Designdrives: Recent Episodes
Sebastian Gier
Felix is the Co-founder & CEO of ADPList and sets the vision and strategy for the company. Founded in 2021, the company grew into a global town square for expert knowledge, with 20K+ Mentors from companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Google, hosting over 100 million minutes of sessions on topics such as product design, product management, and coding in 140+ countries.
As a designer, Felix has embedded his creative roots in ADPList's culture, product, and community.
Featured on Forbes 30 under 30 Asia List and Tatler's Generation T Future Leader List in 2023. In 2021, ADPList raised $1.3 million from Sequoia Capital India and Goodwater Capital.
The Guest
Felix is the Co-founder & CEO of ADPList and sets the vision and strategy for the company. Founded in 2021, the company grew into a global town square for expert knowledge, with 20K+ Mentors from companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Google, hosting over 100 million minutes of sessions on topics such as product design, product management, and coding in 140+ countries.
As a designer, Felix has embedded his creative roots in ADPList's culture, product, and community.
Featured on Forbes 30 under 30 Asia List and Tatler's Generation T Future Leader List in 2023. In 2021, ADPList raised $1.3 million from Sequoia Capital India and Goodwater Capital.
In our new episode, we delve into an enriching conversation with Ole Lutjens***, exploring the fascinating evolution of design, both in his personal journey and the current technological landscape.
Ole shared captivating anecdotes, starting from his childhood fascination with Commodore 64, where coding ignited his passion for computer graphics.
His pivotal time at an art school in Germany saw a fusion of art and technology, experimenting with Hypercard on Macintosh computers, sparking his interest in motion graphics.***
Transitioning to the United States, Ole witnessed the shift from text-based interfaces to mouse-driven interactions, contributing to simulated computer interfaces for television crime shows during his college years.
Throughout our discussion, we navigated through the parallels between the early computing era and today's AI landscape, highlighting the importance for designers to adapt to a more probabilistic interface approach due to AI's influence.
Ole Lutjens currently serves as the VP of Product Design and Research at Udemy. During our conversation, he emphasized the challenges and opportunities brought forth by AI, emphasizing its role as a skill set and discussing the evolving nature of design interfaces in this technological age.
In this episode we talk about:
How early experiences blending art and technology shape your approach to design leadership today?
The transition from being a designer to managing your own business? How did this shift influence your perspective on design at scale?
The challenges faced in achieving a cohesive visual experience for Disney content, particularly concerning collaboration across different divisions?
How to navigate the balance between emotional resonance and content-centric interfaces when designing for brands like Disney, BMW, and Instagram?
What specific design philosophies or strategies did Disney Plus employ to prioritize clarity, simplicity, and swift content delivery in its user experience?
In what ways should we foresee AI becoming a game-changer in content creation and learning experiences, especially within platforms like Udemy?
Looking ahead, how is the evolving role of AI impacting creative teams and product development in the future?
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, Ole!
In the episode, together with Wolfgang we talk about what designers need to learn in order to become great design leaders, which kind of skills they need. And how do you push forward design ideas or innovation ideas within an organization and create a win-win between different stakeholders?
Wolfgang has a lot of experience in the space and giving a lot of talks on innovation, leadership, and design. He has gained a lot of experiences, both in the startup area, but then also agencies and enterprises, for example, at Nokia or SAP.
In this episode, we look at:
What are the key elements of effective design leadership?
How important is clear communication in cross-departmental collaboration?
“It's about teamwork and finding allies to make joint decisions for a great product experience.”
Why is it important to have allies who champion the cause of design within the company?
What are the benefits of designers proactively seeking out opportunities to contribute and solve problems within their organization?
"Proactivity and initiative are crucial for changing the perception of design within an organization."
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, Wolfgang!
In this episode of we engage in a captivating conversation with Sheng-Hung Lee, an accomplished design expert and a dedicated PhD researcher at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Sheng-Hung's journey in the realms of design, engineering, and academia has equipped him with a wealth of knowledge and insights, making this discussion truly enriching.
Through this engaging dialogue, we unravel intriguing topics at the crossroads of science, engineering, and design. Sheng-Hung passionately advocates for the necessity of constraints and friction in this intersection, underscoring how these elements serve as catalysts for innovation and the birth of creative solutions.
In the episode, we jump into:
Intersection of science, engineering, and design.
Design in financial services.
How to balance design and engineering perspectives?
Sustainability and design in academic environments.
“As designers and engineers, understanding the user's perspective is essential. It's like speaking a language that the user understands, and that language is empathy.”
What is the power of design in innovation?
"Innovation thrives in constraints. Constraints are not roadblocks; they're the creative boundaries within which we find our best solutions.”
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time, Sheng!
In this episode, we explore the dynamic relationship between design as a creative discipline and the systems and tools that shape this creativity, for better or for worse. We delve into the importance of customizing design processes to allow designers to focus on the most impactful aspects of their work, including the strategic and psychological components of problem-solving.
Our guest, Don Norman, a renowned design expert with over four decades of experience in academia and industry, shares his insights on a range of design topics. We discuss the challenges designers face in avoiding quick assumptions and solutions when tackling design briefs and how to choose the most effective methods for problem-solving.
Don also offers guidance on incorporating principles of visual perception and affordance into the design process, as well as creating artificial friction in designs.
In addition, we explore the importance of designing for a better world and the role that sustainability and humanity-centeredness play in this process.
Don shares his thoughts on how designers can effectively communicate the value of design to business stakeholders and the common mistakes to avoid.
We also discuss the need for a different kind of design in the fifth industrial revolution and the arbitrary and artificial measurements that govern our lives.
Tune in to this episode for an engaging conversation on design's impact on the world and how designers can play a crucial role in shaping a better future.
In the episode, we jump into:
Design Industry / Role of designers - how is it changing?
What do you think are key challenges for people to communicate the “value of design” to a business stakeholders? Common mistakes you see? What did you learn about framing design for business stakeholders?
How do you try to balance challenging the status quo and also pushing forward existing initiatives?
“Human behavior brought our world to the brink, human behavior can save us.”
Why do we need to design a better world and what is broken?
"If design got us into today’s mess, can design get us out?”
Why if Design is to Save the World, It Must Be a Different Kind of Design
"Almost Everything I see is Artificial"
"Almost Everything Artificial Has Been Designed"
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, Don!
In this episode, we delve into the relationship between design as a creative discipline and how systems and tools shape this creativity for better or worse.
We also talk about why it helps designers to customize their processes and how this allows designers to focus on where they can have the most impact, which is often the strategic side of design, as well as the psychological aspects of the creative problem-solving process.
In this episode, we look at:
How can you challenge the design brief while avoiding "quick assumptions/solutions"?
How do you choose the best methods to solve the problem (JTBD, Sprints, etc.)?
How do you incorporate principles of visual perception and affordance into your design process?
How do you create artificial friction in your designs?
How can designers envision the future using today's tools?
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, Mustafa!
The Guest
Mustafa is a Staff Product Designer at Twitter working on design systems.
Previously he was UX lead on install-ability on Chrome and Design Advocate at Google. His work involves bridging the Mobile and Desktop PWA Eng through cross-platform designs. He takes concepts through requirements docs to fully finished and implemented designs.
Also he was the UX design lead and manager for the Developer Relations Infrastructure team and launched Google.dev, a learning platform for developers.
He can create interactive prototypes, whiteboard/brainstorming, paper prototyping, and low and high fidelity mock-ups quickly. He is also a Design Sprint Master Trainer and has led numerous design sprints for Google's product teams and top-tier partners.
He has over twenty years of experience working with a variety of organizations, including News International, Middlesex University, Metro Newspaper, BBC/Arts Council of England, and Macmillan Publishing, in a variety of sectors, including publishing, charities, local, central government, education, and finance.
He has also been asked to write articles for the Times Online and.netmagazine, as well as to speak at Future of Web Design and London Web Meetup.
In EP76, we had the pleasure of speaking with Lindsey Mosby, a partner in Prophet's Austin office who specializes in healthcare transformation and innovation.
She has worked for nearly two decades to improve healthcare by making it more connected, compassionate, and transparent.
Prior to joining Prophet, she was the global strategic design lead for Philips Design and Philips Healthcare Transformation Services.
She had previously worked at frog Design for seven years, building the Healthcare Practice from the ground up.
Clients have included Pfizer Consumer Health, the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, UCSF, TEVA, Johnson & Johnson, AARP, Otsuka, Boston Scientific, Merck, Medtronic, and Cigna.
In the episode, we focus on how to design and develop better healthcare experiences both digitally and physically, looking at the entire customer journey as well as opportunities for creating innovations when it comes to the power of cross-industry learning. So, what can we learn from the hospitality industry, What can we learn from the finance industry to improve health-care experiences.
In this episode, we look at:
What is the state of healthcare today?
What opportunities do designers have to influence the healthcare industry?
Are we making the move from "Healthcare as an event" to "Health as a journey and mindset"?
How do we shift from "solving" to "prevention" and become more strategic in this context?
In terms of experience design, what can the healthcare industry learn from the financial industry?
In a data-driven world, how is the concept of "personal advisor" changing?
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, Lindsey!
The Guest
Lindsey Mosby is a partner in Prophet’s Austin office, specializing in healthcare transformation and innovation. For nearly two decades, she has worked to make healthcare more connected, compassionate, transparent, and, dare we say, delightful.
That necessitates thinking big, being brave, and listening well, all of which she has honed over her 20 years in design strategy and innovation. (Being a mom, a road warrior, an industry speaker, and auditioning for Lilith Fair also helped.) She focuses on envisioning and executing innovation programs that lead to a more human and sustainable healthcare ecosystem, working with both legacy and start-up healthcare players.
She previously led global strategic design for Philips Design and Philips Healthcare Transformation Services before joining Prophet. She spent seven years at frog Design building the healthcare practice from the ground up. Pfizer Consumer Health, the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, UCSF, TEVA, Johnson & Johnson, AARP, Otsuka, Boston Scientific, Merck, Medtronic, and Cigna are among the key clients.
In addition to her work as a client advisor and team lead, Lindsey speaks on design strategy and healthcare experience innovation to audiences all over the world, including organizations in Copenhagen, Shanghai, Singapore, and Australia.
In EP75, we had the pleasure of speaking with James Martin, co-founder of BabyGiant Design Co. and the founder of Made By James, a brand-focused and design-led creative agency in the UK, also the author of the book "Made by James: The Honest Guide to Creativity and Logo Design" which was released this year.
His clients include The Chainsmokers, Michael Ray, and Carter McLean, as well as brands like Bishop Slayer Oyster Stout and Plastic Freedom.
James believes that there is no shortcut to creative freedom and a life of self-employment.
Being good at what you do isn't enough. His words of wisdom? Work with a team first to gain experience, then go out on your own once you've mastered prospecting, pricing, and presenting.
In this episode, James discusses how to systemize your creative design process and how designers can do so to scale their services and make them more efficient.
We also talk about what makes a great logo and how effective brand designs can help brands advance.
In this episode, we look at:
The commercial significance of a new logo design.
What is the most underrated aspect of a great brand and communication design?
How do you develop your design's narrative and strategy?
When it comes to new clients, how important is your "design style," or are you completely adaptable?
What is the most difficult aspect of selling brand design?
How do you explain the positive impact of a brand design project?
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, James!
The Guest
In EP74, James Martin is the co-founder of BabyGiant Design Co. and the founder of Made By James, a brand-focused and design-led creative agency in the UK, also the author of the book "Made by James: The Honest Guide to Creativity and Logo Design" which was released this year.
Musical heavyweights like The Chainsmokers, Michael Ray, and Carter McLean are among his clients, as are brands like Bishop Slayer Oyster Stout and Plastic Freedom.
James Martin honed his illustration skills before becoming a self-described "bad" teacher and then a less-than-dedicated tattoo apprentice. He eventually worked in design agencies, honing his craft and gaining experience in order to launch his own brand and business.
In EP75 we interviewed James Martin, who is the founder of Made By James and Co-Founder of BabyGiant Design Co., a brand-focused and design-led creative agency in the UK.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Liliia Mandrino, UX Director at EA Sports, on this episode.
She has also held the positions of Director of Product Design at Fitplan Technologies Inc., Head of Design Foundations (Global Design Language) at HomeAway, and Head of Design & Founder at Olilija DOO - as well as other businesses.
She has spent over ten years investing in continual independent training and skill development, including research, product design, behavioral psychology, and neuroscience.
In the episode, we learn how to create game designs. Games, like automobiles, are highly emotional products, and the design process differs significantly from that of a more utility-driven product, such as a financial application.
We also learn about multisensory design and the importance of conveying a story when it comes to user journeys, which we can apply to other goods after designing for such an emotional product.
In this episode, we look at:
What distinguishes the design process and needs of "creating gaming interfaces" from "common interfaces of digital consumer products"?
Do gaming interfaces foster / empower for creativity?
What are some of the most typical design issues in the gaming UX design space?
How does it affect "cognitive load" and other usability KPIs as game interfaces get more graphically emotional?
How do you strike a balance between the significance of an emotive narrative and design and rational usability considerations?
How does gaming behavior differ (and how does this affect design) across cultures and regions?
What hurdles will designers have while creating for the gaming industry, and what problems will they have to solve?
And plenty more!
Thank you very much for your time and knowledge, Liliia!
