We believe in the power of people, compelling experiences + design.
We are driven by our love for design, creating experiences and solutions that meet the needs of others. We are inspired by the unlimited potential to make an indelible impact on the quality of working lives. We are an employee experience design and strategy studio, here to inspire organizations to create work experiences people love by design through design.
Our story
XPLOR was founded with a clear point of view: people deserve better work experiences, and people-centered design can be the force of good.
In 2019, Lisa Morris set out to help organizations create better employee experiences. She is inspired by her love for design and frustration over three decades of lived experiences in corporations, where she witnessed decisions based primarily on business drivers and outcomes. Where people were an afterthought. Where empathy may have been talked about but not practiced. Where bureaucracy, efficiency, productivity and the bottom-line were favored over humanity. Where poorly planned and executed organizational change happened frequently. Where processes, procedures, etc., were built around technology capabilities, with people required to fill the part that technology could not while navigating disconnected silos and unnecessary complexity.
Today, we have the privilege of partnering with leading companies committed to putting people at the center of everything they do. We team with leaders separating their business drivers from those of people, knowing that when they put the needs of people first and forge deeper relationships with them, powerful business results ensue.Unlike other studios, agencies or firms, we are devoted to employee experience and design.
We've spent decades working on the 'inside' of organizations. We have figured out how to harness human-centered design approaches, strategy, and systems thinking along with other disciplines including communication, and behavior change to co-create better experiences for and with all people at work. From candidates and new joiners to individual contributors, people leaders, senior executives, and, yes, even contingent workers and alumni.
We are humble collaborators, rebel thinkers, meaningful makers, and curious explorers. We are XPLOR.
Our founder
Lisa Morris is the founder of XPLOR. She has the privilege of setting the direction for our team and our work. She is characterized as an inveterate problem solver, equal measures right-brain and left-brain. She is an applied organizational anthropologist, strategist and transformation expert turned designer. Today, her days and dreams are all about design - and channeling its power to make the world a vastly better place to work. Before entrepreneurship, she was a Senior Director at Sparks Grove, a strategy and design firm, leading the Global Employer Brand and Employee Experience Practice while co-leading the Service Design Practice, serving clients like Coca-Cola, Red Hat, Johnson & Johnson, and many other prominent brands. Before Sparks Grove, she spent time with Press Ganey (formerly Morehead Associates), solving employee engagement challenges, and nearly 20 years at Accenture. Accenture offered her diverse opportunities to serve global clients, including Accenture itself. She hold an undergraduate degree in Mass Communications and graduate degree in Organizational Behavior and Communication from Miami University, Oxford Ohio. She also holds advanced certificates in Employer Brand Strategy, Graphic Design, Human-Centered Design and Service Design. At XPLOR, she lead a networked team of human-centered researchers, strategists, and experience designers with expertise in both organizational and business transformation, employer brand strategy, design research, service design, and graphic design. As needed, we call upon other designers in disciplines like industrial design, interaction design, UI, UX, information architecture, etc to support our clients. Together we are curious explorers, humble collaborators, rebel thinkers, meaningful makers and devout practitioners of design craft who are forever learning. We believe every organization creates experiences for people. Too often, these experiences are random or unplanned. Too few experiences carry the hallmarks of design. We are united in our commitment to unleashing the power of design to make an indelible impact on the quality of working lives.
