Deep Collaboration

A company I really admire is IDEO. I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about why this company has me particularly star struck, and I think I’ve got it boiled down.

This is a company that works both ways — they influence the users of whatever product or system they are building, and they influence the business that they are working with.

“IDEO designed Innova’s entire K–11 learning experience and strategy. After months of fieldwork, prototyping, and deep collaboration with the Innova team, IDEO developed the curriculum, teaching strategies, buildings, operational plans, and underlying financial model to run the network of schools.
Read more at https://www.ideo.com/work/designing-a-school-system#PCmmkPq6btTdWEyC.99

I don’t know how many times I’ve thought, “If only the business did _______, then we could do _____ for the users and it would be so much better!” Do you see what IDEO did? Deep collaboration with the Innova team.

Are you letting your UX designers have deep collaboration? You brought them in — don’t shackle them!

Look, companies of the world, I know how hard changing a backend, or establishing a new process, training employees for something new, can be. But if you built it, you can change it, and we just want to help you be better. If your business is too inflexible, I think it’s only a matter of time before it collapses anyway.