The Guest
In EP74, Liliia Mandrino, UX Director at EA Sports, and we had a conversation about her work developing a top-tier design team and user experience design field.
Her interest has always been experience design. She adores the multisensory element of it, where music and haptics link what we see and do on the screen into enduring and empowering experiences.
She assists businesses in creating teams and digital goods.
To create things that people adore, Liliia is creating a platform for collaboration between many professions.
She bases her work on research and data-driven insights, which also aid teams in developing memorable and captivating experiences.
She has invested more than 10 years in ongoing independent training and skill development, including in the fields of research, product design, behavioral psychology, and neuroscience.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Paul Lafata, VP of product management at Heal and former CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA/Lab1886 Daimler's USA, in this episode.
He has also worked as the Head of Design & Innovation at Laureti, the Experience Design Director at BCG Digital Ventures, the Design Director at Bird, the Director of User Experience at Qualcomm, and other companies.
Aside from being a great CEO, Design Director Paul distinguished himself by being a true intrapreneur, developing venture ideas, pitching them, and securing funding for them, as well as signing on investors and major clients.
In EP73 we discuss the differences between designing a digital automotive experience and designing a digital consumer app, as well as the opportunities for innovation, with Paul.
We also talk about the true meaning of good design leadership and how we are involved as a designer in building bridges with business stakeholders.
In the episode, we jump into:
How can designers have the most impact on their work from a business standpoint?
In the automotive industry, Where can designers have the most influence?
What new business models are emerging in the automotive industry, particularly in terms of digital products and innovation?
What are the opportunities and challenges for designers in the healthcare space?
How can digital innovation enable people to receive more measurable assistance?
What are the main obstacles to communicating the "value of design" to business stakeholders?
How should design be integrated into an organization to be most effective?
And many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and your learning Paul!
The Guest
Paul Lafata is the VP of Product Management & Design at Heal.
He is a product creator, startup builder, and team leader.
He has over 20 years of experience working in design firms, consultancies, tech behemoths, and media conglomerates as a Product Designer, Creative Director, and Venture Studio CEO.
Paul creates consumer products with the goal of providing unique and seamless CX (customer experiences) in healthcare, mobility services, IOT devices, and media.
He guides multidisciplinary teams through the product development process's stages of innovation, incubation, and commercialization.
He has also worked as a product manager and design leader at Heal, Mercedes, BCG Digital Ventures, Bird, Qualcomm, and Nokia, where he built and led teams to create digital products and services.
In EP72, we are talking with Jan-Erik Baars
Currently, Jan-Erik is head of the CAS in Design Management at the University of Applied Science in Lucerne, Switzerland.
He also does research on the aspects of organizational maturity, design leadership and customer-centricity.
As a result, he created the Customer Centricity Score (CCS) and is the author of the book “Leading Design”, a hand and brain book to develop design-led organizations.
He is recognised as one of the leading experts in design management and led the Bachelor Program in Design Management in Lucerne from 2011 to 2019.
He also lectures at universities in Germany and the Netherlands.
In the episode, we talk about how the future of mysticism relies on the ability to design and create many companies onto the track after a certain time to assist to focus too much on the business administration of existing processes rather than creating new ones.
In the episode, we jump into:
What are some of the mistakes design leaders are doing and what would recommend them to do?
Why are many organisations “losing the ability to design/create” and why is the future relying on that?
How to help businesses succeed through creativity and design.
What are the key challenges for people to communicate the “value of design” with business stakeholders?
How designers should be integrated into an organisation to be most effective?
And many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and your learning Jan!
The Guest
Jan-Erik Baars heads the CAS in Design Management at the University of Applied Science (HSLU) in Lucerne, Switzerland, and does research in the field of design management and customer-centricity.
Furthermore, he is a member of the board at Vetica AG, a Swiss design agency, and co-owner of Customer Metrics AG, a Swiss-based service agency.
He is a recognized expert in design management and the author of many publications in this field. He lives in Germany, close to the Dutch border.
“If you know every single thing, then it’s hard to think outside of the box”
— TESLIM ALABI
Buckle up for a fresh episode of Designdrives, where you can learn from the world’s best and most forward-thinking design minds.
In EP71, as inspirational as it was, we had a great time hosting Teslim Alabi, who serves as a Product Design Lead at Netflix, the leading streaming entertainment service in the world with 200+ million paid memberships.
During Teslim’s decorated career before Netflix, he worked at one of the “Big Five” in Silicon Valley, Microsoft for almost 5 years, and co-founded and led the design team for Project Moca a.k.a. Outlook Spaces.
We talk about his life experiences, challenges that he faced and also the story behind starting the social enterprise called Leads By Design, to actualize the mission of inspiring people from underrepresented backgrounds and underserved communities.
In 2017 Teslim co-founded Seattle-based watch company, James & Muriel and led end-to-end for both industrial and product design teams on some high-end timekeeping instrument projects.
During the episode, we chat about how he used a “yes mindset” to gain opportunities and get ahead in his career and also how his background as a designer coming from Nigeria make an impact to make organizations more customer-centric.
We also chat about designing at Netflix, what makes their design culture more special and share some thoughts and predictions on what lies ahead for designers working in the media and entertainment industry.
In the episode, we jump into:
The power of creative ignorance in innovation.
What are the opportunities and challenges in the entertainment content space and where can designers have the biggest impact?
New content models with growth in contexts of digital products and innovation?
What are the key challenges for people to communicate the “value of design” with business stakeholders?
Role of the designer working in the entertainment industry in the future.
and many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and your learning Teslim!
The Guest
Teslim Alabi is a Product design lead, Entrepreneur and Mentor, currently at Netflix who is passionate about creating delightful and intuitive human-centred experiences at scale through innovation and product strategy.
Prior to Netflix, he worked at Microsoft for almost 5 years, scaling innovative products, building 0 to 1 projects and leading design on several features and tools that help hundreds of millions of people worldwide be more productive.
In 2020, He co-founded and co-invented a canvas-based technology named Project Moca a.k.a Outlook Spaces for organizing artifacts around projects and goals, leveraging it to explore the next frontier of connected collaboration and time management.
With a background in Computer Science and Digital Media, he has explored storytelling and problem solving through various mediums like video games, animation and visual design.
Teslim strongly believes in the value and power of mentorship, and views it as a way for anyone to pay it forward.
He founded the Leads By Design Fellowship to inspire more people from underrepresented backgrounds and underserved communities to pursue careers in tech and to thrive.
Also he co-founded and serves as the Design Director at James & Muriel, a watch brand based out of Seattle.
“Design’s superpower is to evolve abstract into concrete”
— DOGAN SEKERCIOGLU
In this episode, we chat with Dogan Sekercioglu, who is a former Industrial Design Lead from IDEO and currently works on future robotic and medical designs at Intuitive in California.
With Dogan we chat about the interplay between abstract and concrete and how it’s actually a superpower of the designer.
Throughout the episode, he shares his learnings from projects where he had worked, which made a positive impact on the world.
We also talk about his experiences working on sustainability design projects and how changing the question from solving to reducing can actually open up new opportunities for innovation that might be just an iteration but also a step forward because moving is better than not moving.
In the episode, we jump into:
The role of advanced design when it comes to designing complex systems.
How can constraints and requirements and fighting them, and questioning them could lead to product innovation?
What are the key challenges in designing in the medical space?
Why is “creative” not a department but a culture?
and many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and for your learning Dogan!
The Guest
Dogan Sekercioglu is currently a Senior Industrial Designer at Intuitive, focusing on developing human-centred solutions to improve patient outcomes in minimally invasive robotic surgery.
His previous consulting experience at IDEO as an industrial design lead spans medical tools & robotics, autonomous mobility UX, lifestyle, and consumer electronics.
He has helped shape future product experiences for Johnson & Johnson (Auris), Ford, ConAgra, Biotronik, Medtronic, Atlas Copco, Timberland, Jordan, and Cisco.
Dogan is passionate about infusing human insights with craft excellence to deliver delightful products.
He has deep experience designing for dynamic hardware systems such as autonomous vehicles and robotics, seeking design opportunities in often ignored physical transitions.
"Every project needs to start with inspiration" - Hussain Almsosawi.
In this episode, we had the pleasure to chat with Hussain Almsosawi.
Hailing from Bahrain, 3D motion designer Hussain Almsosawi has since moved to Brooklyn, New York, and started his own studio – Mossawi Studios.
Across his exciting career, which is equally striking as it is satisfying, Hussain has worked for huge brands, including Adidas Football, Adidas Basketball and EA.
The strength of Hussain’s work lies in its confident simplicity, flourishing in intelligently reserved aesthetics and concept.
Aside from some of these projects with the big brands in the industry, a massive part of his self-initiated projects has led him to gain a large following on social media, with followers captivated by his gratifying and eye-catching outcomes.In the episode, we jump into:
What are common challenges in CGI projects?
At what part of the process to bring in advanced visualization? (Early-phase vs final renderings)
How will “designing in real-time rendering” change the design process?
How will digital and physical be coming together in the world of design?
What will the metaverse and "instant real-time visualization" mean for the future of design?
and many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and for your learning Hussain!
The Guest
Hussain Almossawi is an international designer based in New York City who has worked on various products across different industries worldwide.
Hussain began his career designing official websites and logos for NBA players such as Derrick Rose, Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady.
He also designed official websites for Adidas Basketball.
Almossawi created Type Fluid, a 3-D typography experiment. He was named one of Fast Company'sCompany's ""10 Inspiring Type Designers From A New Generation"".
In 2016 he designed a pair of sneakers based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with footwear designer Quintin Williams. That same year, Almossawi created Enfuse, a custom tea maker.
A significant part of his work has been working with world-famous companies such as Nike, Adidas, EA Sports, Ogilvy & Mather, and other world-known brands.
He currently works out of his Mossawi Studios in New York.
Mossawi Studios is a multi-disciplinary studio specialized in creating memorable, iconic, and bold experiences, blurring the lines between CGI, VFX, and Product Design.
From 2018 to 2019, Hussain Almossawi was an adjunct professor at The New School.
He taught Human factors and ergonomics and now serves as a member of the advisory panel for Pace University'sUniversity's Lubin School of Business in New York, Design Thinking Program.
He is a frequent public speaker and has presented workshops and designs at Bike to the Future, Solidworks Conference in Bologna, Saudi Design Week, and -ING Creative Festival in Dubai.
He frequently publishes design tutorials and articles in magazines and trade publications.
His designs have been featured in publications such as Wired UK, Motor1.com, Mashable, Auto Motor und Sport, Highsnobiety, Fast Company, Yanko Design, SoccerBible, Hypebeast, Gizmodo, and Adobe'sAdobe's Substance 3D Magazine.
“Failing is the first ingredient of design”
— SAMUEL NORTHWAY
In this episode, we had the pleasure to chat with Samuel Northway, Head of Product Design at Mason.
In the past, he worked as VP of Brand Product Design at Goldman Sachs, worked as a lead designer on Deloitte and as Design Director at AT&T, among many other experiences.
We talk about his mindset and motivation for working in the creative industry during the episode. And uncover many insights on approaching innovation projects or innovation in general without getting burned out and creating shared ownership, which is critical for innovation to move forward.
We also talk about how he has grown in design maturity at Goldman Sachs and his learnings as a designer and leader. And what opportunities designers have when changing industries, and how to overcome the fear of leaving your company.
Further, we also explore the intersection of physical and digital design and how new business models actually bring both aspects closer together.
In the episode, we jump into:
How to empower and manage design teams?
What are the challenges when you are confronted with new environments/companies as a designer and how do you overcome them?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of designers switching between industries?
What impact can designers create in the future?
What are the key challenges for designers to communicate the “value of design” to business stakeholders?
and many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and for your learning Samuel!
The Guest
Samuel Nothway is an Executive Design Director with a broad background across industries in data-driven design systems, software/hardware development, and product/brand strategy.
Samuel enjoys leading teams working closely with clients and internal partners to develop and execute user-centric products and branded experiences.
Through understanding and empathizing with the needs of users/customers, his research and design work focuses on delivering experiences that elevate the brand and enhance the consumer's everyday lives.
Samuel solves complex challenges for his clients and their brands using new technologies and age-old techniques.
Talking about his career, which started in 2007 as an assistant photographer & art curator, by 2016, he was Design Director at AT&T for innovation planning.
After the Lead Product Designer at Deloitte Digital and VP Product Design, Private Wealth Management, then VP Brand & Product Design, Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs now, he is serving as Head of Product Design at Mason.
“If it’s not Co-Created it will fundamentally fail ”
— SCOTT ROBINSON
In this episode, we had the pleasure to chat with Scott Robinson, Founder and CEO of FreshForm. A customer and UX agency based in San Diego.
When it comes to design, Scott Robinson thinks Frank Lloyd Wright said it best: “Form follows function—that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
Robinson takes that advice to heart, leveraging human-centred design principles to grow and differentiate brands in today's ever-changing digital landscape, including Acura, Honda, Ballast Point, Facebook, Intel, ExxonMobil, Qualcomm and the University of San Diego.
Robinson has been in the field of design and marketing for nearly 20 years and at the helm of FreshForm since 2001 and remains intensely passionate about the intersection of marketing, design, technology, innovation and consumer behaviour in the digital age.
We've got a chat about how human-centred design is changing as humans evolve but also the environment of humans becomes increasingly technological.
