Experience by Design

Designer and entrepreneur Paul Bulencea, who is the co-creator of the college of extraordinary experiences, visits the Experience by Design studios. Paul’s personal journey started with a Masters degree in recreation while in Salzburg. Blending gamification and experience design, Paul and his advisor created new ground in the space of tourism experiences in the book Gamification in Tourism. A chance encounter with a Nordic LARPing leader resulted in them exploring how to rent places to create immersive experiences, influenced by the work of Punch Drunk and Meow Wolf. The idea was to take LARPing, mix it with game design, and run a professional conference. Where those things intersect, you will find the College of Extraordinary Experiences.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

Many companies want to use customer experience, but are they really embracing its essence?  Businesses often think it is about customers being happy in terms of ‘customer satisfaction.’  The point is really customer experience is about much more than satisfaction. To be a company that embraces customer experience is to embrace cultural change. We all know that change can be difficult, and it can be challenging to get people on board with it. 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.

Medicine, like it seems everything else, is undergoing an experiential transformation. The movement toward redefining healthcare in terms of patient experiences is not necessarily new. While it might not ebe new, it still is evolving. Not only our understanding of patient experiences, but the broadening out of that into provider experiences as well. As we have turned our attention to frontline heroes in healthcare, the question arises of to what extent does an emphasis on patient experience potentially negatively impact provider 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. 

Running a professional association ain’t easy. There are a lot of elements that go into creating and delivering a quality member experience. Living during a pandemic has only made that more challenging as conferences go online, member information needs change, and organizations try to find ways to provide meaningful experiences and value to their membership. 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. 

Pandemic life means for many of us that we have had to become audio-visual professionals. Along with all the stress of kids at home, COVID tests, and trips to the grocery store is the worry about what happens when technology goes wrong. And not just our computer systems, but what about binge watching Netflix and Hulu when your streaming no longer works. What about when technology rebels? Who is there to save us? 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. 

The good news and bad news of a connected world is that we are more connected. In that lies the question of how we create and maintain meaningful connections that feel real. Given the ‘flame wars’, tribalism and trolling of Twitter and Facebook, it can be difficult to find threads of humanism in the digital age. 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.

As the saying goes, the only constant in life is change. Or as the song goes, The Times They are a’Changing. But if so much of life is change, why are we so bad at handling it? Why do people, and organizations resist change so much? And how can we not only implement change, but better manage and embrace it?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. 

Issues of racial equity, and institutionalized discrimination, have long been at the center of customer experience, and the right of people to be seen as customers. Today’s podcast is a recording of an event from the end of July on ‘Inspiring Racial Equity: How CX Professionals Can Guide Their Organizations to Tackle This Urgent Issue.” The event was a joint effort of the Boston and Atlanta chapters of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. There was a tremendous team of folks from both chapters who worked together to put on this event. Most of the folks involved, including me, would be considered to be ‘allies.’ By that I mean people who may not have to suffer the daily indignities of structural racism and discrimination, but see it as a malevolent force that needs to be directly confronted and addressed in whatever quarters possible. For this group, the field of engagement is the organization, and what can customer experience professionals do to change these internal dynamics, which hopefully will contribute to a broader social change. 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. 

Higher education’s imminent demise has been long forecast, with a number of factors contributing to this terminal condition. The cost of higher education in the United States is unparalleled in the world, with the average in-state cost of even public universities increasing 63% since 2008. This growth has outpaced all other price indices by far. The fundamental model of higher education has also been called into question. The concept of domain-specific expertise and apprenticeship has been accused of being out of pace with a world where people will change (and lose) jobs many times over. Advances in technology similarly call into question the necessity of human instruction, with artificial intelligence and other new forms of communication and education potentially threatening the traditional centrality of professors. These concerns have been amplified in recent years by a growing chorus of business leaders declaring that “you don’t need a college degree to be successful’. And, of course, the COVID-19 era is now an additional factor in this equation, with students suing their schools for going online midsemester, and institutions facing massive budgetary shortfalls with the spectre of broad scale distance learning in the fall.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.

Looking at the Life Celebration website, you might be surprised to discover that their business is funeral memorial services. But with the bright colors and designs comes a philosophy of elevating memorial experiences to another level. The realization that funerals had become too routine (and, well, lifeless) led our guest Jim Cummings on a quest to not only provide unique experiences, but also learn from Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore and receive Experience Economy Expert Certification. 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.