Speaker 1 0:07

Welcome to the Design Thinker podcast, where we explore the theory and practice of design, hosted by me, donnie and the Peaser. Hey Peter, hi Donnie, how are you?

Speaker 3 0:21

Good, how are you? I'm great thanks. Yeah, really good.

Speaker 1 0:27

Good hi what's up for today's episode?

Speaker 3 0:31

Yeah, we were just having a little bit of a warm up conversation there, weren't we? Maybe we should have one every time I feel energized and ready for a good chat, good exploring of our subject. What we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1 0:43

No, it's almost better than coffee, I think. So what are we talking about today?

Speaker 3 0:48

What are we going to talk about? Let's talk about context, Donnie.

Speaker 1 0:51

I feel like we talk about context in every episode, but it's probably about time that we actually devote an episode to context.

Speaker 3 1:01

Nice, delve into it A whole episode about one word. I wonder where this is going to take us.

Speaker 1 1:07

We usually start with the what.

Speaker 3 1:11

Yep.

Speaker 1 1:12

So what is context?

Speaker 3 1:14

What is context? I'm going to do my own. Let's go with the dictionary definition, if I can see it. Ah yeah, I'll do my. You do that and, in particular, as always for any for a long time listener, you know that I like to go back to the origins of words. So where does it come from? What's the original meaning of this word? Is that context? I wonder what language it comes from. What have you got? Are you looking at?

Speaker 1 1:41

So the first definition I found is the circumstances that form the setting for an environment statement or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood.

Speaker 3 1:59

Say that again to a word.

Speaker 1 2:00

The circumstance that form the setting of an event, statement or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood. So it comes from its Latin.

Speaker 3 2:19

Yes.

Speaker 1 2:20

So the con apart comes from? So it comes from the word context. The root of the word con is about together and the textura means to weave.

Speaker 3 2:43

Okay, so to weave together and let through.

Speaker 1 2:46

So context means to weave together. From what do you call it?

Speaker 3 2:51

No, it's not epidemiology, it's etymology Etymology Not to be confused with entomology. It's the etymology of entomology. We research entomology's insects, or it's not epidemic.

Speaker 1 3:06

It's definitely not epidemiology, no Nice.

Speaker 3 3:13

I've done my own googling and you probably looking at the same information Interestingly on the Google search engine. It gives you a kind of mentions over time for the word. There's a steep ramp up from about 1950 to the present day. Usage over time of the word context from 1800 to 1950 pretty flat and then all of a sudden it bursts. I wonder if that reflects the increasing complexity of the world from that point onwards. That was a new piece of information.

Speaker 1 3:44

I always try to think about when I see things like that, like what was happening in the world during that time. That would have caused the use of that word to go up or down, or you know.

Speaker 3 3:54

Yeah, me too. I also kind of met a thinking about how do they? What's? What information is Google? What's the context of this? What information is Google using to count the mentions?

Speaker 1 4:09

What's it?

Speaker 3 4:09

pulling from yeah, probably more importantly and more relevantly In this context, just what was happening. I think it's like the post-war, post-second World War maybe acceleration of technology politics, maybe just communication post-op, as the world became more connected by different means of communication.

Speaker 1 4:32

I wonder. So I just found what you're talking about and it started to go up in the 1950s, like you said. So, of course, world War II. I wonder, which is kind of and if you follow that trajectory, it kind of follows the same trajectory as, like, globalization. Yes, that's the word yeah, so I wonder the reason that the use of the word context became more popular is, as we became a more global society, context became more relevant because we were dealing with multiple contexts.

Speaker 3 5:08

Multiple contexts, yes, and also, as the world became more connected and globalization, we were less familiar with the context. We were less familiar with where something had come from, what meaning it had, let's say, before 1950, we would be talking about things that were understandable, relatable, because essentially they were kind of on our doorstep.

