'Understanding Empathy' is a recording I made at 'Opening the Door on Design Ethnography' 8/12/2010

Tina Basi was part a research team at ESRO, working on a project in partnership with The Design Council and Youth Justice Board on the design of Young Offender Institutes.
In their workshops with stakeholders, they encouraged their client to empathise with the service user experience of prison.

The team found a creative way of helping their clients understand their research.

understanding empathy

What happens when you combine righteous anger with unwavering hope? You get George Aye—and the “Angry Hour.”

In this lively episode, Lou Rosenfeld chats with George Aye, co-founder of Greater Good Studio, about his mission to create spaces for “pissed off optimists”—people who see the world’s injustices and refuse to give up on making things better. George shares the philosophy behind Angry Hour, a growing series of meetups uniting professionals from diverse fields around shared frustration and hope. He explains how these gatherings channel collective energy into meaningful connections, local nonprofit support, and even bigger plans like the upcoming Livid Conference—a national gathering for changemakers who are angry enough to care and optimistic enough to act.

If you’re searching for solidarity in uncertain times—or simply wondering how to turn anger into action—this conversation offers insight, inspiration, and a glimpse into a movement fueled by equal parts rage and resolve.

The Pissed-Off Optimist with George Aye

What do video games and world-building have in common? Everything. Lou reconnects with Cheryl Platz—author, designer, and creative director—to explore the evolving world of video game development. Cheryl shares what drew her back to the gaming industry after years in enterprise UX and voice design, and how her new book, The Game Development Strategy Guide, distills insights across disciplines to help teams build modern games that truly thrive.

The conversation ranges from the power of cross-functional collaboration to the benefits UX skills bring to game development to the monetization models shaping today’s games. Cheryl reflects on the challenges facing the industry—massive layoffs, misaligned incentives, and a lack of shared understanding—and how a more human-centered, sustainable approach could be a game changer. 

Whether you're a UX professional, game developer, or just curious about what makes great video games tick, this episode offers a sharp, wide-angle view of where the field is headed.

The Intersection of Game Development and User Experience with Cheryl Platz

Design operations isn’t just about process—it’s about shaping better products, teams, and organizations from the inside out. José Coronado joins Lou to unpack why DesignOps deserves to be treated as a true design discipline. Drawing on his experience leading global teams at JPMorgan Chase, Target, and beyond, José shares strategies for embedding operational roles into business units, measuring impact, and scaling design without sacrificing quality.

They explore how enterprise UX has evolved since the iPhone, why service design is the right lens for thinking about internal operations, and what it takes to foster effective cross-functional collaboration. The conversation offers a preview of José’s upcoming panel at the 2025 DesignOps Summit—and plenty of practical insights for DesignOps professionals at any stage of their journey.

DesignOps is Design with Jose Coronado

What does it take to transform a century-old tech giant into a design-led organization? Doug Powell—executive coach, former IBM design leader, and featured closing speaker at this year’s Design Ops Summit—joins Lou for a wide-ranging conversation on scaling design, building community, and leading through unpredictable change.

Doug shares hard-earned lessons from IBM’s ambitious and trailblazing design transformation from the mid-twenty-teens: how centralization jump-started progress, why decentralization required careful timing, and what metrics ultimately proved design’s business value. Along the way, he offers thoughtful advice for today’s design leaders and ops pros who are navigating evolving roles and growing complexity.

Whether you’re leading a design team or supporting one behind the scenes, Doug’s insights are a must-hear for anyone shaping the future of design operations.

Scaling Design Leadership, from Chaos to Clarity with Doug Powell

Design operations is increasingly about navigating a moving target. AI-infused tooling is upending established models, and the pace of change is forcing teams to rethink everything from handoffs to team dynamics to what quality even means.

As systems fracture and new patterns emerge, Ops leaders are stepping into roles that feel more like architects than managers—shaping the blueprint for how design and engineering build together in real time.

