In our Human to Human blog series, we dive into the human side of Sparks Grove to learn more about our people behind the business.
In part three of our series, we are speaking with Mariella Volio, a member of the Experience Design Strategy team. Mariella describes her job as play time, where she can use the excuse of being on the creative side to invite people to come play in the sandbox.
Q: What are the biggest challenge(s) of creative strategic thinking in today’s world?
The first thing that comes to mind is when you feel that you are getting bogged down in organizational structures and additional made-up guardrails that deeply prevent us from fulling our potential to design transformational ideas.
Based on your previous statement, what would be the first thing you would do if there were no boundaries or guardrails?
Chutzpah! I would definitely say the desire to try cutting edge bold concepts as early as I can. This way people can be on board since the beginning and explore, expand and bring to life different business opportunities so that we can develop outperforming solutions.
Q: Looking at the experience process, how would you describe human experiences being delivered to customers, employees and communities?
There are two ways we can look at this. It can be delivered beautifully, when it is done in a simple and genuine way. Or it can go in the opposite way, horribly, when it is done in a robotic and overly contrived manner. That is why we must be responsible for everything we do, our solution should be conscious, meaningful and purposeful in order to build real human relationships.
Q: Designing for human experiences is about making an impact and changing lives, if you could change anything in the world what would you do?
How about a super-power that allows us to physically feel each other’s happiness and pain? We would then truly be able to understand and empathize with each other, and quickly solve the core problems, rather than get stuck with confronting pre-conceived notions and stereotypes.
Q: What do you hope to see in the future for experience design strategy practice?
I would just simply say, more color, more abstract and more daring because we already have enough straight lines in the world.