The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Design Empathy and Contextual Awareness: Frames of Reference for the 21st Century Creative by Wayne K. Li

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Design Empathy and Contextual Awareness: Frames of Reference for the 21st Century Creative by Wayne K. Li https://www.amazon.com/Design-Empathy-Contextual-Awareness-Reference/dp/1529438217 https://id.gatech.edu/people/wayne-li One of the biggest challenges facing designers across all fields is not simply in the design of the product or service itself, but rather how to arrive at a design solution that resonates with a target audience, that will have a higher than likely chance at market adoption, and that will avoid negatively impacting society or the environment. What are the skills that can be employed by a student or young professional creative early on that enable them to identify the issues at work and address them? By understanding design from human-centered perspectives - both from the customer's and the producer's point of view - innovative, resonant designs are possible. Design Empathy and Contextual Awareness demystifies the "fuzzy" front end of the design process, where research methods mix with business trends and marketing. The accessible, authoritative text presents design as neither merely a "trade" skill nor an exercise in personal creative vision, but rather the application of multiple mindsets and practices, built around a process of alternating points of view (or "frames"). As well as covering theory and process, this visually engaging book also provides real-life business examples and applicable templates to help designers hone their empathy and contextual awareness in order to more directly and efficiently achieve successful design outcomes. Chapters cover: Laying a foundation: design as a whole-brain activity Design behaviors: design as a whole-life activity Empathy: cognitive and emotional empathy, and compassionate concern Contextual awareness: cultivating your designer's sixth senseAbout the author Wayne K. Li is the James L. Oliver Professor, holding a joint position between the Colleges of Design and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He leads joint teaching initiatives and advances interdisciplinary collaboration between mechanical engineering and industrial design through classes and the Innovation and Design Collaborative, also known as the "Design Bloc," while also serving as a principal design consultant at Wayne Li Design. Li's research areas include ethnographic research, multidisciplinary education, and human-machine interaction in transportation design. His career spans industry and academia. Li has led innovation and market expansion for Pottery Barn seasonal home products, taught in Stanford University's design program, led interface development at Volkswagen of America's Electronics Research Laboratory, and developed corporate brand and vehicle differentiation strategies at Ford Motor Company. He has also worked as a product designer at IDEO Product Development. Li holds a Master of Science in Engineering from Stanford University, and undergraduate degrees in Fine Arts (Design) and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm this Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen there, and the latest thing that makes official welcome the big show. As always, Chris Voss Show family for 16 years. Going on 17 with 2,500 episodes.

We're bringing you the most latest, greatest of minds on earth. None of me. That's why we're guests on the show, because I'm just an idiot with a mic. But for the show to your family, friends, and relatives, Go to Goodreads.com, Fortresschusch, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortezs, Chris Vos, one in the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Today, an amazing young man on the show. He's the author of the latest book that just come out. September 2nd, 2025, it is entitled, Design Empathy, and Contextual Awareness, Frames of Reference for the 21st Century Creative by Wayne K. Lee.

We're going to get into it and some of the insights and how you can utilize his knowledge to make your life. better. Wayne Lee is a professor at the practice of design and engineering school of industrial design. Will he eventually graduate beyond practice to expert? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe he already is. I think it's, I just thought it was funny. He's just practicing right now. Anyway, Wayne is the James L. Oliver professor holding joint positions between the colleges of design and engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He leads joint teaching initiatives and advances interdisciplinary collaborative. between mechanical engineering and industrial design through classes and the innovation and design collaborative IDC and design block. His research includes ethnographic research. We're going to learn

some new words today, folks. Multidisciplinary online education. I think that's what my parents called the beatings. And human machine interaction in transportation design. His career spans industry and academia and his lead innovation and market expansion for pottery barn seasonal home products taught at Stanford University's design program and lead interface development at Volkswagen of America's electronic research laboratory and help corporate brand and vehicle differentiating designs at Ford Motor Company. He's also worked as a product designer and mechanical engineer at IDEO product development. Welcome to the show. Wayne, how are you? Great to be here, Chris. I'm great great to have you sorry I had to do a little bit of riff on the practice title I thought