One of those leaders is Aletheia DeLivre, Senior Program Manager of Design Engineering Collaboration & Strategy at Microsoft, and a featured speaker at the upcoming DesignOps Summit. In this conversation, she and Lou unpack how AI is disrupting workflows, accelerating timelines, and reshaping power dynamics between disciplines.

Navigating the AI-Driven Shift in DesignOps with Aletheia Delivre

Scott Zimmer’s career arc spans from dreaming big at Disney to reshaping design inside massive enterprises through acquisitions like Capital One (AdaptivePath) and Verizon (Moment Design)—and now, to scaling expert knowledge with AI through his startup, Tmpt.me. In this episode, Lou and Scott dig into what it takes to earn design a seat at the table, how to read a company’s culture before you join, and why expertise shouldn’t disappear when the expert leaves the room.

If you’ve ever wondered how to build design credibility in a skeptical organization, how to scale expert mentorship without burning out your top people, or how AI might actually amplify—not replace—human wisdom, this episode is for you.

Elevating Design and Scaling Expertise with Scott Zimmer

What if your next big career move didn’t involve managing people—but managing impact? Catt Small joins Lou to unpack the rise of the staff designer: a role that's redefining what senior-level growth can look like for designers who want to lead without becoming managers.

Catt shares insights from her forthcoming Rosenfeld book, The Staff Designer: Grow, Influence, and Lead as an Individual Contributor, where she draws on her own experience at companies like Etsy, Asana, and Dropbox—alongside interviews with nearly 30 other design pros—to clarify a path that’s increasingly relevant in today’s flattened organizations.

Catt explains why staff designers thrive at the intersection of strategy and execution, influence and diplomacy. Staff design isn’t about hierarchy; it’s about navigating complexity, guiding quality, and mentoring others, all without direct reports. Whether you're a senior designer wondering what’s next or a leader trying to support IC career growth, this episode reframes design leadership for the modern era.

The Staff Designer with Catt Small

Jen Briselli’s journey into service design didn’t start with design at all—it started in a physics classroom. From studying the fundamental workings of the universe to teaching high schoolers how to grasp complex physics concepts, Jen’s interdisciplinary curiosity has always driven her path. That same intellectual agility eventually led her to discover information design, dive headfirst into Carnegie Mellon’s legendary design program, and eventually rise to executive leadership at Mad*Pow. Now co-founder of Topology, Jen continues to explore how systems thinking, complexity science, and human-centered design intersect to build adaptive organizations.

In this episode, Jen and Lou preview her upcoming talk at Advancing Service Design 2025 and unpack why learning—not certainty—should be the North Star of design practice. She shares how service designers can operate more effectively by zooming out to see systems-level patterns and zooming back in to take practical action. From breaking down spatial and temporal complexity to explaining how constraints inhibit organizational learning, Jen reframes service design as an adaptive, constantly evolving practice. Whether you're a seasoned designer or simply service-design curious, this episode will stretch your thinking about what service design is—and what it can become.

Designing for Learning and Complexity with Jen Briselli

What do a Brazilian retail strategist and an Indian industrial designer have in common? A passion for transforming complex systems through service design—and a shared mission to push the profession forward. In this episode, Lou welcomes Gustavo Vieira and Shreya Dhawan, two of the curators behind the upcoming Advancing Service Design conference, for a behind-the-scenes look at how service design is evolving—and how they’re helping shape that evolution.

Gustavo shares how his early work in franchising sparked a fascination with aligning brand strategy, operations, and customer experience, eventually leading him to service design as a more holistic lens. Shreya’s journey began with product design in hospitals, where she realized the real challenge wasn’t just designing a better object—it was improving the entire system around it.

Together, they reflect on the emerging trends in the field, including the move toward systems-level thinking, new contexts like journalism and B2B, and the rich global collaboration shaping this year’s conference. The conversation is full of thoughtful insight, heartfelt reflection, and a few unexpected gifts—from Ken Wilber to Picasso.

understanding empathy

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