Design Thinking and the Metaphors of Science
Posted: August 28, 2011 Filed under: complexity, design thinking | Tags: Andrea Yip, chemistry, complexity, design, developmental design, learning, science 3 Comments »
The Chemistry of Creation
There is a certain way in which things come together to create a successful design (or relationship) that is often chalked up to “chemistry”. But design chemistry could mean something both literal and evolving just like biological organisms if we take the concept to its fullest.
Metaphors are commonly used in tackling complex problems. The uniqueness of the situation, the level of detail of the manner by which the influencing factors coalesce, and the multidisciplinary ways of seeing the problem in the first place all present a problem of language, thus using oblique comparators can often fill the gap.
Science and mathematics have the advantage of being closer to ‘universal’ languages than many of the other forms of communication we share as a species (Leibniz’s ideas notwithstanding). They are less (not completely) influenced by cultural variations and local differences and can be shared globally. It is for this reason that the the prospect for a means of communicating concepts like design through science has appeal. As Andrea Yip has pointed out, design itself can be transformed into chemistry using the periodic table as a guide to serve as a more universal metaphor for understanding the way design thinking is experienced and practiced.
Chemistry is the study and creation of the bonds of the universe. More specifically, it is:
the science of matter, especially its properties, structure, composition, behavior, reactions, interactions and the changes it undergoes.
As a metaphor for design thinking it works beautifully. Through the Periodic Table of Design Thinking we see an attempt to lay out the properties of design thinking, map out the structure and explain their composition. Through practice and reflection we will see how these compounds play out in the design process.
Another scientific metaphor that takes up the charge from where chemistry leaves off is from developmental biology:
the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop
In the case of this metaphor, design thinking is the organism. Just as an organism, made of chemical compounds interacting over time, evolves, so too does the design process and the thinking that comes with it. In this case, metaphors like those proposed by Ms Yip and the concept of developmental design fit harmoniously.
Designing for and with complexity requires attention to a dynamism that can be lost if one takes the approach that product development happens at only stage of its life cycle. For many products this might be appropriate, but it falls short when we describe social design issues such as creating policies or social programs such as those found in health and education. I’ve referred to this concept as developmental design. Developmental design, like developmental evaluation, implies an evolved, dynamic approach to generating knowledge or outcomes and while I only loosely conceived of it in a way that matched developmental biology, it may be time to revisit that more intently. Designing developmentally means working through the design process on an ongoing basis, like perpetual beta in the software industry. It means evolving strategies for adaptation rather than solving problems because true solutions to wicked problems are often more dream than reality.
Taking the chemistry metaphor, it means that the ingredients, dosage and combinatorial mixes change over time in the production of a new compound or design. They may require catalysts — such as the inclusion of new perspectives or a particular discipline — to provoke certain reactions and move ideas into new space. It may also involve the same type of intervention from the designer to bring these chemicals to life. The chemist is not removed from her creation.
All of these are metaphors, yet they provide us with a means of taking the messiness of the language, something discussed in previous posts, to a new place until we can find the language that is most appropriate. Until that time, science might offer one of the better means of conveying design, complexity and the creativity that comes when we apply them both to generating products and services.
Photo Chemistry! by matfred used under Creative Commons Licence from Flickr.
The Science of Design Thinking
Posted: August 27, 2011 Filed under: art & design, design thinking | Tags: Andrea Yip, Buckminster Fuller, design, design science, design thinking, health promotion, Nigel Cross, periodic table of design., science, visualization 10 Comments »My colleague and design collaborator has proposed a way of viewing design thinking as something akin to a periodic table of elements. Beyond just posing a brilliant way of explicating and organizing the multiple facets of design thinking, Andrea Yip has shown the world that there is much we can learn from science, visualization and how they both apply to design.
Last weekend a group of design thinkers got together to discuss the concept of design thinking and what it means. The conference, summarized in another post, explored the language of design thinking, the need for visual thinking, and the importance of understanding the context of design and design thinking.
While this was going on in Vancouver, another designer (my colleague, Andrea Yip) was back in Toronto taking these same ideas independently and transforming them into an organizational structure that should create much room for thought among those interested in design thinking. The model she has developed is one not based on areas that are familiar to design – architecture, art, graphic design, business strategy, or engineering — but science.
