Design Thinking | Systems Thinking

During the February  intensive I had the pleasure of talking with Nina Serpiello, a professor at BGI. She worked at IDEO for years and has been a major proponent and teacher of design principles. We talked about the role of the designer, where “design” happens, and what systems thinking can bring to the design process.

Nina talked about how design springs from process. Once we are able to move through the awkwardness of a wild idea new pathways to solutions emerge. To get to that place we need permission to play, explore and to trust one another and the process. We need the capacity to tolerate ambiguity and engage with juxtapositions. The design process can create content, but really it is about building relationships and developing creativity.  Organizations can use the design process to solve large problems and include many stakeholders rather than just a small team or one person to solve a problem.

An example of this process at work involved redesigning a key service within a hospital. During the research the designers found that the nurses, doctors and other staff had forgotten what it felt like to be a patient in the hospital system. To remind them the designers set up a restaurant that offered the same customer experience as a hospital. The nurses and doctors entered the restaurant. Some were sat at a table immediately, other were told to wait for an hour, while still others were told to remove some of their clothing and then wear a bib while they waited. The food arrived at different times and at different qualities. Basically, it was not the customer experience that anyone expects from a viable business.

This experience reminded hospital staff what it is like to be patient within the hospital. Through play they experienced the problem that their customers faced in a new light. With this new empathy the hospital staff was able to think about the problems with a different mind set and new solutions emerged. Empathy is a key piece of Human Centered Design.

When looking at problems in big systems the design process can create space to dream up new solutions. However, those solutions might not work if designers don’t understand the system at play. Nina also talked about the importance of systems thinking when looking at wicked problems. Designers dig into a problem with the end user, understand their need, and co-create the perfect solution. But, often times if you don't understand the system in which the solution will operate the idea won't work.

I found an example of the interaction between design thinking and systems thinking with a recent product developed by D-Rev [1]. Their new energy efficient affordable light-therapy unit that treats jaundice had much lower than projected adoption rates in India. This was confusing to D-Rev as they had conducted many field interviews with doctors and hospitals to pin-point the need. They partnered with a local manufacture that already had the infrastructure to distribute the light-therapy unit.

The light-therapy unit from D-Rev

Once their product hit the market they found that hospitals, the core customers of the unit, were buying their unit. Instead, they were buying more expensive units. They found that this happened for two reasons. D-Rev’s revolutionary design was such a departure from what already existed that the buyers didn’t understand the new technology. The second reason had to do with the system of medial purchasing. In India, there are kickbacks to the hospital buyers if they purchase specific devices, typically more expensive devices. Even though D-Rev had interviewed a number of end users about their needs and they created a product that was superior at a much lower purchase and operational price, they came up against a system that did not support the distribution [2].

This highlights what Nina was talking about regarding the interplay between design thinking and system thinking. I think that this is particularly important when designers are developing something for communities other than their own. We all have an intuition on how our communities and cultures work, but not all communities and cultures work the same way. When working on any problem, but particularly problems outside your community it is essential that you explore not just the end-user’s need, but also the system that has created the need. Without that knowledge many great ideas, products, and services are doomed to fail.