Experience by Design

Anyone who is in education knows the challenge that exists when we are trying to deliver content that connects with students. It can be hard to remember that the material that exists us might not be that exciting for the students. Although, I do find it hard to imagine that sociological theory isn’t fascinating for everyone. At the same time, there is plenty of academic and scholarly material that I find completely indecipherable. When you read this material, you can see how it is confusing, lengthy, and perhaps even boring. Academics write for other academics, and when dealing with students who are not academic, the question becomes how do you get them excited, interested, and keep their engagement. The answer in many ways is pretty simple. As with any population, you have to speak their language. Or if not be fluent in their language, at least communicate in a way that they understand. In other words, you have to be learner-centric in your approach.Today’s guests on Experience by Design have a strategy that might just help in this area. Emily Ritter knows the challenge of connecting with students.  As a PhD in political science that explores human rights, domestic conflicts, and international relations, her work is relevant to the major issues of our time. But even that can get lost on students who can’t wade through text books and journal articles. And imagine that compounded when trying to share complex ideas with policy makers and the broader public. To solve this problem, her and her graphic artist husband Darick combined their super powers and started Sequential Potential, a company that takes educational content and turns it into comic books and graphic novels. The results are a stunning depiction and portrayal of academic concepts and content in a way that is accessible to readers of all ages. Emily is joined by doctoral candidate in history Travis Hill, who also is a comic book creator and Sequential Potential employee. Together, we explore the challenge of creating academic content that connects with audiences. Their mission is to help all people understand the processes and evidence of rigorous research and connect those findings to their own lives. In an era of “did my research,” we definitely need more voices that can bring rigorous research into the public sphere in an accessible way. And Sequential Potential shows us one way of doing it.It was a fascinating and frankly inspirational talk about how to bring academic material to the mainstream through the universal language of comics. 

Here at Experience by Design, you might not be surprised to find that interior design is not our strong suit. We really don’t know what colors go with what motifs, what furniture matters (outside of comfort), how to create flow and space, and anything else that interior designers may consider when going about creating the environments that we inhabit. It turns out that there is much more to interior design and creating environmental experiences that one might assume. The carbon footprint cost of interior design can be high, and interior spaces of offices can be primary contributors (or culprits). Thus, we might miss the environmental costs of our environments. And it turns out that creating change in how we think about our interior spaces and consume products in relation to them is a lot more difficult than changing our furniture and wall hangings. To help us address these issues, we welcome to the Experience by Design studios Jon Strassner. Jon is a Chief Sustainability Office . He comes to this job after a longer period of time trying to raise awareness and behavioral change around environmental sustainability and the climate. In this episode, we explore how he approaches his role of creating awareness to create more environmentally sustainable designs. We discuss the balance between overwhelming people with information against failing to act quickly enough, getting enough people on board for scale impact, and introducing enough friction to get people to act. It’s tricky, but what Jon shares with us is right in line with an ethnographer’s point of view - you need to take a holistic view. 

The idea of pleasing customers goes back as far as the beginnings of human history. A 3,800 year old clay tablet with cuneiform writing from the city of UR is perhaps our evidence of customer complaints. A man named Nanni complained about the quality of copper he received to Ea-Nasir, along with issues with subsequent delays. A quote from the tablet says, “What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?” The letter goes on from there with complaints about the lack of customer service and experience. In fact, this might be the world’ first Yelp review.So clearly customer service and experience are not new concepts, even if they are relatively new terms. Why then does it seem like we are still struggling in the same way that Nanni struggled. Despite various technological advances, why does it still seem like in many ways customers are moving backward in terms of their experiences? Is the Customer Experience movement helping or hindering the creation of good customer experience? And perhaps most interestingly, on a scale of 0 to 10 how likely was Nanni to recommend the copper vendor Ea-Nasir to his friends and family?To explore these questions, and many more, we welcome Alex Mead to the Experience by Design studios. Alex is well known in CX circles for his strong positions and ideas on what the field of customer experience needs, as well as what companies need to do to create better experiences. Alex knows that to improve customer experience, you have to start with employee experience. Companies often fail to conduct a systems analysis to get to the root cause of their issues. And if they do, they seldom want to hear the results and actually act on them. The outcome is a replay of the same kinds of issues that Nanni had to deal with 3,800 years ago.Alex takes us through his EPIC framework for customers, which stands for Easy, Personalized, Intuitive, and Contextual. We also talk about his TIME framework for employees, standing for Time, Information, Motivation, and Empowerment. Ultimately, we need to focus on delivering the experiences that people want, and not the ones we force them into. It was great to hear Alex’s decades of experience dealing with employees and customers, and trying to build better connections between them. 

