Throughout my career as a sociologist, I have come to the conclusion that people find sociologists annoying on a deeply personal level. Anthropologists have great stories about travelling to exotic locations. People seem to really appreciate psychology because they think it helps them to better understand why people do the things they do. Historians, while might be boring with their details and minutiae of past events, at least have something to help carry a conversation at a party. Perhaps the only other truly annoying academic profession are philosophers, but they may spend more time talking to themselves than other people.

What makes sociologists annoying, in my opinion as a sociologist, is that we think critically all the time about everything. It is not just how we are trained; it is how we are wired. You could show a sociologist a picture of puppies playing in a field, and the sociologist would talk about the perils of puppy mills. You could assure the sociologist that these are from a rescue, and the sociologist would talk about there is a lack of oversight and regulation of these organizations and the emotional manipulation of Sarah McLachlan commercials. You could assure the sociologist that this in fact is a wonderful animal rescue, and the sociologist will talk about how veterinary services in the United States cost more than in other parts of the world, and then launch into a discussion of the lack of healthcare overall. We are exhausting. But the critical thinking element is nevertheless important, because through critical thinking and critical analysis, progress and improvements can be made.

The person who joins me today on Experience by Design is neither a sociologist nor annoying, but is a critical thinker and thought leader in his field. Andrew Carothers has had a long career in customer experience, and has some perspectives to share about its past, present, and future. In his opinion, customer experience is in its teenage years, a kind of awkward adolescence where it is trying to find its identity. In finding its way, it also has to find ways to define its importance and relevance to organizational success and culture.

We talk about the need for CX to go beyond the metrics it has, but also find other metrics that matter. Andrew discusses the need to put CX more centrally into strategy. We also explore the implications of artificial intelligence for customer experience as a feature and a profession. Andrew emphasizes that good enough is often good enough, especially if that is all that customers want. Finally, we explore how keeping customers is easier than getting customers, and that CX can provide the path to do so, but only if it continues to grow up.

Andrew Carothers LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-carothers/

One of the things that I have come to thoroughly enjoy as a type of past time is the learning about the history of World War II in the Pacific theater. A book that I have been listening to recently is “Japanese Destroyer Captain” by Captain Tameichi Hara. It is amazing listening to give a version of things from the perspective of a Japanese naval commander who went through the Imperial Japanese Naval college at Etajima and then saw action across the war. Getting a sense of what that experience was like from his point of view very much helps to get a greater overall understanding of the war because after all, history is about perspective.

I felt the same way about the book “D-Day through German Eyes.” Perspective switching is a vital skill and ability because it allows us to get outside of our own world view and take the position of others.

My guest today on Experience by Design knows all about telling stories, and also all about the navy. Christian Lachel started his career in the US Navy in special warfare and special forces. But an injury curtailed that career and led him to attend the ArtCenter College of Design, where he also taught. His background in design, storytelling, and media and history eventually found him at the company BRC Imagination Arts, where he is now Chief Creative Officer.

Christian has been involved in creating 5 USA Pavilion Exhibits at World Expos, which requires crafting what story to tell about the United States. This includes the USA Pavilion currently in Osaka, Japan. He also has worked with the Henry Ford Museum and the River Rouge plant, which if you know labor history has special meaning regarding the rise of unions and collective bargaining.

We talk about how storytelling is about bringing together perspectives and capturing different points of view. He emphasizes the importance of deep listening and research with all stakeholders to make sure their voices are included. We also discuss how that story has to be distilled in a way that audiences will be entertained and engaged. Christian is focused on what we can create collectively as a community and world when we work together toward a common goal, and hope that this is what is communicated through his work. The importance and power of the experiences he helps to create is to provide that shared meaning which resonates individually and brings people together collectively.

Christian Lachel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianlachel/

BRC Imagination Arts: https://www.brcweb.com/

USA Pavilion Osaka 2025: https://www.expo2025.or.jp/en/official-participant/united-states-of-america/

Being a sociologist means that there often are only so many opportunities to “do sociology” in a way that has impact. It is not that sociology doesn’t have value and practical applications. On the contrary, I would consider it one of the most useful and practical disciplines. But it can be hard to combine the opportunity to do practical application while working in an academic environment. I am very lucky that I found one such place to work.

