The Design Strategy Podcast

Prapti is a strategist and researcher at Harvard D-lab where they’re bringing together design and public health. Besides her current role at Harvard D-lab, she also shares the learnings she has made throughout her career, starting as an architect and transitioning into design strategy by working at Ford and Cisco. In addition, she shares that she sees design strategists as connecters, breaking silos and bringing different knowledge areas together so they can learn from each other.

Key words:

Design-thinking

Design for public health

Etnographic research

Quick interventions

Educating non-designers

Specialism versus Generalism

Creative collaboration

Humanity-centered design

Web 3.0

Metaverse

Sustainability

Books: 101 Design Methods, Communicating The New, Ten Types of Innovation

CNBC video series: How Companies Work

Speculative fiction

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast, speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

In this episode, Pablo Groglopo shares insights about his job as a Circular Design Strategist. Among others, we talk about circular design, system thinking, identifying future scenarios and personal branding.

Key words:

- Circular design

- System thinking

- Value chain

- Stakeholder management

- Product service systems

- Reframing questions

- Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)

- Future scenarios

- Net zero vs. Net positive

- Regenerative trend

- Ellen McArthur Foundation

- Intrapreneurship

- Analysis paralysis

- Personal branding

- Books: The Blue Economy / Products That Last / Brand The Change

- Documentary: Kiss the Ground

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast, speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

This episode's guest is Kartik Poria, a Product and Venture designer at BCG Digital Ventures. With a background in Architecture, UX and branding he has an inspiring career path and shares the lessons he learned along the way. In addition, he also shares what his current role at BCG DV looks like and how he applies design strategy on a daily basis.

Key words:

- Venture building

- Corporate Startups

- Portfolio Sprint

- Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

- Ethnographic Research

- Lean UX

- Design Thinking

- Mentorship

- Artificial Intelligence (AI)

- Making technology more understandable

- Democratizing Design Thinking

- Books: Hidden in Plain Sight / Orchestrating Experiences / Reimagining Design

- Design toolkit for brand extension decision of corporate startups: https://josephinescholtes.com/design-toolkit/

Disclaimer: all speakers on this podcast, speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

Seun started as a graphic designer and developed his career into being a successful freelance design strategist today. As he's based in Nigeria, he shares with us what the design strategy industry looks like over there and how he supports organizations in "going from standardization to humanization". In addition, he also shares a project example that illustrates how user research can change the course of a project.

Key words:

- Freelancing

- User research

- Butterfly Works

- Design Strategy in Nigeria

- Human-centricity

- Strategic Fore sighting

- Adaptability

- Started as a Graphic Designer

- Executive design strategy roles

- Tim Brown

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

Kim is a Creative Strategist and works on a freelance basis. In this episode she shares what it's like to be a freelancer and why she decided to leave the corporate world to become a freelancer.

Key words:

- Freelancing

- Project acquisition

- Workshop facilitation

- Consulting

- Company politics

- Defining your career path

- Decision-making

- Learning from mistakes

- Lead your career changes

- Theory by Jonathan Stark: getting rid of hourly billing

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

In this first episode of the second season, Liset explains her current role as an Innovation Coach at SHV Energy. In addition, we also discuss her career path, how she defines her path and what decisions she made along the way.

Key words:

- Digital Innovation Accelerator

- Design Sprints

- POC (Proof of Concept)

- Expectation management

- User research

- Career learning curve

- Switching jobs

- Listening to your inner voice

- Start doing instead of overthinking

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

We received multiple requests to create an episode in which our podcast host, Josephine, tells more about her role at Microsoft. And so in this episode, Josephine and Alina tell more about their roles as UX Consultants at Microsoft.

Among others, they discuss the importance of storytelling and that working in tech does not always mean that you are focusing on disruptive technologies and innovation.

Key words;

- Tech Consulting

- Tech Architects

- Daily standups

- DevOps

- UX show & tells

- Data visualization

- Conversational AI

- Mixed Reality

- Product teams vs. consulting

- Legacy systems

- Company culture

- Incremental vs. disruptive innovation

- Managing backlogs (user stories, features, epics)

- Inclusive Design

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

In this episode, Willem Evers joins us to talk about his job as a Product Manager at Picnic, an online supermarket. He shares his experiences, insights and challenges.

Key words:

- Product Owner

- Product Roadmap

- Optimizers vs. Creators

- Creativity vs. Intuition

- Being comfortable with ambiguity

- Online groceries

- Business cases

- Measuring business impact

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.

Susana Tort is a design strategist within the social innovation sector and is currently working as an innovation strategist and design lead at MIT GOV/LAB. This lab is part of the well-known university Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and focuses on innovation in citizen engagement and government responsiveness. In this episode Susana talks about designing interventions, wicked problems, being comfortable with ambiguity and the importance of creating collaborative spaces so people can connect, communicate and create. In her opinion this last point, is something we as design strategists are good at and we should use that at our advantage. But there’s a fine line between creating collaborative spaces and letting the experts be the ones that are having the conversations. Listen to the episode to learn more.

Key words:

- Designing for governance

- Designing interventions

- Marshall Ganz

- Tropicalization

- Creating spaces

- Wicked problems

- Collaborative spaces

- Unintended consequences

- Viviane Castillo (challenges of design research)

- Support systems for design researchers

- Being comfortable with ambiguity

DISCLAIMER: all speakers on this podcast speak on behalf of themselves and do not represent the company they work for.