

The Human Centered Design Podcast (Premium)
This is HCD
This is HCD: The Podcast for Human-Centered Design EnthusiastsWelcome to This is HCD, the premier podcast for human-centered design, with over 1 million downloads and hosted by Gerry Scullion.Our mission is to empower designers, changemakers, and innovators to craft a more inclusive and thoughtful future. Each episode brings you engaging conversations with leading voices across service design, UX, interaction design, product management, and more. Together, we explore the nuances of what it means to excel in human-centered design, offering insights, skills, and perspectives to elevate your practice.Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just beginning your journey, This is HCD is your destination for actionable ideas and inspiration to drive meaningful change through intentional design.Join our growing, ethically conscious design community—connect, learn, and get involved. Together, we’re building a private LinkedIn-style network for human-centered designers ready to make an impact.Tune in, get inspired, and shape the future with This is HCD!
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 17, 2020 • 35min
Kim Mackenzie Doyle 'Designing for the future with children and schools at the Center'
This episode is brought to you by This is Doing - Learn Design and Innovation remotely via online classes
Hello and welcome to another episode of Bringing Design Closer. My name is Gerry Scullion, and I’m a service designer, and founder of This is HCD and CEO of This is Doing - we provide live online design and innovation classes, providing training for service designers, design researchers, product managers, user experience designers and much more.Today on the show we have Kim Mackenzie Doyle, a name that will be familiar to all of the Irish Design community. Kim is the Former President of the Irish Design Institute and when I say this, I truly mean it, one of the most incredibly forward-thinking individuals in Ireland right now. Kim works tirelessly on projects that she initiated such as Mind Over Matter, and also Why Design - an initiative that aims to address and improve the ration of men and women in Design. We also speak about Kim’s latest project, The Big Idea, something I am involved with as a judge, and This is HCD and This is Doing are both right behind her on this one - working on the next generation of designers currently in School.
Let’s get into the episode...
The Big Idea
Kim on LinkedIn
Kim on Twitter

Nov 14, 2020 • 31min
Doing Design 'Structuring Design Research Projects for Success'
In this episode of Doing Design, you will hear from myself, Gerry Scullion and Geke Van Dijk, one of the finest design researchers that I know of and work with. We chat about structuring design research projects for success and go through the granular details of things that successful research projects do.
It's a good one!
Train with Geke
Train with Gerry
View all courses on This is Doing
This is Doing on Twitter

Nov 12, 2020 • 53min
Nick Evanson 'Big Data growth is not sustainable'
By 2035, it is estimated that there will be more than 2,000 zettabytes of data produced globally. Based on current storage pricing, 2,000 zettabytes would cost $58 trillion to store. The global economy is currently worth about $80 trillion. The pace and quantity of data production is not even remotely sustainable.One zettabyte—just one zettabyte—would require 20 trillion trees worth of paper to print out. There are about three trillion trees left on this planet. The digital world is undergoing a Big Bang of data and 90% of it is useless because we have a culture that prizes production and collection over-analysis and insight. Nick talks about how we might address the Big Data tsunami.
Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/
Connect with Nick - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-e-0a0734124/
Upcoming courses with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern
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Training with This is Doing

Nov 9, 2020 • 33min
David Dylan Thomas 'Designing with/for Cognitive Bias'
Hello and welcome to another episode of BDC. My name is Gerry Scullion, and I’m a service designer, and founder of This is HCD and CEO of This is Doing - we provide live online design and innovation classes, providing training for service designers, design researchers, product managers, user experience designers and much more.
In this episode, I am delighted to welcome David Dylan Thomas, author of the new book from A Book Apart, Designing for Cognitive Bias. We speak openly about bias in the design sphere and what we can do to mitigate it - right from the start of our projects. David’s a wonderful guest and also facilitated a wonderful live event for the This is HCD community in Berlin, now available on YouTube - I will add a Link to that in the show notes.
David's talk at This is HCD / Berlin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4-rZRecqc
Buy David's book - https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-cognitive-bias
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Training with This is Doing

Oct 27, 2020 • 26min
Marc Stickdorn on Doing Design 'Journey Map Operations'
Welcome to the Doing Design podcast on This is HCD. Hosted by all the worlds best live design and innovation trainers at ThisisDoing.com -
The Doing Design podcast focusses on all the behind the scenes things related to actually DOING Innovation and Design, such as Design Research, Facilitation, Prototyping, Visualisation - and a great sounding board for industries like Service Design, UX, Content Design and Product Management -
In this episode, you’ll hear from myself and Marc Stickdorn author of 'This is Service Design Thinking' and 'This is Service Design Doing' and trainer at This is Doing -
We chat about how almost all projects in an organisation impact cx and ex. We speak about how to get an overview of all projects going on across the different teams and departments that impact those experiences.
We dive into the back story of Journey Map Operations, Marc's new approach using journey maps as a visual management tool - something that I believe is an amazing framework that can really really help organisations and teams ‘move the dial’
I love chatting with Marc, and as we mention at the top of the episode, has been on This is HCD, now 4-times! But the good news is with Doing Design, you’ll hear much more from Marc in an on-going basis, chatting more around the complexities of Doing Design.
Let’s get into it.
View Marc's upcoming courses
Learn more about This is Doing