Speaker 1 5:36

Well, I think, with globalization comes traveling outside of your familiarity, right. And then I wonder if that's just when. So when we travel outside of our bubble, our awareness of context becomes more present, or we become aware of context because we start to notice that, hey well, this is okay to do in my home country. Yeah. It doesn't go so well when you do it.

Speaker 3 6:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes me think of hand gestures. So the same hand gesture. I'm not going to make this quite as concrete as I could because I don't want to stray into dodgy territory, but this has something to it. But I think the context maybe we need to get began further, or it could go ahead and A hand gesture in one culture can mean hello or things are all good. A different hand gesture Sorry, the same hand gesture in a different culture can actually mean the opposite, like I'm gonna kill you or sending you an insult across the street. I guess, as globalization increased and people taking out of context, that particular hand gesture could land somebody in trouble.

Speaker 1 6:49

And even things like no. In some cultures, things like shaking hands is a sign of respect, but in other cultures, doing anything that requires physically touching another person is not considered. It's considered disrespectful right.

Speaker 3 7:08

Yeah. So we're kind of focusing a little bit I guess we could call it an art into cultural context here, couldn't we, or could we?

Speaker 1 7:13

I think culture is an element of context, but I think what we're talking about specifically at the moment is cultural context, and I think context applies to other things as well.

Speaker 3 7:24

Yeah, definitely, I'll bring us back out of focus down on that. So bring it back out. Yeah, globalization context it means essentially weaving together. When I read that I thought, yeah, this is like a this is slightly metaphorical, so go with it on this. Where we live in New Zealand, things even still to this day, some useful objects are made by weaving flax together. So the flax tray or basket is the context, and then the object that we're, or the situation we're talking about, is the thing that sits on that tray or within that basket. That's the picture that came into my mind when we went and came across that Latin.

Speaker 1 8:08

Very deep, I can see it.

Speaker 3 8:09

A warm-up conversation.

Speaker 1 8:13

So now I'm picturing the flax basket and an object in it. I think context also isn't just the basket, it's also the thing that the basket's made from.

Speaker 3 8:25

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 8:26

It's where the basket is placed. Yeah. It's like the whole ecosystem where that basket sits.

Speaker 3 8:33

Another word that I think it's like location, where things are located in relation to others. But then when I say location in relation to other things, I don't just mean geographical or positional locations, like all the different dimensions that are relevant to the thing that we're talking about. We're getting quite abstract here.

Speaker 1 8:55

When you said that, the thing that came to mind from me was like you don't store your toothbrush in the kitchen. That's the analogy of location that I got.

Speaker 3 9:05

Oh, okay, you're not telling me what I don't do or don't do. I was like you've been, I do not. We most people don't store their toothbrush in the kitchen, and I'm one of those most people.

Speaker 1 9:17

And if we went into an environment where toothbrushes are stored in the kitchen like, our brains would go oh, that's out of context, right? Yeah. So that's where I was going with placement. Location is about context as well.

Speaker 3 9:31

Nice, I think. Yeah, I've got a question about what happens when we do see the toothbrush in the kitchen and why is it important, but we've actually got a whole segment about why is this important. Is it now or is it next, or is it after?

Speaker 1 9:45

Well, I wanted to talk about. So context is a word that can be applied to anything. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 9:54

But this is the Design Thinker podcast, isn't it? So maybe we should bring it In the context of design thinking. What is the word context important?

Speaker 1 10:04

Well, I think, before we get to the why, in the world of design thinking, what does context mean? So we have the broad definition Is? It the same definition. Is it a different definition? I have some thoughts on this, but I'm curious to see what your thoughts are.

Speaker 3 10:21

Okay, thanks, I'll take that. We're playing tennis with a good serve and I'll take it as like a bit of top spin on it, heading towards the far corner. But it's all right, I've got footwork today and I've got to the ball. And context, when we're talking about design thinking, well, it's similar to if we think about the woven basket and then, as you described, the kind of what the basket's sitting on and whether going too deep or too wide into the cosmos.