In today’s data saturated world, businesses are looking for ways to cut through the noise, and consumers are looking to feel seen and heard. Tools and techniques from the social sciences like Anthropology and Sociology can help organizations thrive in today's complex world by focusing on people’s lived experience in context. Learning to see connections from an experience standpoint reveals often implicit rules and relationships that shape how and why trends and ideas matter. Audiences will take away how to understand customers more holistically, integrate experience and systems design thinking ethically, and build more sustainable and authentic relationships. We'll explore how aligning experience and brand charts the future through transparency, sustainability, responsible tech and more.Travel with Adam and Gary, along with previous guest Jen Briselli, to the 2023 South by Southwest event for their session "Customers in Context: Social Science for Marketers." A packed room of over 300 were on hand to hear about how social science can be essential to designing brand experiences. Listeners will hear how to receive a special summary of the event, with tips and ideas on how to think like a social scientists when creating brand experiences.This episode brought to you by the Experience Research Society (EXPRESSO)

Designing for an international audience can provide challenges to the experience designer. If we are going to design with the cultural norms and expectations in mind, how do we handle when the number of cultures we are catering to seems to always increase? This also is a major challenge when living in a multicultural society where we have people from many different backgrounds. At least in that situation, we might have a national culture we can orient to. But what then about living in an international city, where people from all over are constantly arriving, each with their own sense of what is a “moment that matters” or what constitutes a “wow” and transformative experience? And of course, national culture is only part of that equation. We also can think of wealth cultures, religious cultures, age cultures, gender cultures, recreation and hobby cultures, and the list goes on and on. In the face of such complexity, the impulse can either be to turn and run, or to oversimplify to the point so that all these groups are reduced to a least common denominator which serves no one in particular.Today on Experience by Design, we are happy to welcome Kiran Varri, current CX consultant and formerly of ITC, the international luxury hotel chain. Kiran has had his own international journey. Growing up in India, he then went to university in Dallas, TX. And if that wasn’t enough culture shock, he then found himself working in Dubai. In the midst of all these travels, he has gotten to know a bit about working across cultures, and how to leverage those challenges to create vital opportunities.In our conversation, we discuss how multicultural workgroups are the key to designing international experiences.  We explore how ‘intercultural frolicking’ is vital to unlocking experience designs that resonate with audiences. We also talk about how building a common and shared culture from is like the US motto E Pluribus, Unum, or Out of Many, One. By allowing people to showcase their talents, they can find new ideas through their shared creativity. Out of this we raise the larger question, How do we foster cultures of more openness and acceptance, and not to lose our focus on the importance of being human.This episode brought to you by EXPRESSO, the Experience Research Society.

In a media environment where we are beset on all sides by messages, it can be hard to connect with your audiences. More challenging still is educating and impacting. We are all familiar with ads on television for different medications, from restless leg syndrome to depression to atrial fibrillation to skin problems to Wilfred Brimley “diabetus” advertisements, it is easy to feel uneasy about our health. It raises the question of whether the purpose of these ads is to educate or to convince that we indeed need to “speak to our doctor” about a certain drug despite the quickly-spoken side effects. Even when focused on “human-centered” design, it is easy to lose the human in the drive for profit. Not that there is anything wrong with making a profit, but when that becomes the sole driver, then all other considerations can take a backseat to that goal. To create a successful marketing and branding experience, it is not just about convincing, but also connecting. And as our media and social environments continue to change, we have to be innovative in how we create content that connects with people in a way that makes them feel cared for. Today on Experience by Design, we are pleased to welcome Wanda Toro Turini of Ketchwords and Rock-It Fuel. Wanda has built a career around innovating how people connect with their target audiences. Her interest in helping people led her to get a Doctorate in Pharmacology. And her passion for innovation and entrepreneurship led her to work with Novartis as a Sales Specialist and innovating in eBusiness. This path ultimately led her to exploring how to optimize how we connect with people through leveraging the power of new technologies to create more engaging content. We explore the concepts of awareness versus education in marketing and content creation. She tells us about her move from the pharmacy to sales to entrepreneurship, and what she learned from each along the way. We discuss why we need an outside perspective to help us see what we can do for others, and how to create systems to deliver on that promise. Finally, we talk about shamanic journeys and strategic meditation, and what a long strange trip it's been.This was the first in our series of ExD Live, hosted by the ever affable Michael Kirkpatrick on location at Centric Park in beautiful downtown Newburyport, Massachusetts. Centric Park provides experience design and rapid innovation for great companies committed to customer centricity. 

One of the lessons of the pandemic is raising the relevance of the workplace as a physical location in which people come together to accomplish their tasks. There are numerous stories of empty locations and attempts by employers to bring people back. Some of these attempts involve enticements, while others involve threats. Both speak to the growing question of what does the workplace provide to us that we cannot get working at home? And how might we design workplaces that people want to be at?To create a better workplace, the workplace designer has to embrace the experience design mindset. Workplaces are not just about utility, but about the experiences they provide and the vision they represent. The cubicle farm of some workplaces tells you what is thought of workers, especially one devoid of life, growth, and hope. We form an emotional attachment to the work spaces that we inhabit. Whether it’s a home office, a cozy corner of the library, or a bustling cubicle in a bustling office, our work spaces become an extension of ourselves. We come to rely on their familiarity, the way that the light cascades through the window or the smell of the coffee machine in the break room. It’s not just the physical attributes of our work spaces, though; there’s an emotional attachment that develops, too. Space and place come to mean something.Today on Experience by Design, we are pleased to welcome Doug Shapiro, of Imagine a Place Podcast and Vice President of Research and Insights at OFS Furniture. Doug talks to us about how we need to develop more creativity as a society in order to face the challenges that we have in front of us. Creativity is not just the future of work, but the future of our world. He describes the strong connection between place, health, and productivity. We dig into how the design of an environment has to reflect the different types of people that exist in that place, and speak to them all in their own way.The workplace needs to be different in order to support what is important to do in person, namely connect, laugh, and create new ideas. As plants need sunlight to grow, so do we. And beyond that, we need a fertile environment in which we feel cared for, nurtured, and welcome. Ultimately, we need to think about the soul of the workplace, and how to create one that creates a culture that supports the flourishing of those who work there.And also how laughter might be the best metric of success of all, and how a closet full of wigs might be the key to changing corporate culture. 

