Under the sea of obviousness | Part 3 of 3 | Making the model tangible

Obviousness has taken over the world. Innovation design has been reduced to slick formulae, and while the design industry prides itself on creating new paradigms, there’s a disappointing lack of novelty, originality and progress.

This three-part series articulates my mental model and the questions I ask when trying to dive under the sea of obviousness.

Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

The elements of the model presented in the last part of the series, might have seem disparate, and you may question the sequence and importance of each of them, and/or whether they aren’t exhaustive for success of any innovation. If that’s the case, that’s a great outcome for me, as it means I’m giving a more realistic representation of the world and the complexities of human nature and the realities on how to bring a successful innovation to live.

At this point — and wearing my business designer hat — I’d like to make this mental model of mine more tangible, practical and specific by providing the primary indicators I use to check if the main premise of these different elements is being fulfilled.

Emotion 》Start with love

The rise of behavioural economics, neuroscience and advances in psychology in the past 50 years have seen a raft of great studies describing the science of how different emotions affect our decision-making processes. This paper on decision-making and emotion, by scholars from Harvard University, Claremont McKenna College, University of California and Carnegie Mellon University provides a clear view on the progress that has been made in the field, reinforcing the belief that many psychology scientists and economists now believe that emotions are the dominant driver of most decisions in life — whether meaningful or trivial.

For me, particularly, when talking about the success of any new innovation, the key emotion that I would look to inspire is love for the product or service — or the person/organisation delivering it. I could explain why in great detail, but someone else has already done a great job. Here’s how love could be measured (Love Index) — while this may seem like a plug for my employer, I genuinely believe there’s solid, robust evidence behind the Love Index.

Quality 》Start with beauty

For me, (and this might seem controversial), when talking about quality in innovation, the first dimension I focus on is aesthetics — concentrating on the level of detail and craftsmanship spent to make the solution pleasing to the senses, particularly sight and touch. I believe there’s clear correlation between the effectiveness of any solution and the attention given to making the design look and feel beautiful.

There are those who continually dismiss this point and insist that there’s always time to beautify things; please don’t listen to them. There are thousands of studies that describe how certain universal beauty standards exist in our subconscious, and when those standards are met, there’s a positive impact on our brain receptors. Most recently, the neuroaesthetics discipline has focused on how our brain reacts to the aesthetic experience, which consists of feelings, judgments, interpretation, character and reactions to aesthetics. Recent studies in this field have proven that activity in the brain is stronger when you think something is beautiful.

Even if you aren’t a trained designer, or can’t apply electrodes to your users (!), there are simple questions that help measure and assess whether your solution is aesthetically pleasing. Here are some good, simple thought-starters from Canva.

Impact 》Start with traction

I think the importance of seeking impact is clear, but what I believe doesn’t exist is a widespread agreement on how to measure impact — or /and a focus on ensuring a focus on social impact.

My tip: one step a time, start by obsessing about traction figures, for both financial and social outcomes. Traction in this instance refers to the rate at which a business model captures monetisable value from its user. Focus on working out what success looks like against your quantified long-term outcomes in the first weeks and months, then recalibrate. The time spent in complex financial financial models and scenario planning is much better spent gaining traction. A lot of people believe that heavy-duty quant is a sign of rigour, and that the use of complex business cases — which are at worst complete fantasy, and at best purely speculative — are an indication of superiority in a future solution.

Use guidelines to benchmark the type of traction you need to get you to your next stage of development or funding. I tend to use a mix of typical funnel conversion metrics, VC investment guidelines, and databases that collect impact from previous social focused projects.

Side-note: The world is not driven by VCs and exponential growth, and not all products have a social component, but I believe that seeking modest impact without a social component attached to it isn’t worth the effort.I apply this thinking as part of my day to day job to ensure we aren’t just another product and service design studio, but a traction studio, one that links quality design to outcomes.

Simplicity 》Start with speed

We need to become more agile!! Kidding — please don’t jump on that wagon yet.

My view is that to be able to succeed in the market, simplicity is critical and, for me, speed is the key indicator of simplicity. When working on a new innovation, calculations should be made on the resources it will take to reconfigure the product, service or business to be launched. Specifically, the metric I look to quantify is the number of the days it will take the existing team to work against different T-shirt sizes — with the large size being a complete a new direction to the business.

I then aim to minimise. This will give me an indication on whether we have embedded simplicity into our operations and, more importantly, how dynamic we could be to cope with the pace of change from the market. Time and time again I see every single mental resource consumed on day one, with no plan for the next day.

With this three-part series of articles, my aim is not to reduce the ambiguity in a process, but to give people a degree of confidence to embrace more ambiguity as a force of creative inspiration, and to highlight some non-obvious questions that could help progress our practice.

On the back of these mental models, I’ll share some more practical thoughts — watch this space. In the meantime, I’m very keen to hear about any other mental models you find useful for diving under the obvious.