, in fact, is designed. Moments of pandemic, where a virus crosses borders and bodies with no care for the social structures we’ve erected, brings to light the radically unequal way our public health systems are designed. For middle class families who find themselves for the first time concerned about the lack of available health care or beds at a hospital, must now contend with the fact that this is a common reality for many poorer communities and communities of color.

But moments of crisis like this are also moments of hope. As Dr. White notes in the conversation, we have to remember that there are more people who seek equity and change than those who benefit from the status quo. What's radical is to acknowledge the racial, social, and economic injustices that frame our public health system and to then set about to change those inequities for a more just world. 

Website: https://byronreese.com/

Twitter: @byronreese

Facebook: @byronreese

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/byronreese

Our guest for today, Amira Valliani, has some thoughts on how to meet this challenge.. Amira is the co-founder and CEO of Glow.fm. As they describe themselves, “Glow is the best, most flexible way to build your podcast’s membership program.”  We talk about what led her to create Glow.fm out of covering local politics in Cambridge, MA. We discuss the more than 800,000 podcasts that exist worldwide, and how storytelling has forever been our primary mode of self-expression. Finally, we explore both the professionalization of podcasting, as well as its democratizing effects of giving everyone a voice who wants to use it. 

To learn more, Adam and I chatted with Kristin Shuff, who is the Senior VP of marketing at Lightstream. We hear how Kristin grew up reading Ad Age and early on being captivated by the characters she knew and loved being created by ad agencies. We also discuss how ‘omni-channel’ marketing doesn’t automatically mean ALL channels. Kristin describes how customer and employee centricity are central to mapping a loan experience that correlates for why people are getting loans, and how providing loan information beyond interest rates is a key to their branding efforts. 

On this episode we talk about what brands are, how the cultural work of branding has changed in recent decades with the advent of new and easier to use technologies, and how we can think about brands as conversations - not just between businesses and customers but also between businesses.

Billfleming.com

Bill on Twitter

Ideas and Articles we reference

https://www.commarts.com/columns/the-sensitive-anthropology-of-branding

https://raleighgreeninc.com/blog/2011/07/31/an-anthropologists-approach-to-branding/

https://lippincott.com/insight/b2b-brands-in-the-human-era/

This episode is brought to you in part by This Anthro Life, a sister podcast hosted by Adam Gamwell. Life is complicated, but we love simple answers. AI and robotics are changing the nature of work. Emojis change the way we write. Fossil Fuels were once the engine of progress, now we're in a race to change how we power the planet. We're constantly trying to save ourselves...from ourselves. This Anthro Life brings you smart conversations with humanity’s top makers and minds to make sense of it all. We dig into truth and hope in our creative potential through design, culture, and technology. Change your perspective.

--- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Enter Liliana’s work at JetBlue, where she was Director of Customer Experience for almost 8 years. If there is a feature of your JetBlue experience that you enjoy, odds are that Liliana had a hand in it. In describing her role, she once wrote “As customer experience director at JetBlue, I feel pride and responsibility to meet the high expectations of our customers and am passionate to keep the love alive as we grow.” Listen to Liliana talk about how she keeps the love alive in her work as a customer experience evangelist.

Today's episode is sponsored by Missing Link Studios.

Ben is the Chief Experience Office at World Employee Experience Institute. 

https://www.worldeeinstitute.com/about

Ben's Book Employee Experience: Develop a Happy, Productive and Supported Workforce for Exceptional Individual and Business Performance

Ben's website

If you like the show, please share it with a friend or colleague! This is the best way to help us all spread these conversations and get the good word out about experience and the need to intentionally design for good. 

The path to VP of AI would seem to be paved with engineering school, or maybe computer science. But as we will hear from Rick, the path to VP of AI is not predictably linear. It is a story that involves trading derivatives, call center management, and a new technological frontier of sentiment analysis. Rick and I talk about how the technology factors into the contemporary workplace, the road to richer interactions, technology as a tool versus a determinant, and creating computer-aided authentic moments. 

This episode is sponsored by Missing Link Studios

This episode sponsored by ethno-analytics.

Today's episode is sponsored by ethno-analytics.

The question is, then, what to do about it. We've got some takeaways for that.

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/experiencebydesign/support