Designers often speak of a need for multidisciplinarity in their work. While laudable, this commonly refers to the inclusion of multiple perspectives on a design problems from within the broad field of design. It is indeed rare to find such multidisciplinary teams comprised of scientists. Andrea has turned that upside down by proposing a model of design thinking based on the periodic table of elements. The table, shown below, is a first draft, but a highly sophisticated one and something that ought to be taken seriously.
Periodic Table of Design (version 1.0) by Andrea L. Yip on DrawedIt
By using the structure and format of a bedrock of science, Andrea has shown that there are ways of thinking about design that transcend the boundaries that we often unconsciously bind around it. This new model inverses the terms posed by the creative arts or the applied disciplines of engineering or architecture, each that have made enormous contributions to the field, yet all rely on a level of subjectivity, and replaces them with a model based on a more universal language: science.
Science and design are uneasy partners. Some, like Nigel Cross, have pointed to the challenges with the use of terms design science and the science of design, while others, like Buckminster Fuller, use the term design and science in ways that are open to challenge from those who identify as practicing scientists. Ms Yip, a designer trained in science (biology) and social science (health promotion) fields, sees things in ways that transcend these perspectives to propose using science as a guide to inform the way we understand design.
In doing so, she provides a bridge between the worlds of science, with its emphasis on evidence and strict adherence to protocols, and design, with its flexible, rapidly evolving, yet often non-specific methods. Indeed, Andrea’s blog showcases many examples of how design and fields like health promotion fit together and differ. It is time for both designers and scientists to listen more intently to this conversation.
By using methods, theories, analogies and conceptual models that extend our thinking beyond the realm of conventional design and science, we offer opportunities to make things better — and in doing so shape our world for the greatest benefit for us all.
Andrea’s blog is called Drawed and can be visited at: http://drawedit.wordpress.com/ . She welcomes feedback on her ideas.
And if the Periodic Table of Design is not enough, Andrea’s also developed a prototype set of trading cards based on the table for those more inclined to school-yard forms of collaborating around design that are also up on her blog.
For more dialogue on design thinking, stay tuned to this space and the Twitter feed @d_bracket for the upcoming launch of the Design Thinking Foundations project and corresponding site. And wouldn’t you know? Andrea Yip is the coordinator of that project.
Design Thinking: Reflections on an Unconference
Posted: August 21, 2011 Filed under: design thinking | Tags: complexity, design thinking, innovation, language, unconference, Vancouver, wicked problems 6 Comments »
Reflections on the Language and Process of Design Thinking
From August 19-20th, dozens of design-oriented people from different backgrounds came together in Vancouver to meet and discuss the concept of design thinking: its meaning, its application, and its future. These are some reflections on what I took away from the two day event.
Design thinking is becoming a hot topic — or term — and while there are those who argue that it has jumped the shark (i.e., outshone its utility and over-reached — see Bruce Nussbaum’s thoughts on this) the past two days showed how clearly this is not the case.
A cluster of passionate people from various worlds of design, architecture, education, business consulting and even public health came together to listen to examples of how design thinking is being applied and conceived of (day 1) and work through the issues in small discussion through an unconference (day 2).
Throughout the two days a few patterns emerged from the Design Thinking Unconference 2011, which I will summarize here.
1. The language of design thinking is ripe for evolution. Bruce Nussbaum aside, there has been much written on the concern with the term “design thinking”, most notably that it focuses on thought and cognition and not action, which is what design is also about. Rather than re-ignite this discussion, a more interesting turn was initiated by Sudhir Desai, an innovation strategist based in Cambridge, MA, who noted the problem of using terms that were intended for something else to mean what we mean with design thinking. Quoting the work of Management scholar and pracititioner Dave Snowden (of Cognitive Edge):
We cannot use the same words to describe our solution with those used to define the problem
Through his brief presentation on Friday and the unconference session he convened Saturday, Sudhir succeeded in inspiring dialogue on whether we need a new term altogether — something that might not even be one that we know of at present. Terms like ‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’ were thrown out, but they met with criticisms and a sense of dissatisfaction. No viable term was proposed, but the seeds for a contemplative discussion on what that should be, whether we need one, and what the challenges of language are for design thinkers was made clear.