We also dive into the difference and intersection of CX design and EX design, further Scott does play a key role in the context of design capital 2024, which will be a collaboration between San Diego and Tijuana in Mexico, in the episode we learn about what makes the region special and unique
In the episode, we jump into:
✔️Designing for humans and technology in harmony.
✔️Why Co-Creation is critical for innovations to survive?
✔️Why great CX Design requires great EX (Employee Experience) Design?
✔️How technology is becoming an extension of the human body, and how to design for it?
✔️The mission and journey behind the Design Capital 2024 (San Diego and Tijuana)
and many more!
Thanks a lot for your time and for your learning Scott!
The Guest
Scott Robinson is the founder of FreshForm, an experience design consultancy that leverages a combination of design thinking, business thinking and customer experience principles to grow and differentiate companies.
Scott has been in the field of design and digital experiences for over 20 years and at the helm of FreshForm since 2001.
Scott is an advocate for the business value of design and was the Founding President of the Design Forward Alliance from 2016-2020, where he led the non-profit to bid and win the designation of World Design Capital 2024 for the San Diego/Tijuana region.
Scott is intensely interested in the intersection of design, technology, business and human behaviour in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
"The circular design is about really eliminating the concept of waste by designing it in a way that every material can be reused." - Karel J. Golta
Circular design: the next step of design thinking?
Circular design, by bringing the subject of resources to the forefront, also creates an opportunity to integrate increasingly more important strategic dimensions in an ever-changing world.
Shifting to a circular mindset when it comes to design can prove to be delicate.
Thrilled to launch our EP66 which is all about circular design thinking.
In this episode, we had the pleasure to chat with Karel J. Golta, Founder and CEO of INDEED Innovation, about circular design, strategic innovation, and speculative design.
His team had the chance to bring a strong perspective of circular design into recent projects and he shares the learnings on scaling from user-centric design to circular design.
Where not just incorporate more data and more stakeholders into the project but also approach your design with a new mindset.
Further, we also discussed the overlap between speculative design and circular design.
We also talk about AI and how the tools and the processes actually going to change and influence the future job of the designer.
In the episode, we jump into,
How to design for circularity.
The role of ESGs for designers.
User-centered design vs circular design.
Why sustainability requires system thinking.
Creating frameworks for circularity.
Importance of Co-Creation on designing a circular product.
Why designers should be more focused on the circular design.
Thanks a lot for your time and for your learning Karel!
The Guest
A humane innovation advocate, Karel J. Golta is on a mission to reverse human impact on the planet by using the power of design to build a more livable future for all life on earth.
With the undeniable effects of climate change and major planetary boundaries at tipping points, Karel demands for businesses and innovation to turn their focus from a human-centric model to a planet-centric one in order to preserve not only humanity, but our entire global ecosystem.
A strong believer in boldness and courage, he never does things halfway. The declared business romantic thrives when he is contributing and sharing visionary ideas with others – whether as an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, lecturer or author.
As founder of multiple companies and CEO of INDEED Innovation Karel loves to discuss big ideas, poke at rigid thinking, and ultimately unearth previously unrealized possibilities.
“With Play, we just serve up all of these amazing things that Apple has created and give designers the ability to kind of play in the sandbox that Apple has created we layer our essentially our play UI on top o that and we give them the properties to manipulate.” — Dan LaCivita
What if it were possible to design and build a mobile product all on your phone — and what if it were a better way of working?
As designers, we are used to designing on our computer - which is often not the end-device of interaction. There are easy ways to transfer the content to phones but with our new guest Dan LaCivita we discuss a bold new idea:
What if you could design directly on your phone and it would be even better then designing on a different device?
Are a keyboard, mouse, and desktop the best tools for creating mobile products… or have they become barriers?
That question started the journey of what came to be Play which Dan founded together with colleagues.
Play is the first native iOS design tool built for creating mobile products.
What does it mean for the future of design?
Design, iterate, and collaborate directly from your phone, experiencing your design as you create it while taking full advantage of native iOS features to bring your product to life.
We are thrilled to launch our EP65 with Dan LaCivita, Co-Founder of Play.
In the episode, we chat about the role of mobile interactions for innovation.
Also why innovation often starts by saying "NO" when it comes to product requirements. The approach of focus actually opens up the field for innovation.
We also dig into cross-device interaction and his experience leading a major design agency in New York called Firstborn, which got later acquired where you can learn about how to run a large design business and grow it even further.
Thanks a lot for your time and for your learnings Dan!
The Guest
Dan LaCivita is an entrepreneur and servant leader who has built, grown and led successful teams and businesses in the digital space for over 15 years.
His latest venture, Play, is transforming how teams create mobile products by empowering them to design, build and experience their product in real time—all on the medium they’re designing for—their phone.
Previously, as CEO of award-winning agency Firstborn, Dan led teams to create powerful digital products and experiences for a client roster that includes PepsiCo, L’Oréal, Adidas, S&P Global, Supercell, Jet & NYU Langone.
Under his guidance, Firstborn’s work has been recognized with numerous awards including Clios, Cannes Lions and One Show Pencils; the agency, itself, has been placed on prestigious rosters such as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies (2x), Advertising Age’s Agency A List and Crain’s Best Places to Work in New York City (4x).
A thoughtful commentator thanks to his diverse roles within the industry, Dan has penned his point of view for Fast Company, Forbes, Advertising Age and Adweek and has spoken at the Financial Times, Ad Age Digital, 99U and FITC conferences, to name a few.
Dan was also named to the 4A’s “100 People Who Make Advertising Great” list, Direct Marketing News' 2016 '40 Under 40' list and sat on the Digital Board of Directors of the 4A's.
Outside of work, Dan’s passions include participating in GORUCK Challenges, team-based endurance events that push your physical and mental limits.
Inside and outside the office, Dan can often be found shuffling a deck of cards—a nod to his passion for the art of close-up magic.
“There’s such a business aspect to design that doesn’t exist in the creative artistic world, and we got to remember that when we are doing design it’s artistic by nature but it’s a lot different than art”
— MICHAEL JANDA
So you are planning to launch your own creative business or you’ve already launched, and you’re starting to grow.
That’s great!
But good growth won’t just happen. Just like a junior designer starts with small projects and slowly builds skills, a new business needs time to mature, test new ideas, and prepare itself, too.
We are happy to tell you that this episode is packed with tips and strategies that can help you with your business.
In EP64 we chat with Michael Janda on the intersection of business and design.
We talk about how you set up a design agency so you can actually sell the business at some point and also how you scale the design business and drive sales.
That means how you get clients or get better ones and how you can convince them to spend more money with you.
We also drive into some of the biggest mistakes designers are doing, and how you can communicate the value of design towards business and marketing in the most powerful way.
Mike is running one of our absolute favorite Instagram channels where he inspires and shares his insights on business aspects of design.
So we are really honored to have him on the show.
With Mike, we jump into;
Why systemising the business is key.
How to design your business as a system.
How to communicate design deliveries when negotiating with clients.
Communicating the positive business impact of design.
Disadvantages of value-based pricing.
How to find new customers and boost sales.
How to convince price-sensitive customers to invest into design.
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Mike!
The Guest
Michael Janda is an award-winning creative director, designer, and agency veteran.
In 2002, he founded the creative agency Riser, which provided design and development services for clients that included Disney, Google, Warner Bros., Fox, NBC, ABC, National Geographic and many other high-profile brands.
Michael sold his agency in 2015 and now spends his time speaking, developing books, courses, and social media content to help creatives level up.
He is the author of “Burn Your Portfolio” and “The Psychology of Graphic Design Pricing”
"Unfortunately or fortunately UX design is now being the hot topic everybody wants to give you suggestions. So how not get irritated but understand that why people are showcasing so much of interest is because our discipline matters and take it constructively and take that opportunity to educate people about not being a pretty picture but how it is driving strategy is important." - Kadambari Sahu.
We are super excited to launch another episode of Designdrives where we explore why, how, and what design drives forward.
In EP63 We chat with Kadambari Sahu SVP Design at ValueLabs, about her learnings working as a design leader for many years.
Recently she has been winning many global design awards and building up her design competence at Value Labs India.
Kadambari creates design cultures by infusing design thinking within organizations and businesses to create a holistic strategy and marketing experience.
We learn how she positioned up and build design within the company from scratch and grow raw responsibilities of design and value of design within the organization.
We also have a super interesting chat on one of her most awarded projects called "Sniffing out the differences" where we not only learn about the challenges and opportunities designing with smell as a creative medium but also the business value considering it in a commercial setup and what it could be if brands would invest into the design with sniffing.
With Kad, we jump into;
What were the key challenges that she had to face in the “Sniffing out the differences” project?
How can interaction designers and companies incorporate the sense of smell more into their projects?
What are the positive outcomes when designing with the “smell in mind”.
How does she grow and position design within the company?
What strategies she uses to communicate the business value to design.
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Kad!
The Guest
Kadambari Sahu is a Design Leader, working as SVP Design at ValueLabs.
She founded the award-winning design team, User Experience Group at ValueLabs, and is currently leading 50+ designers to create world-class and award-winning products and services to have a positive impact on businesses.
Kad is the founder of Sniffing out the Differences collective, which started with the grant received from Prince Claus Fund and the British Council to explore storytelling through multisensory installation with a focus on smell interactions.
Her forte lies in building, growing, coaching, and mentoring high-performance design teams from scratch.
She creates a design culture by infusing design thinking within organizations and businesses to create a holistic strategy and customer experience.
Her practice in design allows her to work on intangible and tangible aspects of design breaking the boundaries between physical, digital, and service design and creating a seamless experience across media, devices, touchpoints, cultures, and geographies.
She has worked for clients across geographies spanning, North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
She has won many awards for her work.
The latest includes Red Dot awards 2020, Vega Digital Award, DNA Paris 20 awards for Interactivity and Graphics, India’s Best Design Project 2019, India’s Best in-house design team, and many others.
She has been part of many national and international fellowships such as BMW Doathon, VR storytelling guild, etc.
She is an international speaker on design and has given talks at many design conferences such as Interaction 20, Interaction 18, organized by IxDA, UXindia, and many others.
She is on the international committee of World interaction design day and organizes and hosts the same in Hyderabad.
She is an alumna of the National Institute of Design, India, where she did her Post-graduation in New Media Design, which has led her to examine the impact that technologies have on human interactions and culture.
She has been curious about the role of design in everyday life and how human interactions can be mediated, shaped, enhanced, or augmented by technologies.
“We can take a lot of inspiration from our engineering friends in this department. I think engineering is always at least a few years ahead in any company because they are usually the first people to start working at a startup”. — DARSHAN GAJARA.
We are super excited to kick off 2022 with a fresh episode of Designdrives.
In EP62 we had the chance to chat with Darshan Gajara Head of Design at GraphCMS a growing startup based in Berlin.
He is also the creator of Product Disrupt.com which is a popular newsletter and website for design resources linked towards the best design blocks, the best podcasts, the best resources, and also a great newsletter for young designers to advance themselves as a designer.
With Darshan, we jump into;
What it means to join an early-stage startup as a designer as he joined GraphCMS as the founding designer.
What it means to grow together with the team and the company as a designer.
What kind of challenges come ahead as you work in such an environment.
We also talk about why and how you can use the power of online education and inspirations to advance yourself as a designer using good resources and online programs.
During the episode, he also shares his insights on:
As a designer how you can find fresh materials online.
What to expect and how to adapt to your job role after joining a startup.
How to stay agile and structure the design projects?
How to set up projects and design teams?
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Darshan!
The Guest
Darshan Gajara is a Product Designer driven by the passion for making products and helping others do the same, or even better.
He is Head of Design at GraphCMS and runs ProductDisrupt.com where he shares his insights and curated list of resources to learn product design for young designers and wannabees.
The reason why he created this side-project ProductDisrupt.com is he is an internet-made designer and strongly believe in giving back to the internet.
He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai.
Darshan experienced in delivering end-to-end product solutions for India’s top ticketing portal BookMyShow and building a crowdfunding platform for creatives – Wishberry.
He also worked towards building a community of design enthusiasts for Panda Network.
His key skills included business requirement mapping, product specification, user experience by user research, user interface and interaction design and studying the user feedback on an iterative basis.
He has been working as an independent Product Design Consultant for 6+ years now.
His clients include startups and established businesses from US, UK, UAE, Canada and India.
“It doesn’t necessarily take advanced technology to have a great impactful project. I think sometimes as technologists we forget that”
— JOSH CLARK
We are thrilled to launch our EP61 featuring Josh Clark founder of Big Medium in New York.
Josh is a vivid speaker, a brilliant author, and an expert on UX design for AI.
With Josh, we jump into how AI could influence creative decision-making and how it’s already influencing our day-to-day activities and decision-making.
We also discuss what’s his perspective on why AI as a complementary aspect to human decision making should give, signals, recommendations but also what level of confidence the AI actually has in the signal to make it transparent to humans.
He also shares his experiences working with AI projects, making it a super inspiring conversation on the future of AI.
During the episode we explore:
The impact of technology on human decision-making
One of the biggest challenges in designing AI experiences
Why questions are more important than answers when designing for AI
What are the challenges in “probabilistic design”?
How much "AI/Data" do you need to prototype an experience?
How can design foster development in AI?
The Dark side of AI (Optimism and Practical Skeptmism)
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Josh!
