What Dementia Taught Me About Experience
My Dad died a couple of years ago after living with dementia. He went from someone who was sharp, practical and reliable to someone who seemed to be living in a different world. What happened to my Dad’s experience? From spending time with my Dad over those last few years, I noticed a couple of things. […]
What a Designer taught me about Experience
What if experience is not about what you know? Recently, I sat down with Industrial Designer Philippe Guichard for a conversation on On Experience. Given I’m a former architect, we naturally talked about design and creativity. Plus, we talked about ego, failure, culture and comic books. But the biggest insight I took away wasn’t really about design […]
A Comic Book and Sustainability with Philippe Guichard
For Industrial Designer Philippe Guichard sustainability started before his career began in the unlikely place of a comic book. Since then, it is been a normal part of his design process and how he sees the world. In this excerpt from On Experience, Philippe tells the simple story of how a man and his son in […]
The Things We Learn to See with Philippe Guichard
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Industrial Designer Philippe Guichard for a conversation on experience. I thought we would be talking about design. And we did. But as often happens with these On Experience conversations, the topic gradually shifted. What started as a discussion about products, creativity and culture slowly became a conversation about perception. It […]
Failure Changed My Design Philosophy with Philippe Guichard
When Industrial Designer Philippe Guichard started his career as a designer, success was partly about proving himself. Then he lost everything. In this excerpt from On Experience, Philippe reflects on how losing his business, combined with years of meditation practice, fundamentally changed the way he approaches design, work and life. What emerged wasn’t a better design process. It […]
What Designers Notice with Philippe Guichard
What do designers notice that other people miss? When Industrial Designer Philippe Guichard walks into a room, he isn’t looking at the paintings on the wall. He’s looking at the lights, the switches, the chairs, the proportions… In this excerpt from On Experience, we explore how years of experience reshape attention itself. Because expertise isn’t […]
Why Your Expertise Needs a Shape
A lot of experienced professionals know they’re valuable. They’ve solved real problems. They’ve helped real people. And they’ve built real expertise over time. And yet, they still struggle to explain, package, or scale that value. That’s usually not a confidence problem. It’s a shape problem. ? The hidden frustration experienced professionals feel What I see […]
Thought Leadership – Five Ways to Create Cutting Edge Content
The best thought leaders create cutting-edge content. But how do you do this? We presume the thought leaders with the groundbreaking ideas are simply smarter than the rest of us. That might be true. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Success leaves clues. In this post, I’ll show you the five ways that thought […]
How NOT to Plan Your Project
Plan Your Project The traditional message about how to plan your project is flawed. You’ve probably heard the old adage: to fail to plan is to plan to fail. And, if you only plan you will also fail. We are told to plan our project by only focusing on what we have to do. Typically […]
Project Design Books – Twelve of the Best
The thing that I am most proud of around Project Passion is that it was fuelled by Book Rapper. Yep, re-reading my own material provided the insight I needed. It’s a neat reminder for me about the value of great books and the RAPs as a quick reference guide. Thus, this list of Project Design […]