Episode #13
Oliver Weidlich - UX & Empathy at Scale
Oliver Weidlich has spent decades years inside every major shift in how humans and computers talk to each other, from triple-tap Nokia keypads to Palm Pilots, from the iPhone moment that finally made UX matter, to spatial computing years before Apple Vision Pro existed. He built Contxtual (formerly Mobile Experience) not to scale into an agency of hundreds, but as what he calls a “lifestyle company,” small, specialist, and deliberately built around the work he wants to do rather than the work that pays. In this episode, Oliver traces his path from psychology undergrad to UX pioneer, explains why empathy is a teachable skill rather than an innate gift, and gets candid about the hard, unglamorous grind of building an independent practice with no big brand behind him. He also lays out where spatial computing is headed, and the very real ethical dangers, from pupil-dilation tracking to advertiser access to biometric data, that come with computers that finally understand the physical world around us. Thanks to Carla Martin, Jarra Vreman-Naughton and DOUBLESTAR CO. Special thanks to PhaseOne and Fat Cat Music Group for the use of their song, “Crash & Burn” ft. Northlane.
