Reframe — A Top of the Page Review
October 2023
This book ended up on my reading list courtesy of a Design Thinking Boot Camp that I took awhile back. The boot camp was designed to introduce non-designers to the nuts and bolts of design thinking to better facilitate communication within product teams. As a result, the workshop was populated by project managers, software engineers, product owners, and operations folks like me.
The workshop was fantastic, as was the list of additional resources the facilitator provided. Among that list of resources was Reframe, a book written to “help people unlock their creativity and generate brilliant ideas.”
If you have ever found yourself marveling at or envying the way designers churn out a seemingly endless supply of ideas, you’ll find this book insightful. If you have ever found yourself frustrated because the rational/financial side of the business seems out of sync with the ideal/innovative side of the business, you’ll find this book revolutionary.
Patel, Mona. 2015. Reframe: Shift the Way You Work, Innovate, and Think. NP.
Quick Summary
Reframe contends that design is not about sketches or graphic layouts. How something looks matters, but it matters significantly less than how it functions. Function is the heart of design.
The purpose of design is to solve problems. As such, it needs to sit within the center of business, rather than being siloed in a “creatives” department. Business and creativity are not in competition with one another. Truthfully, they need each other.
At the heart of this book is the belief that any individual, or business, can become more creative and innovative. And that every business must, if they want to grow and thrive.
In the book, the author dives into the fears that block creativity, and offers practical techniques to overcome them. Many of the exercises can be applied without special training to improve trust, change perspective, and create a safe zone for experimenting. Even without the expert guidance of the author’s consulting practice, I predict these exercises will improve innovation immediately for companies willing to give them a try.
Key Takeaways
Leadership
If you are in a position of leadership or decision making, you are a designer. It is important to recognize and embrace the role. Design is less about how something looks, than about how it functions. The purpose of design is not to make the world pretty, but to identify, address, and resolve issues that make the world less useful for its inhabitants.
When you make decisions on behalf of your organization or lead your team, your underlying mission is to resolve the problems, issues, obstacles, or roadblocks that prevent your people from reaching their goals. There is a fine and important line between listening to stakeholders so you can understand their problems to build them real solutions and hearing their “requirements” so you can build what they think they want.
Designers need a kind of cognitive disassociation to hear and understand, while also staying innovative and uninfluenced. As a leader, you do too. The balance between the two can be pretty challenging. It helps to stay focused on the outcome desired — life without the problem.
Process Improvement
I love that the author expands the realm of design beyond visual or graphic art. Because everything within a business needs design. Indeed, everything in business is designed. It is either designed well with attention to detail and purpose…or it is haphazardly designed and is sloppy.
As the author makes clear, design is really just problem solving. So anywhere problems emerge, there is an opportunity for design. I spend my time deeply engrossed in process design and operational improvement, where poor design always make work needlessly difficult. If you have found yourself struggling with poorly designed workflows, implementing the ideas in this book will rapidly improve your business processes.
Good business processes are good design. They take time and effort but they create value and remove friction for the people who interact with your business.
Memorable Quotes
1️⃣
“Design is not just about how something looks. It includes the functional component of how something works and the emotional component of how it makes people feel. It is about finding barriers or pain points in an experience and attacking them to make things easy and simple for users.”
2️⃣
“Creative people are constantly questioning the things they see and experience: questioning assumptions, questioning authority, questioning reality, and questioning the status quo. But questions can be tricky. The way you ask a question can impact the answer you get.”
3️⃣
“Being busy is a choice but some people make it a state — a state that prevents the need to innovate”
4️⃣
“A big part of innovating is gathering information and understanding what users and customers actually need and want.”
5️⃣
“The ability to ideate, explore, identify, assess, pivot, and receive feedback is critical to innovation, regardless of whether it’s a big or small company.”
Final Thoughts
Everyone can be creative. Every leader must be.
Good design is about making everything a little bit better for the end user.
Learn more about Top of the Page
Thanks for reading! I am a self professed nerd who loves reading and learning. To me every book is a conversation. By the end of the conversation, I always have new ideas that I want to try. What are you reading?
