Professional Evolution: From Digital Strategist to Experience Design Leader
Werner Puchert’s career trajectory spans advertising, consulting, and corporate innovation across multiple continents. Born and raised in South Africa, his educational foundation uniquely bridges technology and art—holding a B.Sc. in Computer Science while also studying Fine Arts before entering the digital marketing industry. This dual background has informed his distinctive approach to design strategy throughout his career.
Puchert began his professional journey in 2004 as a developer, gradually expanding into user experience (UX) and digital strategy roles. His formative decade was spent in advertising, most notably at TBWA\Tequila Johannesburg, where he led digital strategy for major brands including Standard Bank, Nissan, and VISA. His talents were quickly recognised—by 2012, he had been appointed to Tequila’s board of directors, and in 2013, he was promoted to Digital Strategy Director. Describing himself as “one of the last Mad Men” of the ad industry, Puchert eventually decided to “add tilt” to his story—taking a calculated risk to pivot his career.
After a successful decade in agencies, he left to establish his own consultancy, with Deloitte becoming his first significant client. This relationship eventually led him to join Deloitte full-time, where he worked on experience design and digital transformation projects. Notably, he was instrumental in launching the first Deloitte Digital studio in Central Europe around 2015, where he built teams, developed user experience competencies, and integrated these into broader digital marketing offerings.
By 2018, Puchert pivoted again, establishing his own design strategy consultancy, Xperience Consulting, based in Warsaw with a presence in Zürich. As founder and Experience Design Director at Xperience Consulting, he focused on “unlocking the transformational potential of experience design” for clients. In the early 2020s, alongside running his consultancy, he stepped into corporate roles in the tech industry, serving as Senior Manager of Customer Success at MURAL (a leading digital whiteboard/collaboration platform) from early 2022 through mid-2023.
He then took on a significant design leadership position at Sunrise GmbH, a Swiss telecommunications company, as Head of Human-Centered Design (January 2023 – April 2024). In these roles, he drove customer experience innovation and human-centered strategy within large organisations, managing to divide his time between MURAL and Sunrise in early 2023.
Key Projects and Achievements
Throughout his career, Werner Puchert has led numerous impactful initiatives across various industries:
Strategic Design Frameworks and Corporate Initiatives
- CX Fundamentals Toolkit: Puchert developed this comprehensive framework to help organizations diagnose, analyze, and transform their customer experience. The toolkit provides strategic prompts and exercises to guide teams from high-level ideas down to tangible customer experience improvements, reflecting his belief that even non-designers can systematically innovate if given the right processes.
- Customer Co-Creation Forum at Sunrise GmbH: As Head of Human-Centered Design, he established this initiative to foster collaboration between customers and the organization, driving improved service delivery through direct user input.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program for Liberty Global: Puchert contributed to designing an employee experience program aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion across the European organization.
- Led the end-to-end creation of an online training program for the Event Design Collective (EDCo.Global)—from LMS implementation and learning plan design to video content creation and platform rollout—enhancing scalability and learner engagement across global markets.
- IKEA Szczecin Pop-Up Store: He provided design advisory services for the launch of this innovative retail concept in Poland, helping IKEA enhance customer engagement through experience design principles.
- eCommerce Platform Development for CD Projekt Red: Puchert supported research and development efforts for the Polish gaming company’s new eCommerce platform, applying his expertise in user-centered design to the gaming industry.
- Digital Transformation at Deloitte Digital: He played a crucial role in establishing Deloitte Digital’s presence in Central Europe in 2015, building teams and developing UX competencies that integrated into broader digital marketing offerings.
Award-Winning Work
Puchert’s work has garnered significant industry recognition, including Loerie Awards (Silver and Bronze), a Cannes Lion (Bronze), Assagai Awards (Gold), and IAC Awards for campaigns with clients like Standard Bank and Adidas. These accolades highlight his ability to blend creativity with strategic thinking to deliver work that not only meets client objectives but also achieves industry acclaim.
Podcasting Ventures and Content Creation
One of Werner Puchert’s distinguishing pursuits is his prolific work in podcasting. He has been involved in multiple podcasts—as host, co-host, or producer—often exploring design, innovation, and personal development themes.