2. Design thinking and design tools are not the same thing. Another strong theme was a railing against the popular held notion that design thinking is all about what it does. This is another twist on the argument about design + thinking, but one that instead focuses on the way of approaching problems, not just the tools to solve them. Although there was much interest in tools and strategies, there was also agreement that design thinking is about practice, a way of approaching problems, and manners by which tools and strategies bring them together as a whole, not as a series of parts.
Which brings me to the next point…
3. Design thinking is (very often) systems thinking. This is something I noted even if it wasn’t made as prominently explicit among the discussions. Design thinkers might be one of the best groups I’ve been associated with at systems thinking; that is part of what they do. Whether it was something about this group or something about the discussions that took place, there was a real, palpable sense of looking to the past, the present and future of any design project and exploring the wider system of where design takes place. On Friday, Trevor Boddy, a Vancouver urbanist and author (PDF), took a group out on a walking tour of the city to show how the landscape was changed and transformed over time through a series of successive steps and interconnected actors and policies. This way of seeing Vancouver permeated through the ways in which the attendees saw their issues as part of systems, not just isolated activities.
4. Context is everything/designers have to be excellent listeners. The resistance to the idea that there is a recipe — something that many attendees voiced wanting to get at the start of the two-day event — for design thinking was made visible and loud. Context counts more than almost anything else and designers cannot succeed with cookbook strategies to generate solutions to design problems. Context, context, context was plastered all over the place during the summary session yesterday after the unconference.
At the same time, there was a quieter, but equally powerful push for designers to be good — indeed great — listeners.
The need for design thinkers to engage in deep, contemplative listening was something that permeated a lot of the sessions at the unconference that I was a part of (and not necessarily because I brought it up). The challenges and ironies associated with deeper listening were also noted as many noted that there is such a push, particularly for those working in corporate environments, to do more and do it faster instead of slow down and think. To this end, I am reminded of the work of Ezio Manzini and his push towards a culture of slow in support of sustainable social innovation and the work of the Centre for Contemplative Mind in Society who work to promote mindfulness in academia and education.
As we wish to speed innovation, sometimes slowing down is the way to go faster.
5. Design thinking is best done visually. Visual communication — sketching, digital rendering, mock-ups, art in various forms — was presented repeatedly as a means of conveying the complexity of the information that is often generated from tackling the problems design is called on to address (see below). Thankfully, a room filled with creatives generated a lot of visual media to support ideation and synthesis. Sketching on notepads and craft paper, model building (literally, with fruit and food sometimes!), and graphical presentations featured prominently in the conference; not by design, but by necessity. Building on the points raised earlier, it was evident how challenging our current language is in describing design problems and situations. I’ve elaborated on this in previous posts, but these two days only served to strengthen my conviction that we need more creative means of expression introduced into our work and people who can render ideas in visual forms on our teams.
6. Design thinking is wicked. The conference began with a discussion of the wicked problems that designers are frequently employed to tackle and over two days it was obvious that not only are the problems wicked, so too are the design thinkers involved in those problems. By wicked the reference is to a set of conditions that are unstable, non-directional, dynamic, context-sensitive, and in need of diverse, coordinated, flexible responses. This is design thinking to a tee.
To paraphrase the great Winston Churchill:
This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.
Much more will come in the months ahead and the networks forged and extended because of this event, for which I am grateful for the opportunity to attend, will advance and so too will the ideas for what is design thinking. For readers interested in engaging in this discussion and learning more, check out the Design Thinking LinkedIn group that is the hub and the source for this entire two-day event.
Design for Social Norms or Social Change?
Posted: August 6, 2011 Filed under: behaviour change, design thinking, health promotion, systems thinking | Tags: complexity, creativity, danah boyd, design, emergence, health inequity, health promotion, Keith Sawyer, social change, social design, social justice, Social media Leave a comment »
Social change or social norm?
Designing for how people live is part of good design practice, but what about designing for the way people could be? What does it mean to design for social norms and what role does design have in changing them?
