IDEO and a Story of Design

that is the most complicated question what is I do I do I do I do I do looks like a very serious design company behind the scenes it's kind of like Oompa Loompa Willy Wonka Playland is this amazing power of wide-eyed curiosity what is it that the world needs or that person needs it's hard to imagine a facet of life where we're not being asked some kind of interesting question how my government be more responsive to its citizens what is teaching and learning in the 21st century how do we think about accessibility make healthcare more seamless design the future of self-driving experiences change the demographic for voting in a county that has five million voters between 30 different languages provide access to justice to all the people who can't afford lawyers create products that actually add value to people's lives rather than becoming another distraction I do is uniquely equipped to come into those kinds of big messy complex problems I think we're teachers offering on the edge of really getting into some great there's a lot of David's in this company just so you know after I met bill we decided to merge our firms and make I do that was a long time ago so before we merged the designers would come up with some beautiful stuff and the engineers would want to compromise all the interesting bits away to make it more manufacturable turns out it was actually a big idea for us to come up with something that was well designed and well engineered and then present that to the client see their eyes sparkle that's when we knew we really hired something of consequence at IDEO there was a different approach it was designed as an engineers working together we would go in to see the CEO and he or she would say you know you say you want to design our new chair let's say tell us about other chairs you've designed right and I didn't have the heart to tell him that not only hadn't we designed any chairs we hadn't designed anything but we have this process that will probably result in a different kind of chair than if you hired a chair designer to do it that was the pitch I had a background in psychology gosh it seems like we know it should be learning quite a lot about people couldn't we therefore be designing better stuff if we incorporated some of that knowledge into some of the decisions that we were making common sense would say well instead of just designing it by yourself in a room with a bunch of other engineers maybe should go out and talk to people that you're designing for you know from business school in every quarter of any institution I've ever worked for there's a real premium on knowing if people would actually carry around books of what they know and an idea was just ok to say I don't know let's find out it's our job to always cushion everything and always ask why why is that why do you do that we go out into the world we talk to people we sit in their homes we have conversations of people we ask for their ideas we would come back from the field informed and inspired by some of the things we'd seen and use our tools and education and expertise and intuition to create a solution for you because people would say oh I'm stupid I can't figure out how to use this thing we said no no no no it's poorly designed we'll make it so that it's intuitive and then you don't have to have this disconnect between the human and the technology part designing a reading machine for blind people or computers that were going to figure out whether this was a tissue match between two people getting a heart transplant I mean that's kind of stuff we're working on design a mouse to design a laptop what's that I mean we get to determine what this thing is from scratch there's an inquisitive approach that doesn't say who do I as a creative person want to put out into the world what is the world need what's the world asking of us and then how can we use design to help bring that for life the culture of how you go about innovation and design is as important as the process design for me has never been an individual sport it's always been a team sport how could I possibly have all the good ideas what we found is that when we brought these people in from different disciplines they just had ideas that resonated people coming together with different areas of expertise fluidly working together and provoking each other to do a little bit better constantly entertaining ourselves by adding new disciplines to the mix and activating them as designers musicians jammed together you walk into a project space it's you know the same time energy the night line shopping cart video in 1999 still amazes me the number of people that come up to me and say oh I saw it in my class you saw in your business class in 1999 no no last week take something old and familiar like say the shopping cart and completely redesign it for us in just five days humble objects really a shopping cart that everybody could relate to it was long enough to show how we actually behave together and how individuals contributed and how the group worked oh you know that's what happens everything gets designed and there are people who do that and that looks exciting it seemed to be an example of how you could be more effective as innovator so I think that was actually the most important thing there was nothing in that show that said you need design people filled in that space we got a call from the director of the emergency room at DePaul who said if you can do that for the shopping cart you can do that from my emergency room and so we did this was a surprise to us in terms of how far it could go and it really unlocked the diversification that we saw with the rise of once we'd stepped over that line and we were comfortable with that we just kept going all of a sudden businesses that have been happy kind of trundling along for decades found themselves having to innovate so there was this recognition that the world of business really wasn't equipped to grow in this way and that the smart organizations