Speaker 3 10:50

I think we need to understand. Well, part of the context is what's the problem, who's experiencing the problem, and then what's the overall environment that that problem is sitting within. So, and then again, by environment I do mean the physical environment, but I also mean, like, what's the political environment? For example, are we talking about? Are we working in a big organization, a small organization? What's the will of the organization's leadership to actually be interested in the problem, nevermind solving the problem? I guess getting more practical and concrete when it comes to, let's say, understanding the problem is part of somebody's life. So what part of somebody's life is it, is it? Yeah, that's where my mind starts to go. Give you a lob back over the net.

Speaker 1 11:43

So, interestingly, our definitions are pretty close. Oh, okay. So when I think about what does context mean for design thinkers? There's three things I think about. So first is and you mentioned this the problem. The second thing is the environment where the problem's happening, and the third thing is the capabilities of the team tasked with solving the problem.

Importance of Context in Problem Solving

Speaker 3 12:13

Mm-hmm. Okay, Well, I'm glad to be a liner on a couple of those. Yes, the problem, the environment where the problem is, and then the capabilities of the team to solve the problem. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 12:30

And I hadn't thought about that. Maybe I would have done if I'd kept going, because I think the capabilities of the team is it sits kind of alongside or in the same. Maybe it's a slightly different but related kind of strand of the weave what is the organization's appetite, or what is the appetite to discover, explore and then solve this particular problem? What's the will? And then what's? Maybe not, maybe come beyond that, not just what's the will, but yeah well, it's actually capability. So capability not just of the team but of, I mean, you could go really broad and wide and say what's the capability of society as a whole to actually pay attention, to discover, care about and then solve a particular problem. And I guess I've gone as wide as society, because sometimes it is desirable to solve a problem but there's no political will or there is no technological means to solve a problem, or maybe both of those exist, but there's actually no spare money to solve a particular problem. For me, all of that is context.

Speaker 1 13:48

So I think some of that, what you said, sits within the problem. Some of that sits within the environment, because I think the will to want to do it, but I think those are all environmental patches right, Whether it's a social problem, where then it becomes political will and society's desire to fix it. If it's within an organization, it's probably budget, but also organizational politics, are a real thing. To your point on capabilities, I actually the only reason I added capabilities to my list is because it's something I learned through my research. Okay.

Speaker 1 14:26

Until then, it didn't occur to me that capabilities is a whole context when it comes to design thinking.

Speaker 3 14:32

All right, tell us more.

Speaker 1 14:34

Well, what I started to see is that across organizations there were team. So we all know that all organizations experience similar problems. Yeah, some can solve them better than others. And when I started to look at that at some a team level, what I the only differentiator was the capability of the team, like how the team was looking at the problem, how the skills that the team brought to fix the problem, and that was a differentiator. And that was a differentiator not just across organizations, but it was also a differentiator within teams of an organization. So like, if you think about, if you think about a large organization where there's similar teams and all the teams are experiencing similar problems, but some were dealing with it better than others, it came down to this team's capability.

Speaker 3 15:28

Yeah, okay, you've got me convinced, but what are the questions that are out there? So I suppose this does relate to, or does this? Does that say, then, that this is important to the context of the particular problem and the solution? Because not only the ability to discover, identify, care about the problem, but also how the problem is solved depends on which depends on the context and specifically depends on the capability of the team that's actually working on the problem. So if the same problem is encountered by team A and team B, team A has one set of capabilities, then it will solve the problem in one way. Team B has a different set of capabilities that will solve the problem in a different way, and we'll end up with two different solutions because of the capability of the two, the different sets of capabilities.

Speaker 1 16:23

Yeah, so that is only true if they're in the same environment with the same problem.

Speaker 3 16:28

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 16:30

You can kind of test that another way, because if you take somebody, that like this often happens with high performance right yeah, they're high performers in one organization and then they go to a different organization, so environment change, now they're not a high performer anymore.

Speaker 3 16:49

Because the context has changed.

