Product Powwow

10 Anthony Davies: The future of TV

Kevin McCullagh — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 16:30:51 +0100

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 conversation as wise and insightful as I did.

01:02 Career history

04:46 Sky Glass - The TV Apple should have made

13:09 It's all about timing - paddling before the wave comes

15:52 How TV and film are being produced now

26:45 AI's impact on content creation

33:18 Designing shared screen experiences

35:40 Can AI agents fix the web experience

39:39 Personalised content

43:33 Customisation vs making the right product call

48:18 How TV watching is changing

55:50 Designing with and for AI

Anthony Davies

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.

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09 Tom Inns: Healthcare system design

Kevin McCullagh — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 21:00:00 +0000

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 because the concept of systems is used in so many different domains, from biology and software engineering to urban planning and sociology and policy.

Tom has a refreshingly straight-forward way of talking about the topic that includes lots of analogies and metaphors, which I think makes it much more accessible.

00:53 Career background

03:45 System design

06:40 System vs service design

10:42 What good looks like

18:35 System design process

31:47 Painting with data

36:34 Testing and learning

41:21 The craft of system design

46:21 Domain knowledge

49:11 Documentation and handover

54:40 Using maps to identify automation opportunities

TOM INNES

Website: www.cofink.co.uk

Email: tom@cofink.co.uk

Tom studied engineering at the University of Bristol, design at the Royal College of Art & Imperial College, London and has a PhD from Brunel University, awarded for research exploring the impact of design thinking on drivers of innovation success in small businesses.

In 2000 he became Professor of Design & Head of the School of Design at the University of Dundee. He directed the AHRC/EPSRC’s UK-wide Designing for the 21st Century research initiative between 2005-2010 before becoming Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and then Director (CEO) of Glasgow School of Art from 2013 to 2018.

In 2019 he established consultancy, COFINK Ltd., using design and systems thinking approaches to help individuals and organisations understand complex challenges and collaborate to develop innovative solutions. Through COFINK he was worked with a wide range of health trusts, charities, businesses, universities and research organisations across the UK, and in Europe, USA, China and Africa.

Tom also works part-time as a Research Fellow at DMEM, University of Strathclyde, (Glasgow) as a Visiting Professor at Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh & Dubai) and with Magnetic (London & Manchester) as a Design Coach for Innovate UK’s Design for Growth programme.

Tom’s writing on topics discussed in the podcast:

Patient_Ecosystem_Mapping_2024.pdf

A paper Tom wrote in 2024 for the DMI’s Design Management Review. This describes the Patient Ecosystem Mapping methodology discussed in the podcast.

Guide_to_Patient_Ecosystem_Mapping.pdf

A short guide to how the Patient Ecosystem Mapping approach works and how Tom supports this approach through his consultancy COFINK Ltd.

Designing_Realistic_Healthcare_Improvement_2020.pdf

A paper Tom co-authored for the DMI’s Design Management Journal in 2020, with ENT Consultant Surgeon, Rod Mountain, exploring how design thinking can help inform innovation in health and care

Theatres_For_Design_Thinking_2013.pdf

A paper Tom wrote for the DMI’s Design Management Journal in 2013 describing how design can support facilitation.

08 Andrew Barraclough: Maximising design’s business impact

Kevin McCullagh — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 05:05:00 +0000

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 of stories, backed by appropriate metrics, to engage with stakeholders on a regular basis – rather than chasing after the red herring of a single killer ROI number. Later on, he has sage advice on how to collect and contextualise measures from different parts of the business.

We also cover his concept of ‘Design Linking’, the important internal plumbing work of connecting different design teams, initiatives, partners and stakeholders together to maximise design’s impact.

06:48 Design ROI - a red herring

12:55 Plotting a holistic design strategy

14:50 Wide and frequent stakeholder engagement

24:00 Aligning projects with stakeholders

28:57 Design Linking

37:39 Marshalling metric

43:20 Getting out of the doldrums

ANDREW BARRACLOUGH

KEVIN & PLAN

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07 Nick Hunn: The future of ‘Hearables’

Kevin McCullagh — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 14:25:40 +0000

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 devices collect.

