This Field Guide: Five years in the making

Julius and I started EX Lab 5 years ago together with our good friend Seyda, who is now with Kaospiloten. It was not called EX Lab yet. It was 3w20. And no, it was not named after an engine oil. 3w20 was an acronym I invented to make it easier for new design thinking coaches to define design challenges.

3W representing the 3 whys that needed to be covered: what, why and for whom and 20 because it should not be more than 20 words so it’s easier to get it right away.

3w20 was a true moment of experimentation. We were without knowing, looking for our 3Ws and we had so many ideas that it was hard to put them into only 20 words.

After some time, in August 2019, I heard the term Employee Experience in a Hacking HR webinar and something clicked. I pitched the idea of using design thinking for organizational design and it made so somehow sense to all of us so we went for it. None of us had an HR background, but being the curious minds that we are we jumped into the cold water without knowing what Employee Experience actually meant.

We did research, webinars, talked to amazing people working in HR in companies we admired. We did a train the trainer for them so we could learn more about it and build a community around EX. We launched a course, the Employee Experience Playsprint, trained people and consulted companies like Kleinanzeigen, Astra Zeneca, the UN Food Programme accelerator and many more. We build experiences in companies like Kleinanzeigen, Coffee Circle or the German Red Cross.

Yet despite that and all the evolution the term has gone through, it’s still not clear for us what Employee Experience really means. How it shows in the day to day of every human going to work and how design can change this.

Julius has always been frustrated by high level and abstract conversations. He’s a doer, a wonderful visual thinker and storyteller. So it is not a surprise that he decided to put together every skill and interest he has into creating a field guide to show with concrete examples what EX is and how companies can actually make the time people spend at work, meaningful.

I don’t know how much time julius has spent watching youtube videos about the ins and outs of how people do stuff. Like that time he got obsessed with videos about how japanese noodle restaurants prepare before welcoming patrons. His religious watching of “Every Frame a Painting” to learn about how the greatest film directors of the world make beautiful movies.

We cried together talking about the book “Reinventing Organizations” and the moving stories Laloux shares when describing teal companies. That’s Julius.

So, get ready for a treat and be ready to become a maker because I have zero doubt that his endless curiosity, sensitivity, appreciation and respect for the process behind all the things we give for granted is what’s going to make this field guide a gem for all of you, the people wanting to stop talking and start doing to make every day at work a meaningful one.

Madlen