Speaker 1 16:50

The context has changed. That's not to say, because you change context, you won't be a high performer anymore. Yeah. So that's why I think these three things really play together. Yeah, it's the same way that sometimes we talk about design thinking being able to be applied in for any problem, but we also have to accept that design thinking may not work really well to solve certain types of problems, but not other problems. It doesn't mean that design thinking is defective. It's that, being mindful, are we applying the right approach to the right problem?

Speaker 3 17:25

For this particular context. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So just a quick recap. So capability of the team is a specific one of the three variables, should we say, or factors in the context. What were the other two? Again, it was.

Speaker 1 17:41

So the problem, the environment, the problems happening in, and then the capabilities of the team tasked with solving the problem. So again, context here matters. I'm specifically now talking about what does context mean in the context of design thinking? Okay. All right, so I think we've covered the what pretty thoroughly now, definitely so. We then move on to the why is this important? Why is context important?

Speaker 3 18:11

Well, I think we've kind of started talking about it a little bit already. Why is it important? I suppose it's fundamentally we understand against the environment that we're trying to solve. The problem in understanding the context. I think it helps us understand where to apply our efforts, because a particular context there might be, we might have the capability and we've got a highly capable team. The problem, because we've got a capable team, we can do a great job of understanding it. But there's environmental factors that make it more challenging to actually move forwards and I'll just choose, like political, like organizational politics might be our context and a challenge that we can foresee. So therefore, we apply more effort to, you know, talking to stakeholders, understanding the politics and, almost in a meta way, applying our design thinking approach to helping us get over that or move through that political obstacle.

Speaker 3 19:22

So yeah, the context yeah, it's important because without truly understanding the context, we won't make progress. And also, I think when we do that amazing, magical, satisfying thing of discovering a problem, starting to implement a solution without understanding the wider context, this chance of that solution actually sticking being adopted being continually supported by the context, or we need to understand the context in order to design something that is going to be sustainable.

Speaker 1 19:53

When we don't understand the context, we run the risk of not we run the risk of working on the wrong problem to begin with and this goes back to I know we used this example before where, supposedly, was it? Henry Ford said well, if I ask people what they wanted, what people were asking for faster horses but what they were really wanting is a way to travel faster. So if you didn't understand the context of what people were trying to do with the thing that you're asking for, you could spend a lot of years breeding faster horses I don't know how to explain and we probably wouldn't have automobiles right From the very beginning. Not understanding context can set us up for failure, because we might end up focusing on the wrong problem because we don't understand the context of where the problem is happening and what people are wanting to do or intending to do.

Speaker 1 20:52

And then I think and this is something that, and this is probably a future episode topic as well Like there's two parts to design work right, there is designing the thing and then there is getting people to use the thing. You've designed. That second part we often tend to forget. Thomas, back to your point that if we don't understand the context, then we end up creating a thing that when we go here, you go, this is what you asked for, but it's not solving the need that I have, which you didn't understand to begin with. So now I'm not used to the thing, because what I had in mind and what you've delivered isn't.

Speaker 3 21:36

Isn't what's been delivered and like a lot of the things we talk about, I think they're applicable. The ideas and the concepts are applicable at lots of different levels From the. You know we've got into the kind of political landscape et cetera there. And then we're talking about identifying and designing solutions and being wary of the context to enable solutions to have the best chance of being adopted and used. But even, let's say, in our research you know this word context if we talk to the people who are trying to help, let's say we do. You know, we invite people into our place of work and we host them and talk to them and they will tell us things and we might observe things that they're doing.

Speaker 3 22:17

But often, or they can't what we should be aware of is that they, that is, in a particular context, like in our place of work, rather than where they're experiencing the you know the problem or the situation. You know we aren't what people say they do. What people actually do are often slightly different, even unknowingly to us. Well, what we do, what we say we do as human beings, is different and we don't even realize that they are slightly different. So you know, just getting into the real detail of designing and researching. I think those are a couple of call outs that we need to be wary of the context in which we are carrying out our design activity, whether it's researching or prototyping or anything.