His first notable podcast was “Bloc Thinking,” co-created with Jonathan Gall around 2018. Born from “a friendship forged in Poland,” Bloc Thinking set out to “explore ideas and concepts that make designers and entrepreneurs like us tick.” Puchert and Gall recorded conversational deep-dives into design strategy, creativity, and business, feeding their “insatiable curiosity” as designers. The show gained a niche following in the design community and occasionally featured guest interviews, such as Puchert’s live conversation with creative strategist Jens Mühlstedt.
In 2019, Puchert embarked on an even more personal podcast experiment: “Finding Frequency.” This project was a daily audio journal—literally a podcast a day. Finding Frequency documented his journey to “see the extraordinary in the ordinary, one day at a time,” as he challenged himself to record 366 consecutive daily episodes. The podcast functioned as an intimate audio diary, with Puchert reflecting on life’s small moments, family, work-life balance, and creative insights. Over its run, Finding Frequency amassed over 600 episodes, far exceeding the original one-year goal—demonstrating a remarkable consistency that Puchert noted is rare, as most podcasts “fizzle out after the first few episodes.”
Beyond hosting his own shows, Puchert became the producer of “The Business of Extraordinary Experiences,” a podcast by Claus Raasted focusing on experience design in unconventional settings. He also appeared as a recurring guest and panelist on The Jens Heitland Show, participating in a special series called “Innovation Breakfast Club” throughout 2021.
Additionally, Puchert maintains a YouTube channel with over 1.1K subscribers, where he shares explorations in design and creativity. His channel features hundreds of videos ranging from design tool reviews to “creative problem solving” vlogs. He frequently demonstrates facilitation tools and card decks for innovation, earning him the informal title of “#designthinking #facilitation tools guru.” Through his “Creative Coffee Break” live streams (hosted on creativecoffeebreak.live), he regularly brought together creative thinkers from various fields to share knowledge over casual virtual coffee chats around 2020-2021.
Design Strategy and Thought Leadership
At his core, Werner Puchert is a design strategy and customer experience (CX) expert who has championed human-centered design approaches in various forums—from corporate boardrooms to industry conferences. During his Deloitte Digital tenure and later at Xperience Consulting, Puchert led experience design projects that sought to transform how businesses engage customers.
His colleagues describe him as a “Human-Centered Design Leader” with broad expertise in customer experience strategy, innovation, and design thinking. In practice, he has helped business leaders develop new concepts and “authentic experiences” that delight customers and drive growth. Puchert often emphasizes bridging the gap between big-picture vision and practical execution, developing tools and frameworks that make innovation accessible and systematic.
His thought leadership extends to speaking engagements and writings in the design community. At UX Poland 2015 in Warsaw, he was interviewed about “Feature phones in Africa”—sharing insights on mobile user experience in emerging markets, informed by his South African perspective. He has also contributed to professional forums like the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and Information Architecture Institute.
In recent years, Puchert has published articles on Medium and his blog that blend personal narrative with design philosophy. His writing style often extracts life lessons relevant to creativity and accountability from everyday experiences—from playing tournament paintball to having a poignant last coffee with a mentor in Johannesburg.
A distinctive concept in Puchert’s thought leadership is the idea of “adding tilt” to one’s story—introducing a twist or risk that propels growth. He has applied this principle at multiple career junctures, choosing to “tilt” rather than remain comfortable, whether by leaving the ad agency for consulting or moving internationally.
The College of Extraordinary Experiences
A standout project in Puchert’s portfolio is his involvement with the College of Extraordinary Experiences, an immersive experience-design conference held annually in a medieval Polish castle. Puchert has been part of the core team since its inaugural event in 2016, initially joining as a facilitator helping orchestrate elaborate role-play scenarios and workshops.
Over the years, he took on more responsibilities; sources note that Puchert’s role encompassed student admissions, facilitation, and design for the College’s programs. His colleague Claus Raasted (a co-founder of the College) credits Puchert as a key member of the team and one of the people he relies on to “hatch schemes of world domination” in the realm of extraordinary experience design.
