Paul Bennett: Design is in the details

Paul Bennett — Small is the new big

Bennett runs a design company, Ideo. He used an example of a hospital client asking for ideas on how to improve their patients’ experience. His theme began with the need to reconcile the big (what the organisation/system/country) wants with what the small (the individual) wants.

He started with “the blinding glimpse of the bleeding obvious” or noticing. There is great value in making ourselves conscious of those things going on around us that we often overlook that may be part of the problem and/or part of the solution.

We talked about the concepts Bennett brings to creating good physical design and what we could learn from these. We identified that we need to understand the overall intention — and keep that big picture objective in view. We concluded that this overall intention must be fixed. If we find that it changes (that it isn’t fixed) then we probably haven’t explored or defined it well enough. We would therefore need to go back and widen our view further and grasp the bigger system of which our problem is a subset. If we don’t have the biggest picture we are capable as a background we will probably end up addressing details that might not address the problem.

Bennett was also clear that once you have the big picture in mind, then start trying to solve the problem incrementally, rather than assuming you will find a powerful, single solution. An overall solutions will tend to be made up a many small solutions.

What we understood of Bennett’s design approach:

• observe what is happening (be objective with fresh eyes)

• consider the issue from the user’s perspective

• keeping the big picture in mind, consider each aspect of the problem and consider how to address that one, rather than striving for a big fix-all solution

• make use of what is already known — ask the people who have experience

In summary: keep in mind the big picture and look to a variety of small steps to fix it from the prospective of the user.

We also talked about Jamie Oliver and his food in schools programme that some of us had seen on TV. Oliver identified a problem (children eating unhealthy food at school) and thought he had some solutions. As he tried to apply these solutions he found his initial attempts didn’t work and that he had to keep trying different things. By trying different things he learned more and more about what underpinned the problem. In the end, he determined he needed to understand why people and children eat the unhealthy ways they do. To do this he needed the big picture, he needed to think systemically.

By questioning and listening, he identified that people were disconnected from their food, that they had no relationship with where it came from and how it was produced. Once he understood that this was the basis for their poor eating habits, he had something to work with and began to think about ways of connecting people to what they were eating, so they understood their food. Until he understood the systemic issues, he was trying to solve details that just wouldn’t be solved because his solutions didn’t address the fundamental problem.

Both of these are very good examples of systemic thinking. They aren’t contentious, in that we didn’t have significant disagreements as we discuss them. But they are revealing and useful to apply to our work and lives.
Dave
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