Experience by Design
96 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 days ago - ★★★★★ - 8 ratingsThis is experience by design, a podcast that brings new perspectives to the experiences we have everyday. Does standing in line always have to suck? Why are airports so uncomfortable? What does it mean to be loyal to a brand? Why do you love being connected but dislike feeling tethered to your smart phone? Can we train people to care about the climate?
Join Sociologist Gary David and Anthropologist Adam Gamwell on an expedition to the frontiers of culture and business through the lens of human experience. We're here to make sense of the madness with leading psychologists, cognitive and social scientists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.
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Episodes
Big Little Breakthroughs and Josh Linkner
April 30, 2021 17:46 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBOur guest today Josh Linkner has had a pretty varied set of experiences that led to to writing his latest book, Big Little Breakthroughs. In fact, he describes himself as being a “strange mix of things.” From an early age he picked up guitar. That’s not necessarily notable, as lots of young kids pick up guitar. However, his interest led him to focus on jazz guitar, resulting in him even attending the Berkeley School of Music here in Boston. But his journey didn’t end there, as he ended up tr...
Jack Whalen and a Career of Workplace Studies and Design
April 10, 2021 17:04 - 1 hour - 75.9 MBIn the area of ethnomethodology and workplace studies, Jack’s work always served as a case study in how to apply academic research and industry impact. From his earlier days at the University of Oregon, to his move to the Institute for Research on Learning at Stanford, and then to the XEROX Palo Alto Research Center, and even today with the sustainable fisheries partnership, Jack has used ethnography to further design throughout his work. In this episode, we talk about how he arrived at thi...
Jacqueline Bouvier Copeland and Designing for Social Impact
March 29, 2021 22:02 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBDr. Jacqueline Copeland grew up in Philadelphia, which she describes as a city of neighborhoods. But, just because you have neighborhoods doesn’t mean that everyone is neighborly. From those early experiences of people watching and trying to understand the dynamics of Philly, she became interested in exploring new worlds and understanding different cultures. Anthropology and philanthropy then became her new home from which she could explore and have a greater impact. We explore her work in ...
Business Anthropology and Experience Design with Oscar Barrera
March 12, 2021 16:42 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBOscar Barrera is a Business Anthropologist based out of Veracruz, Mexico who brings a global mindset to helping businesses turn hurdles into opportunities for positive change. He is an expert in innovation, change management, and strategy. In this episode in partnership with This Anthro Life and Experience by Design, podcast cohosts Adam Gamwell and Gary David dig into Oscar's story to learn the steps he took in moving from academia to business. We also dig into: case stories of how Oscar u...
Adrian Swinscoe and Punk CX
February 26, 2021 20:39 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBPunk is more than songs; it is an ethos, as well as an aesthetic. The punk lifestyle and its music is all about attitude, and fighting against norms, traditional dogma, social injustice, and intolerance. It strives to move outside of how things have always been done, as well as being cautious of authority. The more society tells you that you should be doing something, the more likely you are to see punks heading in the other direction. Today we’re talking with Adrian Swinscoe, customer exp...
Lauren Waldman and Learning (Pirate) Experiences
February 14, 2021 19:59 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBThe Experience by Design mothership is being boarded by pirates! On today’s episode, we welcome the Learning Pirate Lauren Waldman. Lauren long has been interested in education and learning, a passion that saw her take on the Head of Learning and Development in Canada for Tata Consulting Services, as well as being Training and Development Manager for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, which seems like a place a learning pirate should be -- the high seas. As her bio says, she is a pirate searching...
Paul Bulencea and the College of Extraordinary Experiences
January 26, 2021 22:36 - 1 hour - 66.3 MBDesigner and entrepreneur Paul Bulencea, who is the co-creator of the college of extraordinary experiences, visits the Experience by Design studios. Paul’s personal journey started with a Masters degree in recreation while in Salzburg. Blending gamification and experience design, Paul and his advisor created new ground in the space of tourism experiences in the book Gamification in Tourism. A chance encounter with a Nordic LARPing leader resulted in them exploring how to rent places to creat...