This side venture is far removed from Puchert’s corporate consulting work—it involves elements of live action role-play, theater, and experimental learning design. This under-the-radar project illustrates Puchert’s passion for pushing the boundaries of design in playful ways and has directly inspired other endeavors in his portfolio.
Community Engagement and Side Projects
Beyond his day jobs and content platforms, Werner Puchert engages in several side projects and communities—often unconventional ones—which are not widely publicized. In 2019, he served as the host of ProductCamp Gdynia (in Poland), a volunteer-driven conference for product managers. He has also spoken at Fuckup Nights—candid forums where entrepreneurs share failure stories, exhibiting the same brutal honesty he is known for among friends.
Another collaborative project was the Innovation Culture Coding series in 2021, a live online show by Heitland Innovation where he appeared in the first episode to discuss “How to design an innovation culture with diversity.” He brought his perspective as a South African working in Europe to that conversation, emphasizing cross-cultural insights in innovation.
These community engagements highlight Puchert’s tendency to operate on the edges of the mainstream design world—frequently participating in experimental events, local meetups, and collaborative side projects that may not make headlines but profoundly influence those involved.
The Paintball Champion: Tournament Career and Community Building
Before his design career took center stage, Werner Puchert was a significant figure in the world of competitive paintball, particularly in South Africa.
SAPaintball Community Founder
Noticing that local “weekend warriors had nowhere to vent and express themselves,” Puchert launched SAPaintball.co.za (later SAPaintball.info) as a digital portal for the South African paintball scene in the early 2000s. This site quickly became a popular hub featuring bulletin-board forums, heated discussions, player blogs, and tournament news. Under his leadership, SAPaintball grew into the heart of the community—hosting player interviews, tournament coverage, and even small sponsored events at each season’s end. Puchert ran the site for roughly a decade before retiring from the sport and shutting it down. His early initiative effectively jump-started South Africa’s online paintball culture.
International Tournament Success
Puchert himself was an accomplished tournament paintball player who competed internationally. He played for top South African teams—notably Rage SA in the early days and later Team Reaper—and even had a stint guesting for the European pro team London Nexus. His biggest achievement came with Team Reaper when they traveled to Asia and won the Malaysian World Cup (World Cup Asia) in late 2007.
Puchert also tested himself on the European circuit by joining London Nexus for a Millennium Series event in Marseille, playing alongside some of Europe’s best. This appearance with Nexus—a UK pro team coached by the legendary Pete “Robbo” Robinson—put him under Robbo’s guidance and gave him a taste of top-tier European competition. Additionally, Werner traveled to major international tournaments including the prestigious PSP World Cup in Orlando (USA)—the “promised land” of paintball.
Paintball Media Pioneer
Beyond playing, Puchert was a correspondent for FaceFull magazine, a leading international paintball publication in the 2000s. As FaceFull’s South African correspondent, he contributed news and articles about the SA paintball scene to an international audience, building bridges between South African paintball and the global circuit.
Around 2007, he co-created the SAPaintball.info Podcast, one of the earliest paintball podcasts in South Africa. Together with co-host Gunther, Werner produced a raw, unfiltered monthly show that ran from 2007 through about 2010, totaling 21 episodes. The podcast mixed humor with serious content and featured exclusive interviews with both local and international paintball figures, including Russian Legion pro Bart Blonski, Leigh “Lips” Digard of London Nexus, Maximus Lundqvist of Joy Division, and Frank “Mr. U” Connell of the LA Ironmen.
Through his playing career, community building, and media work, Puchert earned respect as what colleagues have described as a “lifetime-legend” in paintball—a testament to his impact on the sport, particularly in South Africa.
Motorcycle Activism: “Ride On! Speak Out!” Campaign
After transitioning away from paintball, Werner Puchert channeled his passion and leadership into long-distance motorcycling for social change. In late 2012, he participated in the “Ride On! Speak Out!” campaign—an epic motorcycle ride organized during the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women (November 25 – December 10, 2012).
