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

#48 | Phil Balagtas | Driving speculative futures.

We are very excited to launch EP57 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!

#57 | Catherine Nygaard | Driving UX/UI for billion+ users.

We are thrilled to announce our EP59  featuring Fabrice Pöhlmann, Founder and CEO at HelloDesign

With 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!

#59 | Fabrice Pöhlmann | Driving behavior design and gamification.

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!

#60 | Brittany Arthur | Driving innovation cultures through facilitation.

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!

#61 | Josh Clark | Driving digital AI product experiences.

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!

#62 | Darshan Gajara | Driving digital design resources, education, inspiration.

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!

#63 | Kadambari Sahu | Driving new sensing experiences.

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!

64 | Michael Janda | How to grow your design business.

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-centred 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!

#66 | Karel J. Golta | Designing for a circular future.

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!

#67 | Scott Robinson | What is after Human-Centered Design.

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!

Why, how and what design drives forward. The podcast exploring the impact of design.

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#48 | Phil Balagtas | Driving speculative futures.

Designdrives

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