———
The Guest
Josh Clark is a UX design leader who helps organizations to build products for what's next.
He is the founder of Big Medium, a New York based design studio specializing in future-friendly interfaces for artificial intelligence, connected devices, and responsive websites.
His client’s list includes Samsung, Time Inc, ExxonMobil, About.com, TechCrunch, Entertainment Weekly, eBay, O’Reilly Media, and many others.
Josh has written several books, including "Designing for Touch" and "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps."
He is also an Editorial Board Member at Rosenfeld Media and an Advisory Board Member at Third Wave Fashion.
In 1996, he created the popular “Couch-to-5K” (C25K) running schedule, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up jogging. (His motto is the same for fitness as it is for software user experience: no pain, no pain.)
He speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces.
The goal is to be in line with the vision and then the way in which you align with the vision that's where you get to creative.
Brittany Arthur
———
We are excited to announce our EP60 featuring Brittany Arthur, Co-founder & Director of Design Thinking Japan & Business Karaoke Podcast.
With Brittany, we dive into the connection between culture and innovation.
We learn how design as facilitation can foster business innovation and growth and where Brittany saw people's life change to create problem-solving.
Further, we dig into how design thinking can break company structure hierarchies and bridge cultural differences.
She also shares how to measure the impact of design facilitation and how to leverage the digital layer on a hybrid world of digital-physical facilitation.
During the episode we explore:
How do you evaluate if a workshop or design thinking session was a success?
How do you ensure your projects have an impact and not get "lost in the transition to implementation".
How do you ensure facilitation has a long-term impact on your work/workshops.
The design and innovation culture in Japan and how it differs to other regions in the world?
How the right facilitation can bridges cultures and bring people together.
Best practices in design facilitation
How to keep the alignment with the business vision and strategy, but still foster positive transformation
How to navigate design facilitation in a hybrid world of physical and digital sessions
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Brittany!
———
ABOUT THE GUEST
Brittany Arthur supports companies in Japan to bring their business aspirations to life and to ignite creative confidence at the Japanese workplace by equipping people with tools for innovation.
She specializes in innovation, Design Thinking and Design Sprints in Japan and in Japanese.
She is the Co-founder Director of Design Thinking Japan & Business Karaoke Podcast, the only English-Japanese, 🇬🇧🇯🇵, innovation podcast because innovation is driven by the power of storytelling.
She also founded the ToYoko Design Thinking Network, the only English-Japanese, 🇬🇧🇯🇵, innovation MeetUp because innovation requires robust ecosystems of community and partnership.
She has a equal passion for Rotary.
Brittany is a member of the Rotary Club of Berlin-International, Past Rotary Foundation Scholar, Past President ofRotaract Club Berlin and Past Vice-Chair of the Rotary International Joint Committee for Young Leaders and Alumni Engagement.
She also a member of the Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
She’s continued to contribute to the creation of new industry knowledge and exchange ideas around the new world of work.
EP59 with Fabrice Pöhlmann, Founder and CEO at HelloDesignWith Fabrice,we talk about why, how, and what to focus on behavior design principles and how he's now implementing these principles to any kind of project.
We also discuss how to use behavior design to drive business goals and actually get stakeholders motivated to use gamification in order to drive business KPIs.
Further, we dig into a specific project where he actually had the chance to use gamification for making help content accessible to the generations.
During the episode we explore:
How do design with gamification in mind
How to design for behavior
How you can infuse behavior design in any project
How to start a design agency and grow it
How to understand the relationship between target group and choosing the right content & UX strategy
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Fabrice!
——
The Guest
Fabrice Pöhlmann has been teaming up with creative agencies and start-ups to create sticky brands, converting websites and lovely digital products for almost a decade.
Today He’s the Founder and CEO at HelloDesign besides this he’s also a Lecturer for Design Thinking at Hochschule Fresenius in Germany.
In his role as CEO of HelloDesign, he helps organizations combine behavioral science and design thinking to develop products that help their users live happier and healthier lives.
Here are some recent website projects that he had involved in,
User Research: Studio Sasch
Information Architecure: Reinhard Ernst Museum
UX & UI Design: Pure Perfection | Award Winning Aesthetic & Skincare Clinic
He was the Keynote Speaker at Hochschule Darmstadt / Code University Berlin / Product Camp 2020.
We are thrilled to launch EP58 with Bob Baxley, Senior Vice-President of Design at ThoughtSpot.
Before ThoughtSpot he served as a Senior Manager of Design and product management at Apple and Head of Product Design at Pinterest.
With Bob, we talk about the software as a creative medium and a potential opportunity for designers.
We also talk about the Design-Culture at Apple and what makes it so unique when it comes to Customer-Experience.
During the episode we explore:
Why the team comes first and how important team and culture is done any product innovations.
What Bob has learned working with Steve Jobs
How Apple wins through design
How Apple drives UX design and user research
Why great design needs great engineering
How design visions can bring teams together and bring together design and engineering
Over a million users, no user research, why every project needs a tailored approach
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Bob!
THE GUEST
Bob Baxley is a design executive, advisor, mentor, and advocate that has built, managed, and led UX teams at some of Silicon Valley’s most respected companies.
With a career spanning three decades, Bob's work at Apple, Pinterest, Yahoo!, and elsewhere has touched hundreds of millions of users around the world.
Currently, Bob serves as the Senior Vice-President of Design at ThoughtSpot, a business intelligence and data analytics platform.
An advisor to Project Invent, Bob is committed to recruiting and inspiring the next generation of designers by mentoring individuals and advising organizations that are working to improve the profession and practice of digital product design.
——
The Guest
Catherine Nygaard has been making well-designed and meaningful products, services, connected systems and environments for over a decade. She is the Design Director at WhatsApp in London.
Before that she was Experience Design Director at Airbnb in San Francisco and Head of Product Design + Research at THE NET-A-PORTER GROUP in London.
In addition to that she was also Design Director at Spotify and Method where she worked with many design studios around the world.
Her experience spans retail for digital and physical environments in fashion, connected home, gaming and video streaming for cross-platform/devices environments.
She gained experience in both designing and leading and growing design teams.
In EP57 we have the chance to learn with Catherine Nygaard, Design Director wat WhatsApp and former Director at Airbnb and Spotify.
With Catherine, we explore how to grow design teams, foster creativity in your team, and what she has learned working with some of the world’s best product teams in the world.
We also learn her personal approach towards design and what she has learned managing design teams and working in transformative business environments: for example her time at Airbnb during the times of COVID.
During the episode we explore:
How to design for billion+ users.
How to drive productivity in your team.
How to empower users.
The importance to know the ‘why’ of your innovation.
What makes your product stand out.
Why culture is key for foster creativity.
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Catherine!
——
The Guest
Catherine Nygaard has been making well-designed and meaningful products, services, connected systems and environments for over a decade. She is the Design Director at WhatsApp in London.
Before that she was Experience Design Director at Airbnb in San Francisco and Head of Product Design + Research at THE NET-A-PORTER GROUP in London.
In addition to that she was also Design Director at Spotify and Method where she worked with many design studios around the world.
Her experience spans retail for digital and physical environments in fashion, connected home, gaming and video streaming for cross-platform/devices environments.
She gained experience in both designing and leading and growing design teams.
In EP56 we have the chance to learn from Margot Bloomstein, author of Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap (2021) and Content Strategy at Work (2012).
She is the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston.
With Margot chat about the driving content design and strategy.
During the episode we explore:
The three-legged stool of content design.
How to collaborate with stakeholders in content design.
The upside of shared ownership to push ideas forward.
Synergies of digital content and product design.
Challenges of aligning Brand and Content Strategy
Choosing the channel for content is key.
Quality over quantity in marketing
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Margot!
——
The Guest
Margot Bloomstein is the author of Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap (2021) and Content Strategy at Work (2012).
She is the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston.
As a speaker and strategic adviser, she has worked with marketing teams in a range of organizations over the past two decades.
The creator of BrandSort, she developed the popular message architecture-driven approach to content strategy.
Margot teaches in the content strategy graduate program at FH Joanneum University in Graz, Austria, and lectures around the world about brand-driven content strategy and designing for trust.
Very excited to launch our 55th episode featuring Jaime Levy an American author, lecturer, interface designer, and user experience strategist.
She wrote one of O’Reilly’s bestselling books called UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Digital Solutions.
She first became known for her new media projects in the 1990s. For more than 30 years, Jaime has been a pioneer in the creation of game-changing digital products and services.
Her passion is to help business leaders and internal teams transform their product visions into innovative digital solutions that customers want.
With Jaime chat about the driving UX Strategy and touch base on the following topics: Why is the relationship of UX and Product Strategy is critical for any business How to run User Research programs
How to define the right scope for a client
How to run benchmarking projects around UX and Product Strategy
How to use Social Media to validate assumptions and learn about user behaviour
How small changes in the UX strategy can create a completely different product (Tinder vs Bumble)
You can get her book here: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Jaime-Levy...
You can also explore her new audio version of the book, via Audible.
And check her website here: https://jaimelevy.com T
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Jaime!
In EP54 we have the chance to learn from Philipp Steiner a Design Leader, former Executive Director at IDEO, and Senior Director at Teague.
With Phillip chat about the driving industries with future thinking.
During the episode we explore:
The power of mixing design disciplines.
Aviation Experience x Service Design
The importance of future thinking and advanced design.
Using "backcasting" in design.
How to structure advanced design projects.
Why prototype very early is key.
Why bringing "whole-self" to project can create magic.
Why shared ownership is key for projects.
Why design leaders should act as role models.
How to foster creativity in your team.
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Philipp!
The Guest
Philipp Steiner believes everyone has a creative capacity to support ongoing, meaningful, and positive transformations of great businesses. With expertise in using Human-Centered Design, Philipp focuses on unlocking creativity in people so they can actively shape the world around them.
As a creative leader, Philipp has extensive experience generating award-winning work across industries for companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Boeing, Ford, Starbucks, and Nike.
He has recently exited the role of Executive Director at IDEO having led their evolution of intangible design capabilities and supported their growth in areas of design strategy, innovation, and mobility.
As Senior Director at Teague, Philipp built and led a world-class team of Creative Directors.
Collectively, this group oversaw all projects originating at Teague’s Aviation Studio in support of Boeing’s R&D and their airlines’ fleets branding/customization efforts.
Philipp is an experienced keynote speaker at industry conferences such as IDSA, Semi Permanent, PD+I, and AIX.
In EP52 we have the chance to learn from Dr. Elizabeth Churchill, a Director of User Experience at Google.
With Elizabeth we chat about the intersection of design and psychology as well as her approach on influencing product strategy from a User Research perspective. During the last years Elizabeth had the chance to work on many of Google’s well known software tools like Flutter, Material Design and recently Google’s new OS system called Fuchsia.
During the episode we jump into:
✅ how to she set’s up to UX research projects at Google
✅ how interviewing people outside of your user group can foster innovation
✅ the biggest mistakes digital products teams and startups make in their product design, strategy and research
✅ how to do user research on AI projects
✅ what excites her about the future of tools and software platforms when it comes to user research
✅ tactics to create more empathy in your larger product team (e.g. workshop method called “wearing hats"
✅ how to control the customer experience with cognitive science and visual design
Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Elizabeth!
“Design is about raising ambitions.”
In this episode, I chat with Clive Grinyer, Head of Service Design at Royal College of Arts in London.
In the episode we talk about:
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his experience to work with legendary designers like Bill Moggridge (IDEO Co-Founder) and Jony Ive (Former VP of Design Apple).
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how he implemented service design and user-centric processes leading global design teams and projects
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how you communicate the impact of design investments within a company and set KPIs
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why it's more important than ever to focus on the MVE (Minimal Viable Experience)
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how he is using his skills to create a path for designers to be effective
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why it's better to be a great designer first before moving into design leadership and management, it’s not something you can learn in school
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how you set up KPI and business goals for service design outcomes and why you should align on them early in the process
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how do you methods like “design intervention” and design vision to ensure the success of a service design project
About the guest:
Prof. Clive Grinyer is Head of Service Design at the Royal College of Art.
Clive is an acknowledged expert in service design, design thinking and digital and technology innovation who has led award-winning design teams for companies around the globe.
Clive started in design consultancy Ideo in London and San Francisco before co-founding design company Tangerine with Martin Darbyshire and future Apple design chief and RCA Chancellor Jony Ive. He went onto build and lead design teams for Orange, Samsung and Cisco and was Director of Service Design at Barclays.
In 2018 Clive was named in Creative Review's Top 50 as 'a passionate advocate for the transformational potential of design for some three decades.
In EP51 we interviewed Afshin Mehin who is the founder of Card79 about brain-machine interfaces and the future of multi-modal interaction design.
He and his team recently had the chance to work on the Neuralink robot and beyond that experimented in many internal projects on the future of thought-based interfaces.
During the episode we jump into:
how to BCI (brain-machine-interfaces) work
what value do these interfaces provide
how do interactions with such interfaces work and why multi-modality is key
the evolution and future of interaction design
how to navigate the value of design in the fields of advanced technologies, science, and research
challenges when designing though-based interfaces
Thanks a lot for your time and learning Afshin!
About Afshin Mehin:
Afshin Mehin is the founder of Card79, a creative studio based in San Francisco and Vancouver specializing in giving form to the future.