Stacy Sherman and Doing Customer Experience Right
December 11, 2020 21:10 - 55 minutes - 51.3 MBMany companies want to use customer experience, but are they really embracing its essence? Businesses often think it is about customers being happy in terms of ‘customer satisfaction.’ The point is really customer experience is about much more than satisfaction. To be a company that embraces customer experience is to embrace cultural change. We all know that change can be difficult, and it can be challenging to get people on board with it. Our guest today, helps us figure out how to over...
Justin Bright and Integrating Healthcare Experiences
November 27, 2020 22:31 - 1 hour - 72.1 MBMedicine, like it seems everything else, is undergoing an experiential transformation. The movement toward redefining healthcare in terms of patient experiences is not necessarily new. While it might not ebe new, it still is evolving. Not only our understanding of patient experiences, but the broadening out of that into provider experiences as well. As we have turned our attention to frontline heroes in healthcare, the question arises of to what extent does an emphasis on patient experience ...
Virtual Communities and Membership Experiences with Nicholas Bott
November 14, 2020 22:22 - 1 hour - 68 MBRunning a professional association ain’t easy. There are a lot of elements that go into creating and delivering a quality member experience. Living during a pandemic has only made that more challenging as conferences go online, member information needs change, and organizations try to find ways to provide meaningful experiences and value to their membership. To help explore this issue, we welcome Nicholas Bott of Sengii to the Experience by Design studios. Sengii’s platform and features he...
John Day and AV Hero
October 31, 2020 00:32 - 1 hour - 59 MBPandemic life means for many of us that we have had to become audio-visual professionals. Along with all the stress of kids at home, COVID tests, and trips to the grocery store is the worry about what happens when technology goes wrong. And not just our computer systems, but what about binge watching Netflix and Hulu when your streaming no longer works. What about when technology rebels? Who is there to save us? Fortunately, John Day has an answer in the form of AVHero. Being born out of h...
Ken Gordon and Designing Meaningful Dialogue
October 16, 2020 23:29 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBThe good news and bad news of a connected world is that we are more connected. In that lies the question of how we create and maintain meaningful connections that feel real. Given the ‘flame wars’, tribalism and trolling of Twitter and Facebook, it can be difficult to find threads of humanism in the digital age. To explore these questions, we have on today’s show Ken Gordon, Principal Communications Specialists at EPAM Continuum. EPAM Continuum, located in Boston, has an over 30 year histo...
Sue Harvey and Managing the Winds of Change
September 11, 2020 20:56 - 1 hour - 63.5 MBAs the saying goes, the only constant in life is change. Or as the song goes, The Times They are a’Changing. But if so much of life is change, why are we so bad at handling it? Why do people, and organizations resist change so much? And how can we not only implement change, but better manage and embrace it? To answer some of these questions, we talk with Sue Harvey of New Direction Strategy. If there is one thing that Sue knows about, it is change. Her early career found her working as the ...
Inspiring Racial Equity across Customer Experience
August 29, 2020 20:49 - 1 hour - 57 MBIssues of racial equity, and institutionalized discrimination, have long been at the center of customer experience, and the right of people to be seen as customers. Today’s podcast is a recording of an event from the end of July on ‘Inspiring Racial Equity: How CX Professionals Can Guide Their Organizations to Tackle This Urgent Issue.” The event was a joint effort of the Boston and Atlanta chapters of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. There was a tremendous team of folks fr...
Higher Education is Dead; Long Live Higher Education
August 14, 2020 16:12 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBHigher education’s imminent demise has been long forecast, with a number of factors contributing to this terminal condition. The cost of higher education in the United States is unparalleled in the world, with the average in-state cost of even public universities increasing 63% since 2008. This growth has outpaced all other price indices by far. The fundamental model of higher education has also been called into question. The concept of domain-specific expertise and apprenticeship has been a...
