Change by design (book by Brown)

Change by Design

Tim Brown

Change by Design

This book, written by the CEO of IDEO, describes “design thinking”. Design thinking is more than design. At one level design is about making things that work well, and can be done by one person based on their own insight, analysis and imagination. Design thinking is more integrated and holistic that this. In particular, design thinking is more human-centric than technology-centric. If design is tactical, design thinking is strategic. More than many books, this is a book of stories rather than lists. In fact, the author notes that a central theme in design thinking is the creation of a story about somebody who had a problem and how a solution for that problem that made that person’s life better. I’ve organized this summary with the stories at the front and the lists behind.

 

Story #1

The opening example in the book related to an engagement with Shimano (they make bicycle parts) who wanted to restore growth to their business. IDEO & Shimano created a team who went out to talk the 90% of adult Americans who did not ride bikes, though they had as kids.  They learned about the human factors that discourage people from riding and developed concepts that would make biking more attractive. Some related to sophisticated bike parts to make new/old bikes and some related to talking to communities about bike paths and bike safety. Some related to talking to bike stores to teach them how to stop intimidating their prospective customers. All of these different projects originated from the common ground of understanding how these people related to biking. Shimano brought in some of their customers to participate in the project, who though competitors – found common cause in bringing useful products to these customers.

Story #2

The Wii gaming system from Nintendo was cited as an example of use of constraint. Ever improving graphics was making games very expensive but indistinguishable. Introduction of motion sensing was novel enough that graphics could be deemphasized and the cost of the console could be reduced. A more novel user experience was combined with higher margins for Nintendo. What made this work was the focus on the desired experience, and acceptance of simplification of some aspects of the product.

Mattel wanted to rethink their girl’s product line. Mattel recruited a multidisciplinary team, provided them with 2 weeks of intensive training in various skills and for another 10 weeks the team developed product concepts. During this period, they worked in a separate building and worked on the project exclusively. When the project end (successfully), the team dispersed to their original roles excited about what they had learned and planning to use their new skills with their regular teams. However, they made little progress in dealing with the main culture of efficiency. Some gave up in frustration and some left the company. Training people is not enough, creating a space for innovation is not enough; creating an innovative design-thinking organization also has a cultural component that amplifies the creative-risk taking potential of the people who work there.

 

Story #3

 IDEO was hired to help design kitchen tools. While the majority of customers are adults who cook daily family meals, IDEO observed children and professional cooks to understand how these tools failed these people. The solutions developed from this study worked for everybody. Ordinary adults had developed workarounds sufficient to their needs.

 

Story #4

 In order to learn more about the emergency room experience, an IDEO employee reported to an emergency room with a foot injury (imaginary). Using a micro-video recorder, he recorded the whole process. He noted how the staff treated him, how often he was told to wait or do things without explanation and how extensive his human contact was. But the most profound learning came when the design team watched his tape. Much of the tape was of the ceiling and featureless hallways. He was left on a gurney for some time with nothing else to do or watch. The team developed an empathetic understanding of the patient’s experience – scary, indifferent and boring

 

Story #5

IDEO was hired by Nike to develop some kid’s products. IDEO brought in a group of 8-10 year olds, gave them breakfast and instructions. They then separated the boys and girls and sent them to identical rooms for an hour. At the end of the hour, the girl’s group had nearly 200 ideas, while the boys group had about 50. The boys apparently focused on getting their idea out, while the girls had a serial conversation with each stage of the conversation building on what came before. The girls were listening and building. The boys were not listening. If innovation is a numbers game, groups that listen will triumph over groups that don’t.

 

Story #6

Amtrak was developing high speed rail service from Washington to Boston and asked IDEO for help with seat design. Amtrak thought comfortable seating would be valued by customers. IDEO decided to experience the trip themselves (many times) and discovered that a train trip involved 10 steps – and the eighth step was the first involving a seat.

 

Story #7

IDEO was working with Marriott on an extended stay hotel. To understand this experience, they built a hotel “set” of foam board in a loft and invited people (including customers) to visit. People recorded their ideas on post-its and stuck them to the walls and furniture. Combined with discussions with these travelers, a number of features were added to the hotel to accommodate the unique needs of this traveling subset.

 

Story #8

T-mobile was exploring how people might use phones to coordinate schedules and events in a social circle. The design team created two prototypes and handed out phones with these two services. It was immediately obvious that people preferred a service where they built networks around events and disfavored a service which developed shared phone books. The designers had predicted the opposite. Since the phones were actually identical, the distinguishing aspect was the experience enabled by the phone.

 

Story #9

Marriott assumed that the first, most important determinant of visitor acceptance was check-in. They invested in improving the check-in area and process. IDEO challenged the assumption and decided to follow some travelers from airport to their room. Indeed, things did go wrong along the way on occasion, but the big moment for the traveler was when they finally got to their room, throw their stuff on the bed and exhale.  With this insight, they invested in also making the exhale “better”.

 

Story #10

This is not really a specific story, but the big story of the book. Design has gotten small over the years as it sought to create incremental and superficial improvements. That may have been suitable to the times. Today’s circumstances call for design to get big again. There are some big problems and design thinking starting from a human-centric perspective may be necessary to solve these problems.

