From BECOS to Psychedelics, Here comes a wild future with James Wallman

Dan Harden deliberates with futurist and Stuffocation Author James Wallman on what matters most in design today. They dissect a range of issues, from how the pandemic pushed us into an experience economy to how we can design more meaningful experience-driven innovations that value time above materialism.

 

Episode Transcript

Dan Harden 0:06

Hello, and welcome to PRISM. PRISM is a design-oriented podcast hosted by me Dan Harden, like a glass prism that reveals the color hidden inside white light, this podcast will reveal the inside story behind innovation, especially the people that make it happen. My aim is to uncover each guest’s unique point of view, their insights, their methods or their own secret motivator, perhaps, that fuels their creative genius.

Dan Harden 0:34

Today, I’m talking with James Wallman. It’s such a pleasure to have you, thank you so much. You are a best-selling author, entrepreneur, futurist, keynote speaker and government advisor. That’s interesting. I’d like to hear about that. I’m gonna say government, right?

James Wallman 0:49

Yeah, I’m also a dog walker.

Dan Harden 0:50

You’re a dog walker! Why is this not the first thing on your bio?

James Wallman 0:55

It didn’t used to be my thing. But you know, and also pick up dog poo therefore. But as you know, I gave a talk yesterday. And you know, when someone introduces you, and you always hear these kind of list of things that you’ve done, and you always think, oh, wow, listen to that. That sounds good. And then you kind of have, especially, you know, since we’ve entered the kind of zoom world of working from home, you know, during this COVID time, you think, Well, actually, I’m at home, and we’re all at home during our days, trying to get through this thing.

Dan Harden 1:23

It’s so good to bring it down to a human level. Isn’t that?

James Wallman 1:26

Yeah, yeah, that’s why. But I do do those other things as well. That’s true.

Dan Harden 1:30

Okay. You have done some significant things, that’s why we wanted you on this program. You’ve also written two best selling books about the experience economy,

James Wallman 1:39

Yes

Dan Harden 1:40

Stuffocation, which I read, when I met you; and Time And How To Spend It, which the Financial Times named one of the must read books of 2019. You also run this strategy, innovation and futures consultancy, The Future is Here. It’ll be interesting talk about that. And your opinions have appeared in so many different places, New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, Wired etc. And let’s see what else here. You advise the British government and your role as sector specialists for the experience economy. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack here with you.

Dan Harden 2:18

And the reason I invited you is the things that you think about are things that I think industrial designers like me and the people that will be listening to this should hear about, you know, it’s like, why are we designing? What is the context of our work? What is the definition of prosperity? You know, ever since the founding of industrial design, over 100 years ago, its primary business objective has been to sell more product, because the corporate rationale was that if you made your products better looking back, then they would be more marketable. And they were, you know, those early industrial designers, they proved that, and their design help to catapult these companies like General Electric, and John Deere, and IBM, and all these amazing companies that they, you know, became. But since then, design has certainly evolved into a much more sophisticated and multi dimensional professional that considers not only product appearance, but the entire user experience. Wh