Jim Cummings and End of Life Experiences
August 05, 2020 15:09 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBLooking at the Life Celebration website, you might be surprised to discover that their business is funeral memorial services. But with the bright colors and designs comes a philosophy of elevating memorial experiences to another level. The realization that funerals had become too routine (and, well, lifeless) led our guest Jim Cummings on a quest to not only provide unique experiences, but also learn from Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore and receive Experience Economy Expert Certification. In this...
Justin Sandercoe and Designing Virtual Guitar Learning Experiences
July 17, 2020 15:07 - 1 hour - 62.3 MBDuring the pandemic, people have been trying to find ways to fill their time, often by pursuing hobbies they always wanted to pursue. One such hobby is learning how to play guitar. Who better to talk about teaching guitar online, as well as designing online learning experiences, than Justin Sandercoe, also known as JustinGuitar. Justin is one of the top 10 YouTubers in the United Kingdom through his online guitar instruction forum. Justin’s site has had triple the traffic during the lockdown...
Megan Burns and Moments of Change for Experience Design
July 11, 2020 19:57 - 1 hour - 61 MBMegan Burns has been involved in analyzing organizational efforts to create better customer experiences for over 20 years. From her early days at Forrester, to now with her own consultancy called Experience Enterprises, Megan knows how to approach an experience ecosystem, and importantly how to help organizations change to reach their experience goals. In 2014, she developed the Customer Experience Index to guide organizations across many industry benchmark and improve their own cus...
Megan Burns and Moments of Change™ for Experience Design
July 11, 2020 19:57 - 1 hour - 61 MBMegan Burns has been involved in analyzing organizational efforts to create better customer experiences for over 20 years. From her early days at Forrester, to now with her own consultancy called Experience Enterprises, Megan knows how to approach an experience ecosystem, and importantly how to help organizations change to reach their experience goals. In 2014, she developed the Customer Experience Index to guide organizations across many industry benchmark and improve their own customer exp...
Experience Design and Management at BYU
June 26, 2020 10:47 - 1 hour - 67.3 MBWe live in an experience economy, where experience channels abound in business. Whether customer, user, patient, employee, or something else, we are facing expanded opportunities to create and design experiences. Given this emergent reality, why are not more colleges and universities developing programs in experience design? To explore this question, Neil Lundberg and Mat Duerden visit the Experience by Design studios to talk about how their program in Experience Design and Management start...
Durell Coleman and Designing for Social Impact
June 11, 2020 22:19 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBDurell Coleman has for a long time been interested in how to create inventions and entrepreneurial opportunities to create social change. With an early interest in engineering, sparked by working on cars and home improvement with his dad, Durell followed that passion to Stanford University. Connecting an engineering degree with sustainable design through the famed d.school, Durell has followed that path from the forests of Nicaragua to the criminal justice system of the United States. Throug...
Lindsay Goldman and Inclusion in Cycling
June 05, 2020 23:43 - 57 minutes - 53 MBGiven all the challenges we are dealing with as a society right now, talking about bikes might seem unimportant. However, in fact, the topic of cycling, exercise, and inclusive environments is exactly on topic for this moment. Today’s guest is Lindsay Goldman, who was a professional cyclist as well as Director of Marketing for USA Cycling. Since our conversation, she has moved on to become the Director of Marketing at Eliel Cycling, as well as Wattie Ink. Linsday also was the Owner and GM of...
Mike Goldberg and The Design House
May 30, 2020 02:27 - 1 hour - 57.2 MBFriend and colleague Mike Goldberg comes by the Experience by Design studios to talk about his career in design. Mike’s career extends back a long way, with 27 years teaching graphic and web design at the college level, and 37 years of professional award winning graphic and web design experience. Some of his past clients include marketing and advertising campaigns for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Major League Baseball, IBM, Fidelity, and The Wall Street Journal. Beyond that, and for th...
