Dana Burland

“Mama!” I’m briefly off mute, contributing to a work Zoom call, and a Brady Bunch screen of my coworker’s faces smile as they hear the loud call for me in the background. B and C and I are home together. A last minute decision to avoid positive COVID cases in kids in C’s classroom. About an hour later I’m at the kitchen table with C. We’re doing that Perler bead craft where you spend forever dropping tiny beads on to pegboards and ironing them to connect. This, I think, will buy me some quieter focused time so I can check emails and join my next meeting. But when it’s meeting time my computer won’t connect to the internet, and there are too many bodies in this house. I sit on the floor of our bedroom, joining the call from my phone, squinting to see the tiny shared spreadsheet from a colleague. Later B puts on SpongeBob for C. I sit in the front playroom and tackle my last meeting of the morning, successfully, mostly off mute. B picks up Panera carry out. We sit around the ta...

Last fall I closed an 8 year chapter at Steelcase and opened a new one at Bissell . I’ve been there, at their Grand Rapids area global headquarters, for a little over three months now. And I’m loving it. I’m on a team responsible for the entire post purchase and consumer support experience. My job is to make sure it’s easy and enjoyable. So far I’ve helped design a customer support phone bot which routes you specifically based on your voice responses. I designed step-by-step, interactive product troubleshooting, simplifying the experience of fixing vacuums at home on your own. On a larger scale I’m thinking about a consumer’s entire shopping and post purchase journey, where/how to let them do what they can on their own, and where/how to intervene with live help. It’s really fun! And it’s really challenging. It’s like coloring in a picture but also having the flexibility to change what picture you’re coloring in at the same time. (Maybe I’ve just been coloring too much lately.) ...