Humans First: Design-Driven Strategy

Why do so many companies feel stuck in an endless cycle of feature requests and customer demands? Often it’s because they’re trapped in a pattern of reacting to their customers instead of leading their customers. In this episode, we break down the three phases companies go through—engineering-led, customer-led, and design-led—and why making the leap to a design-led organization is the key to innovation.

We explore the hidden forces ...

Why do some of the best products—built by amazing teams—still struggle? Even when they are building exactly what the customer asks for? The answer lies in understanding three key models that shape product success:

• The engineering model (how it actually works)
• The user model (how people think it works), and
• The design model (how we want them to think it works).

In this episode of Humans First, hosts Andrew Sladky, Kurt Vander W...

Are banks and fintechs fighting for your financial data? A new data regulation is changing the way consumers control their money—and it’s creating a high-stakes environment between banks, fintechs, and regulators.

In this episode of Humans First, we talk with Lee Wetherington, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy at Jack Henry, about what this means for financial institutions, UX design, and the future of banking. How will fintechs...

How long should UX take? Many executives set arbitrary deadlines for design work, expecting fast results without understanding the risks. But UX isn’t just about making screens look good—it’s about deeply understanding users, their workflows, and the business itself.

In this episode, Andy Van Fleet, Nick Bray, and Kayla Byington break down the UX timeline, explaining why the upfront discovery phase is crucial, how misjudging timelin...

Are you struggling to find the right UX talent for your team? In this episode of Humans First, UX experts Andy and Kayla Byington share their secrets for hiring top-notch UX professionals. They discuss the four essential qualities you should look for when interviewing candidates: empathy, problem-solving, communication, and humility.

Learn how to spot these traits during interviews and avoid common hiring pitfalls that could lead to...

How do you go from leading a design team of 10 to a global group of 300 in just a few years? In this episode, we talk with Timothy Embretson, VP of Experience Design at Inca Group, IKEA’s largest franchisee.

Timothy shares his journey of scaling a design team across multiple continents and navigating IKEA's largest digital transformation in its 80-year history. He discusses the importance of being proactive, empathetic, and building...

In this episode of Humans First, Dr. Stacy Van Gorp—co-founder at ⁠See What I Mean⁠, a consulting agency who specialize in facilitating organizational change—shares her groundbreaking research on the role of trust in fostering innovation and managing change within organizations. Stacy explains how trust—not just leadership—can drive employees to embrace new ideas, technologies, and processes, even when they’re psychologically resis...

Is your company struggling with low user engagement, inefficient product development, or lack of innovation? These problems often stem from a lack of organizational design maturity.

In this episode of Humans First, we dive into the seven levels of design maturity with Nick Bray, UX Design Director at Visual Logic. From companies just starting to invest in design to those fully embedding human-centered thinking across their organizat...

Why do some digital products fail to gain traction, even after countless redesigns? In this episode of Humans First, Andy Van Fleet and Kurt Vander Wiel break down what design really is—and what it isn’t. They explore the story of a company that spent 20 years refining its digital experience, only to find that users still preferred calling a human. The reason? A fundamental misunderstanding of the real problem.

Listen in as they dis...

In our debut episode, we explore the hidden complexities of UX work: from asking uncomfortable questions to uncovering the real problems, to navigating business constraints and designing solutions that actually work.

User Experience (UX)–and all other adjacent Experience disciplines (i.e., CX, EX, OrgX)–help solve complex business problems.

Visual Logic partners Andy Van Fleet and Kurt Vander Wiel, along with Senior UX Designer, Andr...

In then first few episodes of Humans First, we're introducing the idea of human-centered design, how it should be embraced by more than just your design team, and how it can impact both your product and your organization. Topics will include:

• Defining "design"
• Improving your organization’s design influence through "design maturity"
• Building a global design team (featuring Timothy Embretson, Global VP of Exp...

Humans First is a podcast for business leaders that places a human-centric lens on your business strategy. Join us as we discuss topics such as embracing human-focused design as an organization, scoping a UX project, and hiring the right team to shift your company toward a "humans-first" culture.

Humans First is hosted by Visual Logic, a User Experience (UX) design firm with over 30 years of experience helping organizations such as...