Steve Koch and Human-Centered Healthcare Experiences
May 19, 2020 01:08 - 1 hour - 66.1 MBPatient experience is an ever-expanding area of work as hospitals, especially in the US, try to compete for higher patient scores to not lose valuable reimbursement. It is perhaps understandable that a lot of attention in the patient experience is directed at the point of care, and what happens when a patient is receiving treatment. However, such a view is dangerously myopic. There is a lot more that goes into the patient experience than what happens when seeing a doctor a nurse. There is th...
Beyond the Prototype: Navigating that Fuzzy Area between Ideas and Outcomes with Douglas Ferguson
May 06, 2020 17:07 - 1 hour - 65.4 MB"You gotta slow down to go fast" - Douglas Ferguson Voltage Control president, design thinking facilitator and innovation coach Douglas Ferguson recently published a book called Beyond the Prototype that aims to help teams and organizations (and individuals!) go from generating awesome ideas to implementing them. Over the course of our conversation we cover: the power of systems thinking seeing variables in the design ecosystem facilitation as model through systems thinking The connecti...
Gio LoMonaco on Music and the Viewing Experience
April 24, 2020 17:27 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBGary and Gio go a long way back to 2013 when Gio was a student in Sociology of Sports and later did an internship with CBS Sports where he paired music with sports highlights. From these humble beginnings began a career in media working with some big shows and performers, where today Gio LoMonaco is a Coordinator of Music and Media Licensing at Viacom. Whether watching a movie, or streaming a show, or tuning into a sporting event or highlights, music is an integral part of what we experience...
Marissa Bluestine and Criminal Justice Design
April 10, 2020 14:48 - 1 hour - 65 MBBefore COVID-19, the criminal justice system was cracking under its own weight. Now, those cracks have started to spread. Police are changing how they perform their duties based on the virus, limiting pro-active policing and placing N95 masks next to Kevlar vests as safety equipment. Courts are shutting down based, suspending trials and releasing those awaiting trial. Prisons are facing a potential major crisis with outbreaks looming and emerging behind the walls. What we are seeing happen t...
Dr. John Torous, Digital Psychiatry, and Delightful Mental Health
April 03, 2020 16:55 - 1 hour - 61.7 MBIt is not surprising to hear that everyone’s state of anxiety is pretty high. We are all facing a very uncertain future. Turning on the news, which I recommend doing only in moderation, it is easy to get caught up in the frightening images and metrics as the pandemic spreads. Enter digital psychiatry and e-mental health tools. Technically speaking, digital psychiatry refers to any electronic device or mechanism through which people can get information about or assistance with their mental he...
A Virus Without Borders: The Design of Public Health, Inequities, and Hope
March 21, 2020 20:49 - 1 hour - 70.4 MBShelley White is an Assistant Professor of Public Health and Sociology, and Program Director of the Master of Public Health. Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal is the Assistant Program Director and Associate Professor of Practice at MPH@Simmons. What a difference a week makes. Or does it? With the expanding pandemic of COVID-19 disrupting more lives, many here in the United States might feel caught off guard, or that things have changed to rapidly. Now health care is a constant concern. What Shelley...
The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity w/ Byron Reese
March 13, 2020 22:08 - 1 hour - 59.6 MBGigaom CEO, publisher and author of "The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity" stops by virtually to chat with host Adam Gamwell and guest host Astrid Countee to help us make sense of just what Artificial Intelligence is, what are its promises and limits, and what this means for the possibilities of conscious computing and smart robots. Byron breaks down the philosophies behind our ways of thinking about AI in way that gives us new social tools to approac...
Amira Valliani (Glow.fm) and the Podcast Experience
February 26, 2020 02:34 - 1 hour - 57.9 MBWe meet a lot of people who say they want to do a podcast, and in fact they are technologically easy to produce. Getting listeners is another matter altogether. And getting listeners pay for content is a totally different proposition. The podcast landscape is pretty saturated, with as many options as stars in the sky. How then can podcast producers create listener experiences that their audiences are willing to pay for? Our guest for today, Amira Valliani, has some thoughts on how to meet...