Speaker 1 23:02

So with design research, totally agree, context is important and here again you mentioned the context. Like if you're asked, if you have people come into a work environment and you're asking them about what they do at home, who they are in that work environment and is different from who they are at home, so what they're gonna say and what they do at home may be different. Absolutely need to keep that context in mind. The other way that context is important to design research is the questions that they ask. You have to make sure that the questions are appropriate to the context that you, the context of who you're asking them of, but then the context of where you are or where that person is.

Speaker 3 23:47

Like we're talking specifically like the, let's say, the geographic location of that person. Okay, because it, yeah, where that? But, as we kind of kick this thing off, your cultural context.

Speaker 1 24:00

So it's not that we don't ask those research questions, but we have to think about how do we frame them so that they make sense in their context. Yeah, okay. If I wanna learn more about why people prefer using text messaging over email. Yeah. I have to know some context about that, right Cause the way I ask that to a CEO is gonna be very different to the way that I might ask that of a teenager. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 24:30

Right. So we have to give some thought to the context of the people that we're gonna go speak to, because that will inform how we shape our research work and make sure that we're asking things that are appropriate.

Speaker 3 24:45

Yes and yeah, that's a great example, like, yeah, investigating the same thing and being in to two different people. You know that considering the context is gonna really potentially quite confusing and productive. What about the people researching with themselves? Like, what do you think about this idea of helping them understand, I guess, the context of the research we're doing? Do you think that's an important thing to do to, like, say, the CEO or the teenager when we go to talk to them about text or email? What's your thoughts on that? Or what kind of language would you give us?

Speaker 1 25:18

I don't need to be cheeky when I'm gonna say it depends on context.

Speaker 3 25:22

It depends on context. Nice.

Speaker 1 25:23

And the reason I say that is because it depends on what the research is for. Yeah. Because, depending on the type of research, providing context might be more important than not, and in other situations providing context may not be relevant at all. So it's really hard without having a specific example.

Importance of Context in Design Thinking

Speaker 3 25:42

Sure, okay, maybe I'll go a little bit further along that kind of spectrum of important, not important, what about? Or helpful, not well, yeah, it's maybe helpful, not helpful Because is it in other situations, do you think, where it's actually not helpful to provide context to people, where, let's say, researching with at the moment rather than Sorry.

Speaker 1 26:03

So to rephrase what I said, it's not. You always have to provide some context.

Speaker 3 26:09

Okay, that sounds like my question.

Speaker 1 26:12

So it's more about how detailed you have to get in the context. That matters, right. So when I did the research on the Design Thinker profile like to build that I had a very broad context to begin with. I'm talking to people that work. I'm talking to working adults, that whose work really revolves on problem solving. It's a very broad context because at that point in my research that's where I was. Then, when I progressed and I'm like, okay, this is really about using design thinking capabilities to solve problems, then I narrowed the context so that people understood Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 26:57

It does, yeah yeah, what we're saying is it's always important to provide context. I think full stop. Actually, I was curious to get your thoughts on when we're in a research situation or use situations to the context, because when I'm communicating with people, especially at work, what I've learned and what I tried to do but probably not always successful is to give people some context, so that I'm not asking them, for example, a question or giving them information without some extra information that helps them understand. Well, why is this? Why is this guy asking me for this thing?

Speaker 3 27:35

Or, yeah, I guess it's the yeah so you've answered the obvious question, which is yeah.

Speaker 1 27:43

So another example. Let's say that I am. I'm doing research to understand the different types of technology people use. Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:52

I can ask the question tell me about the different types of technology used. But now my research is actually I want to understand the different types of technology people use at work. So if I go and say, tell me about all the different types of technology used, people might tell me about all the things in their house, all the ways they connect with family, but that's not context, I'm researching. Then I would change the context and say I'm doing research to understand the different types of technology that people use in their work or at their workplace. Which now gives that person oh okay, this is not about all the other things in my life, this is just about this part of my life.