My guest today on Experience by Design had similar fortune. Dr. Ashley Guajardo first fancied a job as a marine biologist due to a love of dolphins. But a fear of the ocean and aversion to being in the water curtailed that path. Lucky for us, she found sociology instead. While at Brunel University she studied with a professor who worked at Ubisoft as a user researcher. This, along with her own love of video games, led to a research interest and career in the design of video games. As well as the current President of the Digital Games Research Association. Additionally she was recently inducted as a Higher Education Videogame Alliance Fellow. Finally, she has recently left the University of Utah and will be starting at New York University as a professor and joining the Games Center faculty and staff.

We cover a lot of ground around applied sociology and public scholarship, since along with her academic work, she also is a livestreamer on Twitch and content creator through her new effort “The Research Left Behind Podcast.” We cover how there can be fun in frustration and forming positive social relationships through gaming. We talk about how gender is portrayed in and how genders approach gaming. We talk about the perils of livestreaming as a woman, and what female content creators say about how they are perceived and targeted by viewers. Finally we talk about how academics need to make their content more accessible to broader audiences and disseminate our findings though alternate formats.

Dr. Ashley Guajardo Webpage: https://amlbrown.com/

Ashley Guajardo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-ashley/

The Research Left Behind Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@TheResearchLeftBehind

Professor_Ashley on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/professor_ashley

Stories are the ways that we can relate our experiences to others. It is the most primary form of human communication, which makes it kind of ironic that people seem to be discovering the importance of storytelling. Through stories things become memorable, or more easily remembered. Growing up going to Catholic school, I might have a hard time remembering the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes, I could remember the gist of the parables. A good story can be transformational, changing the ways that we look at the world and ourselves.

The importance of story is at the center of my conversation with today’s guest Diane Kahn of the Humans of San Quentin. If you are not familiar, San Quentin is one of the state prisons in California. It houses approximately 4000 inmates, which is over its original capacity of 3,084. It is the state’s oldest facility, founded in 1852. In March of 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the future transformation of the prison to focus on rehabilitation rather than just incarceration.

Diane started Humans of San Quentin with a similar goal in mind. She has a background of an educator, which involved going to the University of San Francisco. That led to an opportunity to engage with inmates at San Quentin. Through that opportunity, she heard the stories of those behind the walls, and knew that she had to do what she could to bring them to the outside world.

As she relates, the program aspires to educate and build compassion by sharing the lives of humans living behind bars. The inmates feel affirmed in realizing they have something worth saying, and that people want to learn about them. We also talk about her educational experiences of teaching in San Quentin, having an audience that wants to learn, and not having to compete with the distraction of electronics in the classroom. We explore how by demystifying inmates we can create programs and heal both victims and offenders.

Finally, we talk about how the program is not in over 100 prisons in the US, as well as around the world, showing that there is a broader need to have people’s stories told and heard.

Humans of San Quentin: https://humansofsanquentin.org/

The Prison Podcast: https://humansofsanquentin.org/connections/the-prison-podcast/

Diane Kahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-kahn-1a04b1b4/

The Employee Experience MBA class that I'm teaching this summer is in full swing, with a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. One of the things that I emphasize out of the gate is that employee experience is about optimizing the organization for the employee. Or, put simply, treat your employees like human beings, and treat them well. Shocking I know. But there is something about some organizations and business that can be dehumanizing in their own unique ways, as well as in the ways that they can replicate larger social dynamics that exist. Taken together, these elements can be unhelpful when trying to create better experience and more inclusive environments. As a result, the simple idea of treating people as people can at times not be so simple to execute.

Thus for the next 6 weeks we’ll be going over how we can conceptualize, integrate, and execute employee experience. Not that any of this is going to be mastered in six weeks. Mastery isn’t achieved by taking a single course. It is in the doing of work, of applying concepts, of developing experience that we can start to reach the point of mastery. It is through the dedication to the concepts introduced, and the examples presented, that the students can be in the position to make for better employee experiences.