Kristin Shuff on Lightstream and the Loan Experience
February 19, 2020 14:47 - 1 hour - 63.8 MBLoans have a fascinating cultural property. We might think of ‘loan sharks’ as the present-day manifestation of the ancient pronouncements against taking advantage of people through the giving of loans. More generally, people who handle money in some cultures are seen as ‘unclean.’ So, the topic of loans and lending is by no means a new one.This makes tackling the ‘loan experience’ a unique challenge, and one that the company Lightstream is taking head-on. To learn more, Adam and I chatted...
Micah Solomon on Ignore Your Customers and They'll Go Away
February 12, 2020 15:45 - 55 minutes - 51.1 MBMicah Solomon had dreams of wanting to be a rock star. When that wasn't going to happen, Micah's new journey took him from opening up a recording studio that became a manufacturing business, which then led him to be a Customer Experience star. In this episode of Experience by Design podcast, Micah visit the Experience by Design studio to talk about his new book, "Ignore Your Customers and They'll Go Away." We explore how to create a company culture that is experience-centric and which listen...
Whitney Quesenbery on Voter Experience and Civic Design
February 04, 2020 20:41 - 1 hour - 61 MBWhitney Quesenbery has had a long and influential career in user experience. The author of three books on UX, Whitney has been involved in a lot of projects aimed at making things more usable. But perhaps none of her work is as important as her co-founding and co-directing the Center for Civic Design. Whitney talks about her unintended introduction into the world of experience design through a theater class, her early work in UX as being user-centric, and how a committee assignment through ...
Brands and the Business of Relationships with Bill Fleming
January 29, 2020 16:17 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBBill Fleming stops by to chat with Adam about branding, marketing and design. Bill is a Boston-based Independent Brand & Marketing Strategist, and Business Consultant for Designers. On this episode we talk about what brands are, how the cultural work of branding has changed in recent decades with the advent of new and easier to use technologies, and how we can think about brands as conversations - not just between businesses and customers but also between businesses. Billfleming.com Bill ...
Emily Guendelsberger and On the Clock
January 22, 2020 17:34 - 1 hour - 78 MBEmily Guendelsberger, author of the book “On the Clock: What Work Did to Me, and How it Drives America Insane,” was a journalist who, upon her newspaper closing, decided to work at a variety of jobs. Her choices included an Amazon fulfillment center, to a call center, to a McDonald’s. As our conversation shows, the book explores what it means to work today, where deskilling, automation, technological controls, routinization, and stress all come together to create an employee experience that ...
Communism, Casinos, Airports and Customer Experience with Liliana Petrova
January 15, 2020 16:02 - 1 hour - 60.6 MBLiliana Petrova, formerly the Director of Customer Experience at JetBlue, and now Founder and CEO of The Petrova Experience, describes herself as an “Organizational Culture Evangelist.” The airline industry might seem like an odd place to plant your flag to keep love alive, but if you are going to carry forward the gospel, you need to go to dens of evil. And there is perhaps no place as evil as the airline experience. . How can you convert a whole organization of people to adopt a ‘culture o...
The Employee Strikes Back: Ben Whitter on Employee Experience
January 08, 2020 10:00 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBAre employees like customers now? For example, does an employee's capacity to leave feedback on social media or employment sites like Glassdoor tip the balance of power in the workplace when employees are unhappy? How are mega companies like Amazon changing their approach to employee experience and helping other companies wake up to coming back to the fundamental point of starting with the human? As Ben says, its not just about what you create and contribute to the employee experience, a lot...
