From the Ski Hill to the Lab
Finding the problem before jumping into a solution
On weekends in the winter, I volunteer with the Canadian Ski Patrol. We’re the guys and gals with the bright red vests administering first aid and carting injured skiers down the hill on a toboggan. During the rest of the week, you can find me at the LOFT (Lab of Forward Thinking), Manulife / John Hancock’s innovation lab. Follow the smell of uncapped Sharpies and trail of post-it notes and you’ll find us. This past weekend, while on patrol, I was struck by the similarities of these two very separate worlds.
At Manulife / John Hancock, we strive to be a customer-focused organization. For us in the LOFT, that means putting the user at the center of everything we do. To accomplish that, one of the methodologies we practice and teach is Design Thinking. Design Thinking as a methodology, starts and ends with the user in mind.
For designers — and those using design thinking, the first place to start is at the problem. By better understanding the problem, we are almost certainly going to be on a better path to creating a superior solution. “How do you do that?” Well, it’s not rocket science — we ask. We ask as many types of users as we can so that we can get a sense of pain points, “jobs-to-be-done”, and aspirations. We look for patterns in our user’s answers and in the patterns we find clues so we can get to building our first prototype.
It’s not such a different process for patrollers on the hill evaluating a patient, only in this case, we’re looking for literal pain points (and are less focused on their aspirations). When we arrive on scene and introduce ourselves, we start by asking the important questions. “May I help you?”, “Do you have any pain in your neck and back”, “Can you feel your fingers and toes?” “Are you able to wiggle your fingers and toes?”. We then examine the patient from head to toe to find any pain points that the patient may not have known existed.
On the hill, it’s only natural that you wouldn’t start treating a patient without better understanding the problem. There’s a temptation in other areas of our lives, however, to jump into solutioning right off the bat. This may feel like innovation and it is no doubt hard work, but I urge you to resist the temptation, take a step back, and evaluate the problem.
If we jumped into backboarding (see below) a patient at every call, we may end up immobilizing their broken leg (their pain point) in passing — but it will require lots of unnecessary resources, many patrollers on scene, and is definitely not the best solution to the patient’s problem. The proper solution only requires a piece of cardboard and a few cravat bandages.
What do you think? Comment below!
