The Experience Designers

What if the magic behind your favourite experiences wasn't just a coincidence? In this second part two of this two-part series with Goc O'Callaghan, Co-owner of ArcTanGent Festival and Global Experience Lead at Buro Happold.

In this episode, we peel back the curtain on the often-overlooked and unknown 'dark side' of Disney's magic. From the hidden infrastructure at Disney parks to designing festivals that feel like second homes, Goc reveals how intentional design can transform ordinary spaces into extraordinary memories.

Get ready to explore behind the scenes of thoughtful details, and see how the environments around us are engineered to make us feel, move, and connect in profound ways.

00:00 Introduction to the Experience Designers Podcast

01:05 Guest Introduction: Goc O'Callaghan

02:06 The Dark Side of Disney

03:13 Disney's Design Secrets

07:07 Real-Time Feedback and Customer Experience

08:47 Designing for the Senses

10:48 Applying Disney's Principles to Business

15:36 Experience Design in Structural Engineering

18:55 Quantifying Experience

31:26 Personalizing Office Spaces

38:02 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

43:55 Conclusion and Farewell

In this episode, we’re joined by John Sills, managing partner at The Foundation and author of The Human Experience. John shares an incredible story of how a broken train in Switzerland became one of the most memorable customer experiences he’s ever had—and not because it went wrong, but because of how it was handled.

Together, we dive into the heart of what makes customer experiences truly remarkable: human connection, ownership, and care. We explore why so many business leaders feel disconnected from their customers, the role technology plays in both enhancing and damaging experiences, and how companies can cultivate human traits like empathy, respect, and responsibility in everything they do.

Join us as we uncover the real secret to turning an ordinary—or even negative—experience into something extraordinary. Whether you're in customer service, leadership, or just curious about the magic of human-centred design, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration you won’t want to miss!

Want to connect with Morten?

www.linkedin.com/in/morten-raahauge-9823368/

Books we discussed:

The Experience Economy - Review here
Exponential Organisations - Review here

Experience Designers Ep 2

(We use a mix of automated transcript software and editing for readability)

Steve (Host): [00:00:14] Hi Morten, thank you very much for joining me for this episode.

Morten: [00:00:20] My pleasure.

Steve (Host): [00:00:20] Good stuff. So we've got a few things we wanted to cover off today as part of this interview or discussion. A lot will be centered around the employee experience and the evolution and where we think this could be heading and how H.R. departments could be developing the employee experience and playing a big part in this.

Steve (Host): [00:00:48] I think one of the things for me just to give some context is that I think generally right now the employee experiences is a really hot topic. I think we've gone from a period probably in the last ten years where there's always been a focus on employee engagement and certainly in the UK there was lots of research undertaken by a chap called David McCleod. He did some work under the previous UK government Labour government and latterly into the Conservative government which is around employee engagement and looking at it from a kind of top down perspective and more recently with the evolution on employee experience, it tends to be that kind of bottom up approach, looking at shaping and creating experiences for employees.

Steve (Host): [00:01:41] So I guess this falls in line with some of the experience economy stuff, which I'm sure we'll cover. What's your view around around this, where do you think we are around the topic of employee experience right now? What driving this?

Morten: [00:02:00] Well I think there's a lot of discussion on the topic and what I've been noticing is that people seem to have a little bit of unnecessary difficulties. You can sort of attack this from an array of different angles. And for me it's pretty simple because I'm a fully certified experience economy expert. So for me the whole methodology is there but it's really just applying experience design to this new area. Just as you would with any other business or business area. It's just another business area that needs to go through the same sort of change.

Morten: [00:02:53] So the methodology is there and there's a lot of models. And I think if this is something you want to work with. Then all the models all the ways of viewing things that's in the experience economy can be applied in a pretty straightforward way and easily implemented. So for me it's easy, but it seems to be there's a big discussion also, the different parts you know. Okay so what's the employee experience here? What's the employee experience there? And one other thing when you talk about experience, it usually centers on things that are sort of experiences by themselves. So in the experience economy you often speak about concerts or festivals or you know tourism stuff like that. But this is really a way of looking at things that could be applied to anything and especially in business and still make a lot of sense. So it doesn't have to be sort of above the experience you've just got to work in the morning. I mean you can you can even work on that if you want to.

Steve (Host): [00:04:05] So just taking from the other functions or other business areas that have gone through this change. I mean H.R. and I think learning and development tend to be the ones that kind of lag behind I think, is my view within organisations. Which is crazy because it's the most people focussed areas. For the listeners out there that are sitting in a human resource department or talent department what kind of symptoms do you think that they will be seeing within the organization that would I guess lean well to kind of say we need to look at adopting or engaging some kind of experience design.

Morten: [00:04:48] Well, when I worked with experience design in other areas the first thing you really need. Well first you have to decide that this is what you want to do. I mean you can't just. Well I'll do some of it. So if it gets to be a strategic approach I think that's good. And I think the way H.R. could look at it is that if you want to step up the H.R. Then this is definitely a way to go.

Morten: [00:05:16] There's something about the name, I mean...