that was just kind of interesting it's like yeah that is a professor of practice that's right that distinct just basically means you have to have work experience right you've got a lot of work experience and us are but you've done industry work yeah what's it online practice makes perfect so give us your dot coms where can people find out more about you on the interwebs yeah sure so you can find me at georgia tech that's just gottech.edu and then search under my name. My design consultancy is Wayne Lee Design, all one word, W-A-Y-N-E-L-I-D-E-L-I-D-I-D-I-D-N-E-L-I-D-E-L-I-D-E-L-I-D-E-L-I-D-E-L-E-L-E-D-E-L-E-L-E-E-L-E-L-E-E-L-E-E-L-E-L-E-E-L-E-L-E-Rness. Tell us about this book, if you would. Sure, so this all stemmed from an article I wrote for Design Intelligence Magazine back almost a decade ago, but talking about

what are the ways that we can practice either our behavior or our mindsets to make us more creative, more entrepreneurial, and to help make an impact in society. So empathy and contextual awareness are two out of five behaviors you can practice. So that's where it all kind of started. And entrepreneurs, you know, we need as much of this we can possibly get. You know, we're always trying to see outside the box. We're always trying to see things at different angles. Explain to us, let's lay a foundation. What is the definitions of design, empathy and contextual awareness yeah so if you think about empathy right there psychologists have labeled that kind of in three different components but the

idea it's cognitive emotional and compassionate concern so we if we take those three ideas and apply them in methods on how we might go about making products services or businesses for people how might you do that if you think about cognitive empathy it's do you understand can you take someone's perspective all right can you understand where they're coming from I can do it not give a shit what do they call that is that design non-empathy well that's that's well i mean that's why there's three components too right they it can't just be well i can see where you are but i really don't care right so but you're wrong that's the emotional part right so you nailed it can you feel someone

else's emotions can you empathize that way it's not just saying oh yeah okay i see it's you sprained your ankle i see where you're coming from it's actually feeling the same pain oh and so so that's that other part and so how do you develop those types of that type of behavior or that type of understanding about someone and you know there are techniques for that like you know you can there are method acting techniques there are you know diagrams you can fill out so those types of things you can practice it you can learn about it and then that last component is what we call empathetic concern now that you can you know where someone's coming from you can feel what they're feeling are you moved to help and how much are you moved to help and so if you're really thinking about a business and you can't empathize with your customer let's just say it that way right so If we go back and say, okay, well, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm making, I'm running a car, I'm running a car service shop, but I really don't care about the person whose car broke down. Well, that's going to be a problem, right? Like, you know, and, you know, but at the same time, you can't, empathetic concern is a tough one, right?

Think about someone, like, say, a first responder, right? An ambulance, an EMS technician. If you, if you're emotionally crippled because you're so, you're crying along with a person who just, you know, got into a bicycle accident. Well, you can't be moved. You can't help because you're basically emotionally a wreck. So you've got to kind of balance that, right? You got to understand where they're coming from.

You'll feel their same emotions, let it kind of inherit that. But then you still have to have enough distance, right? That's kind of why doctors have to have that professional distance too, about being able, how can I help, how can what I do as a creator of products and services or as a designer, help you now in that situation. So you're really looking at all three when you're thinking about that, right? Yeah, so that's that empathy part. Contextual inquiry or contextual awareness is understanding that all the things we make,

someone's got to make them, someone's got to sell them, someone's got to distribute them. And so it's not just enough to know your audience. You actually have to know the ways and means of production. So, you're right, where is it being used? How is it being used? That's contextual inquiry. Oh, wow. sexual inquiry you know I so it's it's good to have empathy it's good to uh understand these

things and you know like I say when people ask me for empathy on something I sit and listen to them and then I go wow I feel your pain on that but I just don't care and you're delusional and you're wrong it's kind of how I roll on Twitter a lot of people roll that way on Twitter actually a lot of people are rolling that way online right so you do you lay out the book in a way that this can be used just in life in general and or more like for business applications, being a CEO, being an entrepreneur? Chris, that's a great question. Yeah, no, it's a little bit of all of that, right?

