In an ideal world, college would help students explore possibilities and imagine a future that fits who they are. Instead, many choose majors before they know themselves and get pushed onto a career conveyor belt with little space to discover what matters to them. Farouk Dey wants to change that. His work encourages students to pause, experiment, and learn from real experiences before deciding where they want to go. In this episode, Dart and Dr. Farouk Dey discuss how life design can help students find direction through experimentation, and how universities can create fuller, more meaningful journeys for the people they serve.

Dr. Farouk Dey is the President of Palo Alto University. He has spent more than two decades reimagining how universities help students prepare for life and work.

In this episode, Dart and Farouk discuss:
- The Imagine Center for Integrative Learning and Life Design
- How economic shifts drive national career changes
- The growing need to develop minds, not just careers
- Changing the outdated career service models of American universities
- Balancing competition and curiosity when choosing a career
- The importance of experiential learning for life design
- How universities can give students a higher return on their investment
- Farouk’s advice for companies who want to build a life design center
- How to construct your passion – not find it
- And other topics…

Dr. Farouk Dey is the President of Palo Alto University and the former Vice Provost for Integrative Learning and Life Design at Johns Hopkins University. He previously held senior roles at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University, where he led work in career and experiential education. His focus is helping students navigate learning, work, and meaning through applied design principles. Dr. Dey holds a PhD and EdS in Higher Education Administration, an MBA, an MEd in Counseling Psychology, and a BBA in Finance.

Resources mentioned:
Bill Burnett on Work For Humans: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/designing-your-life-how-to-use-design-principles-to/id1612743401?i=1000738307337

Connect with Farouk:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faroukdey/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Friction is part of every workplace. It shows up in the meetings that don’t need to happen, the unclear steps, and the small barriers that make work harder than it has to be. It’s a cost we’ve come to accept, but it doesn’t need to stay that way. When we look more closely, we start to see the real experience of work where people get stuck, where energy drains away, and where better design could help them thrive. In this episode, Dart and Stephanie Denino discuss what friction really means, how language shapes the way we think about work, and why AI is putting new pressure on workflow design.

Stephanie Denino is Head of Advisory at FOUNT Global and a Managing Director at TI People. She helps leaders understand friction in workflows and redesign work so people can get things done with less effort.

In this episode, Dart and Stephanie discuss:
- Why friction is “the tax you pay when work is poorly designed”
- How workers describe friction in their day-to-day tasks
- Why focusing on workflow changes how leaders see problems
- The two types of workflows inside organizations
- How language shapes the way leaders talk about work
- Why HR is becoming central to workflow design with AI
- What friction reveals about customer outcomes and capacity
- How process diagrams mask the lived experience of work
- How product thinking improves workflow design
- And other topics…

Stephanie Denino is the Head of Advisory at FOUNT Global and a Managing Director at TI People, where she helps organizations identify and reduce friction in employee workflows using data and design. Before joining TI People, she spent more than a decade at Accenture in experience design and talent transformation roles. Her work centers on improving how people get work done through better systems, clearer processes, and intentional practices.

Resources:
FOUNT Global: https://www.fount-ex.com/

Connect with Stephanie:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniedenino/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

From kitchen tables to self-driving cars, everything around us was designed to solve a problem. Bill Burnett, award-winning Silicon Valley designer, believes we can use the same approach to design careers that bring fulfillment and joy. By using curiosity, reframing, collaboration, and other tools, Bill shows how to enjoy the present while shaping a better future. In this revisited episode, Dart and Bill discuss how to adopt a design mindset for life and work, tackle the sunk-cost fallacy, rethink work-life balance, and share practical management advice.

Bill is an award-winning designer, New York Times bestselling author, adjunct professor, and Executive Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Bill has designed everything from the first slate computer to Hasbro Star Wars action figures, assisting and advising Fortune 100 companies and start-ups alike.

In this episode, Dart and Bill discuss:
- The design mindset you need to build the life you want
- The problem with hyper-focusing on one goal
- How to reframe problems to discover new solutions
- Avoiding the sunk-cost fallacy
- Enjoying what you have while building a brighter future
- Management advice for interviewing and hiring adaptable employees
- An antidote for the work-life balance problem
- And other topics…

Bill Burnett is an award-winning Silicon Valley designer and New York Times best-selling author. He currently serves as the Adjunct Professor and Executive Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University, and over 350 universities now use his curriculum on how to design your life. Throughout his career, he has designed everything from the first slate computer to Hasbro Star Wars action figures in the toy industry, assisting and advising Fortune 100 companies and start-ups alike.