Consistently blurring the boundaries between our digital and physical lives, he’s worked for client’s ranging from small startups such as Neuralink and Noon Home to large Companies such as Amazon, Lululemon and Ford.
Prior to setting up Card79, Afshin worked in San Francisco and London for design studios such as Whipsaw, IDEO, BarberOsgerby, and Terence Conran.
In episode 50 I had the absolute pleasure to learn from Gavin Ivester, VP of Design of Bang & Olufsen.
Gavin made experiences working at Apple, Nike, Puma and even gained experience working as a design consultant.
During the episode we talk about to:
how to lead design teams and projects at Apple, B&O, Nike, Puma and others
how design drives brand and brand drives design
why brand transformation starts at the product brief
why you can't disconnect brand values and product design
how he helped to simplify the user experience by collaboration of UX/UI teams and Industrial Design
Why design requires optimism
About Gavin Ivester:
Gavin Ivester is a hybrid product and brand leader with roots in Silicon Valley industrial design and extensive European lifestyle and tech experience. He specializes in driving profitable, responsible growth through the power of design and brand.
Gavin recently exited the role of VP Design at Bang & Olufsen after wrapping up his efforts on an aggressive product portfolio upgrade. Coupled with new strategy, the company has returned to profitable growth.
As Senior VP/General Manager of PUMA's global Footwear division, he drove growth of over 400% to €2billion, and led PUMA's watches and eyewear product lines.
Gavin designed the first-ever PowerBook at Apple, headed Nike's Global Footwear Design team, served as Gibson Guitar's Chief Creative Officer, and lead a turnaround of Under Armour's Footwear division.
As an entrepreneur and consultant, Gavin has advised on brand and growth strategy for Grammy-nominated music artists and companies in healthcare, banking, beverages, digital media, sports fashion.
In episode 49 I had the absolute pleasure to learn from Spencer Nugent.
Spencer is well known in the Industrial Design community for his tremendous community content and sketching tutorials with his blog Sketch-A-Day. In the past, he worked at ASTRO Studios, Vivint Smart Home, and others. Currently, he is also an educator at Offsite, an education platform by Advanced Design.
With Spencer we dive into:
The importance of visualization for the design process
how to stay motivated in creating community content
How to drive business impact as a designer through visualization
how sketching and dodging helps to align within a design process and helps you to “prototype” ideas
the importance of visual thinking
Diversity in design: what designers should do to tangle problems around inclusion and diversity
Why it is critical to developing more diverse role models in the design community
More about Spencer:
Spencer Nugent is the founder of Sketch-A-Day, has been engaged in providing free, high-quality online design sketching tutorials and on-site sketch workshops since 2008. He has created an extensive online network and following within the Industrial Design community and continues to connect with students and design professionals via his online websites.
His experience includes working at General Motors in Warren, Michigan, San Francisco-based design firm Astro Studios, heading up his own design consultancy, Studio T minus where he worked with several clients primarily in the consumer electronics and apparel industries. Spencer has worked with brands such as Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett Packard, BodyGlove, Adidas, Verifone, Kyocera Altec Lansing, Hasbro, Dell, Tupperware, and Motorola. Further, Spencer has been involved in managing the design for Vivint Smart Home.
Most recently he started his business with 50/50 CreativeLabs as well as teaching at Offsite.
In episode 48 I had the absolute pleasure to catch up and learn from Phil Balagtas.
Phil Balagtas is an Experience Design Director at McKinsey & Co. in San Francisco,CA. He is also the founder of The Design Futures Initiative (DFI) that focuses on speculative design.
An educator and futurist.
His Design Futures events bring together designers, futurists, and strategists from all over the world to teach and speak about designing for the future and the ethical challenges around emerging technologies. Speculative Futures are a new field and his initiatives enable people around the world to access frameworks, methods, and knowledge to apply it and use it to solve major global challenges.
Speculative futures can drive strategic business visions.
During the episode, Phil shares inspiring learnings about how speculative futures can be used to make strategic business decisions. By understanding preferred, probable, and potential futures businesses can understand the long-term consequences of a market and designers support in aggregating knowledge from experts into a visualized and tangible future story that helps everyone to make the right decisions and be aware of consequences.
Public policies and ethics around technology.
Further, Speculative Design can be used to make people aware of how frameworks and innovations around data, technology, privacy, business models, and design concepts will lead to certain behavior and societal outcomes. This can be used to raise awareness and act early for policymakers and technology regulators to create the right frameworks that balance the needs of humans and businesses.
About Phil Balagtas:
Phil has been a Visual & UX Designer since 2001 and has experience designing across a variety of devices and platforms within non-profit, retail, advertising, and enterprise software organizations. He is currently an Experience Design Director at McKinsey & Co. in San Francisco, CA. He is also the founder of The Design Futures Initiative (DFI), a nonprofit that organizes the international Speculative Futures meetups and PRIMER conferences in the US and Europe. An educator and futurist, his events bring together designers, futurists, and strategists from all over the world to teach and speak about designing for the future and the ethical challenges around emerging technologies.
Phil is also an avid public speaker—he has presented and taught workshops around the world on various topics including Design Facilitation, Digital Transformation, and Speculative Design. Delivering powerful statements around the importance of design and strategy to shape the future of society and businesses, he shares an amalgamation of experience from working across sectors and focuses on how to empower designers for social impact.
More about Phil:
Phil currently contributes to a small chapter of a book coming out later this year led by Gem Bartond called: Experimental Realism
He runs a frequent Twitch show called ztopia.show about speculative futures.
Books Phil recommends:
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
How to Future by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby
Future Scouting by Damien Lutz
Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby
Extrapolation Factory Operator's Manual by Elliott Montgomery & Chris Woebken
Discursive Design by Bruce Tharp
Homo Deus, Sapiens, & 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
The Signals are Talking by Amy Webb
In episode 47 I had the absolute pleasure to catch up and learn again from Bilgi Karan.
Bilgi Karan is UX Manager at Inter IKEA Group - working on Smart Home experiences.
Hybrid design approach.
Bilgi has a strong background in designing hybrid experiences, uniting interaction and industrial design aspects, Before his role at IKEA, he worked as a Principal UX Designer at Above in Sweden, at TEAGUE in Seattle and Sony in Sweden, and graduated from Umea Institute of Design in Sweden.
UX Strategy informs Industrial Design Strategy.
During the episode, we explore the intersection of Interaction and Industrial Design: why you need to think about future digital interactions to inform strategic industrial design.
Further, we touch on what design areas are key contributors in designing connected smart home experiences and what excites him about the space.
Habits vs “Newness”
One of the key challenges when designing anything innovative is how to drive user adoption and create nudges to create a positive human behaviour change? In the episode we touch on strategies designers can apply to understand the border between these two aspects - and it starts and end with user research.
Tech-driven vs User-driven.
Bilgi had the chance to work with many Advanced Technology teams during his career. In the episode, he describes how he tries to approach tech innovation with a “human” perspective and why we should be careful to task designers to “find applications for technology innovations”.
Happy to share that episode 46 is out! 🎙
This time we had the great opportunity to speak to Kevin Bethune - Founder & Chief Creative Officer at dreams • design + life Chair of the Design Management Institute Board of Directors, and Author at the The MIT Press - as he is writing a book on the intersection of design and business.
Kevin started as a designer at Nike and later on worked as a VP of Strategic Design at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Digital Ventures. Further Kevin gave a TEDx talk on the “4 superpowers of design” which we can highly recommend.
With Kevin, we chat on the intersection of business and design.
How can design drive business impact?
Why designers should think beyond human-centered design?
Why "business language and communications" skills are key to build strong partnerships to push an idea forward?
Why designers should think more about ethics, sustainability, diversity and inclusion? And how to approach it?
Kevin explains and gives insights into how designers can shape businesses - especially in uncertain times like these.
Thanks a ton for the time Kevin - it was great learning from you!
Enjoy the episode! And happy eastern!
A good manager needs to identify the levels of wants & needs - this can be done through behavioural planning.
In episode 45 I chat with Matt Wallaert on driving behaviour outcomes. Matt is the author of “Start at the end” and former director of Microsoft Ventures. Formerly he was also Chief Behavioural Officer at Clover Health.
Matt and me meet in 2018 as we were both speakers at a Conference called “IT Arena”. It was great to reconnect!
In the episode we learn from his experiences of driving behaviour outcomes. We touch on:
-> Matt Wallaert’s journey on the intersection of behavioural science and product development.
-> Why Behaviour design requires a holistic approach.
-> Why everyone is shaping user behaviour outcomes in different ways.
-> Why you need to align on “success factors” before any design process.
-> How do design for a behaviour outcome and consider long term consequences.
-> Why behaviour science can be used to increase business and product success
Enjoy the episode!
Check out more about Matt’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Start-End-Products-Create-Change/dp/0525534423
“Tension doesn’t have to be a bad thing… Tension can actually be healthy…” — Mark Abraham
In episode 44 I chat with Marc Abraham about innovating in product strategy and product development by balancing different tensions and how they could even create a better outcome in the end.
Marc is Head of Product for Engagement at ASOS in London and Cu-Curator of Mind The Product, where he is working with organisers of ProductTank events in over 25 countries to ensure we deliver the highest quality events for our global community of product people.
He also wrote a book called “Managing Product = Managing Tension”. In the episode he shares his product management process, the role of design for product success, best practises in the collaboration of Product Managers & Designers and how the tension in a team and different stakeholders can drive innovation and product success - when managed well.
Enjoy the episode!
“Cross-pollination is the best thing for creativity.
- Rob on his creative process.
In episode 43, we chat with Rob Harrigan, Lead Designer at Y Media Labs and former Design Principle at IBM within the Data & AI organisation.
In the episodes he shares how designers can see, explore and visualise potentials and visions of technology - making ideas tangible and tell stories that make people see potentials and drive believe in new technologies. In his personal experience he was driving multiple design initiatives at IBM focusing on explaining AI and exploring long term visions and opportunities - by crafting and design great stories.
From art school to AR, Rob has over sixteen years of experience as a creative in a multitude of forms, from advertising to technology. Prior to his role at IBM that was the Associative Creative Director at advertising agency Ogilvy, gaining many experiences in the New York Design scene.
Rob discusses how he moved into the field of design and technology from his education background as a fine art graduate, and how his background strengthens his skillset in his work.
With so many years of design experience, Rob gives insights into the three design principles he has learned throughout the years and why that is relevant and important for designers nowadays.
On the role and impact of design in business, besides designers simply ‘having a seat at the table’, Rob posits that designers can be a voice of reason for businesses and in early-stage technology developments.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
"How do you democratise not only access to technology, but also pay attention to the diversity and richness that is important for technology to adopt or adapt, rather, to different parts of the world where it’s going to be used, and designers can effectively impact that situation as well."
- Scott on the importance of user experience in creating access to technology.
In episode 43, we chat with Scott Nazarian, Design Director at groundstate. Scott spent his formative years in design at frog, working his way up to Executive Creative Director at the design agency. He most recently was the Experience Design Director at McKinsey, leading teams in building design capabilities within enterprise-level scale companies.
Scott discusses his work as a designer in corporate organisations like Microsoft and McKinsey, especially touching on what makes working at McKinsey – a consultancy – so unique, compared with his work at frog – an innovation design firm.
We look at his views on how the designer brings value to the table, within large-scale organisations, as well as how designers can drive impact and bring change to organisations that are stagnant and slow changing.
Looking ahead into the future, Scott discusses his views on how design practices will change in the next five or so years. Placing his bets behind machine learning and AI development, Scott argues that designers are the key to humanising these new intelligences, because of their role in human-centered research and human-centered design.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
"What should we be building to provide the most value to people in this product space?"
In Episode 41, we chat with Kristie Fisher, Staff UX Researcher at Google. Kristie is currently building the UX Design Research at Google Stadia, and has previously worked on Google Suite and Google Ads, and has previously worked at Xbox and Microsoft.
With a background in cognitive psychology, Kristie’s research interests center on gaming, human-computer interaction in the context of AI, and human learning.
Initially pursuing a career in academia, Kristie discusses what initially drew her into the field of gaming, and how her background in psychology plays into that.
The experience of gaming has changed vastly in the last few years; games are no longer a simple linear experience of the player completing levels. They are far more complex, and many are built around social interaction, which we can see with the rise of e-sports. Cloud gaming is a relatively new field in gaming, Kristie gives some insights on what Google is doing in this field with Google Stadia.
Designing a game provides many challenges, especially because it is such a creatively focused process. Research plays a very large role, but there may also be times where data can’t provide all the information and Kristie talks about what happens during those challenges.
Games are often early adopters of new technology, using them in new and exciting ways which other products could take away from. There is an overarching reason why games are so successful, and Kristie discusses what that is and why games are so powerful.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
“There’s a lot of great realisation in the design industry around the ethics of design. We know the power of design, but how do we use our power for good?”
In Episode 40, we talk with Janaki Kumar, Head of Design of Commercial Bank at JPMorgan Chase, and co-instructor at Stanford’s LEAD course on Customer Experience Design, and has previously led the Design and Co-Innovation Center at SAP, helping businesses transform through design.
Janaki discusses her experience working in corporate organisations, and the intersection of design and business; how to bring design to the table and how to work with other stakeholders to grow the value of design.
