Day 83: On Design Thinking Part 5: The Power of Diversity

In my previous blog On Design Thinking Part 1: The Gist, I have outlined the three key ideas of design thinking. Let’s recap in these timeless words:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” — Henry Ford who, as we know, did not create a faster horse, but a car;

“Imagine if this building will become the prototype of every building of its kind, what should it be like?” (I obviously paraphrase the architect Louis I. Kahn’s here). Kahn argues that relying on the existing precedents don’t lead to great design, or what he calls, a “thoughtful making of space” (also, simply put by Black Panther) “Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved”); and, finally,

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful” — John Maeda, the author of The Laws of Simplicity, in which he obviously argues that more is not more, and less is not more, unless the less is full of the meaningful (think about it for a moment — it’s important).

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) President John Maeda and the author of The Laws of Simplicity.

So, how do we bring all of this together.

Based on my years of working with creative minds, the solution is simple: Diversify. That is, the more you can get people who have other ways of seeing involved, the more you can come up with better strategies to enhance your competitive advantage.

So, here’re the practical solutions.

First, when starting a project, form a group that consist of people from, at least, three different disciplines. Of course, for example, to design and build a house you’d need an architect, a civil engineer, and electrical engineer and so on. But these disciplines are not considered as diverse — as they’re all “technical.” They’re the defenders of practicality. Now, imagine if you could get an artist who could conceptual the mass, volume, dynamics, and quality of the interior space. Imagine if you could get a writer who understands where best to put a desk. Imagine if you could get a chef who would know very well the essential circulation of a kitchen. These are “experts” in their own light who can help you to form a different way of thinking about a house. Now, if you imagine something less concrete, say you would like to re-write a policy, regulation, rule, or something.

“If you only have a hammer as a tool, you’ll see everything as a nail,” the old saying goes. Your policy, rule, and regulation will likely to be one-sided if you think alone. One time behavioral psychologists only think of behavioral change in terms of punishment and reward: give people what they want when they do the right thing and punish them when they don’t. Maybe you’ll come up with this similar “punishment-and-reward” scheme to get people to do things that you deem appropriate, but what if “nudging” — or motivating the right behavior by ways of cognitive psychology — is another option that is simply more effective both in terms of behavioral change and cost?

Second, show your project idea to a child. This might sound absurd but believe me you’ll learn something rather intriguing. The executive of a world’s famous design consultancy IDEO Tom Kelly also writes in The Ten Faces of Innovation that one of the secrets of the firm’s success is how they constantly test out their fun prototypes with curious kids. One of the things that I always learn from kids are how much what I see in the world as “truth” are simply my own “attitude.”

Again, the former cannot be changed, but the latter is all up for grabs. My little cousin, who will turned 12 this year, for instance, is amazing at giving me interesting advice based on:

1. Simplicity:My little cousin though can easily be pleased sometime with the most basic things, she dislikes complicated things. The more complicated things are, the more she’s likely to be bored by;
2. Imagination: She can conjure up a lot of interesting ideas that have yet to be confined by our adult’s experience;
3. Fun: My cousin would not engage in anything that is not fun. So, she’s trying to make everything fun (including studying). So, when testing my idea on anything with her, I need to make sure that whatever I propose will give both the meaning and playfulness to those involved in the process; and,
4. Elevator pitch: My sister doesn’t have a lot of patience. So, if I can’t get my idea across to attract her attention within 15 seconds, her mind would have wondered elsewhere and that I would have to buy her an ice-cream to get her back.

Third, before brainstorm, “brainwrite.” There have been many research that show many detrimental aspects of brainstorming, even at some of the world’s most famous creative agencies.

The problem of brainstorming is the problem of human’s survival, namely “social proof,” “appeal to authority,” and sometimes, simply, “the loudest get to lead.”

We tend to be “intimated” by ideas that (may not be as good, but somehow) garner a lot of support from other people. We tend to want to lay low when our idea is that of the minority’s. Most of all, we tend to not wanting to risk if the ideas that are being discussed belong to the authority and superior. We haven’t even taken into account here the gender, age, and social class dimensions, let alone implicit biases on race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Many times I find myself in a situation whereby I have something to say, but everyone else seems to have formed a stronger opinion on something else so I don’t dare to say anything else that will contradict such an already-established opinion. This is especially the case when these brainstorm sessions are conducted in the languages that I am not good at, and among those whose socioeconomic statuses are higher than mine. All of these make voicing one’s ideas very very difficult in a brainstorm session.

All of these are enemies of creativity. So, to get some creative ideas to come out, we must eliminate all of these fertile grounds of miss opportunity for creativity (i.e., “mis-creativity). We must not let what the psychologist Robert B. Caildini calls “social proof,” and “appeal to authority” get in the way. In one instance during which I was asked by a CEO of a start-up to help him build his new company, he says that the biggest problem of his company is that:

Even though I have tried to eliminate hierarchy in my company (e.g., by eliminating dress code, everyone including the CEO rotates hot desks, nick-names only workplace, etc.), it still seems as though no one wants to speak up about their fresh and great ideas.

It’s like we have to wait until the New Year’s party that some of these great ideas are heard — but in a form of, “Today is the end of the year, for the past 365 days of this year I had been having this great idea but I didn’t think it was good enough so I had kept it to myself.” And that’s not helping. It’s bad for the company when great ideas are kept to the employees themselves. How can we enable these great ideas to come out all the time?

The suggestion here is get the team to write their ideas on post-it notes — and the same rules for brainstorm, which is to go for quantity and not quality, must apply here. Since nobody has heard anyone else’s ideas yet, this “brainwriting” process will incubate individual’s ideas without any external influence.

Brainwriting also helps the manager or anyone in charge of the creative process to gauge the diversity of the team as well as the potential of the team dynamic.