James Buckhouse on starting with human experience

We were recently lucky to host James Buckhouse, Founder of the Sequoia Creative Lab, on our podcast for an in-depth discussion about the role of story in experience design. James comes at this from a unique angle. He spent nearly a decade as an animator at Dreamworks, working on blockbusters like the “Shrek” franchise, before becoming a senior experience architect at Twitter. Today, storytelling is the foundation of the work he does at Sequoia, where he helps portfolio companies create better experiences for their own users.

On the day of our recording, James brought something extra with him to the studio – a short story to inspire and remind us all that design isn’t about pixels, features or new user flows, it’s about designing complements to the human condition. In that process of design, Buckhouse points out, there’s a wealth of value in the events happening around us on any given day.

You can check out his essay in the embed above. Happy listening ?

Story and narration by James Buckhouse
Audio productions by John Davis