Design Thinking for Better Health
An interview with Dennis Boyle, IDEO Founding Member, and Stanford Professor, uncovering his secrets of living a healthy lifestyle for over 30 years.
Dennis is one of my favorite founding members of IDEO. He is passionate about the power of design to change lives, and works not only to lead IDEO’s Health & Wellness Business, but also to teach students at Stanford University how to “design for better health”, helping people with chronic conditions stay healthy, and avoid long term illness.
A while ago, I invited Dennis Boyle to a conversation about healthful living. We spoke about how he managed to stick to healthy habits for over 30 years (despite his busy schedule) and how he applies design thinking methods into building healthier habits, and make better decisions about his health.
I thought I would republish it on Medium, for those of you who love his work the same as I do.
Dennis, how do you manage work-life balance?
I think I managed to do fairly well over time. I’m a big proponent of being physically active every day. I ride a bike, commuting from home to work. I’m always riding at least two to four miles a day on a normal bike. But I also, I try to run almost every day. I like the running or walking.
Teaching this class “Design for Better Health” to help my students work with people with chronic conditions, made me aware that being active during the day is not a big secret. It’s just part of our daily habits.
What are the most successful methods that you have found to keep this an ongoing habit?
Most of the time, I run or walk with people. I run with my brother, or with some other folks here at IDEO, and I find this is also social. You’re discussing things together and I find it makes it enjoyable and productive in many cases.
To ensure I stay accountable, I schedule this almost like a meeting in my calendar, sometimes at the end of the day, at noon or even in the morning. And then, you got a meeting, you got a session. And you keep it. You’re more likely to keep these appointments. I think, that’s a very, very important strategy around being physically active every day.
On weekends I go for a longer ride with a bunch of friends, and that’s at 20 or 40 mile. We make that a bit of a stereo Sunday morning event. We pick a hard route for those who love to ride, and have a little breakfast and coffee afterwards. So you feel like you’ve accomplished something, but you’ve also spent time with those people that you really enjoy being with. Being social and being physically active is absolutely important to me and it’s much harder to do these things on your own.
How about morning meditation? Do you meditate?
I like to meditate. I try to meditate almost every day. Ten minutes or maybe 15. I use an app called Excellent Energy that I like because it just records how much you’re meditating every day. And then it records the total time over a year period. I really like that effective approach.
Do you use any tools to monitor your health?
I’m actually quantifying some of my runs and rides, since that can last 30–40 years. I just write all these things down in big lists, all these places that I ride up hills are certain distance, or certain runs.
I’m a former collegiate track and cross country runner, so just write down all the times that I’ve ever done for everything. I’ve also subscribed to this service called Plus 3 Network, which I like very much.
What are the benefits you’ve noticed by using this app?
Well the app is like a motivating factor to me. I use it for lots of different levels. First, to record my data during the day from an iPhone app that has GPS. The GPS version is interesting because it records the map, and the pace that you’re running riding or walking.
I use it for skiing and kayaking too. I use it for cross country skiing, or for mountain bike riding, road bike riding or, any time I’m outside. It records and shows me my peace. So that’s one thing that I like about it.
But the next level shows you how you’re doing compared to all your friends that are in the group. I made this group here at IDEO where we can see what everyone else is doing, and we compete with each other. It increases motivation and inspire a healthy living.
The third level is interesting since the app partnered with 100 different sponsors to help collect money for charities. So every time you run, walk, ride your bike, or when you’re doing any indoor activity such as meditation, swimming or yoga your activity is recorded. You earn points towards personal rewards and a donation is made to charity like the Czech Museum or the Cancer Society, The Heart Association, the technology Museum in San Jose, or many other local causes.
How using design thinking might help people to create better, healthier habits and change their behavior?
I think it’s becoming more and more common to use design thinking to honor a healthy behavior.
The fundamentals of design thinking are to carefully understand the needs of a person. We’re trying to understand on a very fundamental level people’s emotional need, but also what their physical needs are, and what they’re doing on a daily basis. And then refills are designed for that.
Some of my students have just made their own apps or created some of their own spreadsheets and shared what they are doing with their patients and vice versa.