So even though the book is a design textbook, right, it was, it's original intent is for maybe junior, senior, and undergraduate studies in design, industrial design, graphic, music production, you know, product design, those types of majors, right? It can be used by any young, any professional, I think, right? Any creative professional. So if you're, let's say, or if you're creating a startup, maybe you're have a change of life and you've worked for five, 10 years, but now you're starting something new. Books for you, right?

If it's your a young startup and you have a founding team of four or five people and you're trying to understand your customers better, you've got this interesting, let's say, technology, you're thinking you want to create a product of some type. then this book is probably for you too, right? Music producers, poets, creative professionals, any person that wants to be able to understand their audience better and understand how what they make and how they make it will affect their business model is going to be one of those things

that are going to be key. So I think that's the textbooks got uses beyond just the target audience. Yeah, I remember, you know, being able to understand your customer what they want is really important. And I've seen, I think maybe you've seen two probably in your research examples where people made a product that you're just like, how am I supposed to use this? I remember, you know, one of the things that we always measured in our reviews is how intuitive a product was. And so nine times out of ten, I would be like, okay, well, I'm going to open up out of the box to try and use it without reading the directions in our reviews. And, you know, sometimes we get these PR agents that would be representing the companies.

and sending his products review and they'd be like, hey, just so you know there's like a certain way you've got to go about this and utilize this product and this is kind of what it's about. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, if you got to explain it to me, this is a problem. We're looking for intuitive products

because most people don't read the instruction manual. Man, the instruction manual anyone ever has to read because there's no way around it is from IKEA. Yeah, it's a pictogram. You don't have to look at it. And you need to figure out which way is up and learn Mandarin as well.

So good luck with that. You're absolutely right about that. I mean, I do legal work and expert, usually expert analysis on product design. And you said the simplicity of it and the intuitiveness of it. And you're right. I think there's been some studies out there. You can find them online that less than 25% of the people actually read an instruction manual, right?

Yeah. And that's because, yeah, the product should be simple. I use what they usually do. They open up the instruction manual. they look at the first four pages. They feel there's 20 pages of legal jargon before you even get to the instructions. So they kind of like, yep, shelving this. And they drop into that junk drawer, which has all the other instruction manuals in it, right? And then they just quickly YouTube search, how do I use this blank, blank product? And they see someone using the product

online. So that's how they get, that's how they usually kind of get acclimated to it. Yeah, I got a whole drawer full that crap. Exactly. Yeah, but you got one for your, you got one for You got one if you're a blender. You've got one for your coffee maker. You've got one for, you know, for, you know, your TV, all of those things. No one really looks at them because the minute you have 12 pages of legal requirements first and safety, like, don't, you know, don't put your hairdryer in the shower. You know, that kind of thing, right? You're not supposed to do that?

Well, they've got to put a label on it, right? No, so. So someone did somewhere. And that's always the funny, that's the funny part, right? Yeah. It's really incumbent on a designer, especially an industrial designer, a product designer, to make those products simple, to make those interfaces easy to use, right? I used to design cars for a living at Ford and Volkswagen. We designed, I mostly designed the interiors.

Oh, really? Yeah, exactly. So, like, you know, you don't need a, you don't want, you don't want to have, besides the dealer going, all right, look, let me show you how, look, here's where the radio is, here's where the air conditioning controls are. most people can just get into a car and drive. They don't want to train for 12 hours just to figure out how to use the NAB system. So, like, that's some of the research I do at Georgia Tech is the simplicity and ease of understanding across different cultures for how to use an automobile, right?

Yeah. So, yeah, those things you just would think that they are just that intuitive. Now, here's the interesting thing. Intuition, as far as kind of a mindset to use, that, that's favorite. by different types of people. Artists tend to be creative people tend to be more intuitive in the way they approach things. Scientists tend to be more technical

in how they approach things. So it's an interesting thing when we talk about these mindsets that you're going, okay, look, you can be creative. If you're technically minded, you can be creative. If you're creative, you can have a technical mind. Everyone has both sides of that or all sides of that brain.

