Today on Experience by Design, we welcome Michael Kirkpatrick, CEO and Co-founder of Centric Park, an experience design agency outside of Boston. We explore Michael's start as a graphic designer and his career the led him to be EVP of Client Experience and Strategy at Mad*Pow before starting Centric Park. We talk about why design needs to drive change, and how we can combine stakeholder input and designer vision to achieve that goal. We also discuss his early work in designing games, and how that translates into his work today.
In many ways, Experience Design is a new field of work in terms of how it has become focused on and prioritized in companies and across sectors. In other ways, there is nothing new about it at its core. Experiences have been designed and delivered throughout human history. Perhaps what is most different about today is the awareness and intentionally behind experience design.
But what is the purpose of all this experience designing? Are we just trying to increase bottom-line revenues? Are we trying to create better outcomes beyond profit? How about creating more equitable environments? Perhaps we are trying to effect some kind of positive change through the interactions that we orchestrate, the environments that we construct, and the perceptions that result. Or maybe all of the above?
To discuss these questions and more, today on Experience by Design we welcome Michael Kirkpatrick of Centric Park. Michael has had a long career as a designer, working as the Executive Vice President of Client Experience and Strategy at Mad*Pow before starting Centric Park and serving as its CEO.
We talk about not just talking about design, but using experience design to transform business and outcomes. Specifically, we talk about how experience design needs to be a people (or human)-centered activity, constantly coming back to the question of what is best for those who are involved. Using a systems perspective, this requires the designer to take ethnographic noticings, stakeholder input, and designer vision to achieve those goals, which first and foremost includes designing products and services that will help people.
Finally we talk about gaming in the age of CD-ROMs, and how Monopoly and Risk are really tough games to finish.