Empathy – Storytelling Built For Innovation

Emotions: The Feature That Powers Our Operating System

June 4, 2025June 6, 2025by stayintouchwiththelambLeave a comment

Friend and futurist Simon Waller invited me to explore the future of acting on his podcast, The Future with Friends. It led me to a surprising place. The conversation evolved into a discussion about the importance of emotion in navigating life as a human being. It led me to reflect on how emotion shapes communication. Not as something that drives us irrationally as a holdover from our distant past, but as the feature that has allowed humanity to outpace other species and thrive in increasingly complex societies.

Problem Personas: The Paradox of Research in Design

November 14, 2023November 15, 2023by stayintouchwiththelambLeave a comment

In the realm of human-centred design, we face a paradox. We listen to stories brimming with emotions and experiences during the research phase. Yet, as we synthesise these narratives into user personas, the original stories often dissipate, leaving behind mere shadows of their former richness. This became evident nine years ago during my initial training…

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Better Design Outcomes: Character, Insights and Customer Experience

October 6, 2023October 12, 2023by stayintouchwiththelamb

Acting is about telling the truth. This can seem counterintuitive, considering the costumes, makeup and sets that go into the average play or series. It is carefully constructed and fabricated. And yet, if the performances aren't convincing, an audience will tune out or walk away if it doesn't feel authentic. Acting is a powerful medium…

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Innovate Like Shakespeare, Be Audience-centric

March 11, 2020August 19, 2020by stayintouchwiththelamb

William Shakespeare was a playwright, poet and theatre owner who lived over 400 years ago. His work is still performed today, translated into countless languages, taught in schools and studied by scholars. How does someone achieve this type of longevity? Two words, Shakespeare was – ‘audience centric’.

Why Are We So Bad At Imagining The Future?

January 28, 2020April 8, 2021by stayintouchwiththelamb

But this is not why is conceptualising what our lives will be like in the future is difficult. The wiring of our brains leads us to be bad at it. We evolved to think day by day. To survive situations as they occurred in weeks and months. And for hundreds of thousands of years, this has served us well.

Empathy Design : Characters For Personas

October 21, 2019February 4, 2020by stayintouchwiththelamb

We listed the pain points and the pleasure points and mapped out what the persona was thinking and feeling. Then we started building out deeper insights. What did this persona need, that they may not even understand themselves?

I was feeling a bit lost. As an actress, a person who is trained in creating representations of real people, I knew I didn’t have the right information in front of me. If I had to play this persona as a character I would have no idea how to do it. I would not understand how to build dialogue that reflected how this person would see themselves and the world. I would be completely at a loss. And to compound the confusion the rest of my team seemed confident to build deeper and deeper insights.

Co-Design Your Story

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019by stayintouchwiththelambLeave a comment

What does Co-Design, Complex Systems Theory and Storytelling have in common? Can co-design methods be used to gather stories as a qualitative data set in processes of innovation, change or disruption? To use stories as a qualitative data set, it is necessary to see storytelling as a system of feedback loops that deliver new learnings…

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Improving Empathy In Your Design Process, Create Characters For Your Personas!

July 31, 2019August 1, 2019by stayintouchwiththelamb

Improving Empathy In Your Design Process, Create Characters For Your Personas! Human-centered designers use empathy-based processes to understand the people they are creating solutions for. Being able to see through another person’s eyes can feel like magic or good luck. And yet the tools to make this a repeatable and reliable process are within our…

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