Speaker 3 28:37

And you know, because, using that as an example, not just the what will change, but the why and the how, I think, changes as well. Everything changes.

Speaker 1 28:46

Yeah, everything changes because of context. Which?

Speaker 3 28:49

is why it's so important.

Speaker 1 28:50

This is starting to feel like a little bit of a circular argument.

Speaker 3 28:53

Mic drop. Context is important because it's important to understand the context in which we are exploring the context. What's next? So we've covered off the what is it why it's important how We've talked to yeah, we've kind of stumbled into a bit of power as well, haven't we? Yeah. So do you have any practical ways of I'll describe it as mapping the context? What are the ways that we can start to think about it and almost show it to ourselves before we then share it with other people?

Speaker 1 29:29

The three questions that I ask is you know, do I understand the problem and is it the right problem? I'm I certain that this is the right problem, and do I understand the environment that the problem's happening in? And then, are the people that I'm going to be working with, do they have the right capabilities to work on this problem? So those are the questions that I ask when I'm thinking about applying design thinking, and that's not to say so. If you don't feel like you understand the problem enough, it doesn't mean that you don't solve the problem. It means then you have to think about OK, how do I really validate this is the right problem?

Speaker 1 30:13

And in our design thinker toolbox, we know empathy interviews, going out and talking to people. So you need to do more of that work, to get more on. Is this the right problem? Then the same thing. If you feel like you know I think this is the environment, or I've only talked to the leadership team and they're telling me this, but that's just one view, that's not the whole story about the environment, then again, you know we've got tools in our design thinker toolbox to go OK, I need to go learn more about this environment. I need to talk to a wider variety of people, or the starting place might be going out and talking to people and saying I think the problem to solve is X. Is that the problem you're experiencing? Because sometimes playing back to somebody what the problem is is more helpful than asking them what is the problem.

Speaker 3 31:05

This makes me think that understanding the context we should definitely make a conscious and deliberate part of our early let's call it discovery. And it also makes me think of what one of my favorite and the guidebooks I guess designing for growth by Gene Ledger and Tim Ogilvy. Four questions, double diamond approach, they go. What is what if, what was, and what works like what is like what we're talking about, like, what is our current contact? And we should be deliberate, like I say, deliberately, baking that into our early work.

Speaker 1 31:37

And then on the capability part, you know, if you're sensing that actually we want to use design, thinking that capability isn't there, then there's stuff we can do to help with that right. So it's not to say that if those things, if you ask those questions and they're no, we just go. Ah well, I'm done.

Speaker 3 31:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice point, yeah, nice built. Like we don't walk away from it. If it doesn't meet our criteria, we go. This is what we need to do as part of the work. It's not just a all or nothing.

Speaker 1 32:03

But what I see happening in organizations and I think this is why some of the challenges that organizations face lag on forever and ever that we there's an obsession with delivery. Got to deliver, we've got to deliver, we've got to deliver. It doesn't matter if the thing that's being delivered is right or not, it's just let's just deliver something. Take the box and yay, pat ourselves on the back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 32:29

And that kind of environment often leads to the wrong thing being fixed. So that's, that's one way I see this going wrong. The other thing is we also have to be mindful of overdoing it as well. Like we can't keep, we can't keep, because I also see this situation in organizations, where we're in a perpetual state of defining what the problem is.

Speaker 3 32:53

Yes, right, yep, and we're not breaking out of that discovery defining.

Speaker 1 32:58

So again now it comes to balance, like have we, have we done enough to understand the problem? That was like is this the right problem? Which comes back to the empathy work and the discovery work, but then making sure that we're not stuck in a petrified state of empathy and discovery. And then also this is also where design thinking lends itself pretty well right, because we could go all right, we think we've done enough, let's kind of do the ideation and the prototyping and take that out and we might find that when we get started, actually the problem is a little bit different than how we understood it before.

