Tag Archives: Design Thinking

How My Experience Becomes My Reality

by

Imagine you are getting ready to board the plane to the vacation of your dreams.  Just before getting on the plane, a person comes to you and says “I hope you have a great vacation but I just wanted to tell you that when you return, all your pictures will be deleted and you won’t remember anything about the trip.”

What do you do?  Get on the plane anyway?  Take a different vacation?  Go home?  Throw a tantrum?  Cry?

A similar question confronted people in one of Daniel Kahneman’s research studies exploring the cognitive process people go through to make choices.  In his research, he found most people would change their plans because the main purpose of the vacation was to make memories.

Kahneman became curious about discovering the mechanisms or processes our brain uses to make something memorable.  Over the decades of his research, Kahneman made many important discoveries earning him the Nobel Peace Prize and touching off the creation of a new field called Behavioral Economics.

Two of his discoveries, the ‘selves‘ and the Peak-End Rule, are particularly pertinent to the choices we make to ensure experiences with our organization are memorable.

In what ways are we missing opportunities to be memorable to our clients, customers, beneficiaries, funders, donors, stakeholders, partners, volunteers, etc…?

One discovery, the remembering-self and experiencing-self, describes how we make choices and Kahneman uses parenting as an example to illustrate the difference.

Inspired by his research I began asking friends, who recently had children, if they ever regret giving up their freedom to have kids.  Without skipping a beat, they respond by proudly regaling me with stories of first steps and funny first words.

‘On the whole‘ they would say ‘it is the most rewarding experience of my life‘

This response is coming from their remembering-self because the answer is informed by the memorable parts of parenting.  They are referencing the highlights over the years to make a judgement about whether having children has been a worthwhile endeavor.

Then the 3 year old has a 5-alarm meltdown making me think he is either on fire or possessed.  With a calm roll of the eyes and a face that momentarily says ‘I might have made a different choice had I known about the volume and frequency of 5-alarm emergencies‘, my friend goes to ensure someone isn’t actually on fire.

Responses like my friend’s facial expression come from the experiencing-self. They rely on information available in the moment and do not have the benefit of past memories.  Have you ever sent text when you were furious?  Sure felt good in the moment……

OK.  Makes sense. Sounds obvious.  We use past experiences to inform future decisions.  This is not new.

For me the new part emerged when he Kahneman began speaking about the Peak-End Rule.    

99% of us are not able to remember every moment of an experience.  Instead, our remembering-self identifies positive or negative snippets (highlights) during the experience Kahneman calls Peak moments.  Additionally, we are prone to remembering how an experience ended which he cleverly calls the End moments. (During the podcast and TED Talk, he talks about the colonoscopy study to illustrate this more thoroughly).  The result is a string of memorable moments we use for making decisions in the future.

So naturally the question becomes; how do we ensure people have memorable moments so they continue supporting our organization?

When I think back to all the events I helped organize over the years, I quickly realize the standard we had for success was whether or not everything went perfectly.  Which really meant everything went as we planned.  Everything was perfect.

Kahneman would say trying to achieve perfection leads our decision-making down a blind alley.  Instead we should be asking ourselves how we can create multiple peak moments and be more intentional about the manner in which the event comes to a close.  What ‘material’ can we provide to satisfy multiple remembering-selves from diverse backgrounds, ages and perspectives?

How would intentional consideration of Kahneman’s discoveries influence the ways your organization interacts with its community? 

 

(48 mins)Hidden Brain: Think Fast with Daniel Kahneman

(20 mins)Ted Talks: The riddle of experience vs. memory

 

The Liminal Learning Loop

by

A few days ago we ran out of apples.  I went to the store and came home with a bag of apples.  I hardly remember the trip because it happens so often.  I certainly don’t remember making deliberate decisions about the shoes I wore, which store I went to, or even the apples I bought.  The entire process seemed automated.   

I would guess you’ve experienced the same thing in your day already.  Think about it.  Why did you choose to brush your teeth?  Why did you choose the blue shirt and not the yellow sweater?  Why did you use the bus rather than your car for your commute?  Have you ever taken the time to determine the thinking process you use to make everyday decisions?  

Gray explains by saying it begins with a need.  Needs arise all the time and some are more urgent than others.  Hunger can be more urgent than shopping for new socks.  In this example  I needed apples.  

Next, I access my internal ‘guidebook’ for navigating reality; my beliefs (for formation of beliefs in detail look at Unpacking Beliefs).   When I need apples my attention is focused on things that will address that need by constantly cycling through theories and judgments to form beliefs about how to get more apples. They tell me which footwear to use, which store to go to and which apples to purchase.

Next, I take action.  I put on my winter boots.  I travel to a particular store.  I buy a bag of apples.

Finally, I make note of the result. By following my belief, was I able to meet my need for apples?  And by making note of the result, what have I learned?

