The Human Centered Design Podcast (Premium)

This episode is brought to you by our incredible friends at Shopify.

Hello and welcome to Bringing Design Closer. Our goal is to have conversations that inspire and to help move the dial forward for organisations to become more human-centred in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

My name is Gerry Scullion, I’m the Founder of the Human Centered Design Network and CEO of This is Doing - home to many of the worlds best design and change maker courses online.

Today on the show we have Emma Blomkamp - a facilitator researcher and strategic designer based in Melbourne and leader within the co-design space. In this episode we speak about Emma’s past and how they go into Co-Design and Design generally.

We speak about the evolution of Design and where Co-Design sits now and what that looks like potentially in the future.

Let’s jump in.

Hannah is a freelance WordPress developer from Bristol with a background in Computer Science. Before freelance life, amongst other things, she honed her management skills at the Environment Agency, where she managed large business change projects. She’s co-founder of Green Tech South West and is on a mission to raise awareness about the environmental impact of digital tech - checkout #LetsGreenTheWeb on Twitter. She also likes dogs, plants and snow.

Hello and welcome to Bringing Design Closer. Our goal is to have conversations that inspire and to help move the dial forward for organisations to become more human-centred in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

My name is Gerry Scullion, I’m the Founder of the Human Centered Design Network and CEO of This is Doing - home to many of the worlds best design and change maker courses online.

Today on the show we have Sasja Nieukerk-Chomos - President of Dynamic Achievement based in Canada. I recently stumbled on Sasja profile on LinkedIn after reading a remarkable post about her father, Nick. In this episode we hear more about Nick’s story and the impact it had on Sasja’s life.

We speak about Leadership and learn more about toxicity within organisations, how we manage this from an executive perspective but also from someone who might find themselves working alongside people who play roles in compounding the behaviours associated to toxicity.

It’s a brilliant conversation - and know you will love it...

Hello and welcome to Bringing Design Closer, the podcast focussed on discussing Designs role in tackling complex societal issues. Our goal is to have conversations that inspire and to help move the dial forward for organisations to become more human-centred in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

My name is Gerry Scullion, I’m the Founder of the Human Centered Design Network and CEO of This is Doing - home to many of the worlds best design and change maker courses online.

Today on the show we have Brigette Metzler, Research Ops Lead at Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment. Brigette is Co-Chair of the ResearchOps community and is based in one of my favourite places on earth, Tasmania. 

We cover off some of the 8-pillars of Research Operations in this episode, and talk openly about the challenges that Brigette faced when setting up the architecture for Research to blossom inside the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment. We speak about measurements of success, and also the challenges that are faced when presenting it to the organisation - although in Brigettes case, the maturity and desire already existing.

We speak about Brigette’s recent neurodiverse diagnosis, and her journey to get to that point. I was curious to tap more into this and we cover off some interesting areas of symmetry whilst doing it.

Before we jump in. Brigette wanted to mention the Research Ops conference that is happening on Jun 8 in New York and also remote. I will throw a link for this into the show notes, but it’s definitely something to get behind if you interested in the whole area of Research Ops.

Let’s get into it..

Note: Shopify is a sponsor of This is HCD. This conversation was unscripted and relatively unedited but we wanted to flag this to our listeners.

Next month, marks This is HCD’s 5th anniversary. If you’ve found this network useful to you over the last 5-years, and want to help me and the team at This is HCD you can do two things. If you haven’t already done it, sign up to our newsletter on This is HCD, where you get fortnightly content about all that is going on in the world of This is HCD. Also if you LOVE what we do, leave a rating for the podcast - this helps us out enormously and helps others find the podcast too. Where? Well, anywhere but leaving it on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts are probably two of the most important channels for us.

In this episode i speak with Lola Oyelayo-Pearson from Shopify. Lola of a Director of UX, Money and we chat about what this actually means. 

We speak about the mission at Shopify to remain independent, and supporting entrepreneurship globally by making it easier to sell and creating a support network for their merchants. What really interested me, was the points about how Shopify makes money, and also not they share the risk in opening up available funds to enable businesses to succeed. That's a huge statement right there - and I can't think of many businesses who can walk the walk - many as you know talk the talk very well. 

We chat about what money means - and it's not just a system to enable a transactional relationship - it's visceral. It's real. It can empower. It can destroy. I was keen to hear their thoughts on how the western driven perspective of money could translate to markets in say, Africa and what that might look like. 

Lola rocks and I know you'll enjoy the chat.

I’m your host KA McKercher, author of Beyond Sticky Notes: Doing Co-design for Real. Today I’m joined by Leidy Klotz, an engineer, behavioural scientist and author of the book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. We talk about subtraction as a critical capability for designers and design leaders, why we overlook subtractive change and about the importance of working in the open. 

Shownotes: 

Hello and welcome to Bringing Design Closer, the podcast focussed on discussing Designs role in tackling complex societal issues. Our goal is to have conversations that inspire and to help move the dial forward for organisations to become more human-centred in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

It’s the start of 2022 and want to ask a favour before we jump in. If you haven’t already done it, sign up to our newsletter on This is HCD, where you get fortnightly content about all that is going on in the world of This is HCD. Also if you LOVE what we do, leave a rating for the podcast - this helps us out enormously and helps others find the podcast too.

My name is Gerry Scullion, and I’m a service designer, and founder of This is HCD and CEO of This is Doing - we provide live online design and innovation classes, transformational design and innovation training for teams and organisations for people within the Design and change-making space. 

In this episode I speak with one of my colleagues at This is Doing, Markus Edgar Hormess. Markus’s name is one that many within the service design world will no doubt be familiar with, but nevertheless let me tell you a little bit about my guest today.

Markus is based in Germany, is a trained physicist and partner at WorkPlayExperience. I look to Markus for many things within design, but I to his deep rooted passion with prototyping of services and just prototyping in general. The bits can so easily be trivialised or assumed are the moments that are missed and we chat at length about how to encourage prototyping generally within your organisation. We speak more around Play and what this means. What does the opposite of playfulness look like within organisations and again, how can we move the dial to become more likely to lean into the prototyping mindset.

Let’s jump into it!

Feb 1 - Journey Map Operations: https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/journey-map-ops-february-2022

In this episode, Ben MacLaren speaks with Marc Stickdorn (main author of the seminal service design books, This is Service Design Thinking and This is Service Design Doing) about understanding zoom levels and how this related to Marc's framework for Journey Map Operations.

The framework helps teams and organisations work better together to manage innovation projects and bridge between organisational silos. 

'Earth Experience Design' course with Gerry McGovern
Date: February 19 2022
Where: Online
Tickets: https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022 

About this episode

Is technology a good thing? That was my first question I asked Dr Sharon Richardson, who is a senior scientist and lecturer in geocomputation at the University of Zurich, where she applies data-intensive methods to improve understanding of and assist in human, societal and environmental challenges. Sharon also has a keen interest in exploring the potential and limits of AI in real-world decisions.

Today on the show we have Renee Abrecht Mallinger - a Lead Design Researcher at one of my favourite design studios Global Good Studio of Chicago. We chat about the intersectionality of Renees’ previous career as a middle school and high school teacher and now as Design Researcher, primarily focussed on governmental and societal work. What pieces has Renee felt set them up for success whilst working in complexity on a day to day basis.

What came out in the conversation was the formal education that Renee received as a teacher, has better prepared her for handling potentially trauma inducing situations whilst researching - something many (if any) design educators cover - psychological safety. 

It’s a good one - let’s jump into it!