In experience design, there is design thinking, design doing, and design strategizing. Seldom do all three things come together in one package. This clearly presents a problem. Thinking isn’t enough without the doing. And doing isn’t enough without a strategy for what we are doing and why we are doing it. How to tie these things together becomes not just a challenge, but a requirement if you want your company to succeed long-term.Taking the messy, ephemeral aspects of how we go through life - expectations, memories, senses - and turn those into strategic points for organizational action. And it is not just about having organizational action, but more importantly organizational impact. The question becomes in what ways are the experiences we design impactful? And how do we have impact that has larger meaning and connected to a greater purpose? Changing behavior is hard because it is easy to come back to the old behaviors. With old behaviors comes predictable outcomes. In a world where change is needed, we can no longer abide by predictable outcomes.Today on Experience by Design, we are very excited to have Dr. Aga Szostek. Aga is one of the foremost experience design thinkers and strategists around. In 2021, she published The Umami Strategy: Stand Out by Mixing Business with Experience Design. She followed that up with Leadership by Design: A Guide to Transform You as a Leader in 2023. Central to all of her work is how to take complex ideas, couple them with theoretical frameworks, and turn them into actionable strategies. Her practical approach is inspired by a deeper knowledge that is built on her own unique path to her current work.In our conversation, we explore what is at the center of experience design as an emergent field. We discuss how she works as a type of Experience Therapist who helps her clients shift their worldview and strategy. Her Umami Strategy course is meant to help people find a way to do things that are meaningful to them, and can be meaningful to others. Rather than going for the big change, you can go for 1000 small changes. Once people see that change is possible, then you give them confidence to make those bigger changes. Ultimately, every experience designer is a person who wants to fix the world. Through her perspective and work, Aga definitely is on a mission to deliver on that promise.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being an experience designer, or a designer of any kind, is the opportunity to make unexpected connections in order to deliver new experiences. Often this starts in our backgrounds of study. Because there are so few programs targeted in experience design, the majority of designers combine their educational background in different ways, practicing a strange type of professional alchemy that results in creativity and innovation. And if you talk to an experience designer, which we do a lot here at Experience by Design, you often get the same kind of response, “I don’t know how I got here, but I'm sure glad that I did!” One of the best thing about doing the podcast is the opportunity to explore those diverse backgrounds and journeys, tracing the circuitous routes that many of us take to get here. While it will be a good thing to at some point have experience design programs that train experience design professionals, it will be unfortunate if we lose the spirit that comes from the diverse journeys.Today on Experience by Design, we are glad to have consultant and experience designer Jaci Badzin. Jaci brings with herself a range of personal and professional experiences that she combines to make memorable experiences. We talk about her affinity for backgammon, her training as a dancer, her knowledge of gymnastics, her working with some of the biggest brands around, and her work running her own experience design company. We also talk about how constraints are the possibility for creativity. When you don’t have the budget, you can see what you do have. When you don’t have the space, you can see how to best use the space you have. When you don’t have the staff, focus on the skills of the people you do have. Her role is to bring the parts together in unique ways, and be the conductor of the experience orchestra.Jaci also thinks she has some idea on how to make academic conferences less boring, which would be her greatest achievement of all!

One of the fascinating things about doing experience design is the innumerable ways in which we can apply our understanding and work. While we might talk about silos such as customer, user, employee, patient, and the like, it always comes down to people. Or, some might say, humans. And it is not just that we are dealing with humans in our design, but that we should be humanistic when approaching our designs and for whom we are designing. Rather than designing “at” people, we need to design “for” them, or even hopefully design with “them.” There are many ways that our designs can make a difference in people’s lives when we are open to those possibilities.Today on Experience by Design, we are very fortunate to have Vaishali Dialani, now of Konabos but formerly of NOW Money. Vaishali also is a winner of the CXPA 2022 Emerging Leader in CX Award for the Middle East. We talk with Vishaly about how the company started with a strong dose empathy for their migrant worker customers, who can be in precarious employment and immigration situations regarding their stability and opportunities. She talks about how her own background of being of Indian descent but growing up in Dubai helped her build trust with customers. We explore how the use of the app was about much more than the app itself, but about cultural norms, mindsets, and social context. Ultimately, the financial tool had a major impact on setting culture through technology, impacting the person who is using it as well as the family back home where the money is being sent. In this way, it became a tool to help provide services and support to the globally underserved and unsupported.