Oct 20, 2020 • 49min
Jono Alderson 'The unseen cost of poor web design'
The growth in webpage size over the years has been astounding. It is driven by a culture of delivery, a project mindset, and a feeling that the Web is this unlimited space where you can essentially do anything you want without consequences. But good web design is a complex task that many organizations are either unwilling or unable to manage professionally.
Once the initial buzz of signing off the visual design is done people want to move on. Fixing stuff is seen as a cost that the organization doesn’t have time or money for. Reframing things around quality can change the focus. Jono explores how we can think of web design through a quality lens.
https://www.jonoalderson.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonoalderson/?originalSubdomain=uk
Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/

Oct 20, 2020 • 38min
Diarmuid Gavin 'Digging into the world of Garden Design and what Service Design can learn from it'
In this episode, I speak with Irish garden designer and tv personality - Diarmuid Gavin. He has presented gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show on nine occasions from 1995 to 2016 - He has also authored or co-authored at least ten gardening-related books.
For regular listeners, you will be familiar with a recent episode I did with 16-time Grammy award-winning producer, Rafa Sardina - well this episode is continuing on that trend. I am really keen to explore other disciplines to see how they work to solve complex problems and also approach their work. I see gardening and working with nature as a direct parallel to working within organisations. Thinking like this, I was excited to speak with Diarmuid to see how he explores designing for the future and chat at length about external factors that could hinder the designer's vision.
Diarmuid was a great guest - and wanted to give a big shout out to his wonderful Instagram page where he answers questions regularly through his Live events. So if you are interested and getting started with anything garden related - Diarmuids yer man!
Follow and connect with Diarmuid on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/diarmuidgavin
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Training with This is Doing

Oct 9, 2020 • 36min
Doing Design 'The Challenges of Facilitating Collaboration in turbulent times
In this episode, you’ll hear from myself, Gerry Scullion, and Renatus Hoogenraad, a trainer at This is Doing and one of the finest facilitators and practitioners in the business.
Renatus is an executive coach with a background in theatre and dance and also a leader within the world of applied improvisation.
In this episode, we speak about how facilitation is evolving due to the pandemic and how our home office spaces are becoming less about work and moving closer towards a stage.
It’s a good one - let’s get straight into the episode...
https://www.twitter.com/thisisdoing
https://www.instagram.com/thisisdoing
All our Design & Innovation courses

Oct 3, 2020 • 39min
Donna Spencer 'Jumping into the world of Information Architecture'
This episode was brought to you by https://www.thisisdoing.com – learn new skills in Design & Innovation via live online classrooms with the worlds best trainers
I am delighted to welcome Melbournian, Donna Spencer, a name that should be familiar to many Information Architects around the world. Donna has over 20-years experience, and has lived and breathed the full lifecycle and has seen strategic design evolve. Donna has written 3 books ‘A Practical Guide to IA’ ‘Card Sorting’ and Copy for the Web, and as you will learn in this episode, has two more in the pipes -
In this episode, myself and Donna speak openly about what an information architect does, something some of you may already know, but it’s interesting to hear from Donnas perspective how IA sits within the world of UX and also how it can benefit anyone in the delivery of services. Information is critical and we speak about what makes IA skills really really important in an ever-changing world.
https://twitter.com/maadonna?lang=en
https://maadmob.com.au/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-spencer/
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Learn Design & Innovation skills with This is Doing

Sep 24, 2020 • 39min
Pinar Guvenc 'Understanding Architecture's role in designing inclusive spaces'
This episode was brought to you by https://www.thisisdoing.com - learn new skills in Design & Innovation via live online classrooms with the worlds best trainers
Today on the show, is Pinar Guvenc, Partner at SOUR, an architectural and design firm based in Brooklyn, New York - SOUR is a play on the words social and innovation - and their purpose is to responsibly use Design to build a better future. We get into the what the role of Architecture is and how it connects with services, and how the discipline of architecture has evolved over the last few decades and how in reality, the architects are caught between money-hungry property developers, who ultimately hold not only the purse strings but also much of the control in what is possible. We speak about accessibility in physical places, and what needs to change in order for architects to deliver more inclusive experiences. It’s a pretty free-flowing conversation and we covered quite a bit of ground. Let’s get into the episode.
https://sour.studio/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pinarguvenc/
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