Media scholar and youth researcher danah boyd recently wrote on the need for designers to consider social norms as part of their media creations. The post received a lot of attention in the mediasphere and came on the heels of another interesting post by Keith Sawyer on Chinese social norms and the Tiger Mom phenomenon (that I also wrote on a while back). Returning to boyd’s argument, she makes the case that designers don’t dictate the behaviour of people in the systems they create, the people tthemselves do:
Social norms aren’t designed into the system. They don’t emerge by telling people how they should behave. And they don’t necessarily follow market logic. Social norms emerge as people – dare we say “users” – work out how a technology makes sense and fits into their lives. Social norms take hold as people bring their own personal values and beliefs to a system and help frame how future users can understand the system. And just as “first impressions matter” for social interactions, I cannot underestimate the importance of early adopters. Early adopters configure the technology in critical ways and they play a central role in shaping the social norms that surround a particular system.
What boyd is arguing (using my words and concepts from complexity science) is that emergence and path dependency shape design’s manifestation in the social realm. In technology-oriented systems, the ‘early adopters’ are the ones who set the stage for how the next wave of users interact with the system and boyd points to examples from Friendster about how attempts to control its community helped drive people away from the site (ultimately leading to its demise).
People don’t like to be configured. They don’t like to be forcibly told how they should use a service. They don’t want to be told to behave like the designers intended them to be. Heavy-handed policies don’t make for good behavior; they make for pissed off users.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t design to encourage certain behaviors. Of course you should. The whole point of design is to help create an environment where people engage in the most fruitful and healthy way possible. But designing a system to encourage the growth of healthy social norms is fundamentally different than coming in and forcefully telling people how they must behave. No one likes being spanked, especially not a crowd of opinionated adults.
The focus here is more on social media and online spaces, but the argument could be made for the same thing in social design. But unlike information technology, which favours a very particular group of people, social design has the potential to intentionally engage specific populations. Using boyd’s argument, one might assert that much of the technology we use from Foursquare to Instagram to the iPhone itself is shaped by the under-40 set of educated, middle class, largely white male hipster knowledge workers as they are typically the earliest visible adopters for such technologies (even if that is changing) .
In this model those with the most power, privilege and social capital at the outset greatly determine what comes next. This might be OK for technology, but is highly problematic for social justice and social inequities. A health promoting social design has the potential to change this by seeding that early adoption cycle with different people with potentially different values to shape outcomes not defined by a narrow set of social groups.
Keith Sawyer’s article points to the social norming around Chinese parenting (as defined through Amy Chua’s Tiger Mom) and how it clashes with a particular type of parenting model that dominates in the United States and our ideas of creativity. In describing his reaction to a recent review of Chua’s book and its contents, Sawyer points to the unease it creates in him when comparing norms and what it means for creativity and innovation:
I ought to be lined up with all of the horrified American parents who hate this book. But I just can’t side with them on this one. Creativity is hard work, and you don’t get creativity without paying your dues. No one magically learns how to play piano or violin (I’m reminded of the old joke: “Do you play the violin?” “I don’t know, I haven’t tried it yet.”) And as Amy Chua points out, there’s nothing like the joy that comes from being able to do something well, knowing that you earned it with hours, months, and years of hard work. As a child, I took piano lessons for eight years, and now thirty years later it’s a major source of joy in my life.
Chua’s parenting is an issue because it doesn’t fit with the dominant social norms, just as the self-esteem-at-all-cost approach that Sawyer rightly exposes as problematic in its own right would be in China.
These are designed systems. Just as we create path dependencies for one set of values, so too can we do the same for others and with other people. The focus on the outcomes of systems rather than their design is problematic if we want change. Starting with design and values at the outset, being conscious of who we invite in and how we engage them and by remaining contemplative about how these systems unfold and the emergent patterns that shape them, designers of all stripes may be better positioned to create social change rather than just for social norms.
Health for Design
Posted: July 14, 2011 Filed under: design thinking, health promotion | Tags: conference, design, design thinking, health Leave a comment »The Design4Health conference is on this week bringing together designers from different fields together with health policy, practice and research professionals. While the focus is on the relationship between design and health, it is also inspiring thoughts of how health itself is designed.
This week the first Design4Health conference is being held in Sheffield, UK. The conference attendees includes designers looking at interactions, service, interiors, architecture, fashion, and industrial areas of design. Mixed with is group are physicians, physiotherapists, psychologists sociologists, health promotion practitioners, artists, and policy researchers. This mix represents much of what makes the design and health intersection so exciting, but also the (somewhat) predictable “Tower of Babel” with many disciplines working to be understood by the others.
