It is indeed an exciting time to be alive. I’m not talking about AI, but OTAs, or Organized Team Activities in the National Football League. Non-contact football practices have just commenced. Our hometown heroes the New England Patriots are coming off a very successful season, which unfortunately ended in the Patriots getting shellacked by the Seattle Seahawks (so much so I stopped watching the game).

If Patriots fans thought that was the low point of this year, recent stories around the head coach Mike Vrabel’s personal activities (shall we say) have raised questions around how successful this season is going to be. Being a leader can require a lot of focus to the task at hand. If you can’t focus, can you lead? Or, is there going to be a level of distraction interfering with the focus that is needed to succeed at that level.

It seems that the only story getting more press than the Mike Vrabel saga is the artificial intelligence saga. AI is impossible to escape in the press and in our lives. When I was at the FTT Fintech and Customer Alpha event, every session had some discussion about AI. In these discussions, it is interesting to hear the ever fluctuating claims about how essential AI is to a company’s success. There are stories about how it is vital to success, as well as stories about how it is going to contribute to failure. There is a lot of space in between those extremes to add further stories.

These discussions raise the question about what it means to “embrace technology.” There is a difference between a company embracing technology and becoming beholden to it. We are seeing many companies becoming beholden to AI. Some companies are becoming beholden by making the decision to turn their operations to AI, reducing headcount, and dealing with the aftermath if the expected returns have not materialized. Or, they are now seeing the price of tokens being significantly increased. Other companies, by comparison, are embracing technology by finding areas where its use fits and is appropriate. Adoption involves whether technology is seen as a tool or technology as a determinant.

It all comes down to leadership, and making strategic decisions in times of uncertainty.

This is why we have this week on Experience by Design Marianne Bachynski, Chief Information Officer, Author, Speaker, and Strategic Advisor. Marianne’s expertise lies in aligning IT Operations and Business Strategies to achieve organizational goals and foster sustainable growth. There perhaps is no better time to engage a conversation around strategic use of technology than now.

In our chat, Marianne suggests that AI can unlearn more quickly due to its objective nature and the ability to be retrained, but it lacks empathy and can have unchecked bias unless trained by humans. In other words, why we still need humans in the loop. We also discuss how new technology creates opportunities for experimentation and innovation, but only if we are not relying on it just to replicate what we’ve done in the past.

Marianne stresses that especially in times of rapid technological change, success comes down to people and how culture still matters. We have to hire curious people to begin with, and continue to engage them around the what and why of your decisions. People need to be shown that they still matter, and that we are all in this together.

This includes people at all levels of the organization. Marianne describes how her end of summer meeting with interns was her favorite meeting because of the unique perspectives and creative ideas that were shared. Marianne highlights the need for leaders to shift from micromanaging to influencing and coaching, while also fostering a sense of community and shared purpose. Marianne shares her hope that her book, Fit for Uncertainty, would help readers change their leadership approach and build coping skills for stress.

Ultimately, Marianne shares that leaders of all kinds need to have the humility that allows them to say “I don’t know” and be open to learning from many different voices, which still includes human intelligence.

Marianne Bachynski Website: https://mariannebachynski.com/

Marianne Bachynski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-bachynski/

Fit for Uncertainty: Lead with Purpose, Adapt to Change: https://mariannebachynski.com/book/

For regular listeners of Experience by Design, you’ll know that I have had a bit of travel of late. London. Florence, Italy. Even Lake Placid, New York. To be honest, I don’t like traveling. I like being places, but don’t love the process of getting there. I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling. Travel can be taxing. Being there should be enjoyable. Or some might say an experience.

Hospitality is a big part of experience design. In fact, while a lot of attention is given to customer experience, user experience, patient experience, and employee experience, travel and tourism is a major area of work for designers of experiences. Admittedly, it is not something that I have done any work in, but it is something that I have experienced as a person who has traveled.

It used to be the case that you learned about a travel location through the pamphlets on racks by the hotel door. Or some local restaurant. Or a local attraction. These pamphlets don't do much to tell a story about the location you're in. As a result, it can be very difficult to learn about local history and culture. Samantha Hardcastle is on a mission to change that by linking local community and culture into storied experiences.

