Experience by Design

I think I am being honest when I say that I have never eaten at a Cracker Barrel. I may have once or twice in my life, but I honestly don’t remember. This is not out of any ideological reason or inte…

For parents who have school-aged children, it is the most wonderful time of the year when the children are gone from the house and return to places of learning, or at least someplace other than bothe…

I am just back from a vacation that took me across three states, one Navajo reservation, and some federal land in the southwest of the United States. Departing the humid and heavily greened northeast…

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 l…

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 i…

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 co…

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 …

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 e…

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 shiftin…

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 Bri…

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 perfecti…

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One of the things that I am starting to notice more and more is the difference between “getting older” and “feeling older.” Getting older is something that is unavoidable as long as we’re alive. But …

Parenting children is definitely one of the hardest challenges that we can face in life. But as challenging as that is, it is nothing compared to reparenting your inner child. Some of you might be fa…

I’m lucky enough to live in a spot where there are a lot of trails that I can enjoy whether running, walking, biking, and even snowshoeing if we get enough snow. No matter what I am doing, I have one…

We are rapidly approaching the end of semester, which can only mean one thing: freedom. The end of the semester is always a weird time. It kind of reminds me of the end of a relationship where both p…

Springtime in New England is the worst. As I sit here on another cold and rainy “spring” day, I’m reminded of what I was told by someone when I first moved to Boston 25 years ago: “Springs in New Eng…

I always feel a bit bad complaining about getting older, because getting older is not a privilege afforded to everyone. At the same time, getting older does present certain challenges. I was able to …

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the great things about doing a show like this is the fascinating people I get to talk to who are coming at experience design from many different approaches, perspecti…

I made a huge mistake. That statement is not that uncommon for me to say. Mistakes happen with some frequency despite my best efforts. If to err is human, I’m definitely very human.

There is an interv…