The language issues have been relatively minor, but on one level the more complicated area of confusion is not where one might guess (the application of design to health issues), but rather the understanding of health itself relative to design.
To illustrate, much has been presented on the way design has re-fashioned devices for those with some form of physical disability. From wheelchair designs that are aesthetically pleasing and light to female portable urinals to address issues of incontinence and the social issues women face trying to relieve themselves in non-toiletted spaces, the products being discussed have shown what some design thinking can do to potentially improve people’s lives. But what if those lives don’t need improvement in the way we think?
Consider the language of health in popular use, which focuses on the ability to control conditions and both be free of physical discomfort and mental stress. These are deficit-oriented models that focus on what must be absent or is undesirable, rather than what a person does with their life and their capabilities to act on their values and interests. What if we viewed health differently?
Further, what happens to design when we focus it’s talents on alleviating pain and discomfort as defined by some standard that is both ideal and unattainable at the expense of promoting personal wellness as defined by the person living their life? What we’ve not talked about is the idea that someone with a substandard medical device might have creative ways to live a life where the sub-standard product becomes nearly invisible. This is not to suggest that we lower the bar, but it does beg the question why we are so focused on ‘problems’ of a particular perceived nature and not opportunities?
We also seem to be poor at reflecting the diversity in the public and their relationship to their bodies, minds and lives that we embrace in our attendance at our conferences. Just as we come from different disciplines, so too do people’s sense of what is a ‘problem’ and what contribution design has to addressing that problem. This is about designing health, not the design for health.
The Design of Health
Posted: June 24, 2011 Filed under: design thinking, health promotion, innovation | Tags: design, health, health promotion, innovation, public health, social innovation Leave a comment »
The Pulse of Health Promotion & Design is Different
Design and health promotion have a great deal in common and enough to complement one another that makes them a great match. However, it is the scale and rhythm of the two that brings them together and keeps them apart.
Although the two fields are distinct, design and health promotion are a natural fit. Health promotion is a field that seeks to address social, environmental and care-related factors that keep people well and reduce the resource gap between those that have good health and those that do not.
Designers seek to develop products — objects, services, structures — that meet the needs of their client and, in the cases of social design, the larger society that they are a part of.
Both fields operate systems thinking environments and consider the opportunities for engagement of wide-scale participation in the creation of their products. But where the two fields differ is where the greatest opportunity for collaboration lies.
Health promoters — and health professionals in general — are not great designers. While they are good at engaging the community in assessing need and opportunity, there is a bias in the sector to looking to what is to inspire what could be. This means drawing on current evidence and spending considerable time defining the issue at hand in the first place in light of this. Health promoters are adept theorists and practitioners, however the theories used are often contested and widely debated — something health promoters embrace. The risk for health promotion is that they will use the solutions already developed or they will get mired in debate over the meaning of potential solutions to come.
Designers on the other hand are great dreamers and doers when it comes to creating things that are novel. Designers are comfortable with working with conflicting information and abductive reasoning to solve problems before them. And then they move on. Design’s focus on the here and now for the product or service gives them focus, but loses the thinking about the wider implications of their product – something that keeps health promotion in debate.
There are exceptions to the examples provided above, but they are exceptions and not the rule.
In a health context, designers systems think about the way their product is established, where health promoters think about the values that underpin that product and the wider implications for its use beyond its creation. Bringing these two fields together provides an opportunity to make health promotion more innovative and action-oriented and design more evidence-based and socially responsive.
The social challenges from chronic disease, environmental threats, social migration, aging populations, economic disparities, and a more globalized, multicultural world require strategies that bring the best ideas to the table, strategies to realize them, and values that make these actions more equitable for everyone. Health promotion + design is one way to achieve this.
Gaming the Health System for Innovation and Change
Posted: June 10, 2011 Filed under: art & design, design thinking, innovation | Tags: collaboration, design, gaming, health, innovation, research, serious games Leave a comment »Yesterday I attended the Cure4Kids Global Health Summit at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The three day event (continuing for the next two days) aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and clinicians working on issues of importance to child and youth health — including an emphasis on the role of engaging young people. Of the many presentations and conversations that were had on the first day of the event, the ones that struck me the most were on the potential of games and gaming to engage people and promote literacy.