Speaker 1 33:39

Yeah, so, this is why design thinking is an iterative process, where or it's iterative and it's also cyclical.

Speaker 3 33:46

That's the one that was in my mind as well. Yeah, and a reminder that just because we should definitely understand the context before we set off on our journey. But we should also be aware of and pay attention to the fact that the context can change, things can shift and we can, like you're saying, we can discover more about. It becomes clear or maybe less clear as we go on. So, yeah, the kind of again the picture in my mind is, especially when you talk about not setting off on the journey, just continually discovering or not setting a direction. As, like we imagine you are, you find yourself in a forest, maybe, maybe you're lost in the forest. At some point you need to start moving through the forest to get out of it, rather than sitting there wondering which direction to head off in or going around in circles in the clearing. That is safe and comfortable place.

Speaker 1 34:35

And I'll give you an example of I don't know if I've shared this example before, but some years ago I was doing some work in an organization and I got asked to kind of show up to this working group thing because of my knowledge and capability. And so I show up and they're all sitting around the table talking about this cool app that they're trying to build. Now I'm really confused because that's I couldn't figure out why I was in this space.

Speaker 1 35:09

So, then, as I'm listening, what I'm hearing is oh, they're talking about building a learning app, so where you can, instead of like logging into your computer to take, like, your required courses, you could do it on your phone, you could do it on a mobile app. Okay, sounds good, but, knowing what I knew about the organization, it still didn't. It didn't make sense to me, like this was the conversation being had, so I asked the question.

Speaker 3 35:36

Before hold on. It sounds like you didn't have the context, danny. You didn't have the.

Speaker 1 35:42

I did. I was put into a situation where I didn't have the context. That was problem number one Right Now. In that moment I had a choice right, I go oh, okay, so we're building in that. How can I help here? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 35:56

But, recognizing I didn't understand the context. I said, well, how did we get to the point, how did we get to decide that we're building an app? Now they all looked at me like, well, we're building an app because we're building an app, that's what people are going to learn. And I said, okay, so is the goal that we want people to learn, or is the goal that we want people to use an app to learn? Like, how are we? And it took a really long time to unpack this and we went in these circular conversations and I know that that team was really annoyed because I had disrupted this great work they were going to do on this app. But come to find out, the problem they started with is that they had a significant number of people that weren't completing their mandatory training and somewhere along the way, someone had said why don't we build an app? And then the work became about building an app and I can see you giggling Is it there? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 36:57

And, if you think about it, the impact of that right. So had that team gone off and I'm sure they would have built a brilliant app, that would have probably been amazing, but it still wouldn't have fixed the problem. So they would have spent millions of dollars doing something that, at the end of the day, didn't drive the outcome they were intending to.

Speaker 3 37:17

Great landing Groom Airport. I love your story.

Speaker 1 37:21

It's one of my favorites.

Understanding Context and Its Importance

Speaker 3 37:22

I was giggling from recognition we were starting to get to the end of our time, danny. Otherwise I would share a similar story or stories and we could just go off on war stories along those lines. And probably the reason that I end up doing the work that I do is just stumbling into or coming across those situations over and over and like, whoa, hang on a minute, don't solve, don't do that to solve that problem. Let's take a step back and actually understand what the right problem to solve is. Ok. So we did our definition, we understood what it is, we've talked about why it's important.

Speaker 1 37:59

Can I just and then we were talking about how can I just have one more thing in terms of don't assume that because something worked in one environment, that it's going to automatically work in another, and vice versa. Don't assume that because something didn't work somewhere else, it won't work in another environment. Because I think there is a tendency for us to walk into situations and go oh I did this over there and it was really successful, so let's just do that here.

Speaker 3 38:28

There's a massive tendency for that, and understandably, because it seems like a really helpful shortcut to do that, but I like your calling it. I'd say that could be absolutely true. So we shouldn't be open to all possibilities?

