so this is the guy that creatively taught banks for creatively use their customers funds....

Keep the Change marketed their programs as if the banks were paying you to use their services (and why not, they're making 2.3% of all transactions made). The reality was that customers were simply allowing the bank to overcharge their spendings (banks make the extra income over millions of transactions and some customers were caught in "overdraft" mode.)

LIke most consultants, the IDEA guy is only good to conceptualize ideas...how ideas are implemented and consequences of such ideas are never their problems....that would be the job of yet another consultant.

"Get lots of skills"

Keep dreaming.
I have a wonderfully diverse resume and serious skills and work experience, but HR people and managers tend to think inside the box -- if you don't fit EXACTLY what is in the description page, they ain't interested.

"America loves the liberal arts education"
That's another myth. Most American university "education" is nothing but overpriced occupational training (e.g. pre-business, pre-law, pre-med, etc). There are very few pockets left for authentic liberal arts and people who value/practice them. WNYC is one of them.

I know many Apple employees that would take issue with the comment that Apple is not a 'design team.' :)

Brian,

Ask you guest how Bank of America's "Keep the Change" program was also used to train/incentivize (sp?) customers to use debit cards and thus markedly increase the odds that the bank would reap the benefits of overdraft fees (not likely to happen to customers who tend to use cash or even credit cards). Was that part of the design thinking?

we accept into our everyday lives

-software that commands "click start to stop" and "hit cancel to use credit"

-alarm clocks without a button that says "turn alarm off"

please paint a picture of how every day things are designed and how it got so bad