Bill is the co-author of the bestselling book Designing Your Life and recently published Designing Your New Work Life, both of which have garnered significant acclaim. His impact on design, education, and professional development continues to shape industries and inspire aspiring designers worldwide.

Resources Mentioned:
Designing Your New Work Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Work-Life-Happiness/dp/0593467450
Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321

Connect with Bill:
www.DesigningYour.Life

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Dropbox didn’t just adapt to remote work. It redesigned work itself. After the pandemic, Melanie Rosenwasser and her team joined forces with Dropbox’s designers to study how people actually work and what they need to do their best thinking. Backed by data, they made the leap to their Virtual First operating model in which the vast majority of the workforce is remote and physical spaces are used primarily for planned team events. In this episode, Dart and Melanie explore how Dropbox leadership supported the move to work-as-a-product, how design thinking has fundamentally reshaped the people function, and what it takes to build human-centered systems at scale.

Melanie Rosenwasser is the Chief People Officer at Dropbox and a key architect of its Virtual First model. She focuses on designing human-centered, high-impact ways of working.

In this episode, Dart and Melanie discuss:
- How Dropbox rebuilt its operating model
- Why most companies misunderstand remote and hybrid work
- The principles behind Virtual First
- What happens when HR behaves like a product team
- How clarity, norms, and intentionality replace meetings
- The experiments that changed how Dropbox collaborates
- How leadership transforms in a remote-forward world
- Why work must be designed, not assumed
- And other topics…

Melanie Rosenwasser is the Chief People Officer at Dropbox, where she leads the global HR organization spanning People Operations and Tech, Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, Learning and Organizational Development, People Analytics, and Employee Experience. She is known for championing innovative talent practices, cultivating continuous learning cultures, and designing workplaces where people can do their best work. Melanie is a lecturer in Columbia University’s Human Capital Management program and a key architect of Dropbox’s Virtual First model.

Resources Mentioned:
Virtual First: https://experience.dropbox.com/virtualfirst
Dropbox blog, Work in Progress: https://blog.dropbox.com/

Connect with Melanie:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanierosenwasser/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Stacy Barton was assigned an exhaustive project at 9 pm and had to complete it by 6 am if she wanted to receive a paycheck. While most of us would have deflated under the pressure, Stacy saw an opportunity; it was time to get creative. By being inventive and working around the rules, she learned how to deliver a product that companies, employees, and her audience love. In this revisited episode, Stacy shares how constraints spark creativity, why the audience is always the star, and how storytelling can transform leadership, teamwork, and workplace culture.

Stacy has been creating multimillion-dollar immersive experiences for over 37 years as a designer, award-winning writer, and story lead. She uses her creativity to work with high-network individuals and companies like Disney, Ringling Bros, DreamVision, and SeaWorld, among others.

In this episode, Dart and Stacy discuss:
- Creating an immersive experience to engage customers
- How to show your customers/employees you care about them
- Discovering the story behind your brand
- Finding employees that complement your company
- The importance of appreciation at work
- Applying storytelling to real-world business problems
- Being creative within the constraints of work
- And more…

Stacy Barton has been creating immersive experiences as a designer, writer, and story lead for over 37 years. Utilizing immense creativity and problem-solving skills, she helps build multimillion-dollar pop-up experiences, escape rooms, shows, and theme park areas for high-network individuals and companies, including Disney, Ringling Bros, DreamVision, and SeaWorld.

As a writer, Stacy brings stories to life through her scripts, narrative development, and novels. She is the award-winning author of three books, five children’s picture books, and over 30 magazine publications. She presented as a panelist for the National Association of Writers and Writing Program and is a speaker for events such as the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference and the Disney Institute.

Resources Mentioned:
Why We Work, by Barry Schwartz: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Work-Barry-Schwartz/dp/144237814X

Connect with Stacy:
Website: https://www.stacybarton.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacy-barton-58b7997/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stacy-Barton/author/B001JS4R6A

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Modern work is haunted by an idea that began in feudal Europe. The Master Servant Doctrine gave employers the right to command and control workers while imposing a duty to provide for them. That ancient logic still shapes the modern workplace — from “at-will” employment and HR policies designed to protect companies, to benefits that bind people to their jobs. In this episode, Dart and Elizabeth explore how feudal ideas of control and obligation still structure employment today, and what it would take to build something better.