Speaker 1 38:41

I think that lots of tools, the process of design thinking and the tools of design thinking and the capabilities of design thinking, if you really sit down and think about it, they're all designed to enable that contextual thinking. So I think that kind of nicely leads us to the next thing, which is to talk about which capabilities apply here. And we always say all of them, but what do we think mostly apply?

Speaker 3 39:06

I think situation optimization is important and I think perhaps some curious experimentation.

Speaker 1 39:15

I also think empathetic exploration. I don't think without that you could really understand context.

Speaker 3 39:22

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that makes sense. Do we want to go into any more detail in the more?

Speaker 1 39:26

we'll just call them that empathetic exploration is about understanding wide perspectives about a specific situation. I think the more, the wider the range of people we can speak to, and that doesn't mean speaking to 100 people. It means talking to different people from different groups. So the more groups of people, that the more. How do I say this? The wider the variety of people you speak to, the better you'll understand the context. Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:57

So I think empathetic exploration is really important. I think situation optimizing, which is about I mean, it's about optimism, but it's also about that balance of understanding what are the constraints and how. So that piece is really important, because if you don't understand the constraints, then you don't understand the environment. I think curious experimentation I wasn't sure about that one, but I think I've talked myself into that one now which is about learning by doing. Yeah, yeah. Because at some point you've got to take the empathetic exploration into some action.

Speaker 3 40:33

Yeah, and what was going through my mind when I started with curious experimentation or mentioned, is that learning by doing. In order to truly understand the context, you need to actually do something and, yeah, early on, it's helpful to do things that are with an experimental mental mindset. I'm going to do something small, I'm going to try to see if it works or I'm going to in true experimentation framework. I've got an hypothesis about the context. I'm going to test the hypothesis and discover whether my hypothesis about the context is true or not.

Speaker 1 41:04

And sometimes your curious experimentation could be part of your empathetic exploration.

Speaker 3 41:10

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1 41:11

All right. So what are you taking away today?

Speaker 3 41:15

Oh my, goodness, what am I taking away? Well, this idea of context being about how things are woven together, and I suppose maybe the overall takeaway is just paying more attention to context. And actually I'm going to take your three, boiling it down to something simple and practical the problem, the environment and the team's capability. I think that's a great simple one two, three checklist when we're describing or understanding the context. So that's my takeaway. Nice, how about you?

Speaker 1 41:47

Mine is the. I was really intrigued by context coming from the Latin origins of it and meaning weaving together. I don't know where I'm going to go with that, but it's sparked something that I'm going to go ponder. So you know, at two in the morning in the next couple of days I'll wake up.

Speaker 3 42:07

I want to know your thoughts.

Speaker 1 42:09

It's a nice, I guess.

Speaker 3 42:10

It's a nice no, don't. It's a nice, maybe reminder that everything's connected. Everything is woven together, Like these three things, even the problem, the environment and the capability. They're all related to each other. They can't be separated out In the same way that the problem, the thing in the basket, is sitting on the basket as part of the basket. Getting deep now, man.

Speaker 1 42:32

You're getting very philosophical, but it actually is right. Like, even if you think about yourself, like who you are today has everything to do with the environment. You started in the capability of the people that were around you. You know, like these, they're not connected.

Speaker 3 42:53

And the problems that you, that we, as individuals, have chosen to focus on solving.

Speaker 1 43:00

But a big part of who you are today are also not just the problems you chose to solve, but also the problems that life presented to you. Yeah, yeah yeah, the fix.

Speaker 3 43:11

Oh yeah, that bit too, of course.

Speaker 1 43:13

Because we don't always get the choice of the problems we get to solve sometimes.

Speaker 3 43:19

OK, well, before we just dive out into therapy session, then we'll have some sounds like a good place to wrap up, for today at least. And yeah, thanks for another great conversation, yes, some great thought provoking moments there and a nice concrete takeaway from me, so thank you.

Speaker 1 43:41

Thanks Peter, thanks everyone for listening.

Speaker 3 43:44

Yeah, see you next time. See you next time. Bye, bye, bye.