 

The evolution of design to design thinking is the story of the evolution from the creation of products to the analysis of the relationship between people and products, and from there to the relationship of people to people.*

 

There is no one right way to develop design thinking, and the process is not especially linear. Design thinking involves inspiration, ideation and implementation. Inspiration relates to the understanding the problem space. Ideation relates to initial generation and testing of ideas. Implementation relates to planning the conversion of successful prototypes into final solutions for release.

 

Good design embraces its constraints. Three things contribute to constraint: feasibility (what is possible now), viability (what is economically practical) and desirability (what will positively work for people). Relief in one constraint probably means tightening another; the balance of these choices determines success.

 

A good design project does not pre-suppose the solution. The project brief does need to describe the constraints and the problem to be solved, but it should be open to how the problem might be solved. The design brief is also a first draft and may be revised as more is learned.

 

Designers are often specialists. They may know engineering, psychology or art from school combined with years of application in those fields. Design thinkers know a field in depth, but have experience in numerous other fields. If designers look like a capital “I”, design thinkers look like “T”. A team of “I’s” may be multidisciplinary, but a team of “T’s” is interdisciplinary. Freed from advocating their discipline, design thinkers can focus on the problem and the whole context of the problem. If you want to find design thinkers, it may not be that obvious what schools or fields to search in; design thinking is bigger than either.

 

 IDEO has a strong commitment to the use of environment to foster creativity, which they think allows their people to be “whole”. Putting people into a static, uniform environment will lead to static, uniform thinking – not the real thinking they would otherwise have. The best environment might be the environment where the problem and people are found.

 

One of the main challenges for design thinkers is to get “latent needs” articulated. Three practices that help expose these latent needs are: insight, observation, and empathy. People develop workarounds to deal with their problems, and convert these workarounds into unconscious behaviors. Insight develops when you note that people do unexpected things – like using a hand tool as a doorstop. If lots of people have lots of different kinds of doorstops (hammers, bricks, shoes, etc), maybe there is a need for an improved door. While companies often study their average customers, they are more likely to learn something about problems by examining people who are the edges of their domain. Direct observation and experience fuels the development of insight – the basis for all innovation.

 

Design involves divergent and convergent stages. During the divergent stages, the goal is to explore different ways to approach and solve the problem. During the convergent stage, the goal is to settle on one or two approaches. Most companies are much more comfortable with the idea of convergence and cut divergence short. Interestingly, the divergence stage is associated with analysis (where things are taken apart), while the convergence stage is dominated by synthesis (where things are put together). Ironically, companies can find synthesis challenging because it is also a creative act. To be clearer, convergence is not about deciding – it is about synthesizing solutions from the parts created during analysis.

 

Design thinking is experimentally oriented. An idea is not a solution until it is found to work. Six rules are proposed for organizational success:

1. The best ideas emerge when the whole organizational ecosystem – not just its designers and engineers and certainly not just management – has room to experiment.
2. Those most exposed to changing externalities (new technology, shifting consumer base,…) are best placed to respond and most motivated to do so.
3. Ideas should not be favored based on who creates them.
4. Ideas that create buzz should be favored. Indeed, ideas should gain a vocal following, however small, before getting organizational support.
5. The “gardening” skills of senior leadership should be used to tend, prune, and harvest ideas.
6. An overarching purpose should be articulated so that the organization has a sense of direction and innovators don’t feel the need for constant supervision

 

Design thinking is one version of system thinking. The ultimate solution is a product of the problem and its context. Design thinking requires that the people, history and environment of a problem be considered in development of solutions. The design shouldn’t be independent of its context.

 

Prototyping is a critical part of design. Good design groups learn how to make quick & dirty prototypes, and refine them through the life of the project. Many companies go wrong by trying to produce too good a prototype too early. Just about anything can have a prototype including: products, services, and experiences. Storyboards, customer or product journeys, and improve skits are prototyping tools.

Increasingly, people are motivated by experiences (potential or actual) rather than products. It is not the product that you enjoy, but using the product. As a consequence, it is increasingly important to understand the story of which the product or service is a part. This is generating what has been called the “experience economy”. This leads to participation being part of the experience. In the past, we had consumption, but in the future we will have experiences. Consumption, without participation, may not be viable design. The rise of Facebook, and decrease in television viewing are symptoms of this change. Increasingly, design thinking must consider the whole experience – not just the product/service functionality.

 

When the process adds a story focus, it begins to deal with design with time. What are the beginning, middle and end of the story. More good ideas die because they fail to navigate the treacherous waters of the organization where they originate than because the market rejects them. Any complex organization must balance numerous competing interests, and new ideas…are disruptive.  Without a good story that explains how the idea relates to the past, present and future, it is difficult for people to understand their relationship to the idea and why they should embrace it. A good story combines the general and specific, the factual and emotional, and the past and the future. In most organizations, the central question may be – what does this story mean to me/us? For design thinkers, the paradigm changes from chasing numbers to serving humans. For the end users, this was always the question.

 *Denotes verbatim quotes from the book