One of the things I enjoy about this course is the way in which it is directly connected to applying the concepts that are learned. We might think of academia as a place where there is a lot of conceptualizing, and industry as a place where there is a lot of doing. It would then make sense, at least to me, that there is more partnership that takes place between industry and academia. But we don’t often see that. Rather, at least in US society, we see more of a divide between academia and industry which precludes this kind of collaboration.

Luckily, today on Experience by Design, we have someone who can talk about improving organizational culture, employee experience, and academia and industry collaborations. Josee Tremblay has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering, a certificate in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from the Stanford School of Engineering, as well as other educational achievements. She has worked in the energy industry and is now a Principal at Strategic Decisions Group. In addition, she serves on the Schulich Industry Advisory Council for the School of Engineering at the University of Calgary. So she knows something about integrating industry and academia.

Also, she has written a book called Us and Yet and Yet. It is a fascinating examination and discussion of gender in the workplace. Her focus was on genders in nontraditional roles. Think male nurses, female engineers, and the like. In her book, she shares her experiences of transforming organizations through leadership, removing biases, and nurturing a positive multi-gender environment. Her goal is to give people a roadmap to collaboration and working together.

We talk about all these elements in our conversation, along with the key message of no matter your background, you are bringing in a contribution which is essential. The role of leadership is to create an environment to bring that out.

"Us and Yet and Yet" - https://usandyet.com

Josee Tremblay LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/josee-tremblay/

Summer is in full swing, and with summer for academics comes the typical question, “Do you have summers off?” I can’t speak for all academics, but summers don’t mean the lack of work, but the shifting of work. We go from our primary focus being on teaching and into other pursuits that we don’t have time for during the school year. Typically that means research and writing. For me, it is no different. I’ve been doing a lot of writing, working on the Experience by Design book and making some progress. Of course, I think that everything I am writing is terrible. At some point soon you can be judge at how bad or good it is. But rather than thinking of “bad’ or “good”, I’m thinking more in terms of “done” or “not done.” And “done” is better.

Another part of my summer is doing this podcast. When this was started over 6 years ago, the biggest challenge was getting people who wanted to chat about their work. Then gradually PR firms would contact me about their clients who could appear on the show. Now, getting guests is no longer the hardest part. Rather, it is getting the episodes out to keep up with the number of conversations that I’m having.

This means that I’m going to try to go to launching an episode a week. This is no small feat given that this is a one-person operation. Communicating with guests, having an introductory conversation, recording the conversation, recording intros and outros, audio engineering, loading it up, updating the website, creating promotional materials. All of it is me. That’s a lot of work.

The biggest payoff is the conversations that I get to have with the people who appear. I think about how I would have never have learned as much as I have and made the connection that I have if it wasn’t for the podcast. And that’s pretty cool. And makes the work worth it.

My guest today has been part of many different design projects, including the Most Important Conversation Initiative. Chad Lefevre and I were once neighbors, me living in Detroit and he being born in Windsor. Has since traveled the world doing design work. From the United Way in Calgary (we also have in common that we worked for United Way) to working with thought leaders at Design Shop to tackle society’s most complex problems (like peace in the Korean peninsula), he’s covered a lot of ground.

We do likewise in our conversation. Along with those topics, we look at the impact of AI on society and the workforce, and how we need to design a new way of being. We talk about how we are entering the Creative Economy, and how creativity is the new currency. We talk about even though people are resistant to change, change is the only constant in life and this moment requires it. And finally we talk about through our conversations maybe we can make a shared reality that allows us to change things together.

The Most Important Conversation - https://tmicglobal.com

Chad Lefevre - https://chadlefevre.com

Chad Lefevre Substack - https://chadlefevre.substack.com

Happy Fourth of July to everyone out there, as I record this on the day before the 4th. For those in the US, this is the day that we celebrate our independence from the British. No offense to our British listeners. But to be fair, we are not alone in our desire to kick the British out. Nice to see that we could put that ugliness behind us. Now we are happy to closely monitor Royal Family news, refurbish British shows to suit our own tastes, welcome musical acts, and occasionally drink tea and have small sandwiches.