would cultivate that and invest in it help me get better at creating more options for my customers so that I can grow the top line of my company Design Thinking gave us a way of explaining what design was to people who didn't understand it it's actually not anything I do invented the only thing that we did was try to make it a bit more explicit here's how we understand the market and the people here's how we interview people to understand what they'd like and here's how we prototype it empowers people to get their ideas out and to share them it's just a way to start being willing to have a hundred sketches on the floor that didn't work before you find the one that does we test those out we see what works and we refine those from ambiguity to clarity to refinement to either launch your implementation it holds the space for us to be sort of ambiguous and messy knowing that you're moving in a certain direction that's gonna lead to the outcomes you're looking for creating the conditions for innovation to happen over and over again by having a methodology that we could teach that we could share where we could have clients come and work with us in the project room instead of just waiting for us to turn up with the deliverables made it possible for them to begin to soak up that capability it doesn't just sit within I do this is something that we've actually brought to a lot of our client partners and then help them grow within their own organization it's good for business to let creativity out of the cage and let it run down the corridors all we've done over the years is figured out how scale that how to make it more accessible by embracing design thinking we were able to start to find ourselves in those types of conversations that were far more impactful for society the world is at a difficult place right now if you look at communication politics society the environment there's a fundamental or an inherent lack of creativity and trying to answer these questions in a moment where there's so much disruption and upheaval being able to sit in that space and guide others through the ambiguity is incredibly valuable not trying to know the answer at the start of the process is something that is very fundamental to design we bring our creative lens imagining how we can make that world better I'm careful about words like solution or the answer because these are people based systems the important part about tackling big questions like that is trying to understand the context in which they sit it's not just about going to someone's house and spending an hour anymore the best way to do that is to start with co.design instead of going to those people to learn from them actually bring them in to the process not just clients and organizations were designing for but the people that it's going to affect in communities government's organizations and partners that can help us implement the larger the scale gets the easier it is to forget about the people in the system the people in that community are shaping the decisions that they're making so we had to shift away from being the ones to decide to being the ones who facilitated others to get to that decision so that their voice is the design solution that's the only way you can go after these big complex problems we have helped elevate design up to being one of the ways in which humanity improves itself and improves its condition we've had a series of these clients over the years that have helped expand our minds carlos rodriguez pastor who's the CEO of inter core he came and said i want to redesign schools in peru and i think you can help we would have loved to afford that we could new school system but I'm not sure we would have ever gone to somebody to say hey please let us buddy's gonna go where people ask us the problems were being asked to help solve are far beyond what we could have imagined four decades ago if the whole world thinks all designers do is something decorative they're not going to come to you and say hey we actually have a serious issue of sexual harassment on our University campus can design play a part and helping us solve that and not through just putting up more compliance posters but actually asking how do people relate to each other what is the culture what should be changed design could help answer that today we're thinking about design as an opportunity to reimagine the world the objects the institutions that help to reinforce the ways that people relate to each other redesigning entire systems that affect our societies how do we design a system of reentry for people who have been incarcerated make saving money more fun help make judaism fit into people's lives help successful companies of the past be thriving companies of the future redesign our idea of classic beauty create a welcoming and secure environment for immigrants to a certain extent the first response has to be where do we start if it was that easy somebody else would have done it literally the hairs will stand up on the back of my neck when I know we're at the edge of everybody's ability you're on a lake and the fog drops down and you are rowing and the client is freaking out because you know you're gonna hit land but the client thinks oh my god they're rowing us into the middle of oblivion we're in the business of sort of navigating the fog and helping clients not jump out of the boat thank you thanks [Music] [Music]

Channel: Dress Code

Views: 79,652

Keywords: Documentary, Technology, Tech, IDEO, Dress Code, Design, Stanford, Culture, Arts, Startup, Industrial Design, Product Design, Business, Innovation, Global, Expose, Engineering, Invention, Design Thinking, POV, Genius, Smart, Errol Morris, Impact, Design at Scale, Human Centered Design, Human, Dan Covert, Production, Production by Design, New York, Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, Process, Behind the Scenes, David Kelley, Tim Brown, Sandy Speicher, Paul Bennett

Id: _KK958OkD6g

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2019