Through her 17 years at SAP, Janaki and her team at SAP came to the conclusion that there are four stages in organisational readiness for design. When established multinational organisations start to see new start-ups with new design and technologies entering their industry and taking market share, these large corporations begin to realise they need to evolve and bring in designers to support this. In doing so, designers should be patient with themselves and with the organisation, as it can take time for organisations to fully accept these new designs and processes.
Janaki also discusses where she sees design heading – how the design community itself needs to evolve in order to take on new opportunities. The role of the designer is evolving – instead of being given a clear design brief, designers are now being brought in to a project during the early stages to develop the design brief alongside the organisation. What does this mean for the designer and how do they add value?
Thanks for your time Ben and IxDA Milan and Interaction20 where the episode was recorded for the support!
“Design is an activity you do in response to some information about thinking what you might do next, and it’s almost like a pause in between some data and a need or a problem and an action, that allows people to consider a range of different options.” - Ben Reason
In episode #39 we talk with Ben Reason, Founding Partner at Livework, a service design & innovation consultancy.
Ben and Livework where one of the very early adaptors and drivers of the “service design” discipline, bringing a new approach to designing experiences.
Livework has three studios located in London, Rotterdam, and São Paulo, and has clients across a multitude of sectors, including: BBC, NHS, Experian, Fiat, WWF, Gucci, JPMorgan, Vodafone, Johnson & Johnson, Lufthansa, public sector bodies and government departments.
In this episode, Ben talks about the evolution and future of service design, as well as the link between design and sustainability – the evolution of human-centric design to design that also takes into account the environment around us.
Ben discusses his early days in service design, including a few stories of brands Livework has worked with, such as London Underground and Streetcar.
A unique element of service design is the frequent crossover to non-design related disciplines. Most of Ben’s work is more related to those working in different disciplines, such as in healthcare when they work with clinicians. Livework facilitates the service design process, helping clients then use the new framework to do things differently.
We also discuss the impact design has on business. As design becomes more prominent for a business, designers need to have a seat on the table in order to know the objectives and metrics they are designing around.
Thanks for your time Ben and IxDA Milan and Interaction20 where the episode was recorded for the support!
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
“Design is a privilege - As designers we have been given a space to question. And a belief that we have a role to play in changing the world around us. And most people don’t come in with those opportunities.” Robert on both opportunity and reponsibility of being a designer.
In episode #38 we talk with Robert Fabricant, Co-Founder & Partner at Dalberg Design in New York, and former VP of Creative at Frog.
With 25 years of experience in design, including 15 years co-leading the design team at Frog, Robert’s design work has spanned everything from interactive environments and virtual worlds to medical devices and civic services.
Most recently he is using his experience in human-centred design to work on social issues, social innovation through collaboration and empowering local stakeholders in the process.
In this episode, Robert shares about the process, importance and outcomes of social design and innovation.
These days he is leading design teams at Dalberg Design, a unique design and innovation practice focused on social impact, with teams located in London, Mumbai, Nairobi, and New York, aimed at making positive social change for and with under-served communities around the world.
Their projects have been recognised in the 2019 Fast Company World-Changing Ideas Awards. We also discuss his highly acclaimed book, “User Friendly - How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play”, released in 2019 and selected by Amazon as one of the Top 100 books for 2019. Written in collaboration with Cliff Kuang, “User Friendly” unpacks how design has changed the world, and how it shapes our behaviour.
Told through fascinating stories such as what the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island reveals about the logic of the smartphone, “User Friendly” is a must-read for designers and innovators.
Read more about Robert and his work on his website: https://www.fabricant.design
Thank you Robert for the great episode and thanks to Interaction 20, where the episode was recorded and IXDA for the support.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
“We live in a 3D world, but as children we were taught to think in 2D.” - Ana on the importance of re-learning to think and shape in 3D.
In episode #37 we talk with Ana Sofía González, Senior Designer at Microsoft on designing future mixed reality experiences in the B2B space.💡
We chat with Ana about what excites her about Mixed Reality and the applications of it. MR brings together real world and digital elements, allowing us to interact with and manipulate both physical and virtual items and environments.
Ana believes that Mixed Reality can empower people in their professions and activating that power for them can simplify so many processes 🛠
In the podcast Ana shares about her design process when designing mixed reality experiences with low fidelity paper prototypes and quick explorations - but also highlights the importance of user research. Understanding the user interaction in the B2B space and problems is key to come up with mixed reality experience that make a difference.
We also touch on how to designing interaction modalities for mixed reality is very different to designing for VR or touch experiences.
Thanks to Ana for the great time and IXDA and Interaction 20 for the support.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
“How do we take things that are very inhuman by nature and make them more human. Tweak algorithms to make them seem more human, more interesting, more weird.” - Dan on designing with AI and robotics.
In episode #36 we talk with Dan Saffer, Product Design Leader and Author of 4 influential design books.
He gained work experience as a Senior Staff Designer at Twitter, Creative Director at Jawbone, Smart Design and AdaptivePath.
He also gained experience leading larger product initiatives as VP of Product at Mayfield Robotics.
As an accomplished author; his insights and approach to design expressed in four books that he has written.
His latest book, Microinteractions, about the details and intricacies of design, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim.
With Dan, we talked about the intersection and differences of digital Product Strategy and Product Design based on his learnings being responsible for the product but also for design efforts.
We also touch on how to design for robotics and how different product verticals might evolve considering challenges in the interaction design of these products and engineering challenges.
Dan highlights how designing with AI systems changes the design process and how he incorporates this in FTU and Onboarding aspects at his more recent work experience at Twitter.
If you want to learn more about Dan or buy his books head here: https://www.odannyboy.com/
Thanks to Dan for the great time and IXDA and Interaction 20 for the support.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
In episode 35 we talk with Mark Rolston who is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer at argodesign as part of a series of conversations at Interaction 20 in Milan by IXDA. Formerly he served as Chief Creative Officer of frogdesign, founding the firm’s software business and guiding its transformation into a modern strategic design organization.
Mark shares insights from over 30 years of design experience: how he experienced the transformation of technology, society and design in the last 30 years and where he sees it going. We touch on the mixed reality and how technology and computing at large are changing human behaviours in both positive and negative ways. We also explore invisible interfaces, how present AI is already in our today’s life and how digital design systems have changed the way software is designed. Mark also shares inspiring perspectives on the role of design and why it is a more “designable” world than ever. We also talk about where he sees design evolving and the role of user experience moving forward. Exciting insights and inspiring perspectives.
Thanks to Mark for the great time and IXDA and Interaction 20 for the support.
About Mark Rolston:
Mark Rolston is cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of argodesign and a renowned designer with a 30-year career of creating for the world’s largest and most innovative companies. He was an early pioneer of software user experience, helping forge the disciplines around user interface design and mobile platforms. His current focus is addressing the modern challenge of design beyond the visible artifact – in the realm of behavior, the interaction between human and machine, and other unseen elements. Prior to founding argodesign, he served as Chief Creative Officer of frogdesign, founding the firm’s software business and guiding its transformation into a modern strategic design organization.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
Episode 34 kicks off a series of conversations at Interaction 20 in Milan by IXDA. I had the outstanding opportunity to sit together with Doug Powell, Vice President of Design at IBM.
Doug shares insights on how he is focusing on building a framework where designers can grow into leaders and the importance of excellent design leadership.
Also, we talk about how he grows a design team of over 2500 designer with studios around the world and manages to create an international design community.
Based on his experiences he shares why design is key for businesses and why designers need to understand business aspects to grow into leadership positions.
To demonstrate the value of design to other stakeholders Doug shares his principles to measure design impact and how to communicate this to other parts of an organization.
Doug also touches on the importance of diversity, inclusion, new growing fields of design and his views on the future of Interaction Design.
Thanks to Doug for the great time and IXDA and Interaction 20 for the support.
About Interaction 20:
Interaction 20 is the annual Interaction Design conference organized by IxDA - the largest community dedicated to interaction design - and in 2020 hosted by the IxDA Milan & Turin local group. Interaction Week 2020 brought together the brightest minds in design, as well as science, philosophy, psychology and business.
Interaction 2021 will happen fully online. You can get more details here: https://interaction21.ixda.org
In episode 33 I talk with Tanu Malhotra during UX India who is a UX Manager at IG Wealth Management and Mackenzie Investments.
Before that she was Senior UX Designer at SAP working on B2B Enterprise products and Lead UX Designer at Samsung B2C consumer product concepts and visions. We learn about the difference of designing for enterprise solutions versus consumer product and how digital legacy is sharping software enterprise solutions when it comes to design and innovation.
We also touch on the maturity of design in India and responsibility designers share to shape products and services inclusively and towards positive outcomes for people: why designers should know about the potential consequence of designing habits versus addictions. Enjoy the episode!
This episode is in collaboration with uxindiaconf (ux-india.org) UX INDIA. More episodes from the UX India are on the way!
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 32 I got the chance to talk to Ruchin Shah, Senior Interaction Designer at Frog India who joined the Bangalore studio when it was being set up and was an active contributor in scaling up the studio and its culture. He shares his personal experience and journey as a designers getting international work experience at already an early time in his career and how it shaped him. In regards of that he shares learnings of cultural differences that he sees when with international clients from different parts of the world. We also dive into how he sees the design education maturity and value of design in India and how he sees the design community in India evolving moving forward.
This episode is in collaboration with uxindiaconf (ux-india.org) UX INDIA. More episodes from the UX India are on the way!
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 31 we get the chance to learn from Lajja Mehta Senior UX Researcher at Salesforce and dive into UX Research at large corporations and driving it within organisation.
We talk about
the importance of UX Research in the design process
how to incorporate UX Research in the UX design process
best practises and common mistakes on the intersection of UX Research and UX Design
how researcher and designer could collaborate in the best way
how UX Research is set up at Salesforce and how she works together with other teams and departments
how a strong UX Research culture and a transparent and aligned process helps not just the design process but the whole company in getting a common understanding of users, product scenarios and more which ultimately helps people to speak the same language
Methods and tools in UX Research
This episode is in collaboration with uxindiaconf (ux-india.org) UX INDIA. More episodes from the UX India are on the way!
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 30 I talk with Nick Cochran, Design Strategy Manager at ExxonMobil.
During UX India we sat together and exchanged over his experiences building and growing internal design communities, resources and culture for many years. We tap into
his experience transitioning from a technical IT role into the design and being part of day one of design within the organization
why and how to evangelize a design-mindest within an organisation and how he helped to establish a internal design culture
how to pull in other departments into design practices and methods and empower other teams to use the same methods - building bridges with other departments
how to grow a design community, methods, processes within an organisation and built out the infrastructure that empowers the design team to drive impact
how to communicate design value to other teams and what it can deliver to the business and the products
This episode is in collaboration with uxindiaconf (ux-india.org) UX INDIA. More episodes from the UX India (and soon IXDA Interaction 20) are on the way.
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 29 I had a very inspiring talk with Bermon Painter, Innovation & Strategy Lead at EY Wavespace.
During the conversation at UX India we dive into
his approach on design leadership, hiring, team building and learnings during the years
his approach towards innovation strategy and how he is connecting with design, business and tech
how he is using design to redefine businesses in the consulting space
his personal journey from graphic design to innovation strategy and being a manager
what changed for him moving into management as a designer by training
the importance of building to learn get context, data and feedback on a assumptions to evolve products and businesses
the future of interaction design and what he thinks will becoming important topics in the future
how AI will change the design process and what the value of “humans” will be
This episode is in collaboration with uxindiaconf (ux-india.org) UX INDIA. More episodes coming!
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
“Innovation has become a lazy industry word” - Mario van der Meulen
In episode 28 I had the great opportunity to talk to Mario van der Meulen living in Singapore as Head of CX at Tribal Worldwide and former Principal Designer Foolproof and Creative Director at Frog Shanghai.
We have sat together at UX India where both of us gave a talk and workshop. He is also the author of the book “Counterintuitivity - Making Meaningful Innovation”.
We talk about his inspiring journey as a designer starting in Belgium and gaining work experience in Asia - as well as his transition from Graphic Design to Customer Experience and UX Design.
He also shares insights from his book: principles of innovation and how to embrace counterintuitive thinking. Mario also shares stories of projects and challenges where he was able to drive a positive impact through counter-intuitive thinking and by having a human-centred design lens.
Besides that, we also learn how to challenge your assumptions in the design process and discover opportunities for innovation.
If you are interested in reading more about his book you can find it here: https://bit.ly/2IpGSaO
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 27 I talk to Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan, Global Strategic Design Director at Designit, a Wipro Company. Certainly one of the most inspiring conversations I had during the podcast. Udhaya shares inspiring insights from his proven track recording on the intersection of entrepreneurship and design consulting for companies around the world.
We touch on:
the importance to “unlearn”, having the humility to learn, even if you have been successful in an area (the beginner mindset)
how to communicate design as a strategic tool and the power to use it in strategic capacities
why and how design & business are connected
why designer having the ability and opportunity to jump into new industries and experience different verticals
the difference of founding and scaling a design company versus a product/tech startup, learnings from his experience
how he built startups himself that got successfully acquired
the importance of being user research driven, focusing on ethnographic research before designing
the evolution of design-awareness in India
Udhaya, thank you so much for your time!
About UX India
UX India is a not-for-profit venture, UX INDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate the next generation by bringing innovators and UX practitioners from across the world.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
About the Episode
In episode 26 I had the chance to chat with Steve Fadden on driving UX Research and Insights. Steve is the Head of User Research for Analytics, Insights, & Measurement at Google as well as Lecturer for User Experience Research at UC Berkeley.