Games are entered into voluntarily and allow for natural collaboration, creative exploration, and constant, developmental learning.
Developing serious games for health often requires artists, designers, users, engineers, social scientists, educators and health professionals working collaboratively so it provides a natural laboratory for design research and studies on participatory engagement on health issues.
But what excited me the most was seeing how games were being developed through games themselves. Small competitions, limited budgets and compressed timelines along with mentorship produced some amazing results (which will be discussed in a later post).
Watching it all, it opened my eyes to how gaming — the games and the process of creating the game itself – could offer so much to learning about innovation, discovery and collaboration.
The Momentum Problem in Developmental Design and Evaluation
Posted: June 2, 2011 Filed under: complexity, design thinking, evaluation, innovation, systems thinking 1 Comment »
Setting a pace and keeping speed
Developmental projects evolve at a pace that suits them, but what happens when the speed and pattern of this process collide with the other projects in life?
The concept of developmental evaluation and developmental design resonate with a lot of people working in social innovation, public health, and international programming. The reason is that, despite the wealth of planning frameworks available and the logic that is embedded within them, the world doesn’t really work according to plan.
As Colin Powell once said (paraphrasing another famous military leader):
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy
While we may accept this as common and expected among our programs, it doesn’t make adapting to these circumstances any easier. And, true to complexity, the more elements added to this mix, the more unpredictable and non-linear things get.
For developmental evaluators, this non-linearity and complexity is part of the job, but when you’re working on multiple projects, that job becomes more challenging to do. When you are a program manager responsible for budgets, ensuring that you have the right staff, accounting for the delays and system dynamics associated with your program delivery is an enormous undertaking and can by itself shape the program that is actually delivered. One can’t justify keeping a staff member on to wait for things to happen; most of the time that person is found other things to do in the interim. However, those “other things” lead to a fragmented attention on what is going on with the program.
Multiply this by manyfold, and you have a truly complex problem affecting a complex program.
What does this mean for a developmental design and evaluation? My motivation for writing this post is to solicit ideas and stories about this problem set and explore some potential solutions. While I personally struggle to maintain the focus and momentum on projects that have extended lags, unpredictable or spontaneous patterns of activity, I know that many of those lags are partly affected by those running the programs having other things on their plate. Its a compounding problem. One person experiences a delay, occupies time with other things that take them away from the project, which create further delays with other elements of the program and so on.
From a design standpoint, this is less problematic. These delays can spur creative reflection and action towards generating a product if the time away from action is used for such mindful attending to ideas.
For developmental evaluation, this is slightly more problematic as the event-process-effect links that we seek to connect together become harder to disentangle. Non-linearity doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as cause and effect. It is just that there are consequences arising from events that are nearly impossible to trace back to a single “cause” (which may not exist), but nonetheless, something does happen that sparks other things. The more one can attend to such things, the better quality the evaluation.
Yet, I argue that the very complexity of the programs require more not less attention when doing evaluation lest we become simple storytellers. We offer more than that. But to do that well requires a sustained level of attention to the dynamics and what we might call paying attention to the silences to glean lessons from non-action that might have significant impact on our programs. This also requires not “filling the time” when things are quiet, but remaining active. Anyone who practices mindfulness meditation knows that non-doing requires a lot of work!
This sounds nice, but how practical is it? And how do we set benchmarks of sort to evaluate the silences and justify such active work in times of quiet? Or do we simply ride momentum like others and hope that we can pick things up when the momentum is high?
Photo Speed of Sound by Ana Patricia Almeida used under Creative Commons License from Flickr
The Lies Told By Innovation
Posted: May 11, 2011 Filed under: behaviour change, design thinking, environment, systems thinking | Tags: Calgary, environment, innovation, systems thinking, Toronto Leave a comment »
You Can Build It, They Will Come, But Can it Last?
Being innovative requires a sense of the system that innovation takes place and the design sensibilities to make change last. Are we letting innovation lie to us?
I’ve been on the road much of the past three weeks and one stop I was very glad to make was to my hometown of Calgary, Alberta.
