Michael Ellsworth is a partner at Built By Civilisation - a design firm based in Seattle, Washington. In this conversation, we talk about how he went from working in ad sales with community organisations, and pivoted to working in design. We talk about the name Civilisation, terms like ‘forced perspective” and “simplicity” , what designers do in general, examples of his work such as “drugs over dinner” and identity work for governmental organisations, how he defines "design-thinking”, and how he focuses.