One thing I found that really seems to work well is how my students work with their patients directly to honor a healthy behavior everyday. They are texting each other, so they’ll know they have an activity to do. The patient will initiate a text and tell about what they did that day. A few people switched to emails for that. Others use phone calls or google documents where they share not only what they did physically, but also photos with what they ate for each meal.
They found out what people respond to this, and they stick to a habit. Something like that seems to be working at a grass roots level. The sharing of what you’re doing on a daily basis has proven to be successful.
I’m a big proponent of this process. It’s sort of the way I work. But not everybody gets it all the time. So it’s important to remember that not everybody is the same. People respond quite differently for different modes of communication or products we try to create for them.
What are some of your favorite healthy eating habits to make eating on-the-go easier?
I cook a fair amount at home. But we make food at the office a lot. And it seems to be a very popular thing to have breakfast and lunches at the office. I’ve learned over the years I need to stress some things to make them work.
I try not to drink soda, ever. I just stay away from sugary juices and sodas. Replaced it with water, or coffee, or beer, [LAUGH] which I like.
I like chocolate, which I can’t resist, but I try to avoid sugar in general.
I cut back on bread, pasta, chips or white potatoes. I just made a concerted effort to remove anything containing white flour or white rice, and eat brown rice instead. I also substitute lots of plants. I eat meat, but I cut back on red meat to eat it only once a twice or week at the most, and substitute fish and chicken.
Those are some rules I live by. The more green vegetables the better for me.
People in general weigh too much salt, weigh too much sugar, weigh too much white flour and weigh too many white potatoes, we don’t need all that starch.
What techniques did you use to get yourself to stick to those changes?
When your weight is creeping up and you see your blood sugar and other markers increasing, then you say: “I want to be healthy and look good and have a normal weight. I want to be able to run, and ride, and be strong.” So, you start to see what the bare patterns are. I do this together with my family. My wife realized all this a number of years back.
We pretty much come together and we eat out together and she is almost militant about not eating lots of the bad stuff. It’s not so hard when you’re doing it together. If one person in the relationship is trying to do this and the other is not, I think that’s very hard.
Then you’re changing. You’re competing on things. I’ve learned what she likes in me, and we help and empower each other keep on a healthier path.
We also lead by example as parents. We have two boys. They are now age 25 and 20. They’re a little less rigorous but one of them is a pretty strong hockey player and the other one is a skateboarder. We talk about this with them and they kind of realize you lead by example. You fix food for them and there are exceptions when you do something like bread, meat or something with more sugar. But those are exceptions.
Over time they’re just used to what you’re eating and they pick up your habits. It’s definitely important not to lose the ability to cook well, and to plan meals. This way children are not becoming overweight.
Which of your existing habits would you like your sons to adopt?
That’s a good question. I hope they will try to be active every day. Being active, walking, running or riding their bikes. Being active helps them maintain a better lifestyle. I think if you can find one area to be good at, then other areas tend to follow along. I’ve found that being active is really fun and you do it for your whole life. That helps drive good behavior I think in every level.
Lots of people are having trouble sticking to a healthy habit. What can we do to maintain healthier habits?
That’s true. Everybody is quite busy with everything and people don’t have time to take care of themselves very well. Not enough sleep, they’re eating way too much fast food, all of the wrong food, too much sugar, fat, salt and then they’re not active at all. People just sit all day long and all night long and they’re not physically active, or in some cases not social enough, or mentally active enough. All these things conspire them to lose their energy, and be less productive.
I’ve noticed that if you shook things up to meet what people enjoy, then changing a habit becomes easier. Instead of focusing on the negative, focus on the enjoyable side of the process. For instance, everything from stopping eating sugar, fast food or stopping smoking, and stopping being sedentary, are all negatives that we try to take away. You have to time it much more around what you are enjoying, and what you want to obtain long term..
Also, I think it’s important to figure out a program substitute in things that you also like that are much better for you. Try not to frame it, as you have to take away all these things you like, but substitute things that you do like, with others that are much better for you. Figure out what those are. That’s a better way of framing those problems.