This event, co-sponsored by UN Women and Harley-Davidson Johannesburg, assembled a caravan of bikers to raise awareness about gender-based violence. Puchert was one of 15 men who rode across nine countries in Southern Africa, covering 8,200 km (over 5,000 miles) on their bikes. The riders served as male ambassadors (“Men as Agents of Change”) for the cause, spreading the message that ending violence against women is everyone’s responsibility.
They traversed South Africa and neighboring countries—from the highways of Gauteng to the rural roads of Mozambique and beyond—engaging communities at each stop. The sight of a pack of bikers in orange UNiTE campaign gear drew crowds and media attention, helping spark conversations about violence prevention.
Puchert’s LinkedIn profile highlights this volunteer experience, calling him an “Activist — UN Women (Ride On! Speak Out! UNiTE to End Violence…)” since November 2012. By completing the grueling 8,200 km trek, he demonstrated the same all-or-nothing dedication he was known for in paintball, now applied to a humanitarian cause.
Personal Style and Character
Those who have worked with Werner often remark on his distinctive personal style and character. He is known for wearing stylish waistcoats (vests) as a sort of trademark look—a fact tongue-in-cheek referenced in podcast introductions and his public bio. More importantly, he’s recognized for an attitude of “brutal, but caring honesty.”
As Claus Raasted wrote in a profile of Puchert: “I’ve met few people who so often say they don’t care… but who so obviously do.” Puchert has a knack for blunt truth-telling (“I don’t care about that bullshit, dude!” is reportedly a favorite phrase) paired with genuine empathy and humor. This rare combination of candor and warmth makes him a valued friend and collaborator.
Personal Interests and Online Presence
On a more personal note, Werner Puchert is an avid motorcyclist—proudly referring to himself as a “biker” in bios. His social media handle “@weenerdawg” is a playful moniker he’s used on platforms like Twitter and Instagram for years. His Instagram (with over 3,100 posts) encapsulates his lifestyle: he calls himself a “coffee guzzling South African based in Warsaw and Zürich.” Indeed, coffee is another minor obsession; many of his podcast episodes and blog posts mention sharing a good cup of coffee or using coffee as fuel for creative sessions.
Puchert is also a devoted father—occasional anecdotes about parenting appear in his Finding Frequency podcast, and colleagues have noted how he enjoys sharing parenting stories. This personal side makes him relatable despite his many professional roles.
Online, Puchert maintains a presence across platforms, though none of them are highly “amplified” by traditional influencer standards. His LinkedIn profile details his professional roles and links to his projects, while his Medium account (with around 48 followers) contains thoughtful storytelling that blends personal narrative with professional insights.
Professional Expertise and Methodologies
Puchert’s professional toolkit includes certification in various methodologies such as Design Thinking, Scrum, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitation. His approach emphasizes solving complex challenges through research-driven insights, ideation processes, prototyping, and collaboration with diverse teams.
With over 18 years of experience working across industries including finance, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, media, retail, and hospitality, Puchert has developed a reputation for connecting fragmented ideas into actionable strategies while fostering innovation within organizations.
Conclusion: A Multifaceted Professional
In summary, Werner Puchert is a multifaceted professional: a design strategist, content creator, and community convener with a career marked by strategic pivots and creative exploration. He has worn hats ranging from Digital Strategy Director in a top ad agency, to Innovation Coach and Experience Design Director in consulting, to Podcast Host/Producer, to conference facilitator in a castle.
Along the way, he has built an eclectic body of work—much of it under-the-radar—that showcases a continuous thread of creative curiosity. Whether producing a daily micro-podcast to find joy in everyday life or orchestrating whimsical experiential learning events, Puchert injects creativity and honest introspection into everything he does.
Those who know him (or discover his more obscure interviews and posts) come away inspired by his willingness to share both successes and failures openly. As one profile fittingly dubbed him, he is “a man on the move”—ever evolving and helping others innovate—yet deeply grounded by the principle of staying human-centered and authentic. This combination of broad professional skill and quirky passion projects makes Werner Puchert a truly unique figure in the fields of design strategy and experience innovation.