Drone Use: How to see the unseen with service design?
A hundred years ago, cities across the US were dealing with a new potentially problematic inhabitant — the automobile. Despite being cleaner and more efficient than the horse, the car proved challenging. Our city streets were not well prepared for the car, and although planning and policy moved quickly, fatal accidents were common.
Some observers liken this chapter in transport to the one that’s about to happen with drones. Only this problem is much more complex. While cars, at least, move on an X-Y axis on a level plane, drones will occupy a three-dimensional space. So just how do we go about planning for their common use?
Dealing with absolutes
While states such as Hawaii have begun to implement laws banning drone use to anyone outside the police or military, it’s clear from innovation pushes, such as Amazon Prime Air, that the demand for commercial drone use is there. The company has already built a fulfillment center in the UK. Will the US really sit back and watch this development on other shores? Probably not. Sometime soon, drone zoning and legislation must come into force.
And this brings us to an interesting point in service design: how can we plan for something in advance of its conception? Many service design tasks revolve around an existing product, process or problem, but designing from scratch is hugely challenging for one reason — there is as yet no goal.
We can formulate for likely problems, such as issues with safety, noise, damage, personal intrusion and privacy, but until the day-of-the-drone arrives, we won’t know what other issues will arise. We can even agree that the five points above are the only possible issues, but that doesn’t make it so. We need to free our minds and unleash the most creative sides of our brains. To use an old cliché — we need to think outside the box.
Getting creative
I’m no drone expert, nor do I have a background in city planning, but I can tell you about flexing your brain muscle. There are several strategies psychologists advise for helping us to see the unseen, to work toward a creativity, which delivers solutions even when the problems can’t be defined. The following is one of my favorites.
Thought association
Look at the sky. What do you think of? Planes, clouds, birds, wind…pollen? The list can go on and on but the challenge here is to think of something that hasn’t been thought of before, and the best way to do this is with thought association. Taken from Freud’s theory of word associations, which helps individuals to unlock the unconscious, thought association can do the same, except with concepts rather than emotions. It’s hard to set a target to think of something novel, but by concentrating on an intangible yet visual object, like the sky, you can practice this method. Just let the words come out of your mouth. You may be surprised by the things you hear.
While this may seem like a gimmick, it’s worth remembering that problem solving is a learned skill, which many of us have learned to complete in a certain way. When it comes to a completely new technology or a service within a blue ocean market, we need to retrain our brains to break out of their old problem-solving routines. The imminent arrival of drones in our airspace is just one example of how we will need to change the way we solve problems in the years to come.