It's just whether or not they choose to favor it or use it when they need to. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, we, and there were times where I would have, like, they would be like, hey, you know, someone from the, the company used to call you to explain you how to set this up and work it. Yeah. And I'm like, are they going to call every customer that sees our video for reviews and buys? Like, how was this facilitable? And I remember years ago, I had a good friend who, he created a startup in Silicon Valley.

He'd worked with Apple and Palm. and, you know, he'd been on the team that had built the iPhone. And he had kind of a, what I saw as a WordPress killer, he wanted to use it for something else, but he had an app that was very kind of interesting sort of, it was a WordPress killer if it would have been applied right, but I don't think he wanted to apply it that way. And he kind of had his own lane for it. But he, you know, when I first sat down with him, he goes, I don't want to show you what I'm working on when I built.

Okay, great. And I said, okay, just give it to me and let me play with it for a bit. And, you know, I'll figure it out because I'm, you know, this is what I do for living. It's kind of intuitive. And, and I pretty much have a mind that pretty much anything you give me, there's a certain segue of patterns that I know. You know, it's kind of like business. Once you know how to do business well and you've done enough of them, it's just about the widget, really. Like all the other stuff, you know, filing a what to name the company filing all the filings. crap you got to do it's all just business right it's all just it's the same sort of mechanics you advertise it blah blah at least it is for me and uh and so i suddenly play with it he goes no no no i got i got to explain it to you it's really complicated and i'm like he is complicated and so for the next half an hour to 45 minutes while i lost my freaking mind quietly in my head tearing off my face he explained he had to explain it to me and it was i mean it's a great idea he was a really smart guy but some people are maybe too smart for the own good you know he's going to let the design team handle some things and yeah and i just remember that i just 45 minutes of

explaining this to me and i'm like are you going to go around to every single bloody customer you're ever going to have and do a 45 like it just doesn't scale yeah that doesn't work i mean like and you're chris you're touching upon it i mean that's there's a design principle there right i mean The idea is, right, first off is, yeah, I mean, you, one, there's a cognitive bias called the Dunning Kruger effect. So you're a really, really smart person, either technically, like, you know the technology really well. What's easy to you, you think's easy for everyone, not knowing that, hey, not everyone is a, you know, PhD technologist, right? So like, the one hand is like, okay, that's not really very good, right? The other one that you're so, yeah, so of course, then we're, when we're inflicted with bad design all the time, we have products that are hard to use.

confuse. There's 15 different menu bars. You have no idea what's going on, right? But there's another part of this. There's a design principle out there called progressive disclosure. And that basically means is you hide complexity away and you actually empathize with the user first to understand what their learning trajectory is. Yeah. Think about every Mario game you've ever played. What's the first level in Mario or any first person shooter or video game you've ever played? Get out of the base. Or in Mario, it's can you run left and jump? and that's world one right yeah real simple and easy yeah simple and easy but by world eight or world five and mario now you're doing all the crazy twists and spins and triple jumps and you know

you're hitting gumbas off of walls and stuff you're doing complex procedures but that's because they bring it out to you slowly would you call that to like complexity right you level up when you go through those things right would you call that gamification i think isn't that some of what they call gamification it's a little it's a little bit of that it's also just the fact that that gamer, like, people who design games, right? They know this concept called progressive disclosure, right? They keep it simple, knowing that you're a beginner. And when you're ready for the complexity, they unfold it for you.

So, yeah, so they know that they're, they've empathized enough to know your trajectory, your learning trajectory. So when are they going to, when is this person going to get familiar enough with the product that they level up and then we allow the next level to come in? Yeah. Think about like Google search. Again, it doesn't have to be a video game. Google search, right?

There's just one blank box. You've never used a computer before, and all you have to do is type something in. And Google will find it for you. But if you're an expert Google searcher, you know there's that little black triangle on the right, you click it, and it's like, hey, do you want an image? Do you want a news story? Do you want more tools? How big is your image?

And now all of a sudden, the expert users know to click the black triangle on the right hand side. But if you don't know what the black triangle is, it doesn't really matter. So that's progressive disclosure, right? You hide the complexity of something until someone's actually able and lets you know, the product know or the service know, that, hey, yeah, I'm ready for this level of work. That's the good way to design it because you're right. You can't, your customer service is going to get inundated with calls if it's that complicated right away. Oh, yeah.