We get the chance to learn from his deep experience working at the intersection of UX research & design. We touch on
how UX researcher and designer can collaborate in the best way
the importance of ethnographic research and participational design
the intersection of product management and UX research
how to act on behavioural UX design insights
how to balance between incremental UX insights and strategic long term research to influence product strategy decisions
how UX design and UX research can have the biggest impact from his learnings
measuring outcomes of product and services in the design process
why UX research never stops
About UX India
UX India is a not-for profit venture, UXINDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate next generation by bring innovators and ux practitioners from across the world.
UX India currently launched “UMO Unites - Social Impact by Design” to counter the global difficulties due the virus. You can take part with projects or help out as a mentor, volunteer or contribute as a partner.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 25, I have the chance to talk to Shiva Jaini, Product Design Manager at Google, on driving intrapreneurship as a designer. Certainly one of the most talented designers I had the chance to talk to, especially on the intersection on design & intrepreneurship. We learn about:
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his journey of driving YouTube Kids during his time as a Staff UX Designer at YouTube
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from an idea to internal concept video to a co-founded internal project and nowadays an actual deployed product that people enjoy around the world
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his experience working on Google’s Area120 and partner with several start-up
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how to create confidence through design and drive intrepreneurship and internal incubation projects as a designer
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how he developed an audiovisual kitchen assistant. which successfully graduated within 6 months to help kickstart the meals effort on Google Assistant.
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how you can inspire and convince other of the vision you have insights from working on Google Assistant on voice design, understanding context and multi-modal design
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the importance of prototyping designs to drive impact
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the impact of design on business
This episode was recorded end of last year during UX India in Hydrabad where both Shiva and I were speakers.
About UX India
UX India is a not-for profit venture, UXINDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate next generation by bring innovators and ux practitioners from across the world.
UX India currently launched “UMO Unites - Social Impact by Design” to counter the global difficulties due the virus. You can take part with projects or help out as a mentor, volunteer or contribute as a partner.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org and https://www.umo.design
In episode 24, I had the chance to talk to Mohan Krishnaraj, Vice President and Global Head of User Experience at HARMAN International (A company of Samsung) on the future of connected experiences and his perspectives on design leadership. This episode kicks off a series of episodes in collaboration with UX INDIA. We learn about:
his new book "The Great Balancing Act: User Expectation vs Experience” and how it helps transforming nebulous needs into loveable experiences
inclusivity in design as an area that benefits all users, not just a certain user group, and how it drives innovation in the connected space
the future of physical / digital experiences
his learnings on design leadership
how he set up the teams and projects and why it's important to have technical capabilities in the design team to transfer the design solution
why “domain” knowledge is an important aspect in design consulting, learnings from his experience as a former design leader at WIPRO
the intersection of business and design
This episode was recorded end of last year during UX India in Hydrabad where both Mohan and me were speakers.
About UX India
UX India is a not-for profit venture, UXINDIA is built by, built for, and sustained by its growing community of designers, enthusiasts, influencers from business, education, and governance.UXINDIA is being organized by UsabilityMatters.Org(UMO). With over 800+ attendees at UX India 2019, it was India’s largest conference on user experience design. UXINDIA™ helps to educate next generation by bring innovators and ux practitioners from across the world.
UX India currently launched “UMO Unites - Social Impact by Design” to counter the global difficulties due the virus. You can take part with projects or help out as a mentor, volunteer or contribute as a partner.
Learn more at https://www.ux-india.org
In this episode I have the chance to talk to Heike Rapp, former VP of Product Design at SAP in San Francisco and former Senior Director, Brand Strategy & Design at Autodesk.
Heike shares her insights on designing enterprise solution and digital platforms at SAP that need to integrate various client, use case and environments but also how to integrate various software brands and digital legacy products in a holistic and synchronized brand and product experience at Autodesk.
Furthermore, we also dive into design leadership: her experience largen the footprint, impact and responsibility of a design team within an organisation. In that context, we also learn her approach working with business and bringing design into the conversation of solving larger business problems and be involved in a companies strategy.
In addition, we also touch on the intersection of brand and design and how to lead design strategy efforts dealing with different digital product brands and align interaction and interfaces but also evolve brands over time by design.
About Dan Harden:
Dan is CEO, Founder & Principal Designer of Whipsaw Inc., a highly acclaimed design firm in San Francisco and San Jose California. Dan is the highly active creative force of Whipsaw, where he directs the strategic and conceptual direction of most client accounts. His passion and experience combined with his personal philosophies about art, culture, psychology and technology permeate the work and the brand.
Throughout his prolific career Dan has designed hundreds of successful products ranging from baby bottles to supercomputers for clients including AT&T, Braun, Brita, Cisco, Dell, Google, Haier, Intel, Logitech, Merck, Motorola, Olympus, Samsung, Sony, Tile, Tonal and Uber.
Dan has won over 300 design awards in his career including many IDEA, Red Dot, iF and G-Mark awards, and granted over 500 patents. Fast Company magazine featured Dan as a Master of Design and called him “design’s secret weapon”. Dan's views and work have also been featured in Abitare, Axis, Business Week, CNN, Domus, Form, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, Wired, and several design books. He was awarded the prestigious IDSA Personal Recognition Award in 2019.
Prior to founding Whipsaw in 1999, Dan was VP and President of Frogdesign where he designed many notable products for luminaries including Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch. Before joining Frog in 1989 he was a lead designer at Henry Dreyfuss Associates and interned with design master George Nelson. Dan graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture and Art in 1982.
About Whipsaw:
Whipsaw is an Industrial Design, UX and Engineering consulting firm located in San Francisco and San Jose, California. Whipsaw designs consumer electronics, housewares, business equipment, medical, scientific, robotics and industrial products for clients such as Alza, Brita, Cisco, Dell, Ford, GE, Google, Haier, Harrys’, Intel, Leitz, Livescribe, Merck, Nike, Olympus, Peloton, Tonal, Samsung, Sony, TP-Link and Uber. They are known for creating smart, unique and intuitive products that profoundly connect with end users on both a rational and emotional level. They’re also known for getting their solutions to market and consistently creating hit products. Whipsaw has won over 280 design awards, is widely published, and has work in several museums. Founded 1999.
https://www.whipsaw.com
In this episode, I talk with Hector Silva, Founder of Advanced Design & Research Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame about the future of design education and bring value to design communities. As this is a collaboration of the Advanced Design Context Podcast and Design we touch on:
why and how he launched Advanced Design to bring value to the design community: from a summer school and gathering to now a non-profit and design community with a large following on social media but also a team that drives initiatives like conferences, events, podcast and more
The future of industrial design education and the "disruption of education" in the digital age
A bit of myself: my journey as a designer and why I started the podcast Designdrives
The design community in Chicago and how Hector wants to drive change in design education moving forward
If you like to learn more about the Context by Advanced Design head here:
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/context/id1471644670
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2BwnLTa4L1BSjZPrRIumLm
Website: https://advdes.org
About Advanced Design:
At the very core of Advanced Design is a small, concentrated team of design students and professionals lead by Hector Silva. The diverse team is comprised of a number of versatile young designers that take on graphic design, marketing, event planning, and other roles to develop SQ1 each year. Their focus has allowed them to host their first two wildly successful SQ1 conferences within 10 months of one another—pulling attendance from a total of nearly 1,000 people in the first year they've held the annual conference with an international audience to boot. Since 2016, AD and SQ1 have expanded beyond sketching and continue to push their message forward through education in the advancement of various design and communication practices.
In this episode, I talk Chris Jackson, Founder & Director of We Create Future in New Zealand on
the journey from being a furniture designer in the UK into becoming a future thinker and service designer in New Zealand
why future thinking is important and why there is not the “one future” but rather a plurality of futures
why and how we as designers should consider the long term consequences in of our design decisions in times of design sprints and increasingly fast design circles
how to shape public services and the “citizen experience” through service design and strategic foresight
the design industry in New Zealand and the what are emerging design topics in the country
the importance of empathy when designing future digital services: “your future might be awful to someone else” (why we should understand the user and understand that people prefer sometimes different futures and have different preferences that not align with the designer's point of view)
Again, this is a collaboration of IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America) and Designdrives. All episodes of this series were recorded at the 2019 International Design Conference (IDC) in Chicago.
Want to learn more about “We create Futures”? Head here: https://www.wecreatefutures.com
About IDSA:
“For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.”
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In this episode I talk with Paul Hatch, CEO of Teams Design USA. We talk about the journey of scaling a design studio and why it is important to specialize and become known for a certain skill and topic. We also tap into how Industrial Design was influenced by UX and how ID will change in the future considering topics like AI-driven tools and generative design. A main theme of the conversation was the topic of IOT; how connected products and the process and thinking around these is changing the role of design, and the importance of having designers involved early in the process.
Again, this is a collaboration of IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America) and Designdrives. All episodes of this series were recorded at the 2019 International Design Conference (IDC) in Chicago.
About IDSA:
“For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.”
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
Just launched episode 18, which was an inspiring conversation with Laura Silva - VP Accessibility Technology - UX Design Lead at Bank of America as well Mentor at Girls Who Code and formerly UX Designer at Amazon. She shares outstanding insights on
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the importance of accessibility in design and how to integrate it into the design process
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how she drives the financial sector towards more accessible service experience
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her learnings designing more inclusive product experiences at Amazon
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why understanding regional cultures and evolving a robust UX research practise for markets is key for more inclusive products
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why diversity in teams and backgrounds can drive product success
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how inclusivity as an approach leads to better designed products
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her powerful story and passion and drive behind accessibility, inclusion and diversity
Again, this is a collaboration of IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America) and Designdrives. All episodes of this series were recorded at International Design Conference (IDC) in Chicago.
About IDSA:
“For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.”
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
Designdrives Podcast is back with new episodes. In the episode 17th I spoke with Qin Li who is the VP of Design at Fuseproject in SF and is Chair - Board of Directors of IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America). We sat together by the annual conference of IDSA in Chicago the day after Qin and the outstanding team was recognised with some impressive design awards at the IDSA Gala. With Qin we talk about
why designers have a huge reposnbility when in comes to robotics and new technologies
learnings on how to make robotics and technology more human based on fuseproject’s project SNOO
how to introduce the aspect of sustainability to clients and other stakeholders
why designer’s visions can drive change
why more diversity in the design industry is key and the importance of more gender balance and female role models in the design industry
her journey joining Fuseproject in the early days and growing with the company and seeing design gaining more importance for other companies
how she wants to bring value to the design community as a key member of one of the world’s largest Industrial design organisations
her reflection of being a designer grown up and China and seeing the Chinese design industry transforming over the last years
Thanks to Fuseproject and IDSA for enabling this episode and special thanks to Qin Li - it was a pleasure talking design in Chicago.
An episode right at the core of Designdrives: exploring the value and impact of design - in this case the impact on business and strategy. In episode 16, I talk with Kathleen Brandenburg, Co-founder and Chief Design Strategy Officer at IA Collaborative - a global design and innovation agency in Chicago and Los Angeles. She is also part of the Innovation Council at Northwestern University, Board Member at Chicago’s IIT Institute of Design, Board of Trustees Member at IIT, and also recently co-taught Design for Social Innovation as a visiting professor at Harvard University. In her role as both a business owner and educator, Kathleen leads integrated teams that drive business and human impact through design. This is a series of podcasts where IDSA shares insights from the best International Design Conference speakers and design voices in Chicago. Kathleen has a unique background in both business and design, and this is something we dive into: the rise of the importance of design in business. We also talk about how to convince business stakeholders about the impact of design, how to be a master of collaboration (learning from the culture of IA Collaborative) and how designing for behavior change is a new gateway and huge responsibility for designers to drive impact - and can even save lives. This podcast is packed full of learnings and insights on why, how and what design drives forward. About IA Collaborative: IA Collaborative is a global design and innovation consultancy. We believe the companies and organizations that will succeed in tomorrow’s hypercompetitive landscape are those that understand how to fully integrate design into business thinking and operations. We work with business leaders to rethink the role of design in every corner of their organization – and how to leverage design as a competitive advantage, from corporate growth strategy, to offering investment, to driving performance at scale. From redefining customer experience at Airbnb, to transforming brand loyalty for Audi, to designing new platforms and identifying new business models for Nike - IA Collaborative prioritizes, prototypes, and launches what’s next for leading brands. Learn about IA Collaborative’s 7 Elements of Design: https://iacollaborative.com/perspective/7-elements-of-design-innovation/ Learn more about IA Collaborative: https://iacollaborative.com About IDSA: “For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.” Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In the newest episode, I got the honour to sit together with Brett Lovelady, Founder & CEO of ASTRO Studios in San Francisco. Brett shares his perspectives on the intersection of design and business, learning from his experience founding startups like ASTRO Gaming, Minus-8 Watch and serving as a VP to frog and Lunar. We dive into:
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his experience of driving design entrepreneurship, founding many startups including Astro Gaming which was acquired to Skullcandy and most recently Logitech
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how and why design is driving new initiatives and start-up ventures, by being in the catalysing and initiating role to drive a common vision for all stakeholders
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how to learn by every project and business venture initiative as a design team to drive impact
how design practise and community developed in Silicon Valley, looking back at the 25 years of ASTRO Studios
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the future of design and the growing responsibility we share to drive the right behaviours, habits and outcomes on the intersection of technology and humanity - and why designers have to be the “human advocate” in the process
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the important link between design and branding - and how this helps to set design solutions in context
We sat together at the recent IDC, International Design Conference in Chicago. The next IDC will happen 2020 in Seattle. For more information about it head here: https://www.internationaldesignconference.com
About IDSA:
For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In the newest episode, I enjoyed talking with Chris Lovin, Experience Design Lead at athenahealth and teacher at Austin Center of Design. Before that, he worked on the intersection of Interaction & Industrial Design at frog, Honeywell, Mixer Design Group and others creating hybrid experiences in physical and digital domains.
