Bloc Thinking

Starting the new year nice and easy with a few good books and perhaps some Tacos and a good Mexican beer. This episode was recorded in San Diego California and is a rundown of my favourite books of 2018. If you love reading about design, and topics related to becoming more aware then this would be for you. It's also a handy primer, just in case you get locked up, and you're not sure which book to choose from the prison library. Happy 2019!

Ever contemplate the similarities between Design and playing Jazz? Not only the interplay between musicians but also the courage required to get on stage to do the work. For Marina Terteryan a Service Designer and musician all the way from Los Angeles, Armenia it's an obvious analogy. We talk about a brave grandma, brave parents who moved to make a new life in America and to be bold in Design.

Paul Bulencea, is a Romanian Experience Designer, with an unquenchable need to play and explore the universe. He is the co-author of the book Gamification in Tourism and one of the founders of the College of Extraordinary Experiences a remarkable, physical interpretation of Pine and Gilmore's "Experience Economy". Paul was also recognised by Forbes in 2018's 30-under-30.

I invite you to look at design through the lens of Culture, with Olga Skoczylas. Olga is a Cultural Economist and co-owner of the Design Agency 'Cultural Design'. In this episode, we cover culture, what it means and why it's important but we don't stop there. She has this innate obsession to create domain names and attach projects of all shapes and sizes to them. To that point, the conversation takes an unexpected detour past blockchain, brutalist design, innovation and art.

Andrew Lacanienta is a Doctoral Candidate in Experience Design at Texas A&M University. He is a close friend who makes a yearly pilgrimage to our side of the world to attend the College of Extraordinary Experiences at Czhocha Castle, Poland. We took some time out of the College schedule to talk about his insights on Experience Desing and focused our conversation on the Theory of Structured Experience Design.

Michel Cloosterman from the Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® provides us with an insight into the method initiated by LEGO CEO Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen back in 1996.

What if you could practice what you preached? Well, Seth Minard, a former Interaction Designer at Cooper is an Example of that. Seth has turned the focus of his design practice inwards to re-design his life. Perhaps, transformation starts with the designer, before attempting to design experiences for others?

We have a few short announcements and thought we'd try a Mini-Episode. Jonathan's business is growing which is GREAT! However, it has a ripple effect on his involvement in this project as my co-host. We discuss this along with some news about our workshop at Product Development Days.

Wojtek Kutyla values the ability of a designer to play the role of enabler, and we ‘absolutely’ agree with his approach. If you building something with a team of people they, we, are all busy with the act of creation. In his words, he has a sneaky plan to replace the old dinosaurs with teams with an user-centric approach.

This week we are joined by Olga Kovalenko. She has found her niche in digital marketing and join us from Kiev, Ukraine where she applies her trade at Trionika as Marketing Team Lead. Here she focuses on email marketing; she's fast to point out that the humble E-mail is not dead [yet], and still remains a key part of the digital communication mix. She recently finished a PhD that focused on unpacking the value of micro-copy within digital communication, amongst others.