In this episode, I talk to Anthony Davies, MD of Design at Sky and Comcast. We talk about the future TV, fixing the web, designing with and for AI and much more. As you will hear, he’s an incredibly smart, strategic, creative and humble guy, which helps to explain why he’s so highly respected. Finally, Anthony mentions Sky Glass , their high-end TV, with elegantly integrated software and services, and Sky Q , a set-top box system that combines satellite and broadband feeds. I hope you find this ...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 10
In this episode, I talk to Tom Inns, the principal at Cofink , the system mapping, facilitation and coaching consultancy. The concept of Systems design has been around for decades. I’ve even been called a Systems Thinker a few times for my sins, but I’ve always found it a bit of an esoteric and even eccentric subject. Whenever I open a book or article on the topic, I don’t get far before being hit with dense and abstract schematics. Each author also seems to have a different approach, probably b...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 9
In this episode, I talk to Andrew Barraclough, who has held a number of corporate design leadership roles, as well as doing tours of duty in marketing and R&D and ran his own design agency. His design experience also spans industrial, packaging and digital. Partly as a result of his broad experience, he’s one of the most commercially and organizationally savvy design leaders I know. In this conversation, we talk about how to raise design’s impact on organisations, by developing a portfolio o...
Mar 06, 2025•47 min•Ep. 8
Welcome to season two of Product Powwow. In this episode, I talk to Nick Hunn, a global expert in wireless technologies and more specifically in what he calls ‘hearables’ – which are ear-based wearables. We cover a lot of ground, including audio, hearing loss, health-sensing and voice control use cases for hearables. Themes include the nuances of human perception and behaviour around this highly intimate technology, and the search for sustainable business models based on all the data wearable de...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 7
Today, I talk to Katherine Farnon about her pivot from Global Head of Digital Experience Strategy & Operations at Vodafone to becoming a change management consultant. As anyone with leadership experience knows, simply asking or telling people to adopt a new system, structure, process, or way of working is unlikely to have much success. Change is harder than that. As you will hear, it’s a deeply human endeavour, and systematic change management has lots of parallels with the way we design and...
Nov 08, 2024•46 min•Ep. 6
Today I talk to three design industry luminaries about the current state of design and potential paths forward. They’re all seasoned hands who have ridden out a few downturns in their time and can take a long view on design from their different vantage points. Robert Fabricant is a Social impact designer based in NYC who specialises in Healthcare and previously worked at Frog. He wrote two much-discussed articles on FastCo earlier this year, which provocatively asked if Business was breaking up ...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 5
Today, I talk to Christine Ruf and Sebastian Stoddart about their move from design leadership to innovation consulting. I made contact with them both while writing my article on the same topic, which in turn was prompted by a training programme I developed on what it takes for senior designers or design leaders to make the leap into innovation consulting. 03:37 Christine’s career path 07:03 Sebastian's career path 09:20 Motivations behind the shift to innovation consulting 16:43 Example consulti...
Sep 20, 2024•49 min•Ep. 4
This is part 2 of my conversation with Don Norman, where we get into some of the big questions around AI. Don mentions Ben Shneiderman and Salman Khan a few times. Shneiderman is a renowned computer scientist who has focused on Interface design and recently wrote a book called Human-Centered AI. Khan is best known as the founder of the Khan Academy, a free online non-profit educational platform which hosts 6,500+ video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects. 03:18 AI agents 10:51 ...
Sep 10, 2024•45 min•Ep. 3
Today, I talk to Don Norman, the godfather of User Experience. It’s a wide-ranging conversation, so I’ve split it into two parts. Part 1 focuses on Don and how the way we’ve interacted with technology has evolved over time. If you already know lots about Don and UX, want to hear about AI, you might want to skip straight to Part 2. That said, I thought I knew a lot about him but learned how he was there at the dawn of computing, AI and how to think about human cognition and behaviour – including ...
Sep 10, 2024•37 min•Ep. 2
Product Powwow is a monthly podcast where I have big-picture conversations with design and innovation leaders. KEVIN & PLAN Kevin McCullagh is the founder of Plan, a product strategy consultancy based in London, which helps design and innovation leaders with strategic clarity. He writes and speaks on Foresight, Innovation and Leadership. LinkedIn Newsletter Plan website Email: kevin@plan.london MUSIC By Nico Delaney https://www.instagram.com/marksson.music...
Sep 10, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1