I mean, there's sometimes I've had to call the PR agency or the company that sent me the product to review. and I'm like, what the F is going on? What is this and what is that and what is everything? And I'm good at being intuitive. Like, I'm pretty good at problem solving too, but, man, you don't send me a Rubik's cube. But yeah, you're right. Like, we've reviewed video games too, where they throw you just right in. They don't do the gamification process.

And they just throw you right into the full thing. And you're like, what's going on? I've quit games like from the get-go. I remember there was some trucker game. Someone sent us to review and one of the first things that did is they had you get stuck

in the mud and you had to figure out how to get out. You had to figure out how to get out. Like you had to solve the problem without having any sort of, this is like in the first two minutes of the game or something. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, you know, after mucking about for like 30 minutes with it, I was like, you know, fuck

off. Like I just fuck your game. They're like, hey, we're going to review that? No. Anything that's stupid in the first two minutes is just going to get stupider. Yeah, yeah. No, I've definitely, I can definitely understand where you're going to. I've definitely had a video game where that first level was something that probably, the people would develop the game.

Yeah, remember the people that developed the game, play testing it for like 500 hours. Oh, yeah, they're up in their own freaking private Idaho's of shit. So you're like, hey, well, you know, you're only on the first level, but you've got this six button combination that you've, got to do in sequence you didn't know about that like no i just learned how to like run and jump at this point or i learned how to aim and shoot and that's about it oh yeah no you have to do this and do all this and you're like okay that that's probably too difficult and you're just going to give up i want

i'm just going up to youtube or google and i'm going okay and we got past level one three on this and then there's just and then there's just comment after comment after comment going yeah that's impossibly difficult, but it's worth it. Once you get past it, then the rest of the game's easy. If I have to struggle for two hours just to get to the point where the rest of the game is easy, do you think you could have flipped that and made that difficulty ramp up a little more gradually? And then you feel good at the end of two hours finishing the game, right? Instead of quitting at the very first world. There's games I've quit near the end because there's some sort of a complex bullshit thing that, like, I remember there was a Russian game. And at the end,

there was a giant monkey that would come at you like zombie monkey or something and normally throughout the whole game you fight shit you shoot it you attack it with weapons you know whatever else was in the game at the time turns out there was some slick thing that somehow you were supposed to slide past

this giant animal that could kill you in one crush you're supposed to slide around it quickly and run away from him and I never would have thought that because the whole game and the gamification it taught me that you kill and fight there was never like just the slide around the dude to run and it was impossible to slide around this dude this dude could hit you once and kill you and i quit the game for like six months and i was really pissed off about it because i really loved the game up until that point and just that one oversight sure like just really ruin the game and then of course you know now you can

go on youtube and i think whatever but you bring up a good point because i used to be really fan of the Bungy game Destiny. And I love Destiny. I had 17 clans on there, 1,700 people. I love the freaking game. But it got to the point of what you mentioned, where the people who were developing the product inside

were so good at the game that they were turning the game into a job. And at one point, we figured out that if you did all the activities they wanted you to do every week, it was over 40 hours, closer to 80 hours. And this is during COVID when we were all sitting at home and, you know, video games were the way we were kind of keeping ourselves social and engaged and not worrying about how the world is going to hell.

Of course, we were playing Division 2, which is about a virus being released in the system destroys the world. So that was real interesting during COVID. But we used to call it COVID apocalypse practice. Right. But, you know, destiny got to this point where, you know, you could tell these people were so up in their own ass of the game of, because they made it, they probably played it all the time and shit, that they expected us to live the way they did. And they got paid to do this. We would be just like, man, this game's turned into a fucking job, dude. And then they started coming at us with, hey, if you want this exotic gun, you got to get like 600 kills that are headshots.

Yeah. and you're like, who's got this kind of fucking time? I get on here in the afternoons, you know, you know, most of the 20 minutes. Yeah, most guys get home, they got 20 minutes to play. They want to have a beer. They want to unwind a little bit before their wife starts yelling at them. They want to play a video game. And, yeah, I mean, 600 head shots.

