Design 2.0: Diego Rodriguez
Introducing our first speaker: Diego Rodriguez. Diego is a professor at the D-School and works at IDEO. He also writes the design blog Metacool. You may remember me writing about his Creating Infectious Action conference a few weeks back.
The Aquarium Analogy
Diego began his talk with a picture of the jellyfish tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A decade ago, a designer tasked with creating this amazing experience would have thought of what shape to make the glass, how to set up the lighting, and what scenery should go in the tank. Nowadays, a designer would take a much broader perspective. How do people get to the aquarium? Where do they park, where do they stay? Is it enjoyable? The immediate design of the jellyfish tank is but a smaller part of the experience of visiting the aquarium – the point being that a great experience means a great ecosystem fit.
Three approaches to design
The above diagram illustrates the three sets of factors to consider when approaching a design problem. Design thinking traditionally focuses on the human factors, on how to make a product desirable. This is a great way to ensure a product will meet a true user need. However, Diego emphasizes that the other two perspectives must also be considered, in particular the business side which is sometimes overlooked by designers.
4 key characteristics of a successful design thinker
- * optimism
- * the mind of a child, the ability to be curious and naive (in a good way)
- * wisdom, the ability to draw on experience
- * building to think, prototyping
T-shaped people
T-shaped people is an old concept that IDEO uses to describe its hiring practice. T-shaped people are people with very deep knowledge in one domain (the stem of the T) but some knowledge in a wide variety of other domains (the bar of the T). The idea is that multi-functional teams of T-shaped people form the strongest design teams because each person has some understanding of their teammates’ fields. In Diego’s words, “design thinking is the glue that holds things together”.
Build a fruitfly
For the sake of argument, let us suppose you were tasked with building an elephant. You may think that the best way to do so would be to build a small elephant and let it grow from there. But with a 23 month gestation periods, building even a small elephant takes time. The trick is to instead build a fruitfly, that can evolve and adapt quickly. The same goes for products.
Designing for business to create value
The trick is for the business to make the shift from thinking of itself as the center of the solar system, to seeing itself as a big player in the ecosystem.
Three steps to success:
- 1 – ensure desirability
- 2 – balance desirability across stakeholders to create a non-zero-sum game
- 3 – build fruitflies, not elephants, and iterate quickly