We dive into why smart home products and connected experiences demand hybrid-thinking that bridges physical and digital and how it elevates the process, output and outcome. Further we lean why and how designers can drive positive impact for people in the health-care space and how how the strategic layer can connect various design disciplines in the process
In addition we talk how to balance iteration loops between physical and digital design and how 3D printing and other innovations may create an "agile industrial design" in the future. Chris also shares how to transition between design disciplines: in his case from Industrial Design to Interaction Design.
About IDSA:
For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In episode 13, I talk with Dan Grossmann, Design Director at Smart Design in New York. Dan and I sat together at the recent IDC Conference in Chicago and chat about his learnings around why, how and what design drives forward.
Dan shares from his experience and impressive body of work: before his role at Smart Design, he was Director of Industrial Design at Bark but also worked at Peloton, Martha Stewart Living, Prime Studios, 4sight Inc., Project H Design and many other places. His experiences ranging from various industries and perspectives: from startup to Consultancy to in-house experiences. One recent experience he shares is the design process of New York's iconic public trash bins - which were designed for both citizen and the people cleaning it.
We dive into how to communicate the value of design to other stakeholders, when is the right time to make a move in your career as a creative, what designers can influence in today's world and even speak about how to prototype designs and work iteratively when designing for animals - specifically dogs. Further, we also learn why it's important to diversify your experience, collect mentors and the importance of learning from different work and project environments. On top of that Dan highlights while it’s not just important to try out different industries but also learn the whole process: from idea to prototype and even how the product is sold and communicated. In Dan experiences, designers can have a tremendous impact when being involved in product pitches and shaping the companies product portfolio - not just the execution of it.
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The next IDC will happen 2020 in Seattle. For more information about it head here: https://www.internationaldesignconference.com
About IDSA:
For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In episode 12, I talk with Michael DiTullo, one day after he received his Personal Recognition Award by IDSA during IDC 2019 in Chicago.
“Michael DiTullo has designed for mega-companies like Google, Nike, and Honda as well as innovative start-ups. He has been the Design Director at Converse, Creative Director at frog, and Chief Design Officer at Sound United.
Michael is known for his impressive body of work, yet as one of his nominators writes, “his ability to give back is underrated.” He is gracious in giving his time to students and non-profits; served on several design boards and committees, including this year’s IDEA jury; and has contributed to Core77 for nearly two decades.
Michael is praised for his honesty and willingness to promote a healthy dialogue about big issues in ID. His latest initiative #RealDesignersShip(link is external) is just one example of his ongoing commitment to building a supportive and trusting design community.” - IDSA
With Michael, I talk about the what he learned designing and prototyping with Michael Jordan working at Nike, risk and opportunities for the future of design and industrial design, why kids should be taught in schools about design and how to report as a VP of Design directly to the board and talk to business.
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The next IDC will happen 2020 in Seattle. For more information about it head here: https://www.internationaldesignconference.com
Chris has an interdisciplinary background ranging from Design Strategy, Research as well as Service and Industrial Design. Recently he had the chance to work as a Senior Design Consultant for Embraer exploring the future of aerial urban mobility as well as working as a Creative Director for InReality in San Francisco.
Chris tells about the process of realigning the IDSA programme and organisation using design and especially service design. Of course, we also dive into the future of Industrial Design itself and how to position yourself as an Industrial Designer in a world that gets more complicated and a design industry that constantly invents a new definition of design and categories of designers like “hybrid-designers”. We talk about what is important for Industrial Designers to learn moving forward, trends to be aware of and give also give advice to young design students. Why, how and what industrial design drives forward: we also dive into the impact and responsibility of industrial design and how we should act on this.
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The next IDC will happen 2020 in Seattle. For more information about it head here: https://www.internationaldesignconference.com
About IDSA:
For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In this episode, I talk with Chris Livaudais, Executive Director at IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America).. We sat together at the recent IDC (International Design Conference) hosted by IDSA in Chicago USA. The conferences highlighted speaker from various areas of Design and especially Industrial Design talking about the future of the discipline, the impact, challenges, recent case studies and more. As a speaker and attendee myself I had an absolutely amazing experience.
Chris has an interdisciplinary background ranging from Design Strategy, Research as well as Service and Industrial Design. Recently he had the chance to work as a Senior Design Consultant for Embraer exploring the future of aerial urban mobility as well as working as a Creative Director for InReality in San Francisco.
Chris tells about the process of realigning the IDSA programme and organisation using design and especially service design. Of course, we also dive into the future of Industrial Design itself and how to position yourself as an Industrial Designer in a world that gets more complicated and a design industry that constantly invents a new definition of design and categories of designers like “hybrid-designers”. We talk about what is important for Industrial Designers to learn moving forward, trends to be aware of and give also give advice to young design students. Why, how and what industrial design drives forward: we also dive into the impact and responsibility of industrial design and how we should act on this.
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The next IDC will happen 2020 in Seattle. For more information about it head here: https://www.internationaldesignconference.com
About IDSA:
For over fifty years, IDSA has worked to advance the practice of industrial design through education, information, community and advocacy. Our roots stretch to the beginning of the profession and our members are, and have been, some the most celebrated industrial designers of all time. However, being a part of this community means you are joining something bigger than any one individual. Your participation helps strengthen the industrial design profession as a whole and contributes to the boundless impact of design within business, culture and society.
Learn more at https://www.idsa.org
In this episode, I talk with Hannah Thomas, a Senior Business Designer at Fjord London who is driven by a huge passion to create change towards a more sustainable future. We talk about how service and business designer can contribute drive business and services to be sustainable and circular. Hannah shares how she leverages her background in business with design skills and methods to create this change for clients, partners and projects.
Furthermore, we learn the importance of having design joining the discourse of driving this change and how she is working from a Business Design perspective with other design disciplines like UX, UI, Products or Industrial Design to archive these goals. In addition, we bring more transparency into the difference between Service and Business design and what they both bring to the table to drive innovation.
This episode I talk Nancy Diniz, an architect and teacher from Portugal who is heading and developing the world first “Bio Design” Programme which explores the intersection of design and biology at Central Saint Martins in London. In addition, we talk about the opportunity of that intersection and how design and science can drive change and move the worlds towards more sustainable solutions, buildings, products, services, businesses and more. In the programme designer from all backgrounds work closely with biology and find new paths.
Nancy experienced working in design education and research in the USA and China and has a well understanding of the relationship between science and design, and how both can enlarging their impact by working together. Nancy’s insights are an eye-opener about how designers can take a stronger part in driving sustainability and fields that a new, untapped, unexplored but have tremendous opportunity and impact.
If you want to learn more about her and the programme: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins/people/nancy-dinizFurthermore we tap into the difference between the Italian and Canadian design scene and where he things heading in terms of the evolution of design and specifically service design. In addition we talk about the impact design can have on society and how is driving change.
Antonio is a Service Designer at Partner at Studio Wé in Canada, Visiting Lecturer at UAL and Masters Candidate, Human Systems Intervention.
This episode I talk with Michael Seum on design leadership and his career from in-house experiences in the USA and Italy to startup and consulting work at Minimal and Lunatik but also his roles afterwards in design leadership at Pepsi and most recently Grohe (P&G).
Michael gives important design advice for young talents when it comes to building up a career and some of the things he learned at different stations in his career. We also talk about the difference between a good designer and a good design leader.
Also, we touch on how to grow a design studio, how to drive design cultures and enlarging the impact of a team within a company. Further, we have the chance to learn how Michael involves other stakeholders in the process and his approach of gaining new design capabilities and responsibilities within a company - to drive positive change and impact for users and businesses through design.
This episode I talk with Antonio Starnino about different views of “what is design”. Antonio draws his insights from a reflective and thoughtful article we was writing on Medium about 3 schools of design. We discuss the tension that is visible these days in the design community. The meaning of what design is range from traditional views where design is about the craft, to newer streams where design is seen as a cultural-mediator and driver for change to design as an inclusive tool for innovation that everyone can learn.
Furthermore we tap into the difference between the Italian and Canadian design scene and where he things heading in terms of the evolution of design and specifically service design. In addition we talk about the impact design can have on society and how is driving change.
Antonio is a Service Designer at Partner at Studio Wé in Canada, Visiting Lecturer at UAL and Masters Candidate, Human Systems Intervention.
The newest guest at Designdrives is Kathryn Richards, Design Director at Fjord in South Africa. Kathryn had the chance to drive Service Design and Design Strategy in an impressive amount of countries - she designed in London, Munich, Paris, Istanbul and across South Africa.
This rich experience as a design leader is the base of our conversation: we learn what it means to design in different environments, solve local design problems and face new challenges like building up Designit London or transitioning to new roles of leading design teams. Besides Designit and various positions at Fjord she also worked at EY and Designplus getting to know how to communicate the importance and value of design from a broad design consulting experience.
Incredibly inspiring to hear her insights how to convince other stakeholders on the importance of the design investment and perspective in the process of innovating in products and services: to ultimately driving innovation across public and private organisations—from start-up, global corporates to the government - that full-fill customer desires beyond expectations.
In this episode we talk about Design Strategy and UX Research. Ross Mitchell is an experienced design leader that gained experience from the automotive field at Ford to the entertainment industry at AT&T as a director of UX Research and Strategy who gained experience in both in-house teams and design consultancies. Before his corporate experiences, he was also working at design agencies like RKS Design and served as an Adjunct Professor at CCS. Nowadays he is building WHOA as a Co-founder and Managing Director of the agency which bridges the sectors of research, strategy, innovation and design.
In this episode, we talk with Shan He from Uber, the founding member of Uber’s data visualisation team. Combing backgrounds in architectural generative design (gained in China) in the physical space with generative software design and data visualisation (learned at MIT) she created a new field that becomes increasingly important. By using geo-data and design visualisation tools she is able to design eye-opening visualisations that help in the communication of scientific findings and enable better decision making for cities and governments. Based on the data from Uber's global user in over 600 cities the visualisations can show when and how people move in the environment. In addition, her team developed an open source tool called “Kepler.gl” which gives everyone access to these powerful visualisations tools. Furthermore, the data is empowering research and science to easily create stunning infographics and presentations out of their data. For cities and urban planners its crucial to understand how people move, if they drive alone or with multiple people and understand citizen behaviour in general. Shan and her team work closely with cities to foster better and more strategic urban design. A talk exploring the intersection of design, data and cities of the future.
If you want to learn more about the tool Shan helped to develop and enables you to create powerful data visualisations click here: https://vis.gl
If you are interested in getting Joey’s book on emotional ergonomics head to https://www.joeyzeledon.com/shop/touchy-feely-book
In this episode, we talk with Joey Zeledón who just founded his own Design Studio. Prior to that, he was Design Principle at Steelcase, driving the intersection of spacial healthcare experience and furniture design. He is also the author of the book “Touchy/Feely” and Co-founder of Mothership. Before joining Steelcase Joey gained experience at Smart Design in New York, Continuum and even in footwear design through his time at New Balance. In the episode, we pick from his wide range of experiences ranging from Industrial Design and beyond - pushing innovation in a large range of areas like kitchen products, consumer electronics, furniture and others. Through experiences at Smart Design he also explored and researched new bold questions in design for example “How design can inform our food?” and how design can foster greater food decisions? A topic we specifically focused on was “emotional ergonomics” - how it does foster empathy for human-centred and importantly inclusive design.
If you are interested in getting Joey’s book on emotional ergonomics head to https://www.joeyzeledon.com/shop/touchy-feely-book
In this episode, we talk to Siri Johansson, who is currently designing at Spotify in Stockholm. Siri is a Swedish Interaction Designer who prior worked in various positions at IDEO London (and other locations) and studied MFA Interaction Design at the renowned Umea Institute of Design in the very north of Sweden. Before deciding to go into IxD she was already working as a full-time Industrial Designer in Sweden which led us to the topic of the intersection of Interaction and Industrial Design. We talk about how both fields can learn from each other, her learnings in the transition and how being interdisciplinary and open can be highly beneficial as a designer to drive things forward. In addition, we also touch on the difference between consultancy/agency and in-house when talking about her role at Spotify and the how design is positioned there.
We talk with Cheryl Platz, a pioneer in the area of AI-driven Voice User Interface Design and one of the first designer on the Amazon Echo System. We talk about the design process of designing the very first interactive voice experiences. Furthermore we learn about her experiences at Microsoft where she worked on both B2C and B2B solutions: Ranging from the Azure Product to AI in-car systems. These days she is driving positive change and impact through design as a Principal Designer at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition she is also running her own design consulting venture Ideaplatz, takes roles as an Actor and speaks at conferences around the world.
The conversation happened before Cheryl left Microsoft and joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.