The city is nestled in the Alberta foothills with a view of the Rocky Mountains and an hour’s drive from some of the most beautiful prairie, mountain, and river-filled countryside you’ll find. The city I grew up in has been widely known as an innovator, particularly on issues of the environment. It’s light-rail transit system is powered by wind-generated electricity. Everywhere, there were examples of innovative technologies and conversations about innovation in the news and visible as one drives through the city. Calgary’s vigorous culture of outdoor activity, the natural beauty of the Bow Valley combined with a historical connection to land for food and lifestyle has made it hard to ignore the role of the natural environment in everyday life.
And yet, driving through this city — one that has nearly tripled in size since I was born there — it is hard to not see the innovation forest and trees disconnect. Yes, there are waste diversion programs and hybrid cars and more transit, but the city continues to grow (literally) well beyond its traditional borders into territory that was once farmland with barely an eyeshot of the city. I’ve always known Calgary as a physically large urban centre, but the rampant push towards making more suburbs seems at odds with the desire for a liveable, environmentally responsible city.
Calgary is not alone. As I fly to my home in Toronto, the same conversations are taking place and there, like out West, there is the belief that innovation will save the day. As fuel prices spike as they have over the past few days (and reasonably can’t be expected to lower much anytime soon), I find it hard to imagine how innovation is going to reduce costs and impact for people in the short term.
Whether it is on the issue of the environment, improved knowledge translation in health, or better social design for services, innovation can be seen as the answer. If we just come up with the best idea, the thinking goes, we will be able to solve anything. We are creative people, we can do it.
I actually think this is the lie we tell ourselves to avoid going where real innovation is needed and that is: personal and social change. Without a systems approach and a design for those systems, we will continue to ride our horse (to pick up a Calgary stereotype) in the wrong direction. More clever ways to reduce the impact of our lives on the environment doesn’t change that we’ve created systems that pollute and damage the environment in the first place by design.
Creating sophisticated knowledge translation systems aimed at getting the “right information to the right person as the right time” sounds sexy, but doesn’t work unless there is a system designed to support people in accessing that information when they need it and having the time and space to process that information to make meaning of it. Otherwise, we are just shovelling bits at people and making ourselves feel better because we developed something that, on the surface, looks good, but in reality doesn’t address the bigger picture.
If the forest and trees are part of the natural environment, then we need to consider them both at the same time — literally and metaphorically — in the systems we work in and do so with intent (design) otherwise we will continue to perpetuate the lies that innovation allows us to tell ourselves so well.
*** Photo Calgary Dusk Skyline by fung.leo used under Creative Commons License from Flickr
What If Research Was Like the Restaurant Industry?
Posted: April 25, 2011 Filed under: design thinking, research | Tags: communication, knowledge translation, marketing, research, restaurant, universities 6 Comments »
A model for research?
Spend some time engaging with the service industry reveals a stark gap between what they do to deliver a product that satisfies and what research does and maybe there are lessons to learned for those of us in the scientific world.
I’ve recently had the privilege to spend a week in the Sonoma and Napa Valley areas of Northern California. If there ever was a place devoted to food and drink, it is this part of the world.
Spending time sampling wine and exotic locally produced, handcrafted foods, beyond being enjoyable, also raises awareness of the craftsmanship that goes into a good drink or meal. From the way a food is grown or raised, prepared, delivered and consumed, it is hard not to appreciate the amount of effort that goes into making that meal a good one. Add in the restaurant, its ambiance, design, and the people there to serve the food to you and soon you are prepared to say “thanks” before every meal whether you are religious or not.
Sitting at a table looking at all that was around me, I couldn’t help but notice the finer details of my experience and wonder about why we have no equivalent in research. Whether it was the texture of the linen table cloth, the arrangement of flowers on the table across from me, the blown-glass lantern and flickering light it produced on my table, to the smell of the food, its temperature, its presentation and, of course, the taste. What about the cadence of the service? How about the way that the server introduced the menu and commented on the options for pairing a wine with each course? Restauranteurs create experiences and products and work to make sure that they are matched to what I want and how I want it now.
In research, we spend at least as much time thinking about how to produce a product that is worthwhile as farmers, ranchers, and vintners do, yet once created we do comparatively little to further develop a worthwhile experience for our end user — if we think about them at all. When was the last time a researcher — or knowledge producer (it could be a clinican sharing their knowledge — helped you to gain a deep appreciation of what they had to offer by working with where you were and what you kind of experience you were looking for?
