Experience by Design

Are employees like customers now? For example, does an employee's capacity to leave feedback on social media or employment sites like Glassdoor tip the balance of power in the workplace when employees are unhappy? How are mega companies like Amazon changing their approach to employee experience and helping other companies wake up to coming back to the fundamental point of starting with the human? As Ben says, its not just about what you create and contribute to the employee experience, a lot of the value your company creates is also in the negative things you prevent from happening for your brand. The takeaway: Be good to your people because we're all people. Ben is the Chief Experience Office at World Employee Experience Institute. https://www.worldeeinstitute.com/aboutBen's Book Employee Experience: Develop a Happy, Productive and Supported Workforce for Exceptional Individual and Business PerformanceBen's websiteIf 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 new year, and the new decade, means that we are now officially in the future.  Of course, any discussion of the future has to include a discussion of technology, and how it is shaping our future. This makes for a perfect time to welcome our next guest to Experience by Design, Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Rick Britt of CallMiner. 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

Anyone who has ever received a medical bill in the mail knows the experience of trying to understand the costs. Stories abound about making sense of the codes, line items, services, and treatments that are part of the pages of billing that we can receive. This makes the financial aspect of getting treatment often the most painful. Jayson Yardley and Avadyne are trying to change that. Hear how Jayson and Avadyne are looking to the Black Eyed Peas, comic books, and AI to try to make the patient journey more healing. While getting your bill in the mail may never be a positive experience, it doesn't have to be so awful. And if the smiling faces on Avadyne's webpage are any indication, it might just be enjoyable.

Professor of Philosophy Axel Seemann has long been interested in how people create a common understanding of social spaces and experiences. In his recent book, The Shared World, Axel explores these topics, arguing that it is our ability to communicate about our experiences that gives us the ability to share them since on their own they will always be unique. This raises questions regarding how we conceptualize and measure experiences, how we boundary them as discrete entities, and how we go about intentionally designing them. From thinking about bat-consciousness to his work as a management consultant, Axel has contemplated a lot of factors related to experiences, and we explore many of them in this episode.This episode sponsored by ethno-analytics.

A 2019 article in The Economist proclaimed that “The escape-room games industry is booming”, Today there are over 2,300 in the US, and probably more than 10,000 around the world. But why are they so popular? Ultimately, escape rooms sell an experience. Not only is it an escape from a room, but from reality as well in this totally immersive experience. This is a team sport, with some teams precisely treating it as such. Red Bull (who else?) has an Escape Room World Championship. As the business and pop culture awareness has grown, so has everything that goes along with a growing business and pop culture success. There are escape room trade publications, escape room blogs, scholarship on escape rooms, movies about escape rooms, and yes, this podcast on escape rooms.Today's episode is sponsored by ethno-analytics.

Diane Magers has a long career in customer experience. From humble beginnings in a basement business to the Interim CEO of the CXPA, and now her own company Experience Catalysts, Diane discusses what drew her to customer experience in the first place. Always fascinated with human behavior, Diane applied her clinical psychology degree to understand what customers want, and what employees need to deliver that to them. Hear why it is hard for companies to make that leap to change who they are to be more customer-centric, and how they can be helped along the way. Finally, listen to how customer experience has evolved during that time, where it is at today, and where it needs to go in the future. 

Aran and Gary go way back to 1989 when Aran was pledge for Sigma Pi fraternity (Delta Alpha, Central Michigan). Reunited by LinkedIn, Gary, Aran, and Adam talk about how Aran approaches the fan experience as VP of Arena Operations at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. From farm to table meals, bourbon tastings, Spotify playlists, and bathroom stalls inspired by New York parking lots, Aran takes us through our they try to get fans to make the journey to the facility to watch a game, concert, or special event. We have come a long way from the troughs in the men's bathrooms! 

World Usability Day is happening on November 14, 2019, and we in large part have Elizabeth Rosenzweig to thank for it. Listen to Elizabeth describe her journey from taking pictures in Vermont and a rejection from RISD and to the MIT Media Lab. We also talk about the relationship between user experience and customer experience, who stands supreme in that arrangement. Finally, hear us discuss about how usability can change the world, and how the first UX professional was likely Homo Habilis.

Welcome to Experience by Design Podcast! This is a new series of conversations and reflections on the emergent and exciting field of Experience Design as it relates to business, culture, customers, digital and technological worlds. In this episode hosts Adam Gamwell and Gary David explore the age old adage that "The Customer is Always Right" and find out that, in fact, this isn't always the case. Adam and Gary reflect on and share some takeaways from the first CX Frontiers (CX stands for customer experience) event held in Waltham, Massachusetts in July 2018 that focuses on emerging trends in customer experience and experience design. The question is, then, what to do about it. We've got some takeaways for that. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/experiencebydesign/support