Creative collaboration and thinking holistically
Yesterday, we started by a short creativity exercise that allowed us to play between flexibility (coming up with ideas using a derivative and / or distinct approach) and fluency (speed and quantity). These 2 two goals you want to keep in mind when you generate ideas.
The exercise as many of the icebreakers we will do in class is a good way to create a different mindset (putting us out of our comfort zone thus allowing us to be more creative individually and collectively as everyone shares this moment of unfamiliarity).
Remember it’s easier to have a great idea if you have to choose from many. It is important to combine fluency and flexibility to have a rich array of ideas to choose from.
Organizational culture to support creative collaboration and innovation
Based on the IDEO video and the Engine case, we discussed how we can create the cultural conditions for creative collaboration to happen:
- (little) structure: lack of hierarchy, small diverse teams with little specialization
- Diverse yet T-shaped individuals
- Open communication: OK to disagree, a sense of permission
- Process: divergent — convergent; multiple prototypes (in parallel) and iteration; a strong belief that if we follow the process, however messy and ambiguous it feels, we will be able to find some solutions.
There was also an interesting balancing act between flexibility, lack of boundaries and some structuring (time, phases of the process, facilitator, self-appointed group of adults). This structuring was the condition for the chaos to be productive and generative.
Note for those of you who did the extra readings, Sutton’s Weird Rules of Creativity invites us to challenge our expectations about how to organize for creativity (for instance, look for the “slow learner” in other words: the person who will not take things for granted and will ask often “why”) and the cross-pollinator’s chapter explores further the value of the intersection between multiple disciplines.
Diffusion of innovation:
The shopping cart was not implemented because who owned the problem was not defined and there was no one willing to implement. It could also be that they were ahead of their time ( see https://yannigroth.com/2011/08/12/the-ideo-shopping-cart-1998-wasnt-a-failure-the-concept-was-just-ahead-of-its-time/) and it’s interesting to see how parts of the idea have been implemented.
Service Design: some pointers
- Thinking of the journey: the before and after the product. The product becomes one touch point in the whole experience.
- -Service design as design more broadly (i.e. when designing a product, you always design a service at the same time. E.g. when designing a phone, you also design the service of communication and connection).
- It requires us to think about the whole system and
- Service design as a system approach which includes both tangible and intangible aspects; the material and activities (e.g. in a hospital)
- Service design as a template for thinking about complex issues?
Service design in practice: in-class challenge
Tools you used: personas; empathy map and brainstorming
After discussing the Engine Case we moved to putting things in practice: each group had a family persona and using the empathy map tried to define the problem statement for which to design. This is a complex exercise and all teams realized that for each family the problem was more than simply overweight and risk of obesity.
All teams did a very good job in analyzing the situation using the empathy map. While you were able to come with a problem statement using the empathy map and personas, it was not easy to focus on that problem statement alone during the ideation phase. Defining a generative problem statement (focused yet broad enough) is complicated and you’ll have many more opportunities to do so. Many of the teams tried to start thinking of the different stakeholders to involve and how to find ways to make the different programs / ideas sustainable. Kudos to the team which sketched the app!
I really enjoy seeing how the different ideas could be integrated if you were to keep developing the ideas.
One important learning from the case B is that the final outcome was more a proof of concept of service design as an approach to address complex problems.
“Particularly in the public sector space, people are becoming much more interested in us teaching them how to fish… So much more of work is about strategizing of capacity building” Joe Heapy (Engine Service Design)
System-thinking
Our discussion of service design led us to emphasize the importance of taking a system perspective.
Empathy and understanding of the needs involves not only the end users / customers but also the company / service provider as well as other stakeholders. Understanding the consequences of the products / services you design on other stakeholders (the environment being one).
I would recommend you check the Circular Design Guide that was recently created by IDEO and that is another variation of design thinking with a service design mindset. It’s going to be particularly useful as you embarked on your team challenge (more on this next week).
This connects back to the importance (that we discussed last week) to include people’s needs (desirability) as well as technical feasibility and business viability in order to develop a sustainable solution that might be implemented.
See you next week!
