Tell us a little about yourself and your current work outside of Experience Haus?
I’ve been in and around creative industries for about 18 years, initially working up the ladder in strategy and then more recently crossing over to a more ‘hybrid strategic experience’ role. Now I work as a freelance consultant on projects that require a mix of strategy, service design, product design and customer experience. Example clients include 02, HSBC, PlayStation, Ford, Saga, Microsoft, Samsung, Tate, Belmond…the list goes on!
Did you have a specific goal you wanted to achieve before you started teaching at Experience Haus? Do you think your time here so far has kept you on the right track?
When surgeons are trained they are forced to ‘see one, do one, teach one’; this is because teaching someone else to do something requires a real mastery of concepts and material. I guess this is what I personally want to achieve through my teaching with Experience Haus, beyond the more obvious answers like ‘sharing with others and building the community’. I hope by coaching others I test and improve my own knowledge and skills.
What is your teaching philosophy?
I’m a big fan of Bloom’s taxonomy and Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate, Create framework. I also like giving each student the responsibility of being a design leader, making them responsible for ensuring that the class delivers their homework for the week.
What do you enjoy most about teaching at Experience Haus?
The live, hands-on nature of the sessions means that you’re constantly kept on your toes. Whether it’s fielding unexpected questions, facilitating an interesting debate, running impromptu workshops or navigating tricky project briefs that even a seasoned pro would find hard to solve – the largely unscripted format means that it really is as close to doing the job in real-life as you can get. There are no predefined answers or multiple choice questions in the real world.