Yeah, no, this goes back, Chris, this goes back to what we talk about context, right? Like, when you're developing a technology in a lab or internally, you're living with it, eight, 10, 12 hours a day, of course, you know every single in and out, you're forgetting who you're designing it, who that technology is for, right? If you're trying to bring that technology out of the lab and now commercialize it, let's say, right, or that video game, if you're just around it that much and you forget what it's like to have fun, you forget what it's like to get, why do people game in the first place?

Yeah. Have fun to talk to each other online. Are you serious? They do that for fun? Exactly. I do it because I'm a masochist. But you got to remember who's using that thing and what and what do they have time for? Like you said, you know, I'm a family man.

I have a four and a six-year-old. I barely got 30 minutes to do any video gaming unless I'm gaming with my kids, right? So at that point, it's, you know, I was like, yeah, I'll play Mario with you because that's all I've got time for, right? And so in that situation, you've got to remember who is that target market that you're trying to sell to? how do they want to engage with that game? What are they thinking, right? So if it's about building plans, socializing, trash talking, still like, you know, playing the game,

it's a first-person shooter, right, and trying to do an objective with Destiny, that do they still remember who those people are and how they want to engage with that game? Are they playing in a basement? Are they playing online? Do they have a giant, like sniper headshot? Chances are, I mean, I know a couple of video game

designers like the video game designers got like a crazy 85 inch TV at their workstation and if you're not playing on that you can't see that target right like oh yeah i can get that set shot that guy like i literally had a friend tell me that like i i i wrote off on my taxes an 85 inch tv monitor to like to play halo with that back then it's like yeah because now i can headshot anybody that head's like five inches big and so like well listen not everyone has an 85 inch tv hooked up to their PS3 right or whatever back Or Xbox at that part for Halo. But you're like, so you've forgotten that like that most people that are buying this game,

they're your teenage boys playing Halo in their mom's basement. Like, you know, it's not what you're thinking it is. And so they lose sight of that a little bit. And that's kind of where, that's been aware that, yeah, that discrepancy comes in, right? Yeah. And this is important in product design because people aren't going to give a second chance. Like I, like I said, I quit playing. And I finally just quit playing destiny.

I'm just like, you know what? This isn't my job. I don't get paid to do this. I have fun. I mean, I kind of get paid to do it. But it's just not fun anymore. It's just work. You know, it's like, it's like showing up nine to five.

And you're like, what do we got to do today? Oh, these same hundred fucking things we've done a million times. And, you know, oh, for some stupid crap that we've gotten 50 million times. And, yeah, just making it fun and interesting. And people do that. They make them a stick with a lot of products. We get pitched a lot of stuff on the Chris Vos show to review or look at. And like some of the stuff they come out with, you're like, man, you've been in a room alone by yourself for way too long.

Yeah. I mean, part of what I'm trying to get people to do or at least learn about in the book is how they engage with people. Like, if you had a focus group earlier and you got out of the lab or you got out of the coding session and you wound up playing games with people, you kind of get re-inspired by who you're making it for. You see, like, if you, if you are now watching, you know, or gaming with, you know, people who loved Halo back then, and you're like, yeah, this is what, this was cool, like, hiding around on a map, finding new places to snipe you at, and then, like, talking to each other about it, sometimes it's trash talk, sometimes it's not, but at the same time,

actually that social connection, right? Like, you wanted to, you're fostering that, you're trying to build something. that's this whole understanding of what we call user experience, right? What is the customer's experience? Because you're right, but a minute they have a bad experience, they're not using your product and service anymore. Yeah, you're out. So you really got to understand

what is that user experience from start to finish, from picking up the product to putting it down, or if it's a service, you're going in to buy something. Like, even if you're just ordering fast food, you know, what is that service, right? People really need to tailor, to spend a lot of time and money, tailoring that such that that service experience, that experience that you feel when you're,

when you like go into order fast food is, is tailored to you, is efficient, is, you know, whatever it is that makes you go, yeah, I'm going back. Because if you have to stand in line for it for more than, you know, let's say 20 minutes to get a burger, you're probably not going to go back to that restaurant. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So what else do we need to talk to about in some of the work to you? Do you do consulting, coaching? What are some of the things you do to help people and stuff? Sure, Chris.