I can say confidently that this has never happened to me. And why shouldn’t it have? Or better yet: why haven’t I done it for my audiences?
Anticipating some answers that others might give, I offer a back and forth / Q & A:
1. Position: That is not a researcher’s job. We are trained to do research, not sell ideas.
Response: Times change. I can’t think of another role, job or position that doesn’t have to adapt to changing times and where there is no accountability for the outcomes of that job to someone else. I am not suggesting that a researcher, particularly those doing more basic/foundational research, will, can or should know the myriad possible applications of that research, but the idea that they ought not have thought of some possible, eventual application is problematic. I have heard time and again that such applied thinking undermines discovery, but there is no evidence that this is the case, nor does it seem reasonable when those who pay the bills are the public. Even a discovery that makes it easier to make further discoveries is an application of translational thinking and it is time to change.
2. Position: Others don’t understand my research; it’s too complicated to explain.
Response: Any service organization that is unable to explain its purpose goes out of business. There are a lot of ideas that seemed complicated at first, but became easier to grasp once those offering such services reached out. Investing and mutual funds are two examples of complicated business models that have gained widespread purchase. Nearly every concept can be broken into pieces that can be understood by someone else. For a great example, look at the Academic Minute program on WAMC Radio where academics take one minute to share their research with the world. It can be done.
3. Position: The time I spend selling my ideas takes away from generating knowledge. I will be far less effective if I have to do one more thing.
Response: This might be true, but that is only if a researcher does all her or his own knowledge translation and communication. The service industry uses many models. Great chefs aren’t always out on the street wearing a sandwich board trying to convince you to eat at their restaurant, or romancing a dish at your table, there are specific roles that do that. But a great chef is always prepared to play that role if needed and at many great restaurants, the manager or chef surveys what is going on in the front and back of the house to make sure things are going well. In research, we don’t do this much at all. We produce knowledge and maybe share it with other producers, spending little time with other audiences and even less wondering whether we produced the right kind of research for the. There are some models that are promising, like the knowledge broker , who can play the role of the sommelier for research , but like restaurants that have a role like this for wine, they only work when the system is in place to use those talents well. The analogy here is that there needs to be the right stock of research, the right options for using it, and a mechanism to connect the knowledge broker to the audience.
4. Position: Selling research cheapens it and makes it like a commodity and it is so much more than that.
Response: If you don’t think that there isn’t some commodification of knowledge, then maybe you need to consider what is happening to academia and the trends in research, education and publishing. Louis Menand‘s great historical review of the North American university views the battle for ideas as a marketplace shows that this isn’t even a new phenomenon, rather its just looking different than it did before. He has gone further to discuss the problem with PhD’s, echoing recent work published in the Economist on the disposable academic, pointing to the commodification and professionalization of academia. Researchers may like to imagine that their ideas and work are pure, but the reason we get funding is that someone is interested in what we do for reasons that go beyond reason and science and into passion and some acknowledgement that something will be better because we ask the question. Yes, knowledge is greater than just its application, but we must acknowledge than we compete for attention and that when people pay attention to what we do, we have greater impact than if they don’t.
5. Position: There is no support for this kind of selling of research.
Response: Have you looked at the Internet? Walked into a bookstore? Perhaps turned on the TV? There is research being used all the time. Do the major grant councils pay for this? Not always. But times change (see point #1). The idea that knowledge translation should be funded by grantors is new in itself and will evolve. We need to evolve with it and, if it is not supported, do it anyway. Tweet, blog, share. There is too much information available out there to not be active in its promotion or use, otherwise our intended audiences will choose to use something else.
Restauranteurs know this. They know that no matter how good they are, there are hungry (literally!) customers and competitors who will walk down the street to another place. A Michelin star or Zagat rating this year doesn’t mean that you’ll be successful next year.
Take a moment and envision what research could look like if we handcrafted it to meet the needs of our audience, still taking the time to create art like great chefs, warm our day like a host, and treat us like royalty like a great server. What might that look like and why should we not take some queues from the diners we visit and the restaurants we visit as models for a tasty future for knowledge generation and translation.
Making our customers feel good about our product
** Photo Waitress at Il Folletto by boocal used under Creative Commons License from Flickr
** Photo Sandwich Board by zappowbang used under Creative Commons License from Flickr