Gray calls this the Learning Loop.  Need – Belief – Action – Result.  Out of apples – Store has apples – Go to store and buy apples – Don’t need apples. 

Each time I progress through the Learning Loop to address a need, my beliefs are either challenged or reinforced.  If the store had my apples, my belief is reinforced, creating what Gray calls habits of belief. There’s no need to change my behaviour because my need has been served through my belief that the store has the apples I need.

However, when the store doesn’t have the apples I need, my belief is no longer valid.  So I begin the process of building another belief by cycling through the other options for buying apples.   I go to the other store and buy apples.  I make note of the result.  In the end, I may have formed a new habit of belief if the new store addresses my need better (cheaper, tastier apples) than the old store.

In itself, Gray’s learning loop is quite straightforward.  It becomes more interesting when my learning loop interacts with yours which I will explore in my next post.

The Size of the Pie

by

Douglas Rushkoff is a provocative writer and his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus challenges the most fundamental principles of our economic system by juxtaposing the disruptive potential of the digital economy to distribute value to everyone with the industrial economy designed to extract value for a few.

Rather than simply making my piece of the pie bigger (industrial economy) , I should make efforts to increase the size of the entire pie (distributed economy) .

Success in the industrial economy, argues Rushkoff, is too heavily weighted in favor of growth.  CEOs are rewarded for growth in market share, shareholder price and/or company size.   To grow they need to extract greater and greater amounts of value from customers (profits) or cut costs (slash expenses).  Companies that aren’t growing are thought to be in trouble and lack of growth is seen as the death knell for the company share price. So it becomes a zero-sum situation where companies are forced to grow at any cost – even if it means cannibalizing their own company to lower costs and inflate shareholder value.

Instead Rushkoff proposes companies think beyond the needs of the shareholder and look for avenues to create longer-term value in the lives of everyone (customers, employees and shareholders). It would mean companies would be choose to participate in the human-centric marketplace of a distributed economy.

What would a distributed economy look like?  Rushkoff dives into many ideas with numerous examples but the two I find most compelling are money and labour.

Money

Originally, money was invented by merchants in a local market to alleviate the cumbersome nature of bartering.  It became a local currency used to expedite transactions between producers and consumers within a local market. Later though, the King recognized the potential for garnering income from the market and introduced the King’s Coin creating a centralized treasury that issued the currency for any transactions in the market.  Any merchant opening a new enterprise(creating value) needed to borrow from the King’s treasury to be paid back later with interest(extracting value) – very similar to the system we use today.

Currency in the distributed economy would allow producers to create value outside of the centralized banking system. This would require us to suspend all we think we know about how an economy should function and pursue alternate platforms for organizing transactions.  One such platform is called the Blockchain (for a more thorough explanation of the blockchain).   Blockchain transactions are conducted using crypto-currency(bitcoins) and verified by the community.  Once verified they are posted to the global ledger that everyone in the community can see.  Authority in the system is distributed not centralized.

Take a minute and ponder the implications of this type of system.  How would it change the way we buy a car? a loaf of bread?

 

Work

Why do you have a job?  To earn money.  So you can participate in the economy by buying a house, a car, food, gadgets or eat in restaurants. What happens if you don’t have a job?  Debt.  Bankruptcy. And eventually you are unable to participate in the economy.

If you are able, I would ask that you suspend the rules for a minute and answer this question for yourself; imagine your participation in the economy is assured and your basic needs are met.  Would you change the job you currently occupy?  Would you do something completely different?  Would you work less and spend time with family?

Eventually we will need to come to terms with the demographics and pace of technological change and how it will impact the workplace.  Disruptive digital start-ups employ 1/10th the number people compared to the organizations in the industry it disrupts.  Amazon employs 1/10 the people compared to the bookstore industry. Couple that with global population growth and we will have less work for more people.  How do we distribute the work we need done?

I have merely plucked a couple of concepts from the book and would encourage you to read it (or listen as Mitch Joel conducts a fantastic interview with Rushkoff on the Twist Image podcast.)  Admittedly, I felt uncomfortable reading this book because his ideas challenge commonly held notions of how our economy should work.  But his words are inspiring because they create the possibility that things can be different – we just have to be intentional about choosing it.

Podcast Pick: On Average by 99% Invisible

by

I’m a huge podcast fan and sometimes I come across an episode that I feel compelled to share.

On Average by 99% Invisible (20 min) is an informative bit of  research illustrating how the mathematical concept average can solve problems……or create them.

It starts by outlining the historical origins of how the average measure was discovered and subsequently used.  For example, it helped solve a clothing issue for President Lincoln by creating the Small, Medium and Large sizes we see in stores today.  Later  it illustrates how designing for the average had disastrous outcomes for the United States Air Force.

Can you think of any examples in your life/work where designing for the average has been a help? or a hindrance?