Design & Empathy

Design is getting a lot of attention lately and design strategy is one application of a greater movement known as design thinking. To provide an accurate definition I'll quote Tim Brown of IDEO.

"Design Thinking is a discipline that uses the designers sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity." 

More business leaders and educators are recognizing the necessity to utilize design as transformational force within organizations. Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management has written a book all about infusing design into business titled "The Design of Business".  Educational institutions such as  California College of the Arts and the Rotman School of Management are incorporating design education into their MBA programs.

What makes design a transformational force you ask?

The methods, techniques and skills involved in design tackle problems from a different perspective than say engineering or business.  As a broad generalization in business you ask questions like; are we building the "right" thing (i.e. will there be a market for this product)? In engineering you ask are we building the thing "right" (i.e. will the product live up to the rigors of use)?  Design asks questions like:

• what do people do?
• what do they struggle with?
• what do people want to do?
• what do they care about?
• what do they value and why?

Getting to the heart of these questions and designing great products to satisfy people requires empathy.  

What is empathy?  From wikipedia: "Empathy is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another being."  Empathy is absent from both the business and engineering as disciplines because they are both inwardly focused to address their own problems.  Design is outward facing by necessity.  Empathy allows a connection to form between another and ourselves; design requires it.  The tools of design are geared toward empathy.  

Tools of design fall into a few categories: Tools of Observation, Tools of Listening and Tools of Thinking. 

Tools of Observation

Tools of observation require that you locate people who could benefit from your product and observe their behavior.

• What do they do? 
• What difficulties are they having?
• What causes the difficulties?

Observation need not be in the physical sense a lot can be gleaned from observing actions online.  Cloud based software and social media allows for behavior to be observed remotely and pooled with the behaviors of other users. This field of analysis is emerging as a powerful observational tool. Observation helps a you to understand people by what they do.  Knowing peoples behavior, given a stimulus, helps to better understand them.

Tools of Listening

To listen requires that you engage with people in active conversation. Get people talking.  What do they want? What do they do now?  Why do they do behavior X (observed)? What do they struggle with? What do they think might help?  Excellent questions can be gleaned from the the earlier round of observational studies. 

Tools of Thinking

Tools of thinking allow you to extract meaning and patterns from what was observed and heard earlier.  Concepts and prototypes articulate those ideas into a tangible medium for discussion and feedback.  Concepts and prototypes can also be tested to evaluate whether ideas address the struggles of people.

Effective design creates what's known as a feedback loop. Observation leads to effective questions for listening.   The tools of thinking help interpret observation and listening into tangible concepts that can be used for further observation and listening. Making each round of design more precise towards a product people value.

So what makes design so transformational? The questions being asked in design are the crux of product success.  Developing empathy means a team cares about its users and will not want let them down. Empathy generated through design means a team can feel when their solution is on right track.  It is not to say the questions of business and engineering are ignored when delivering products, it is just that those questions only need to be answered once a solid vision of what provides value to people is discovered.  I'll leave the integration of business, engineering and design for yet another post.

Design and the Magic of Spirograph

When I was a boy my sisters were much better at drawing and art than I was.  I remember feeling frustrated and dejected by my lack of skill, until one Christmas discovering Spirograph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph  If you aren’t familiar with Spirograph it is a set of specially designed cogged wheels with holes for a pen that allows anyone to produce stunning symmetrical images by using the tools provided.  With a little practice and experimentation I was producing stunning images of color and symmetry.  By using different shaped cogs, pen positions and colors I was able to produce something slightly different each time. While not exactly the same as the free form drawings my sisters were producing I was proud of my new found skills and experimented with the kit extensively.  By using that kit, I development my confidence to experiment and practice other forms of art.

Fast forward to today where I work as an experience designer and design educator, I find myself thinking about ways to help teams streamline producing great products.  Wouldn’t it be great if there were a system like Spirograph that could allow teams to learn and gain confidence while producing exceptionally designed products?  A team could gain a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction like I did as a boy just by using a kit of tools to guide you like I did with Spirograph. 

Historically the only way to learn the tools and techniques of design was to enroll in a university program like industrial design, architecture or HCI or through years of practice and independent learning. Thankfully some specialty programs have arisen that teach the techniques of design for high tech. Programs like Stanford University’s d.school, Jon Kolko’s Austin Center for Design AC4D, Jared Spool’s Unicorn Institute are a few examples of programs that teach user research, interaction design and evaluation.  If you are planning to go to school to become a designer one of these programs is likely to be life changing. Given the opportunity I highly recommend formal education for anyone with the time and funds to enroll. While these education programs provide invaluable experiences for individuals lucky enough to enroll, what about a whole product team within a company?  How much impact can an individual with a design education have on a product team’s ability to understand and integrate design affectively?  

From my own experience producing an exceptional product is a team endeavor. Exceptional products are produced by teams who together care about all facets of their product together.  Business people, engineers and designers need to understand and respect the commitments and goals that each are responsible for, and work to harmonize their goals throughout the project.  From my experience I have noticed that design is the least understood within a corporate environment.  This leads designers to often be isolated from business people and engineers. Isolation causes significant friction when it comes to delivering products since the goals of business, design and engineering do not get harmonized.

I believe courses like the ones mentioned are a good first start towards design education but are ineffective at reducing friction and creating lasting change in an organization.  I believe that design is a team sport and the best products are produced by teams who practice “design” together.  To do that everyone on a product team needs to understand the fundamentals of design in order to play an effective role (and that goes also to understanding business and engineering).

To affect the lasting change a product team needs I use a different approach.  I work with product teams on their project to teach the fundamentals of design, to harmonize the goals of business, design and engineering which will reduce friction.  Using a curriculum of exercises specifically tailored for your situation your team must learn to design together using a real problem under a real deadline.  While most corporate education uses case studies that are artificial and “safe” (with a set of known answers); case studies may not be directly applicable to the problem your team faces.  By integrating design education into a project no time is lost and the outcome can be compared to previous projects.

I consider my approach to be a lot like Spirograph.  I provide guidance, training and mentoring for teams to learn the skills that produce great designs that build confidence together.  Much like the cogs in Spirograph my design exercises lead to effective outcomes a team can build on.

Drop me a line I’d love to chat about your team and your specific challenges.