Elizabeth Tippett teaches employment law and legal ethics at the University of Oregon School of Law. She is the author of The Master Servant Doctrine, and her research examines how historical legal frameworks continue to influence the modern workplace.

In this episode, Dart and Elizabeth discuss:
- How feudal law still shapes modern work
- The three pillars of the Master Servant Doctrine
- Why “at-will” employment persists in the U.S.
- How HR became a modern tool of control
- Why employee benefits reinforce dependency
- The moral legacy of servitude in labor law
- How law and culture preserve inequality at work
- What a modern social contract for labor might look like
- And other topics…

Elizabeth Tippett is Professor and James O. and Alfred T. Goodwin Senior Fellow at the University of Oregon School of Law. She teaches courses on employment law, torts, negotiation, and dispute resolution, and her research examines how historical legal doctrines continue to shape modern employment practices. She is the author of The Master Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace, forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2025.

Resources Mentioned:
The Master–Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace, by Elizabeth Tippett: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Servant-Doctrine-Legal-Modern-Workplace/dp/0520382323

Connect with Elizabeth:
Website: https://liztippett.com

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Most organizations think about the design of work in terms of products, services, or customer journeys. But Dave Norton has spent his career arguing that experience design goes much deeper. It is about shaping how people spend their time and, in some cases, their lives. In this episode, Dart talks to Dave about how experience design has evolved, why context matters more than personality, and how AI may finally make transformational design scalable.

Dave Norton is the founder of Stone Mantel, an insights consultancy focused on helping companies create meaningful experiences for their customers and employees. A pioneer in experience strategy, he helps organizations across industries rethink the meaning of time, transformation, and context in design.

In this episode, Dart and Dave discuss:
- The evolution of experience design
- Why context matters more than customer psychology
- How to design time that is well saved, well spent, and well invested
- Why transformation requires discomfort
- The power of modes and modularity in designing for focus
- How to design whole offerings that get the “whole job” done
- Why AI could help scale transformational design
- And other topics…

Dave Norton is the founder of Stone Mantel, the experience strategy firm built on the belief that meaningful work is less about what you sell and more about how people spend their time. He began working with Joe Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy, in the early 2000s and in 2005 launched Stone Mantel to help organizations design experiences that are “time well spent.” Over the years, he has guided clients across industries, including healthcare, banking, and hospitality, shifting the focus from features to whole offerings and from channels to moments.

Resources Mentioned:
Stone Mantle: https://www.stonemantel.co/
The Experience Strategist (Substack): https://theexperiencestrategist.substack.com/
The Experience Economy, by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-Competing-Customers-Service/dp/1422161978

Connect with Dave:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davenortonphd/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

The tools we use shape how we work, what we see, and how we think. Dmitri Glazkov, Strategy Lead at Google Labs, initiated Breadboard and helped launch Opal—tools that let people connect prompts into systems that think together like Tinkertoys for the mind. His passion is building technology that makes creativity easier and more human. In this episode, Dart and Dmitri explore how AI can capture tacit knowledge, why strategy gets embedded in culture, and how to design “tiny brains” that think with us, not for us.

Dmitri Glazkov is Strategy Lead at Google Labs and the initiator of Breadboard, the open-source foundation for Google’s Opal project. He is a longtime Google engineer and an early contributor to Chrome and Web Components.

In this episode, Dart and Dmitri discuss:
- How AI tools reshape the experience of work
- Why Breadboard and Opal make creativity easier
- How AI can help capture and share tacit knowledge
- The difference between dandelion and elephant growth strategies
- How strategy becomes embodied in company culture
- What “lensical thinking” means and how to use it
- Why Dmitri calls Opal a cognitive WYSIWYG
- How chains of prompts can act as “tiny brains”
- And other topics…

Dmitri Glazkov is the Strategy Lead at Google Labs and the initiator of Breadboard, the open-source project that underpins Google’s Opal tool for creative AI experimentation. Over nearly two decades at Google, Dmitri has shaped how people interact with technology—from helping build Chrome and pioneering Web Components to exploring how artificial intelligence can amplify human thought. His work focuses on designing systems that think with us, not for us, making creativity more accessible to everyone.

Resources Mentioned:
Opal: https://opal.withgoogle.com
Dmitri’s Blog: https://glazkov.com
Dart and Dmitri’s article, “The Unvarying Infrastructure of Variation”: https://read.fluxcollective.org/p/69

Connect with Dmitri:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dglazkov

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.