So, this will be it,... this, we're doing this, we're doing this for real.
I'm a child, I'm just a really old child.
Imagine retaining a childlike unbound creativity
within the adult frameworks of responsibility we all know like a job or a business or even a family.
How would you like to return to a sense of discovery and knowing that it counts, and that's where I
came across design thinking.
Out of all the possible venues, it was actually as serious a place as Amazon
where this has long been exercised, using the company's customer-centric working backwards methodology,
basically a wrapper for how to routinely come up with new products or services that create value for the customer.
And over time I found that design thinking is actually not all child's play or even consultancy BS.
You may not be able to pinpoint right now what design thinking actually is and how it's relevant to you.
And maybe this video can change that.
I grew up in a fairly strict household.
It wasn't encouraged to play to waste and instead I was told to do more grown-up, serious stuff.
And in line with that sentiment, design, this creative discipline, perhaps always comes across a little airy fairy,
about making things pretty; often it doesn't have a reputation of being overly serious or even.
Just think of what gets showcased at an odc to a fashion show would you really wear that
stuff. Now that sentiment already changes if we specifically talk about industrial
design or even more substantial, when you think of structural design, the classic example there being
the design of a bridge.
What all of these design approaches have in common is that they render something more: more attractive, more unique, more ergonomic, more functional
and that they are the result of numerous iterations of someone making a small or big tweak to that last prototype.
Now that probably doesn't sound much different from how you'd go about driving progress or growth in
your job or or your company, except that the order of tasks is actually reversed.
Normally you'd have seasoned professionals and scientists tackling a problem, solving for incremental improvements and
basing their assumptions on their domain knowledge.
These folks do a lot of hard work thinking about what to build and how to build it. In the context of business goals then, what gets often disregarded,
though, is the the real life impact of culture and context, of how and where a product or service is
being used. That's why I used the word assumption and maybe even biases for how a professional or
a scientist sees the world. In contrast, designers actually excel in, I almost want to say, shooting
in the dark: collecting feedback and then iterating based on everything they have observed. So a design
process, through continuous learning, much more "builds in order to think" as opposed to "thinks
about what to build," which is the traditional problem-based or problem-focused approach.
You therefore have multiple rounds of diverging ideas and choices and then converging those ideas
and choices, and that's where rapid prototyping as part of a design process comes in as well: to help
designers gather real feedback from users gauging the logical and emotional impact a solution might
have, and then have that feedback into the overall design process. With a more traditional approach,
which may focus much more so on a previously established problem definition, your sole focus
would be on converging: we have a specific problem, we have data to inform that and with specific
assumptions in hand, we will leave the solution to be X, so let's build that.
Remember that story of Steve Jobs hiding in the bushes outside one of Apple's earlier stores, to observe how customers
shopped. You could argue that it really doesn't matter that Apple's shopping bags could be worn
safely over your shoulder, also largely displaying the company logo, that every customer has just
enough space to engross themselves in trying out a product without anything distracting them, that
you can pay with the same associate who helped you on the floor not having to line up again,
that it takes really only one hand to unbox an Apple product.
All of these features say nothing about the actual product and perhaps even really hard to measure in terms of their impact on sales.
That means in all likelihood, a professional in charge of delivering the next wave of company
products or services would never even think of these details, because they are not captured in a
predefined success metric. Maybe that sounds familiar.
Closer to home i had a project where i gathered insights that would inform "how might we deliver better products or services for today's 70
year olds." And as part of my observation process, I went to a grocery store in the morning to observe
folks in a mature age range to see how they shopped and behaved in store. And my assumption
was that older individuals take their time, they're set in their ways and they're generally
early risers who like to get their chores done, because what else are they going to do.
What I observed, though, was older shoppers, often limited in their mobility, often with a basket actually,
not even a cart, because they already had their own trolley, purchasing a higher percentage of
well-established brands and processed foods, and being fairly determined in getting their shopping
done with as little resistance as possible. And through additional interviewing and then a couple
of empathy exercises, I learnt that the primary objective of these folks was to assure a specific
outcome for the quest they were on, being focused on getting their stuff done without
being challenged and perhaps face debilitating uncertainty. Now imagine, as a supermarket chain
or consumer goods executive, the impact it would have for this customer segment to have
products moved around, perhaps even just move items to a lower or higher shelf, the store layout
changed altogether, decreasing lighting during low traffic times, such as early in the morning
your packaging rebranded even the ability to pick up a product with one hand,
essentially a ton of factors that say nothing about selection nothing, about in-stock,
pricing or product quality, but all of which contribute to whether someone shops there and
picks up your product. And it's these kinds of customer specific observations feeding into a
solution that design thinking captures early on; maybe not the ultimate focus but it doesn't ignore
them. The challenge with this approach is obviously, where do you stop, as in when do you know when your
approach is too widespread and ultimately you're spinning your wheels unnecessarily. And that's
where an early exercise around first defining the problem, the "how might we solve for X" is key,
which means you observe and understand your customer, you empathize with them on needs and
challenges, both rational and even emotional before you even talk about a product or solution, and then
you iterate on how you solve the problem without creating new ones, aiming to meet your business
goal. That's also the biggest differentiator to a more traditional approach where you're less likely
to iterate and where you produce a new version guided by a more abstract thinking process that
should optimize an outcome in theory. It might help you solve complex problems where we need to move
the needle by x bps, but it leaves you stuck with what are referred to as "wicked problems,"
sheer insurmountable challenges, problems that are ordinarily too hard to solve, carry a lot of risk
and where existing processes, tools or practices just seem insufficient. For you, a wicked problem
might be pivoting to a new customer segment, coming up with a double-digit growth strategy,
entering a new market, perhaps getting a into a different career focus or simply starting a
new venture; something you've never done before, basically anything that is fairly removed from
your current familiar domain. Thinking freely, like a designer, then is to tap into a greater resource –
call it unbound or even collective creativity, if it's done in a group, which it should, as opposed
to limiting yourself to existing options that come across as safe and predictable. It means you leave
a familiar territory behind and then actually approach it like a child, carefully but with
joy in the process.
Those wacky haute couture creations showcased at a Paris fashion show
are actually very, very important, I think, because they give us a glimpse of, what may be not viable
but, what may be materially feasible, perhaps a little desirable even, which ultimately sets a new
direction and perhaps even ushers in a new trend.
If you do what you've always done, you're gonna get what you always got!
So if you want new and vastly more, then start designing, preferably like a child, because everyone can do it and it's more fun.
I hope you found this little discourse helpful. If so, feel free to share comment or like this clip.
For now though, thanks for watching!
bye