Samantha grew up in the travel industry, as her mother was a travel agent. She got to see behind the scenes at how things worked. After getting a degree in marketing, her first client was a hotel. Throughout her career, she has sought to create better hospitality and tourism experiences not just for travelers, but for the people who host travelers and the communities in which these places are located.

Today, she runs her own consultancy called The Storied Experience. As her website states, “Our approach puts equal emphasis on cultural immersion, wellbeing and transformation, and regenerative impact to ensure we’re co-creating a highly-valuable, in-demand experience.”

We talk about our relationship with vacation as a culture, and whether we let ourselves to truly turn ‘off.’ As a result, we need to encourage more escapism on a regular basis, and need the places where we can do that. She describes work that she has done with clients to bring local culture into contemporary accommodations and features. Part of this includes creating micro-experiences that engage curiosity and imagination in a way that also promotes reflection.

Finally, she describes how she found her way into experience design, and the way in which she pulls from many different areas. Part of this included books on world building, story development, and ethnography. She even pulls from works of fiction for how to develop characters, a plot, and story arc. A key challenge she shares is how do we continue to create stories and experience when people’s attention spans are so short. This is a challenge that most of us can identify with, and she shares how she tried to crack it and succeeded.

It is a perfect time for this conversation as we are approaching the summer travel and vacation season!

Samantha Hardcastle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skhardcastle/

The Storied Experience: https://www.thestoriedexperience.com/

I just got back from the Customer Alpha event that was part of the broader FTT Embedded Finance, Payments, and Future Identity event, put on by VC Innovations. It was the first time I’ve spoken publicly about my concept of THE UN-WOW, focusing our efforts more on everyday mundane experiences rather than transformative metamorphic experiences. There is more to it than that, so stay tuned for updates as I work on a book on THE UN-WOW.

While in London, I was able to go to the Tate Modern Art Museum. This was quite the shift after visiting museums in Florence with all of the Renaissance representational art. One of the interesting differences between the two is that the art in Florence often was made for patrons who were commissioning artwork, which ultimately was made to please those patrons. The art in the Tate often was made by artists who were trying to please themselves using art as a statement. As a result, the artists’ statements became a key piece of looking at and understanding what the art was meant to represent and the response it was hoping to create.

Regardless of whether sponsored representational or abstract and surreal, through art one can give external voice to one’s internal dialogue to create a social experience.

On today’s episode of Experience by Design podcast, I welcome Ali Fawkes, the Head of Social Innovation at the social design firm Humanly. “Humanly is an award-winning design studio specializing in human-centered design for social impact.” On their website, they continue to describe themselves as, “specialising in inclusive, creative and participatory research and design with seldom-heard and underrepresented groups.”

I came to learn about Ali and Humanly through a paper she co-authored on “Co-designing the Future of Respiratory Healthcare” in the journal CoDesign - the International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, detailing their work and approach.

Ali is a self-described “art kid,” who found an outlet for her own voice. She went on to get a degree in Fine Art from the University of Kent, as well as additional certifications and degrees in Secondary Art and Special and Inclusive Education from the University of Cambridge. Ali describes co-design efforts she did with students during her work as a secondary school art teacher and educator in schools whose students had special needs.

She describes her journey from that rewarding work to working with Humanly. We discuss how being an outsider with little knowledge about a setting or industry can be a real gift to having open eyes and ears to learn from people who are often not listened to. Ali discusses the ethical considerations and methodologies involved in working with underrepresented groups, emphasizing the importance of truthful representation and co-design approaches. We also discuss the importance of her artistic background as a source of challenging norms and disruption, leading to innovative approaches.

And if doing social design and impact isn’t enough heavy lifting, Ali also participates in strongperson competitions, lifting very heavy things and sometimes having to carry them across distances. Which is not unlike trying to lift complex problems and carry solutions forward.

I always love good art talk on Experience by Design, and especially when it is connected to social impact.

Ali Fawkes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alifawkes/

Humanly: https://www.designhumanly.com/

“Co-designing the Future of Respiratory Healthcare”: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15710882.2025.2603298