I was very lucky to speak with Ovetta Sampson, Principal Creative Director at Microsoft. I enjoyed our animated discussion about how she got her start wanting to be the Queen of England when she was a nine-year-old in Chicago while learning to code with her father to being a journalist/activist for 20 years and then making a dramatic transition to technology and finding herself doing design research at IDEO. Along the way, Ovetta became an expert at designing for ethical AI and amplifying the need for diversity in AI.

As Principal Creative Director at Microsoft Ovetta works with designers, engineers, researchers, and technologists to help the nation's biggest companies visualize and realize a digital transformation. She gets to play with the entire spectrum of technology from plain old enterprise systems design to exciting opportunities in Mixed Reality, IoT, and AI. Before her job at Microsoft, she was a Design Research Lead at IDEO where she focused on ethical AI and integrating data science with human-centered design 

Lockdown has given Mauro Porcini, Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo, the chance to slow down, enjoy the details of life, and write a book that captured his life experiences leading large design teams. I was fortunate to hear about his new book and what he believes makes innovation truly happen — people. To Mauro, a designer's main job is to bring innovation to the company. But the branding of designers doesn't always make this easy for executives to understand. I had the great pleasure to talk with Mauro and hear about how he leads his global design team at PepsiCo and how during Coronavirus he has made sure to create personal engagement at all levels to help his design team across the world feel connected and appreciated.

Mauro Porcini joined PepsiCo in 2012 as its first Chief Design Officer. In this newly created position, Mauro is infusing design thinking into PepsiCo’s culture and is leading a new approach to innovation by design that impacts the company’s product platforms and brands. Before PepsiCo, he was a design leader at 3M and Philips. In 2018 Mauro has been recognized with the Knighthood (Cavaliere) by the President of the Italian Republic.

• Mauro's Linkedin

For the 10th episode of the podcast, I had the great pleasure to "travel" to Poland to chat with Radek Taraszka, a product design lead at UXPin, a UX design and prototyping software company based in Gdańsk, Poland. My favorite lesson Radek gained from the pandemic was his needing to learn to unplug from work at home. He did this by removing Slack and email from his phone, thereby creating a barrier from notifications taking over his home and family life. Radek also feels that even with all the tools we have (Slack, Zoom, UXPin, etc.), it is difficult to build a company culture and show true appreciation to people for their work. He said this can be especially hard for a company that creates innovative and disruptive products.

Radek has worked at UX Pin for 5 years. He is responsible for delivering the part of the software focused on hand-offs between designer and engineers. Prior to working as a UX designer, Radek was a product manager. UXPin was one of the first web-based UX design and prototyping tools.

Worldwide Creative Officer of EF Education First Joel Hladecek shares his personal experiences of how he has overcome three crises - the Dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and now Covid-19. From the ending of a company to the loss of a job, based on his own ups and downs, Joel explains how these challenging times can be unexpected opportunities to do new, innovative things. For finding inspiration, he recommends designers not to reference other people's work but to be inspired by something else - a book, one's childhood, or even the problems we're facing in a pandemic - to invent and be unique.

Joel Hladecek is responsible for overseeing EF’s creative, design, and experience globally. Spanning 500 offices in 50 different countries, he works with the creative teams in each office to ensure that the key consumer touchpoints feel consistent across all of EF. Joel currently lives in Lucerne, Switzerland where EF has its global headquarters.

I had a fun and inspiring chat with UX firm founder Adam Faulkner in Sydney, Australia. Adam shared his thoughts on how he keeps his team morale up through staging virtual community events and "Quarantini" online gatherings. He also talked about how the terminology "social distancing" sent the wrong message to the public but that "physical distancing while staying socially connected" was a more positive way to express it.

Adam has been working in technology and telecommunications since 2000, and has worked at Sony and Blackberry. He founded UX research and design agency blueegg 8 years ago, is an instructor at General Assembly, and currently runs the Enterprise UX Meetup in Sydney.

In our 7th episode of Recliner Designer, I had the great pleasure to speak to Helen Kokk, a lead service designer from Tallinn, Estonia. Helen told me why Tallinn has the most tech startups in the EU. She explains that Estonia's X-Road, a centrally managed data exchange layer allows organizations to send information over the Internet using confidentiality and interoperability between parties. She stays focused during Coronavirus by imagining her next day like a movie. Helen also makes a strong suggestion to all designers in the world that during pandemic "everyone is at home looking for solutions and now is the time for making bold decisions."

Helen Kokk, User Experience and Service Design Lead at Nortal, has almost 15 years of experience with user experience and user interface design. She’s passionate about entrepreneurship, branding and identity. Kokk has helped clients rethink their approach to the UI and UX for their services on numerous occasions and would be happy to do the same for you.

In this episode, we travel across the Pacific to Sydney, Australia to speak to Krister, who is an experience designer, educator, and author. He tells us how through quarantine he found an opportunity to create a book and course focused on helping entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs realize their dreams.

With his 19 years of human-centered design experience, he helps businesses in education discover their ingenuity, and grow new revenue possibilities with cross-channel services that solve customer and operational needs. Doubling as a constantly-curious and imaginative inventor of better processes and 17 unique emerging learning technologies, Krister has consulted, written design manuals, and built teams in 18 fields of design. He is using this pandemic to proactively realize his one dream to launch a book and course.

Momo Estrella is an interaction designer in Shanghai, China leading UX at IKEA. He talks about his experience transitioning from IDEO to IKEA in the middle of the pandemic and how strange it was coming out of quarantine a month and a half ago to go to work. He shares tips for transitioning back to creative life through radical optimism.

Momo has 20 years of experience across Film & Animation, Digital Product Design, and Experience Strategy. In the last decade he has helped to set the vision, culture, and capabilities to sustain human-centered innovation in companies like EF Education First, Imagination, and IDEO. He currently serves as the Design Director / Head of UX at IKEA. This has guided his endeavors as a writer, industry speaker, and board advisor. He is currently authoring a book on Design & Leadership and the space in between. He lives with his very-happy son, and his very-cool wife in Shanghai. Learn more about Momo.

In this latest podcast, I was fortunate to speak with Diego Kolsky, a design leader, ECD, and design educator. Diego leads cross-disciplinary teams working on innovations, deep transformations and high-impact design initiatives. He works with studio teams, large corporations and young startups across sectors, from airlines to technology companies, through retail, hospitality, consumer products, and destinations. He is based in New York City and works for clients across the Americas, Asia and Europe. He also is a design professor at Pratt. Diego is a partner at independent brand consultancy The Velo Group and teaches at Pratt Institute.

Our third episode is with seasoned designer and author Charlie Brewer, who explains how being sheltered at home allows him to work when it suits his peak energy levels. Charlie is a user experience designer and product manager with over 20 years of experience in software and media. He is co-author of Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design (O’Reilly Media, 2020). He helps companies establish and grow the full stack of UX capabilities: Customer research, interaction design, information architecture, user interface, and graphic design, editorial, usability, and prototyping. For special projects, he leads the design team to deliver software that is fit for purpose and mindset, easy to learn, and easy to use. In his free time, he likes photography, cooking, and reading. He lives in San Francisco. More: http://www.charliebrewer.com