This episode is on the longer side, but it was tough to edit down as Nick delivers ‘all killer, no filler’. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did.

02:05 A brief history of wearables

03:30 In praise of ears and hearing aids

07:15 Wearables still in the 'hope bubble'

17:10 The hidden genius of hearing aid

26:30 Overcoming the stigma of hearing aids

36:15 Is Apple going to change the game

42:10 What the new Bluetooth LE standard unlock

51:10 The return of voice

57:05 Health monitoring

1:00:30 What is Apple doing with that health data?

1:04:45 The wider role of hearables in our tech ecosystem

NICK HUNN

Nick is technology strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert witness, keynote speaker and author with a broad view of the details of technologies, user experience and wider interplay of different market solutions.

Website: www.nickhunn.com

KEVIN & PLAN

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06 Making change happen

Kevin McCullagh — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 15:39:23 +0000

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 innovate.

This conversation follows nicely from the previous two episodes in that it explores a potential career track for some Design and Innovation leaders and, more importantly, a skill set that could integrate into their initiatives.

01:32 Career background

05:30 Change management

10:35 Why is change so hard

15:23 Identifying a change project

22:05 Types of change

30:25 Change leaders

35:39 Juggling change with day-to-day operations

38:39 New skills

42:06 Knowing what you know now…

KATHERINE FARNON

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05 Routes out of Design's Doldrums

Kevin McCullagh — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:55:48 +0100

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 with design, which partly prompted my article on Design in the Doldrums.

Sean Carney has a background in ID, and has held various design leadership roles, including being the Chief Design Officer of Philips for 15 years, so gives a highly authoritative corporate design view on the situation.

Warren Hutchinson has moved from ID to UX to digital transformation design, both in-house and as a consultant, including his current consultancy, which he co-founded.

15:00 Symptoms of the Doldrums

25:15 From product to system design?

35:32 Over specialisation?

39:10 Routes out of the Doldrums

ARTICLES MENTIONED

Robert Fabricant, ‘The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future’, 15 February 2024, FastCompany

Robert Fabricant, ‘Design leaders are in their reinvention era’, 10 April 2024, FastCompany

Kevin McCullagh, ‘Why design is in the doldrums’, 18 September 2024
Kevin McCullagh, DMI keynote deck, 24 September 2024

KEVIN & PLAN

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Email: kevin@plan.london

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04 Design leadership to Innovation consulting

Kevin McCullagh — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 08:29:06 +0100

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 consulting projects

27:38 Old and new skills

43:31 On the creativity of non-designers

ARTICLE

Designers as in-house innovation consultants (the comments are well worth a read too)

CHRISTINE & SEBASTIAN

Christine Ruf

Sebastian Stoddart

KEVIN & PLAN

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03 Don Norman: Human(ity) Centred AI – Pt.2

Kevin McCullagh — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 14:54:49 +0100

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 AI devices

16:56 Overtrust in AI

19:33 Human vs Machine strengths

26:08 Intelligent amplification

34:36 AI amplified design

38:55 Examples of HCAI

BOOK MENTIONED

Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing), Salman Khan, 2024

DON NORMAN

Website

Bio

Don Norman Design Award and summit

KEVIN & PLAN

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Email: kevin@plan.london

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02 Don Norman: Human(ity) Centred AI – Pt.1

Kevin McCullagh — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 14:44:42 +0100

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 his beef with B. F. Skinner, one of the godfathers of today’s Behaviour change movement.

04:32 Humanity-Centered Design

13:33 Wide-ranging career

26:45 The evolution of our interaction with machines

34:22 Smartphones

BOOK MENTIONED

Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein, 2019

DON NORMAN

Website

Bio

Don Norman Design Award and summit

KEVIN & PLAN

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