Yeah, it's a little bit of all of that as well, right? So I've got a couple of things going on, right? Design Block is my, you can consider it like a lab, a part of the School of Industrial Design that teaches multidisciplinary design thinking, a human-centered design. And then within that, you've got executive education, professional development, things like that, right? So within Georgia Tech, there's those,

are those avenues. And so we've done things for Fortune 500 companies, other universities, right? I think I have to, there is a contract in the works. I think I've done it in the past, but as we're re-opping it for the fall, I have to be in South Africa to teach some, the university, there's university there, and then to teach the faculty, like these entrepreneurship techniques, and, you know, how to empathize, how to understand context and, and, and, you know, and how it might affect young entrepreneurs, right? Because they're standing up in an entrepreneurship hub over there. So in academia, in consulting clients, I do do private consulting.

I've had clients like Home Depot or Panasonic or things like that, where we are teaching these similar methods, but obviously in a much more commercial setting. So we're looking at, you know, what are your processes for bringing a product to market? And then how does your human resources, your financial resources, your timeline, your supply chain, all the operations, how does that fit into this way of getting your stuff out to customers quicker earlier before you cut steel? So when you cut steel, it's too late. The factors are already churning them out. You can't make changes. So how do you make

changes early, you know, in your development process? And some industries, they don't, like, their customer focus groups after the product's already launched. And that might not be a good idea. You know, we're working with, we, yeah, I work with executives, yeah, C-suite and Fortune 500 companies to kind of understand their processes and, and hope to incorporate some of these techniques into their dev cycle. Did you get my, no, can people access you off your Georgia Tech website or is there another one? Yeah, so they can, yeah, the Georgia Tech one, yes, if you look up ID.gotech.d.U, right? Then there's a people tab. I'm right there. Private Consultancy is just Wayne Lee Design, W-A-Y-N-E-L-I-D-N-E-L-I-D-N-E-D-N-E-L-I-D-com.

So that's the easy way to get in a whole of me. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome, sauce. Awesome sauce. So as we go out, give people a final pitch out to order up your book and all that good stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And again, thanks, Chris, for the opportunity to talk about it. It's been a fun half hour here, right? Just talking about video gaming, right?

It's just cool. So I'll get to the number for bungee so you can call them up. and fix the problem. Sure. Yeah, yeah, happy to go to talk to somebody in the studio. But yes, if you're interested in kind of these ideas, these design behaviors with specifically the design empathy and contextual awareness, right?

These are, it's a book, it's got business cases in it, it's got some anecdotes of my time being a car designer and then homeware, houseware, is designer for pottery barn in it as well. And then if you want to learn more about just how to practice, right, how to empathize. everyone has the potential to be empathetic to be creative right it's the whether it's whether or not they actually take the time to practice it so i think part of that is this book design empathy

and contextual awareness if you go to amazon dot com just type in my name wayne lee last name spelled l i and design empathy it should pop up it's the first link so um i just do a search there and and pick it up if you're interested in learning more uh so fun is fun thank you very much for coming the show we really appreciate it wayne absolutely thanks a lot, Chris. Great to be here. Thank you. And thanks for honest for tuning. And order up his book where refined books are sold and probably really important as a

entrepreneur to understand this or a CEO. Maybe we can work on the design if you own a cable company on how you handle the phone calling customer service system or a, let's see hospital or anyone in the medical field or anyone

at GoDaddy. Like serious, that same Muzac has been playing a GoDaddy hold system for like the last well we started the show 17 years ago i swear to god it's the same music please make it end uh so order up his book where refined books are sold so we can do that it is called design empathy and contextual awareness frames of reference for the 21st 20 let me recut that design empathy and contextual awareness frames of reference for the 21st century creative and i'm going to write a book on how to enunciate

So check that out, folks. Out September 5th, 2nd, 2025 by Wayne K. Lee. Thanks, Wayne, for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Chris. Pleasure. Thank you. And thanks for my honest for tuning in.

Go to goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. Chris Foss won the TikTok and he all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. That should have us out.