Rick Britt and Speech Analytics
January 01, 2020 21:59 - 1 hour - 64 MBThe new year, and the new decade, means that we are now officially in the future. Of course, any discussion of the future has to include a discussion of technology, and how it is shaping our future. This makes for a perfect time to welcome our next guest to Experience by Design, Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Rick Britt of CallMiner. The path to VP of AI would seem to be paved with engineering school, or maybe computer science. But as we will hear from Rick, the path to VP of A...
Jayson Yardley and Patient Financial Experience
December 18, 2019 14:49 - 1 hour - 59.2 MBAnyone who has ever received a medical bill in the mail knows the experience of trying to understand the costs. Stories abound about making sense of the codes, line items, services, and treatments that are part of the pages of billing that we can receive. This makes the financial aspect of getting treatment often the most painful. Jayson Yardley and Avadyne are trying to change that. Hear how Jayson and Avadyne are looking to the Black Eyed Peas, comic books, and AI to try to make the patien...
Axel Seemann and Shared Experiences
December 10, 2019 19:50 - 1 hour - 60.6 MBProfessor of Philosophy Axel Seemann has long been interested in how people create a common understanding of social spaces and experiences. In his recent book, The Shared World, Axel explores these topics, arguing that it is our ability to communicate about our experiences that gives us the ability to share them since on their own they will always be unique. This raises questions regarding how we conceptualize and measure experiences, how we boundary them as discrete entities, and how we go ...
PJ Mann and Puzzlescapes Escape Room
December 04, 2019 00:33 - 1 hour - 60.7 MBA 2019 article in The Economist proclaimed that “The escape-room games industry is booming”, Today there are over 2,300 in the US, and probably more than 10,000 around the world. But why are they so popular? Ultimately, escape rooms sell an experience. Not only is it an escape from a room, but from reality as well in this totally immersive experience. This is a team sport, with some teams precisely treating it as such. Red Bull (who else?) has an Escape Room World Championship. As the busine...
Diane Magers and the Evolution of Customer Experience
November 27, 2019 12:53 - 55 minutes - 50.5 MBDiane Magers has a long career in customer experience. From humble beginnings in a basement business to the Interim CEO of the CXPA, and now her own company Experience Catalysts, Diane discusses what drew her to customer experience in the first place. Always fascinated with human behavior, Diane applied her clinical psychology degree to understand what customers want, and what employees need to deliver that to them. Hear why it is hard for companies to make that leap to change who they are t...
Fan Experience with Aran Rush (Golden 1 Center, Sacramento Kings)
November 20, 2019 14:14 - 38 minutes - 35.3 MBAran and Gary go way back to 1989 when Aran was pledge for Sigma Pi fraternity (Delta Alpha, Central Michigan). Reunited by LinkedIn, Gary, Aran, and Adam talk about how Aran approaches the fan experience as VP of Arena Operations at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. From farm to table meals, bourbon tastings, Spotify playlists, and bathroom stalls inspired by New York parking lots, Aran takes us through our they try to get fans to make the journey to the facility to watch a game, concert, ...
Elizabeth Rosenzweig and World Usability Day
November 13, 2019 22:10 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBWorld Usability Day is happening on November 14, 2019, and we in large part have Elizabeth Rosenzweig to thank for it. Listen to Elizabeth describe her journey from taking pictures in Vermont and a rejection from RISD and to the MIT Media Lab. We also talk about the relationship between user experience and customer experience, who stands supreme in that arrangement. Finally, hear us discuss about how usability can change the world, and how the first UX professional was likely Homo Habilis.
Episode 1 - The Customer Isn't Always Right
August 02, 2018 20:15 - 26 minutes - 24.6 MBWelcome to Experience by Design Podcast! This is a new series of conversations and reflections on the emergent and exciting field of Experience Design as it relates to business, culture, customers, digital and technological worlds. In this episode hosts Adam Gamwell and Gary David explore the age old adage that "The Customer is Always Right" and find out that, in fact, this isn't always the case. Adam and Gary reflect on and share some takeaways from the first CX Frontiers (CX stands for cus...