For those in other parts of the world, hope you are still able to celebrate July 4th as a good day.

I am preparing to once again teach my course on employee experience. One of the challenges of teaching a general class is that you realize how much you could cover and how much there is to talk about. Also, things are rapidly changing the world of work which needs to be considered and covered. Despite all of these changes, there are constants that exist which form the foundation of employee experience. We might think that the more things change, the more they stay the same. To be successful in any experience design effort, we have to keep the fundamentals in mind.

On this episode of Experience by Design, I welcome Brian Kurtz to the show to talk about his career in direct marketing. But Brian is about more than just direct marketing. Turns out that he started out as a film critic and film editor, even doing film reviews for the New York Times. That led him to pursue a PhD in English at Idaho State University. While that didn’t pan out, it did solidify his analytical approach to designing communications that resonate with target audiences no matter the method through which it is disseminated.

We talk about all the changes that he has seen in his long career in direct marketing, including the changes happening today. We also explore how despair these changes, the fundamentals remain the same. He describes his book Overdeliver, and how we need to approach business not as a revenue event but as relationship events. People are more than lists and segments. To be successful in breaking through the noise, we need to design messages and content that connects.

And we talk about the biggest challenges with being a baseball umpire.

I’m currently working on a book called Experience by Design, and by currently I mean the last three-plus years. You could say it is a work in progress. But as the saying goes, “progress, not perfection.” When all you see is the goal, it can be hard to see the progress you are making. So making progress I am, and hopefully I’ll have something to share about that soon. If you would be interested in checking out drafts of chapters for this book, drop me a message at feedback@experiencexdesign.com and I’ll put you on the list of feedback providers!

One part of this book deals with Design Ethics and Justice. That’s a pretty big topic to be sure. One theme that I was thinking about is the idea of “service”, and the service economy. When thinking about the service economy, the main definition of it is the implied and explicit obligations that are inherent in the transactional relationship between companies/workers and customers. Because you are a customer, or potential customer, I provide a service for you. My obligation to do so only extends so far that you are a customer (or potential customer).

But that is not the only way to think about service. Service also can be something that is done for someone solely because I am in the position to do so and you are in need of it. The obligation of this kind of service rests in the idea that doing a service for someone is a noble act of selflessness. Doing a service can be thought of as a higher calling, but also a starting point. To do service is to rediscover that one has self-worth, something to offer, can make a difference no matter how small of an act of service one does.

This is why doing service is a foundational part of recovery from substance abuse and other kinds of unhealthy patterns and behaviors. Putting out coffee at a meeting, setting up chairs, cleaning afterward, there are no small acts or insignificant ones. Each act serves a purpose, and does a service. When we do services for others, we can contribute to a stronger community and even a better society. On the other hand, if all of our relationships are only based on transactions, there is nothing to say that I need to do anything for you, nor you to do anything for me.

This episode of Experience by Design dives into ideas of self-worth, trauma, recovery, service, and healing. I welcome Rikki West to the show to talk about her book “The Empty Bowl: Pursuing Truth in a Messy World.”, which she describes as combining “the drama of a personal memoir with the philosophical and spiritual insights of a Zen student.”

Our conversation traverses a lot of different areas and aspects of her life. We talk about starting out with a degree in genetics, only to move to integrating art, dance, and philosophy together for a master’s degree. We talk about her early experiences in the tech industry in the beginning days of Silicon Valley. She tells of how getting laid off in 2001 led to a cycle of desperation that finally culminated in deciding that she needed a change from being stuck in self-pity as her identity.

She describes her voyage of recovery through recovery programs, coming to know the value of herself, letting go of the results you want and accepting the results you get, and how to heal intergenerational trauma. The source of this is finding the inner strength we all have and that we can nurture to be more present in our lives.

Finally we talk about how her work is about sharing lessons of experience, strength, and hope to receptive audiences to help them in their healing journeys. And through this we can experience the world in a more healthy way and form more connected relationships.

Rikki West - https://www.rikkiwest.com/

"The Empty Bowl" - https://www.rikkiwest.com/the-empty-bowl