Scott Scheff

The reconnect roadshow took me to EMPIRE ESPRESSO LLC in Columbia City this week to catch up with Scott Scheff. While ordering americanos, Scott recommended the cashew milk. As a creative director at Smashing Ideas and an instructor of UX Design Thinking at the University of Washington, I take Scott’s recommendations seriously. They are always based on good user data.

As we chatted about product and service design, riding Chilly Hilly together, and our upcoming family road trips with dogs in tow, I had three takeaways;

1) good leaders push the capabilities of the team while maintaining contact with the team’s core expertise,

2) the value of strategic direction based on good research (no winging it, people), and

3) the satisfaction of working on projects that allow time for creation, feedback, optimization, and seeing the results of that optimization.

I admire Scott tremendously for his accomplishments, his smarts, and his lifelong pursuit to create better customer experiences. It was great to catch up and the cashew milk, not surprisingly, was quite delicious. Thank you Scott!

#designthinking #innovation #productdesign #servicedesign #uxdesign#customerexperience #cashewmilk #thankyou