Sr. Manager of Category Experience Design at Purina, Stephen Wurth: People Don’t want a Quarter Inch Drill

Human Centered Design – type that puppy into google and you’ll get a myriad of definitions and approaches, but this episode’s guest defines it quite simply as using empathy, ideation and experimentation to put the needs of the human (end user) at the center of the problem-solving process. Meet Stephen Wurth, Sr. Manager of Category Experience Design at Purina. He chats with WD Partners’ Lee Peterson on how his team works with retail partners to design solutions in an omni-channel world, how Design with a capital D can (and should) be used as a thinking tool across an organization, and why design thinking is not a linear process.

1:01 – Getting to know Stephen
5:00 – Human centered design
9:20 – Leveraging design thinking to help solve problems
12:15 – The advantage of design led companies
18:58 – Cultural ways of working
20:27 – How does tech fit into human centered design
24:29 – Direct to consumer models
29:08 – Why bonobos is killing it
33:36 – Predictions for 2021
36:15 – Advice for public speaking
38:00 – Cardinals fan through and through